Regeneration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 3)

by Laura Disilverio

  Saben doesn’t look surprised when I mention Vestor, and I raise my brows at him. “Did you know that Vestor was the High Commander?”

  “I’d heard rumors,” he admits. “Very hush-hush. He seems like such a buffoon, and yet there’s something about him . . .”

  I know exactly what he means. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t believe the security at the headquarters. Facial scrambling goggles, tunnels, early warning . . . it makes a RESCO look like they have an open door policy.”

  “I’m on the mid-shift; I’m supposed to report for bomb-hunting duty at twenty-two hundred hours,” Saben says. Resolve hardens his face. “But it’s time for me to go AWOL. Living a lie has irked me for too long. I’ll be glad to shed his uniform.” He plucks at a sleeve. “It’s clear that our best chance of finding the bombs in time is Idris; he can point us straight to them. If he’s a POW, I can find out where he is and even get access to interrogation reports, if he’s already been questioned. If not, I’m more than willing to take on the task.” There’s a dark look in his gold eyes that I’ve never seen before, and his mouth twists into a grim line.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at the MSFP?”

  “Dr. Ronan is there. Clearly, he’s already got Alden and the Ministry spun up. There’s nothing I can do there that he’s not already doing. They don’t need me. You do.”

  He leans forward and swipes a gentle thumb under my eye. “You’re exhausted. You need sleep. You can’t go with me to the base, anyway. You stay here and sleep while I find out where they’ve got Idris stashed. I’ll come back for you. It’ll only take me an hour or two.”

  I catch at his hand and nurse it to my cheek. “I don’t want you out there. What if the bombs detonate early? What if Idris was lying about the timeline?”

  “It’s a risk I’ve got to take.”

  I can tell he’s determined, and I don’t argue anymore. I wish we could both hop on the next train headed west and ride it to the end of the line, and then set out on whatever vehicle we could beg, borrow, or steal for a point on the globe so remote the virus would die out before it reached us. But we can’t. We have to stay. We have to help, however we can.

  I pull Saben so he stretches on top of me and kiss him gently. His gold eyes study my face, and the love in them warms me, even though the thought of what lies ahead chills me. He kisses me again, and it’s a kiss of comfort, a promise. The heat between us tonight is banked. He shifts his weight off me—a good thing since I’m having trouble breathing—and cradles me so my back is against his front and I’m facing toward the window. His arm is locked around my waist. I could drift off to sleep if it weren’t for the nagging sense that this is a momentary lull.

  His warm breath caresses my neck. His voice when he speaks is low but steady. “Everly, if I get infected, will you—?”

  I stiffen. I know what’s coming.

  “Will you make sure I die humanely?”

  He’s asking me to kill him if he gets rabies. The very thought shreds my insides. My throat is clogged with unshed tears and my stomach lurches and grinds like I’ve swallowed glass. I don’t know if I can do what he asks. I know why he asks, though, and I hope that I’ll be strong enough to help him if the time comes. “I’ll try,” I manage to choke out.

  “Keep a weapon on you at all times. I’ve got a knife. My dad gave it to me.”

  I can do nothing but nod and hope he feels the movement against his chest. He must because his arms tighten around me. “I love you, Everly Jax,” he says.

  “And I love you. More than duty. More than life.” It’s a pledge.

  We stay still, wrapped together for long minutes, and then he disentangles himself. “Back in two hours,” he says, leaning down to kiss my forehead. His blond hair flops forward. “Get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, right.” I smile and he smiles, and then he’s gone, out the back door. An ACV starts up and hums away.

  I lie in our warmth for a few minutes, but when it dissipates, I rise and follow his path to the kitchen. The outside door is locked. On the counter is a slim knife in a thigh sheath. I go still when I see it, knowing why he’s left it there. Then, I take a decisive step forward and close my hand around the hilt, drawing the knife out. It fits my hand well. It’s old, the blade double-sided and honed to a wicked point. The sheath is well-worn leather, dark and supple with decades of oiling, rather than a more modern intelli-textile. Spreading the sheath flat on the counter, I use the knife to gouge another hole in the strap. If it’s sized for Saben’s thigh, I’m going to need to tighten it up.

  When that’s done and the knife’s strapped to my thigh, I wander the house. The colors are pleasing: creams, yellows, and earth tones with the occasional splash of blue in a tea kettle, a vase that looks old, a rug. The house is tidy, beds made, dishes clean and stacked in the cupboards, books shelved and alphabetized by author: Austen, Christie, Dickens, Dominguez, Hemingway, Imbala, Steinbeck. Some old, some more modern. I pull out one of the well-worn books. Great Expectations. It’s a weighty tome, and even though I’d like to relax by reading, I can’t get past the first paragraph. I slot the book back onto the shelf.

  I move to the stairs and ascend, feeling part discoverer and part snoop. I know Saben wouldn’t mind my poking around, but his parents might not be too thrilled. The carpet muffles my footsteps. I skip what are clearly his parents’ room and his sister’s, not wanting to invade their privacy. The next room is a hyfac and I realize I have to pee. Done, I wash up, luxuriating in the lavender fragrance that bubbles up with the soap, and cross the hall to Saben’s room. A biolume fixture slowly illuminates. I gasp.

  Saben’s artwork is pinned to the walls around me. Sketches and paintings of gnarled trees, a river, a cabin. And people. Dozens of portraits, some of them hurried and casual, as if he were sketching someone unaware that they were his subject, and some of them detailed and finished. There are several of a girl who must be his sister, who is a freckle-faced adolescent with a grin that won’t quit in the early drawings, and then a young woman with a glint of mischief in her eyes in a more recent watercolor. There are faces I recognize—Fiere, Alexander, Halla, and one full-length sketch of Idris. It’s only a few lines of charcoal, but they somehow capture Idris’s intensity and arrogance.

  The paintings and drawings vibrate with life, the subjects exploding off the page. It’s amazing. He’s amazing. As I turn, wondering at the magnitude of his talent, I spot a drawing of an albatross, similar to the one he gave me, and beside that a face I’ve almost forgotten. Mine. I step closer and peer at the painting of me he must have done when we were part of Bulrush because my hair is still long and blond, my eyes marine blue, my chin, lips, nose and ears unaltered. It’s not quite a three-quarters view, but not strictly profile, either. My gaze is fixed on something unseen and my upper teeth are biting into my lower lip. I’m concentrating on something, and my expression hovers between fierce and uncertain. It’s uncomfortable looking at myself, and I turn away. There are numerous other sketches of me, but I don’t look at them, afraid of learning something about myself, or about how Saben sees me, that I’m not ready for.

  A single bed, a chair and a desk are all the furniture the room contains, and I lie on the bed, curl onto my side and promptly fall asleep. A hand stroking my cheek brings me awake and I’m fully conscious immediately. I sit up. Saben sits on the bed beside me. His tender expression becomes businesslike as he sees I’m awake, and he says, “Time to go.”

  “I wish we could stay here.”

  For answer, he leans down and kisses me. There’s nothing gentle about this kiss. It’s full-on passion that has my blood leaping in response. “We can spare ten minutes,” I whisper as I nip at his ear.

  We shed our clothes and weapons in a frenzy and our joining is urgent, powerful, and right. Our mouths and tongues are hungry, seeking. Heated flesh slaps against flesh as we strain to get even closer. My body aches for more when we’re done, but I’m emo
tionally sated, determined to remember the way we fit together, the way we become one. Who knows when we’ll have the chance to make love again, what might happen as soon as we walk out the door? As we dress, I say, “I’m glad.”

  “Me, too.”

  Saben watches as I strap his father’s knife around my thigh and there’s something almost more intimate in that moment, in our shared thoughts, than in our lovemaking. I swallow hard and say, “Ready?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  It’s not until we’ve gone a mile in his two-seater ACV that I think to ask, “Where are we going?”

  “The Central Detention Facility.”

  I know it well.

  At least, I know the part of it I saw from my cell for four months, the trek to the interrogation rooms, the hyfac where I got to shower with no privacy once every three days. With a flicker of fear, I wonder if the guards are the same. They’ll recognize me.

  “You look different enough,” Saben assures me when I voice this fear. “It’s not just your hair. You hold yourself differently. You come across as more”—he searches for a word—”powerful.”

  I like that. I don’t feel particularly powerful, but I still like the idea. “Thanks. How do we get in?”

  “I took the time to create transfer paperwork.” Saben pats his chest pocket which crackles. “It says Idris is being transferred to a secure MSFP site for ‘specialized’ interrogation. It reads exactly like the forms I was given when I was escorting prisoners to the secret lab. You are the MSFP rep who has been sent along to ensure—what?” He looks away from the road to prompt my response.

  “To administer sedation to keep the prisoner quiet?” I ask. “To inject an interrogation enhancement drug?”

  “Good.” Saben nods. “Better not be an injectable, though, unless you’ve got a syringe in that bag of yours.”

  I pretend to search for a syringe in my messenger bag and pull out a container of lip salve. “No syringe, but I’ve got this. If asked, I can say the drug is absorbed through the skin.” I slick some onto my dry lips.

  Saben smiles, but we’re too tense to laugh. The ACV whizzes through the city center, dark and still in the hour before dawn. We decided this was the best time to extract Idris, when the guards were tired, bored, and eager to end their shifts. Hopefully, that will cut down on the number of questions they might ask, and their alertness. As we draw nearer, my muscles stiffen, my right hand throttling the door release lever. I could yank it and tumble into the street, stop this madness. I don’t.

  My jaw muscle throbs because I’m gritting my teeth so hard. I waggle my jaw from side to side. I refuse to ask Saben to stop and let me out. Saben nudges the ACV up against the curb outside the prison. It’s set back from the road, fronted by waist-high boulders to keep anyone from ramming the building with a vehicle, and a guard in a kiosk monitors entry. The prison’s granite bulk looms over us, and I imagine it casts a shadow that swallows us up, even though the moon is still low, far down on the western horizon. Lights rim the prison’s rooftop, and glow from within bullet-proof polyglass windows. I spot a sniper’s silhouette on the roof and two guards chatting idly in the vestibule. I know there are more.

  Saben puts his hand over mine where it’s clenched against my thigh, his gold eyes searching my face. “Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be. Let’s go break my brother out of jail.” Despite my flip response I’m numb as I duck beneath the ACV’s rising door and step onto the sidewalk. It takes several steps before feeling returns to my fingers. I wiggle them and suddenly I’m all right. We’re doing what we have to do.

  The lone guard in the kiosk straightens at our approach. He’s young, with a prominent Adam’s apple. Saben gives him no opportunity to speak, but says brusquely, as if the guard’s mere existence is impeding his mission, “Senior Captain Derringer. I have orders to transport the prisoner Idris Ford.” He slaps his forged paperwork onto the ledge. I’ve never seen him be rude or arrogant, but it works on the young sentry.

  “Uh, yes, sir. Let me just l-look at the forms,” the guard stutters, drawing the papers inside the small hut. His gaze flits nervously from Saben impatiently tapping his foot to the forms. His lips move as he reads. He speaks into the radio at his shoulder and shoves the papers back toward Saben, “You’re c-cleared for entry, sir,” he says.

  With nothing more than a curt nod, Saben turns away, strides between two of the boulders and marches toward the prison. I follow, feeling my stomach hollow out as we get closer to the high doors. They swing inward at our approach, forming a V, and we enter through the broad end and exit through the point, which is only wide enough to admit one person at a time. The doors close behind us with a quiet electronic click that sounds as loud in my mind as the slamming of a coffin lid. A wave of dizziness makes me sway, and I realize I’m almost hyperventilating. I concentrate on slow, deep breaths, feeling the gray close around me.

  The prison’s interior is ordinary beyond belief, and yet it still has this effect on me. It’s another of the re-purposed office buildings that the Prags have adopted to other uses, but it has an aura that says “medieval dungeon,” dank and sinister and drained of hope, despite polished granite tile floors, efficient biolume fixtures, and twelve-foot high ceilings. Everything is gray, from the guards’ uniforms, to the granite floors, to the tint on the polyglass windows that makes it seem as if the sconces and overhead fixtures are giving off a mist-colored light. I feel the gray absorbing me, and I bite the inside of my cheek. It’s a building, not a living entity. I focus on Saben who is looking around as if he owns the place, his demeanor saying someone better attend to him right now, or else.

  A senior guard approaches him, his carrot-colored hair the only spot of color in the room. His geneborn gold eyes have random flecks of sienna that match the darker strands of his hair. “I am Lieutenant Andros. You are—” the guard starts, only to have Saben interrupt him.

  “As I told the dolt outside, I am Senior Captain Derringer, and I’m here to pick up Prisoner 62341, Idris Ford. He’d better be ready.” Saben slaps his papers into the guard’s outstretched hand.

  “We were not informed of a prisoner transfer,” Andros says, his gaze going from the papers to a guard manning the console which controls entrance and egress. If he pushes the right button, the prison will go into lock-down mode and we’ll be trapped here. He shakes his head slightly at the older guard’s implied question.

  “Not my problem,” Saben says.

  Lieutenant Andros takes his time examining the transfer forms and his eyes widen when he gets to the signature at the bottom. I wonder whose name Saben forged on the form. He’s an artist—I suspect he could have reproduced any signature from John Hancock’s to Premier Dubonnet’s. Despite his shock at the signature, Andros holds onto the papers when Saben puts out a hand to reclaim them. “This doesn’t say where the prisoner is going.”

  “That’s classified.” Saben stares him down.

  The lieutenant’s jaw shifts and his gaze falls on me. “Who’s she?”

  “AC Rose Budd,” I say with total confidence, stepping forward. “From the Ministry of Science and Food Production.” I hold out my forearm as a third guard, a short, wiry man, approaches, wielding an identity scanner. I recognize him. Rute. I want to put a hand to my face or shake my hair forward, but I stand statue-still. I can only hope the identity the Defiance gave me is more than skin deep, that it’s registered properly. The wiry guard watches the scanner’s screen as it reads my microchip, and gives his commander a nod. I pass muster.

  “Why is an MSFP scientist involved in prisoner transport?” Lieutenant Andros asks, frowning.

  “The Ministry has created a new interrogation enhancement protocol,” Saben says, making it sound as if he’s doing the lieutenant a favor by explaining. “It needs to be administered an hour before interrogation begins, and the subject needs careful monitoring after absorbing the drug.”

  I produced the tin of
lip salve and hold it in my cupped hands like I’m protecting the formula for eternal youth.

  Andros eyes it with a mix of fascination and repulsion. He’s undoubtedly seen the effects of many interrogation enhancing drugs. “So wherever you’re going is within an hour of here,” he says. His eyes glint; he’s proud to think he has put one over on Saben, figured out something he wasn’t supposed to be privy to.

  Saben says again, “That’s classified,” but he gives a small nod that rewards the man’s deduction.

  I can’t help but marvel at this side of Saben I’ve never seen, at his ability to assume a new persona and carry it off without an apparent qualm.

  Making up his mind, Andros simultaneously hands the transfer papers to Saben and calls over his shoulder, “Get Prisoner 62341 ready for transport ASAP. Let’s not keep the Minister of Defence waiting.”

  So that’s whose name Saben forged. I stifle a smile. Nothing like pulling out the big guns.

  “I’ll make sure the Minister hears about your cooperation and efficiency,” Saben tells Andros. The man nods, pleased, and I can see he and Saben are well on the way to being fast friends. I roll my eyes and wonder at the power of intimidation mixed with judicious flattery.

  “I can give you a brief tour while we wait for the prisoner,” Lieutenant Andros tells Saben. I can see he’s itching to show off his fiefdom. I stiffen. I don’t think I can bear to go through the doors that the wiry guard is trotting through, the ones that lead to the cells, and from there to the interrogation rooms. I feel again the lightning brightness of electricity blasting through every nerve ending. I swallow hard, my mouth suddenly dry.

  Saben declines the offer, and I know it’s because he senses that I wouldn’t hold it together if I had to go through those doors. The lieutenant is miffed, but he smiles when Saben says he’d like a tour another time, when the Minister of Defence isn’t waiting for him. “Of course, of course,” he says. “Any time, Senior Captain.” The guard at the console summons him with a gesture and they whisper together for thirty seconds.