Regeneration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 3)

by Laura Disilverio

  It feels like an age but is probably no more than twenty seconds before Saben’s weight lifts off me. I raise my head cautiously. A sunbeam pokes through a jagged hole in the window. Beamer- and bullet-proof, but not bomb-proof. The air swirls with debris caught up in the blast: paper ripped into confetti, dust and polyglass glitter. It’s unbearably pretty in the sunlight. The stench of seared plastic fights with the sharp ammonia smell of urine. Someone lost control of their bladder in the blast. I check. Not me. I scan below the window for the blood and gore that would mean the blast tore Idris apart. A few red droplets drip slowly down the cracked window, but that’s all. I stumble to the hole and look through it, scanning in all directions. Idris is gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  Minister Alden’s IPF security squad comes charging in, weapons drawn, alerted by the blast. Observant bastards. Andros, Saben and the escort leader give contradictory orders to each other and the guards, until Alden’s withering voice cuts across their arguments. “Enough!”

  They turn to her, their adrenaline-heightened anger turning to sheepishness. She dismisses her security team and tells them to await her outside, ready to depart in five minutes. They troop out, booted feet crunching on polyglass. My hearing is returning.

  “I tried to tell you the anklet was unlocked,” Rute says in a voice that pleads that he not be blamed for the disaster.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Alden says wearily. “You, Lieutenant—”

  “Andros.” He straightens. A rip in his uniform at sternum height shows where a polyglass shard scythed past him. His redhead’s freckled skin is ghostly against the gray uniform fabric. As I watch, a thin line of blood beads on his chest. He was lucky.

  “Let the barracks commander know the situation is stable and make sure the rest of the guards in this facility are apprised of the situation, as well. Then see a medic.”

  He nods, happy to have orders that make sense, and turns to the console to communicate with his higher-ups. I’m surprised at first by Alden’s calm and competence, but then I remember how she and Alexander survived the Between together, how they formed the Pragmatists and brought them to power. This is not my mother’s first brush with the aftermath of a fight and disaster. Years of being Minister of Science and Food Production might have dulled her combat instincts slightly and age might have slowed her reflexes, but the habit of command is harder to eradicate. That’s what Andros is responding to.

  Saben feels it, too. “What now, ma’am?” he asks.

  She folds her lips into a thin line and her eyelids close for a long moment. They’re crepey and blue-veined, and a tic makes the right one jump. The lid seems so thin and fragile, I’m almost afraid the movement will tear it. Those eyelids reveal her true age. When her eyes open again, her indomitable will negates her age. “Find him,” she says. “It will be too late, but we have to try. Do you have any idea where he might be?” Her shrewd eyes move from Saben’s face to mine.

  “The Peachtree house?” Saben suggests. “It was Alexander’s—it must belong to Idris now. He knows it well.”

  Alden is shaking her head before he finishes. “It was razed following the raid that put Everly in prison.”

  “Oh.” The sound escapes from me before I can stop it. That house was special. It marked a turning point in my life. It was the place where I learned to rely on myself and on others, where I learned that my body was as powerful as my mind, and where I met Saben and Fiere. It was a haven for Halla and Wyck and me when we needed one most. It held most of my memories of Alexander. Even though it’s been gone for a year already, it’s a fresh wound.

  “There is no time for sentimentality,” Alden says, sparing me a glance that dismisses my dismay. “Think, damn it. Where would he go? Who are his friends? He’s wounded”—she nods at the bloody wall—”and wanted. He can’t have many options.”

  “His friends.” I latch onto the phrase. “Who was captured with him at the Kube? Are they here?”

  Alden raises her blond brows at Lieutenant Andros. “The Defiers arrested with Prisoner Ford. Where are they?”

  Trying to hold a flap of uniform over his bared chest, Andros says, “Two women and three men were processed at the same time. Four of them are in the cells.”

  I interrupt to ask, “Is one of them called Wyck Sharpe?” Maybe he’s here. Safe.

  Andros frowns at the interruption, and shakes his head while saying, “The fifth, Prisoner Merton, was wounded and is in the infirmary.”

  Rhedyn. Rhedyn was hurt. “She and Idris were close,” I tell Alden.

  “Show us,” Alden tells the lieutenant.

  “Without authorization, I can’t—”

  “This is a matter of national survival,” Alden says, her voice like the flat calm before a hurricane. No one could doubt she’s staring into the face of a catastrophe almost beyond comprehension. “Take us to the infirmary. Now.”

  Looking at the hole in the wall of his prison, and perhaps realizing that his career likely has a hole just as big in it, the lieutenant shrugs. He works the console himself, and the door to the cell wing swings open. He makes a sweeping and ironic gesture toward it. “Be my guest.”

  “Good man,” Saben tells him with a nod as we pass through it.

  Giving his men guidance about dealing with the IPF soldiers whose ACVs are hovering in front of the prison in response to the alarm, Andros traipses after us, more out of curiosity at this point, I think, than from any hope of restoring order to his prison. The place is still a maze of white-painted walls interspersed with polyglass-fronted cells that allow prisoners no privacy. It smells like nothing I can isolate or describe, just clean and institutional, and yet the faint odor immediately brings bile to the back of my throat. I swallow it and speed up. Several guards man their posts and all want an explanation of the lockdown from Andros, but he waves them away. I see no one familiar in the cells we pass. At the end of the first hall, I automatically turn toward the infirmary, having spent time there myself after one interrogation session. Andros notices but doesn’t say anything.

  “Here.” I stop in front of a closed door.

  Andros shoulders me aside and puts his eye to the iris scanner. “Access granted,” the robotic voice says, and the door slides open.

  Andros is first into the room, raising a calming hand when a guard and a white-coated medical technician rise. Alden, Saben and I crowd in behind him. Only two patients occupy the six beds lined up in facing rows of three. The nearest, a man, is shaking so hard the bed’s metal frame beats a tattoo on the floor. He’s mumbling incoherently. I saw other patients like this when I was here. It’s an after-effect of some of the interrogation meds. Beyond him, half of her face swathed in gauze, lies Rhedyn. I only know it’s her because of the red hair splayed across the white sheets. Fluid-filled bags hang from stainless steel IV stands, pumping heaven-knows-what into her veins. Painkillers, I hope, moving closer and getting a look at the seared flesh visible beneath a loose bandage. The one visible eye is closed, and a sheet is drawn up to her armpits. Her arms lie atop it, one of them gauze-wrapped from hand to mid-upper arm, the other in a cast with only her fingers poking out.

  “The prisoner has third degree burns over sixty-seven percent of her body,” the medical technician says, gliding up behind us. His voice is dry and precise with no hint of emotion. “She has a broken ulna and a fractured tibia. Additionally, there are internal injuries. We have been unable to assess the scope of them because she is not stable enough to undergo an operation. We are keeping her comfortable.”

  He is telling us Rhedyn is going to die. The truth of it seeps into me slowly, like contamination leaching from the ground into clean water. Regret and sadness swirl through me. She helped rescue me from incarceration in a RESCO. Even though she and I weren’t friends, I admired her competence and had been swept up in her vitality. All that life force is now banked and will soon go out forever. I touch her fingers gently, but she doesn’t stir.

  “The patient i
s sedated,” the medic says, as if that should be obvious to any moron.

  “We need her alert,” Minister Alden tells him.

  He makes no protestations about the pain she’ll be in if wakened, but looks to Lieutenant Andros for guidance. At the lieutenant’s nod, he crosses to a cabinet and returns to the bedside with a syringe. He drains its contents into one of the tubes.

  “How long can she talk to us?” Saben asks.

  “She should be relatively comfortable for five minutes or so before the pain becomes unbearable.”

  Saben takes my hand and squeezes it hard. I have to remember we’re doing this for him. For him and all the geneborns who will be die in pain as great as Rhedyn’s if we don’t disable the bombs before they go off.

  The drug works fast. Within a minute, Rhedyn’s eyelid flutters and then she’s staring at me. Her blurry gaze moves to the others, and returns to me. She blinks. “Everly?” She must recognize me by my hair.

  At my shoulder, Andros jolts. I can sense him putting two and two together and deducing that I’m the wanted murderer and traitor Everly Jax. I can’t worry about that now.

  “Who are these people?” she asks distrustfully. “They’re geneborn.” Her eye rolls toward Saben and Andros.

  I back away a step and whisper to Alden. “This might work better if it’s just me. We’ve got a relationship of sorts.”

  After a brief hesitation she nods, and retreats with Saben, Andros and the medical technician. The latter rattles a curtain around the bed so we have the illusion, at least, of privacy. The metallic quiver of the other patient’s bed against the floor is a constant accompaniment to our conversation.

  “It’s me, Rhedyn.”

  Some of the haze disappears, and she half-scowls. “What are you doing here? You weren’t captured at the dome with us. At least, I didn’t see you. You were in the basement . . .” Confusion, pain or medication hazes her voice, and the casted arm rises half an inch before she winces and lowers it to the bed again.

  “No, I got away.”

  Her gaze sharpens again. “We were going to execute you. You betrayed the Defiance. Idris said—. Idris! Is he okay?”

  “Let’s talk about Idris, Rhedyn.” I scrape a metal chair close to the bed and sit. I lean forward. An unpleasant odor of charred flesh and a sweet ointment drifts off her. “Idris escaped from here. He’s hurt. Do you know where he would go?”

  She gives me a crafty look. “Maybe. What’s in it for me?”

  “You can help save his life. He’s hurt. He needs medical care. If we find him, we can give him that.” The seconds are ticking away too quickly. She is going to need the pain meds again in a couple of minutes and they will wreathe her brain in clouds I won’t be able to penetrate. I’m a lousy interrogator. I should have let Saben or Alden talk to Rhedyn. I’d thought my connection to her would help, but I was wrong.

  “You want to kill him.”

  “I’m his sister. I want to save him.” Not untrue. I want to save the thousands of geneborns more, but if I can save Idris too, I will.

  “You’re lying.” Her mouth falls open a half-inch.

  I shake my head.

  “Idris said— What day is it?” Anxiety sharpens her voice.

  “Thursday.”

  “What time?”

  It dawns on me what she wants to know. “The bombs haven’t gone off yet,” I said. Leaning close enough to see the tracery of red blood vessels in her cornea and smell her stale breath, I say, “What do you know about the bombs, Rhedyn? Where are they?” I try to keep the excitement out of my voice. Maybe we don’t have to waste precious time tracking down Idris to get the information we need. If anyone else knows where the bombs are, it’s Rhedyn, Idris’s favorite lieutenant. My fingers close around the half of her hand the cast leaves free. Her fingers are cold and limp in mine. “Tell me. You can save thousands of lives.”

  “Geneborns.” The derision she packs into that one word says she shares Idris’s hatred.

  “They’re people, Rhedyn. Some good, some bad, some kind, some mean. They don’t deserve to die because of how they were conceived.”

  “Oppressors . . . killers . . . my sister . . .” The words come on exhalations and her head moves restlessly on the pillow. “Necessary to eliminate . . . make it possible for natural borns . . . achieve . . .”

  I release her fingers and sit back. Resolve steels through me, leaving me rigid and cold. I know what I have to do. “Rhedyn.” When her eye swivels to meet my gaze, I say, “In less than a minute now, the pain will come back. I can tell you’re already feeling it.” She’s breathing shallowly through her open mouth. “The medical technician out there”—I nod to the curtain—”can take the pain away almost instantly. But he’s not coming in here until you tell me where the bombs are.”

  “Go to hell.” The words cost her. She closes her eye.

  I wait. In half a minute, her body beneath the sheet stiffens. “Uhhn,” she moans.

  “Just tell me how many bombs there are,” I say. I learned this technique from my own interrogators: get the subject to give up something easy, a piece of information that doesn’t seem too critical. Then, once they’ve betrayed their cause in a small way, you can use that betrayal to lever more intelligence out of them. I’m fully conscious of the irony as another fifteen seconds ticks by.

  “Seven,” she finally gasps. “The pain . . . please . . .” Her eye pleads with me. Her fingers clutch at the sheet.

  Tears pricking my eyes, I shake my head. “We need to know where.”

  The next twenty minutes are the longest and most damaging of my life, worse by far than when I was tortured in this very facility. Rhedyn’s moans grow louder, sounding like they’re torn from her lungs. They escalate to sobs and then to screams of agony. The sounds rasp my nerves and I have to sit on my hands to keep from trying to comfort her. She begs for painkillers between screams. I ask where the bombs are. Finally, she tells me, gasping out the locations in a voice that is little more than a harsh gargle. Four bombs here in the city, one in the Carolinas Canton, one in the Midatlantic, and one in Ottawa. The medical technician rushes in with a syringe immediately and I realize he’s been waiting, listening, the whole time, as have Saben, Andros and Alden. Rhedyn’s body relaxes moments after he squirts the medication into her IV and her eyelid flutters closed. I think about apologizing to her, even though she’s lost consciousness, but I don’t. I had to do it.

  I try to rise from the chair, and almost fall. I’ve tensed my muscles for so long that they’re frozen. It takes a minute to work through the rigidity so I can move. With an unsteady step, I cross to the curtain and fling it aside. Saben reaches for me, concern in his eyes. Alden, behind him, relaying the bomb locations through the tiny radio transmitter pinned to her collar, gives me a tiny nod. It’s nothing more than a quarter-inch lowering of her chin, but it conveys approval, recognition of what I’ve been through, a new status as, if not equals, something close to it.

  “Ever—”

  I brush past Saben and the comfort he wants to offer, and plunge through the door to the hall. There, I’m sick, heaving uncontrollably for several minutes. There’s no way to vomit up the guilt, though, the knowledge that I have done something truly evil. I can tell myself it was to prevent a greater evil, but my body still punishes me. The heaving gives ways to shakes, and it’s then that I turn to Saben, who has been beside me all along, patting my back and offering me water. I let him fold me into his arms and murmur into my hair. It feels like forever before the shaking stops, but it’s probably only a couple of minutes.

  “You did the right thing,” he tells me, holding my face between my palms so I have to meet his eyes.

  “No.” I pull away. “I did what had to be done. That doesn’t make it right.”

  The sound of the door opening makes us both turn. Alden stands framed by the doorway, nostrils flared. She speaks with an effort. “I just got word. A bomb’s gone off. The one in Baltimore.”

 
; Voices issue from the open line of her radio. She puts a finger to her ear bud, listening. Her face drains of color. She acknowledges the communication, says, “On my way back,” and looks at me and Saben. “Another one. Here. Centennial Park.”

  The look of defeat and futility on her face gets through to me faster than the words. I think that what I did to Rhedyn was all for nothing, and then I think of Saben. I’ll do anything to keep him from being exposed to the virus.

  Alden says, “Everly, you need to come back to the ministry with me. You’re needed. You can help the team perfecting the DNA editor to excise the targeted gene.”

  “We’ll need to use nuclease proteins to selectively cut DNA, to cut out the genes for gold eyes. It’ll work like a pair of molecular scissors,” I say, my brain blazing.

  “A genome editing tool that confers adaptive immunity. Exactly.” Alden nods once. “We also need to work out a plan for administering it to all geneborns as soon as possible. Sooner. We need a delivery method—vaporization? Electroporation?” Her blue eyes focus on me like lasers. “I need to coordinate with the other ministers about how we’re going to locate and disarm the remaining bombs, handle the panic, get care for the infected geneborns, dispose of . . .”

  She trails off but I know she was going to say “the bodies.”

  “Keep the government running, stabilize the economy . . .” Her thumb rubs against her fingers again as she enumerates the seemingly endless list of things that must be done to mitigate the catastrophe.

  “Saben. I’m not leaving Saben.” My brain races. “They might have biohazard suits here. Masks, at least. We take one for Saben and get him to the MSFP. He stays quarantined there, in one of the bio containment labs, until . . . until it’s over.”

  “I’ll help organize relief efforts,” Saben says, “and coordinate with the IPF.”