“No, it’s okay,” I said. I looked around the girls, at their concern, and wondered if I should share some of what I learned today. If I did, I would have to be very careful how I did it, because they were all one-eyed supporters of the chancellor, worshipping the very ground he walked upon.
“Actually, I found out why they’re running these pregnancy tests.”
“Isn’t it to see if we can pass our genetic modifications on to our children?” Jess said.
“Actually, it’s to see if the Korean children can pass their genetic modifications on to their children.”
A stunned silence followed that statement.
“What on earth are you talking about, Chelsea?” Romy snapped.
“Bhagya overheard the doctors talking today. They said the geneticists duplicated our genetically engineered modifications and gave it to all Korean children born in the last twelve years.”
“You’re speaking utter nonsense, Chelsea. Genetically modifying human beings is contrary to the Founders’ teachings.”
“Will you believe Bhagya when she tells you the same thing?”
“Actually, I don’t think it is contrary to the Founders’ teachings,” Jess said before Romy had a chance to reply. “A Better Way says that nuclear-radiation caused mutations of the human genome, if permitted to go unchecked, would pollute and destroy the human race. Genetic engineering is something else entirely, something the Founders and chancellors who succeeded them have pursued vigorously. All the food we grow, from potatoes to carrots, from apples to lemons, and even our poultry, have been genetically engineered.”
The girls all nodded thoughtfully as Jess spoke.
“You know, you’re right. Never thought of it like that,” Romy said. “And if Chelsea is telling the truth about the Korean children and they are like us, then this will be a good thing, like all of the chancellor’s strategies.”
“A strategy that will benefit the town–” Jess began.
“–and all of its in habitants,” finished Liz.
“Can you imagine a population where all the people are genetically engineered to suit their assigned roles?” Jess said, barely containing her excitement. “Enhanced hearing, the ability to echolocate, and superior strength for the foragers so they can find what they are foraging for more easily and protect themselves from the Skel? People with lower IQs yet faster eye-hand coordination will be better suited to working in the factories. Doctors with higher IQs will be better equipped to combat diseases.”
“The opportunities are limitless!” Anna said.
Somehow, the girls – every last one of them – missed the threat implied in what I told them. That the Korean children were the only ones being genetically engineered boded ill for the rest of the town. The elitist few were becoming even more elite.
The girls began chatting excitedly amongst themselves, the tragedy of my miscarriage overlooked. I wondered what they’d say if I told them about the virus. If they believed me, and I doubted they would, they would smile and say it was for the good of all as well.
I slipped my hand free and headed down to my bed, eager to get out of the uncomfortable hospital bedclothes and into my own.
I started when I realised Romy had followed me.
“Didn’t quite go down the way you hoped, did it?” she said.
I thought she was referring to the pregnancy until I saw the animosity in her gaze.
“What are you talking about?”
“That little bombshell you shared about the Korean children. You shared that hoping to cause a rift between us and the chancellor.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you, Chelsea? But you’re not. Did you think for even a moment what would happen if you did manage to drive a wedge between the chancellor and us? If we start suspecting him instead of trusting him, if we begin resisting the Founders’ teachings, if we rebel against the jobs they give us to do?”
One by one, the girls at the other end of the room fell silent and turned to watch as Romy continued her verbal assault.
“Why are you always on my case, Romy?” I asked, letting anger seep through my words.
“Your dangerous, Chelsea. They euthanized the boys because they were uncontrollable and therefore posed a significant threat to town security. And there you were, running around doing more damage that any of them could have done, masquerading as your brother and instigating the breakout. You'd better start being a poster girl for our group; otherwise you’re going to get them thinking they can’t trust or control us either, and that we need to be euthanized too.”
“Romy, what are you saying!” Liz exclaimed, jumping up from her bed.
“They’d never do that to us!” Jess said.
“Don’t talk like that, Romy, you’re scaring us,” Anna wailed.
Romy leaned closer until her nose was an inch from mine. “It’s up to you, Chelsea. Try thinking things through before you speak.”
I pulled a face behind her back as she retreated to the front of the room. The fact was, she was speaking the truth – not that I was a troublemaker but that the chancellor would see us euthanized if we became a threat to him. Romy airing that thought in front of the girls was good. I wanted them to see that their value to the chancellor was conditional upon them doing exactly what they were told.
* * *
“Only Koreans will be immune to this virus, you say? But immune to what, exactly? What will this virus do to the rest of us?” Patrick Tori asked as he paced up and down the Metallurgy Club staffroom. “Kill us? Make us all docile? What?”
“I’m sorry, Sir, that’s all I was about to find out,” I said. When I went back to school the following week, I told Ryan that I finally discovered something about the Plan, so he arranged for me to meet up with Tori that afternoon after school. When I got to the club, I was surprised to find only the two of them waiting for me. I quickly filled them in on everything Bhagya overheard from Dr. Jeong and the geneticists.
Tori nodded thoughtfully, glancing at Ryan and then back to me. “I know you’ve had a tough time lately, Chelsea, and my condolences about your miscarriage, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you and Bhagya to step up some more. We need to know what this virus will do, and we need to know as soon as possible.”
“They said they can only release it after confirming that the modified Korean children can procreate. Doesn’t that mean we’ve got about six years, since the oldest Korean children are only twelve?” I said.
“Your assuming they will wait until the children are eighteen before they test whether they can have children or not. What’s to stop them getting impatient and trying earlier? It’s immoral, I know, but we’re talking about the chancellor and the geneticists here. They don’t even understand the concept of morality.”
“Which means it could be as little as two years, not six,” Ryan added.
I shuddered at that thought. Surely they wouldn’t do that to their own children?
“You going to tell her what you found out about the information she got for us earlier?” Ryan said.
“Right.” Tori turned to me. “Those files you found on the lab’s computer, such as gene expression, senescent cellular elimination, regenerative embryonic stem cell research. Do you know what they refer to?”
I shook my head.
“The study of longevity.”
“Life expectancy?” I asked.
“More specifically, extending life expectancy.”
“So the geneticists are studying how to extend human life spans?”
“No. Only one particular person’s life span,” Ryan said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“You can’t be serious,” I said, looking to Tori.
“We don’t have proof, but yes, thanks to the information you obtained, we now believe that the chancellor is Captain Lee Kwang Soo, the submarine captain who founded the town a century ago,” he said.
“How old w
ould that make him?” I thought of all the times I saw glimpses of the chancellor during the Solidarity Festivals, and when he visited the lab. It gave me the creeps to think he was the same man who founded Newhome and not his grandson, as everyone believed.
“Hundred-and-forty? More? Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it explains why the government has always followed the same policies, never straying from them even in the slightest.”
“Because the person who implemented them is still in power,” I said.
“Exactly. A ruthless dictator who never dies is a ruthless foe,” Tori placed a hand on my shoulder, gazing up into my eyes. “Ryan made a good call asking you to infiltrate the lab, Chelsea. You’re an extremely capable girl and an invaluable asset. You be careful in there, okay? Oh, one last thing. Let’s keep this information about the virus between us for now. If it gets out, it could cause mass panic as well as tipping off the geneticists that we’re onto them.”
The next morning was heralded in with the news that both Suyin and Madison had miscarriages. Yet even as they were coming back downstairs, three other girls were summoned upstairs to undergo the same experiment. They went with grim expression, fully expecting their pregnancies to fail as well.
Madison didn’t seem overly fused that she miscarried, but Suyin seemed crushed. She joined the day’s classes and activities, but spent most of the time staring into space. I wondered what saddened her more, losing the baby, or being unable to serve the chancellor in this area.
When we adjourned for lunch, Suyin shared her fear that we were all infertile, a side effect of our genetic engineering.
“Does it matter?” Madison asked bluntly over a salad sandwich. “It’s not like we were ever going to get married.”
“Why do you say that?” Suyin asked, crestfallen.
“We have sworn to serve the chancellor. Can’t do that if we’re lumbered with a husband and stuck at home raising children, now can we?”
“I was kind of hoping our service to the chancellor would be for a limited time, not forever. That we would be awarded with normal lives in appreciation for our work,” Jess said.
“It’s a moot point if we can’t have kids. No one would marry us,” Suyin said.
“Funny how you all jumped to the conclusion that we’re infertile,” Bhagya said, her quiet voice cutting through the room. She rarely spoke, so everyone paid attention when she did.
“You think some of these experimental pregnancies will succeed?” Madison scoffed.
“No. But not because we’re infertile.”
“What are you trying to say?” Suyin asked, looking up hopefully.
“We’re not infertile – we’re just incompatible with normal humans,” Bhagya replied.
“You think we can reproduce with our own kind?”
“That’s my guess, Suyin. Shame they euthanized all the genetically engineered boys, then, isn’t it?”
“Who said they did? If I managed to hide for that long, maybe there are still others out there, male and female?” I said.
“Little good it would do our marriage prospects if there are,” Bhagya said. “They euthanize the boys as soon as they find them, remember?”
That gave them pause for thought. I wondered if we were managing to get through to them, if even a little.
* * *
I continued to follow Jazza’s group after school, the weeks flying past as I did so. I was no longer focusing on trying to discover the identity of the Patriot, since he never turned up to their meetings unless he was actually Mr. Fenton, the PE teacher. He was always present. Instead, I worked hard creating a portfolio of the group’s members, following a different man or boy home after each Underground meeting.
In the course of my investigation, I learned that Jazza joined the movement because his mother committed suicide after Custodians took her baby girl simply because she had a cleft pallet. Carver’s beef with the authorities was due to his father’s incarceration in a prison factory for speaking openly against the Founders’ policies. Mr. Fenton, on the other hand, proved a hard nut to crack. Attempts to follow him never bore fruit because whenever he met someone it was in the privacy of his home or theirs.
Bhagya and I also tried to find out more about the Plan and the virus, but without access to the lab’s upper floors, we hit nothing but dead ends. Eavesdropping on Mr. Cho’s conversations revealed nothing too. He was extremely careful when he spoke on the phone or to his visitors, obviously due to being aware of our advanced hearing.
One day in early December, I was walking home from school with Ryan. We walked in silence for the most part, enjoying the warm evening air and gentle breeze.
“Hey, did you hear about the Japanese ambassador they brought in today?” he asked.
“A Japanese ambassador?”
“Yeah. One of the joint Custodian/forager teams rescued a Japanese ambassador and his young translator from the ruins today. They were ambushed by Skel not far from Newhome. Intel says they were on the way here to open trade negotiations between Hamamachi and Newhome.”
“Hold on, what do you mean by joint Custodian/ forager teams? Are Custodians going out with the foragers now?” I asked.
“It’s a new initiative implemented this week. A squad of four Custodians has been assigned to each foraging team. The foragers have been told this is to protect them from Skel, but in reality it’s to stop them getting up to extracurricular activities while foraging and to stop them smuggling items into Newhome.”
“And you’re saying one of these teams saved this Japanese ambassador and his translator from a Skel ambush?” Having seen the Skel in operation, I found that quite an achievement.
“Sergeant Liam King took the credit for saving them, although I have my doubts about the validity of his report.”
“Why’s that?”
“Partly because two of his men were killed in the operation, but mostly because the foragers in his team were lead by Ethan Jones. I’ve heard rumours about Ethan’s foragers beating off several Skel attacks.”
“Ethan Jones? Didn’t he go AWOL back in early ’20? Mehmet reckoned he was in hospital. Which story is true?”
“Both. It’s not common knowledge, but he went AWOL at the beginning of ‘20, and came back later that year suffering severe head injuries. Once he recovered he went back to foraging.”
“We actually started work as foragers on the day he disappeared,” I said, remembering the confident, slim young man being fawned over by the rest of the foragers present. That he was giving the Skel a taste of their own medicine was no rumour. The Recycling Works boss mentioned it to me, telling me not to be like him, since I tussled with the Skel that same day. “You recon the chancellor will trade with the Japanese?”
“Time will tell. Depends on what they’re offering,” Ryan replied.
We paused when we reached the copse of trees concealing the hidden magnetic door into North End.
“Something I’ve been putting off telling you,” I said.
“Sounds ominous.”
“All the IVF pregnancies resulted in miscarriages.”
“Which means what exactly?” He spoke casually, as though not knowing where I was going with this, but I could tell it was just an act.
“It appears we girls either can’t have children, or can only have children with our own kind.”
“Your own kind – as in males with the same genetic modifications?”
I nodded.
Now he looked troubled. “But they don’t know this for sure, right?”
“They have conducted three rounds of IVF pregnancies so far, nine girls in total. The result is nine miscarriages, all around the six week mark. Yeah, it’s pretty conclusive.”
“I see.” He broke eye contact. I could tell he was struggling to process the emotions warring through him in light of this news. If we were to end up together one day, I wouldn’t be able to bear his children.
“Having second thoughts now, aren't you.”
&nb
sp; His head snapped up. “That's not it at all.”
“Ryan, it’s perfectly natural to want to have kids, and now you know that if there was some unforeseeable future where we could get together, that’s no longer a possibility.”
“Hey, you’re the one who kept mentioning children,” he said.
“I merely pointed out the difficulties they’d face having a mother with a criminal record.”
“And I said that was an obstacle we could face and overcome as a family.”
I sighed. “Ryan, you need to forget about us getting together. You can do a whole lot better than me.”
“You don't get it, do you?” He was hurt; I could hear it in his words.
“Get what?”
“You’re my best friend and I can’t bear the thought of life without you in it. I just want to be with you, whether children are involved or not.”
“I saw the look on your face a minute ago when I told you I can’t have children with you.”
“What, I’m not allowed to react to surprising news now?” he asked.
“Sorry, of course you are. But are you sure you’re not bothered deep down that I’m not as human as you?”
He grabbed my face and forced me to meet his gaze. “I know you’re different, Chelsea. And yeah, it’s taking some getting used to, but like I told you before, I don’t care about that! I just want to be with you.”
I looked at the passion blazing through his stunning brown eyes, and the anger and frustration I was feeling towards him began to slip away, along with my defences.
I rewarded him with a weak smile and gave his hand a squeeze. “Sorry. I gotta go,” I said, wiping a tear from my eye before hurrying into the trees.
* * *
Everything went pear shaped on Friday.
Rumours started circulating throughout the school during morning recess that Skel had hit the foraging teams and their Custodian escorts. Students with forager or Custodian family members or relatives swamped the school office, demanding more information. Others simply played truant, rushing out of school to find out the truth for themselves.
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 117
