“Hurry,” Saben calls.
A blast whistles past and a chunk jumps out of the wall, stinging my cheek. “Halla’s unconscious,” I shout. “I can’t get her up.”
Seconds later, booted feet appear on the ladder. Wyck jumps from half-way down and lands in a crouch. Then Idris appears. “Where?”
I indicate Halla. “She just had surgery,” I caution them. A waste of breath. They need to get her over the fence any way they can; otherwise, she’s dead. Another blast singes past.
They wheel the bed up against the fence. Wyck climbs onto it, and with Idris's help, gets Halla up and draped over his shoulder so her head hangs down his back. The pressure on her incision must be horrible. Alexander will know how to repair it.
“You first.” Wyck’s face is white with strain. “I can’t get her over the top. We’re going to need everyone possible on the other side to pull us over.”
Idris nods and scrambles up the ladder, disappearing over the fence.
Wyck’s got a beamer strapped to his back. I free it and motion for him to grab the ladder. He hesitates, then steps off the bed to put both feet on a rung half-way up, gripping a higher rung with one hand, while securing Halla with the other arm clamped across the back of her thighs. Halla dangles like a rag doll. “Pull,” he yells.
The ladder starts to inch up. There’s a blur of movement to my left. A soldier. Caught off-guard, I level the beamer and hesitate. The soldier falls and I look up at the wall, startled. Idris gives me a mock salute from where he’s straddling the wall, beamer cradled in one arm. Wyck and Halla are almost to the top now. More yelling, sounding confused, drifts our way. One word stands out: “Fire.”
I scan the compound, still dark, but with a lightening that says dawn is around the corner. An orangey glow flickers on the far side, past the lake. It’s a fire. I’m as confused as the soldiers, but then I realize it’s a distraction. Since it’s inside the RESCO, I suspect Jariah is responsible. Booted feet pound toward the fire and someone issues orders for using lake water to douse it. Saben and a man I don’t know have appeared at the top of the fence, smashing the glass insets with their weapons’ stocks, then reaching over to grab Halla from Wyck. They balance her on her bottom atop the fence, facing into the compound. Then they maneuver her legs around until they’re draping down the outside wall. Gripping her upper arms, they lower her, every tendon in their necks and jaws standing out. She scrapes along the wall and then she’s out of sight.
The unknown man jumps down and then Saben helps an exhausted Wyck over with an approving thump on his back. He holds down a hand to me. “Everly. Hurry!” Slinging the beamer over my shoulder, I run for the ladder and grasp a rigid rung. The ladder sways as I step onto it.
A hand clamps around my ankle. I look down to see a helmeted IPF soldier. He’s bleeding. He might be the one Idris shot. Balancing on one leg, I use the other to kick at his head. Saben, above me, has no clear shot. The risk of hitting me is too great. The man staggers, then renews his grip. My too-big pants start to slide down. I kick harder and the man’s grip loosens. The scrub pants are at my knees. Something flutters. The DNA report! I grab for it. The soldier reaches up and snags my wrist.
Then, a hole opens on his right shoulder and blood appears. He falls backwards. There’s a tearing sound and he’s gone, half the report still locked in his grip. I look up and over my shoulder to where Saben shifted along the wall to get a shot at the soldier.
“Everly.”
I can’t ignore the anguish and command in his voice. Made awkward by the sagging pants, I scramble the rest of the way up the ladder.
Saben claps me on the shoulder when I reach the top. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Ladies first,” I say, flashing a grin. Despite the fact that we’re still in horrible danger, everything feels like it will be okay now that I’m with Saben. Lowering myself to my stomach, I swing my legs over. The remnants of the glass cut through my top and grind against my abdomen. Someone on the other side braces my legs and helps me down. When I hit the ground, he takes off running, hops onto a scooter and zips north. There’s no sign of Halla or the other rescuers who must have been here; they’re all headed for safety, I hope. The headlights of IPF ACVs, at least three of them, streak toward us.
Saben grabs my hand. “Come on.”
We jump into a two-seater and Saben ignites it. I can tell immediately that it’s been modified for turbo speed. That makes it faster, but also less stable. I grab the seat edge as we blast away. A round sizzles past us and smashes into a tree trunk. It topples as we slide beneath it.
“Too close,” I breathe.
Saben doesn’t reply, too intent on evading the IPF to talk. We’re in a copse, weaving so quickly through the tree trunks that I hardly dare breathe for fear of unbalancing us. Skimming over a large rock, we roll, the instability almost capsizing us. Saben rights the ACV and, if possible, goes even faster. One of the ACVs on our tail fires again. The beam goes wide, but close enough to make us pitch. I bang my forehead on the dash. The beamer strapped to my back knocks my shoulders and I grab it, cursing for not having thought of it before.
A round explodes through the rear window, raining shards of polyglass on us. I swivel in the seat so I’m on my knees facing backwards. Two IPF ACVs are behind us, riding side by side as much as the forested terrain allows. I can see the helmeted heads behind the windshields.
“Hold this thing steady,” I say, leveling the beamer. My index finger puts pressure on the touch pad to let off a blast. The pursuing ACV swerves and I miss by a mile. I wish I’d spent more time with Idris in the attic weapons range. The stock vibrates against my palms to let me know the weapon’s charge has fallen to twenty-five percent. I only have a couple of shots left. I’ve got to make them count.
With the image of the falling tree that almost crushed us in mind, I aim for a magnolia’s overhanging bough. Timing it carefully, I put two fast shots into the rotten wood seconds before the closest IPF skimmer surges beneath it. The heavy limb separates from the trunk with a loud crr-rack and smashes onto the ACV’s roof. It spins out of control and we’re pulling farther away as it skids toward its partner. The two vehicles collide and explode in a ball of flame and spinning metal parts. I turn my head away to protect my eyes from the glare.
“Nice shooting.”
I nod, looking back to see if the third ACV is still pursing us. Not. He is slowing, intending to help his wounded comrades, I assume. I slide down into my seat, suddenly trembling.
“You okay?” Saben can’t spare a look, not at the speed we’re traveling.
“Uh-huh.”
Saben takes a circuitous route back to Bulrush’s headquarters, to guarantee we’re not followed, and it’s two hours before we dive into a tunnel entrance that’s new to me and approach the brothel from the north.
“Thanks for getting us out of there,” I say as we emerge from under a tile-coated trapdoor in a utility room. It smells like wet metal from the old furnace and air conditioning units rusting there. The idea that Alexander and Saben are trusting me with more of Bulrush’s secrets pleases me, even though I’m almost too tired to experience any emotion. In the hall, Saben catches me by my upper arms. His grip is firm, his expression serious as he gazes into my eyes.
“If you’d been killed—”
Wyck charges around the corner, saying, “Halla’s going to be—” He stops dead when he catches sight of me and Saben, his gaze going from one of us to the other.
Saben releases me. “You did great back there,” he tells Wyck. “Halla wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
A tic jumps below Wyck’s left eye.
“Is she okay?” I ask, trying not to think about how badly I wanted Saben to kiss me. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs. Sedated. She was hysterical about the baby.”
We hurry upstairs to the room where Alexander operated on Fiere. She’s guarding the door and stops us before we can enter. Her dark hair is
all which-way, as if she’s been raking her fingers through it, but her face is composed.
“Alexander’s still repairing the incision,” she says, holding a hand to her own abdomen, as if in sympathy. “He says she’ll be fine, though.”
“I don’t know what happened,” I say. “The extraction wasn’t scheduled until morning, but when I got to her room, they’d already delivered the baby.”
“She probably went into labor,” Fiere says. “They’d move up the extraction, if that happened.”
“I couldn’t get the baby. There was no way.”
“I know,” Fiere says, in a voice that says she really does. “You did great getting yourself and Halla out of there.”
“These guys did the hard part,” I say, motioning to Wyck and Saben. “Especially Wyck, carrying Halla up the ladder.”
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw you pushing a bed across the courtyard,” Wyck says.
“A bed?” Fiere asks.
Taking turns and talking over each other, Saben, Wyck and I tell Fiere about the rescue. They talk about rounding up ten Bulrush agents for the mission and about contacting Pharaoh’s Daughter to plan a diversion. I explain how I fooled the technician and stole her clothes and badge. I leave out my detour to Dr. Malabar’s office, but become ultra-sensitive to the rasp of the paper against my stomach. Suddenly, all I want is some privacy so I can read the report . . . what’s left of it. Fiere, though, insists on examining and disinfecting the gouges I made on my thighs to bloody my sheets. Shooing Wyck and Saben away, she takes me into a small bedroom and swabs the fork punctures and scrapes with alcohol.
“Nasty,” she observes, “but clever.” She lowers her voice. “You took the pill, right?” When I don’t answer, she says, “They give you hormones, and something else, I think, some kind of mood elevator, during the implantation. You know that right?” Her tone is urgent. “What you’re feeling, whatever urge you have to actually bear the fetus they implanted in you, it’s chemically induced. You’re a bio-chemist for heaven’s sake—you understand that.”
I do understand that, but I can’t rationalize away what I feel. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but part of me wants to have the baby. He or she is destined to be someone special, someone who can help Amerada, help all of us. Raising the baby scares me to death—no way could I take that on—but I can at least give it life and then leave it at a Kube. Like I was left. I wonder then if my own conception was unplanned, perhaps unwanted. Maybe. But even so, my mother didn’t sweep me from her womb. She gave me life. Don’t I owe this baby the same gift? I don’t say any of this to Fiere. I pull up my baggy scrubs and say, “I need to find something to wear and then see Halla.”
Fiere steps back, her eyes opaque.
I hide in the hyfac with the door locked and strip, peeling the albatross drawing and the DNA report carefully from where sweat has stuck them to my skin. I sit on the toilet. It’s cold against my bare skin. Dragging in a deep breath, I clutch the document I took from Dr. Malabar’s office. For a minute, I actually think about destroying the document, as penance for losing Halla her baby. No matter how badly I want to know who my parents are, this piece of paper wasn’t worth sacrificing Halla’s happiness. What’s done is done, I tell myself, swallowing hard around the lump in my throat.
I unfold the page. It’s headed with my name, age, and gender. Most of a DNA fingerprint appears below that information, colored bars graphing who I am at the molecular level. The paper shakes as my eyes travel down the page. Under the heading “Likely Parental Matches” there’s a colon and then the words “No matches found.” There’s more, but my fingers go slack and the paper slips to the floor. All that risk, and still no answers. I let the tears fall. Soon I’m sobbing silently, hunched over, shoulders shaking. I’m thinking about Halla, about her anguish when she realized we were leaving without Little Loudon. But I’m also crying for me. I still don’t know.
My crushing disappointment is tempered by disbelief. It’s impossible. Everyone, everyone, is in the DNA database. Dr. Ronan’s voice echoes in my head, urging me to be skeptical, telling me that of course not every bird has died off. “Every” is a big word in the scientific world. I try hard to get into scientist mode, to jettison emotion for logic. I scrub my face with my hands to wipe away tears and mucus. The evidence before me clearly indicates that not everyone’s DNA has been entered in the national database. Everyone with a ration card has to supply a DNA sample before receiving one, so the data suggest my parents never received food or electricity from the state. Outlaws? I suppose it makes sense that children born to outlaws aren’t registered. Even so, their parents should have been in the database. The DNA registry became mandatory shortly after compulsory insurance coverage. The system should have found my grandparents, at least. Something’s not right.
I retrieve the page and smooth it on my knee. There’s the first part of another genomic map; the rest is torn off. Below it, the type says, “Sibship Index, 16 Polymorphic Loci, 99.9998%, Confirmed. Sibling Match: One. Sibling Na” It breaks off there, the rest torn away. I have a sister or a brother. It’s too much to take in. I re-read the five and a half words a dozen times. Older? Younger? Sister? Brother? Where is he or she? Who is he or she?
There’s knock on the door. “You okay in there?” Fiere asks.
I quickly fold the page and tuck it away. “Almost done.” My voice sounds congested.
I take the world’s quickest shower, don a clean jumpsuit with the DNA report hidden in my bra, and turn the hyfac over to Fiere who gives me a strange look. I hurry back to the makeshift surgical suite. Entering, I can’t help but compare it to the ultra-modern facilities at the RESCO. The “operating table” has been scrubbed and smells of wet wood. A hint of rosemary perfumes the air and I imagine a former owner, Alexander’s aunt, chopping and sorting herbs on that table. Those thoughts leave my mind when I see Halla lying on a cot, eyes closed. Her arms are outside the sheet that covers her, dark against the pale linen. I approach the cot on tiptoe.
“She’ll recover.” Alexander speaks from behind me; I hadn’t noticed him sitting in a chair, keeping watch over Halla. He’s slumped on his spine, legs extended, arms crossed over his chest. “The interior seals held up; I only needed to re-seal the exterior incision and repair minor tears. They do good work at the RESCO, I’ll give them that. She lost a little blood, but she’ll be up and about in a couple of days. Sore, but fine.” He rises. “I need food. Don’t stay long. You look like you could sleep for a week.”
Giving him a grateful smile, I pull his vacated chair closer to the cot and take Halla’s hand. It’s limp and unresponsive in mine. I wish I could tell Halla about the DNA report, tell her about my sister or brother. But I never can because then she’d know how I betrayed her. It’s physically painful to think that my actions, my selfishness, have put a barrier between us. A permanent one. We can never, ever be as close as we once were because Little Loudon’s absence separates us. My gaze falls on a Bible half-hidden by the coverlet. I don’t know if it’s Alexander’s or Halla’s, but I reach for it.
Opening it at random, I read aloud softly, knowing how important the Bible is to Halla. “‘My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock . . .’”
I don’t know how long I read before her hand twitches in mine. I look up from the page to find her brown eyes fixed on me. There’s an expression in them I’ve never seen before. I jerk away involuntarily and drop her hand.
“Halla—”
That’s as far as I get in my explanation or apology or whatever I was going to say.
“Stop. Stop reading that. It’s bullshit!” She swipes weakly at the Bible in my hand. “It’s just . . . just words.”
I set it carefully on the bedside table, hoping Halla will want it again soon, feeling almost sorry for the Bible that Halla has rejected it. Ridiculous. It’s inanimate, unfeeling. I lean toward her, but she turns her face away.
“Get away fro
m me,” she says. “I hate you. You left Little Loudon. You let them keep my baby.”
“There was no way to—I couldn’t—”
“They didn’t even let me see my baby. I never held my baby. Now I never will. It’s your fault. Get out!” She shrieks the last word, rising up on her elbows.
“She saved your life.”
It’s Alexander’s voice, quiet and compelling. He’s standing in the doorway.
“Little Loudon was my life.” Halla collapses back against the pillow, spent. Her eyes swivel to me, burning with fever and hate. “I will never forgive you, Everly Jax. Never.” Her fingers brush the bruise on her temple. “You hit me. You kept me from going back. Little Loudon needed me and you—”
“They wouldn’t have let you see him or keep him,” I say, hoping my logic will get through to her. “They—”
She spits at me. The nasty glob splats on my cheek. I don’t lift a hand to wipe it away. There’s so much I want to say, but I know none of it will help. Not apologies or explanations or even the truth. Her pain is beyond all of it. The spittle slides wetly down my cheek.
Alexander helps me rise. My knees tremble. I try to speak, but he hushes me. “Not now. Give her time.” He ushers me to the door and closes it. I linger, not knowing where else to go. A minute later he emerges, passing a hand over his sleek hair. “I gave her a sedative.”
“She blames me.” Rightly. It’s my fault. By taking the time to search for my DNA report, I cost Halla her baby. I traded Halla’s baby for a chance to learn who my parents are. I gambled her happiness and lost everything.
“She’s hormonal and in pain. She’ll see things differently when she’s had some sleep and when the birth hormones recede. She’ll understand that you had no choice but to leave the baby.” He sees my doubt. “You had no choice.”
“I did,” I said. “I could have left her there, with Little Loudon.”
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