by Eden Wolfe
Accept it, Uma. This is just the beginning. The next pages will only get worse.
She looked back down at the page, halfway down the handwriting pulled to the right. On top of the ink was a stain of dried brown blood. It covered much of the code on the bottom half of the page. Uma had to hold it up to the light to make out the writing beneath it. The penmanship was growing erratic, the words varying in size, at one point letters were missing from the middle of words.
Uma didn't let her imagination recreate the scene in which the page was written. She held it up to the light and steeled her stomach, forcing her eyes to focus on the writing and nothing else.
"Uma."
"What? Can't you let me concentrate?"
"Uma," Roman started gently. "It's eight o'clock."
"What?" she looked at the wall, ticking two minutes past eight. "Sorry."
Roman looked at her desk. Uma had made good progress but there were still more than a hundred pages left.
"Go home, Uma. Come at it again tomorrow. One more day isn't going to alter our course."
"But the Queen - "
"The Queen knows you're human."
"We need to know, Roman - if it's here, if she's said anything at all, I'll run it through to the deepest level of analysis. I'll analyze the - um - I can find through the lab techs the different experiments that cover - "
"Uma, you're tired. You'll start making mistakes. You'll miss something. I'm not asking, I'm telling you. Go home."
Uma closed her eyes and her head began spinning.
He's right. And I can't afford to make a single mistake. Not now.
"Alright. I'll go."
"Find me tomorrow when you've finished, obviously I have no greater priority than to hear your analysis."
Uma nodded and Roman left. The door shut again. Uma let her hands rest on the pages in front of her, which were outlining the next stages for reducing the gestation period for Willing Women. She lowered her head onto Sara's script and immediately fell asleep.
Tapping on the windowed wall woke her.
She jolted her head upright, stars sparkling in her peripheral vision.
Carole opened the door. "Roman sent me."
"Mmm."
"I'll take you home."
"Not necessary."
"Roman says it is."
Uma lifted herself from her desk, her toe catching on the carpet as she tried to walk. "Fine. Let's go."
She jimmied the key in the lock and looked one last time at the nightmare on her desk.
Nightmares. My whole night will be filled with nightmares.
She awoke before her alarm. She grabbed the clock, her eyes adjusting to read it.
Five in the morning.
She stayed for a moment, staring at the ceiling, a single strip of light sneaking through the curtains from the streetlamp. She blinked her eyes, having forgotten the day that lay ahead of her. It rushed back into her consciousness and quickly threw off the covers, hastily dressing. She grabbed two pieces of bread and tossed them in the toaster. She tied up her shoes, but the laces felt foreign in her fingers. She almost couldn't tie the knot.
Snap out of it, Uma. Today's the day.
She swallowed the toast without tasting it as she rushed to the Tower. The front door was already open.
"Hiya, Miss Uma," the Gillard guard saluted.
Uma nodded without making eye contact. A young woman was waiting at the elevator, the doors opening just as she arrived.
"Take the next one," Uma said to the woman, who stepped back from the entry, nodding quickly at Uma.
The elevator felt painfully slow.
8-9-10...
She was convinced she'd climbed the stairs faster than the elevator was delivering her.
14-15-16...
At last, the doors opened on the seventeenth floor. Carole hadn't yet arrived, nor had the admins. She had the floor to herself.
She stuck the key in the lock, shaking it until it took, closing it firmly behind her. She pulled down the blinds on the windowed walls.
This is it.
She sat down, knowing that in addition to the information scratched out on the pages, she would see the evidence of Sara's interrogation.
I can't let it shock me. I am a scientist. I'll observe it and file it like any other input.
She looked down at the next page of code.
Roman crossed by her door. She continued.
The door creaked as Carole peeked in. She continued.
Roman and Carole were speaking, she heard their voices. It was early afternoon, but she was too deep in now. She'd just started seeing the pages she'd been waiting for from the start.
The pages which detailed the adaptations made on the incubates.
Finally, they got it out of her. How many days had she written before she cracked? How much had she endured? Never mind that, Uma. This is what you need. Stay in it. This is what counts.
The initial pages were all known modifications, the conflicts they'd found in the first phases.
Come on, Sara. Get to it. This is all standard, though the guards forcing it out of her wouldn't have known that.
On the first page, there was a reference scribbled, the beginning of something Uma recognized from the Male Program but which was out of place here. But the sequence wasn't finished. Uma couldn't make sense of it. The sequence was unknown, and it seemed to contradict itself. Uma compared against Sara's activity log, but it didn't match up.
It's not incubation, the reference points aren't even close. What is this? Was she starting to go mad? Did she have a side project that none of us knew about?
Uma flipped to the next pages, hoping it would put the code in some kind of context.
It didn't.
But what she found jumped out from the page. It was what she was looking for. It couldn't have been planted by Sara, but it appeared that she knew about it and hadn't reported it. At least, not reported it in a way that anyone had noticed.
Inconsistencies in incubate sequence - is this the first of the window or the middle? Must be the first - position A - when the signal starts is when the reduction is... it's synonymous. The reduction in variability. It's picking up the first position and the twenty-fifth.
Uma sat back in her chair so hard it bounced behind her.
There is an overlapping gene.
She scanned further, there was much to interpret, but she had enough now to go to Roman with something concrete. She felt everything inside her release, like the darkness she'd felt stretching before her had transformed into a fertile green field at sunrise.
30
Roman
Uma passed Roman the page.
He didn't want to take it.
He knew what had been done to produce it. Knew the torture Sara had endured. Maeva had detailed it without hesitation.
He looked at the page Uma held out, the writing hardly legible, the edges of it crumbled. Spots across it that he couldn't identify and didn't want to.
He slowly stretched his arm and took it from her.
"It's in the second half." Uma's eyes had fire in them. Roman was worried about her mental condition. She'd pushed too far these last days. He wasn't sure her analysis could be reliable in her state. "Look, look." She came around beside him and pointed, "Position A is the beginning of the coding sequence. But Position H reads in reverse." She squinted at the page, "From what I can tell."
He looked it over, and then back again.
She might be right.
"So you think it's a regulation sequence?"
"I haven't taken the analysis to the next stage yet. Could be regulation sequences to transcribe the gene, but it could be a splicing enhancer or even a promoter sequence. There's a chance it's a functional RNA, but that's unlikely. Still, I haven't gone any further yet, I don't have much left to review, but I wanted to tell you immediately."
"Yes, as you should have." He looked up at Uma, her hair sticking out and her collar pulled wide. "You've done we
ll, and you look ill. We can't take it to the Queen with you in this state."
"Me? I'd take it to the Queen?"
"Of course you would, it's your discovery."
"But I haven't completed the analysis."
Roman walked to the door, opening it for her. "You go home. You take a couple hours of rest. You don't have to sleep, but you have to at least clear your mind. Bring me the remaining pages before you go, " he felt his stomach drop, but he had no choice. It was his turn to face what had happened to Sara. "I'll review what remains and we can do a deeper analysis tomorrow, based on the Queen's response."
"Yes. Yes, fine." Uma walked out the door and Roman watched as her shoulders relaxed. She walked in a trance to the elevator. She forgot to push the button. Roman shook his head. She eventually realized it and quickly thrust her hand at the panel. He closed his office door and sat at his desk, preparing himself for what was coming.
Three hours later when Uma came back, he was no closer at advancing the theory than when Uma had brought it in.
"It's all confused," he said to her before she'd even come through the door. "It talks about one potential variation and then flips to another. I can't make any sense of it."
He couldn't tell if it was intentionally written that way by Sara to throw them off the scent, or if she didn't know herself, or worse.
Is this just the scientific musings of a dying woman?
Uma came and looked over his shoulder. She was a changed woman from who she'd been just a few hours before. Her skin was fresh and her clothes pressed. Her hair shone in the light of the setting sun.
She shook her head. "I can't tell. Not without comparing it to the original sequences."
"That could take weeks."
"For me, yes. For you, yes. But for Lucius - "
Roman cut her off, "Don't say it. Don't say his name."
I've already been on my knees before Lucius and he might as well have kicked me like a dog. This code won't change that. If anything he'll be furious about Sara's capture and - and the method of extraction of this information.
"We've got to figure this out, Uma. We don't need him. We have to try."
Uma stood up and shrugged. "Maybe you're right. Maybe with time, we can fix this. But the next phase of incubates is about to be launched. They are already in month five."
Another phase of incubates to be born. If only we'd known five months ago what we know now.
Roman internally prepared himself for a conversation he couldn't imagine. "Get ready, we're going to see Queen Ariane."
"There is a message superimposed on the gene," explaining the science was proving more difficult than Roman had expected. "That's the one we're concerned about."
Maeva stepped forward in front of Queen Ariane. "And you couldn't have found this before?"
"We're still not even sure of what we've found, if it's there at all."
"This is ridiculous, Roman. So you've come here to tell us of something perhaps you've found but can't interpret it?"
"That's right. And we never would have had any idea of what to look for without - " he didn't know the right words to describe it, "without the insights the Commandante provided through her, um..."
"We all know what you're trying to say," the Commandante stepped forward. "So this is all a result of analysis of the intelligence provided by the betrayer?"
"Sara of the seventh line. Yes. It's our interpretation of those pages."
The Commandante nodded, and Roman couldn't help thinking that she looked satisfied at hearing it.
'Would you all please sit back down." Queen Ariane had not moved from her armchair at the head of the room. Roman had never been in the meeting hall before. While the surface wasn't large, the walls extended up at least two stories, completely stone. No windows. There were in the very heart of the fortress where prying ears couldn't happen upon them by accident.
Maeva retook her chair, as did the Commandante. They were in a circle where all the seats tilted toward the Queen.
Ariane rubbed her temples. Everyone waited. "You have a concept, but no real evidence yet, is that right?"
"Yes, my Queen."
"You have fourteen thousand live births over the past five years."
Uma cleared her throat. "Fourteen thousand births, but only twelve thousand, nine-hundred alive."
"How's that?"
Uma looked at Roman quickly before turning back toward the Queen. She straightened her shoulders. "The others were involved in incidents."
Ariane didn't flinch. "They killed themselves."
"Yes."
"Incidents," the Queen echoed shaking her head. "Central Tower is gifted at creating euphemisms."
Uma shifted in her seat. "Within one week's time, that figure will be fourteen thousand, nine hundred."
The Queen sat forward in her chair, her green eyes catching the candlelight from the chandeliers. Her voice came out slow and precise. "Explain."
Roman knew it was his turn. "This is the sixth phase."
"You conducted a sixth phase?"
"Yes, this was before we had identified the pattern."
The Queen, Maeva, and the Commandante all spoke at once.
"You didn't see the pattern?"
"How could you continue with a failing program?"
"This is the disgrace of Lower Earth," Maeva stood. "I cannot sit down. I cannot take any of this sitting down!" She marched to Roman, "I cannot comprehend what was going through your mind!"
"We were operating on orders."
"You mean my orders."
"You were Queen."
"You were the Great Geneticist. It was your responsibility to do it right, I gave you no timeline."
Roman bit his tongue to keep from saying something that could have repercussions. "We weren't ready for the order you gave."
"You said you could do it."
"We had the ability to implement. We had the equipment, we had the common sequence of women which was getting closer to exceptional levels of resilience. But we didn't test it. We immediately operated at scale."
"Lower Earth needs soldiers, not warm bodies that throw themselves off bridges! It was your design, not my command, which has left us in so sour a position. The flaw was in the design."
"It was never designed for the incubation program you ordered. There were unforeseeable social consequences. We couldn't have identified them in the design."
"Nearly fifteen thousand?" The Queen whispered. She stood, gesturing with her hand for Maeva to sit back down. "Fifteen thousand? And you cannot guarantee the long-term effects, nor create a treatment for them?"
"We cannot treat it. It's social in nature, not biological. The very fact of their incubation birth has already done irreparable damage to their brains."
"Fifteen thousand," Ariane whispered.
Roman felt like all the air in the room had been suctioned out. He wasn't sure if he was breathing, and couldn't tell if anyone else was either. He heard the air go into the Queen's nostrils. She parted her lips and the air sighed out. She nodded.
"You have all created a very unfortunate situation for me." Ariane closed her eyes.
Maeva whispered, "It was based on the intelligence of the time, the scouts-"
"SHUT UP, MOTHER!"
The sound of the Queen's scream tore at Roman's ears, the screech almost inhuman, he'd never heard anything like it. He covered his ears but it passed. Maeva was sitting far back against her chair, all color drained from her face.
"You," Ariane stepped toward Maeva, "You have put us in this position. Do you see what you have caused? You tell me to bring compassion to our people, and yet you have given birth to a generation who would rather die than serve you." She walked down the middle of the circle to the Commandante. "Irene, I will be holding a Tuesday Briefing," she turned back to Maeva, "Does that please you, Mother? Look at how I take your advice."
The voice sounded like venom and Roman's stomach turned.
The Queen turned back to Ir
ene. "Every soul across Geb must be in attendance. Every Willing Woman, every soup seller and field dweller and Central Tower lab tech. All of Cork Town, you hear? Every single person must make their way to the center of Geb and have clear, unobstructed access to a screen. The message must be unambiguous and every ear must hear it from my own mouth. There will be no rumors, only the truth that falls from my lips." The Queen turned, "Am I clear, Irene?"
"Yes."
"I can't hear you!"
Irene stood. "Yes! My Queen!" Irene bowed deep. "It will be done. Every guard will be dedicated to this one goal until the Tuesday Briefing."
"Do not let me down, Irene."
"I will not!"
"You are all dismissed. You all have much to discuss, much to prepare, much to do. And I can't bear to look at any of you anymore. Leave. Now."
Roman didn't remember winding through the corridors of the fortress, he only remembered the sound of his breath between his ears until finally he stepped into the sun of the Geb City Square and marched to the Tower, his mind concentrated on one task and one task only. Remedy the code of incubates, or feel the weight of Lower Earth crush him into his grave.
31
Trudith
Trudith and Anna tried to settle in the crowd, but shoulders were pushing and feet inevitably stomped on theirs as the thousands moved from Cork Town to the Geb City Square. Despite the number of people in movement, few voices dared to speak. They didn't need to be told something was very wrong; the fact alone of their being herded like cattle to the Tuesday Briefing was enough for alarm bells to sound in Trudith’s mind.
"We haven't even had a Tuesday briefing since Queen Ariane's coronation," a woman said. "Whatever this is, it can't be good."
Trudith agreed. Anything that brought together the entire population of Cork Town with the Geb City population was going to rock the world they knew.
"I still think it's Upper Earth," a voice said somewhere behind Trudith, but she couldn't turn around to see who it was. The waves of people forced her forward. Trudith didn't know Geb City much at all, and in these conditions, it was downright unrecognizable.
