by Eden Wolfe
Left foot, right foot, left foot...
When she looked up again, she thought she could see a wall.
What is a wall doing in the middle of the country? Who needs a wall here? Who is being held in?
Gillian stopped.
Am I going crazy? There can’t possibly be a wall there.
Her feet recommenced their painful trajectory, but she was less sure, moving slower, evaluating her own state of mind, and coming up empty. She was so tired.
The closer she came, the more real the wall appeared. She could make out stone blocks cemented together, the height of two people, or maybe more.
The capital? Have I reached Geb already? I expected to see a city; everyone says it’s a city, not a wall in the middle of nowhere...
Something was flowing in the wind from the top of the stones. Black and long, like a horse’s mane or blanket of silk. Gillian’s body contracted, her stomach pulled into a knot and her head went light.
Left foot, right -
It wasn’t the capital. She was still nowhere near the capital.
But her feet refused and her mind had no more power over the rest of her.
Just as the wall became real before her, she watched the world turn sideways and her head hit something.
She blinked, half-aware that she was on the ground, barely conscious as the swatch of black on the wall disappeared and then seemed to immediately reappear before her. All Gillian could think was that the meaning of beauty had shown itself in human form and was kneeling before her.
“Are you alright, young one, are you alright?”
Gillian closed her eyes and disappeared into the waking dream.
23
Leadon
Lea stood in her favorite spot, watching the boats, a couple of new vessels to their fleet. She shook her head, taking in the sight of them.
And yet she felt no comfort.
The Queen was cracking down on inventory reports, including of their boats. But Rose and the incubates had already been long gone before the controls began.
Thank the ancestors Rose and the others had left when they had. To think I lived in such naïveté and for so long.
Leadon sat at the water’s edge resting her back against a boulder. Crows flew overhead, though this wasn’t their season. Nothing was in Lower Earth as it should have been.
Rose. So many children. Our warrior priestesses. Are they well? Have they found their way? Did they all make it alive?
The bobbing boats gave no answer. Leadon wondered if she could send a small vessel to go check on them. Thousands of incubates, some elderly women, a hundred carers… They truly were a new colony in Lower Earth.
If they had made it.
I can’t send anyone. It would expose them. The Queen believes the incubates dead; that is how they are safest. Rose will send word one day. When she’s ready, when she’s able. We all knew this would be hard. I just didn’t realize how many questions would go unanswered.
“Lea, Lea! Come quick!”
Lea lifted herself from the water’s edge scanning the edge of the forest for the faint voice that called her.
“Lea!”
Lea set eyes on the woman reaching her from the main forest path, “Please come, there’s a young woman from the Dark Counties. And her story is almost unbelievable.”
Lea felt an energy rush through her body and she scrambled over the boulders to the pathway. She ran with the warrior priestess close behind her. Her heart pumping, and her mind raced.
From the Dark Counties? What can be happening in the Dark Counties now? Is it a scout? Could the legends of Upper Earth be coming to us at last?
Lea hadn’t given any thought to Upper Earth in years. Though there had been a time when fears of a renewed colonization attempt by the men of Upper Earth had been the only thing on her mind. They had all believed the arrival of Upper Earth imminent. The legends preceded them. Legends of violence, of pre-Mist culture, of men who made women subservient. Men who valued power over the well-being of their people.
Lea’s feet kept her moving forward though her mind hurtled into itself as she remembered the commands of their own Queen. The command to execute. Execute thousands of children.
Perhaps we are not so different from the legendary men of Upper Earth after all.
They reached the edge of the village where another warrior priestess was waving them over.
“Lea, over here! Over here!”
Lea felt her breathing shallow. It was the unknown that gave her pause.
Aren’t I the chief? Why this banal fear? When do I overcome it?
Probably not until I stop caring.
Like Irene.
Lea pushed the thought of Irene from her mind for now. Irene whose actions were so inexplicable. So unpredictable.
Lea reached the hut as the women followed her. She threw open the pelt which covered the doorway feeling her heartbeat accelerate and a layer of sweat start to drip down her temple.
But all she saw was a girl.
She was filthy, sunburned, tall but thin and lanky as she lay on a mat directly on the dirt floor. Her eyes were closed. Lea kneeled beside her.
“Child, I am told you have come from the Dark Counties.”
The girl’s eyes blinked open. “Yes.”
“Why have you come to Gana, and why are you in such a state as this?”
The girl’s eyes widened, “I had to come. I had to come! Geb. Have to get to Geb!” She made a move to stand but her body was too weak to lift her.
Lea gathered the slight girl and smoothed her hair. Her forehead was burning. “Hush now. You are in no state to go anywhere just yet. Tell me of your mission. Tell me why you are going to Geb. We will help you.”
“I am in Gana?”
“Yes, child.”
“But the Ganese are wild people, superstitious. They welcome no one. They sacrifice children to their ancestors.”
Leadon’s eyebrows lifted, “Sacrifice children to the ancestors? I would like to know much more about what they say of my people, but I can guarantee you we sacrifice no one to our ancestors. It is the ancestors who give us wisdom. It is they who give us protection. For many generations, long before the Mist, it was the ancestors who had true reign through the spirit world to us.” Lea helped the girl recline again on the mat. “You are in good hands. But it seems you have a heavy message for Geb.”
The girl looked at the floor beside her. “It all happened so fast. It spread so quickly. It all started with one woman,” the girl looked up to Lea. “She was mad at first. She’d lost all her sense. Roaming like an animal. Yes, like a rabid animal. Except that she was desperate to survive. I have seen rabid animals, the boars that roamed on our property. They had no care for survival, they lived within a fog of rage. Not this woman. She came, took what she wanted, and then left. It was a few days later that the first in my house began to fall ill.”
Lea watched the girl’s eyes as they glazed over, memories seeming to come alive before her. “So much pain. They had so much pain. Like they were dying from the inside long before they ever should have.”
The description spurred something in Lea.
The Sisters.
It sounded so similar, too similar, to how Daphna described the illness among the Sisters. Whatever it was killing off the Sisters had now made its way to the Dark Counties, and whether or not she liked it, the girl had brought it right to Gana’s doorstep.
“Child, let’s get you to Geb.”
24
Daphna
Having spent the remainder of the night in a cell in the fortress, Daphna’s back ached. But that was not her primary concern.
Uma had collected her after a few hours sleep, and the time had come for the real work to commence. They walked in silence to the Tower.
Daphna felt her muscles clenching against her will as Uma wound her through floors eleven, twelve, and thirteen of the Tower. It was all too familiar. She tried to calm herself, to breathe slowly, to
let the feelings subside.
And here I was thinking I had gotten over this place. But all I did was leave it behind; it’s the same place, and I’m the same woman. Nothing is any different at all from the day I left. I hate it here. I hate these floors and whitewashed walls, pretending like it’s innocent to everything that happens within them.
Daphna realized she was directing her hate at the physical building when what she really hated were the people within it. The people who ran it. The people who decided life and death with a signature on a Directive document. And those who followed with no mind of their own, obeying like sheep. No better than animals. Just bees who worked their little lives to death for a Queen who didn’t care if they lived or died.
How can they do it?
She watched the researchers arriving. Faces that didn’t recognize her, those who never knew her name, some who hadn’t even been born when she had been a rising star in the Tower.
They walked in, acknowledging each other with a lift of the eyebrows or quick smile. As though what they did was the same as a soup seller or a farmworker. Daphna observed how the bodies were becoming more and more alike.
“Greater alignment in the policy directive I see,” she turned to Uma.
Uma pursed her lips, “No different from before.”
“Ha, no different. Sure. Beautiful green eyes all around the workroom, especially in the younger ones.”
“Queen Maeva preferred that particular variant,” Uma didn’t flinch.
Daphna sighed. “What are we waiting for exactly?”
“We’re waiting for,” she turned and looked to the door, “this one to arrive.”
A young woman looked self-conscious as she entered the room and clicked the door from the stairwell closed. “Hello, Ms. Uma. How can I help?” The young woman said. Her eyes darted over to Daphna, just quickly, before she gave all of her attention back to Uma.
“Rachel, I’m looking for the most current Elgin report that includes structural sketches.”
“Elgin, certainly. I’ll get that for you right away.” She turned and headed towards a storage closet on the far side of the room. Uma followed her, and Daphna followed behind Uma.
“Have you made any inroads?” Uma asked the woman.
“Getting there. We’ve nearly solved the structure of the fifth gene.”
“Excellent. I knew you were advancing.” Uma looked over to Daphna with a slight smile.
Daphna tried to contain her frustration.
Uma, gloating about the fifth gene. She has no idea what she was taking on.
“Fifth gene, huh?” Daphna couldn’t stop herself. “Yes, I can really see how you’re advancing. Pretty soon you’ll be able to draw up a pretty, little picture of the molecule. And won’t that be special? But then again, that will do you no good when trying to address the degenerative effects. You’re not even close.”
Uma’s smile turned into a frown.
“That’s right,” Daphna continued. “Fifth gene. Completely irrelevant. But congratulations on solving its useless structure. Now can we get to the matter at hand?”
Uma turned back to the lab tech. “Bring the report to lab A-5 when you have it ready. Bring all affiliated documentation. I need to be able to validate any new information in the helix. Leave nothing out.”
“Yes, Ms. Uma. I will bring it right away.”
The lab tech arranged everything for them in lab A-5. Twenty-three stacks of papers, each pile containing a different sequence aligned to a different gene. The table was full of them. Daphna didn’t need all of that documentation but certainly Uma wouldn’t just believe her when she handed over the final response. They would need the documentation in order for Daphna to prove her solution.
She had spent many days in lab A-5 when she had been in the Tower. She had been in that very room with Uma back when she first revealed the problems in the water supply. Daphna was struck by how poetic it was. Although thirty-odd years had passed, Daphna felt the sense of inferiority, the lack of power, just like she always had. But this time it would be different. Now she was the one with the cure. This time it would be Uma on her knees, begging her, instead of the other way around.
“So?” Uma began, tapping her fingers on the table. “You’ve come all this way, now, out with it.”
“Out with it?” Daphna had to laugh. “Even in your precarious position, you’re trying to patronize me?”
Uma rolled her eyes, “Daphna, look. If it had been up to me, things would have gone very differently all those years ago. And frankly, you wouldn’t be in the position you’re in now, running around, head of the Sisters, as though you’re the one who gets to call the shots. You and your mishmash of outliers and traitors. It was incredible to me then that Maeva let it continue, and now that it’s Ariane who is Queen? Well, let’s just say, she doesn’t suffer fools lightly. And traitors even less.”
“You think I’m a fool? With everything I’ve brought to you, everything I’ve shown you over the years, everything you’ve learned from me, everything you’ve manipulated and twisted and taken from me? Now you’ve got everything you ever wanted. Your office on the nineteenth floor. And even with all of that, you still can’t solve Elgin. End of story. We do this together now, you give me what I want, or our stay in the capital will continue. We will become more and more disruptive to daily life in Geb. Because for us it’s not about the survival of the individual. That’s the difference in the Sisters. We care about the outcome of everyone. The whole.”
Daphna stood rubbing her temple trying to bring her heart rate down.
“But don’t take my word for it,” she continued. “The Sisters are here, we’ve been here for weeks,” Daphna bluffed, “living amongst you. Like we belong. It all comes down to the decision that you make now, Uma. But believe me, the Sisters are not leaving the capital until finally you have put some attention on this illness we face. Shine some light into the darkness that was planted among my people.”
Daphna turned back to look Uma in the eye. But Uma’s lips were pursed and she looked away, out the window. Daphna knew she was trying to act like Daphna’s words carried no weight. But Daphna had known Uma for a very long time. And she knew that this was the only dagger that could strike Uma where she stood. Not only would Uma’s inability to solve Elgin become more known, but the Sisters across the city could threaten the Tower’s preeminence.
And Uma knew it.
“You best not act all distracted now, Uma. You think it’s only the Sisters afflicted? It’s only a matter of time. Uma! Uma, take off your blinders. Whatever is amongst us is one day coming for you. There is no genetic unification among the Sisters, not like there is in Geb. You know that we have women of the common design amongst us living in the Strangelands. And they haven’t been left unscathed by this illness either. It’s coming for you, Uma. It’s just a matter of time. So get your head out of your ass and start working the sequence with me.”
“You always did have a way with words.”
“I’m not here to get into some verbal sparring with you, Uma. Are you ready to start sequencing the illness the Sisters face, or not?”
“How do you expect me to do that? You want me just to produce the solution to the disease out of thin air?”
Daphna reached into her satchel and pulled out her file, thick and thus far unhelpful to Daphna. She handed it to Uma.
Uma flipped through the pages. “This is a fine start, but I don’t know how you expect us to be able to run tests without -“
“Samples? Right here.” Daphna passed the insulated pack. “Twelve samples. All deceased.”
Uma held the samples with care. Daphna was certain she saw something soften in her old adversary’s face.
“Do none of them survive?”
“None that we know of.”
Uma stared down at the package as Daphna’s heart beat between her ears. Without warning, Uma turned around and left the laboratory. Daphna blinked and waited to see if she was coming back.
When she didn’t, Daphna sat down at the table where the Elgin data laid before her.
The analysis isn’t bad, she thought as she reviewed some of the structural variations that had been sketched out. But they have focused their attention on all the wrong genes. At this rate, it would be years before they’d solve it. Elgin would overrun the capital. Yes, Uma needs me even more badly than I thought.
Daphna heard shuffling outside the laboratory door and quickly stood up, knocking the chair backward, the clang of it echoed in her head and made her cringe. A man came into sight.
“Roman? Is that you?”
Roman stepped fully into view. “Daphna.”
“Incredible that she let you live.”
Roman scratched the back of his head. “What’s incredible is that I’m not even sure who you’re referencing. The Queen? Uma? The Commandante? Seems there are generations who could have, or maybe should have, disappeared me a long time ago.”
“Disappear the former Great Geneticist?”
Roman lowered his voice. “You didn’t see what she did to Lucius.”
Daphna nodded slowly. Usually Queens did their business in the dark of night and in silence. Not in the middle of the day for all of the capital to witness either in person or on the screens. History had been made. History that Lower Earth would not soon forget.
“So, you’re consulting on Elgin?” Roman walked to the table in the center of the room.
She pulled her papers in closer.
Uma may have sent him. He has no allegiance; he might be trying to manipulate me…
Roman raised an eyebrow. “You don’t hide your skepticism very well.”
“It’s hard to know your motivation.”
Roman stepped even closer to her, looking behind his shoulder to see if anyone was coming in. He spoke, his voice hardly more than a whisper, “I’ll help you. I don’t have long left. Degradation. And I’ve done everything wrong in my life. But I might need your help, too.”
