by Eden Wolfe
“Hush, hush. It’s all right.”
Daphna kneeled to the ground and held her. Gale’s arms flew around Daphna’s waist and she buried her face in Daphna’s dress.
“You’re safe, Gale. You’re safe. Let’s get to the camp and talk this all through.”
Daphna didn’t rush her. There was no reason. Gale was coming with them, and they would figure out the rest. The woman had already suffered enough at the hands of others. They stayed until Gale’s tears ran dry. Then, without a word they stood and marched to the camp.
They arrived at the small camp. Adel was waiting for them, just as Daphna had asked her to do. Their camp was small and well concealed in a forest bed. Most of the Sisters had gone straight back to the Strangelands as instructed. Only a select few and their unexpected additions had gone to the Dark Counties.
“Adel,” Daphna put her hand on the woman’s shoulder, “You remember Gale?”
“Of course. It’s good to see you, Gale.”
Gale’s eyes darted left and right. She nodded quickly.
“Come,” Daphna gently led Gale into the main tent, “There’s someone you’ll recognize here.”
Anna sat in the far corner of the tent, rocking the child. Next to her sat Gillian. They all looked up as the tent flap opened and Daphna entered with Gale close behind her.
Gillian stood upon seeing them. “Gale,” she ran to Gale and threw her arms around her.
The unexpected affection seemed to tear Gale out of the daze she’d been in, bringing her back into her skin. She embraced Gillian, pulling her close and running her hand along Gillian’s long hair.
“Gillian…”
Gillian looked up at Gale’s eyes, “How is the farm? How is my family?”
“Please, don’t ask me, Gillian.” Gale’s head gently shook, “I have nothing good to tell you.”
“Are they sick? What about Lore? And Joa? Are they okay?”
Gale’s head shook gently, back and forth. Daphna could see Gale’s face twisting. Her despair was unmistakable.
Gillian blinked hard several times, her lips parting.
Gale pulled Gillian in even closer. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry…”
Daphna turned to Adel and spoke softly to not interrupt the scene before her, “Have you collected samples from the child?”
“Yes, I use the same protocols we used to use in the Tower.”
“Sufficient to replicate?”
“We could replicate a new population with what I’ve gathered, if that was what we wanted.”
“Good.”
Adel was much younger than her, but Adel’s training was good. She had proven herself competent on many projects in the Strangelands. She was among the most trustworthy of the former-Tower Sisters. Perfect for the project at hand.
Reassured that they had the blood, marrow, and tissue samples necessary, Daphna stepped further into the tent.
“We don’t have much time. And all of you have suffered in different ways, so I will be brief and direct. Anna, you will stay in the Dark Counties with the child. There are many places here for you to settle and where you can remain hidden from the Queen. Gillian,” Daphna turned to the adolescent girl whose spine pulled straight though the tears were still running down her cheek, “You’ll stay with Anna and the child, unless you object. But the arrangement seems best for everyone. You can give each other support and companionship. And together you can protect the child.”
“Protect me from what?”
Daphna started. When he spoke, the child spoke only in full sentences. And this was a complex situation. It wasn’t normal that he could process that information.
She looked him in the eyes. Big green eyes that weren’t afraid to look back at her.
“You need to grow,” she finally managed. “You need to be able to develop in conditions that suit your needs. We want to watch and track with your development. You need support to do that. And there are people who wish that wouldn’t happen. You must be protected from them.”
She looked up to Anna and Gillian.
“The reason Adel collected the samples from the…” she hesitated, still unable to call the child a boy, given all of the chromosomal adaptations that had been made. But in this moment it was best she kept things simple. “From the boy is so that we can continue where Lucius left off. We will try to replicate what he did. Our world is not whole without it. I can’t say for certain that our efforts to reproduce another boy, or many boys, will be successful. Nor that it will change our story. But we will try.”
Daphna looked to Gale.
“And you will come back into the Sisters. We welcome you back with no resentment for all that has happened. We all have complicated histories. Yours happens to have been doubly so. You had to watch the evil underbelly of our world, but now you’ll witness that world changing.”
Daphna looked around the tent at the mix of people within it. A deviant woman, a boy child, a girl from the Dark Counties, a former waiting-woman from the fortress, and a Sister who was a former researcher and Central Tower. She gently shook her head.
“I never would have guessed that circumstances would bring a group like us together. But it has, and now we must part. We sleep this night together and in the morning we go our separate ways.”
Every head in the tent nodded in her direction.
40
Uma
Uma walked up the corridor of the fourteenth floor of Central Tower. In theory, she could wait for a written report to be delivered to her later in the day, but in reality, she couldn’t wait a second longer. She moved to the desk of one of the researchers covering the East Fields.
“Well?” she said to the young woman. They were all getting younger. Lower Earth’s reliance on science to overcome the onslaught of post-Mist scourges was on the shoulders of women who seemed barely old enough to be out of school.
Or maybe she was just getting older.
“It’s not reacting yet, Uma. But we wouldn’t expect it to for at least another six or seven hours. So far it is on track.”
“Fine, keep me posted as soon as you have any results. You don’t leave here until you bring that to me, understood?”
“Understood.”
Her head was pounding. So much relying on this seemingly simple treatment.
Swap out a couple of sequences, put a couple of new ones back in. I should have been able to find it myself. The implementation is so straightforward, it’s almost childlike in its simplicity.
Even as she thought it, Uma knew she was fooling herself. She never would have found it. A double compound in the sequence was near impossible to locate.
And yet, Daphna had done it.
Not only had she done it, but she served up the water treatment on a silver platter. But Uma refused to be manipulated. Their history went back too far. Daphna had no right.
Uma was in charge now.
And yet Lower Earth is relying on me to figure it out, and I can’t surmount the most chronic plagues facing us…
But every Great Geneticist had had their Achilles’ heel. Lucius, Roman, even Martin who predated Lucius was known to have pet projects of which the former Queen didn’t approve. She was no different from any of them.
But look how it ended for all of them. Roman, humiliated. Lucius, shamed to the moment of his death and beyond. Martin, slipped away in the middle of his greatest work, probably degraded.
She had stepped into cursed shoes.
Why did I want this so badly?
She looked around at the bodies working away on the fourteenth floor. Assessing, analyzing, revising, devising. Each one of them committed to results, each one a pulley of a vast system in constant movement.
“Miss Uma?”
Uma’s head snapped to the voice across the floor. A woman, older than the others, stood up from her desk.
“Yes, what?”
“Miss Uma, I think I have the first results. On Elgin.”
Uma rushed over even as the
researcher continued to speak. She leafed through the pages.
It worked.
Uma smiled.
It worked. Daphna was right, but it doesn’t matter. I decide what we do with this.
Uma’s chest puffed. She was the one to decide how and when, and in what order they would apply the treatment. Her decision.
I decide our direction. I decide what we take on next.
“Report this to sixteenth-floor implementation. Advise them that West Fields is first. We have to have the grains revived.”
“Yes, Uma.”
“I’ll work on our strategy from there, but start with the sixteenth floor. Got it?”
The researcher said some words of affirmation but Uma’s mind was already far away.
I’m holding life and death in my hands.
They had the resolution to Elgin. That would work itself out quickly now.
This was her chance. She could be Lower Earth’s savior. How addictive a feeling; she could be the one to turn it around. It would take more than just Elgin. Elgin was good, great even.
But now she had a taste of what it meant to hold life in her hands.
And she wanted more.
She rushed to the stairwell, taking them two by two until she reached the seventeenth floor. She flung open the door, her breath quick and hot.
Life-and-death. My decision.
She scanned the seventeenth floor. “Carole!”
“Yeah?” Carole stood from her solitary cubicle across the floor
“Gather up the testing kit. We’re going to Block C.”
“Block C? On seventeenth street? The warehouses have all…”
“No, not Building C. Block C. In Cork Town.”
“Cork Town? Why?”
“No questions now. Get your kit and meet me in front of the Tower. We are going to address the water supply.”
“The Cork Town water supply?”
“Don’t look at me like that. You don’t understand, Carole. I’m about to change the face of Lower Earth within twenty-four hours. Where’s the Willing Woman Overseer?”
A woman stood, “Here, Uma.”
Uma smiled, “Get ready. You’re next. When we are back from Cork Town, you’re finally going to get the change in direction you’ve been asking for. We are going to put in place the new birthing protocol.”
“We are? But I thought we decided that it was best to continue shortening the gestational period in order to replace the incubation failures.”
“Don’t you get it?” Uma was on fire now, her brain exploded with all that she could do, all she’d never realized she had the power to do. “We’re going to raise Lower Earth from the ashes. No more 75% birthrate success. We are going for a hundred. You hear me?”
The woman’s eyes lit up. “Yes, Miss Uma! I hear you loud and clear. The implementation group will be thrilled to hear this change in strategy.”
Uma smiled. It wasn’t intentional, but the light inside her was bursting out of every corner of her body. She looked over at Carole who stood dumbstruck, staring at her.
“What’s happening to you, Uma?”
Uma wondered if she should try to explain but thought better of it. Let them all believe that it is great benevolence and commitment to life-giving. They didn’t need to know that she couldn’t care less if the deviants lived or died, if the Outer Counties blew up entirely, if the Sisters died off in quick succession.
She may not have made the discoveries herself, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was that it was her decision to make. Not Daphna’s. Not the Queen. Not those men who’d held her post.
She was the Great Geneticist not because she was the strongest scientist, but because she was the strongest woman for the job. It was strategy. It was political.
It was all hers.
Uma just smiled at Carole, knowing that despite what anyone thought, she was ultimately the one to determine Lower Earth’s fate.
41
Ariane
Ariane’s fist tightened around the crumpled message. Two days had gone by that she hadn’t left her chambers. How could she? She wasn’t fit to be seen. She wasn’t fit for the adoration the women of Geb gave her.
The voices inside her had gone quiet. No counsel, no advice, no chastising from them. But Ariane couldn’t enjoy the silence. She was alone. In so many ways, alone. Against her desire, she loosened her grip and opened again the message that had been delivered from the Strangelands.
Gale is with us. We will provide the Tower with the necessary information to develop a treatment.
It was signed from Daphna.
Ariane was frozen on the spot, her body in rebellion from her mind that ran thousands of miles in a second. Snapping and fiery ideas flew inside her brain, rebounding across pathways, smashing into dead ends.
Her fears had been confirmed. Never mind Gale, the issue of the antidote always would have been resolved one way or another. It wasn’t that Gale was with the Sisters, nor that they would be the ones to develop a treatment before the Tower. That wasn’t what weighed on her heart.
It was Irene.
Too many days had gone by without word from her, and the truth of it settled like an anvil on her chest.
Irene had abandoned her.
Irene should have been back in the fortress by now, especially since Gale had been taken away by the Sisters. She should have found the fastest way back to the fortress to report to Ariane what she’d learned. To express her shame at failure. To speak of revenge against the Sisters. To recommit to Ariane.
But she hadn’t. And too much time had gone by.
Irene was gone.
Of course, Ariane would search for her. Of course, she would punish her. But none of that mattered right now.
Ariane had counted on Irene’s dedication. Her commitment.
Her love.
Wasn’t the Commandante supposed to love her? Didn’t every Commandante love her Queen?
What did I do wrong? How could she leave me like this? She never left my mother, and that woman had allowed thousands to be raised into death.
All those incubates - that had been Maeva’s fault, and never once had Irene faltered in her service then.
Ariane had never allowed anything so cruel to happen under her watch. She only allowed nature to do as it had to with the deviants. She invested in the capital, where their future lay. Certainly, she got rid of those defectors, traitors, just like every other Queen had ever done. She was no different from any of them.
Except that now she was.
She had been left behind, abandoned by her Commandante.
It’s not fair. It’s not right. It’s against the natural law.
Ariane stood alone in her chambers, rushing mind seeking an answer and coming up empty as a hot tear ran down her cheek.
Priyantha had to arrive soon. She would put that Ganese chief’s head on a stick if she didn’t release Priyantha to travel to the capital. Leadon didn’t know that it wasn’t just for a visit, couldn’t know that Ariane would have her Commandante, her own Commandante, the Commandante that would be the most loyal since Commandantes had been assigned.
Then she could begin to rebuild. Then she could start over, anew, afresh with a woman worthy of the title of Commandante.
Ariane heard Priyantha approaching the fortress. She watched from the window of her chambers as Priyantha strode, tall as Royalty herself. Spine pulled high and chin even higher, her stride exuded confidence. She entered the fortress; Ariane had just a couple of minutes before Priyantha would be at her door.
Ariane ran to the mirror, quickly smoothing her hair and straightening her dress. She looked at her face, borrowed from every other Queen before her, shared with the sister-selves she had either killed or exiled, and she noticed, almost for the first time, just how inhumanly beautiful she was. They all were, each of them. Each Queen before her, each sister-self. She inhaled deeply, feeling the lives of all of them coming into one in the very center of h
er body.
A knock came on the door.
Ariane looked one last time in the mirror. She cloaked herself in the same confidence she had seen in Priyantha moments earlier.
Ariane called out across her chambers to the closed door, “What is your view on the concept of loyalty?”
The door squeaked open. “Queen Ariane?”
“Come in, Priyantha. I’ve asked you a question, and I await your response.”
Priyantha opened the door and walked in. There was nothing tentative in her movements, not like all the others who tiptoed around her in the fortress.
Yes, this is the kind of woman I need to surround myself with.
“Loyalty, Queen Ariane?”
“That’s right. I know you have enough experience on the subject to reply with educated and knowledgeable insight.”
Priyantha’s gaze intensified, but nothing else in her changed, not her heartbeat, not the movement of her blood. She was unwavering. “We have nothing in this world if we do not have the loyalty of those we love.”
“And what do you think of Irene’s loyalty?”
Priyantha’s face didn’t change. “She is two-faced. She has been living a double life ever since she left Gana. She is duplicitous.”
“You are correct,” Ariane felt the excitement inside her, excitement like she was a girl again discovering Cork Town or the Outer Counties or the sense of power that came with making decisions that affected the entire world. Her great relationship with the world was somehow reduced down to this one relationship in this one moment with one woman. “But you, Priyantha, you are not duplicitous. You are loyal. You know the meaning of the word and you live it in your every breath.”
Priyantha bowed her head. “Yes, Queen Ariane. I believe you have seen right into the heart of me.”
Ariane smiled, “I saw it in you the first time I laid my eyes on you. This is exactly why you shall be my new Commandante.”
Priyantha’s head lifted with a snap, her lips parted. Ariane could see the shock and honor across her face, or so she believed it to be.
