Incineration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 2) (26 page)

My voice is gone by the time I reach the last words and they come out as a strangled whisper. I feel as if the night sky has fallen down on me and I am tangled in the black and the blazing stars, the cold of outer space and the burning heat of solar flares. The weight crushes me and my head spins. I put a hand on the stool to steady myself. I’m surprised that it’s solid, unmoving, sturdy. I grip it with both hands like I’ll never let go.

“In a manner of speaking,” she says calmly. Rapid blinking betrays her, though. “I’ve always thought that being a mother entailed more than supplying a gamete and giving birth. Frankly, I thought you had figured it out some time ago.”

“How could I—?”  I should have, I realize. All the clues were there. I had proof upon proof that she has the capability to manipulate the DNA registry that has no records for my parents. Then there was her unusual interest in me. I thought I was so special that I believed her blather about needing me, above all other scientists in Amerada, at the MSFP. My emotions are so jumbled I can’t decide if I’m pleased she wanted me, her daughter, nearby, or if I’m offended that she didn’t really value my scientific abilities as much as I thought.

“Why did you leave me at the Kube?”

“We don’t have time for this conversation now,” she says, turning away.

I put a hand on her arm and wrench her around. “We’re talking now. I’ve waited seventeen years for this.”

She gives me a cool look and peels my hand off as if she’s detaching a leech. “Very well, but we’ll get ready while we talk. You’ve got to get clear of the city before sunrise and I’ve got to get back. As it is, my deputy will wonder why I didn’t show up for all the ruckus.”

She leaves the kitchen and returns minutes later with a clean jumpsuit, a messenger bag like the one I used to carry, and a washcloth. “You can’t wander around the countryside covered in blood,” she says handing me the washcloth. It has a soap pod wrapped inside it.

She motions to the sink and I obediently wet the cloth. I hesitate, shy about stripping in front of her, but she turns her back and I wonder if that isn’t why she wants me to wash—so we don’t have to look at each other while she talks. Suddenly eager to be free of Keegan’s blood, I slide my arm out of the sling,  awkwardly shuck the torn and bloody jumpsuit, and begin to soap myself.

“I’d been back from NAR Site 4 less than two weeks when Alexander left me. He’d told me . . . but I didn’t think he’d really go.”

Oh, my god. Alexander’s my father. The air whooshes out of me like I’ve been sucker-punched. That means Idris is my brother? Remembering the one time he kissed me, I scrub my lips. It’s too much to take in at once so I focus on Alden’s words.

“He took our son. You were a week old. You have to understand, rebuilding Amerada was the most important thing to me—had been for years. Alexander left because of my work, because of what I was trying to accomplish for the country. If I abandoned it after he left—devoted myself to mothering you—it would all have been for nothing. The sacrifices . . . losing Alexander . . . it needed to mean something.” Her voice is strained. “I decided it meant I was born to strengthen Amerada, to assume a leadership role. I couldn’t be distracted by taking care of an infant.”

“So, the Kube.” Scrubbing my belly where the blood seeped through the fabric and adhered it to my skin, I look at her. The slim back is rigid, shoulder blades standing out like wing stubs. “Did Proctor Fonner know?”

“He suspected. Leaving you at Kube 9, with Oliver, was a mistake, but it was close by. I should have taken you to Kube 13 or even all the way north to Kube 5. I had taken the precaution of erasing any evidence of our relationship from the DNA registry, back two generations, so there was no proof, but I suspect Oliver spent sixteen years plotting how to use you against me. I knew he would keep you safe, at least, not let you fall into the hands of enemies who might threaten you to gain concessions from me, or punish me. It wasn’t all about me; I was afraid for you, too. Some of the factions I’ve had to deal with are ruthless—they wouldn’t think twice about killing a child. I thought it best that there was no connection.”

“Alexander. Does he know?”

“You were a week old when he left. As far as I know he doesn’t know anything about you, other than your gender.” Her tone is wistful and I wonder what she’s remembering.

Clean now, I wiggle into the new jumpsuit as best I can one-handed, and re-insert my arm into the sling, which gives instant relief. “I’m dressed.”

She turns around, face devoid of emotion. “Good.” She passes me the messenger bag. “I’ve put ration cards in here for you. Use each one only once—the names associated with them are even less real than ‘Derrika Ealy.’”

I accept the bag which feels familiar. Inspecting a worn spot on the strap, I realize it’s my bag. I look at her, astonished. “This is—”

A small smile relieves the gravity of her face. “Vestor gave it to me after you were convicted.”

“He knows?”

“We’ve been—allies—for a long time.”

Is “allies” code for “lovers?”

The weight of the bag gives me hope. I open it and withdraw my
Little House on the Prairie
and my feather. Tears start to my eyes but I blink them away. Lifting the book, I ask, “Why this book? What were you trying to say to me?”

Her brow creases. “I’m not sure I understand. I’ve never seen that before.”

“You sent it with me to the Kube! It was in the suitcase with me.”

“The suitcase wasn’t even mine. It was in the storage area at NAR Site 4, along with other effects. No one knew or cared that I took it. The book must have been inside it.” She shrugs.

The irony of it hits me. All my life I’ve searched this book for a clue to my parents, for the message I thought they were trying to convey, and it was an
accident.
  It’s only meaning lay in what I assigned it. There was no meaning, nothing beyond the words on the page. Ma and Pa Ingalls’ relationship with Laura had nothing to do with me. My breath hitches as I try to get my mind around the idea that
Little House
, which was a sacred text for me, a connection with my parents, a secret communication that needed to be decoded, was only a book. I can’t do it; the book still feels special, important.

Alden’s other words trickle through to me.
Other effects
. The suitcase belonged to a prisoner, one of the unfortunates experimented on at the secret lab. I stare at the book in dawning horror. Did that prisoner love this book the way I did? Did she—it feels like a book a woman would have owned—miss it when it was taken from her and tossed aside like so much trash? In her agony, did she yearn to re-read Laura’s adventures? Swallowing hard, I tuck it safely into my messenger bag. Just because it didn’t come from my mother doesn’t mean it’s not special.

“Do you know where you’ll go?” Alden interrupts my thoughts.

To the Defiance. I don’t say it aloud. I left the Defiance because I wasn’t sure they were right in wanting to bring down the government, and because I knew I could better serve the country by finding a way to extinguish the locusts. Now, I know the Defiance is right—a government that uses human beings for medical experiments has to fall. The Prags don’t recognize everyone’s humanity and that makes them unfit to govern. Alexander saw it years ago. It took me too long, but I see it now.

“I’ll find someplace,” I say, shouldering my bag.

She eyes me and I get the uncomfortable feeling she reads me too well. “Only two other people have seen what you saw in the DNA registry,” she says.

I know from her tone that they’re both dead. From out of nowhere I become convinced that my predecessor, Dr. Notelmo, was one of them.

“I should have you killed.” There’s no passion in her voice; it’s an analytical observation.

“Or disappeared.”

She shakes her head. “Death is the only reliable silencer.”

I head to the door. There will be no sentimental mother-daughter farewells. I toss a last jab in her direction. “I guess mother love is good for something.”

She shakes her head. “Do you understand nothing, Jax? It’s your potential that makes me hesitate, your scientific genius that can do so much for this country, not the biological link we happen to share.”

“You can tell yourself that,” I say, opening the door onto the cold night.

“Do you feel differently about me than you did half an hour ago, knowing I’m your mother?”

I turn and study Emilia Alden as she stands in the hallway, face showing nothing but mild curiosity, pulse jumping in her neck. It reminds me of Keegan. This woman conceived me with a husband she loved, carried me in her womb and abandoned me at a Kube. She fought to drag Amerada out of the Between and establish programs to make sure all citizens had food to eat. She established the RESCOs and conducted hideous experiments on other citizens “for the good of the country,” and put herself at considerable risk to make sure I survived my trial and had the opportunity to eradicate the locusts. I’m leaving here to fight with the people who are out to destroy what she spent most of her life building. I don’t know how I feel about her, not really. I offer her the only truth I have right now.

“I don’t want to kill you, either,” I say. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Stepping into the night, I close the door behind me and we’re as separated and apart as we’ve always been, only not.

END OF BOOK TWO

Preview of

Regeneration

Book 3 of the Incubation Trilogy

I should have my mind on combat, but instead I'm thinking about irony.

Here I am—here
we
are, Wyck and me—back at Kube 9, close to a year after we ran away from it with Halla. I remember Wyck's knife slicing into my forearm to remove my locator, the fear catching in my throat as we escaped on stolen scooters, the wild dogs, the swamp, the secret lab. So much has happened. The RESCO, Halla's betrayal, finding my mother. Saben. An ache of longing sweeps through me as I think of him. And yet, here I am, back where I started, a chartreuse kudzu leaf tickling my nose so I have to scrunch it several times to keep from sneezing and betraying our position. It's weird to be back here, a little unsettling, and yet it feels a bit like coming home. Does Wyck feels the irony, too,? I glance at him a foot to my left, hugging the ground, kudzu draped over his helmet, his intelli-textile jumpsuit blending with the cover. Who am I kidding? Wyck doesn't do irony.

His gaze slides to me. "Ready, Ev?" he asks in a low voice.

I nod. "Ready as I'll ever be."

Wyck cocks his head, clearly listening to a communication from up the chain via his earbud. Idris, probably, who has the larger Defiance assault force assembled three miles from our position, preparing to hijack a train.

"It's a go," Wyck says, giving me a thumbs up. "You're up. Twenty minutes."

My mouth is suddenly dry. I manage a tiny nod and low crawl on my elbows and knees until I'm behind a tin-roofed shed some hundred yards away from Wyck and the others. I know the hillocks of kudzu betray my movements with swayings, but hopefully any watchers will write the ripples off as wind. Out of sight behind the collapsing shed, I push to my feet. Unlike the other Defiers secreted in the copse of gnarled tree branches canopied with kudzu, I'm not wearing camouflage. I'm wearing the sky blue jumpsuit of a Kube 9 resident, attire I wore every day of my life up until a year ago.

The suit fits physically, but not emotionally. Not any longer. I'm not the Everly Jax who left the Kube a year ago. No, I'm light years away from that girl. I don't look like her—not with my blond hair chopped off and tinted red and my blue eyes made violet by eye color changing tablets—and I don't even feel like her any more. That Everly Jax was obsessed with finding out who her parents were, and trying to work up the nerve to kiss Wyck. She giggled with Halla and argued with Dr. Ronan. The new me hasn't giggled in months. I'm pretty sure I no longer have the capacity.

Leaving aside these fruitless thoughts, I step out from behind the shed. I'm visible. Committed. I strike out toward the dome dominating the skyline. It rises from the flat Florida Canton topography, visible for miles. The green of crops blooms behind the transparent panes, and I'm pulled toward it by a hunger as instinctual as any locust's. It's not a physical hunger. No, it's a craving for the familiar, the comfortable. I imagine seeing Dr. Ronan again, hearing his gruff voice challenge one of my assumptions, and I almost smile.

That's dangerous. I can't afford to feel emotional about the Kube, not when I'm here as a Trojan horse, about to sneak in through the lab and open the main entrance so the Defiers can overrun the facility. I focus on the task at hand, drawing ever closer to the dome. I've left the kudzu-covered thickets behind and am crossing the barren stretch of land surrounding the Kube like a moat. The wind carries a salty tang and my lips taste faintly bitter when I lick them nervously.

I can see people inside the dome now, mostly clad in the sky blue of ACs, apprentice citizens, a couple in the white that indicates a staff member. As I watch, they gaggle toward the tunnel leading from the dome into the Kube; it's lunch time. We timed my arrival to coincide with lunch so there'd be less chance of my being intercepted. Movement to my right catches my eye, and I half-turn to see an IPF patrol emerge from the far side of the Kube complex, coming from the direction of the Infrastructure Protection Force barracks on the other side of the dome. All domes have a dedicated cadre of IPF soldiers; Amerada can't afford to lose its food production facilities to outlaws. With the locust swarms consuming every blade of grass, every budding leaf, growing food outside the domes is impossible, has been for decades.

Don't come this way
, I mentally urge the soldier.

The ACV scooter swerves in my direction. Of course it does.
Damn
. I keep walking. I aim for a nonchalant stride, rather than a panic-stricken dash that would bring the soldier down on me as surely as grass draws locusts. The side entrance to the dome, the small one that leads directly into the lab, is twenty yards away. I lift a hand in casual greeting to the soldier when the ACV's hum tells me he's near, and keep walking.

Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop
.

The ACV judders, and then slows. The soldier leans his weight to the right, hovering the ACV in my path. I'm forced to stop. My heart's pounding so fast it makes it hard to breathe, but I manage a smile.

"AC, what are you doing out here?" The soldier doesn't remove his helmet, the protective casing that makes IPFers look vaguely insectoid, so his voice reverberates a little. He doesn't dismount, either, so he's above me, the air cushion adding six inches to his already formidable height.

I think back to what Vestor taught me about appearing non-confrontational, and consciously lower my chin a couple of notches. "Did I do something wrong?" I ask in an uncertain, girlish voice. "Dr. Ronan sent me—"

"Him." The soldier's tone says Dr. Ronan has been a thorn in his side. No surprise there. "He shouldn't have sent you outside the Kube. We're on lockdown—reports of Defiance activity in the area."

I'm sensing a young man behind the IPF helmet, a youth puffed up by his authority, eager to impress. I look over my shoulder as if nervous about Defiers creeping up behind me, and take a step closer to the soldier, as if asking for his protection. "He told me to collect
Eurycotis floridana
specimens. He didn't say anything about outlaws." I congratulate myself on blending indignation and fear to great effect.

"Not outlaws, Defiers," the soldier corrects me, shifting his weight on the ACV so it seesaws.

"I should get inside, then," I say, making to move around him.

The ACV glides forward to block me. Suspicion in his voice, the soldier asks, "Where are the Yuri-whatevers, the Yuri coats, the specimens you collected?"

Aagh
. I should have come prepared with cockroaches in a box in case I got stopped. I hesitate only a half-beat before saying dejectedly, "I couldn't find any. I'm going to be in trouble for that already, so please don't make it worse by making me late for the lunch period. Please?" My eyes plead with him.

"Oh, very well," he says, reversing the ACV three feet. "But I'll have to make a note of this incident in the log. Dr. Ronan will be hearing from my commander."

I could tell him that Dr. Ronan won't give a shit, but I am too busy thanking him and hurrying toward the gate. I hesitate by the iris scanner, waiting for the soldier to move on, but he stays put, shoulders back, apparently watching over me until I'm safe inside, damn him. If this doesn't work, if they removed my access when we ran away, I'm dead. There will be no creeping back to Wyck's squad if I can't get in, not with the soldier hovering there. The plan has always relied on Dr. Ronan's impatience with, indeed, total disinterest in, administrative matters that don't directly impact lab operations. I've never known him to delete access files when an AC leaves the Kube, but there's always a first time.

I take a deep breath. Clicking back the scanner cover, I bend until my eye is against the scanner. There's a faint whir and then . . . nothing.

"What's wrong?" the soldier asks, suspicion tingeing his voice.

"Scanner's dirty," I say, licking my thumb and rubbing it across the lens.
It's got to work
. When I can delay no longer, I open my eyes wide and press my forehead against the chill metal of the forehead support. The whir sounds again, and then . . .

"Access granted."

Nothing has ever sounded more welcoming than that robotic voice. Relief makes me limp. The portal clicks open, I wave to the soldier, and then slip inside. I lean back against the door when it slides closed, and shut my eyes for a grateful moment. Last time I came through this entry, I'd been caught in a locust swarm and had to be deconned. Not this time. I'm in, and no decon team is waiting for me, but multiple threats still stand between me and mission accomplishment. I think of Wyck and his squad waiting for my signal, and Idris and the larger force intercepting the train, counting on me to have the Kube's gates open by the time they roll up, and I collect myself. My task now is to make it through the lab and into the Kube proper, and then through the Kube to the front entrance, where I can disarm the gate and let the train with the Defiers in. I check the time. I've only got twelve minutes.