The Lethal Agent (The Extraction Files Book 2) (15 page)

LRF-PS-101

SEPTEMBER 7, 2232

Calvin found her in her office the next morning, a container of yogurt in his hand.

“Good morning, Dr. Perkins,” he began as always.

“Good morning, Dr. Calvin.” Aida offered him none of the playfulness they had shared before. She made the conscious decision to keep her distance. Now, he was nothing more than her colleague.

“What are we working on today?” he asked as he sat and pulled out his tablet. She could see the worry in his features, the way his brow knit together, the way his jaw grew tight. Yet still, he refused to ask.

Not at work. This wasn’t the place.

“I’ll continue the terrestrial species array. I’d like for you to work with Dr. Niemeyer to put together a report. He’s been working on the internal core structures of 196. It’s been several days since he’s offered any new information. He is in need of your assistance to finish correlating the data.” She stared at her tablet display, ignoring his eyes, those green gems he’d used to win her over again and again. She couldn’t look at him.

“Yes, Dr. Perkins.” Calvin folded his tablet under his arm and strolled out of her office like nothing had happened. In truth, nothing had. They couldn’t be together, and they had a job to do.

But Aida felt each of his steps as stabs in her chest. How could he walk away? She’d meant to send him away, to get some space and time between them, but she hadn’t expected him to go along so easily, as if he never cared at all.

It hurt her worse than it should.

So, she threw herself into her work. On the right of her screen, miniatures of native species hovered, ready for her to scroll through and catalogue. In the central space, a new species awaited her evaluation—some sort of appendaged creature. It possessed a central disk the size of her hand and at least twenty furry, radiating arms as long as eight or ten inches, like some sort of exotic sea star. The deep scarlet color gleamed with the same unusual florescence as all the others.

She added it to the list and continued. Until she received more information from the probe, it would be difficult to assess the roles of each creature in their various terrestrial ecosystems. Predators, prey, omnivores, carnivores. Some would no doubt have alternative roles dependent to the environment on 196, but that would be determined later.

On and on they went. A caterpillar. A worm. An animal that looked like a large, luxurious flower but was somehow predatory. One had a kite-shaped body with a pointed head, eight arthropod-like legs, and two long antennas. She catalogued it with the other insect-types and moved on.

Aida didn’t stop to each lunch. Calvin never arrived with food, and she wasn’t about to eat the provisions again. She wasn’t that hungry yet.

The familiar beep of an incoming ecomm sounded, though in the silence of her office, it almost startled her.

PERKINS-196 REPORT: INTERNAL STRUCTURE AND STABILITY

In a day, Calvin had accomplished more than Dr. Niemeyer had all week, though it was hard to know how close he’d been to finishing when she’d assigned Calvin to the job.

Aida didn’t want to think about him. She didn’t want a reminder that he existed, that he was only a room away, hard at work merely because she’d asked him to do it. She didn’t want to remember Sal’s application for a Child Permit, or the fact that somewhere on Earth, a geneticist was combing through their genes to select the ideal traits in an offspring.

She didn’t want to think about a piece of Sal inside her, even a single cell.

The thought made her want to wretch up her uneaten lunch.

By the time Calvin returned to her office, her stomach growled, though she did her best to ignore it. She’d processed over 280 species in a single day, but she wasn’t ready to leave.

This was her only safe place now.

“Dr. Niemeyer submitted his report and headed home for the evening. There were some interesting anomalies,” he added.

Aida’s pulse raced at the sound of his voice, at his presence in her office. He was the only one with the power to break her. “Thank you for your assistance.” She didn’t know what else to say.

“If you’d like some help here, I’d be happy to stay.”

“Thank you but I’ll be fine,” she lied.

Calvin set a container on her desk, filled with what looked like salad green. She hadn’t even noticed he held it until he set it in front of her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring it earlier. I couldn’t find a moment to get away without rousing suspicion. If you’d like, I could leave them in your office in the mornings.”

“That’s very kind, but I don’t think that’s wise. You don’t need to bring me anything.” She would have to go back to eating provisions sooner or later. Calvin couldn’t supply her with food for the rest of her life. She didn’t like the thought of it, but that part of her life had to go along with the rest of it. She couldn’t have one without the other.

Calvin’s lips twisted into a pained smile. “Come on, you’ve got to be starving. You haven’t left this office since this morning. I know that yogurt didn’t hold you over all day.” He leaned forward and nudged the salad closer to her.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he added quietly.

Aida shook her head.

“Did something happen between you and Sal?”

“That’s none of your business,” she said, angry that he could still make her heart beat so fast.

Calvin shook his head. “No, it’s not. But he’s clearly done something to upset you. I’m not trying to pry, I just want to know you’re all right.”

Aida rubbed her eyes and tried to think of something to say. She wasn’t all right. She wasn’t going to recover from this. She felt at the edge of an abyss, one step from falling in.

Calvin sat in the opposing chair and pulled her hand between both of his. “What happened?” His green eyes were as dull as she’d ever seen them.

Aida pulled her hand from his and set it back in her lap. “He got a promotion.”

“What else?” he asked.

“He applied for a Child Permit.”

Calvin smiled wide. “That’s great. Congratulations.” He seemed genuine enough, but Aida couldn’t understand why. How could he say that?

Then he realized she didn’t smile back. “You’re not happy? I thought you wanted children.”

“I did,” she admitted.

“Come here,” he said as he stood, his hand outstretched and waiting for hers. When she pushed out of her chair, he pulled her against his chest where they remained for a good long while. “This is what you’ve been waiting for. You can’t give that up because of me. I won’t let you.”

ZUES’S PALACE, OLYMPUS, NORTH AMERICA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2232

The hours ticked away as Silas tried to make himself pretend that she would come, that she couldn’t resist the opportunity of him.

But afternoon faded into evening and then night, and he remained alone.

The hotel room was nice enough, considering it would be the last place he would see before he was transported to a prison nation. Which would be nicer this time of year? Madagascar? Sri Lanka? Cuba could be pleasant enough, if it weren’t for the disease-infested criminals. No matter where he went, the rest of his life would be short. Competing for food and water, rival gangs, fallout and contamination.

His hotel room was one last luxury before they stripped him of everything he had.

A pale faux-wood nightstand and matching desk. Portraits of flowers that no longer existed. A stiff mattress with solid blue bedding, no doubt given to him because of his status. Anyone with clearance such as his surely must be a Scholar…

Silas was halfway through the cheap brandy when he decided to write a few ecomms while he could. Might as well. He collapsed against the padded headboard and pulled up the ecomm app on his tablet.

He started with Nick. He wrote simply:

TO: DR. NICOLAS PASTROMAS

FROM: DR. SILAS ARRENSTEIN

MSG: FUCK YOU.

It felt good, even though he would have much rather delivered his sentiments in person. Via his fist.

Then Knox. It took Silas a few minutes to find his real name in his contact list, but soon enough, he wrote up the ecomm to his longest-running agent.

TO: MARK LENNOX

FROM: DR. SILAS ARRENSTEIN

MSG: TAKE CARE OF RAMONA. ARES PROTOCOL AT 1200.

He would know what it meant. They’d been over it a dozen times.

After that, he struggled. He wanted to send Maz another version of Nick’s ecomm, but he couldn’t. She was the only one who could save him. He wasn’t so desperate yet. Maybe after a few more.

For Maggie, Silas didn’t even know where to begin. What would he say to her? Sorry? Words could never convey the depth of his guilt—his regret. He should have left her where she was. He should have never brought her to CPI. He knew that now more than ever. Now, he wouldn’t be able to keep her safe, as he’d tried to do for so long. Anything he wrote would be a shadow of the truth.

So he wrote to Kaufman instead. His fingers swiped the virtual keyboard, though many times he had to backtrack and fix a mistake. He’d just typed the last line when he heard the sound—a knock.

Silas hit
SEND
and walked to the door. Blood raced through his veins. His damp palm clutched the handle and pulled the door open.

It was Maz.

He let out a huge sigh, not caring that she saw. Her hair was coiled in the tight bun of a Scholar, and her figure was mostly hidden in an indigo pant suit, but in there, somewhere, was the woman he had known for many years in a way no other person ever could.

“Vicereine.” He stood aside as she entered, shutting the door behind her.

“It took me a while to find you.” Her eyes darted all around the room, looking at anything and everything but him.

“Don’t lie.” Silas took several steps closer to her.

“I had some work to finish up,” she said.

“Don’t lie to me.” He neared her again. He could hear her pulse from six feet away.

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to come.” This time, she faced him. Her eyes held his gaze, though he knew she worked at it.

“Two years wasn’t long enough?” he asked as he reached her, pulling her closer with one hand on each of her hips. “Or is there someone else I should know about?”

Silas teased her with his lips on her neck. He knew there would never be anyone else. He’d barely gotten to her himself. Back in Annapolis, they’d met as Youths in a class, evolutionary biology if he remembered. She’d been a stone-cold Scholar, even at fifteen.

She was the last Scholar to ever be swayed, but Silas was up for the challenge. Even after they both Selected, they’d made space for each other, these late night trysts and stolen evenings. Maybe it was habit or nostalgia or something else entirely, but Silas knew there would never be another man who could know Maz as he did.

He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t like it.

“Aren’t we getting a little old for this?” Her words were practical while her hands clutched at his back.

“Oh? You’ve changed your mind then?” Silas pulled away, pulled his lips from her collarbone and his hands from her hips.

She frowned, so angry and cute he couldn’t help but laugh at her. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Sy, be serious. We have careers to consider. At least,
I
still do. You’re determined to ruin yours.” She sounded like a mother disappointed in her child.

“If I recall, you risked your career for several years before you climbed the social ladder high enough to be above the class laws,” he reminded her. “And my career is fine. If you Scholars would just butt out and admit you have no idea how to handle people, this would all go a lot smoother.”

But she remained serious.

“Okay, fine. I’ll back off on the antics.” He could do it, too. Maggie was in line more than ever. If he played his cards right, he could make it happen.

“Really? Don’t lie to me.” She tried to emulate his tone and failed.

“I would never lie to you,” he said, more a whisper than anything. Silas reached behind her and pulled at the pair of pins that kept her long black hair held so tight. Released, her hair fell to her shoulders, sleek and beautiful, for which her parents had no doubt paid a good sum.

What a waste. Such a stunning woman with a heart of metal, a heart that would only warm to his touch. He had to hope it was enough this time.

When she closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, Silas knew he was safe. And, if nothing else, he’d earned a night with Maz. Who knew how long it would be before he got another one?