Incubation (The Incubation Trilogy Book 1) (26 page)

“Murder?”

“There’s a reward for your capture.”

The idea is so absurd that I almost giggle. I sober quickly when he adds, “Dead or alive.”

Wyck sits up, tool in hand, and says, “You were right, Ev—we should leave now. For an outpost. We can get new identities, start new lives, like we planned.”

I’m warmed by his willingness to go with me, after the way he was stalling the other day.

Saben’s gold eyes cloud. He says, “That might be best. You’d be safe, Everly.”

“Is there a reward out on you?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve been able to fly under the radar. We all have. Even Fiere. She wasn’t pregnant when she got away from the RESCO, and it was a quiet extraction.”

No blasts, bullets, or bloodshed, he meant. “So I’m endangering Bulrush by staying here,” I say slowly. The idea crushes me. I’m taken aback by how sad it makes me. I’d been seriously considering Alexander’s offer, I realize, even though I’m not one hundred percent behind what Bulrush does. I want to stay with these people. “I—”

A muffled
clink
sounds from around the corner.

“Did you hear that?” Saben is instantly alert.

Wyck scrambles up. I nod.

“I’m going to check it out,” Saben whispers. He heads toward the bend in the tunnel and disappears from view. A moment later, he shouts, “IPF! Warn the—”

There’s the sizzle of a beamer and his voice cuts out.

“Saben!” I start toward him, but Wyck grabs my arm and slings me around.

“You can’t go up against an IPF squad. We have to warn the others, get them out of here. Go.” He shoves me toward the ladder.

I shoot up it with Wyck behind me. I’m yelling as I come through the opening. “IPF! In the tunnel. Get out, get out.”

Fiere emerges from the ballroom where she’s obviously been training with Idris who peers from behind her. A single stick dangles from her hand. She takes charge. “Close the hatch,” she barks at Wyck who hurries to comply, sliding the bolt into place.

Idris says, “I’ll get Alexander,” and takes off.

“Everly, warn Halla. She's in the kitchen. Everyone into a safe room or down in the tunnels at the back of the house. Where’s Saben?”

I shake my head. She closes her eyes. After a moment, she opens them. Her jaw is tight and her lips barely move as she grits out, “Someone’s sold us out. Right. Weapons.”

A blast knocks the cover off the tunnel entrance. A helmeted head with a bio-chem mask making the face look like a giant insect, pokes through. Fiere lunges and swings the single stick with all her might. It thwacks into the head which lolls and then sinks below floor level. An arm emerges as Fiere tries to close the hatch again. It tosses a cluster of grape-sized metal spheres. They hover, dispensing a thin lavender mist that makes me cough uncontrollably and burns my eyes and the inside of my nose. I’m coughing and running toward the kitchen, determined to grab Halla and hide in the armory. My eyes stream. I don’t see Wyck or Fiere. I hope they got out. Alexander and Idris, too. I bump into the door and then I’m in the kitchen.

Halla cowers on the floor, a blur to my stinging eyes. “Ev, what’s hap—”

Two bangs sound in rapid succession, and the house shudders. “—fire the place and drive the rats out,” a soldier says, voice distorted by the bio-chem gear. “Looks like . . . info was good.”

Are they here for me? It’s terrible to think I brought this down on Bulrush. I fumble toward Halla, get hold of her forearm and drag her toward where I think the pantry must be. Bulky shapes appear in the doorway, distorted by purple mist and tears. One raises its arm, flings something, and they back away. There’s a flash that blinds me and a brutally loud metallic keening that disorients me. I think my eardrums are broken.

I hear Halla faintly, as if from underwater. “I didn’t mean it, Ev. I don’t hate—I didn’t mean—!”

I’m on the floor, somehow, and rough hands are grabbing at me, dragging me up. I swing at the nearest helmet, and as my hand cracks into it, erupting in pain, another soldier grabs me from behind and flings me to the ground. My head clonks against the iron stove and I’m disoriented. My brain is scrambled. Wyck . . . Saben . . . Fiere . . . she said . . . what?

Suddenly, Fiere is there. A soldier half-turns, but too late. Her foot, driven with all her weight, slams into his chin and he goes down. She snatches up the beamer he drops and fires as another soldier lunges at her. He falls.

“We’re getting out of here,” she says, reaching down to me. “I’m not leaving without you.” The sheer force of her will enables me to close my fingers around her hand. She pulls and I lever myself up. The grinding ache in my head makes it hard to think, my eyes won’t focus, and I need to throw up. Concussion.

The kitchen door splinters. Sunlight and more soldiers pour through the hole. The light hurts my eyes. A beamer sizzles and Fiere is knocked back, her hand tearing away from mine, blood blossoming on her shoulder. She presses the heel of her hand to the wound. Her gaze locks on mine. “If they take you, tell them whatever you need to, Everly. Just tell them. You don’t know—”

Another blast silences her. The force propels her out of my line of sight. I scream her name; at least, I think I do. I start toward her, but soldiers rise up and block my way. They reach for me. I run. Slipping past the soldiers in the chaos of sound and swirling smoke, I make it through the kitchen door. A terracotta fountain, dry, and a wrought iron fence swing through my field of vision.
Courtyard. Gate
. I stagger toward the opening and see armored ACVs at either end of an alley. Soldiers boil out of them.

“—think . . . two are dead. Find the computer . . . more than one.”

I refuse to think about who might be dead. Not Fiere. Not Wyck. No time. I run around the side of the house, and find myself in a narrow side yard bounded by a wrought iron fence and choked with four abandoned and rusted-out cars. I’m small enough to eel my way between them; the soldiers fall behind. I burst out into a front courtyard and pound toward the street, becoming aware of a powerful hum. Another weapon? I look up, scanning for threats, hearing the thud of booted feet behind me. A beamer blast zaps past me, missing, but raising the hairs on my arms.

I hit the street and turn right, stumbling over the chunks of asphalt and concrete. I’d give my right arm for an ACV scooter. My head hurts viciously.

A metallic clanking makes me start and I see a manhole cover rolling toward me. I hurdle it. An arm emerges from the hole, and then a blond head. Joy zings through me. Saben! I dart forward and grab him under the arms to help him out.

“Unh,” he groans, flopping forward. He hauls himself to his feet but stumbles. “Hurt. You have to leave me.” Blood oozes from his abdomen and he drops to his knees.

“Shut up.” I crouch to work my arm around his back and wedge my shoulder into his armpit. I straighten, pulling him up, and move forward. It’s getting darker and the hum louder. It almost drowns out the booted footsteps pounding closer. An approaching storm?

“Leave me,” Saben says again, weakly.

“Not a chance,” I grunt. His weight presses me down, but I make my burning thigh muscles propel us forward. His legs catch my rhythm after a moment and we’re running together in an awkward lope, arms clamped around each other to keep him upright. I can feel the effort of will it takes him to keep going. I don’t know how long he can last. We duck as another blast scorches overhead. I’m desperate for a hiding place. Then, I see it. Locusts. A huge swarm. Coming at us, obliterating the sky, blocking the light.

The soldiers behind us stutter to a halt, shouting confused orders. “Swarm. Inside!” “Get the girl—orders!” “Don’t stop, you—” “Fire at will!”

The dark mass of locust bodies, all beating wings and hunger, is less than half a block away now. The air vibrates. Another blast singes past, scoring my side so I yelp and list to the right, jolting Saben. I glance over my shoulder at the soldiers. One is steadying his beamer, preparing to fire again. Another is running flat out toward us, gaining. Two more have dropped back.

“Everly.”

I look up into Saben’s face and he’s actually smiling at me, although pain furrows his brow and makes him breathe shallowly. My chest tightens with emotion, with worry, with the strange exultation his smile elicits, and then with the blazing conviction that I am right where I’m supposed to be at this moment. With Saben. My smile answers his. We’re insane.

Logic intrudes:
If we surrender, they’ll treat Saben’s wound—
. I cut the thought off because I know that’s not what we’re going to do. I feel Saben’s muscles contract even before I take a step and then we’re moving forward together. I tip my head back, eyeing the tidal wave of insects rising above us higher than I can see. Saben quirks a brow. “Ladies first?”

“The hell with that.”

His arm squeezes my shoulders, and his laugh rumbles through me. Or maybe it’s the locusts I feel, making my bones thrum. If only these millions of wings could lift us up and fly us far away. The best they can do is hide us, give us a chance, a small chance, to escape. Covering our mouths and noses as best we can, and shutting our eyes, Saben and I run as one to meet the swarm, letting it swallow us up.

END OF BOOK ONE

Preview of

incineration

Book 2 of the Incubation Trilogy

Prison is no place to spend your seventeenth birthday. I’m pretty sure today is my birthday, but it’s hard to know since I’ve been here almost four months without access to a clock, calendar, window—forty-seven—or any other means of keeping time except by the regular delivery of meals. Swill. Vegeprote patties and the occasional fresh vegetable—I haven’t seen so much as a radish in a week—pushed into my cell three times a day. Forty-eight. As much as I can when I am coherent and conscious, I keep track of the days by scratching faint marks on the floor beneath the bed. Forty-nine. There’s a hundred and fifteen of them now, so happy birthday to me—fifty—happy birthday dear Everly . . .

“Jax!”

I pause mid-pushup and look to my left. The guard I call Bigfoot stands in the corridor beyond the electric field that keeps me contained. His face is as impassive as usual, but he’s practically garrulous today. “Visitor.”

I scramble to my feet, heart thumping hard and not from the exercise. I haven’t had a visitor the whole time I’ve been here. Interrogators, yes, but they don’t get announced by the guards. Rubbing the back of my hand where the IV went in last time, I regulate my breathing and concentrate on feeling calm. My heartbeat slows. I push the two inch scraggle of platinum hair off my face as Bigfoot deactivates the invisible barrier and motions for me to hold out my wrists. I do and he encircles them with maglock cuffs. Thus restrained, I follow him down the narrow hallway, the explosive bracelet on my left ankle making me feel lopsided. Sensors rigged on every window and door of this building will trigger the anklet and blow me to kingdom come. Needless to say, that has limited my escape fantasies since I haven’t yet—despite hours of trying—found a way to detach the bracelet. If only Wyck were here—he’d have figured it out in ten minutes. We pass the hygiene cubicle where I get my thrice weekly shower, to a room I’ve never been in.

Bigfoot pushes the door open, his bulk hiding the room’s interior. “Prisoner Jax,” he announces, and steps aside so I can enter.

I hesitate, momentarily afraid this is a trap, a new twist on interrogation. Build up my expectations and then—wham! I realized weeks ago that the worst part of the torture is the mind games, the anticipation of pain or humiliation. What if—

Bigfoot thrusts me unceremoniously into the room, saying, “I’ll be right outside, sir.”

The room’s sole occupant is plump and fiftyish, with mahogany hair slicked back from a widow’s peak and tucked behind his ears, ruddy cheeks, and amazing violet eyes emphasized with black eyeliner. I’ve never seen eyeliner on a man. He’s wearing a peacock blue coat with a stand-up collar, and heavy rings sparkle on every finger.

“No need, no need.” He waves a dismissive hand at Bigfoot. “I’m sure young Everly and I will get along like a house afire.” He glides to me, grabs my shoulders, and kisses me on each cheek with a loud smooching sound.

The door closes behind Bigfoot.

I blink. I’ve never seen this man before and he’s treating me like I’m his favorite niece.

“Sit, sit,” he says, motioning to the two loveseats set at right angles. “We need to discuss your defense.”

I remain rooted to my spot. Defense? “Um, who are you?”

“My manners, oh, my manners,” the man says, putting a hand with splayed fingers to his chest. “Loránd Vestor, esquire, at your service. Call me Vestor—we’ll be old friends by the end of the trial.” He beams, displaying the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen.

“Trial?”

“Of course your trial. You wouldn’t need a defense attorney if you weren’t standing trial, now would you?” He chuckles. “Oh, you’re worried that I’m some court-appointed incompetent. No, indeed! I am the foremost criminal defense attorney in Amerada, and I’m offering my services—yes, completely without cost to you—because
I
believe in
you
, Everly!” More beaming, like he’s bestowed an unimaginably wonderful gift on me. “Yes, truly I do, despite what they’re saying. You’re lucky to have me, you know. I have never—never!—lost a case or a client.”

“Thank you?”

It seems to be the response he’s expecting because he smiles again. I can’t help noticing a dark mole on his cheek that gets compressed with wrinkles whenever he smiles. It’s disconcerting because it seems to be winking at me. I tear my gaze away from the mole and finally let him persuade me to sit. I look around the room and notice a window. Sunshine pours through it and three potted geraniums in shades of pink and coral bloom on the windowsill. A lump rises in my throat. I haven’t seen the sun in almost four months. The sunlight on the flowers’ translucent petals is a gift.

Vestor’s saying something, but I interrupt to ask, “Where are we?”

Delicate brows arch skyward. “Why, we’re at the Central Detention Facility.”

“No, I mean the city.”

“Atlanta, of course. You don’t think I would waste my talents in some outer canton, do you? No, it’s the capital for me.” He leans forward to peer at my eyes. “The interrogators haven’t done anything with your memory, have they? That’s strictly against the Laidlaw Conventions.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good.” He pats my hand. “No more chit-chatting. We must get to work since the trial starts day after tomorrow. Lots to do, lots to do.”

I hesitate, pretty sure I don’t really want to know the answer, but then ask, “What am I on trial for?”

“Why, murder, my dear Everly. Murder of an Infrastructure Protection Force soldier and treason by way of theft of a zygote implanted at the Reproduction Support Community. Capital offenses. I only do capital cases in the capital city.” He chortles again, clearly amused by his wordplay.

I’m not inclined to laugh. “Murder,” I whisper. “Will they . . . execute me?”

He throws both hands up. “You have Loránd Vestor in your corner—of course not!
I
believe in
you
, Everly, and now
you
must believe in
me
. I will not allow you to be convicted and put to death. Why, think of the stain on my reputation.” He sniffs.

“Wouldn’t want a stain on your reputation,” I agree sardonically. Despite myself, I feel a smile starting and become conscious of an unfamiliar feeling. Hope.

Vestor grins delightedly at my smile, tentative though it is. “Better, much better.” He claps his hands. “Now, let’s get to work.”

He grills me about everything that happened from the time Halla and Wyck and I left InKubator 9 until I was captured and brought here. I am wary of telling him too much, and start with one word answers to his questions. I scan the room for recording devices and don’t see any, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Four months here have taught me to distrust everyone and everything.

Vestor starts me with a prompt. “So, you left Kube 9, you impetuous young girl, because Minister Alden suggested during an Assembly that she would like to have you work for her on locust eradication, right, and you were burning to get started, to put your science genius at the service of our great nation?” He cocks his head and raises his brows expectantly.

I really left the Kube to try and identify my biological parents and because my best friend Halla was pregnant and needed my help to reach her boyfriend in Atlanta, but I get the feeling Vestor wants me to agree with him. “Um, yes?”

He nods vigorously. “Yes! And you bravely helped your friend, Halla Westin, unfortunately deceased, escape from the outlaws who captured you and make her way to the RESCO where she was able to safely deliver her baby and give it over to the government for the good of Amerada.”

“Yes,” I whisper, squinching my eyes to keep back tears. They’d told me Halla was dead during my first interrogation session, but the mention of it still catches me like a beamer blast to the chest, leaving me hollowed out and empty. She died hating me and that’s the most painful part. No, the worst part is that she’s gone; I’d be glad of her hate if only that would bring her back.

It goes like that for hours, with Vestor supplying a favorable interpretation of everything that happened after I left the Kube, and me agreeing to it. He’s obviously done his research and that makes me feel a little bit better about my chances. Bigfoot brings us food and drink midway through the session and it’s the best I’ve had since being captured: fresh grapefruit and broccoli, rice and fish, even a fizzy beverage. I wolf it down while Vestor watches indulgently. He pats my cheek when he rises to go. “Don’t forget:
I
believe in
you
,” he says.

“Vestor,” I say, before he can leave, “can you tell me where they are, what happened to them? Wyck and Saben, Fiere and Alexander?”

His brows twitch inward in the merest suggestion of a frown. With a warning in his violet eyes that I take as confirmation that our supposedly confidential session is being recorded, he says, “It is completely understandable that you should be worried that the outlaws might try to kidnap you again, or hurt you to keep you from testifying. You endured a horrifying experience, something that an adult would find hard to deal with, never mind a young girl like you. I can assure you, however, that your fears are groundless. I’ve been given to understand that you were the only survivor of the attack on the Peachtree Street house.”

It takes me a moment to realize he means the former brothel that Bulrush used as its headquarters. I suck in an audible breath. “Dead? All dead?”

“Of course you’re relieved to hear that. I’m grateful, too. Now, get a good night’s sleep. We have lots of work to do tomorrow to make you presentable.”

When he has gone and Bigfoot’s replacement, a guard named Rute who occasionally offers a sentence or two of conversation, takes me back to my cell, I don’t even try to sleep. I lie on the narrow cot and stare up at the ceiling. Heaven knows, there’s not much else in my gray-painted cell to look at. There’s a stainless steel toilet and sink in one corner and a single shelf where I have kept my
Little House on the Prairie
and my albatross feather and drawing since the interrogators finally became convinced the objects had no sinister purposes. I don’t remember everything that happened in the interrogation sessions because of the drugs, but snippets of conversations, of questions about
Little House
being a code book for Bulrush, or even the Defiance, come back to me at odd times.

“It’s just a book,” I’d told them again and again. “A book my parents sent with me to the Kube.” The feather I’d found on the beach, proof that birds were still alive somewhere. They returned it to me once they ascertained it couldn’t be used as a weapon. The albatross drawing they sneered at and crumpled, but let me keep. Saben had given it to me, had drawn it because of the feather, and I treasured it.

I smooth it now, comforted by the familiar grain of the paper and the angle of the bird’s wing in flight that sings with perfect freedom. It can’t be true about Wyck and the others. They can’t all be dead. Saben, gravely injured by a blast, had run into the swarm with me, but the force of the locusts had pulled us apart. I don’t want to think about how weak he was. Surely at least one of the others made it to the tunnels, escaped. I’d seen Fiere get shot, so it was sadly possible that she had died, but the others . . . I refuse to believe it. They aren’t dead. If they are, why did the interrogators spend so much time and effort badgering me to give up names?

Tears of shame trickle down my face as the memories come back, of the pain from the implanted electrodes, amplified by the drugs. The stench of bile and urine. I can still hear myself stuttering the names, and I am grateful that I didn’t know many, and only first names at that. Alexander was right to keep details of Bulrush’s operations away from me, because I vomited up everything I knew. It wasn’t much, thank goodness. Fiere had shouted at me in those last minutes, told me to “tell them everything.” I hadn’t known what she’d meant until the second interrogation session when they’d switched on the electricity.

I shudder and turn on my side, burying my face in the thin pillow. The cameras are always on and I refuse to give whoever’s watching the satisfaction of tears. I haven’t cried since my first month here, since I decided I was going to survive and escape to find my friends. I started exercising that day, doing pushups, sit-ups, squats, and the other strengthening drills Fiere taught me, as many as I could, no matter how weak the torture left me. When I wasn’t exercising, I sat on my bed, eyes closed, and went through every theorem and chemical equation I knew, reciting the Table of Elements in my head, envisioning each locust I’d dissected and working through different means of destroying them. That kept other thoughts at bay.

I must have slept at last because the next thing I know, Bigfoot is back with a tray and a command. “Wash.”

He leads me to the hygiene cubicle after I eat and scratch another mark under my bed. He hands me a bar of soap and actual shampoo. “Hair, too.”

I’m elated at the prospect of shampooing my stiff hair. They shaved it when I arrived and it's only two inches long now, but the harsh soap I’ve had to wash it with has left it dull and dry. I show no emotion, keeping my face as impassive as Bigfoot’s when I enter the hygiene cubby. He removes my explosive bracelet and leaves, electrifying the doorway. I strip, feeling little embarrassment, even though I know guards are watching. I tell myself it’s not too different than the decon drills we ran at the Kube. I was worried about being raped when I first got here, but it’s clear the guards are chemically neutered. I suppose that’s because even though I’m a prisoner, I’m still a breeder age female who could potentially bear a child for the state. There are too few wombs for the Prags to risk damaging mine.