Shattered Skies

by ALICE HENDERSON

  They passed over an ancient community built along a river that had dried up long ago. A series of crumbling dams had been installed, with fallen bridges spanning the river bed. The old map described this community as “Homes at the River Walk.”

  They flew on, traversing a large expanse of land where all the trees had been removed. Artificial hills, now brown with dead vegetation, had been stacked up around strange sand placements. “Golf Meadows,” read her old map.

  Next they sailed over “Deer Brook,” which sported a crumbling array of houses so close together that she didn’t see how a deer could possibly survive in the community. A long-dried up creek sported many human-made dams and diversions, rerouting the path of the stream around the development.

  “I don’t get this,” she finally said to Raven. “So they named these places after whatever they destroyed to build them?”

  He peered down. “It seems they did.”

  When they weren’t passing over the endless sprawl of abandoned housing developments, the land was broken and fragmented. Old fences, now tangled messes of wire and rotten wood, lined every open piece of land. Old scars pitted and excoriated the ground, like a giant hand had reached down from the skies with a rake and placed furrows in the dirt.

  Strange, rusted metal skeletons spanned some of these raked fields. Other metal skeletons were circular in shape, with the spikes branching out from the center.

  Wind gusted across the soil’s surface below, kicking up a funnel of dust. It twisted across the land, churning along like a solitary ghost in this desolate place, before losing momentum and dying in a puff of dirt.

  Raven noticed her gaze. “Old farms,” he said. “Those metal structures delivered water to them. But then the megadrought came and water become more and more scarce. Crops died, people lost their livelihoods. Food became more and more scant. Most farms were abandoned as people were forced to leave for the megacities.”

  They continued over the desolate land, heading northeast. They passed over a narrow strip of ocean. Winslow announced that they’d reached the coordinates of the genebank. H124 saw a narrow spire reaching up into the sky, marking the entrance. The rest of the building was underground.

  As they hovered above it, looking for a good place to land, Raven stood against one of the windows, looking down. He sucked in a sharp breath. Even from this height, she could see the source of his dismay. Dark shapes littered the ground, and the door to the vault stood open, partially blasted off its hinges. Its contents lay scattered for a quarter mile around the entrance.

  The genebank had been raided and damaged.

  Chapter 14

  Raven waited anxiously for the landing tubes to fill with air, then Winslow gently set the Argo down a couple hundred feet from the vault doors. Raven raced out as soon as the craft touched down. H124 descended the ramp, keeping close. Raven hurried to the littered contents, picking up half-buried vials and trying to read worn-off labels, making his way quickly to the door. “Maybe there are still some viable samples inside,” he called back to her.

  She paused on the soggy ground, looking around. A huge solar array, thankfully still intact, towered over the vault’s entrance. The genebank had been placed here in antiquity because the area was cold and snow-covered year-round. Her boots sank in the spongy soil, water seeping around her soles. A strange, vaguely rotting smell drifted on the breeze. Not a single snow patch remained up here, and the ground was far from frozen. A few scraggly bushes struggled to survive in the boggy soil, comprising plant communities that should have been growing much farther south. It was just like the area around Sanctuary City, where trees that had normally grown in more southern latitudes had crept north as the earth warmed.

  Raven disappeared through the vault door. As H124 approached the entrance, she saw how weathered and dirty the discarded samples were. This damage had not occurred recently. It looked decades old. Maybe longer.

  Dirk caught up with her, and they followed him into the darkness. Beyond the door was an entryway with a power panel on one wall. A shadowed set of stairs led steeply downward. Years of windblown dirt covered the steps. Next to the staircase, an old elevator stood open, one of its doors broken and leaning outward. The car inside was littered with broken glass from shattered vials.

  Raven stood at the power conduit along the wall, attempting to turn it on. “Something’s wrong with the power.”

  He returned to the daylight and stared up at the solar array. “This should be working.” He bent over its control panel, pulling out his multitool and checking all the connections, adjusting a few things and stripping some old wires to make new connections. He returned to the vault and tried to restart the power. They heard a dull thump from a deep part of the structure, followed by a rhythmic hum. Lights flickered on above them.

  As she squinted from the sudden brightness, H124 peered down the stairs.

  “Let’s go,” Raven said, already jogging down the steps. They followed, descending deep into the ground. Raven talked as he took the stairs. “Originally, this facility probably relied on the cool of the permafrost to naturally refrigerate this place. But now that it’s melted…”

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, a set of steel doors waited. The metal leaned precariously, blackened by soot, as if someone had blown the doors off their hinges.

  She stepped into the room beyond, taking in the scene of chaos around her. Shelves that she imagined had once been orderly, holding DNA samples of plants and animals, now lay mostly bare, spilled and broken vials littering the floor. A few of the shelves had been tipped over. Tall vats labeled “Caution—Liquid Nitrogen” had been toppled, their contents spilled and rotting. Doors leading to other sections of the genebank stood open, broken glass scattered on the floor in their entryways. The rotten smell was almost unbearable.

  “No! No!” Raven said aloud, approaching the shelves. He jogged down their considerable lengths, moving faster with each pass of a destroyed shelf.

  H124 and Dirk searched the floor for intact samples, their boots crunching the broken glass. The containers that had spilled out of the liquid nitrogen tanks still held their labels, though the samples were smashed at her feet.

  She read a few of them:

  Q234984 - Vaquita porpoise Phocoena sinus

  JCP32094 - White rhinoceros Ceratotherium simum

  NJS02935 - Green sea turtle Chelonia mydas

  GPH4059 - Blue jay Cyanocitta cristata

  AWH201 - American pika Ochotona princeps

  RAF2423 - Sea otter Enhydra lutris

  SPP64202 - Snow leopard Panthera uncia

  SGO2304 - Wolverine Gulo gulo

  WPG6920 - Greater bonneted bat Eumops perotis

  XOI29405 - Panamanian golden frog Atelopus zeteki

  OWD0528 - Giant ground pangolin Smutsia gigantea

  RNS10456 - Lord Howe Island stick insect Dryococelus australis

  “Weren’t some of these species’ DNA also in the Sanctuary City lab? Did they make it out with the evacuation?” she asked Raven.

  Despair crept over his face. “Yes, but it’s always good to get genetic samples from a variety of individuals to make viable populations.”

  She moved to one of the doors and felt for the light switch along the wall. As light flooded into the cavernous space before her, a similar scene revealed itself. In this room, the labels were different. There were no liquid nitrogen tanks here, just empty shelves. She read a few of the labels:

  Artifact 201234 - Mountain gorilla paw ashtray Gorilla beringei

  Artifact 234092 - African elephant foot umbrella stand Loxodonta africana

  Artifact 482590 - Plains zebra rug Equus quagga

  Artifact 340592 - American alligator suitcase Alligator mississippiensis

  Artifact 723631 - Diamondback rattlesnake belt Crotalus atrox

  Artifact 925061 - Benga
l tiger rug Panthera tigris

  Artifact 525321 - Guitar made from hawksbill turtle shell Eretmochelys imbricata

  The shelves above the labels were empty. She noticed that Raven stood in the doorway, dismayed. “I can’t believe it’s all gone.”

  “What are these?” she asked him, pointing at the labels.

  He came closer, reading them, his expression pained. “These vaults were constructed before de-extinction had been attempted. Back when this was built, they stored all kinds of samples from extinct animals.”

  She pointed to one of the labels. “Elephant foot umbrella stand?”

  “Yeah. In a lot of cases, samples of DNA left from extinct animals were in the form of decorations that had been made from their body parts.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “They were enormously popular. And not just when they were made, but well into the future. In fact, one of the only Sumatran rhino DNA samples we knew about was a wall decoration made from a rhino hide that a PPC exec had in Basin City. I remember my parents talking about how years before, back when Basin City was still up and running, a group of Rovers had infiltrated it to steal that hide.” His expression clouded suddenly, his gaze growing distant. “The PPC…” He gazed around. “At first I thought this destruction was the work of Badlanders or Death Riders, but…excuse me.” He left the room, turning on the display to his PRD.

  Dirk’s voice sounded from another room. “You guys should take a look at this.” He sounded spooked.

  H124 left the room, seeing Dirk gripping the doorframe of a neighboring room, his back to her. She moved to his side and peered in, instantly assaulted by the powerful smell of decay.

  Tall glass cylindrical enclosures filled the room, some still intact, others shattered, thick ooze caked and dried on the floor. But the most startling thing was the contents of those cylinders. Dozens of human skeletons leaned against the glass walls. Thick, gelatinous soup pooled around the calves and thighs of the bodies in the intact tubes. The stench of decay was overwhelming.

  She stifled her gag reflex and pulled the collar of her black shirt over her nose. “What are these?”

  Raven’s voice behind her made her jump. “Cryogenic chambers. But without the power on, the bodies broke down and decayed.”

  She turned to him, her eyes watering from the stench. “Why would they be here?”

  “They aren’t meant for DNA samples. They were probably kept here for resurrection.”

  Dirk’s eyes went wide as he took a step back.

  “Back when this was built,” Raven went on, “if you were rich, you could pay to have your body stored here, to be awakened when the technology to do so was developed. People who had incurable diseases or had grown old and infirm but didn’t want to die yet, paid to have their bodies kept here.”

  “Poor souls,” Dirk breathed. He turned, gazing out over the wreckage. “Who did this? Death Riders?”

  “That’s what I thought at first, some kind of raider who was here looking for tech. I didn’t see why the PPC would destroy everything like this. But I just hacked into the last security recordings before the power was cut.” His face looked grim. “It was the PPC.” He brought up the video window on his PRD and played the footage.

  H124 watched as a huge PPC cargo ship landed outside the vault, followed by an executive airship. Four smartly dressed execs emerged, their suits and hair impeccable. Soldiers escorted them, looking officious and anonymous in their black body armor and helmets with the face shields down. The execs entered the vault with maglev sleds, picking every endangered species collectible off the shelves. When they’d gathered them all, she watched as one of the execs gestured to the soldiers, who then stormed through the facility, overturning shelves and smashing samples. Then they cut the power, and the video went black. They’d left the door open, and with no power, it had ruined the place for anyone who could find future use for it.

  When the video ended, H124 stared in disbelief, then met Raven’s gaze. His eyes had narrowed, flashing with anger. “I guess they didn’t want anyone else discovering this site,” he said quietly.

  “This is unbelievable,” Dirk breathed.

  In the end, H124 and the others found nothing left to salvage. They walked quietly back to the Argo, boarding it in silence. Winslow started up the engines, and they took off.

  H124 stared down at the ruined vault as they flew away.

  “Let’s hope Greenland will be better,” Raven said.

  They motored on, covering vast, empty stretches of dry terrain. Hungry, she grabbed some food and sat down next to Dirk, who had made some earlier. But when she looked at his plate, the food had gone cold. He hadn’t touched it, though he held a fork poised over the meal. He stared blankly ahead, the utensil in his hand forgotten.

  “Are you…are you thinking about Astoria?” H124 asked tentatively.

  Dirk blinked, then lowered the fork. He stared down at the food, his face slack, like all the life had drained out of him. At first H124 didn’t think he was going to answer. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “I feel half empty without her. We balanced each other out. I was the peace to her vengeance.” He paused, looking out the window. “Now I can almost feel that white hot rage she carried with her, like somehow it’s moving into me. She treated it like it was her best friend. Sometimes I think that rage was closer to her than I was, that it had been born out of some kind of primordial pit inside of her.”

  “Where did that rage come from?”

  Dirk sighed as he tucked an errant purple-and-black dreadlock behind his ear. “She wasn’t always like that. She was one of the happiest kids at our Badlander camp. Our parents had been trying to have kids for a long time, so when we came along they really lavished attention on us. Astoria laughed a lot. She’d make up these creative games and all the other kids would play along. Treasure hunts, stuff like that.

  “We were nine when a contingent of PPC soldiers rolled into our camp. We’d had no warning. They burned the place to the ground. Smashed or took everything we had. Astoria and I managed to hide, but our mother…” Dirk’s chin trembled, and his eyes fell away. “Our mother was trying to help these other kids hide. The PPC grabbed her. My dad tried to stop them. They’d picked up a harpoon gun from our stockpile and shot him with it. Pinned him to the wooden side of a building like it was a game. Then they laughed as he screamed at them. They drove away with our mother.

  “We got our dad down, and the camp’s sawbones started patching him up. Astoria ran after the PPC troopers, tracking them. I followed her. We ran after their tracks for two days. Astoria was relentless. And then…on the third day, we were getting close. The tracks were fresher. We came over this rise, saw this dusty lump on the ground up ahead.” He swallowed, staring out of the window. “I thought it was an old bundle of clothes or something. Astoria ran forward, crying out. It was our mother. They’d dragged her to death behind one of the transports. Her body was all torn up. We could hear their engines roaring away into the distance. Astoria stood there staring after them. I’d never seen her like that before. We carried our mother’s body back to camp.

  “It took weeks for our dad to recover from the harpoon wound, but eventually he did. Everyone moved to a new camp. But as it turned out, this one was no safer. Between Death Rider raids and a neighboring group of Badlanders who constantly robbed us and savagely beat anyone caught near their camp, we were always on guard.

  “When we were twelve, we moved to a different area. The place seemed peaceful. Astoria still made up games for us to play, though she didn’t smile or laugh as much as she used to. That summer Death Riders found us. They tore into camp, stealing everything we had, smashing up our living quarters, setting the camp on fire. My dad tried to fight them, and they chained him to a pole. They locked us in these metal cages, and we watched while…”

  Dirk swallowed, his voice caught in his thro
at. When he spoke again, he rasped out the words. “While they carved off pieces of his body and ate them. He was still alive.”

  “Oh, god,” H124 said, closing her eyes.

  “A neighboring group of Badlanders happened to be passing by and saw what was going on. They drove the Death Riders out of camp. But not before our dad had died from blood loss.”

  “This is terrible, Dirk.”

  He picked absently at his food with the fork, moving it around without eating it. “After that we didn’t have much left. Hardly any belongings, no food. One of the kids we grew up with, Dooley, started going on these scavenger runs, finding things to trade or sell. We went with him sometimes. He was brash and fearless. As we got older, Astoria really fell for him. Hard. And he loved her, too. Or so I thought. Some of the levity she’d had as a kid returned. She smiled more. Dooley started disappearing for longer and longer stints of time. Astoria was always so happy when he returned to camp. By this time she’d been training as a fighter—the best in our camp. The best on the Badlander circuit, as a matter of fact, and she was only fourteen.

  “Dooley heard about this massive score of PPC weapons that had been stashed at a satellite site. He wanted to break into it. Astoria thought it was too dangerous. She didn’t want me to go. So they stole away together in the middle of the night.

  “But they didn’t come back the next day, or the day after that. Me and some others checked out the weapons stash. It hadn’t been touched, and was there no sign that someone had been there recently. It was old, probably forgotten about ages before.

  “Astoria didn’t come home. I searched for her for months, asking questions, traveling from camp to camp. No one had seen her. Then a few months later, I was coming back from a neighboring camp, and I happened to see Dooley, bouncing along in an old jeep. He didn’t see me. I followed his tracks way out to this camp on the plains. He’d amassed a fair amount of wealth in stolen goods. I thought maybe I’d find Astoria there, though I couldn’t understand why she would have been out of touch for so long. I entered the camp and asked him where she was.