The Seventh Seed

by Allison Maruska

  Kyle tased the armed man without hesitation. Well-placed punches from other Grays took care of the other two.

  They hustled down the hall, stopping at a door in the middle of it. After three kicks, Kyle had it open.

  The space looked like a bank, with several rows of locked boxes. A pane of glass, likely bulletproof, separated the boxes from where Liz now stood. A young woman with her dyed-purple hair done up in a ponytail sat on the other side of the glass. A locked door big enough to pass small items appeared to be the only possible contact point between the attendant and the outside.

  Purple Hair’s eyes grew big. “What the hell are you doing here? None of you are authorized.”

  “Very observant. Good job.” Kyle analyzed the seam between the glass and the wall. “I’ll tell your boss to give you a raise.”

  She stood. “Seriously, you have to leave. This is a secure area. How did you get in here anyway?”

  Kyle ignored her, opting instead to continue scouring the glass for weaknesses.

  “I’m calling security.” Purple Hair fell back into her chair.

  “Hold on.” Liz put her hand on the glass. “We’re not here to start trouble. We just need to get something. A white powder called Deinix. Give it to us and we’ll leave.”

  The girl scoffed. “Yeah, let me just go get it.” She pushed a button on the counter. “I need security in the vault.”

  Shit.

  Kyle drew his sidearm. “Give us the drug. Right now.” Two other Grays followed his example. Liz backed away, allowing them to take position in front of the glass.

  “This glass is bulletproof, soldier.” Purple Hair crossed her arms.

  Kyle fired, creating a perfect hole in the glass near the ceiling. “I guess my bullets are special. I wonder how many shots it will take to break through.”

  “Are you stupid?” Purple Hair stood. “We have a pretty extreme protocol to follow if the vault is compromised. You can’t just come in here and start shooting.”

  Three guards stormed through the vault’s door. One grabbed Liz and spun her around, shoving her against the wall.

  “Come on!” Her words were directed at the corner, as her cheek was pressed against a framed picture of a cornfield. “I’m not armed.”

  In the same moment she relayed the information, the guard released her as four more gunshots filled the small space. The guards tackled Kyle and the other two Grays. A deafening siren echoed from the hallway.

  The guards leapt to their feet, dragging Kyle and the other armed Grays out. Liz lingered behind. What the hell was going on? Should she follow Kyle or keep trying to get the drug, now that the guards were gone?

  As Purple Hair shoved items into a backpack, a male employee appeared behind her and yelled something that could have been, “Is this a drill?”

  Oh my God. Anxiety filled Liz’s stomach as recognition flooded her mind. He’d lost weight and was taller, and his hair was shorter, but there was no mistake—her son was here. Travis was alive and standing feet from her.

  Purple Hair shook her head and ran to the back of the vault.

  Liz banged the glass with both hands. “Travis!”

  The wailing sirens drowned her cries.

  “Travis!” She kept banging and as he followed Purple Hair.

  Staring through the window as if it would make Travis return, Liz took a shaking breath. She had to find him.

  That siren likely meant they were evacuating the building. Heading for the door, Liz faced a new fear—she was alone. The Grays had left her.

  She rushed to the stairs, looking down every hallway in the vain hope that Travis would be in one of them. She ran with the crowd through the door. As she reached the sidewalk, a deafening boom followed by heat and dust hit her.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I don’t have to answer to you.” The Congresswoman eyed Javier as if he were one of his insects.

  “Pretty sure you do.” He kept his focus on her image in the phone screen. “Aren’t you supposed to be a representative of the people?”

  Those surrounding them shouted their agreement. They’d created an alcove with their bodies, a space large enough for Javier to get an unobscured shot but not large enough for the Congresswoman to escape. With the crowd at his back, Javier hoped any other cops wouldn’t easily stop him.

  “How about starting with your name and which state you represent?” Javier said.

  The people quieted, all eyes on their Congresswoman. Even if she didn’t represent their state, at this moment she represented either the American people as a whole or her own fellow legislators and lobbyists. Javier imagined their silence was to see which it would be.

  She cleared her throat. “Charlotte Holleran. Idaho.”

  Crap. No Seeds there. “What can you tell us about LifeFarm? Or about the virus?”

  “Virus?” Holleran kept a straight face.

  “Yes, the virus. We know quite a bit, Ma’am. I hope anything you tell us will be supplemental.”

  A few in the crowd chuckled.

  Holleran stood in silence.

  “They killed my daughter,” a woman behind Javier said.

  He took a quick glance—it was the woman who’d given him the phone. Javier focused the camera on her. “Tell us about her.”

  The woman’s eyes were already puffy. “Her name was Jade. Nine years ago, she was a student at Northwestern when LifeFarm’s recruiters visited the campus, saying they were showing students the ‘possibilities of a new world.’” She used air quotes for the last words. Tearing up, she pursed her lips before continuing. “Jade was so excited when she called me, saying all those starving kids in the third world would finally be saved, and she had the chance to be part of it.”

  Javier panned back to Holleran long enough to see her stony silence, then went back to Jade’s mother.

  “The last time I talked to her, she was getting ready to go on a LifeFarm-funded humanitarian trip to Kenya. War broke out there less than a month later. They told me her hostel was bombed in the middle of the night.” She wiped her tears with her open hands. “I found out later LifeFarm was there to take over the country’s agricultural industry, and when leaders resisted, they brought in our own military to bomb them. They killed my baby. My only child. Because they couldn’t bully a third-world country into submission. And she wasn’t the only one. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for us to know why.”

  Javier brought the camera back to Holleran. “Ma’am?”

  Holleran blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Stop!” A Seed member yelled as two cops pushed their way through the crowd.

  One reached Javier in seconds. “Step away from the Congresswoman, young man!” He grabbed Javier with a massive hand, pulling him away. Javier dropped the still-recording phone.

  “No!” Javier kept his eyes glued to the phone as he was dragged away.

  Congresswoman Holleran picked it up.

  Javier was out of the building before he could see what she did with it.

  ****

  Coughing, Liz got her arms under her. Dust fell around her like snow—no, it was thicker than snow. She couldn’t see more than one person beyond her, and they all looked like they’d endured Pompeii’s eruption. The ringing in her ears wouldn’t let any other sound through.

  She rolled onto her butt. The blast had thrown her almost completely across the street. Through the dust, a jagged outline of what was LifeFarm’s headquarters remained. At least ten floors reduced to three, give or take a floor. As the dust cleared, smoke rising from the ruins became apparent.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. Help would be here soon. Liz found her feet and spit out the grit in her mouth. Stumbling through the crowd, she analyzed every face. Kyle and Travis had to be out here. She was one of the last out of the building.

  After completing a round through the mass of people filling the street, she debated with herself. What if they hadn’t made it out? Should she look for th
em in the damaged building? The thought that they might have survived nagged at her, but this level of destruction was crushing. There was no way they could have survived.

  Still, she had to make sure. For a few minutes and for the first time in a decade, her family was in the same place. Giving up on that possibility again was unfathomable. She’d thought Kyle was dead once before. Until she laid eyes on them, she wouldn’t believe they were gone.

  She climbed up the rubble, which went from ground level to ten feet high in short order. The debris shifted under her feet, keeping her from moving as quickly as she wanted to. Step, steady. Step, steady. After several minutes and with her heart pounding, she was back in the building. Or on what was left of it.

  “Kyle! Travis!” Her yells mixed with the din of the crowd and the sirens. “Kyle!”

  So much debris lay before and beneath her. Where would she start digging?

  She headed towards where she thought Travis had been, where he would be now had he stayed in the vault and fallen straight down with the building.

  With six floors on top of him.

  Shaking off the thought, she picked up pieces of drywall, handfuls of papers, and jagged chunks of metal, tossing them aside. For all she knew she was piling material on top of Travis. But she had to do something.

  “Ma’am! Come out of there!” A uniformed firefighter was climbing the debris, heading for her. “This isn’t a stable area.”

  “You’re telling me.” She grabbed more debris, tossing it away.

  “Ma’am!” The firefighter reached her in seconds and grabbed her arms. “You have to leave. Paramedics are here to check you for injuries.”

  “My son is in here.” The words hit her like a punch in the gut. He was. “He was right here.”

  “I understand.” His voice had softened. “We’ll get a search team here right away. Please.”

  Taking her wrist, he led her across the wreckage, stopped her from falling when she tripped, and offered a comforting presence.

  She kept her eyes on the place she’d dug until it was out of sight.

  Back on the street, a paramedic met her and after checking her vitals, gave her a bottle of water. She mindlessly took a drink, washing the remaining grit away from her mouth.

  “Liz!” Kristen ran over, her own bottle of water in hand. “Have you seen Kyle?”

  Taking another drink and with her eyes locked on the building, Liz shook her head. “We got separated.”

  “Oh.” Kristen put her hand on Liz’s shoulder. “I’ll circle the perimeter and look for him, okay?”

  Liz nodded, watching the search team take their positions.

  ****

  With the cop’s shove, Javier fell into the back of one of dozens of squad cars that peppered the side streets blocks from the Capitol Building. It took that far to get through the mass of Seed members crowding the Capitol grounds. They’d been arriving in a constant stream during the last hour, and like the woman who’d let Javier use her phone, several had to have arrived as a result of Kyle’s broadcast. But how many? How effective was their attempt to destabilize LifeFarm?

  Other people were being loaded into the surrounding cars. There wasn’t likely enough space in a jail to house all of them. What was the plan?

  And where were Sam, Charlie, and Jonah? The cop had taken Javier’s backpack, but even if he still had it, he couldn’t very well talk to them via the walkie talkie while being arrested.

  As Javier watched the crowd move towards the Capitol, some shouting and some marching in silence, they all did something he never expected: they cheered in unison, as they might if their underdog sports team won a championship. They hugged each other, and a few cried. Through the thick glass of the cruiser, Javier could make out a few of their shouts. Can you believe it? It’s gone!

  What the hell was happening?

  “Hey!” His yell didn’t make it past the car, and he couldn’t bang on the window with his hands cuffed behind him.

  Finally, a young cop arrived, but instead of taking the driver’s seat, he opened the back door. “Get out.”

  “What?” Javier cautiously inched his way towards his escape.

  “Riots are breaking out in other parts of the city. That’s more pressing than you making a Congresswoman talk.”

  Javier scooted out. “Riots? Why?”

  The cop unlocked the cuffs. “The LifeFarm building in New York exploded. People are either out celebrating or freaking the hell out.” He walked around his cruiser and left Javier standing alone on the curb.

  LifeFarm is gone! Or at least their headquarters was. That had to make a dent in their operations.

  He bolted into the crowd of protesters-turned-revelers. He had to get to Sam.

  ****

  “It’s gone?” Charlie grabbed the arm of the guy jumping around with his phone, yelling some nonsense about LifeFarm being wiped off the map. “What are you talking about?”

  “The building exploded!” The guy almost shook his man bun out from jumping around. “Boom!” He laughed. “Take that, assholes!”

  Man Bun hopped into the middle of the crowd, where he filled more people in on the news.

  It was gone? That couldn’t be right. It had to be more propaganda. But to what end?

  What if it was true? Mattson was in New York hacking the broadcasts. What if he was close to the blast?

  Charlie chased down Man Bun. “Can I see the report?” It would be pretty easy to tell if it was real—fake stories always came with extra doses of sensationalism.

  “Sure, I guess.” Man Bun calmed down and handed over the phone, staying inches from Charlie, apparently guarding his baby.

  Charlie skimmed the story—it was more straightforward than propaganda suggested. Shit.

  “Thanks.” Charlie handed back the phone and hurried up the stairs. He had to find the others and get the hell out of here.

  ****

  Javier shoved his way through the crowd and reached the Capitol Building in minutes. “Sam!” He scanned the hundreds—maybe thousands—of faces surrounding him. “Sam!”

  He had to get above these people. Maybe Sam would find him.

  Running up the front steps, Javier eyed the other people camped out there. A brown, bald head popped above the crowd on the other side of the entrance—Charlie was climbing the stairs too.

  Javier reached the top and crossed to the other side. “Charlie!”

  The former agent’s eyes connected with Javier’s for a second before he plowed his way through the group. “Did you hear what happened?”

  Javier nodded. “Where are the others?”

  “I don’t know. Should we go back to the car?”

  As Javier scanned the crowd, frustration grew in his gut. If he and Charlie met at the car and the others weren’t there, then what? Of course, what were the odds of finding them here? “Yeah. Let’s go back.” He hustled back down the stairs.

  The men had to cross the grounds and a street before emerging from the growing mob. Once clear, Javier ran. A twinge of pain radiated from where the bullet fragment had hit back in Colorado, a subtle reminder of what brought him here. Behind him, Charlie panted, and his limp became more prominent.

  Javier had a passing moment of pity before speeding up. If Charlie needed to slow, he could catch up.

  The SUV was on the street where Damien had parked it, only now the windshield was shattered and windows busted out. People were running through the streets and yelling. A group of young men armed with baseball bats targeted anything in their path while yelling about LifeFarm blowing up.

  “Those assholes killed my mom!” One of the bat-wielders whacked a sidemirror off a pickup. “And now they’re dead!” Laughing maniacally, he took off down the street with his buddies.

  Slack-jawed, Javier watched them and the other rioters celebrating by reaping destruction. Those young men, like Javier, had never experienced a world that wasn’t under LifeFarm’s control. They were tasting freedom for the first time,
even if right now it was only an idea. LifeFarm could recover. But the Seeds had been planted to be the first resistance force, and not only had they all made their presence known, countless others had joined them.

  It was disorganized, but this was the birth of a movement. A revolution.

  “I see Damien,” Charlie said, snapping Javier out of his trance. “Come on.”

  Limping, Charlie walked to Damien as he headed towards them from the east side of the Capitol Building. While Charlie opted to wait at the car, Javier and Damien returned to the crowd in search of their missing counterparts. Damien used his flashlight, but all of the faces started to look the same, and the noise had grown louder.

  “Sam!” Javier yelled. “Jonah!”

  His cries were swallowed by the sea of humanity before him.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Desperate but unable to get back onto the rubble, Liz paced on the street. She alternated between staring at the search crews work and analyzing the people in the crowd, which had thinned in the last half hour. Shouts from neighboring streets reached her. She didn’t care enough to find out what those were about.

  What if the crews found Kyle and Travis buried? Or what if they didn’t? How would she find her family?

  What if the debris was crushing them, and they were fighting for air?

  She pushed the thought from her mind.

  Needing to do something, she decided to search the surrounding buildings for Mattson. Kyle had said the kid wasn’t doing well, and she guessed his injury had something to do with it. If he’d gotten sick, he wouldn’t likely emerge into this mess on his own. He’d wait until Kyle came back for him.

  Half a dozen buildings sat between LifeFarm and one of the news networks. She had no way to know if any of these were the right one. How much range would they have needed to hack the signal? It would make sense for them to get as close as possible, so she started with the building closest to the network’s.

  It was a small office building housing a dentist, a chiropractor, and some other businesses Liz didn’t recognize. She checked all of the offices that didn’t have a sign—would Mattson have locked himself inside one of them? About half of the unmarked spaces were unlocked. At the others, she peeked through windows. No sign of Mattson.