by L K Hingey
A small rustle went around the room. The Auroras were well aware that the Bureau was where years of extensive genetic testing had occurred... where their own grafting and incubation had taken place. The idea that Kimber’s mother had been involved in the project was more than a little shocking. The Auroras had been told since birth, and for the most part it had been the truth, that twenty-three poor and uneducated women had been brought into the sanctuary of the caverns based on their health and their willingness to participate in the Aurorean experiment.
Kimber continued, a little softer now. “The headquarters of the Bureau is located beneath the medical clinic at this base. My mother told me some... alarming... details of what happened down there. The leadership of the Bureau now comprises much of what leads and directs Inanna. Based on what my mother has told me about the nature of the Bureau, I do not think it is foolish to expect that the council would terminate the baby. If for no other reason than to make a point.”
Another small gasp circled the room. They had all been thinking it and fearing it, but no one had yet spoken the words. Kimber sighed and continued, “My mother also told me that if our two species should find themselves at, um, a crossroads, that the headquarters would be the place to go to get evidence that may tip the scales in our favor. I’m not 100% sure what she was getting at, but depending on what I find, maybe we could rally the humans to vote the council out of power if they don’t agree to letting Eve’s baby live healthily and happily.”
“What we find down there,” Tristan broke in coolly, standing up.
“What we find down there,” Kimber revised with a nod.
“Absolutely not,” Naomi cut in. “You have no idea what’s down there. You can’t just travel hundreds of miles-”
“One hundred miles, Naomi,” Kimber chided gently.
“One hundred or many hundreds makes no difference. We are your family. What if something happened to you?”
“I won’t let anything happen to her,” Tristan said warmly but sternly.
“Couldn’t we all go?” asked a voice from the side of the room. It was the male named Jordan. His mother had been a beautiful South American girl, and he shared many of her traits. His dark eyes were clouded with concern. Kimber smiled. Jordan was not known to be a workhorse. He preferred lounging over doing work of any kind, but he had a heart of gold and Kimber knew he meant what he said.
“We can’t guarantee food for everybody,” Tristan replied shortly, “and we can’t promise good weather or shelter.”
“Tristan is right,” Kimber tried to soften his stern logic. “Plus, we are both strong runners. We need to get the base and then get back to you all as fast as we can. Hopefully with some answers.”
“What do you think you’ll find down there?” asked one of the females with a shiver. Her name was Adelaide, and she was a fragile girl. Her pigments were soft, almost pink, and she was as delicate as she was quiet.
“I really don’t know, Ady. I am assuming we are going to find evidence of inhumane genetic testing. Why else would my mother send us there?” Kimber replied thoughtfully.
“Take Hunter or Jameson with you!” Renee called out from her seat on one of the deteriorating couches.
“Renee, you can’t just offer us up as tribute, you know!” cried Hunter from across the room. He was standing next to Jameson, who immediately jabbed a heavy elbow into Hunter’s side. “But! We would be happy to come, Kimber. You know that,” Hunter added shrewdly, massaging his rib cage.
“We wouldn’t slow you down too much,” Jameson said.
“I think you two should stay here and help protect Eve,” Kimber said, beaming out over the sea of vibrancy.
“Okay, let’s be real. Zaak will be here. He is all the bodyguard anyone needs,” Hunter said with a laugh.
“Rude!” Zaak called out good-naturedly from the one of the faded reclining chairs in the center of the room.
Raquel, who had been more quiet than normal, finally cut in. “No. Kimber and Tristan are right. They need to go alone and then get back as fast as possible. We are going to need every available body to distract the council members during negotiations in the next week. We have to trick them into not noticing that Eve, Kimber, and Tristan are missing.”
Aaron nodded, “It’s settled then. What can we get you? There’s not much here...”
The visitor’s center had not been used much, apart from serving as an emergency shelter in high winds and as a rally point for the surface excursions. All the tools, supplies, and food had been brought into the cavern years ago.
“Extra batteries maybe?” Kimber asked.
“I’ll go look!” Kat said, standing up quickly. She had been silent thus far and was clearly relieved to have an opportunity to be useful. She hurried off to look in the janitorial closet.
“Do you need a night’s rest?” Raquel asked the pair standing by the fireplace.
Tristan looked at Kimber, who shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t think I could sleep even if I tried. I think we should get out now and at least make it to the first shelter.”
Kimber scanned the room to see if there was anything they could use, or anything she was forgetting to tell the group. A somber thought came to her. “If we don’t come back... do not come looking for us.” Her tone was soft but deadly serious. “We don’t know what we are walking into. If we don’t come back, that means there is a damn good reason for you all to stay away.”
“You just had to end on that note, didn’t you?” Naomi groaned unhappily.
“We will be back,” Tristan grinned kindly at Naomi. “I promise.”
Katherine scurried into the room, her glasses hanging on her nose making her wide eyes even bigger. “Look what I found!” she squeaked happily.
She placed a handful of small batteries on the coffee table along with a pair of walkie-talkies.
“Brilliant, Kat!” Kimber said, as Katherine popped open the plastic door on the back of each of the speakers. She put the batteries in and threw one to Kimber.
Kat pressed the button on the side of her little machine and held it up to her lips, “Hello, hello. Kimber, daughter of a mad scientist, can you hear me?”
“Ha. Ha. Ha. We are all full of jokes today, aren’t we,” Kimber spoke into her own microphone.
“Good find, Kat!” Tristan grinned approvingly as Kimber passed the walkie-talkie to him. He played with the buttons for a second and motioned for Kat to toss him the second speaker. He took the batteries out of the tiny machines to make sure not to drain them and put everything in Kimber’s sack.
“There is some canned food in the staff room where Eve is sleeping. It’s not much... I think its canned spinach and maybe some canned sardines that were left here. Um, probably on purpose,” Raquel laughed. “But you can take them.”
“As appetizing as that sounds, you guys keep it. We will find food along the way. We are going farther north than we have ever gone, so the houses up there may still have stocked pantries. You will need to start forming scouting parties of your own to get food and water and bring them back here,” Tristan said.
Raquel nodded and Aaron stood up. “Be careful,” he said to Tristan gravely.
“And you guys be wise,” Tristan advised back. The two locked arms and nodded.
Raquel swooped in past the boys and their formalities and hugged Kimber tightly. When Raquel let go, Kimber was grabbed by Kat, Renee, and Naomi, who took turns saying goodbye before tearfully passing her to the rest of the females to say their goodbyes. The males followed Tristan’s and Aaron’s lead, each standing to lock arms with Tristan. After the hugging and the embraces were over and the outbound pair had been more or less rough handled to the door, they bid their last farewells.
Kimber and Tristan stepped out into the waning sunlight. The borealis, now brighter against the darkening sky, greeted them merrily just as it had earlier.
“Well?” Kimber asked, looking over at Tristan.
“Well,” he replied with a
shrug, “want to cut northeast until we hit the river-bed? Then we can use it as basic navigation to keep a northeastern track?”
“Yeah,” Kimber considered the route. “We can’t go due north the whole time, and we will need to use the interstate for shelter, and hopefully, for some food.”
They nodded together, both knowing the lay of the land for the first day or two of travel. After that, the map would become invaluable. The Auroras had routinely kept to the south and to the west, their assigned excursions taking them down the familiar and crumbling Highway 31W. The large metropolis of Bowling Green had been their recent city of focus, ever since the smaller municipalities of Cave City and Glasgow had been cleaned out of supplies.
Kimber and Tristan knew that although night would soon be upon them, their path would be illuminated by the colorful streaks dancing in the sky. All that would limit their travel would be exhaustion and the ever-possible windstorm. They had a lot on their minds, and as Kimber looked over at her companion, she felt the same welling of gratitude she had earlier to not be alone in this great big world. Despite her constant effort to not look weak, she wanted Tristan to know how much it meant to her that he had fought to stay with her.
She could not manage much, but before they turned their backs to the sunset and took off in a jog over the burnt landscape, Kimber whispered, “Thank you.”
Chapter XI
As Kimber and Tristan ran across the scarred Earth, night fell deeper and deeper until the borealis was back-dropped by a sky so dark, it could have been a black hole. The ground was tough under their bare feet as they transitioned from what used to be old forested land, to old farmland, and back again. They did not speak as they navigated to rocky terrain, instead keeping focused on the challenges that lay ahead.
Eventually, they intercepted an old riverbed. It was the same river that fed the underground city of Inanna, the Green River. The river had been named hundreds of years ago and as they splashed across the red muddy water, Kimber could not help but feeling like it was a cheap prank. She made a mental note to scratch the words Green River off her map and to scribble Blood River in its place. The new name would not be an insult to the stained waters, but rather an ode to this artery that kept their city in supply of clean, filtered water.
They crisscrossed the river many times as they traveled north and east, enjoying the cold water splashing on their legs. The bed of the river was a strange mixture of clay and pebbles, and it squished up between their toes as they ran across. They followed the river up and down the many ravines and gullies. The folds in the Earth must have been beautiful once, Kimber thought to herself, as they ran past the many rock and soil formations.
Everything was so different up here from in the caves, yet a similar petrified quality was shared between the two worlds. In place of the seemingly motionless grandeur of the stalagmites and stalactites of the subterranean biosphere, here on the surface were giant hulls of felled trees and boulders of every shape and size. The hills looked as if the heavens themselves had peeled back their outer layers and commanded the hands of time to stop, freezing the hills in their nakedness for eternity.
For a little over an hour, they traveled, steadily cutting across the snaking coils of the winding river. They knew that as they progressed north and east, they would run into a large expressway. It was their eastern boundary that would not only be impossible to miss but would mark their turn north. They ran towards the expressway using the borealis as their guiding light, the flashing and swirling of the neon yanking them forward.
The colors above were brilliant and the patterns were constantly changing. Kimber felt as though she could watch the borealis dance every single night and never see the same lightshow twice. Sometimes, the colors were crisp and delineated, and sometimes, they were blended and cloudlike. Sometimes, the skies glowed with the pale hues of greenish white, and sometimes, richer shades of purples and pinks would dominate the heavens. Sometimes, the borealis would be a vertical spectacle, and sometimes, it would create rivers that flowed horizontally over the horizon.
Whichever way the borealis decided to showcase itself was like a brand-new celebration of the cosmos, and Kimber could not help but feel small underneath it all. Tristan too felt the energy seep into his soul as the colors rained down, tonight featuring thin ribbons of electric greens, blues, and purples. The ribbons did not simply trail off into the night sky though; they looked as though invisible paintbrushes were pulling the pigments upwards, bleeding the colors towards the stars.
Kimber looked ahead at Tristan as he ran across the fields of petrified soil. The colors reflected beautifully off his shimmering body, and Kimber’s heart swelled with pride knowing that the name given to their species had been nothing less than justified. Every time the Auroras were sent on excursions under the enchantment of the borealis, Kimber could not stop a strange feeling from settling into her soul. A feeling of being home. Tonight was no different. As the Aurorean pair made their way farther and farther from Inanna, she could not help but question which home was more real.
Just ahead of her, Tristan slowed to a walk. His chest pumped in the pulsing light, but he spoke without sounding winded. “Made it to the eastern boundary,” he said, surveying the area. Kimber looked out from the small hill they were standing on. Below them, I65 snaked north and south, a giant slab of concrete stretching out towards the two opposing skylines, irradiated in an eerie multicolored radiance.
The intensity of the daytime sun had bleached the slab whiter than bone. The many earthquakes, triggered by the same electromagnetic shockwave that had temporarily curved the Earth’s magnetosphere, had heaved and cracked the concrete. The advanced infrastructure, which used to be a thing of great pride for Americans, now looked like the crumbling teeth in a decaying jaw which extended as far as Kimber and Tristan could see.
The roads in America had been completely overhauled and redone after World War III. The highway corridors had been kept, but the roads themselves had been torn up, regraded, and repaved, tripling them in width. The two directions of travel were now divided by a complex inner rail system consisting of three separate tracks: two outer tracks and a switch-track lane in between. Americans had been reluctant to give up their individual cars, but with the new abundance of electric energy, a hybrid of trains and semitrucks emerged. These massive vehicles were a logistician’s dream; they were 100% solar-powered, unmanned, and they could be operated around the clock without interfering with traffic in the common travel lanes.
One by one, these super-expressways replaced all major interstates. Not long after, the smaller state roads were replaced with light versions of the massive highways. Accelerated by the profusion of new yields of crops, a new era of commerce was born. The people of the world began to move on from the destruction the war had caused, and the lost cities of Washington D.C., Chicago, Kansas City, and San Francisco were all but forgotten. The new super-highways were simply routed around and away from the nuclear ground zeros they had been reduced to.
As Kimber gazed out onto the broken road before them, she thought about what those cities must look like now. A chill went down her spine to think of what it must have been like to watch the nation’s four largest nuclear power plants explode, one after the other. It had been one of the toughest topics for the educators of Inanna to teach. Although the educators themselves had not been born until many decades after the daisy-chain of terrorist attacks on the power plants had occurred, many of their parents had been alive to tell first-hand stories.
Global panic had reached its breaking point that tragic day as deadly mushroom clouds containing plutonium, cesium, and strontium isotopes rose up from the four obliterated uranium cores. The radioactive particulate drifted with the wind, dusting America in layers of poison and anger. All the while, Elyria continued her silent, lopsided spin towards the Sun. Small proxy wars had been breaking out for years all over the planet as every nation scrambled for resources, but the attacks on the nuclear sites lau
nched the United States and its allies headfirst into world war. The cities around the powerplants were leveled, and the sites had been quarantined ever since.
However, standing on this ridge with Tristan, the Earth felt peaceful. Sad and badly bruised, but peaceful. Kimber looked back to Tristan. “Let’s try this water filter out and then get down to the road so we pull the map out.” He nodded and they dropped back down the hill to the river. Kimber handed the contraption to Tristan, who unscrewed the top.
He peered into the clear water bottle and shrugged. “Here goes nothing.”
Tristan dipped the bottle into the river and a rush of red water swirled in. With a grimace Tristan screwed the top back on and tipped the water filter upside down. Instead of squeezing water straight into his mouth, he squeezed a bit into his palm. Kimber drew in close to evaluate how well the purifier worked. As they both leaned in, she noticed two things.
First, she noticed the clarity of the water. The low light made it tough to tell exactly how clean it was, but the opacity of the water was gone. There were a few particles floating around, but in general, the filter looked as if it had done a remarkable job. The second thing she could not help but notice, was Tristan’s scent. His body was sweet with exertion, but since the Auroreans did not sweat, it was different from the scents the humans put off. In the sterile air of the barren landscape, it was a welcomed surprise.
“Not bad!” Tristan exclaimed excitedly. The water in the Inanna was filtered through so many layers of sediment that by the time it reached the underground rivers, it was cold and crystal clear. Water that pure served as a hard mark for the puny water filter to compare to. It had done the job though, and without hesitation he motioned the bottle towards Kimber’s mouth. He squeezed and the water squirted out.