by Shanon Hunt
The shower turned off. She skimmed the rest of the agenda.
10:00–12:00 Sensus placement program—Madeline Barnett
12:00–1:30 Lunch
1:30–3:00 Praefuro Case Reviews—Alessandro De Luca
1. Criteria for isolation in salvage
2. Risk mitigation—
The bathroom door opened, and James’s heavy footsteps thudded into the bedroom. Layla slid the papers back into the folder, gently opened the front door, and set the folder on the doorstep where she found it.
A cloud covered the sun, and the bright cabin darkened. Or maybe it was in her head. At that moment, she had only enough energy to crawl back to bed and under the covers. A tightness had formed in her chest, and her eyes burned with angry tears.
She’d given everything to James. All she’d wanted in exchange was honesty and equal footing. But it was all bullshit. All those times James had placated her with his soothing voice and endless offers to get her whatever she needed had only been his way of keeping her from finding out the truth about everything—her past, her pregnancy, and all the other secrets the Colony seemed to be keeping from her.
And how had she responded? With childish whining and indignation: But it’s not fair!
“See you tonight, beautiful girl.” James kissed the back of her head.
She didn’t offer a reply, and he didn’t wait for one. The front door closed behind him, sealing her in with her sacrifice—and god, she’d sacrificed so much. Her days were endless, yet she’d carried a full workload while carrying two fetuses to term. She didn’t know anyone who could match her stamina or work ethic. And this is what she got for it: lies from the person she trusted most, a lousy GS-4 rank, and two long years of pregnancy. It was amazing she still had her sanity after everything—
You’re Allison Stevens.
She howled, pulled the pillow from beneath her, and covered her head until she could hardly breathe. Allison Stevens. Her poisoned self. Had she been this pathetic when she was Allison Stevens? Had she been this weak and powerless?
She stretched open from her fetal position, threw her legs over the bed, and rose fully erect, inhaling deeply, palming her tears away. Just the change of position made her feel stronger.
Allison Stevens had killed a cop. She must have been ruthless.
Allison Stevens had been a fugitive. She’d dodged the police, escaped the long arm of the law, and ran away to the Colony. She was dauntless.
Allison Stevens would be disgusted by the spineless jellyfish she’d become.
Her feelings of betrayal turned to defiance like the flip of a light switch. No longer would she live in James’s world of lies, and no longer would she suffocate under his protective wing.
She wanted to see the other sensus carriers herself. She wanted to know what had been so important that James had to keep it from her.
She stomped over to James’s computer and flopped into the chair with a thud. The screen blinked on. A moment later, a red prompt flashed: Facial Recognition Error. Please enter password.
She stabbed at the keyboard.
Invalid login attempt.
17
October 2022, Mexico
Layla typed in the password a second time, slower.
Invalid login attempt.
She backed away, staring at the screen. And that’s when she noticed the paper coffee cup. James’s coffee. He’d been on the computer this morning.
Her mind flashed with the memory of the guard knocking at her door. She leaned over the desk to inspect the power strip. Hadn’t she flipped it off in a panic when the guard came in? Yet the screen had blinked on when she touched the keyboard a moment ago. James had turned on the power strip. She glanced nervously over her shoulder, as if she expected him to be standing right behind her. If he suspected she’d used his computer, surely he would’ve said something. He should’ve been furious. But he’d shown no sign of anger. In fact, he’d been downright cheery.
She rubbed her itchy palms together. Now what?
She rummaged through James’s desk drawer until she found a campus map. She’d just have to find the carrier program herself.
The Mexico colony was significantly larger than the Arizona colony had been before they’d migrated across the border. This one was as big as a college campus, built in five clusters forming a pentagon, with three to five miles between clusters, each with its own security access gate. A central security building at the hub was positioned to quickly send guards anywhere they were needed.
Naturally, Layla wasn’t privy to the purpose or activities of the other clusters, but she knew that one of them would be where they conducted basic scientific research and another would have to be where they kept the other carriers. Where would James hide them? Somewhere far from her purification center, no doubt, probably near the medical facility so the doctors would be close by. If the other carriers were carrying F1 fetuses like her, Dr. De Luca was the logical choice as the physician in charge. It made perfect sense; he was the fertility expert. It was just as logical that his office would be somewhere near the carriers.
She opened her laptop and searched the directory. Dr. Alessandro De Luca, Building R. She grabbed the campus map again and ran her finger over each building until she found R. It was in a cluster on the north side.
Her stomach flip-flopped as she picked up her phone and dialed. “Hey, Mia. Is Michael on campus, by any chance?”
“Nope, he’s in the field. He’s delivering a group tomorrow. What’s up? You okay?”
She pounded a fist against her forehead. “Yeah, I’m okay. I was just hoping he’d drive me to the rose garden so I could get some air. It’s okay, I’ll sit on the porch.”
“Okay. Later, gator.”
She tossed the phone onto the bed and put the map back in the drawer, taking a moment to make sure James’s desk looked untouched, and scooched back into bed with her laptop on her belly, the directory search still open.
She keyed in the name Eric Ortiz, the EGNX security guard who paid her an unwelcome visit last night, and stared at his ID picture. God, the horror had seemed so real, the maggots oozing from his face, nestling back inside his rotting head. She could still smell the decomposing flesh, the poison, and feel the churning force that fueled her bizarre driving need to purge him from the Colony.
The fetus shifted and stretched, and crushing pain shot through the back of her head, radiating around her head to her temples. The room appeared impossibly bright, and she squeezed her eyes tightly. She closed the laptop and slid under the covers, but try as she might to drift off to sleep, the events of the last twelve hours spun through her mind like a desert tornado. Breaking into James’s computer. Opening Pandora’s box. The strange visit from Eric Ortiz. The mud on her feet and clothes. The lie about Iowa. The password change.
The maggots.
The poison. The plague.
The enormous full moon, and the wolves howling in the distance.
And finally, sleep.
The pack of wolves moves in toward the guard, curled on the floor of the ravine. He’s injured, but even if he could stand, he wouldn’t be able to outrun the pack. He stares, paralyzed with fear, begging God to save him, but his time is up.
The pack strikes as one, their fangs sinking into the flesh of his arms and legs, his bones snapping like twigs under the pressure. The beasts pull in opposite directions until the muscle tissue tears into meaty chunks, which they swallow whole. They growl and snap at each other, fighting to get their jaws into the fleshy abdominal cavity.
Layla stands in the wash, her feet caked with orange clay, enraptured by the attack. Blood mats their thick fur, and she almost wants to reach out to touch it, to feel the warm stickiness. Her attention turns back to the guard, now just a bloody carcass surrounded by piles of shredded clothing. The alpha wolf bites down on the exposed rib cage and thrashes his head, separating the upper torso from the lower half of the body. He drags it twenty feet down the ravine, his ow
n special meal.
But then the wolves are gone. It’s Layla herself who hovers protectively over the torso. A low growl escapes her, and the other women and men, the thin, weak omega members of her pack, obediently return to pick at the lower remains like a happy family over a Thanksgiving Day turkey.
The rumble of Layla’s stomach woke her. Harmony’s soft humming and the sound of her puttering filled the living room. Layla wanted to choke her into silence. She squeezed her eyes and tried to fall back into the dream. Her stomach rumbled again.
She threw the covers off. “Harmony!”
“Oh, you’re awake. Hi, Sister Layla. I hope I wasn’t—”
“I’m starving.”
Harmony did a double-take at Layla’s abrasive tone. “Oh. Okay. Um, would you like some hummus and pita bread? Or I can make you some avocado toast.”
God, that shrill, annoying voice. “I want a steak.” Her mouth watered at the thought.
Harmony took a couple of steps closer to Layla. “Sorry?”
“A steak.” A juicy, rare steak. Barely warm in the middle, dripping with blood.
“But you don’t eat meat.”
The girl’s insufferable sheepishness was enraging. “For god’s sake, Harmony, stop being a whiny little bitch and go find me a fucking steak.”
Harmony made a mewing sound and shuffled to the door.
“And some pancake syrup,” Layla mumbled as she pulled the covers over her head. She swallowed the saliva that was practically dripping from her mouth and closed her eyes to return to the wolves.
18
March 2024, Nevada
Nick packed up his tools and leaned back to admire the gun vault installation behind the passenger seat of his newly purchased 1994 Chevy pickup. Accessibility was awkward, but sure as hell no one would suspect it was back there. He surveyed the parking lot of Henderson’s Ace Hardware to make sure he was still alone, then filled it with what remained of his stash, eight thousand dollars in hundreds and fifties. Carrying cash was risky in the dregs. Not only was crime at an all-time peak, but law enforcement wasn’t known for ethical behavior these days. He’d heard plenty of stories about large sums of cash confiscated under the pretext of “suspected theft” that were never seen again.
But leaving a credit card trail would be the quickest way to get dragged back to Arizona. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go.
He set off for the hour-long drive east from Henderson to Lake Mead. The lake was spectacular in the spring, and Lake Mead had developed quite a trendy bar scene. Back in the old days, he wouldn’t have been able to find a tavern that wasn’t already five deep from the bar. But now, even in the early afternoon when vacationers had finished water skiing or fishing, most establishments were practically empty. Recreational areas like this one had taken as much of a hit as the Strip back in Vegas. Most folks these days couldn’t afford a car, and even if they had one, they couldn’t afford to fill the tank with gas. It would be the perfect place for him to hunker down for a few days and do some research.
Just as he’d suspected, the lake scene was as dead as a lump of lead. He pulled into the empty parking lot of a random dive bar. He needed a cold beer and a quiet place to come up with a strategy. Now, with EGNX and the authorities on the hunt for him, he’d have to operate stealthier than he had in a long time. And never stop looking over his shoulder.
Despite the new complications, the fire in his belly hadn’t burned this hot since his discovery of Vitapura’s underground maze. He was on the cusp of getting the story. He was sure of it. If he weren’t getting close, they wouldn’t be so hot on his tail.
He inhaled with a grin and allowed himself just a moment to imagine the astonished look on his father’s face when the old man saw the story break on cable news, the talking head bubbling, “and bringing you this shocking story is acclaimed investigative journalist, Nick Slater.”
He forced himself out of his pickup before the Pulitzer Prize fantasy surfaced. A bell chimed when he strode through the front door. The bar had an old-time saloon motif, and he took a seat at a stool at the end of the bar, next to a fake antique Wanted Dead or Alive poster of three shady-looking men holding shotguns. Cheesy. The bartender, wearing a tasseled faux leather vest and a cowboy hat, gave him the once-over before setting her phone on the register, exchanging it for a flashlight, and sauntering over to him. She flipped on the flashlight and moved it between his eyes, then leaned back against the counter as if that frenzy of activity had exhausted her. “Yeah?”
He might have passed her virus test, but she still frowned at him. Probably because he hadn’t shaved in three days and his last shower had been an armpit and groin rinse in an Ace Hardware bathroom sink.
“Heineken.” He could be equally uncongenial.
Most inner-city bars had installed retinal scanners at every entrance to check for nystagmus, the only early physical indicator of the virus. If an eye spasm was detected, not only would a blaring alarm create mass hysteria and a human stampede out the back door, but the National Guard would be alerted and on the scene within minutes.
Smaller bars in rural areas couldn’t afford the expensive scanners. If they wanted customers, they’d have to take their chances with the ol’ flashlight test.
She popped the bottle cap and set in front of him. No coaster, no glass, and certainly no customer service.
A headline on the television caught his attention: “Science Research Center Converted to Homeless Housing.” The reporter, whose voice was muted, was standing in front of the well-known genetics research center in Massachusetts, the Broad Institute.
For the second time that week, the name Jordan Jennings popped into Nick’s head. Jordan, who’d worked at the Broad, was a respected geneticist known for his early work in CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. He’d consulted for Agent Peter Malloy at the Phoenix DEA on the case that had ultimately led to Malloy’s suspicious death, bringing Darcy to Nick’s door for help. Jordan was some sort of child genius but definitely on the autism spectrum, as Nick recalled, the kind of guy who could talk about science for hours on end but couldn’t get through twenty seconds of small talk without clammy hands and awkward tittering.
He pulled out his Surface Pro, connected to his personal Wi-Fi, and searched “Jordan Jennings Broad Institute.” The Broad Institute was now permanently closed, but it appeared Dr. Jennings had been hard at work. Much of what turned up was scientific articles he’d authored, but the most recent result was presentation listing for a professional conference, UCLA Biogenetics Symposium 2023. He’d given a talk, “Can Gene Editing Take Down the Next Virus?” Interesting.
He opened the Malloy folder and looked up Jordan’s last known phone number.
A woman answered.
“Hi there. My name’s Nick Slater, looking for Jordan Jennings. Is this still his line?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know—”
She disconnected.
Charming. “Nice talking to you.”
He lifted his gaze as a loud drunken group of five stumbled in through the front door. Glits, by the looks of the Gucci handbags flaunted by the two blondes who bellied right up to the bar. Nick rolled his eyes and sighed. Just his luck he’d pick the one bar in town the day drunks favored. He pulled his beer closer and angled his computer away.
The shutdown of the Broad Institute wasn’t particularly puzzling. The National Institutes of Health had assumed responsibility for most major drug development once research funding had dried up. What puzzled Nick was that the NIH seemed to have defunded all its genetic research. It could be possible that other countries had taken the lead in genetic research, but he had no way of finding out, thanks to the national censorship. Geoblocking Protects Our Intellectual Property! the billboards still read. That had been the end of global news reporting and the beginning of the rapid decline of the first amendment. It still infuriated him.
He opened his notes and started at the top.
Allison Stevens, still miss
ing in action. Stevens had been associated with Agent Vincent Wang after her prints were found on the knife that took Wang’s life. Wang had been working with Malloy and Garcia on the LXR case, and he’d clearly been onto something the night he was stabbed behind the wheel of his car during a stakeout of Stevens’s apartment. He must’ve known she was involved.
Nick was certain that Stevens was somehow connected with the LXR genetic drugs, the case that Aunt Darcy’s boyfriend Pete Malloy had become obsessed with, but he didn’t have hard evidence or a source, despite throwing a wide net. He’d interviewed everyone he could think of: friends, relatives, business associates. The only thing he’d learned about Stevens was that she was an alcoholic with a weak constitution and mental health issues and she’d been sleeping with Harris, her boss.
Which is why when Harris’s body turned up near the Vitapura Wellness Center in Black Canyon City, Arizona, Nick had expected Stevens to reemerge, dead or alive.
“Hey, man.” One of the five rowdy customers—some douchebag wearing a Hawaiian print T-shirt under a sports jacket, no joke—nodded over at Nick. “Where’d you get that fancy computer? Steal it?”
The other four laughed.
Nick gave the douchebag a friendly wave and a snicker. Yeah, brah, joke’s on me. He’d had enough trouble for the week.
His whole case hinged upon finding Allison Stevens, and now that Vitapura was gone, he had no idea where to go next. Perhaps he should consider revisiting other interviewees from his early investigation and push them a little harder about what they knew about Stevens. For someone with a weak constitution, she sure was good at hiding.
All at once, the group burst out laughing, and Nick glanced up from his screen. They gawked at him, waiting.
“I said, you’re the first dreg piece of shit I’ve seen around here. You must be lost, missed your turn onto the Strip.”
That was his cue. He closed his laptop and dropped it into his backpack. He certainly couldn’t risk losing his computer to a group of glit bullies. It was all he had left if he was going to continue chasing this story. He slid a buck across the bar and moved toward the door.