by RS McCoy
How the hell were they supposed to be able to do this?
Hopefully, Nick was about to tell them.
They sat in Nick’s office chairs and waited for him to pull up whatever files he needed.
“How are you settling in so far, Dasia?” Nick asked. His eyes remained on his screen.
“Oh, uh, it’s fine.” She looked at Osip, unsure of what she should say. He smiled his easy, warm smile as if he understood, though she was sure he didn’t.
“Great. Well, you two are the only intel team we have this time around, so it should go pretty quick. There are four others offsite and working, Intel teams two through five. You two make intel team six.”
Osip asked the obvious question. “What happened to team one?”
“They were promoted to a recon team.”
Promoted? Dasia didn’t realize in the world of CPI, where class, past, and background didn’t matter, that she would somehow still end up at the bottom. Oh well. She deserved no better.
“Ah, here it is.” Nick enlarged a panel of profiles, each with a photo and brief description of the person. Almost all were outlined with blue, the Scholars. Two had the green of Craftsmen.
“This is our host matrix. You’ll be responsible for contributing profiles to the matrix and investigating those that are already here. Once a host gets your approval, a recon team will be sent in to extract the bug.”
Yeah, no big deal.
Dasia felt like she understood all the individual words he was saying, but put together, she had no idea what he was talking about.
Oblivious to her confusion, Nick continued. “Each Scholar contributes periodic reports to others in their field, whether a mentor or mentee, an advisor, or the vicereine herself. These reports constitute the basis for determining which Scholars are hosts.”
Dasia looked at Osip and saw him swallow hard, his eyes locked on Nick. He almost looked in pain.
“For Craftsmen, the process is a little more difficult. We have a lower percentage of detection in Craftsmen populations, which we are hoping to make vast improvements upon.
“The bugs affect an area of the host’s brain, so you should utilize their periodic reports to understand changes in their work schedule, data recording, and other aspects that greatly affect their work. If you have any questions, just let me know.”
Nick smiled and switched off the display.
Dasia remained locked in the chair, frozen. What the hell was he talking about?
“Okay, will do, Nick. Ready?” Dasia looked over to see Osip’s hand held out. She slipped her hand into his and let him pull her out of the chair and into the hallway.
“You know what he was saying?” she whispered, nervous Nick might hear and be disappointed in her.
“Not a clue,” he said with a chuckle. “But you’re really smart. I think you can figure it out.”
Dasia stopped in her tracks. She didn’t know why he would say such or thing, why he would have such confidence in her.
“Hungry?”
“Not really.” Breakfast had never been her thing.
“My room then?” Already in the elevator, Osip hit the two and waited to arrive, casual and relaxed where she was stressed. How was she supposed to figure this out?
He let her have the only chair as he cued up the same screen they’d seen in Nick’s office minutes before.
“What do you think?” His eyes were on the screen. His hands were in his pockets as he waited for her response.
“I don’t get it.”
“Okay, what don’t you get?” He didn’t ask with a negative tone, he wasn’t condescending. In fact, he was kind. He really wanted to know.
“I get that these are all possible people who have bugs in them, but how did they get here? How are we supposed to figure out which people could have a bug? I mean, there are ten billion people on the planet.”
“Don’t forget, there’s a few million underground and another few thousand on the moon.” Osip smiled and tossed a few loose strands of blond hair from his face.
“Right, so how do we get ten billion, two million and three thousand people to a list of twelve?”
Osip shrugged as if she’d just mentioned she’d eaten his lunch by mistake. “Maybe they have something in common.” He reached out his finger and tapped the first image.
A brunette woman with her hair in a bun filled the left side of the screen. She had crisp apple-red lips and deep blue eyes to compliment her porcelain skin and rounded cheeks. On the right, her information appeared.
DR. ANYA JAROSAVICH, PROPULSION ENGINEER
STOCKHOLM INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING AND COSMIC RESEARCH
MENTEE OF DR. MITCHELL KERNS (LIMA ENGINEERING RESEARCH FACILITY)
MENTOR TO DR. SAMANTHA PAULING (TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING LABORATORIES OF SHANGHAI)
CURRENT RESEARCH: LIMITING EMISSIONS OF INTERPLANETARY VEHICLES VIA REPLACEMENT FUELS AND REUSABLE DISCHARGE SOURCES.
Dasia didn’t know what she was supposed to learn from the pile of names and places. None held any meaning to her, other than being places she’d never visit. She didn’t know why a person would want to limit emissions of a vehicle between planets or what a discharge source was.
None of it made any sense.
She swiped back to see the profiles and tapped the second one. A woman with fire-red hair appeared on the left while a similar list of useless information filled the right.
DR. MILNA LUDWIG, PHARMACEUTICAL RESEARCHER
CENTER FOR GERMAN PHARMACEUTICAL RESEARCH, BERLIN
MENTEE OF DR. DIVYA PRATABAN (TORONTO INSTITUTE FOR PHARMACEUTICAL EVALUATION)
MENTOR TO UNASSIGNED
CURRENT RESEARCH: ANTHEZINE APPLICATION TO NEUTRALIZE ADDICTIVE PROPERTIES OF ANTHAMORPHINE
Anth?
Just reading the name made it call to her, whispers she had thought she would never hear again.
Everything’s fine. You can figure this out.
The memory of it was sharp enough to cut her.
Her eyes filled with tears and brimmed over before she could stop them. She hadn’t wanted to think about anth or what always followed—Cole.
“What’s wrong?” Osip knelt beside her a second later.
Even as she wiped her cheeks and removed all traces of her tears, he remained.
“I’m fine, just had something in my eye.”
Osip smiled, though not as warm as usual. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” She shrugged.
“Who’s Daugherty?”
Dasia stared in disbelief. “What, uh, I am. That’s my name,” she lied.
Osip swallowed. “No, you’re Dasia King. It was on your file when I picked you up from the shuttle dock.”
She’d forgotten all about that. She’d forgotten that he’d been the first person she’d known in this new life, that she’d been rude to him, that she’d abandoned him for Jane at the first opportunity.
He deserved better from her.
Dasia looked at her lap and ran her finger across the edge of her tablet. “His name was Cole.” She choked on his name but thankfully got it out on the first try. When her dark-red curls fell across her face, she didn’t move them.
“You were with him?” Osip asked.
Dasia nodded. “Engaged.” A fresh tear slipped down her cheek before she could wipe it away.
“And he’s the one that died? From the haze?”
She didn’t know how Osip had come by that information, but she couldn’t deny it. She nodded again.
“What was he like?” Osip reached out his hand a tucked her wayward curls behind her ear. When she didn’t answer, he prodded, “Smart? Handsome? Wicked charming?”
Dasia let out a small laugh. “I don’t know about wicked.”
Osip smiled at her. “Okay, so smart and handsome and charming. Sounds like a good guy.”
“He was.” She nodded her agreement.
“Good, you deserve a good guy, even if it was only for a little while.”
Dasia didn’t know what to say to that, so instead she said, “I’m sorry I lied. I didn’t mean to, it just slipped out and—”
“It’s fine,” he said, and she believed him. “If you want to be Dasia Daugherty, then you should be. It’s one of the few pieces of home you get to keep around here. Hell, Nick wanted me to go by Joseph.” He said the name like it tasted of vinegar.
Dasia couldn’t help but laugh—a good, hearty laugh.
“I mean seriously, you think I should be Joseph, or worse, Joe? Come on.” He pretended to be offended, though only a little.
“We could call you Joey,” she chimed in between laughs.
Osip shook his head. His blond hair swung with the motion. “I don’t care what you call me, as long as you call me.”
Dasia laughed at his cheesiness, but there was an edge of seriousness in his words, an intensity she hadn’t noticed before.
She realized how close he was, how she’d told him about Cole, how he’d made her laugh. Dasia was suddenly aware of Osip’s presence in a way she hadn’t been a moment before. Her pulse pounded in her throat.
As if he’d sensed her sudden onset of nerves, Osip leaned in kissed her. Soft, slow, nothing like she would have expected from a guy with so much confidence. He used his hand to pull her chin toward him, like he wanted to taste more of her. Before she could even think of what she was doing or why she was doing it, Osip pulled back and smiled.
Dasia didn’t smile back. She didn’t know what to do, what to feel, what just happened. She was crying, then they were laughing, then kissing.
In the absence of her reaction, Osip backed away and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Just, you were laughing and—” He looked at the hands as he wrung them together in front of him. He chewed on the inside of his lip. “I’m sorry.” Then he took one long step out the door.
MABLE
CPI-700, NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 1, 2232
Without an access badge, Mable had no choice but to knock at the single door on the uppermost floor of the facility. She pounded on the door for a full five minutes before Dr. Quincy let her in, just as she’d hoped.
“You’re not to be here,” he said, not unlike a robot.
“I’m supposed to learn about the bugs. You study them. This is where I should be. Ask Arrenstein.” Mable hadn’t exactly asked permission before coming up, but she hadn’t exactly planned on coming here, either. She’d only wanted to get away from Theo and ended up in the elevator.
Still, now that she was here, it seemed like a good enough idea.
Quincy walked back to his desk and commed Arrenstein. His face hovered in holographic projection a moment later. “Got an update, Quince?” he asked, clearly confused why he was getting a comm so late at night.
“One of your recruits is here in the lab. She hasn’t been given access.” Quincy pointed the tablet toward Mable so Arrenstein could see her.
“She’s fine. As long as she’s not bothering you, I don’t have a problem with it.” Mable breathed a silent sigh, not only because she would be allowed to stay, but because Arrenstein trusted her.
Under her arm, she felt her own tablet vibrate with a new ecomm. As Quincy finished with Arrenstein, she glanced at the message: WHERE ARE YOU?
She wasn’t in the mood for Theo. If he didn’t believe her about the Scholar woman, then he had a low opinion of her capabilities. The last thing she needed was someone in her ear telling her she wasn’t smart enough to do this.
Quincy’s jaw was set even tighter than before. He stood with arms crossed, waiting for her to say something.
Mable hadn’t had any real questions in mind, at least none she could think of right then. Instead, she asked, “I want to know more about the Slight. How it infects the host, how it chooses a host.”
Quincy turned and walked into the depths of the lab without a word. Mable hesitated a moment, and then followed. Arrenstein said she could be here, after all.
He stopped at a shelving unit against a wall. Unlike the others, it held a mere dozen jars, all small with yellow liquid inside. Quincy pulled out three jars and set them on the table, hitting a button to illuminate the surface. “If you can figure it out, I’d be very interested to know.”
Then, he disappeared in the labyrinthine lab.
Her tablet buzzed again. CAN WE TALK?
Nope.
Mable set down her tablet on the far corner of the table and spread the three jars before her. They were identical from what she could tell. Each held a small bug, about two inches long, with a diamond head and kite-shaped body. It looked like a miniature manta ray she’d seen in pictures as a kid. Beneath the wings, they each harbored four pairs of legs. Antennas twice as long as the body curled in the liquid.
She was tempted to open a jar and remove one, setting it flat on the light table so she could properly evaluate it. Then she remembered what happened when Arrenstein opened the jar, the way the bug turned to dust in the liquid.
In her Biological Interdependence class at the Atlanta Youth Center, the instructor had given them a tour of a massive storage space of preserved animals and plants. Each sat in a jar of yellow or clear liquid—sea stars, grasshoppers, turtles—all kinds of extinct creatures that were killed and collected before the war.
Another student had asked what would happen to the specimen without the jar, and the instructor replied, “The liquid halts the decomposition process. Removing the liquid would merely start it again. The animal would be susceptible to bacterial breakdown in the presence of oxygen.”
She’d thought almost nothing about it at the time, but here, in the bug lab with jars before her, it was impossible not to link the two experiences.
For the bugs, the decomposition process simply occurred in seconds rather than days. It was faster than bacteria could process a body. Their breakdown was due to something else.
Oxygen seemed the obvious answer, but no, they lived within hosts and without oxygen for months.
But then what? What was in the liquid that kept it from happening?
She remembered the instructor naming the liquid as formalin, and given the opportunity to smell it, she would have known for sure. Without opening it, she would have to ask. Her tablet buzzed again as she wandered through the lab to find Quincy seated at his desk, a huge magnifying lens hung over his face.
“Sorry to bother you.” He didn’t move except to turn the jar in his hands to get a better look at the bug. “I just wanted to know if the jars have formalin in them.”
“Ammonium nitrate,” he replied without looking up.
Mable got the go-away signal loud and clear. She shuffled back to her table and pulled up a search on her tablet, but not before she caught sight of the string of messages.
ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? WHERE ARE YOU?
I’M SORRY. I JUST WANT TO TALK.
WHERE ARE YOU? DID YOU LEAVE?
Mable flipped through each message to dismiss them and clear up her screen. It wasn’t until the last one that she paused. THEO’S LOOKING FOR YOU.
It was Dasia of course. Theo must have gone looking for her with her only friend. It was smart, but unfortunately for Theo, not effective. She hadn’t told anyone where she was going.
Annoyed and tired of interruptions, Mable sent Theo her whereabouts and set to work. A few keystrokes pulled up the information.
AMMONIUM NITRATE (NH4NO3)
APPEARANCE: WHITE CRYSTALLIZED POWDER.
PROPERTIES: HIGHLY SOLUBLE IN WATER. ENDOTHERMIC.
USES: FERTILIZER, EXPLOSIVES
SOURCE: ATACAMA, CHILE
Mable leaned over the table and processed the information as she read it. Theo trotted up to the table, his breath ragged, before she’d even finished the first page.
“Seriously?” he whined as he bent over to catch his breath.
“I’m busy. What do you want?” She kept her eyes on the display and continued reading, refusing to give him her full attention.
“Nope. I’m right here.”
Theo moved around to the far side of the table. Through the projection, small bits of his hair lay splayed around his face. Sweat clung to his forehead, and one drip even ran down his temple.
Mable realized he’d been running.
To find her.
She swiped the display away and returned his even gaze. “I would have told you if I was leaving.”
“Would you?” He cocked an eyebrow.
Mable shrugged. She didn’t want to lie, and she didn’t know for sure.
Theo maintained his gaze and spread his hands wide across the table. In a quiet voice, he said, “I don’t want to fight with you all the time.”
“I’m not fighting. I’m trying to figure this out.” She motioned to the space where the display had been.
He rolled his eyes. “What are you working on?”
A quick swipe returned the article to the display. “The liquid in the jars. Why does it preserve them? Apparently it’s a fertilizer. Doesn’t make sense.”
Theo walked around the table to stand beside her and read the article. “Ammonium nitrate? We use that in nanotech. It keeps the metals from oxidizing.”
“Oxidizing?” Mable squinted as she processed the new data.
“Yeah, when an electron is stripped from one atom and added to another,” Theo offered helpfully
“I know what it is.” It was so lovely that he considered her such an idiot. At least she was too pissed off to admire the way he adjusted his hair back into a sloppy bun.
“You think it keeps the bugs from oxidizing? Like metal?”
Mable used her fingernail to pick at the tape that sealed the jar.
“What are you doing?”
She ignored him and pulled at the freed edge to remove the tape entirely. In a single motion, she twisted the lid and set it on the table next to the jar.
As it had with Arrenstein, the bug dissolved in seconds, cracking like firewood before shattering into a fine dust that settled at the bottom of the jar.