by RS McCoy
He opened it immediately.
Abigail walked in looking like he’d never seen her. Blonde hair pulled back, a baggy shirt and loose black pants hanging off her frame. Her arms were crossed, as if she could scarcely be bothered to see him.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes narrow.
“We think the bugs caused a massive fatality event aboard the LRF. I’ve sent word to Masry but had no response,” Michael explained.
Abigail looked at Dr. Hill in the chair.
“What do you need me for?” she asked.
Michael considered sending Dr. Hill away, but he needed him.
“I need you to correlate a list of casualties for each department and give me the final count. I’ll need it when I give Masry the update.” And he wanted her back.
“I already quit,” she reminded him and turned to leave.
Dr. Hill looked between Abigail and Michael with no small measure of surprise.
Michael hurried across the room and caught her at the door. “I’m sorry about the Ares Colony, I really am. I had no idea you’d think less of me for it. But right now, the LRF needs you. I need you.”
Her blonde hair flopped over her shoulder as she spun to glare at him, evaluating his sincerity. “You like killing innocent people.” Her tone was nothing but venom.
“I don’t, and you know it. I hate it. I need you to help me get this under control before we lose anyone else.”
“Recall the termination.”
“I can’t do that.” Why did she have to make it so hard on him?
“Yes you can. There are eight hours until the planets are aligned and the missile will be fired. You have time to fix this. If you don’t, you’ll never see me again.”
Michael lowered his head and sighed. Abigail took one of the most loathsome aspects of his position and used it against him, like he enjoyed terminating whole colonies.
Abigail pushed past him and said to Dr. Hill, “Did you know Alex was alive?”
“Alex?” Michael asked. He had no idea who she was talking about.
Clearly, Dr. Hill did. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth fell open as he asked, “What?”
“He is. I saw him. He’s on the Martian colony. The colony he—” Abigail turned to point a long, accusatory finger at Michael. “—terminated yesterday. He’s going to die. Along with nine kids.”
Dr. Hill shifted his focus from Abigail to Michael, his expression from shock to anger.
Michael pieced it together too late.
Dr. Hill set his jaw and clenched his fists as he stood. Tone dripping in threat, he said, “Recall the termination.”
“Right now, we need to focus on identifying Scholars with bugs and removing them, we can’t—”
“Now.”
“I can’t.”
“You can, and you will—” Abigail said behind him.
Michael turned and shook his head. “A recall order requires the access codes for the ordering researcher. I can give mine, but that still leaves us with Dr. Perkins.”
“Then get him on comms and—”
She made it sound so simple.
“Abigail, Dr. Perkins is dead.”
AIDA
LRF CORRIDOR
SEPTEMBER 14, 2232
Aida stomped the entire way to her office. The acrylic cube warmed in her hands, the embryo protected at its center.
A life.
It was the Earth within the solar system, a tiny, improbably living thing in a wide expanse of nothing.
And it, too, needed a new home.
She would figure something out. Aida sank into Dr. Parr’s old office chair, the one with worn-through arm rests from his years of research. She set the cube on the desktop and tried to think of what to do.
Theo and Maggie walked in a moment later. “You’re back,” he said with a beaming smile on his face.
Aida snatched the cube into her hand and slid it into her desk drawer. “It’s first thing in the morning. Of course, I’m here.” She looked between the two of them and wondered what they were up to. “Why are you here?” she asked Theo.
“Do you know what’s going on?” Maggie asked, her arms crossed, and her brow furrowed.
“What do you mean?”
“Checked your ecomms lately?” Theo asked.
As it happened, no, she hadn’t. She’d been too busy arguing with her no-good husband. She was so pissed, she could just spit.
But now they’d mentioned it, she tapped her tablet and pulled up her ecomms. That’s when she saw it.
Casualties.
Form a line.
“What—? Who?” was all she could get out, her mind racing as it processed the situation.
“Niemeyer, for one. We don’t know of any others yet. Have you seen Calvin?” Theo asked.
Aida shook her head, terrified. It wasn’t like him to be late for work. The worst sort of thoughts filled her mind. Had she seen him for the last time? What did she say to him? She couldn’t remember the words.
“Don’t freak out,” Maggie started. “He might just be at Filmore’s office reporting Niemeyer.”
Not five minutes later, Aida, Theo, and Maggie waited at the door to the director’s office apartment. No one mentioned the suspicious lack of researchers forming a line.
From the other side of the door, they heard screaming, yelling. Some sort of argument. Aida wouldn’t be dissuaded. She pressed her palm to the scanner and again requested permission to enter.
A few seconds later, the door opened. There stood the director, his assistant, and, on the far side of the room, Calvin.
Aida let out a quiet sigh of relief, her pounding heart beating harder at the sight of him.
Then, she realized he had been the one yelling. At the Moon Director. At the second most powerful man in the Scholar class.
Something was very wrong.
Theo and Maggie walked into the office behind her a moment before the door spun shut again.
“Are you all right?” Calvin’s tone was clinical and reserved compared to his usual warmth.
“Yes, thank you Dr. Hill.” She returned his coolness, attempting to be discreet about their relationship. “Did you report Dr. Niemeyer’s death?”
“I was getting there. We have another issue to deal with, first.” Calvin glared at Director Filmore with an intensity that would have made her buckle in a second.
Director Filmore shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do. I told you, I don’t have access to the colony codes. There’s no way to recall an order without both codes.”
Aida didn’t understand.
Ms. Perch looked at Calvin with her arms crossed. She, too, was angry. “Comm Silas.”
On the director’s tablet, Calvin punched in a comm code from memory. She didn’t recognize the face that appeared.
“Good morning, Dr. Hill. I was expecting Director Filmore.” The man on the screen had no shirt. She could see grey and black chest hair at the edge of the screen. He had a warmth to his smile that she’d only seen in Calvin.
Aida wondered how the two knew each other.
“The director has a serious problem,” Calvin looked straight at Filmore.
Director Filmore walked closer to his tablet so the man could see him. “Dr. Arrenstein, we’ve had a crisis occur this morning. At least forty are dead. We think your—” He turned back to look at Aida, though she didn’t know why. “Your facility might have some insight into the situation.”
“Tell him what you did,” Ms. Perch insisted.
“Your agent Dr. Hill believes he has a personal affiliation with a colonist in the Ares Colony. When the colony was deemed a failure, I approved the termination order. He is refusing to offer his cooperation until the colony is restored.”
Aida looked at Calvin but saw his attention was entirely on the shirtless Dr. Arrenstein and the director. None of it made sense. What did a colony termination order have to do with anything? And since when was Calvin an agent?
MABLE
LRF-AQ
SEPTEMBER 14, 2232
Mable didn’t understand why everyone was so upset until she saw the look on Arrenstein’s face. He looked stricken by the information, as if it had been a baton clubbed over his head.
In a conversation about colony terminations, there was only one that would elicit such a response from him.
She’d never known which one, never known how many or how long. She’d never known a single detail of the colony, but Arrenstein did. He understood what was at stake.
Abby stepped forward to interject. “It’s Alex. I saw him on the vid feed.” When she was done, she turned to the director and crossed her arms like she’d just won a round of high-stakes poker.
Mable felt the air leave her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.
They were going to kill Alex?
Mable lunged at the director, but Theo’s arm across her chest blocked her movement. She squirmed against him, lashing out with her feet, her elbows, anything she could use to get free.
Like Rowan, he was too strong.
“Let me go,” she screamed. Mable refused to sit back and let them discuss terminating her brother’s life. She only just found out he was alive. Mable kicked her feet and fought against his grip, desperate to have her say in this.
Theo picked her up off the floor and carried her to the door. He kept his rock-solid arms wrapped around her, refusing to let her free.
Across the room, she could hear Arrenstein say. “I believe Dr. Hill to be correct in this case, Director. You will have to recall the termination order before you receive any assistance from this facility.” He clasped his hands on the edge of his desk and waited.
Filmore slammed his fists on the desk. “Masry will terminate you for this!”
Arrenstein didn’t even blink. “I have complete confidence that the vicereine will offer nothing less than her full support. Recall the order.”
“I can’t!” Filmore screamed in frustration. His booming voice echoed off the synthetic walls.
For Mable, the room spun. Tears sprung to her eyes. She couldn’t hold them back, she couldn’t lose him again. She’d only just learned he was alive, that he had a future, a home.
Alex was going to die again.
Filmore was going to let him die.
“I suggest you figure it out. If that colony is terminated, you’ll receive no further assistance from this program. And I promise you, this is only beginning. Forty is nothing.”
Filmore grappled for a response. “You would kill hundreds of Scholars over one man?”
“There are children in that colony,” Ms. Perch said to persuade him. “There are nine little kids there and you’re going to kill them, along with three innocent people.”
Alex and Kellan? They were together. In a colony. A colony that was going to be terminated.
Mable felt the room jump. The walls closed in as the ceiling replaced the floor. Her knees went limp beneath her as she sank to the ground, clutching at Theo’s body suit as she fell.
Then came the black.
THEO
LRF-AQ
SEPTEMBER 14, 2232
Theo thought he had a firm grip on Mable until she slipped to the floor. Before he could stop her, she collapsed. Only his arm on her back kept her from hitting her head on the floor. Tears clung to her cheeks, continuing to fall even as she lay motionless.
“Aida!” he called.
When she saw, Aida rushed over. “What happened?”
“She fainted,” he said, hoping that was the right answer. He wasn’t really sure what happened. One second she was trying to get away from him, and the next, she went limp.
“I don’t have access to the code. The only person who can recall the order is the person who made it,” the director continued across the room.
“Is there a medical facility here?” he asked. Theo had little desire to see Mable in a hospital again, but if it meant she was safe, that’s where he would take her.
Aida gaped in shock. “No, of course not.”
Too late, Theo remembered the Scholar abhorrence of medical assistance. If a person wasn’t genetically capable of surviving to old age on their own, then they didn’t have genes worth salvaging. He should have known better.
“Well, who sent the order? I’d like to talk to them,” Dr. Arrenstein replied.
Director Filmore lowered his head and said, “Dr. Perkins,” like it was a secret.
Theo looked up with relief. Aida could stop this. She could keep the Ares Colony from termination and earn Dr. Arrenstein’s help with the dying Scholars.
Dr. Arrenstein said, “Get her.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Get her.”
“She’s right here, but she’s not the one—”
Theo saw the realization settle on his sister’s features. She was only inches from him—the two hovered over Mable where she collapsed.
Aida knew her husband was dead.
Theo put his hand over hers and said, “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t enough, but it was the only thing he could think to say.
“Ask her for his code.” Dr. Arrenstein didn’t even pause at the mention of Aida’s dead husband.
“Take her home,” she said to Theo before she stood and walked to the tablet display.
Theo knew she was right, that he should get Mable home safe, but he couldn’t leave. Not yet.
In an even voice, Aida said, “I’m sorry, Dr. Arrenstein. I do not know my husband’s colony access code.”
Dr. Arrenstein went wide-eyed. “Thank you, Dr. Perkins. I am sorry for your loss. Do you know anyone else who might have had access to his code?” In the way he shifted in his chair, the way his voice lowered, Theo could see that Dr. Arrenstein revered Aida. He spoke to her more kindly than anyone except Mable.
“My husband worked with Dr. Ramos for two years, but he was recently promoted to another facility. I’m sure you could find a way to reach him, though I’m not sure it would do much good. They weren’t close.”
Director Filmore stepped in. “There’s another doctor in his department. A Dr. Holtz, I believe.”
“Then it looks like you have some work to do, Director. I trust you’ll contact me when this issue is resolved.”
“Dr. Arrenstein, may I ask you a question?” Aida stood with her hands wrapped together as she waited for his answer.
“Of course, Dr. Perkins. And please, call me Silas.” He didn’t want to answer her questions. Theo could see it from across the room, but what could he do?
“How long have you known my junior researcher, Dr. Calvin Hill?”
Dr. Arrenstein’s eyes went soft. He looked at Calvin before he said, “It’s been about eight years now.”
“What is the nature of your relationship?”
“He is an agent for my facility. He has been undercover at the LRF for the last thirteen months.”
“Aida,” Calvin attempted, but she held up her hand to silence him.
“And, Dr. Arrenstein, can you tell me his name?”
Dr. Arrenstein looked at Calvin as he said, “Vincent Frederick.”
Theo gaped, frozen on the far side of the room. He couldn’t believe Dr. Arrenstein would out his agent so easily, one of his oldest agents, at that.
Aida leaned forward and ended the comm without another word. Then, she turned to Calvin.
He stood and accepted the fierce slap across his cheek—he had known it was coming all along.
“I never want to see you again,” she seethed through gritted teeth. Then she left. In the sudden, consuming silence of the office, they could hear her heels clicking down the corridor as she hurried away.
Calvin’s shoulders hung with the weight of a man who had nothing left. For all Theo knew, he didn’t. He imagined how Nate would have felt if Casey had ever said those words, or how Theo would feel if Mable said them to him. He would never recover.
Theo’s heart broke to think of it.
Abby moved clos
er to Calvin and tried to place a hand on his shoulder. He only swatted her away and walked over to Theo. Calvin’s cheek was bright red from the impact. His voice was little more than shattered glass as he said, “Take Mable home. And when you get the chance, please tell Aida I’m sorry.”
Then Calvin, too, was gone.
When Director Filmore turned to Abby and asked, “You were involved in this all along?” Theo decided it was really time to go. With no small amount of effort, he lifted Mable from under her knees and shoulders, cupped against his chest.
He was grateful he had the strength to carry her, that his Scholar genes were good for something after all. Nearly every person stared as they passed, but no one stopped him. It had just been that kind of day.
By the time he reached the apartment, Mable was heavy in his arms. She was a small, petite little thing, but that didn’t mean he wanted to carry her nearly a mile through the LRF. Asleep and out for the count, she looked almost peaceful, save for the tear streaks.
Theo tried to pretend that everything would be all right—that it wasn’t that bad. Dr. Filmore approved the colony termination. Bugs had killed at least forty researchers aboard the LRF. Aida had discovered Calvin’s second life and flatly rejected him.
Then there was Mable. Passed out from stress or grief or fear.
With a great deal of awkwardness, Theo managed to press his palm to the scanner and get them into the apartment. He lowered her onto the bed, her head propped up with pillows.
Then, all he could do was wait for her to wake up.
SILAS
CPI-AO-301
SEPTEMBER 14, 2232
The silence in his office was enough to kill someone. Osip and Dasia stared up from the couch, slack-jawed.
Silas had forgotten they were there to witness the spectacle.
“That was her, huh?” Osip asked, clearly impressed with Kaufman’s stunning sister.
A sister who just realized the man she loved had been lying to her since the moment they met.
Silas stood from his chair and walked to the door.