by Lynda Engler
“Nice roo…” began Luke until Teagan’s lips forestalled any more inane comments. They tasted warm and sweet on his, just as he had imagined they would. He wrapped his arms around her slim body and was surprised when she leaned into him, almost pushing him down onto her bed. When it finally dawned on him that knocking him down was her goal, he sat down, and then pulled her to the bed with him. All of his fear suddenly dissipated; he followed his instincts.
“You fascinate me, Lucas Bellardini,” said Teagan as she sat on his lap, facing him and straddling his thighs. She leaned down to kiss him again and this time he let her push him down onto the bed. Her hands worked their way under his shirt and they were pleasantly cool and soft. When she motioned for him to take it off, he did so in one fluid motion, his hands coming to rest on her hips above him afterward. She pulled off her own shirt, revealing a lacy pink bra and a thin but athletic figure.
Twenty minutes later, he heard a sound in the hallway. Someone was walking toward her bedroom door. Teagan heard it too and put her fingers gently over his lips. He did not know much about girls, but he instinctively knew that he should be quiet and not alert her parents that he was there. He almost stopped breathing until the footsteps receded.
Luke whispered, “I shouldn’t be here, should I?”
Teagan replied, a little louder than Luke’s whisper but not by much. “It’s okay, I’m not a kid. I’m allowed to have friends over. Even male friends.” She grinned wickedly at him, her green eyes boring into him. “Still, let’s not let my parents know I’m home. They will want to meet you and chitchat, and I do not want to talk to them right now. I’d much rather focus on you.” She resumed kissing him, her soft lips brushing against his, slowly at first, then more urgently.
Luke’s body responded in kind, but then a currently dormant part of his brain kicked in and he wondered how many male friends she had brought to her room and suddenly her spell was not quite as enchanting as it had been. He had no misconceptions that Teagan felt anything for him beyond basic fascination for the freak who had wandered Outside, or that he could ever mean anything to her. Suddenly he felt like the flavor of the week and was certain she would tire of him quickly. He realized that he barely knew her. He was just a passing thing for her. She was his first. He was sure that he was not even in her first dozen.
He gently lifted her off him and put his shirt back on. “I should go. Let’s meet up tomorrow, okay? I want to check out that store where I saw the drum set. Want to go with me?” he smiled at Teagan. He really liked her and he wanted to spend every moment with her that he could, but he needed to slow things down. Sleeping with her – if that was what she had intended – was just too much too fast, for an inexperienced shelter boy. If he screwed this up, he might never get another chance at a relationship with her.
“Yeah. Sounds great.”
Luke thought he saw disappointment in Teagan’s smile. He guessed that few boys ever turned her down. Yet still, he did truly like her. Maybe if she got to know him she would like him just as much, or maybe not. Either way, he wanted to give her the chance. Hopefully, she would not retract her offer once that happened.
August 16, 2101
Chapter Eleven
Isabella
Isabella woke on a soft mattress and for a moment could not remember where she was. She reached her arm across the bed and found it empty. She opened her eyes, saw the bedroom in Mt. Weather, and suddenly remembered that Malcolm was in a detention cell one level below her. Traitorous tears rolled from her eyes. She sat up and wiped them away, angry with herself for her own emotions. She loved Malcolm with all her heart, but crying about his situation would not free him. She had to control her feelings and rely on her wits and her intellect if she was going to free him, the children, and their friends.
She found Luke sleeping on the couch in the living room and tried to be quiet as she closed the bathroom door behind her, but when she emerged five minutes later, Luke was sitting up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
“Didn’t Daphne bring a cot? I thought you put it in Dr. Rosario’s room?” she asked.
Luke grumbled something about “snoring old man” but otherwise ignored her as he brushed past her to take his turn in the bathroom. He was just as grumpy in the morning as ever.
Isabella made scrambled eggs and toast, a skill she had learned during her stay at Telemark. The town leader’s wife, Violet, had been so surprised when Isabella told her she had never eaten eggs before that she was compelled to pass on her kitchen wisdom to the younger girl. The apartment’s cupboards did not have all the herbs and spices that Violet had, but Isabella used what she could find; small amounts of parsley and sweet paprika, along with salt and pepper. The wheat toast was not as good as Violet’s bread, but the butter was a treat and the eggs made up for it.
She did not know how to make coffee so she put on the kettle instead and placed tea bags in three mugs. She and Luke had drunk tea back in their shelter. She had no idea what Dr. Rosario’s tastes were.
“Breakfast is ready,” she all but shouted so Dr. Rosario could hear her from his bedroom. His hearing was not bad for a man his age, but still, it was not great. She was used to speaking up a bit for her own grandparents. He came out of his room fully dressed, shaved, and looking like he had been up for hours. Isabella and Luke both had disheveled hair and were in the clothes they had slept in, she in an oversized t-shirt and underwear, he in a shirt and baggy shorts.
“Young lady, thank you for making breakfast. You don’t know how long it’s been since anyone cooked for me.” The stoic man beamed a smile that went all the way to his brown eyes, a smile Isabella had not known he was capable of. “Or for that matter, how long it has been since I had real food rather than MREs or granola bars before I left on this adventure with your brother.”
The apartment’s refrigerator was stocked with basic food staples, but also contained individual prepared meals in containers that simply needed to be heated up in the microwave. Isabella was not sure where the kitchen was that had prepared these, but she was thankful for the convenience. The containers of lasagna she heated up last night had been a delicious indulgence, and the kitchen still smelled a little like Italian food. After they had eaten, she had washed the containers and their lids and left them to dry in the sink. It was not until after she had thoroughly cleaned up that she discovered the machine under the countertop that washed dishes. Dr. Rosario had called it a dishwasher, but Isabella called it a technological marvel.
Luke grunted his approval of the eggs, shoveling food into his mouth as hurriedly as possible. Before completely swallowing the last bite, Luke said, “I get the shower first,” and ran off to the bathroom. Some things never change.
“I see a month Outside has not improved his manners any,” Isabella complained as she picked up his dishes and took them to the sink. “I wonder if running hot water in the kitchen will affect his water temperature,” Isabella mused aloud and smiled wickedly.
“I sincerely doubt it, young lady. This complex is far too large for the water temperature to be affected by a mere kitchen faucet,” said Dr. Rosario. He sipped from a large mug of tea in between the last bites of his eggs.
Isabella stared at him in confusion. She had not expected him to be so literal. “It was a rhetorical question.” Still, she was disappointed she could not torture Luke just a little for his childish behavior. “Are you heading to that lab again today?”
“Yes. The team they gave me is preparing to produce a test batch of the inoculation, enough to vaccinate 20 people. It should be ready within three days, at which point we will test it on the captive mutants. Since it is the same formula I injected your sibling with, I am confident that at least it will not cause harm to the people we test it on. We do not have any empirical evidence yet as to its efficacy, and the only person who has received the vaccine to date is Luke. It is much too early to tell if it protected him at all.” The old man gathered his notebook, a pen that he pushed into his shirt
pocket, and a pair of reading glasses that he must have gotten here at Mt. Weather because they looked clean and new. He headed toward the apartment door.
Isabella replied to his receding back, “I’m glad that the captives that will be test subjects won’t be hurt by what you are testing on them. Thank you for that, Dr. Rosario.”
The scientist turned around to face her. “The vaccine will not hurt them. However, the only way to tell its effectiveness is to expose them to the Outside environment and see if it protects them. I am afraid that the only rapid way to do that is to bombard their bodies with concentrations of the toxins and radiation found Outside. That testing will hit them with 20 years’ worth of Outside elements over the course of a week. If my vaccine does not work, the testing will kill them.”
Almost imperceptibly, Isabella nodded. She could do nothing to stop this research and the testing. She had to trust that Dr. Rosario would do his best to keep the most people possible from harm while he helped as many as he could. This determined man had done more for humanity alone in the last few years than the entire government working together had in five decades. She thought back to how Andra’s cat, Pumpkin, had taken to the man and trusted him implicitly. In return, the scientist had taken care of the cat even while he experimented on the animal. His blood and DNA tests had discovered the basis for the vaccine. Isabella had been overjoyed to learn from Luke that Pumpkin had followed them all the way to West Point, where the cat was currently safe in the care of a young soldier.
Dr. Rosario frowned and spoke quietly, his voice betraying his sadness. “This is not the way I intended to research this. It is fundamentally wrong to do this to living beings and I do not want to work this way, but they are giving me no choice. I’m so very sorry Isabella.” He turned on his heels and left without another word.
Isabella flopped down on the couch and buried her face in her hands. Tears welled up in her eyes but she pushed them away, swallowed them down. Then, for the first time in her life, she prayed. “God, if you exist, please, please, please don’t let my family be in the test group.” Suddenly realizing that she just wished death upon two dozen other mutants, she began to sob.
* * *
Luke
Teagan answered the door within seconds of Luke pressing the bell. She emerged with a smile, closed the door behind her, and said, “Let’s get going. We’ll go look at that drum set, then we need to meet up with the guys. Mathias messaged me that he had an idea.”
Luke realized he had been holding his breath and let it out quietly. He had not been sure what her demeanor would be like after she snuck him out past her parents last night, but she acted as if nothing had happened. Well, nothing had happened, but if she was upset about that fact, she was not showing it.
“Um, the store opens at ten so we don’t need to rush. Wanna walk down by the lake for a bit first?” Luke had put two sentences together in a row without tripping over his tongue. He was quite impressed with himself.
When she shook her head, he got worried again. “It’s close enough to ten. Let’s just go to the music store and wait for them to open, then we can head up to the concourse level and walk on the beach. We aren’t meeting everyone until lunchtime at El Dorado. So we have time for a stroll.”
He nodded and took her hand, leading the way to B ring. Her skin was silky and felt so good against his own. He hoped his hand would not get clammy. It was not a long walk and Luke could have gone to the music shop any number of times already, but he did not want to go alone. He did not want to do much alone. In his shelter, he had hardly ever been by himself, except in the toilet. He was so used to people being around, and the Outside had been so devoid of humanity that it was exhilarating to be with so many people at Mt. Weather.
The shop’s name was Notorious Notes, and even with the florescent lighting in the store, Luke could see the narrow neon light band along the ceiling and floor through the window. He tried the door and it was unlocked, although it was not yet ten o’clock. Luke walked inside, holding Teagan’s hand, still amazed that she had not pulled it away from him. He was even more amazed that his hand wasn’t sticky in hers.
The drum set faced outward in the window, but from inside Luke got the drummer’s perspective. There was a large base drum on the floor with a foot pedal, a snare, a hi-hat with two cymbals that clapped together by a foot pedal on the left, four tom drums arranged in a semi-circle, and a larger crash cymbal on the right. Standing beside it was another, larger floor tom on its own stand and three smaller crash cymbals on adjustable stands. A pair of drumsticks waited invitingly on the stool.
Luke was just about on the verge of drooling when a deep baritone voice behind him startled him into swallowing. “Why don’t you sit and play?”
Luke turned to face the sales person. He was old, like his own grandfather or Dr. Rosario. At least 70. The man was gray, yet fit and strong.
“Ah... ah … are you sure?” stammered Luke. “You sure I can play it?”
The man laughed. “Well, I don’t know if you can play because I haven’t heard you yet, but I’ll let you try the equipment. Go ahead; the store is soundproofed.” The man gestured to the stool.
Luke hesitated but then reach for the sticks. “You sure no one will mind?” He could not believe he was getting the chance to play these drums!
The man shook his head. “I’m the owner. No one else here to mind. Been my shop for 50 years. I was one of the first settlers in this city. At first all I had to sell were a handful of musical instruments scavenged from Outside, but eventually I was able to begin producing some right here at Mt. Weather. There are only three music shops in the whole city, but mine is the oldest and the best. Used to be a few levels up originally, but I moved down here when they excavated this floor. Bigger space, more customers, now that I’m deeper into the residential section. This drum set is the finest quality you will find anywhere in the civilized world. I’m particularly proud of it.”
Luke sat on the stool, put his foot on the base drum pedal and began tapping quietly on the cymbal, then tentatively started hammering out a rhythm on the two middle drums. Slowly, he gained both confidence and speed ... and volume.
Teagan tapped her foot appreciatively and shouted, “You’re pretty good, shelter boy! You could give Vaughn a run for his money!”
Luke saw the old man’s mood suddenly turn cold, so he stopped playing. “I’m sorry, did I do something wrong, sir?” he asked the shopkeeper. He knew he was not a great drummer, but he was not awful either.
“Vaughn Michon? Is that boy a friend of yours?” the shopkeeper asked slowly, rubbing his collar.
“He’s a friend of mine,” replied Teagan. “He plays in the band Social Dissonance. He’s extremely talented.”
“Yes, young lady, I know the boy. I have known him since he was a child. He used to take lessons here, for many years. Matter of fact, I sold him his drum set.” His frown deepened. “I’m terribly disappointed in him for joining that group. So very sad. He was such a good boy with so much potential.”
“Group?” asked Teagan, scrunching her eyebrows in confusion. “You are upset that he joined a band? With his talent?”
“Not the band, young lady. The group behind the band. That radical group trying to brainwash respectable citizens into thinking that those horrible mutations Outside are just like you and me. So unhappy that he got caught up with them.” He shook his head slowly from side to side.
Luke stood up abruptly and handed the drumsticks to the shopkeeper. “Thank you, but I’m not interested in the drum set. Have a good day, sir.” Luke turned and walked out the door, not looking back to see if Teagan was following him. He did not need to. He could feel her heat right behind him. She was fuming and so was he.
Outside the store, he fairly shouted at her. “The nerve of that man!”
She took him by the shoulders and silenced him with a kiss. When her mouth released his, she put her finger to her lips to indicate that he should continue to be quiet.
“Sshhh, not out here.”
As they began walking toward the lift, she said quietly, “See. I told you what we are up against with the older generation. It’s not easy to change that many decades of a belief system. He remembers the old world and although he is successful here at Mt. Weather, he will never love it. He longs for the Outside, but the Outside of his memory, not the one out there now. The mutants live Outside and he can’t. In his mind, and in hundreds like him, the mutants are the cause of his unhappiness in this locked vault of a city.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Luke, too loudly, because Teagan immediately put her finger over his lips. Quieter, but not much calmer, Luke continued. “The mutants didn’t cause the radiation and poison out there. They are the result of it. How can he hate them?”
They reached the lift and Teagan pressed the up button. Luke was trying to talk quietly as they waited for the elevator, but he was having a hard time controlling his anger. Once the door opened and they entered the empty compartment, he whispered, “Is the elevator bugged?”
Teagan shook her head. “We’ve checked them all,” she said in normal volume.
Luke was trying to control his anger, but was failing. “How can he hate an entire race of people? How can he blame them? How can they all blame them? It’s irrational. It’s crazy!” Luke’s voice was getting louder with every short choppy sentence, but he didn’t care.
“That’s why we need to free them,” replied Teagan. Then she kissed him again. Harder. Longer. Deeper. By the time the elevator door opened onto the concourse level, Luke’s knees were weak and his heart was throbbing. They walked down to the waterfront hand in hand, and Luke barely noticed the people hanging out there, laying on blankets, sitting in beach chairs, or playing in the water. All he saw and heard was Teagan. She had him completely spellbound.
She was lovely, smart, and clearly wanted him as much as he wanted her. He had been worried that he would lose her attentions when he left her apartment so abruptly last night, but she only seemed more attracted to him now. When she pulled him down to the sand and kissed him again, he figured out why. “You surprised me back there at the store,” she whispered in his ear. He had been enraged, and now he was not thinking about that at all. She had a way of easily turning his thoughts completely around.