“Lots of equipment was destroyed that day. What exactly do I need?”
“The Drisden unit, x-ray crystallography. Unless you know of some other way to image a protein.”
Andreas whispered a curse.
“Of course, it had to be that unit.”
“Center 81 has one,” Ayn told her. He smirked, his eyes glinting mischievously. “But if you leave, Brenda will have me resolved. I suppose you’d have to take me with you.”
“Yes, and give you a chance to escape?” Andreas scoffed. “Nice try, but I’ll just send samples with a courier for analysis.”
Ayn’s smile instantly faded into a grimace. There was only one way to get the samples she was talking about.
“I thought you said you needed to present some kind of proof in your conference tomorrow morning,” he quickly pointed out. “You don’t have enough time to wait for results.”
“Sending samples for analysis at Center 81 is separate from what I need for tomorrow,” she answered. “You don’t have to be alive for protein imaging, that won’t help me stop the resolution order. The other researchers are more likely to protest the order if I can provide a definitive method of testing that requires live study rather than a post-mortem.”
Ayn clenched his teeth. It was pointless to hold the rest back now.
“You need the beta-tagged slide stain.”
Andreas cocked her head in confusion.
“For compound seven? The lithium-based behavior control?”
“The one that affected your first neural scans, yes,” Ayn told her. “That’s why you couldn’t get a clear image, it wasn’t your equipment malfunctioning. It’s because you overdosed me on a heavy metal―I’m assuming you must not have been paying attention to the training section that specifically discussed compound seven and its potential effect on neural scan results.”
Ayn saw her eyes grow wide as her face instantly flushed red with embarrassment. He chuckled in amusement.
“That’s another thing that set David’s mind apart from yours. He didn’t get flustered when his results didn’t make sense, he managed to stay calm enough to evaluate his process for mistakes.”
“David was also a natural-aged researcher!” Andreas snapped defensively. “He had years of experience that accelerated researchers like me don’t have. My knowledge is limited to the program’s instruction manuals—the ration development section doesn’t exactly cover how to deal with a problem like you, I’ve never done this kind of work!”
“Believe me, I can tell,” Ayn retorted. “You could’ve at least checked the guides for procedural tips, though, maybe refreshed yourself on the basics of the scientific method? Seems like you abandoned most of that, too―”
“What about the compound?” she seethed, glaring at him. “You said I need the beta-tagged stain—why?”
“Because it reacts with compound seven, why else?”
“But I’ve already used it to test your muscle and blood samples, the results didn’t help. They showed―”
“They showed the compound’s presence in blood and tissue,” he interrupted. “But that’s not what you need to test. You’re going to test cerebrospinal fluid—you need a living subject for that, a dead one obviously can’t metabolize the compound.”
She raised a brow.
“I assume David ran this test? That’s how you know that it will show the absence of the compound?”
Ayn shrugged.
“David didn’t get that far. He skipped straight to protein imaging once he guessed that the issue was likely located in the blood-brain barrier, but it makes sense that this test would be the easiest way to prove what you need to prove. I know that cerebrospinal fluid is present in the brain, and if the supplement compounds can’t cross the blood-brain barrier, you’re not going to find them in the fluid. Not to mention the fact that it will be a lot less painful for me than you drilling a damn hole in my head to get a sample to send to Center 81.”
Andreas opened her mouth, preparing to reply, when an alarm rang out. She cocked her head for a moment, then she frowned.
“Three long notes and a short one!” she shouted, raising her voice to be heard over the blaring sound. “That’s for a missing resident, they’ve figured out that Amber’s gone. Took a lot longer than I thought it would.”
“Good,” Ayn whispered, closing his eyes. He hoped she was far away by now.
* * *
The day wore on as Amber made her way across the sunbaked ground, her legs weak from exertion. By her estimate, she had already traveled a little over thirty miles in the fifteen hours since she had left the facility, but she knew she couldn’t push herself much longer. The exhaustion was making it difficult for her to keep from veering off in the wrong direction.
She reached the top of a small hill and paused, searching the landscape ahead for a place to rest. Confusion filled her mind―scattered across the dusty ground that lay before her were thousands of massive, hollow boxes, each one outlined in the dirt as if drawn there by a giant’s hand. For a moment, she wondered if she was seeing things; the shapes went on for what seemed like forever, disappearing into the distance, but as Amber walked down the hill to get a better look, realization dawned on her—these were the empty, concrete footprints that marked the foundations of countless old buildings.
Rusted fragments of steel loomed up from amid the crumbling forms, the shards of twisted metal bent at an odd angle almost as if doubled over in pain, and thick, half-buried hunks of broken concrete were strewn about nearby. The scattered remains were evidence that the buildings had been intentionally destroyed for salvage long ago, but even those scraps would soon be gone. Time was quickly erasing what had been left behind just as it had for so many lost civilizations over the course of humanity’s existence, and drifts of windblown dirt were piling up to cover these last lingering shadows of the life that had once thrived in this place.
Amber sighed. She imagined that it must have once been a city, and it was strange to finally lay eyes on the hollowed-out remnants of a time she had only ever read about. She had always thought that it would make her feel excited, but instead, she felt a powerful sense of sadness fill her heart. There had been such life on this ground, but now it was just a memory of the destruction wrought by humanity.
She stepped off of the road and climbed up onto the edge of a concrete wall nearby. Half of the opposite side of the old foundation was gone, leaving it partially open to the wind, and fine dirt had piled up in the corner to her left. The other corner was still shielded; the side of the mound tapered off, creating a small, shaded niche between it and the wall that offered shelter from the sun, and she placed her feet carefully as she made her way down to the ground below.
Amber groaned, dropping her bags and sitting down in the shade. It was cooler than being in the direct sunlight, but just barely. Her legs ached as she stretched, then she reached forward and dragged her bags closer.
She smiled with relief as she counted the strips of dried ration meat. The bag held over a hundred of them, which would be more than enough provided she kept making good time. It was sobering to see them all, though, to know that what she held in her hands was all the life she had left unless the mountains proved to have what she and Ayn had hoped for.
Ayn.
Her heart wrenched at the thought of him, and she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she tried to relax. Thankfully, her exhaustion was enough to overpower the unbearable heat, and she felt herself slowly begin to drift off to sleep.
* * *
Darren stood at the back of the main security unit, his arms crossed over his chest as he surveyed the room. The unit was even more crowded than usual; almost two hours had passed since Amber’s disappearance had been discovered, and every shift was helping with the search.
He sighed, focusing his attention on a darkened, cordoned-off area to the right. Dozens of thin screens were suspended from the ceiling, forming staggered, waist-high row
s of glowing displays that seemed to hover midair. Painted grids on the floor had once blocked out the boundaries of workstations positioned directly below each display, but the lines were all but scuffed away from decades of foot traffic in the area.
Time had taken a similar toll on the plastic chairs bolted to the floor in the center of the workstations; the numbers engraved on the back of each one were worn down to nothing, but even though no one really knew which workstation was which, the supervisors still required everyone authorized to monitor the screens to wear numbered armbands. Darren’s armband had been revoked thanks to his promotion, and although he was grateful for the chance to escape the mind-numbing task of staring at the displays for hours on end, he was acutely aware that deleting log entries would be even more risky now. His new clearance only granted access to three mid-level computer terminals, which meant that the thin layer of deniability afforded by the higher-use workstations was gone.
The data that scrolled across the displays cast flickering reflections in the eyes of the personnel seated in front of the screens; the sound of frantic tapping mingled with their anxious murmurs as the day’s logs were scoured for anything that might indicate how Amber had vanished, but Darren wasn’t worried about what they would find in today’s records. It was yesterday’s logs that gave him reason for concern, and his focus instantly shifted when he heard Smith’s familiar voice ring out above the other noises that filled the room.
“Hurry up,” Smith growled, waddling into the security unit. “I don’t have all day!”
Lisa Blake, Darren’s supervisor, forced a smile.
“Right here, sir,” she said, gesturing towards a heavy door set in the middle of the wall on the left side of the room. “It won’t take long.”
Smith grumbled under his breath as Lisa quickly entered her supervisor’s code; he stepped forward when she was done, cautiously shielding the keypad with his body as his thick fingers tapped the numbers. Darren heard a shrill beep ring out followed by a series of quiet mechanical clicks, then a loud clunk sounded as the strongroom’s door released and automatically swung open.
“Thank you, Executive Smith,” Lisa said. “We’ll let you know if we find anything.”
The man turned on his heel and thundered away, and Darren watched out of the corner of his eye as Lisa stepped through the door to turn the lights on.
Steel frames formed rows upon rows of shelves that ran the entire length of a long, narrow room, and plastic crates were neatly stacked up on top of each other to fill every square inch of shelf space. These were the facility’s hard copies, data deemed too sensitive to be kept in a digital record, and somewhere among them was the folder that held the codes Em had requested.
Darren’s gaze shifted to the back of the strongroom. Almost a hundred small, black boxes were arranged in a vertical grid that ran from the floor to the ceiling, forming an entire wall of computer storage that held Center 82’s administrative archive. A series of red lights began flashing on the surface of the boxes, signaling that an archive transfer had been initiated, and he frowned in dismay. The fallout from the ration dome sabotage had made the already-impossible task given by Em even more complicated.
The workstations were originally set to back up information to the archive every other day; system transfers required too much extra power to run more frequently, and the schedule had provided a relatively wide window of opportunity to delete log entries as needed. Unfortunately for him, the administration had decided to take additional precautions after the ration dome incident, and two days ago, Executive Smith had ordered the archive transfers to occur every thirty minutes. This had made it impossible for Darren to delete the log of Amber’s entry to recycling, but it also meant that he was more likely to be caught if he managed to open the strongroom’s door. He would only have thirty minutes to get inside, locate the file that held the codes, and delete the log.
“I’m going back thirty-six hours,” Lisa called out, startling Darren from his thoughts. She was holding a scanner in her hand, and she stepped into the strongroom, approaching the archive and pressing a button on the small device.
A second supervisor, Grant, was standing right outside the door; only one person was permitted inside the strongroom at a time, and the man tapped his foot impatiently as Lisa lifted the scanner towards one of the archive boxes.
“Look for anything in areas with clothing,” Grant said. “The girl had settlement-issues in her room, she must have gotten them from somewhere.”
Darren’s blood ran cold in his veins as he listened.
“Unless she brought them with her,” Lisa called, her fingers flying as she scrolled through the data displayed on her device. Darren held his breath as he waited to see how Grant would react, but the man shook his head dismissively.
“She was from 109, but these clothes were marked for 416―”
“We just got a bunch of reports in from settlement 416,” someone else said. “They were processed yesterday.”
Panic stabbed through Darren’s chest.
“I have an entry into Recycling B at 07:39 yesterday morning,” Lisa called out from inside the strongroom. She walked back to the door, holding the scanner out to show Grant. “It looks like a lab assistant’s code was used, Noah Meyers.”
“We need to hunt down this lab assistant,” Grant said, turning to one of the guards. “Find out if this was his entry, and if not, I want to know how she got his code. And prepare a system reset memo, everyone needs to change their access codes again.”
The man spun on his heel, and for a moment, his gaze locked with Darren’s.
“Go find something to do, Yale!” he commanded. “You’re not helping anything by just standing around!”
Darren put his head down and moved to obey, when Lisa’s voice stopped him.
“Actually, Mr. Yale, you can go,” she called out from across the room. Her tone was overly assertive, as if to prove that her orders superseded Grant’s. “Report back here in the morning, the usual time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Darren quickly said, turning to leave as he watched Lisa push the strongroom door closed. He frowned to himself; almost a two hundred people were coming and going from the security unit at any given time throughout the day, and the unit never emptied. Even if he found a way to sneak into the strongroom, even if he managed to get in and out before the entry was archived, there was no way to avoid being seen.
He sighed as he walked through the hallways that led back to his wing. Despite Em’s order to keep this task to himself, he knew he couldn’t do it alone.
“Darren!”
He glanced over his shoulder; Brian was jogging towards him, a worried look on his face.
“I heard about Amber!” Brian gasped, quickly catching up. “Do you think this is why she needed the clothes yesterday? Do you think she was planning to leave this whole time?”
Darren grabbed his arm and pulled him aside, cautiously looking around.
“The clothes they found in her room were too big for her,” he whispered. “I don’t know what she was up to, but they found out that she was in recycling.”
Brian’s eyes grew wide with fear.
“What about you? Those guards saw you with her!”
“Not until we were halfway back to her wing, there’s no reason for them to think I knew anything about it. Besides, they never got our names or numbers. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
“But if they recognize―”
“I’ll be fine,” Darren repeated, stepping away. “There’s something I need to talk to you about, though, come with me.”
Darren hurried towards his room, trying to ignore the feeling that he was about to make a mistake. Em couldn’t afford to cut him out, she had already said that he was the only sympathizer in security. Still, his stomach churned with nervousness as he opened his door and stepped inside.
“So what’s going on?” Brian asked, pulling the chair out from the narrow desk
and sitting down. He crossed his arms expectantly. “What do you need to talk about?”
Darren closed his eyes for a moment. If Em had a problem with him bringing Brian into the plan, she was just going to have to get over it.
“Em talked to me,” he began, sinking down onto the edge of his bed. He ignored Brian’s gasp of surprise, taking a deep breath as he continued. “She gave me a job, but I need your help.”
†‡†
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Ayn took a deep breath as Andreas gestured for him to move onto his side. He was not looking forward to what was coming, and he swallowed hard, bracing himself as he rolled over. She pulled on a pair of gloves.
“This will be uncomfortable,” Andreas muttered, her voice cracking as she picked up a needle. “The pain control compound won’t help, unfortunately.”
Ayn scoffed in annoyance as he glared at her over his shoulder.
“I thought it was Noah’s job to state the obvious.”
She glanced away, and he could hear her gulp.
“I guess…I guess I’m just not used to dealing with a conscious test subject.”
“Yes, you are,” he countered. “I’ve been conscious this whole time.”
“But I didn’t know for sure like I do now. It just…makes me a little nervous.”
Ayn raised a brow as he studied her face. He couldn’t be certain, but he almost thought he saw a shadow of guilt appear in her eyes.
“Just get it over with,” he snapped, rolling over and staring at the wall. He felt her hand touch his back, and he clenched his teeth as the needle pricked his skin.
Andreas heard the ration inhale sharply in the wake of the needle she inserted in its spine, and she cringed as a twinge of remorse cut through her heart.
“Almost done,” she muttered, watching as the clear fluid dripped into her collection vial. “And…that’s it.”
She withdrew the needle as quickly as she could and stood up, carrying the vial towards her workstation. The slide was waiting for her on the edge of the counter, and she carefully placed a drop of fluid on the surface before reaching for the stain. It was a simple test, but even the slightest trace of the behavior control compound would react if present. Her heart skipped a beat as she moved the slide under the microscope and looked through the eyepiece.
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