The Seeds Trilogy Complete Collection: The Sowing, The Reaping, The Harvest (including The Prelude)

by K. Makansi

  “I wish I could practice on this all day.”

  “Well,” I say, bitterness creeping in, “you can always visit Vale when he moves in.”

  “Oh, Soren.” She drops her hands from the keys, meeting my eyes. Hers are round and dark and swollen with sympathy. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to leave this place.”

  “It’s not about that.”

  It’s about you, I want to say.

  Her fingers go back to the keyboard, dancing through a sonata as I watch. The pounding of my heart calms as she plays. It’s strange, being the audience instead of the musician. Finally she stops and looks up at me. I can’t help but wonder what her lips taste like, or how soft the skin on her cheeks really is.

  “I should go,” she says, her voice at a whisper, her eyes locked into mine.

  “It shouldn’t be as wet on the way back,” I agree. But neither of us move.

  “I don’t want to,” she says.

  It happens in an instant. I slide to the piano bench beside her, and my hand is behind her head as she leans into me. I don’t know where this surety has come from, but I can’t think about anything else as her lips meet mine, salty but soft, and she’s running her hands through my hair and down my face, tracing a line across my jawbone as a shiver runs down my spine. Her hands caress my cheeks, strong fingers drawing lines into my skin. I respond in kind, pulling her closer, pressing my body into hers. I pull her lip between my teeth and hear her draw in a sharp breath.

  But it’s over as quickly as it began.

  She pulls away.

  “Soren.” Her hand trails down my shoulder and collarbone. “I don’t want to distract you from Jeremiah.” Her voice is so quiet, her face so close to mine I can feel the rhythm of her breath. “He needs you now.”

  I nod.

  “Okay.” I run a finger down the side of her neck. She bends like a willow to my touch. “I’ll walk you out.”

  I stand up, lost, wondering where time has gone, whether the rest of the world still exists. She follows me, her fingertips firm against my own.

  I open the door and she steps out, but I grab her hand and pull her in again. She feels so tiny against my body, but I lean down and she stretches up to me and somehow her lips find mine. The world fades into greyscale, the greens and blues incomparable against the intensity of her touch.

  She pulls away a second time.

  “Bye, Soren,” she says. She drops my hand and turns away, disappearing almost as quickly as she appeared.

  I don’t respond. I don’t have to. She’s already gone.

  I.

  Fall 23, Sector Annum 102, 16h07

  Gregorian Calendar: October 13

  “Okaria is reeling today from the most devastating act of violence since the early years of the Sector’s founding. Seven of our most promising young students as well as an esteemed professor at the Sector Research Institute were murdered by an unidentified man dressed in black. Watchmen from Okaria are saying that the shooter in fact may not even have a profile in the population database. We have been given a statement from the Defense Forces tentatively identifying the man as an Outsider or an unaffiliated individual from the Wilds, and Watchmen and the SDF are working together to ensure a thorough investigation into the attack. Chancellor Philip Orleán is preparing a statement now which will be broadcast as soon as the recording has been sent to our offices. The Okarian Official News Network is horrified by today’s violence and is saddened to be responsible for carrying this news to the public. Please check your courriels and plasmas regularly for updates about individual safety as the SDF tries to determine if similar acts of violence could be carried out elsewhere in the Sector….”

  I watch dully as Linnea Heilmann goes on. Whether the tears in her eyes and the occasional choke in her voice are real or feigned, I don’t know. I don’t care.

  Instead of turning off the vidscreen, I throw my plasma through it. I watch in temporary satisfaction as the thin layer of glass shatters, a vicious sound that stabs at my ears. There’s no reprieve from the grief, but the rage bubbling over is temporarily assuaged. Jeremiah, sitting a few meters away with his head in his hands, doesn’t even flinch.

  Then the noise alarm goes off.

  “Soren Skaarsgard, you have surpassed the decibel limit for your residence building.” If there were a way to rip the alarm system out of the walls, I’d do that, too. “Please restrict your noise to a more tolerable level for the citizens in your neighboring flats.”

  I pick up my Mealpak and throw it as hard as I can at the speakers. The container breaks open and the contents spill out on the floor. I don’t care. I wouldn’t have been able to eat anyway.

  I was in class when it happened. The sirens went off and we were rushed out of the room and outside. It was the first time the sirens had gone off in a decade. Watchmen ran in as we were ushered out. Jeremiah and I stood together, silent. I remember watching in dull surprise as Remy Alexander appeared in the courtyard, from the Academy on the other end of the campus, and somehow found Vale’s side. They clung to each other, fingers entwined. They stood apart from the crowd, quiet. I watched them for a moment, my eyes on Remy, wondering what had drawn her to Vale. All I could think of was Hana, then, her small frame tucked against mine, a measure of comfort.

  Rumors tore through the courtyard as students talked about hearing the screams, the flashes of light, the silence after. No one knew what had happened. But when the Defense Forces arrived on site minutes later in two military-grade airships, we knew it was serious. Remy was called away after that, fear scrawled across her face. Vale tried to follow. I could see him protesting, arguing with the two Watchmen who came for her, as though I was watching a recording with no audio. She dropped Vale’s hand, though her eyes stayed with him until she turned a corner past the administration building. I scanned the faces in the courtyard, looking for Hana. I think, when I didn’t see her there, I knew.

  Linnea’s words from earlier echo through my head. The Sector has released a list of the victims’ names. Aran Hawthorne. Matthew Malthus. Tai Alexander. Joaquin Pero. Dakota Quinn. Fennel Chang. Kell O’Connell. Hana Lyon.

  We were sent home. My parents tried to get hold of me but after jotting a quick note to let them know I was safe, I ignored them. Jeremiah and I came back here, to my flat. We watched the broadcasts. I checked my plasma every half-second for any courriels from the SRI or official news from the Sector or the ON network. I paced. I sat. I paced. Jeremiah sat almost completely still, something he never does. I recognized it as a sign that he, too, was in his own world, dealing with the day’s events in his way. We watched together as Linnea, visibly distraught, announced the names of the students not fifteen minutes ago. My mind went blank as I heard them spoken aloud like a death knell.

  It was quickly overwritten by rage.

  I knew them, I keep thinking, the words running through my head like a mantra. I knew them. I knew them. I knew them.

  I remember working out calculus problems with Joaquin and playing soccer with Matthew, Kell, and Dakota. I remember Tai coming up to me after my concert and kissing me on the cheek, so polite. Encouraging Remy to show me her drawing. I remember Hana’s eyelashes matted together in the rain, her hair almost black with water, and how she smelled that day, so fresh and clean and pure. How she squeezed Jeremiah’s hand to comfort him. How soft her lips were against mine.

  I saw her again a few weeks later. I sent her a courriel and asked her to practice with me after classes. It felt like the bravest thing I’d ever done, and maybe it was. My fingers found hers, that afternoon, like magnetism, polarities pulling together. She came to my side and found a space in my body, a space I didn’t know existed. Kissing her was like drowning, suffocating in happiness, as she pressed me up against the keyboard and played the sweetest dissonance I’d ever heard. We made our own music.

  We told no one. That it was secret made it more powerful. But when we both started our research classes, time dissipated, and s
o did our meetings. I only saw her when our paths crossed. We got lost in other things. We lost each other. She was never mine, and I knew that.

  But this destruction is too much to bear. This is a different kind of loss. An ending of all possible futures, a thousand doors slamming shut at once. There’s a cavernous space between my ribs, no melody in my ears. Just the low, hollow echo of a drum, the blood rattling in my skull.

  “Soren.” Jeremiah’s voice is deep and rough. It calls me back to reality. “There was a survivor.”

  “Who?”

  “Elijah Tawfiq. Another TREE scholar. He was Hawthorne’s student researcher. He wasn’t in the class when it happened. He came back after.” Jeremiah pauses, staring at his plasma, open on the table.

  I know Eli. I sit next to Jeremiah and watch on his plasma as Elijah, wrapped in a wool blanket, with red eyes and skin as pale as my own, is ushered from the medical center to the Watchmen’s headquarters. Brinn Alexander, Remy and Tai’s mother, her cheeks streaked with tears, walks at his side, her arm over his shoulders.

  It strikes me as something beautiful that Brinn is standing in for Elijah’s family, who I know are in a factory town on the outskirts of the Sector, even on the day her own daughter was murdered.

  I close my eyes. The gears are already turning in my mind. Why did this happen?

  Jeremiah is silent and still.

  I walk to the chiller and pulls out a bottle of distilled spirits. A gift from my parents after my graduation from the Academy. I pull a swig directly from the bottle and then pour a draught into two tumblers. I set one on the table in front of Jeremiah.

  “You’re thinking,” he says.

  I cut to the chase.

  “How did a man without an entry in the population database get into the SRI?”

  He shrugs.

  “False identity. Forged fingerprints. It’s difficult, but not unthinkable.”

  “It takes serious effort to forge that much biometric data. The SRI is one of the most secure buildings in Okaria, outside of the OAC facilities. The killer must have wanted someone dead pretty badly in order to go through that kind of effort.”

  Jeremiah tosses his glass back like a shot.

  “Or he was going for shock value. That would make sense if he was an Outsider.”

  “He could have just walked down the street and murdered eight people if he were going for shock value,” I point out. “Why a targeted strike?”

  “Maybe he had a grudge.”

  “Then why choose such a public place to do it? To make a spectacle? Why not just murder whoever he was after in a dark alley?”

  Jeremiah lets his head fall back into his open palms.

  “Soren, is now the time for these questions?”

  “Somebody has to ask them.” The rage is simmering, like a steam engine from the Old World, powering an endless stream of thoughts in my head. “If his goal was shock value, why did he take his own life instead of moving onto a new group? And why do it in the SRI? And if his goal was to eliminate one person, why do it so publicly?”

  Jeremiah nods slowly.

  “You’re right,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “And if it was an Outsider, how did he get access to the biometric data needed to break into the SRI?”

  I can’t stop thinking about Hana’s eyelashes, matted together in the rain, her fingers dancing across the keys, her hands running through my hair. I’ll never hear her play again. She was never mine to cling to, but now she’s mine to mourn.

  I want to know why this happened.

  Tapping his fingers, Jeremiah narrows his eyes at the broken vidscreen in front of us.

  “Hell of a job you did there.”

  II.

  Spring 3, Sector Annum 103, 02h13

  Gregorian Calendar: March 22

  Command: Open official OAC death report on Rachel Sayyid.

  Rachel Sayyid: Citizen 0849387. Occupation: Operations manager at ceramics factory in Ellas. Born Summer 18, Sector Annum 62. Died Spring 77, Sector Annum 102. Age at death: 40. Official cause of death: influenza type H3N9 with viable units incubated in petri with potential to spread.

  I tap my finger against the desk and then search for another report.

  Command: Open R. Rosenthal report on viability of orthomyxoviridae in humans treated with OAC-standard metavaccines.

  The study comes back and I look it over. Orthomyxoviridae is the family of viruses that was responsible for killing tens of thousands of humans in the influenza scares of the Old World. But fifty years ago the OAC developed meta-vaccines for humans, which protect against RNA viruses like influenza, despite their tendency to mutate. Those meta-vaccines have effectively eliminated many of the viruses that tormented humankind in the past, such as HIV and influenza.

  So why did Rachel Sayyid, Jeremiah’s mother, succumb to a disease that’s been extinct in humans for four decades?

  I read to the bottom of the report and check the conclusion. There it is. The line I was looking for.

  “Rosenthal concludes that the OAC-standard metavaccines are sufficient to protect against all types of orthomyxoviridae that have to date spread to the human population.”

  So either the metavaccines didn’t work in Rachel’s case, or the real cause of her death was something else. Something not in her death report.

  Command: Open death reports for all Okarian citizens at Ellas between Spring 1 and Summer 1 SA 102.

  The reports come back. I skim through the first thirty days quickly. Old age is by far the most commonly listed cause of death, which I expected. Then certain neurodegenerative diseases that the OAC still has not developed a cure for: Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s. These are rarer and rarer, as our targeted cellular-level vitamin and nutrient programs improve and are personalized to the point where it becomes harder and harder for such diseases to take hold.

  Then I see the first outlier. Another recorded death from H3N9, a week before Rachel Sayyid. And another, five days later. I scroll through them and see thirty-two deaths in all, each one listed as a death from H3N9. But there are no deaths recorded after the third day of Summer. The virus must have been contained by then.

  Command: Open the report on all medical center check-ins same date same time and filter for a diagnosis of H3N9 with ultimate survival and recovery.

  Response: There are no entries that meet your search criteria.

  I stare at the response log line. So thirty-two people died of the disease but not a single person was admitted to the med centers and survived? The strain must have been deadly. But why hasn’t any follow-up research been conducted? Why have no subsequent cases been reported in the months since? And, most importantly, why haven’t these cases been more widely publicized? Usually outbreaks of deadly diseases—rare but occasional—are covered on the news network and addressed by the OAC.

  The deaths began a week before Philip Orleán was appointed interim Chancellor of the Okarian Sector.

  Words my mother spoke months ago come to my mind. We could allow them to volunteer … it wouldn’t be coercion if they volunteered for the studies. And then James’ declarative: But know that if you approve Philip’s contingency plan, you’ll more than likely be condoning the deaths of Okarian citizens.

  I start to wonder if maybe those people didn’t die of H3N9 after all. The OAC could have covered up the real cause of these deaths by blaming them on influenza. Maybe Philip’s contingency plan somehow involved performing studies on human subjects. If the OAC began performing these studies as soon as Corine was certain Philip was going to become the new chancellor, the deaths could have been attributable to the studies.

  But what were they trying to accomplish? What were they researching?

  I spend another hour searching for records of medical trials conducted during that period, trying to find out what the Orleáns were testing. But I can’t find anything. Either the records are seriously buried, or the studies never happened at all.

&n
bsp; All I know for sure is that people started dying one week before Philip Orleán was appointed to the chancellorship. Then, four weeks after that, the deaths stopped. A month later, the famine was over. The OAC put out an official report saying they had successfully developed a gene that would provide viral immunity in the wheat crops, and food production would be restored to normal levels within a month or two. There was a brief celebration, and then it was over. And since then, no one has mentioned it. It’s as if it never happened.

  I know there’s a link, a connection between these events. But I can’t find it. I don’t know if anyone ever will.

  “Go home, Soren.” I jump as a voice rings out through the darkened, empty room. I turn around. It’s James. “It’s two in the morning.”

  “The same applies to you, James.”

  “Do as I say, not as I do,” he says gruffly, pulling up a swiveling chair at my side. “And as long as we’re at the SRI, no matter how late it is, you’ll call me Professor.”

  Command: Erase search history.

  “Your research has been sub-par lately, Soren.”

  “Never one to beat around the bush, are you, Professor?”

  “I’m curious why you’re turning in halfhearted lab reports when you’re here until two in the morning every night.”

  I hesitate.

  “My research may be taking a different direction than I anticipated.”

  “Then put that in the goddamn lab reports. What are you up to?”

  “I’m just looking into alternative paths to take with these gene manipulations.” I try to keep my voice casual.

  “I’m your primary instructor. If you’re looking into different directions, you talk to me about it.”

  “I’m not ready yet.”

  James swears under his breath and looks up at the ceiling. In the darkness, the whites of his eyes glimmer an uncomfortable shade of yellow. It occurs to me how much older he is than I am.