by K. Makansi
“No matter.” Osprey waves the subject away. “This is Idris and Soo-Sun,” Osprey introduces us and, with a mischievous grin adds, “Make sure you stay on Idris’s good side. She bites.”
“Only when necessary,” Idris says, and I catch a flash of a smile. Osprey laughs and then takes off as quickly as if she really were a bird, launching herself after some faraway prey.
I study Soo-Sun without trying to be obvious, but finally ask, “You look a lot like Chan-Yu. Are you related?” She holds my gaze, her face expressionless. I go on, a bit awkwardly. “We were hoping he would be here. I want to thank him for saving Soren and Remy.” For saving me.
“He is not here,” she says finally, but then falls silent again without answering my question. I take a swig from the cup in front of me and pick at the plate of fruit, sausage, and bread in the middle of the table. The silence is heavy and unwieldy, but I don’t want to be the one to break it. Even Miah can sense it and he picks his head up off the table and watches Soo-Sun.
“We’re all anxious to talk to him,” I finally say.
“We’ve had only one communication from him since that day,” she says, her voice neutral.
“The day he left the Sector?” I ask.
She takes a drink without answering and glances at Idris, who gives her a slight nod. “Yes. Osprey was the last to hear from him. We are almost certain he is not being held by Sector forces.” I sigh with relief, but then catch myself as she continues. “We fear, then, he is dead. Otherwise, he would have returned to us.” Her gaze drifts out toward the horizon. “We are bound to the same goal, and if he has failed, it falls on me to complete it.”
I start to open my mouth, curious and surprised, wondering what she’s talking about. Bound to the same goal? But Soo-Sun’s eyes shift above and behind me, and I turn to see Remy approaching. The openness I saw on her face last night has faded, replaced by the same familiar determination I’ve gotten so used to. But her expression is somehow softer. More open. Maybe.
“Squall says to be in the clearing in the center of camp in fifteen minutes,” she says. “We’ll have a chance to make our case then.” She glances at Soo-Sun and pauses. “Are you related to—”
“Yes,” she cuts her off. “Chan-Yu is my brother.”
“Where—” she starts, but again Soo-Sun interrupts.
“We will talk more of this later. Now it is time to prepare for the gathering.” She stands, touches Idris’s shoulder lightly and leaves the table. Miah and I finish eating, down a few more glasses of ginger water, and follow Remy back to the center of camp. We pass through the maze of small buildings, the bedrolls of people who appear to have slept outside, and families in different phases of food preparation or packing and unpacking traveling gear. The whole encampment seems transitory, like no one actually lives here, but instead it is a giant staging area for people who are constantly in various stages of coming and going.
When we get to the clearing, we meet Squall, Soren, and Osprey and another woman, older, with silvery hair. She’s as tall and lithe as Osprey, for all that she looks to be at several decades older. Woven mats have been placed in a circle around a fire pit in which glowing embers flicker and spark, radiating a comforting warmth. Soo-Sun emerges from the trees on the far side and lowers herself to sit on the mat beside Squall, and Remy, Miah and I do the same, arranging ourselves across the pit from the Outsiders. Squall waits until we are settled to begin.
“I trust you enjoyed your dinner. You are the first guests we’ve welcomed from either the Resistance or the Sector.” I wonder if they’ve had any unwelcome guests, prisoners or captives, and what happened to them. “As you may have already ascertained, we are a transitory lot and we come and go as we please. Right now, I’m afraid we”—he indicates the woman next to him—“are the only Elders here. Although we were reluctant to bring you here, the make-up of your group intrigues us—the son of a former chancellor and a current one, an Alexander, and, of course, Jeremiah Sayyid, whose presence among you is particularly interesting given his family’s history.”
“Me?” Miah and I exchange confused glances. “Are you talking about my dad’s work with the Resistance?”
Squall’s brows knit in confusion. “It is your mother that interests us.”
“My mother?”
Squall looks back and forth between me and Soren. “We thought … does he not know?”
“Does he not know what?” I demand, now as confused as Miah.
Squall turns to Soren. “Do none of you know?”
“Is this about his mother’s death?” Soren asks, his voice low, cautious.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Miah demands. My blood pressure is rising as well. Miah and I weren’t friends when his mother died, but I know it was a traumatic time simply because he’s only mentioned it once to me, and only to tell me that she had, in fact, died. When I tried to press the matter, he politely—but tersely—asked me not to inquire further.
Squall holds his hand up to calm him. “We assumed you left the Sector with Valerian when you discovered the truth. Is this not the case?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Miah’s on his feet now, looming over Squall, the angriest I think I’ve ever seen him. He still hasn’t put back on all the weight he lost from his illness, and with his thick mop of hair and bristling beard, he looks rangy—and not a little dangerous. “I left because Vale told me about his mother, about the SRI attack, and that she had directed Chan-Yu to kill Soren and Remy. Since I’d never been one of her favorite people, I figured she’d come after me if she found out I knew about her crimes and, especially, if she knew my dad was working with the Resistance. But most importantly, I left because my best friend needed me and that’s what best friends do.”
A surge of affection and respect flushes through me. I’ve never been more proud to call someone a friend—a brother. And it doesn’t escape me that Soren must know something about Miah’s mother—something he’s obviously never shared. “Somebody better tell me what my mother has to do with any of this.”
“Why don’t you take a seat and—” Squall starts.
“I’ll take a seat when I fucking want to!” Miah shouts. Soren and I are both on our feet beside him, and Squall’s leapt up as well, his hands out in a conciliatory gesture, even as his eyes narrow dangerously. Miah turns on Soren. “What do you know about this?”
“I’m not sure what I know,” Soren says, apologetic. “I’m sorry, Miah. I should have told you a long time ago, but I never had any proof. When I left, I knew it would be too dangerous to try to contact you. And when you showed up with Vale, I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Tell me what, goddamnit?”
“Your mother didn’t die of influenza. I don’t know what she died of, but I think she was in a clinical study run by—” Soren casts a venom-filled glance at me—“the OAC. I think she was used as a lab rat to test … something. I don’t even know what.”
“And just how do you know this?” Miah’s voice is shaking.
“I don’t really know anything. After the lab massacre when…” Soren pauses for a moment, looks down. He blinks a few times and I lean in a little closer—is Soren Skaarsgard crying? His strangely blue eyes shine in the morning light when he looks back up at us. “When Hanna died … I couldn’t let it go.”
Memories once buried rise and flash through my mind: Hanna Lyon, the girl Soren and I used to compete with at piano competitions, a friend of mine until she disappeared into her studies at the SRI and we lost touch. She always had a thing for Soren, but I never knew there was anything going on between them. She was in Tai’s class at the SRI when the gunman came in and blew them all to pieces.
“I didn’t understand what happened or why. So I started looking into the massacre, into your mother’s death, into my parents’ fall from power. It’s all connected, Miah, I’m just not positive how,” Soren breathes, as though the air is being pressed from his lungs. “Your mot
her died a week before Philip Orleán came to power, of a disease that never existed. Influenza was a cover-up. I think she was the result of a lab study gone wrong. It was part of Philip and Corine’s research, their contingency plan to stop the famine devastating the Farms at the time.”
“What?” Miah turns to me, his face slack, his mouth open, questioning, but what can I say? I couldn’t speak if I tried. I feel compressed, bowed by the weight of adding one more death to the list of those I must atone for. There’s nothing I can say or do to change anything my parents have done, but the idea that they are responsible for Miah’s mother’s death is too much to bear.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
“Why would a healthy woman volunteer for a study that could kill her?” Miah protests. “She was perfectly fine, then she was sick, then she was dead. I never even got to hold her hand.” Miah’s broad shoulders are slumped. “They burned her body, wouldn’t even allow me a ceremony.”
“This is why we are interested in her death.” Squall says. “Please, Jeremiah. We will tell you all we know.” Miah sinks back to the ground next to me, and I watch him, hoping beyond hope that this doesn’t change our friendship, that he can forgive me whatever role I’ve played in this. Soren sits next to Osprey, and for the first time in ages, I empathize with him. I can only imagine what it must have cost him to carry this knowledge around without knowing how to share it with his old friend.
Soo-Sun, who has been quiet and calm thus far, finally clears her throat and speaks up.
“My brother Chan-Yu was not the only Outsider to climb high in the ranks of Sector bureaucracy, although he did go further than anyone had before him. We have others, too, who work in the Sector: nurses in the hospitals, assistants in the printing facilities where the MealPaks are produced, Enforcers on the Farms, soldiers in the Defense Forces. When Rachel Sayyid died, the Sector was in a time of turmoil.” She nods at Soren. “Chancellor Cara Skaarsgard was unable to control the crop destruction caused by a mutated virus, and the resulting famine and riots were devastating.”
Remy, sitting almost across from me, looks confused. It occurs to me that Soren may never have told her any of this story, that she might not know anything about the political intricacies of his parents’ fall from grace. A large part of the story is missing even for me—I never did find out what happened to Soren’s parents after they transferred away from the capital.
Soo-Sun continues: “From what we’ve gathered, Corine Orleán began testing possible biological solutions as soon as she was certain her husband would win the Chancellorship. These clinical studies involved modified strains and combinations of various intestinal bacteria. The goal was to modify the way humans absorb calories and nutrients, in order to enable the starving people on the Farms to break down a wider variety of food and to more efficiently turn more of the calories consumed into available energy. A simple idea, in theory, and a noble one. But, as I’m sure you all know, gut bacteria are notoriously fickle. One slight imbalance can upset the whole system. With modified bacteria and new strains introduced to the intestines, the risk is even greater. Some of Corine’s test subjects died during the trials. We believe Rachel Sayyid was one of them. But some lived, and genetic modifications to the DNA of the crops themselves eventually curtailed the disease while steps were taken to modify the chemicals in the MealPaks to prevent further danger to the workers.”
“Ah,” Soren says quietly.
“We believe the biggest difference between the Orleán faction and the Skaarsgard faction was that the Orleáns were willing to use citizens in their clinical trials before all the precautions were taken while the Skaarsgard faction was more cautious. It was a difference of degrees.”
“How do you know all this?” I demand.
Soo-Sun looks at me patiently.
“We know many things, Valerian Orleán, that you would not suspect. We have ways of finding things out that do not always involve stolen passwords and open backdoors.”
I open my mouth to retort and then shut it again, remembering how Chan-Yu had the same way of answering and yet not answering my questions.
“So my mom was a lab rat,” Miah says, his voice thick with grief and anger.
Another debt I have to pay. How many lives do I owe?
As if sensing my unease, Miah turns to me, his brows knitted and jaw clenched. He pokes me in the chest, hard. “Don’t you fucking apologize, Vale. It’s not your fault. Don’t make this whole thing worse by apologizing for something you didn’t do. This isn’t about you. Just let it go.”
Surprised, I nod. But my hands are clenched into fists, and I can’t seem to unfold them.
Squall takes up after Soo-Sun, his words quiet but resonant. “We are interested in your family story, Jeremiah, not only because of your powerful friends, but because of the threat your mother’s death represents. After the clinical trials were concluded and the famine officially ended, research in that direction went dark. We suspect Corine either ordered the research discontinued—or, far more likely, took it up with her own personal research team.”
“She could use it as a weapon,” Soren breathes. Squall and Soo-Sun turn to him in unison. “Bacteria are so easily transmutable,” he says. “If she could isolate one or several of the strains that proved deadly, she could drop it like a bomb on our heads.”
“This is our concern as well,” Squall says impassively.
Remy leans forward, suddenly eager. The steely determination has replaced the confusion from a moment ago.
“So you’re with us, then?” she asks. “You’ll help us?”
The elegant older woman at Squall’s side finally speaks up. She glances at Remy with a hint of disdain in her expression.
“What help would you have us give?” she asks, her voice austere and off-putting.
“This is Chariya,” Osprey says as an introduction. She sounds deferential for the first time since I’ve known her. Reverential, even. “She was a citizen of the Sector, too. Long before the Resistance was born, Chariya left and is now one of our Elders.”
“We need your knowledge, your manpower, your resources,” Remy says, cool as a seasoned diplomat. “We need invisible lines of distribution throughout the Sector, so the Resistance can penetrate the food distribution system and, without the Dieticians’ knowledge, substitute safe, unmodified food for inclusion in the MealPaks. You can help us. You can show us how you move, where you travel, how you get through Sector territory unnoticed. We have the information we need and will soon have the means to produce enough seeds—Old World, unmodified, heirloom seeds—to start a revolution. And with your help, we can grow enough to wean the whole Sector off the modification programs without anyone even knowing.”
“And if we were to help you, what would the Resistance offer us in return?” Chariya asks, her expression immutable.
“What the fuck!” Miah shouts, throwing his arms over his head. “You want to make tit-for-tat bargains while the OAC uses people like lab rats and slaves? You want to sit here and talk contracts and deals knowing Remy’s family was destroyed, my mother was being murdered, Soren’s parents were lobotomized? Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
Miah’s on his feet, and I am too, my hands on his shoulders, trying to calm him, but he’s pushing my hands away and won’t let me speak. But then Chariya stands up in one fluid motion, tall and strong and somehow far more imposing standing than she was sitting. Miah clenches his mouth shut and folds his arms across his chest, glaring at the impassive, fearsome woman before us.
“Before you accuse me of bargaining, cutting deals for lives, or being unsympathetic to the atrocities committed by the Okarian Sector, you should know our story, Jeremiah Sayyid.”
She brushes past us and the other Outsiders in our group are on their feet as well, following her without question. Soren follows Osprey’s every motion, and Miah turns in a huff, his curiosity getting the better of him. In seconds, it’s just me and Remy, and then she meets my eyes.
“So much for diplomacy,” she says, shaking her head as she leaves, brushing so close I can smell the intoxicating woody, earthy scent of her hair.
24 - REMY
Spring 21, Sector Annum 106, 10h30
Gregorian Calendar: April 9
The outsiders come and go as fluidly as water. Soo-Sun disappeared as soon as we mounted our horses and began our trek up the forested mountain. Osprey decided not to join us, much to Soren’s disappointment. It’s me, Vale, Miah, Soren, Chariya, and Squall. We’ve been riding in silence for well over two hours. At first, the further we went, the darker and deeper the forest became. But then the trail sloped upwards, and the trees have been changing, growing closer together but taller and thinner. The trail is steep and slow going for the horses. The air is moist, with that wet earth smell that I find myself taking deep breaths of every few minutes. We can’t have covered more than nine or ten kilometers at most, and I’m amazed at how the flora has shifted so dramatically in such a short distance. It must be the elevation.
I sniff the air as the wind changes direction, and then notice the sound of rushing water. The path turns and descends a little ways, and soon we’re at the bank of a stream that runs downhill. This little clearing is idyllic, like something from a storybook. Lush green grass fills the spaces between the trees and the rushing creek, and yellow and blue wildflowers provide splashes of color. Though I usually prefer pen and paper, I find myself longing for a brush and stretched canvas to paint this pristine little meadow.
Chariya pulls up and dismounts, letting her reins fall. She dips her hands into the stream and pulls up a palm full of crystal clear water. “See this?” she says. “Clean. Pure. Drinkable.” She puts her hands to her mouth and slurps. “We’ve been working for decades to develop a system that uses organic materials to filter and purify water contaminated by fallout from the Religious Wars and from Old world extraction operations. Only in the last twenty or thirty years, have we managed to truly make a difference.”