The Labs (The GEOs Book 2)

by Ramona Finn

  He chewed on his doughnut while I waited for him to keep talking.

  “Most Elites don’t care, but there’s a meteor shower tonight,” he told me.

  I’d never even heard of that, so I let Dax educate me. He went on and on about shooting stars, comets, meteorites, and dancing galaxies until I was as mesmerized as he was.

  “What time does the show start?” I finally asked.

  Dax looked at his computer screen. “It’s already started.”

  I sat up straight. “You should go—the cafeteria would be the perfect place to view the stars. I just came from there. It’s empty.”

  Dax scrunched up his nose like a bad smell had permeated the communications department. “I can’t leave my terminal.”

  “I’ll watch it for you,” I said with a grin. This was working out great. “Nothing’s going to happen in the next hour. It’s too late at night. You go, and I’ll call if anything comes up. It’ll be our little secret.”

  “You sure?”

  “I was a coder in the Geos,” I said. “I know how to watch a terminal.”

  Dax pondered my suggestion for all of two seconds. Then, he was out the door with a skip in his step, heading for the cafeteria before I could take my place at his terminal.

  As soon as the door slid shut, I went to work. First, I pulled up Kev’s records so that I could locate him. It was the weirdest thing, though. There were no records. It was as if he hadn’t existed past the winning of the Acceptance. Someone had erased his file. No matter how I searched, I couldn’t find him.

  I didn’t have time to waste. Dax would return soon, and I had too much to do. I spent a few minutes getting to know the system. Easy. Once I felt comfortable with it, I plugged in Skylar Two’s flash drive and pulled up the file Skylar Two had mentioned when he’d given it to me. It contained a single line of ten numbers. I assumed this was the way to reach him.

  Then, I opened a secured channel in the communications array and punched in the numbers. There was a moment of hope when my terminal made contact with another computer somewhere on the surface. I waited and waited, but no one accepted my request to connect. There definitely was a terminal to receive my call, but no person to connect to. Was Skylar Two even still alive?

  I couldn’t afford to consider that. So, I decided to leave a text message for that terminal number, hoping Skylar Two or one of his people would have a way to access it before the next wave of attacks. I kept the message brief.

  A second and third onslaught are planned for the day after tomorrow. Get to safety.

  I called my parents, thinking that I could persuade my dad to help Skylar Two. It was a long shot, but I was desperate. There was no answer there, either. Dad might be on shift and Mom might be at a clinic or in a deep sleep.

  I pushed away any thought about Mom’s deteriorating health. I didn’t have time for that, either.

  I also sent a message to Nari, the medic, asking her to contact me with news of my parents’ health when she got on shift. That helped to calm my nerves a little.

  All of that done, I sat staring at the computer terminal, overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness. On the surface below, people were mourning their loved ones and trying to save those who had made it out alive. In the Geos, my parents lived from moment to moment, hoping they could avoid the next wave of disease.

  And all the while, I was living it up in the lap of luxury. Sitting alone in the quiet, I’d never felt so isolated. And so useless.

  No. I couldn’t afford to think so negatively. I had to assume that my parents and Skylar Two were fine. I had to carry out the mission he’d asked me to do. So, I plugged Skylar Two’s drive back into the port. As soon as I found the EF schedule, I hit Copy and watched the little bar light up and move from the left to the right very slowly. I tapped my fingers as it moved millimeter by millimeter.

  This was taking too long. Dax would be back any time soon.

  To take my nervous mind off the bar, I checked out what else there was on this terminal. In one section, there were hundreds of vid files—security vids with the names of Elites on each file. I searched for the one with my name on it and watched the vids. They weren’t terribly interesting. There were vids of me walking the corridors, going into the cafeteria, etc. They ended on the date that R.L. had announced my partnering ceremony with Ben. I guessed they’d stopped watching me after that. It felt like a small relief.

  And then I opened Kev’s file.

  The last few vids showed him talking to me in the corridor and then followed him back to his friends, and finally followed him leaving the cafeteria. I watched him enter his old apartment, and that’s where his file ended—only a few hours ago. There were no other vids after that. If I hadn’t been to his apartment and found it empty, I could’ve just as easily assumed he was asleep in bed. In the morning, when he didn’t emerge from his home, would anyone notice he was gone?

  I kept scrolling through the endless files and came across an encrypted vid file. None of the others were encrypted, so I had to know what was in this one.

  It took a while to find a way into the file. In the meantime, the EF schedule had uploaded to my drive. I took a moment to get the schematics to the Greens, and then I uploaded that, too. When I returned to the encrypted vid file, I chewed on my lip, hoping these weren’t private vids of people in their apartments. If they were, I promised myself I wouldn’t look. I tried to recall how often I’d walked out of the shower without my clothes on. I cringed.

  “There!” I was in. These vids weren’t about private Elite moments, though. They didn’t even look like regular vids taken by the cameras that existed everywhere in the Greens. This first vid, at least, was grainy and the picture was shaky, as if the camera was being held by someone. As I watched, I realized that the footage was from a camera attached to someone who was moving about a room.

  The first vid was taken from inside a lab I’d never seen before. A man was seated with his back to the camera, facing a terminal. He was focused completely on his screen and mumbling to himself. I increased the volume to see if I could hear anything.

  “The answer has to be here.” It was R.L. Farrow talking to whoever had the camera. From behind, R.L.’s hair looked thicker and darker. I checked the date stamp. This was from a few years ago. I watched for a few more minutes, feeling uncomfortable eavesdropping on a private moment from my soon-to-be father, but the words he mumbled troubled me.

  At first, I thought he was researching the Cure on his own time—something he mentioned doing a lot on the show. But then he started saying things like “longevity,” “genetic modifications,” and “prolonged life.” None of those words made any sense in the context of the Cure. The camera person said nothing in response, as if they weren’t expected to.

  In one of the next vids, R.L. was seen injecting himself with some kind of serum. It seemed to make him agitated. He began yelling at someone, who sounded like they were reading some text to him—something about the existence of a “Fountain of Youth” and “Tree of Life.” The voice of the camera person was muffled and could’ve been a male or a female. Was that deliberate?

  In a third vid, R.L. was talking again to the camera person. Again, the conversation was muffled. I heard him say, “I haven’t lived this long and come this far to stop now. The answer to my longevity is out there.”

  His longevity. What did his longevity have to do with the Cure?

  “I’m diverting all resources to this research,” he said. “This is our new priority.”

  “What about the Cure?” This time, the camera person’s voice was clearer. “We can’t just cancel the show. People are looking to us for answers.”

  “We’ll continue the show, just to keep the people under control. The show will make it seem as if we’re still looking for the Cure, but progress will be slow. I want all available scientists on my project, understood?”

  “So, we’re giving up the search for the Cure?” the camera person asked.

&n
bsp; “There is no Cure,” R.L. said, looking directly into the camera. He had no idea he was being filmed, I realized. “There was never going to be a Cure.”

  The vid went fuzzy as he walked closer to the camera person. It ended abruptly then, and I couldn’t find any more vids in this folder. My flash drive had uploaded 85% of the schematics of the Greens when Dax walked in.

  “That was the most amaz—” His smile vanished when he saw me bent over the screen. “What are you doing?”

  I jumped out of my seat and my breath caught in my throat. I hit the ‘x’ at the top of the computer screen, hoping I wasn’t being too obvious. Then I started to cough, and at the same time I moved around the terminal to block the fact that my drive was still uploading content.

  “I…I got bored, so I just…searched for some old show vids…” I held my breath, hoping he’d buy my story. “How was the meteor show?”

  That seemed to distract Dax from his suspicions for a moment.

  “It was the best thing I’ve seen ever,” he said. He moved toward his station.

  “Tell me about it,” I said, trying to keep his attention on me as I leaned heavily against his desk. Behind me, my hand stretched out to pull out the flash drive from the computer. If it hadn’t completed its upload, then I’d have to try again another day.

  Dax didn’t seem to notice how strangely contorted my body was. He chatted dreamily about the shooting stars he’d seen. As he sat back down at his terminal, he looked up at me with a serious expression. I swallowed.

  “You have no idea how much this all meant to me tonight.” His dark eyes glistened. “Just to know that I’ve been heard is the most special thing that’s happened to me. Thank you, Tylia.”

  I tried my best to give him as sincere a smile as possible. It felt like a grimace to me. I wished I were the altruistic person Dax thought I was. I hated that I’d used him to get what I wanted. I was a horrid person.

  “Anytime, Dax,” I said. “I should head back.”

  Pocketing the tiny drive in my tunic, I headed to the exit while contemplating how to get the intelligence to Skylar Two. I decided to give him a day, at the very most, to receive my message, and then I’d come back when Dax was on duty again and hopefully send him the rest of the intelligence.

  The door to the communications department swished open as I approached. Three Elites walked by outside. Without thinking, I ducked back inside, and watched them go down the corridor.

  “Early shift,” Dax said without looking up from his terminal. “If you want to avoid being seen, you should take the back passages.” I kind of loved how Dax must’ve been suspicious of my strange behavior, and yet he acted as if it was perfectly normal.

  “The what?” My heart was still racing, but my curiosity was piqued.

  “The reason you rarely see clones about,” Dax said. He got up and led me to the back of the room. There was another door. Behind it was a dimly lit corridor. “There’s a whole network of hidden corridors. Just follow the signs. It’ll lead you back to your sector. And don’t worry about the clones. They won’t care that you’re in there.”

  “Thanks,” I told Dax. I started to offer an explanation, but then decided it was best if I didn’t.

  “No. Thank you. If I can ever be of help in the future, just let me know.” He had a new twinkle in his eye.

  “I, er, had fun helping you sneak out,” I said quietly. “Are you always on the night shift?”

  “More often than not.”

  That’s all I needed to know. I hated myself, but there were more important things to worry about now. Dax shut the door behind me, and I stood staring into the dimly lit hallway for a long time. I could go left, right, or straight ahead. Each path looked exactly the same. The white walls and flooring helped a bit to make the paths look less dark, but I couldn’t make out any actual lighting above me. Picturing the direction to my apartment on the outside hallways, I headed that way.

  Dax was right. I passed several busy-looking clones and they didn’t even acknowledge me. There were maps at every junction and signs that told me I was on the right path.

  Just as I crossed from the regular wing of the Greens into the family sector, I noticed a room to one side. The door was ajar and light poured out from within. Was this where the clones had their living quarters? I poked my head in through the opening, but what I saw wasn’t what I’d expected.

  This large room was filled with people, maybe twenty or more—old people, who were older than I’d ever seen up in the Greens. A few old people survived the Cough in the Geos, and I’d seen others in the Rej camps, but until now, I hadn’t realized that there weren’t any old people walking around in the Greens. I knew R.L. Farrow was old, and from the vids, I had a good guess why. I now assumed that all Elites had access to some kind of age-defying tech. Yet, here in this room, there were old people who looked their age. They were thin, bent over at the shoulders, wrinkled from their faces to the fingertips. They looked frail, and no one spoke.

  The room was sparse, with a few tables scattered about with chairs on each side. There were colorful boxes on each table, and some people were working on whatever the contents were. At the far end, there were a few metal-framed beds lined against the wall. There was a TV hanging from one wall. It was playing re-runs of the show, but no one was watching. Some people slept on the beds and some napped in chairs. Others faced each other at a table, staring into nothingness. Two old people simply walked back and forth along the length of the room, looking severely bored.

  One of them, a lady so thin and wrinkled that her skin looked like a crumpled rag, noticed me standing at the door. “Looks like we have a visitor,” she said in a frail voice.

  Others turned to stare. For a second, I’d assumed this was where the clones retired to, but as these people looked at me, I realized they were all different. These weren’t clones.

  So, who were they, and what were they doing living in the recesses of the Greens?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tam, the lady with wrinkled skin, was the only one who spoke as I stepped into the room. She took my hand, told me her name, and insisted on knowing mine. Most of the old people seemed to suffer from varying degrees of memory loss. I introduced myself at least seven times to the same group of people before I realized that. Tam, though, was pretty lucid. She followed me and snickered whenever I began to speak to a new person.

  “He won’t remember you in three, two, one…” She seemed to enjoy this little game. “She can barely remember her own name, much less a stranger’s. Here, girl, try this one. If you can get him to say one word, we’ll all have a party in your honor.”

  I finally turned to Tam. “Who are you?”

  Tam smacked her lips together and did a little shrug dance. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Seriously,” I said, sitting down at one of the tables. An elderly man and woman sat across from each other, a half-played chess game laid out between them. They each stared at the pieces as if they were tiny aliens invading the table space. Neither had moved since I’d arrived. “Why are you all hiding in this area?”

  Tam grew glum. “You talk like we have a choice. We’ve been here since we arrived.”

  “Arrived? In the Greens? Are you not Elites?” I moved the knight piece for the woman—I figured it was her turn. I’d played this game a few times with my mom a long time ago. I remembered liking the knight the best because it moved in an odd manner across the board. The woman made a grunting sound and moved the knight back to its original place.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Elites? She thinks we’re Elites!” Tam threw her head back in exaggerated laughter. “We wanted to be, but they had other plans.”

  I was getting tired of this conversation. Tam was revealing her story a tiny bit at a time, and I didn’t have that kind of time. I guess she must have read that on my face because she smacked her lips again. Her expression went dark.

  “We’re survivors of the Acceptance,
” she told me.

  My mouth fell open. The man and woman at the chess table looked up at me, and then at Tam.

  “You’re not supposed to tell,” the grunting woman said.

  “Acceptance? Ha!” the man said at the same time.

  The woman’s shoulders shook as she made tiny squeaking sounds. The man reached over and patted her on the hand.

  “Oops, that’s a bad word here,” Tam said. She looked more amused than upset. She had a mean streak, this one.

  “You’re survivors? So am I,” I blurted out without thinking.

  Tam’s eyebrows rose into her wispy bangs. “Really? Welcome, then. You’re not going anywhere for a while. Where are your escorts—those pesky Enforcers?”

  “EFs? I came alone. How long have you been here?” I stared at all the people there. I wasn’t good at guessing ages, but they seemed ancient to me.

  “From before your time, from every time,” Tam said. She picked up a chess piece and took it off the board. I was pretty sure that wasn’t a legal move. Grunting woman squealed and snatched the piece back. Tam laughed.

  “There haven’t been any survivors for years,” I said. “Are you from the Geos?”

  Tam nodded. “Tamara Medic,” she said, pointing at her chest. “Lee Coder and his wife Sharon Coder.” She touched the man and woman on their hands. “All survivors.”

  The survivors who’d been with me and Kev had all been shot. I’d seen that. How did these people make it here? I asked Tam, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. She just kept naming off the other survivors in the room. A few of the names I vaguely recognized because everyone who’d gotten sent to the Acceptance had their names carved on a floor to ceiling plaque in Union Hall. Sometimes I’d stopped to read the names. But they’d meant nothing to me. Until now. We’d all believed that they’d died of the Virus.

  “Tam, wait,” I said, trying a different tactic. “I won this year’s Acceptance. I live out there in the Greens. Why don’t you?”

  Tam’s eyes widened. Then her mouth formed an ‘O.’ She walked to the middle of the room and pointed at me.