Sons of Earth

by Geralyn Wichers

  “What’s that?” Ryker pointed at the coffee as Dominic poured it.

  “Coffee. You probably wouldn’t like it.” Ryker’s dark eyes narrowed, and Dominic almost laughed. “Try it if you’d like.” Ryker shook his head. Dominic shoved a tall glass of smoothie toward him. “I’m bringing you to your new home this morning,” he said as Ryker tipped back the glass.

  “Where?” Ryker asked with a suspicious glint in his eyes. “This Oakley place?”

  “It's a farm—an estate,” Dominic said. He took a sip of his smoothie and relished how the cold liquid felt inside his bruised mouth. “Owned by a wealthy man, but a good man. He will give you a safe place, and work until you are ready to be independent.”

  “So I will be his?”

  “No, not his. You will be free to go, but I would recommend listening to him, and working for him for a year or two. You’ve got a lot to learn.”

  “Maybe.” Ryker grimaced and swigged from his smoothie. His shoulders relaxed.

  Oakley lay in the opposite direction of Caspian, an hour from the sprawl of the city. Dominic could almost hear the wheels in Ryker’s brain spin as he stared at the window at the passing city. He ceased to ask questions after twenty minutes.

  The roads cleared as they escaped the boundaries of the city and became clean and dry. The white sheet of the countryside flew past. The grey sky met the ground almost seamlessly. The world was white, but for the black strip of road and the odd, frosty tree.

  The forest appeared like a hard black line against the downy grey sky, far in the distance. All around them, jagged stumps broke the ground, and heaps of brush and branches sagged under mounded snow. Only a few, brave trees poked up toward the sky.

  The tree line was farther back every year. The government cleared more and more land to accommodate the swelling city.

  The forest opened like a gate to the road, and the Mercedes swept into the trees. Evergreens, their branches laden with wet snow, stood sentinel almost up to the road—dark green, black and brown. The hibernating trees were more alive than anything in the city. Dominic drank them in with his eyes. He glanced over. Ryker stared out the window with a rapt expression.

  Dominic turned the car onto a narrow gravel lane, and crept through the jagged ruts. The car slid toward the edge, and only then did Ryker look up. But the car kept moving, and soon they turned, and drove onto the yard at Oakley.

  The main house stood at a distance, a sprawling stone manor house. Oakley had once been the site of an old, stone church. When Peter Oakley the elder built his house on the site, fifty years ago, he had incorporated the building. The focal point of the house was the bronze-roofed steeple, its bell catching a few stray rays of sun, gleaming dully.

  Dominic stopped the car in the cleared yard, in front of the main farm building, which was an office and a shipping and receiving shop of sorts, also made of stone. Other buildings were scattered around the yard, the houses and bunkhouses of the permanent workers. A long way off stood the cattle barns, where the famous Oakley beef and dairy products were raised.

  He opened the door. “Here we are, Ryker.”

  Two dogs came bounding across the lot, woofing at them and pushing their noses into Dominic’s hand. Ryker drew back.

  “They’re friendly,” Dominic said as he rubbed the dog’s heads, pushing aside their inquiring noses. "These are dogs. Do you remember the pictures from training?"

  “Hello!” A man in a flannel jacket and fur hat came stomping through the snow. At first glance he looked just like any farm hand, but then Dominic recognized him as Peter Oakley himself. “Welcome!” he boomed. His grin gleamed white behind his grey beard.

  “Hello, Peter,” Dominic said, shaking the extended hand. “This is Ryker, one more charge for you.”

  Peter clapped the young MFP on the shoulder. “Welcome, Ryker. You must be brother to Jonathan and David, or as you knew them, 203 and 204.”

  Ryker nodded warily.

  “The guys will be coming in for lunch soon. Come to the bunkhouse, I’ll show you your place, Ryker.” Peter turned to Dominic and said in a softer tone, “They’re settling in well. My farm hands have taken them under their wing like I knew they would.”

  “I appreciate this, Peter.”

  “I’m happy to do it.” The light in Peter’s eyes proved it to be true.

  As they stomped the snow off their shoes in the entry of the bunkhouse, the church bell rang out, clear and sweet.

  “Dinner is what that means,” Peter said to Ryker. “They’ll be in soon.” He pushed open a door and revealed a room with two beds, one on either side of the door. The wide window let in the white winter light and made the room seem airy, even though it was small. “This’ll be your place. You’ll get it to yourself for now.”

  “The other place will be Saber’s when he comes,” Ryker said.

  Peter glanced at Dominic, and Dominic nodded. “Certainly.”

  Behind them the bunkhouse door banged open and cool air swirled around their feet. Loud voices and laughter came in with the draft.

  “…and Jon wouldn’t have any of it. He wouldn’t do it, and I says to him…”

  “What?” Peter boomed as he pushed his way out of the bedroom and out among the farmhands. “Jon it is now? My wife only gave him that name last night, and now you’re shortening it.”

  A young man with a bushy red beard laughed. “It suits him, though. Yeah, Jon and Dave.”

  Dominic caught sight of 203 and 204, dressed in the same warm, practical clothes the other farmhands were wearing, and stomping their boots free of snow just like the others.

  “Come on, Ryker. Dominic, are you staying to eat with us?”

  Dominic thought of the long, quiet car ride and the many thoughts that were sure to crowd in. “Yes, I will.”

  Dominic ate among the loud, merry gathering of farm hands. Ryker was silent, taking it all in, and eyeing his fellow MFPs. They had not yet spoken to each other. At last, Dominic shook hands with Peter, and clapped Ryker on the shoulder.

  “You’ll do well here,” Dominic said, and Ryker nodded with a fair amount of confidence.

  The road seemed longer on the way home. Dominic let the heat blast his face and cold hands, and tried not to long for the warmth and laughter of Oakley, or Casey and Justine’s house for that matter.

  At home he paced around the apartment with the lights off. Just the streetlights, with their greenish white hue, shone through the thin drapes. Dominic wrapped his arms around himself and marched back and forth from his bedroom and down the hall, circling the bed with the perfectly flat cover. He could imagine the imprint of Khalia’s slight frame there, feel her body pressed up against his, her breath brushing his neck as she slept.

  You couldn’t tell I wasn’t human then, could you Khalia?

  CHAPTER 15

  Khalia lay on her side, chin to her knees, staring dead-eyed at the clock and the light mark where the picture frame had stood. It was just a faint light spot by the green light of the digital display. It was still twenty minutes until her alarm went off, and dark as hell outside. She couldn’t sleep. Yet she couldn’t get up, because getting up meant going to work, and going to work meant seeing Dominic.

  That dark, sinister figure that had haunted her all weekend.

  She was past the anger, if only for the moment. She’d moved on to the guilty, desperate feeling that she had done something wrong and brought this on herself.

  Didn’t Jeremy always say that? When she lay in the hospital after the car accident, the time that they put her on oxycodone. “You brought it on yourself. I told you not to drive in this weather. Your job is more important than your own damn health.”

  Her parents had said the same when she’d called them to tell them that Jeremy had been shot by the cops. “What did you think would happen when you married that man?”

  Exactly what did she think a twenty-something genius, who could have any job, life or woman he wanted, could possibly want with her? S
he should have known better. She knew damn well better, but she was a desperate, lonely fool and Dominic had smelled it like blood in the water.

  But Dominic's performance had been so convincing, and even as he’d pressed her against the wall, there had been something in his eyes…

  “Shut up,” she groaned. She clutched her temples and squeezed her eyes shut. “Shut up!” She threw herself toward the pill bottle and gulped two back dry. By the time she’d showered and was standing in front of the mirror, heating the straightening iron, her internal agony had receded to a comfortable numbness.

  She parked on the opposite side of the parking lot from where she usually did, and trudged in over the crunchy ruts of snow. The turnstiles clicked and let her in, and there, down the hall, was Dominic’s dark silhouette.

  Khalia gulped hard, and slowed her walk almost to a stop.

  “Good of you to join us,” Adam said as she walked through the door, clutching her coffee cup from the cafeteria. He looked up from his desk and smiled, and perhaps he meant to be friendly, but to Khalia he looked like an ogre for that moment—a pot-bellied, receded hairline ogre. She mumbled something of a greeting and pushed past into her lab room. Dominic glanced back from his desk, stone-faced. But no leer, no gloating. His jaw was mottled with yellow and purple, and puffy where it was usually square and chiseled.

  Good.

  Barjinder smiled at her from across the room. “Khalia, there is an email from the British representative. Sebert forwarded it.”

  “’Kay.” She watched Dominic from the corner of her eye until he returned to his work. She scrolled through the email—official-sounding garbage that camouflaged their gushing.

  Adam poked his head into the room. “Dominic, I need to see you right now.”

  Khalia forced herself not to look up as Dom stood up and followed Adam from the room.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” Adam said before they’d even made it from the door. Khalia’s hands paused over the keyboard.

  “Didn’t you sign the rejection order yourself?” Dom’s voice was stone cold.

  “Yes, but that was before your little kiddos decided to assault you.” There was a hint of a squeal to Adam’s delivery. “Sebert is on my ass with a full-scale inquiry.”

  “We have 202.”

  “You rejected 201 by yourself, Dominic. Where in any procedure is there allowance for that?”

  “I was angry.”

  “Huh!” Adam blew out a breath and laughed. He said in a half-growl, “Remind me not to make you mad, Dominic.”

  Dominic came in and sat back down without looking at her. "I'll have my report compiled before lunch."

  A spike of pain hit between her temples. She had her own report to compile, and she hadn't even looked at their data. Damn him, that cold son of a bitch. He had his almost ready.

  She opened up her files but every line, every word and number swam in front of her eyes. Her chest twisted with anxiety.

  What did you think would happen? You should have never dropped that mask. Put it back up now, Khalia. Be strong. Show him you don't care.

  She narrowed her eyes and brought the letters into focus. She began to read. But after twenty minutes she was still on the same page. As soon as she read a line, she'd forget what it said. She could barely draw a deep breath. Her hands trembled on the keyboard. She reached for the coffee cup and her fingernails rattled against it.

  Khalia sensed Dominic's gaze on her.

  Panic skittered across her nerves. She had remembered to take her medication, right? Why wasn't it helping?

  I need to take more.

  She reached into the drawer and pulled out the bottle. Who cared if Dom saw her? She was about to get up to use the bathroom, when another email came in from Tony Sebert.

  We’re looking to accelerate the MFP2 timeline. Can the revisions be made and the new prototypes started within two weeks?

  She glanced at Dominic. It could, yes—if they were pulling together. But now there was a saboteur in their midst. A thief.

  He was busy processing the rejection reports from Friday, along with the incident report generated after the assault. He looked freakishly normal—straight-faced, eyes flicking back and forth across the screen, fingers tapping at warp speed on the keys. Thursday, she would have looked at him tenderly. Now she wondered what was going on in his head. Was 202 going to disappear on them, too?

  Khalia pressed her clammy palms to her cheeks and got up. She slouched off to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet lid. She dropped a tablet on her tongue and struggled to swallow it, then got up and stuck her face under the faucet. The pill went down.

  She flushed the toilet and slipped back to her desk, where she spent the next hour waiting for the time-release mechanism on the medication to take its course. Meanwhile she just scrolled down the page and pretended to read. Dominic's fingers tapped incessantly on his keyboard. She fought against the pain in her chest.

  If only it were someone else. If only she had Dominic to confide in. How could she have allowed this to happen?

  Her head lolled to her chest and her eyelids sagged.

  I’m so tired.

  Get up and go to the bathroom. Don't let him see this.

  Khalia flicked the lights on and sat down on the toilet seat. She slumped against the wall and struggled to keep her eyes open. Why couldn’t she wake up? Should’ve drunk more coffee. Had she had coffee at all?

  Get up. Something's wrong.

  Khalia grabbed the handrail beside the toilet and dragged herself upright. The bathroom swam in front of her eyes. She grabbed at the door handle and fell out into the hall. She stared uncomprehending at a pair of shiny black shoes. Her heavy eyes fell shut.

  __

  “Aww crap,” Dominic heard Adam say, just around the corner. He poked his head out of the room into the hall.

  Khalia lay sprawled out on the floor at Adam’s feet, her long hair fanned out like dark reeds. Her hand clutched at air.

  “Oh God!” His first reflex was to spring to her side. He fell to his knees and rolled her away from Adam’s shiny, fake leather shoes. But in the same moment, he felt a cold, iron rod in his insides. Problem solved. She’d overdosed.

  He looked up at Adam to say so, and saw the disgusted look on his fat face, and just like that he heard the words, “Call 911” coming out of his mouth. Adam just stood there, like a frozen idiot. Dominic yanked his cell phone off his hip and punched the numbers in.

  He rode in the ambulance with her, watched the paramedics stabilize her breathing, administering antidotes to reverse the drugs. “Too much for such a tiny person,” they said. They turned to him, and one asked, “Mr. Vermeer, do you know why she was taking oxycodone?”

  He infused as much shock and confusion into his voice as he could. “She’d had surgery, I think? I haven’t worked with her long. I really don’t know.”

  “We’ll check her records.”

  Just let it run its course, Dominic.

  With that memory of her in his head? Of her shivering, naked in his arms, weeping as she said, “You can’t tell anyone.”

  Now he was just another asshole like Jeremy, about to ruin her life. Well, he’d be damned if he did. He couldn't leave Khalia any more than he could have left Sebastian.

  CHAPTER 16

  The first thing Khalia heard was the low whir of a fan.

  The room was lit by the blue morning light. She lay on her back, propped up slightly on fluffy pillows. She was cold. When her hands scrabbled over the covers, she realized they were only one thin blanket and a sheet.

  Where the heck am I?

  Oh. Oh!

  Khalia shot up in bed, gasping.

  “Hey, hey. It's okay.” Two firm hands grabbed her arms and eased her back on the bed. The kind face of a middle-aged nurse appeared over her. The nurse bent down and offered her a glass of water. It dribbled out of her lips onto her blue gown, but some of it made it down her throat.

  “You’ve
had a good sleep, and you’re all nice and stable. Just rest a while longer. Your friend said he would be in to check on you after work,” the nurse said.

  “Who?” Khalia rubbed at her burning eyes.

  “Mr. Vermeer.”

  “Huh?” Her muddled mind was shocked straight. “He was here?”

  The nurse smiled again. “He came with you in the ambulance.”

  “What happened?”

  “You took too much medication. The doctor will give you all the information. Don’t you worry. You just rest.”

  She'd overdosed. Khalia sank back onto the pillows. And Dominic had brought her here. Her job was certainly gone now. Dominic had won. Her job, her project, everything she’d worked six years for.

  She began to cry, big fat tears from her burning eyes, sobs from her gut.

  The nurse stroked her hair gently. “Hey, hey, you’re alright.”

  But she couldn’t stop crying. She wanted to throw up, or scream. Finally the nurse gave her something, and she fell asleep.

  She woke again as four fingertips traced along her jaw, up around her ear, and into her hair. Then a chair scraped across the floor, and creaked as someone settled into it. Khalia didn’t have to open her eyes to know who it was. His scent was around her. His touch was maddeningly familiar.

  She feigned sleep until she had almost gone crazy for wanting to see him, and his eyes, and get some inkling of what he was doing. No. She wouldn’t open her eyes.

  And then, about ten minutes later, the door opened and shoes clicked in.

  “Mr. Vermeer?”

  He stood. His chair pushed back and clacked against the wall, or furniture.

  “I spoke to her supervisor at Caspian. The official diagnosis is taking too much medication, or failure of the time-release mechanism.” The doctor stated it like a question. “Is that acceptable?”

  “Very good,” Dominic answered with a ring of authority. “How long did you give her?”

  “A week to recover. She needs to rest.”

  “Good.” Something papery rustled, and the doctor’s steps receded.

  Dominic sat, and his breath whooshed out.