“It has to be you,” I say, shaking from the cold which has drilled into my bones.
“Fine, yes, all right. I understand that,” he says. His prodigious eyebrows beetle together. “May I assume you’ll be doing something useful in my absence?”
“Trying to.” I manage a faint smile.
“And you’re not going to tell me what?”
“Better if I don’t.”
Sucking his upper lip in, he nods. “Very well, then, I shall do it.”
The way he squares his shoulders and the glint in his eyes makes me think he’s pleased to be going and I wonder what it’s been like for him, stuck down here in this backwater all these years. He’s had his work, but his wife and daughter died in the pandemic, and very few people here are his intellectual equals. I don’t flatter myself that I’m one of them. “No one can know you’re going,” I say.
“Of course not,” he says testily. “The security around this compound is no more effective than a sieve to someone who’s been here as long as I have. Once I’m outside”—he lays a fingers along his nose—”let’s just say I have contacts.”
The Wexl. I’ll bet Dr. Ronan—the sly old fox—has been selling Wexl to black marketeers and smugglers for decades. The challenge of it might have been one way he fought off boredom. Doubtless his contacts have ways of reaching Atlanta that don’t involve run-ins with government minions. We talk logistics and communications for a few minutes, and then I dig out the slide I kept and do a quick scan for data on the computers that might relate to Jereth’s research while Dr. Ronan disappears to his quarters “to grab a toothbrush.” I find a few files and download them to a button for him. By the time he returns, I’ve written letters to Minister Alden and Saben, as well. I give everything to Dr. Ronan who stows it in the simple briefcase he’s carrying. Minister Alden’s letter is addressed. Saben’s is not. I’ve been cautious in both of them. Swallowing hard, I ask Dr. Ronan to memorize Saben’s family’s address. “If you can do so, without danger to yourself, can you leave this letter there?” I ask. “The sooner the better.”
“You are a damn fine scientist and an even better human being,” he says gruffly. I take that as a yes, and blink away tears. They’re collecting under my lids, welling over. I wish every conversation I was having today didn’t end with goodbyes that sound so final.
Pretending not to notice my tears, he takes a step away, and then turns back to me. “People will die.” He states the fact unemotionally.
“Yes.” Hundreds, maybe thousands of geneborns will die if Idris has an effective delivery mechanism. But we can save thousands more. I only care about saving one.
The staff meeting half an hour later is torture. Everyone is gathered in Idris’s office when I arrive right on time. My gaze goes automatically to Wyck, in a chair to Idris’s right, and our eyes meet for a fleeting moment. Rhedyn is across from Wyck, on Idris’s left, sprawled in a chair with her legs stretched out and ankles crossed. Her red hair drapes down the chair’s back. She offers me a disgruntled, “About time.” Beside her, Fiere is peeling one of the new blue citrus hybrids the dome is producing, and a spiral of greeny-blue skin encircles her hand. The lively scent energizes the room. She doesn’t look at me and I can’t tell if Wyck had a chance to talk to her or not. Chrysto is beside Wyck, sitting straight, his knee unobtrusively touching Wyck’s under the table. He smiles at me and kicks out the chair beside him so I can sit.
Idris stands at the head of the table, black hair pulled back at his nape, a line etched between his brows. His gaze rests on me as I sit, and I force myself to return his look with a faintly questioning one. My time dissimulating as Derrika Ealy in Atlanta serves me well. The habit of lying with my posture, my expressions, my eyes comes back easily. Too easily. His expression slides from distrust to uncertainty, and then goes blank. He turns away from me to address the whole table. “Jereth is dead.”
He makes his announcement and leans forward, hands gripping the table’s edge.
Questions spring up around the table: “What happened?” “When?” “Was it the food poisoning?”
“An accident . . . apparently.” He doesn’t expound. His gaze skewers me. “Jax.”
I try to stay casual, but sweat trickles between my breasts. Did someone see me near the hyfac, or overhear me and Wyck questioning Jereth? I raise my brows, waiting for more.
“The food poisoning. Have you tracked the source?”
Relief floods through me. I tell them what my team and I have learned by analyzing the particularly virulent strain of e. coli and investigating the area around the compound. The contamination entered our irrigation system from an encampment of people, possibly outlaws, living upstream of the Kube. Their sanitation systems left a lot to be desired, I say to winces and looks of disgust around the table, but I assess the food poisoning as accidental rather than deliberate. Idris directs Fiere to get rid of the camp by any means necessary.
“They’ll be gone by noon tomorrow,” she promises him. She pops a segment of fruit into her mouth and chews, seeming more relaxed than anyone in the room. I become increasingly certain that Wyck didn’t have a chance to talk to her.
It goes on like that, with Idris and the others discussing and dealing with various pieces of business, one or two of them operational, but most logistical or administrative. Idris is decisive, two steps ahead of his deputies on most of the issues. An itchy mood pervades the small room, and people shift in their chairs and take potshots at each other. Jereth’s name is not mentioned again until the meeting’s end.
Idris dismisses the meeting, but says, “Jax, stay behind. I need to talk to you about a project Jereth was working on. You may need to take it over now that he’s gone.”
My mouth drops open half an inch. Is he serious? His expression is slightly challenging, and he looks annoyed when Wyck breaks in to say, “Ah, actually, I need to talk to you, Idris. It’s important.”
Idris’s jaw shifts to the left and his assessing look moves from me to Wyck. “Fine. We’ll talk first thing in the morning, Jax. It can wait until then.”
“I’ll be here at oh-seven-hundred.” I duck out of the room before he can call me back. The others have scattered, including Fiere. Damn. Wyck and I can take on Idris in the armory, but I’d feel a lot better about our chances if Fiere was with us.
Buzzing with nervous energy, I take the stairs instead of the elevator. An iris scan gets me into the armory and the biolume fixtures light up as I enter. No guards. Wyck must have posted them elsewhere. The room is cave-like and smells of cold metal and cordite. Racks of weapons and supplies form rows that run the length of the room. I take a single step inside and sense someone behind me. Before I can turn, my right arm is twisted up painfully between my shoulder blades.
“Rule one,” Fiere says in my ear. “Be alert.” She releases me with a little shove and a laugh.
I suck in a breath, three parts relieved and one part pissed off. “Don’t you ever get tired of that?”
“Gotta keep you sharp,” she says.
“Wyck talked to you.”
She nods, growing serious. “I didn’t believe him at first. I thought he was having me on, talking about a bio-weapon that targets only geneborns.”
“He convinced you.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” She gets tactical. “I think it works best if one of us hides on each side of the room, behind that shelf of beamers for you, and I’ll duck below this pallet of comm gear. We let Wyck lead Idris down that aisle”—she chops her arm straight ahead—”to show him the ‘missing’ equipment, and we come in behind them. We don’t want to kill him, so we’ll use ESDs, not beamers.” She hands me an electrical signal disrupter. “The three of us should be able to drop him. If not, I’ve got a lot to answer for since I helped train both of you. And, I must say, Wyck does me proud.”
Her taunting look challenges me to retort, but I pass up the opportunity, too tense for banter. Muscles tight, I move into position, merging with a
shadow behind the beamers, holding my ESD along my side. Fiere drops out of sight behind a huge steel box. Wyck and Idris could be here any minute. I try to slow my breathing and untense my muscles, but it’s impossible. There’s too much on the line. If this goes wrong . . . A minute ticks by, then another. Where are they? A spot between my shoulder blades itches. It’s driving me crazy. Did Idris refuse to come with Wyck? Or, worse, did he see through the story somehow and detain Wyck? I scrunch my toes inside my boots.
I hear a footstep first, the heavy slap of a boot. Then voices, faint but getting louder. They’re coming. I feel lightheaded, but focus on the doorway. Wyck enters, moving a bit jerkily. Idris is right behind him, striding confidently, not looking around, unaware of the trap we’ve set. Wyck is saying, “. . . fifty grenades. Let me show you.” They head down the aisle.
As if our movements are choreographed, Fiere and I emerge from our hiding places and close in behind them. Idris has his back to us, facing Wyck, but he must hear us or sense a change in the air current, because he spins, quick as a cat, and launches a knuckle strike at Fiere’s throat. It’s a killing blow. She snakes her head aside and it lands on her shoulder. As she staggers, she gets in a kick to his knee. It buckles. While he’s off-balance, Wyck grabs him from behind, securing his shoulders. I approach, press the ESD against his thigh as he throws his head back toward Wyck’s face, and pull the trigger. He spasms and crumples.
“Restraints,” Fiere bites out and Wyck pulls maglock cuffs from an inside uniform pockets, flips Idris on his side, and secures his hands behind him. Idris isn’t unconscious, and he kicks at Wyck’s ankle in an uncoordinated way. I ease his beamer from the back holster and place it out of reach on a shelf. We all breathe heavily even though the fight lasted less than thirty seconds, and exchange looks of guarded triumph. It went easier than it might have.
Grabbing Idris by his shoulders, Wyck pulls him to a seated position and leans him against the shelf, then he steps back and levels his beamer at his former commander.
Full awareness settles on Idris’s face and he stabs each of us with his gaze. “Traitors,” he says in a conversational voice. He shifts on his buttocks, trying to find a more comfortable position on the concrete floor. A thigh muscle jitters, still affected by the electrical current, and his leg bounces against the floor. After a moment it stops.
I’m taken aback by his calm.
“You killed Jereth.” He sounds neither surprised nor outraged; it’s obviously a possibility he has already considered. “What did he tell you?” Although he tries to hide it, there’s a hint of tension in the question. He wants to know how much we know.
“Everything,” I say at the same time Wyck says, “Enough.”
The three of us stand in a semi-circle around Idris, looking down at him, and he nods and says, “Immaterial. Help me stand, would you? This floor is damn cold.”
I shoot a look at Wyck and he shrugs, keeping his beamer pointed at Idris. Fiere and I each put a hand under Idris’s armpits and drag him upright. Standing restores some of his cockiness, not that he ever lost all of it. Unease tickles at me. Even Idris’s sangfroid should have been dented by being overpowered by three of his deputies.
“What do you mean it’s immaterial?” I ask.
His mocking gaze lands on my face. “Just what I said, sister-mine.”
I sense Fiere’s jolt to my left. I should have told her.
Idris cocks his head her way and asks, “Oh, didn’t you know? Jax is quite the one for keeping secrets. Don’t you wonder what else she hasn’t told you?” He makes a tsking sound.
Wyck’s eyes cut to me and doubt or hurt flickers in them. “Shut up,” he tells Idris.
Apparently satisfied that he has sown discord between us, Idris answers my question. “Jereth’s work was done. He was invaluable to the Defiance but his death is now immaterial. His virus concoction—I’m sure you understand the technical details better than I do, Jax—is out there. It’s being distributed in major population centers as we speak. Every last geneborn is going to die.” As he speaks his face darkens and he gets louder until he’s yelling the last words. “Die” echoes.
An image of Saben as ill as the prisoner I saw this morning darts into my head. It’s all I can do to keep from launching myself at Idris and scratching his eyes out. Instead, I stay where I am and say in a scathing voice, “It’s a good thing Alexander’s not alive to see what you’ve turned into. He would be ashamed of you.” I say it to hurt him, to rattle him into revealing his plans, but it’s true, too.
Idris’s face drains of color. His eyes burn like dark coals and I sense his intention a split second before he lowers his head and charges toward me. His hands are still secured behind his back, but the muscles in his legs power him forward. He uses his head as a battering ram and thuds into my chest with wicked force, knocking me off my feet. I slam to the concrete floor, cracking my head. Idris lands on top of me. He’s using his head and his shoulders to pummel me and pain flares brightly in my cheek before Wyck and Fiere haul him off.
I scramble up, wiping his spittle off my face, and taste blood on my lip. I don’t know if it’s mine or his because his nose is streaming red gore. My chest aches and I breathe slowly and deliberately, wondering if he broke a rib or two. I press a hand gingerly to my right side. Nothing to be done about it, if so.
“Are you okay?” Wyck asks me, still hanging onto Idris.
I nod.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Fiere says. “How are you distributing the virus?”
Idris manages a gurgly laugh and hunches one shoulder up and twists his head down to wipe the blood from his nose. “Fuck you, Fiere.”
Her expression not changing an iota, she jabs a punch at his nose. There’s a sickening crunch of cartilage and more blood. It drips to the floor, each drop splatting audibly.
“How are you distributing the virus?” she asks again in the same unemotional tone.
Idris lets his head hang, his hair draping his face, hiding his expression. He takes a moment to compose himself, but then looks up, all the old mockery in his eyes, although the skin around them is drawn tight with pain. “You always wanted Alexander for a father, didn’t you? You hated me for being his son. You were jealous. You still are. And now you have to live with the fact that Jax is his daughter and you’re not. Does that sting, Fiere?”
My gaze flits to Fiere to see how she’s taking his needling, but her face reveals nothing.
“How are you distributing the virus?” she asks a third time. Her knee flashes up and slams into his crotch.
Wyck winces in sympathy as Idris crumples. He and Fiere are still holding him by the upper arms, and his weight drags them forward half a step.
“That’s enough,” Idris yells when he catches his breath.
For the barest moment, I think he’s capitulating, but his voice is full of defiance and energy. Danger. I’m half-turning to meet the threat, reaching for Idris’s beamer on the shelf near me, when Rhedyn’s cold voice says, “Drop your weapons.”
I instinctively start to bring the beamer around, but there’s a sizzle and it tears out of my hands and whangs into the metal shelving.
Chapter Thirteen
“Hold your fire, you fool,” Rhedyn yells, anger and fear in her voice and I remember we’re in the armory. A ricochet could set off untold numbers of weapons. I’m vaguely aware of the clomping of many booted feet as I look for cover. Fiere and Wyck use Idris as a shield and drag him backward with them, away from Rhedyn and whoever is with her, but are stopped after a few steps by Defiers coming up behind them from the other end of the aisle. We’re surrounded. I put up my hands, scanning the grim circle of faces just waiting for an excuse, or an order from Idris, to blast us.
“Let him go,” Rhedyn bites out, gesturing with her beamer.
Wyck and Fiere shove Idris away from them and he stumbles almost into Faruq who steadies him and frees him from the cuffs. He straightens, turning to face us where we
’re clustered together, inside a circle made up of eleven of his loyal troops. When he smiles, there’s blood on his teeth.
“You didn’t really think you could take me so easily, did you? Once I knew you’d seen the prisoners, I was ready, waiting for an attack or an attempt to lure me into a trap.”
The sick guard. He’d told someone Wyck and I had been in the prison wing. We shouldn’t have written him off. Our misjudgment will cost us our lives.
“When Wyck told me weapons were going missing, I knew this was it. Rhedyn and her squad have been here all along.” He jerks his head and the Defiers closest to us grab hold of our arms. The one holding me has a face sheened with sweat and breath that smells like vomit. “Before we take you out and execute you like the traitorous scum you are, you might as well know that even as we speak, Defiance agents are planting aerosolized virus bombs in population centers across Amerada.”
He’s boasting. He wants us to applaud his cleverness. I grip my lips together, determined not to exclaim or say anything. I won’t give him the satisfaction.
“They will go off simultaneously in three days. That will give me time to alert the High Command and lead the massing of our forces for a fatal blow.”
“The High Command won’t go along with it,” Fiere says. “They’re not into mass murder.”
“That’s why I’m not telling them until it’s happened. Once the virus is out there”—he shrugs—”well, they may bemoan it in public, but they’ll be grateful for such a simple and comprehensive way to achieve our goals. Within a week, geneborns will start falling ill. The Prags will be in confusion, medical centers overwhelmed, government workers and soldiers dropping like flies. Or, I guess I should say, like rabid dogs.” His smile is a slice of red and white. “They’ll be begging us to shoot them as we move into the cities.”
Regeneration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 3) Page 14