by C. M. Adams
“I need someone to take a look at the Defectors’ weapons that were confiscated today. There may be some sort of modifications that can slow regeneration.”
“Sounds like we’ll need forensics then, too. No weapon’s gonna slow down our re-gen time. Not unless it’s biological.”
“Then assemble a team, Maverick,” she replied. “I’ve got agents down and we don’t have time for it.”
“I’ll get it set up. Be there within the hour. Just make sure I have clearance this time, will ya?”
“You’ll be cleared. Kale out.” She seemed glad for the discussion to be over with. She looked to Birdie, “Do you need a break?”
“Um…” she hesitated.
“I need coffee,” Kale told her. “I should eat, but I need coffee. And it looks like we’ve got some time.”
“I know a place,” Brian raised his hand.
“There’s only one place,” Kale shook her head.
“Oh. Oh yeah.”
FOUR
“How long do we need to do this underground thing for?” Birdie asked as they sat down with their coffee in the cafe that she’d been in earlier that day. It was strange knowing it was underground. She was grateful though, at least, that the windows were covered in copper-colored blinds, hiding that there was nothing but more evidence that they weren’t top-side. Her claustrophobia was starting to kick in a little.
“I’ll be advised when the media is finished. Military is sent here on top-secret orders for clean-up.”
“How will they explain the plane being here?” Birdie asked.
“Emergency landing, most likely. They’ll tell the public that the plane was flying to Fort Myers, encountered technical problems, and crashed here. None of us can be top-side for it. It’s an exposure risk if there’s anyone out there that could recognize one of us.”
“Just think,” Brian chimed in, “If you were home watching the five o’clock news and you saw me walking around in the background,” he smirked.
“Yeah,” Birdie shook her head. “I’d fly out here in a heartbeat, just to make sure I wasn’t crazy.”
“Exactly,” Kale replied. “We’ll have to stay under until the wreckage and bodies are cleared. It could be days.”
“Oh,” Birdie looked down into her mug of coffee.
Brian appraised his sister from where he sat beside her. Her suddenly tense form was a clear warning of what could come. He put a hand on her back, even though he knew she didn’t like accepting this kind of comfort. Brian wasn’t the kind of guy that followed rules that didn’t make sense to him. “Hey, it’s totally okay,” he told her. “It’s like an ecosystem down here. There’s fresh air.” He looked over at Kale who had a brow raised in question. “She’s claustrophobic,” he explained quietly.
“I am not,” she retorted. “I’m just…”
“You start to panic in confined spaces. You’re claustrophobic, Birdie,” Brian repeated.
“I can handle it.”
“You can handle it in small doses. But not knowing how long you’ll be in one, you start to freak out.”
“Are you trying to get me to punch you in the face, right now?” she looked at him incredulously.
Brian smirked, “Better angry than scared.”
“I’m not scared,” she pushed him.
“You don’t let yourself show it, but you are so.”
“You can feel free to shut the hell up, any time now, Brian,” she glared at him, and he raised his hands in surrender. “Seriously,” she looked over at Kale, “It’s not that big a deal.” She looked back down at her coffee, trying to fight off the feeling of embarrassment. “I’m going to use the restroom,” she told them as she got up from the table.
Once Birdie disappeared behind the bathroom door, Kale noticed that Brian seemed to regret having given her a hard time. He folded his hands around the warmth of his mug and peered into it. “I was just trying to get her to focus her attention on something else,” he said. Kale wasn’t sure if he was thinking out loud, or explaining it to her. “To keep her from getting panicked,” he continued. “I mean, I’m not claustrophobic, but being down here makes me feel that way after a while.” He looked up at her with an awkward half-smile. “I imagine everyone does.”
“I don’t,” Kale replied, raising her brows. “I find it rather comforting, actually.”
“Comforting,” Brian looked at her from the side, skeptically.
“It’s safer under here,” she argued, neither of them seeing Birdie coming back from the restroom now. “The bomb on the plane, for instance, wouldn’t have been able to penetrate this level. Also, there’s no reason to fear being in this particular confined area. It’s larger than most cities, for one. Its construction is pure genius; not requiring electricity in order to function. In fact, there are several backup energy sources that keep it running. It’s highly unlikely that they would ever all fail.”
“Highly unlikely doesn’t mean impossible,” Birdie said as she sat back down at the table with them.
“One way to get over an irrational fear is to—”
“It’s not irrational,” Birdie interrupted Kale.
Kale raised a brow at this. “On the contrary, an irrational fear is a fear that an individual experiences that doesn’t necessarily have any basis behind it.”
“But it does,” she argued. “And it’s not really a fear. If I fear anything, it’s the possibility of suffocation.”
“That is also irrational,” Kale replied. “For us, anyway.”
“I don’t care that it couldn’t permanently kill me,” Birdie retorted. “And I especially don’t like the fact that I could die on multiple occasions from the same thing. Oh… oh god,” a slightly horrified look plastered her face. “What if there are… people out there; Proprietors that haven’t been kept track of, and they died and were buried, and they woke up in their grave, only to suffocate and die and wake up again and again…”
“Whoa there, sis,” Brian put his hand on her shoulder. “That imagination. Sometimes it surprises me that you’re not the writer in this family.”
“Regeneration can’t process without oxygen,” Kale told her. “We’ve had to exhume bodies in the past. Our bodies don’t begin regeneration until the oxygen levels in the surrounding environment are normal or higher.”
“So, the same would happen for drowning, or being burned to…” Birdie’s eyes grew wide and she looked over to Brian. “We… we had you cremated!” she nearly shouted, then looked back to Kale. “We can come back from that?”
“Actually, no,” Kale looked back and forth between the two of them. “You signed off for him to be cremated. But he never got that far.”
“I have his ashes… I mean I had…”
“Funny thing about a lot of those places,” Kale told her, “Is they don’t mind ‘donating a body to science’ for the right price. What you had was beach sand mixed with fireplace ash and some crushed animal bones. You are correct, however.”
“Uh… about what, now?” Birdie was slightly confused as she was still processing this information.
“Being burned to death. If it’s to the degree of cremation, there is no coming back from that. At least, not to our knowledge. There have been occasions where we were too late to retrieve the body. Early enough before regeneration would’ve started, mind you. Some people waste no time putting deceased family members to rest.”
Birdie and Brian sat in silence for a few moments as Kale took a long drink from her coffee cup. “I guess it’s a good thing we waited,” Birdie said a bit quietly…
* * *
Brian led Birdie back to their apartment, through the tunnels. These tunnels were a lot bigger, of course. Aside from the obvious fact that they were underground, it was the same set up as it had been up top. The tunnels were wide and endless. Each standing structure that had been lowered into the ground had its own second foundation in the tunnels, with the lowering structure doubling as a support system for the high ceilings
. Birdie felt a little better that she wasn’t having to duck as she walked. The ceilings were at least thirty feet high.
In the blue-tinted lighting, the copper-colored metal and gears took on a more dazzling look. They seemed out of place in the real world. She’d never seen anything like it, outside of fantasy movies she’d seen in her childhood.
“This place is kind of insane,” Birdie commented as they walked.
“I thought we’d already established that.”
“I mean, other than the obvious. The way this place was built, is what I’m talking about. Did the military build it? I know the debriefing area is an old submarine. And I get why it’s separate from everything else. But it seems so out of place compared to all of this,” she waved her hand around at the buildings.
“The military built the tunnels,” Brian told her. “That much I know. It was a lot different before they started constructing for life up top. Apparently there’s this guy, a First-gen, that was this brilliant scientist and mechanical engineer. He came up with the design for everything, and helped build the place. He created the energy system, too. Rumor has it, he was a bit claustrophobic as well,” he smirked. “The military’s system wasn’t adequate enough for his taste, and so he decided to fix it.”
“How do you know so much about that?” Birdie queried.
“Research,” he replied. “Sometimes when I’m writing about my own fictitious world, I tend to forget about the fact that I live pretty much in one, myself. I like to learn about this place; what they let us, anyway. A lot of it is very hush hush, top secret.”
“Why?”
“I think it has to do with whatever those military guys came over for. For safety reasons, I guess. They don’t tell us everything, because they fear if any of us run away, we might be a danger to the rest of us.”
“Makes sense,” she nodded as they continued to walk. “What was his name? The engineer…”
“It’s listed as Rowland ‘Rollo’ Oswyn.”
“That doesn’t sound like an American name,” she commented.
“He wasn’t American,” he confirmed, glancing at her. “That’s the first thing I noticed, too. So I dug a little deeper and discovered he’d come to America with his family as a young man. He was a brilliant inventor and engineer and they recruited him for the military as a strategist, for his renowned genius. His interest in science had him crawling all over the experimental serum, insisting he be part of the trial.”
“There’s public information about all of this?” Birdie looked doubtful.
“Not… really,” he replied. “Remember that friend I told you about?”
“The one that was arrested?”
“That’s the one,” he half-grinned. “He discovered this after years of prying with drunken First-gens on many lonely Friday nights.”
“Something tells me you carried on that legacy after he left.”
“What ever would give you that idea?” he raised a brow, a smirk playing on his lips.
Birdie let out an amused laugh. “So… Oswyn. I take it he’s one of the First-gens that is no longer with us?”
“No one seems to know the answer to that,” Brian told her as they came into view of their apartment building. “Rumor has it he left with the Defectors. But his interests seemed so loyal to this place, it doesn’t seem like that would be the case. He might’ve been killed. Like permanently.”
“Assassinated?”
“Who knows,” he replied with a sigh as they reached their front door. “It doesn’t make much sense, though, to kill off someone who was so important to this place.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed, then was overpowered by a yawn.
“Oh don’t start that,” Brian chided, then was hit with a yawn of his own. “Damn you!”
“Sorry!” she laughed. “I’m kind of exhausted.”
“Your first day top-side on Pritchard’s Island has been an exceptional one. And you just got a huge promotion, as temporary as it might be. I think you should probably get a little sleep before it starts all over again in the morning.”
As they stepped into the apartment, a realization dawned on Birdie. “Oh hell,” she shook her head.
“What?” Brian turned in question.
“Reesy and Emmett. I’m supposed to shop with them tomorrow. God, what if they were hurt today? How can I find out? Are there phones?” she looked worriedly around the room for signs of such a device.
“Alright, first of all,” Brian said in a calming tone, “Civilians aren’t really allowed, nor do they have reason to be around the landing strip. They’re probably fine.” He watched as Birdie swallowed and nodded. “Secondly, no phones. Too easy to slip up and call the outside world. But we do have a communication device for anywhere on our part of the island.” He walked over to the couch and moved a few things off of the coffee table, revealing an embedded console that Birdie wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.
The coffee table was a rectangular box made of the same type of material she’d seen on the buildings. The top’s surface was so smooth it almost looked like glass. But when Brian pressed a brass button, and a panel opened up, it was clear to her that it wasn’t.
“PICS, it’s Brian Farran,” he said. Birdie glanced around the room for a moment, in slight confusion.
“Good evening, Brian Farran. How can I connect you?” a child’s voice sounded from the console.
“Teresa Jane, please,” he said.
“Contacting. Please hold.” Brian motioned for Birdie to come sit beside him, as they waited.
“PICS?” she questioned.
“Pritchard’s Island Comm System,” he explained. “Anyone you wanna contact, you can ask for through voice command. It’ll call the recipient and ask them if they’re available to take a call. If they accept, it’ll patch us through. If they don’t wanna take it, or they’re not home, it’ll give us an option to leave a video message.”
“Ah,” she nodded in understanding. “So we’ve gotta be presentable in order to make a call.”
“Well, not necessarily. There’s an audio-only option, as well. Just have to specify it to PICS.”
“Connecting now,” the voice said, finally, and a hologram screen like the one Birdie had seen at the precinct popped up over the table.
Reesy’s face came into view and Birdie suddenly felt a flush of relief. “Oh good! You’re okay,” she told her.
“Hey there, Birdie,” she waved. “Hey, Brian. Glad to see you two are okay. Crazy first day top-side, huh?”
“Definitely not dull. Have you heard from Emmett?”
“He was called in to O.S as part of a research team.”
“With Maverick,” Birdie surmised, and Reesy nodded. “Have they made any progress?”
“I’m honestly not sure. You’d probably hear about it before I would. Speaking of, how’d your first day on the job go?”
Birdie grimaced for a split second. “Considering I’m training as I go? I guess it wasn’t too bad.”
“There’s like four Observers that aren’t in regeneration,” Brian chimed in. “Birdie totally got promoted.”
“Promotion on your first day? You go, girl,” she smiled.
“I’d hardly call for congratulations,” Birdie half-grinned. “But thanks. Anyway, sorry to bug you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Well I’m glad you bugged me, sweetie. And I’m glad you two are okay, too. I’m gonna have to go help out at R.R tomorrow, so I have to rain-check our shopping trip again. Sorry.” she grimaced, hating to cancel on her.
“That’s okay,” Birdie replied. “I have a feeling I’m gonna be wearing a uniform for a while, anyway.”
“And I can take her to get a few things, in the meantime,” Brian offered.
“He’s actually not half bad at picking out nice clothes,” she smiled, brows raised.
“Oh honey, I know,” she told her. “We dragged him shopping his first day up, and he barely needed any help once we got him
to the store.” Birdie shared a small laugh. “Alright, sugar. I’ve gotta go. Get some sleep. I’ll see you later.”
“Bye Reesy,” Birdie waved.
“Bye, Reese,” Brian waved as well. “Tell Jodie I said hey.”
“Will do,” she smiled, and Birdie saw as she reached for something in front of the screen, and the call ended.
Birdie let out a sigh, then turned to Brian. “Please tell me we get better beds than what they had in debriefing.”
“Oh of course,” he said, scrunching up his face for a moment as if that should’ve been obvious. “Come on,” he stood and made his way around the couch. “I have something you can sleep in for tonight, too.” He led Birdie down a narrow hallway to the bedroom on the far end. The light flickered on as they entered it. “I hate how the lighting looks when we’re underground,” he commented as he walked to his dresser.
Birdie looked around his bedroom and noted how much, even with the completely different style of furniture available to them on the island, it looked like Brian’s room, sans the trash. There were clothes strewn about on the floor, empty coffee cups from the shop on his end table, and general disarray. It didn’t smell bad. It smelled like him, though. Like Brian before the drugs. Something inside of her felt as though it burst. Something like the little glass tube filled with hydrogen peroxide that lays within the casing of a glow stick. Only, instead of glowing as it mixed with everything else, it ignited underlying emotion that she’d been able to re-shelve a little of, since finding him that morning.
Brian found a pair of drawstring pajama pants and a tee shirt amongst the disaster that was his second drawer. “These should do,” he said before turning to hand them to her. But he froze in the action when he saw that there were tears streaming down her face. “I-I’m sorry it’s a mess,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting anyone, and usually don’t have people over…” Birdie’s breath picked up and her face skewed with something Brian rarely ever saw her outwardly express. There was panic and sadness in her eyes. “Birdie?” he dropped the clothes as his heart clenched in his chest, and he took the few steps to reach her. “Birdie, what’s wrong?” he put his hands on her shoulders and forced her to meet his eyes.