Escape (Alliance Book 1)

by Inna Hardison

  She was distractedly doodling on a napkin with her immaculately un-chewed pencil. Jason chewed all of his, to barely centimeter-sized nubs. She always razzed him about that lousy habit, telling him that it was impossible for him to ever hide his DNA, constantly wearing gloves notwithstanding. She giggled to herself at the thought of Jason ever needing to hide anything from anyone. That man-child was an open book. A very thorough and efficient open book. And not altogether bad looking. But he was far too taken with her fame, such as it was, and her reputation as an anti-sexer to ever see her that way. Just as well, she thought. Just as well.

  She looked up at the sound of ice clinking. Charlie refilled her drink without asking if she'd wanted one. She did. She had allowed Jason to look into him once, years ago, when it seemed everyone was trying their damndest to make her stop her research. They were all afraid for her then, and walking home alone, going to a pub, none of these seemed safe.

  She needed her alone time then more than ever, and so she conceded to Jason running a background check on Charlie, and her doorman, and the occasional flower delivery boy when she had to send flowers to the parents of the kids she couldn't save. That was when you could still send flowers. And when there were doormen, she thought wryly.

  But Charlie was still here, and he checked out alright. A wife of 23 years who died in a car crash, two boys fighting in one god awful place or another. Two lost boys he thinks about all the time but can't touch. Two boys whose faces are frozen in the only not-dusty frame behind the beer kegs. A smiling red-headed chap of about 20 and a somber looking younger kid, standing on some beach next to a cold looking sea or ocean, staring directly into the camera. For some reason she'd always wanted to ask Charlie who took the photo, but never quite got the courage to. Somehow she always knew that it wasn't Charlie. That even in that photograph they were already lost to him.

  She looked down at her doodles. Symmetrical, yet sloppy. She crumpled the napkin and flicked it into the ashtray, watching a small spray of ashes or dust rise quickly and fall back, slowly. She turned away. They needed to find a way of testing the compound on human subjects now. They would need to sell it to the board, of course, but they still had plenty of money for the meds, and the research part of it seemed to be almost over. She'd be willing as a subject, but that would mean her actually having sex, and she had nobody to do it with. They would need a sample of at least a hundred healthy, appropriately aged females, preferably between 20-34, of different races, in case there is an immunity that's genetically based, all willing to go on record about every intimate experience, preferably with multiple partners, or they would have to test the health of every man in the sample as well, which likely won't be feasible.

  Charlie was staring at her, intently. Asking without asking what was bothering her. In an uncharacteristic and likely Gin and Tonic fueled looseness of tongue, she looked him dead in the face and blurted out, "I need to find about one hundred healthy, youngish females willing to have lots of sex on the record for my research," and she broke down laughing. It was the most unlike her thing she'd ever said in this place, or most places outside of her lab, and it was strangely liberating. She was collecting her things when Charlie, rather gravely, responded, "Prostitutes?"

  That's it. Prostitutes. They do the sex thing for money every day. For very little money, nowadays. And birth control is rarely an option, as it costs far too much for the girls and the men don't particularly care if they impregnate a prostitute... This could indeed be the most perfect drink she's ever had at this pub.

  She ran back to the clinic and then to her lab only to find it deserted and the lights off. She looked at her phone: 3:21 a.m. Everyone was asleep, at home, and would remain so until at least 8:00 in the morning, when Jason would come in bearing a thermos of coffee and a pair of nutro-bars. He was always worried she'd forget to eat to the point of starving herself to death, so at the very least, she was guaranteed this bit of tasteless but highly nutritious breakfast, all 940 calories of it.

  She pulled out her cot and folded her winter coat under her head for a pillow. She needed a blanket. She's always needed a blanket, or anything really to pull over her body to be able to sleep, even in the summer. It wasn't a warmth thing, it was a comfort thing, this needing to feel the weight of something covering her. The pillow she could do without, so she unfurled her coat over herself and curled up, arms over her head, and flicked the light switch off. Tomorrow, she would task Jason with finding the human test subjects. Anything that happens after that she didn't yet want to think about.

  For all these years, all she wanted was to find a way of making pregnancy be a choice that required a physician's intervention, not the other way around. Making it so that parents never had to bury their young because there was simply not enough food and warmth to keep them safe past breastfeeding, and at times, not even then. She was saving the dead babies from ever been born accidentally, thinking that if pregnancy did not almost automatically follow sex, she'd see fewer corpses of newborns on the streets, or starved, obviously abandoned toddlers breaking into old apartment buildings just to keep warm for one more night, subsisting on snow water and god knows what else. This, what they may have just discovered, would cost almost nothing to make. It would fix this. They could make these pills available for nothing with the freely donated meds and still have enough research funds left over to use for distribution. They could put up automated dispensaries in all the cities where one could anonymously take one pill and have no chance of having babies from simply being intimate with someone, or maybe, they could work it into a routine vaccine protocol.

  They would have to come up with a reversal procedure of course, for when someone genuinely wanted to have a child, but now that they know what compounds work, it would be something as simple as putting together one shot or pill that negates the initial effect. This would take a little bit of the cash they have left, and maybe a few months to perfect the delivery method. It would be a small price to pay for giving people this kind of control, a very small price to pay for not having to bury so many babies.

  She closed her eyes and for the millionth time she remembered when she learned what she would end up doing with her years of med school and pathology training. She drifted much against her will to the one dream she wished she never had again and couldn't stop herself from dreaming, knowing the whole time it was a memory. It was all far too real, and after all these years, still far too close, too intimate, too detailed to not wake up screaming in the middle of. And far too personal to ever share with Jason or Charlie or her thankfully now-dead mother... She was drifting into it yet again.

  The snow had just began to melt, not enough to turn to slush, but enough to feel uncomfortably slidy underfoot. It was the tail end of the first week of April, and the trees and shrubs on her street seemed to eye the world with curiosity again. She could almost smell the promise of green steaming off the trunks and branches, and the rare plush buds appearing here and there drew her to them with their impossible new softness. She'd take her gloves off and timidly run her fingers over the sides of the buds, inhale their still stale, almost mildewy scent, and spend far too much time imagining what the next week or month or year would bring, and she'd have to run to not miss her train to school.

  This was an every Spring occurrence and as much as she wanted to tear herself away from this examining, from this prying into the secret world of newness, she couldn't pull away in time to not be late. So she ran, through the slippery snow, pulling her hat and scarf off in the process for suddenly feeling hotter than the weather report indicated she should, and still hoping to catch that very last car of the train, even if she had to hitch a ride on the outside ledge. Sometimes she made it. More often than not, she did not, and on those days, as there was no longer any point in trying to get to school, she'd wander the streets of Manchester, following whatever streets caught her attention phonetically.

  On that day the street that appealed to her was called Madeline. She always thoug
ht of that word as indicative of some mysterious female, certainly not something as commonplace as a type of pastry. It drew her, and she walked for what seemed an inordinately long time. The hat and the scarf went back on. She was chilled to the bone now, and nothing on this street promised a solace of a well heated hearth. The entire street seemed to be abandoned. The apartment buildings, shops, pubs - everything was boarded up, closed, deserted. Not even stray cats or dogs were roaming this street.

  She felt the urge to turn around and run back to the main stretch, but as she looked back towards the road she came from, she suddenly saw it: smallish hills, inorganic, too similar in size and too evenly spread not to be man-made. They were dotting the snowbanks in almost straight lines, the snow now melting, tiny crosses made from sticks in the top of each. So many of them, lining both sides of the street.

  She stood there, frozen, and watched the bits of white powder slide off the tiny bodies buried underneath. So, so tiny. She screamed then, but it didn't matter. She was alone with dozens of corpses of babies defrosting into the new Spring, one that should have been their first, by the looks of it. She ran then. Fast. As fast as her feet and lungs could take. Only this dream, this memory was always just behind her. Even now when she may have just solved this entire mess. After the 20-hour days, and death threats, and no one to share her bed with, this street still followed her.

  She sat up and pressed "2" for Jason. She was still his boss, and if she needed to wake him up, so be it. She needed a bloody hug, and for the first time in all these years of working with him, she was not ashamed to ask him for one.

  The Fence

  Riley, March 16, 2226 Waller, NY

  Riley was fuming mad at Brody for getting him in trouble with Mr. Sanders again. He knew that by the time he got home, his parents will have been pacing the small yard out back for an hour, thinking of a suitable punishment. In that regard, Brody was lucky. His parents were gone, and his uncle had no stomach for discipline. Maybe that's why he did it. Always talking back to Sanders, laughing at his stuttering, without even trying to hide it.

  But Brody had no right to drag him into his stupid fights with the headmaster. None whatsoever. And yet, every single time he did something stupid, he stuck up for him, played along in whatever game Brody had concocted, so that he wouldn't be alone in it. Ever since he'd lost Ella, Brody was it. The only person he could talk to about stuff that actually mattered, things that were never assigned as homework, and things his parents would never ask him about or talk about in his presence.

  After his performance in school the last few months, he was pretty certain he'd be severely beaten and then grounded. Locked up in their shack of a house for a month maybe, unable to even coax them into letting him walk Samson. Curse you, Brody, and your stupid big mouth.

  It would start to warm up soon. The air he was sucking into his lungs no longer pricked, and the metallic smell of coldness was almost gone. The snow would be melting by the end of the week, he thought. His favorite time of year, and he'd miss most of it. The newness of the buds, the first flies and bugs spreading their little translucent wings, shaking off the long sleep of winter. Or maybe they weren't alive in the winter at all and will just be born with the Spring - he didn't know. Biology was not something he'd be allowed to touch for a few years yet. But it didn't matter. The bugs mattered. He liked watching them. In some of them, you could see their insides if you were lucky enough to get that close without spooking them.

  Brody stuck a dragonfly on a needle once and brought it to him. By the time he saw it, the dragonfly was not moving. It had just sat there, the dead wings extended out, the big black eyes still, not seeing anything anymore. He'd cried then, right in front of Brody, and Ella had comforted him, had gotten him to stop crying. He didn't talk to Brody for six months after that.

  But Ella was gone now. He slowed down at the end of Willis, buying himself a bit more time. He could see the corner of their roof just beyond the trees now. He could almost see his father, chewing on a sprig of something or other he picked up from their little herb garden, or at least that's what mom called it. It was really just a dozen old pots with dirt in them, and just a few always struggling plants craning their necks to the sun. Mint and rosemary and something else whose name always escaped him were the only things that ever took.

  Father always told mother to put the plants inside for the winter, but their house was so dark, mother knew that even in the midst of the coldest winter, the plants would be better off outside, feeding on light as they did.

  The days when she'd spot new growth in one of her pots were the happiest. She'd sing to herself while cooking supper. She'd tuck him and even Ella to bed at night. She'd hug father, unprovoked. She'd even laugh at something silly Samson did on occasion.

  He remembered coming home the day they'd taken Ella, only that would happen later, and mother found a new sprig of thyme or something that smelled just as awful growing out of a pot. She ran out to meet him in the street, something she hadn't done in years, and she was beaming. Her eyes were sparkly and all the sadness was gone out of them. He let her hug him and kiss him right there in the street, hoping nobody was watching. But he was happy to see her like that.

  That was almost two years ago now. That night Ella was gone. His mother's sadness came back into her eyes and stayed there, even with the new greens in her pots. He could feel the sadness leaking out from under the unfixable space in the corner of their roof, like smoke from father's old pipe that he still kept, even though there hadn't been any tobacco to put in it for years now.

  He turned the corner and picked up the pace to his house. He was suddenly eager to get it all over with. The door was wide open. He wiped his boots on the torn up mat in the mud room, knowing that it wouldn't really do any good, but mother always insisted on it anyway. The house was eerily silent. His parents were not in the kitchen or the yard. He could see all of the back yard from the small kitchen window without even needing to turn his head. Something was wrong. He felt that wrongness the night their parents fought with the strange men and they lost Ella. It made it hurt to breathe. Samson... Where the hell was Samson?

  That was the wrongness. The dog was always there to meet him at the door, his ears up, tail wagging into the walls of the narrow hallway; his soft whimpering noises. For some reason, Samson never barked. "Samson! Come here, boy!" Screaming into the silent house made it feel worse that no one replied. And that there was no sign of Samson. He took his coat off and hung it up on the rack, only now noticing that all the other coats were gone. Hats and scarves too. And Samson's collar was lying opened at the link on the floor by the mat.

  He should have noticed it earlier, but he wasn't looking down then. Stupid of him, not to notice. It was a habit of his to analyze everything he'd done wrong. As if it would bring Samson running through the mud room. Or his parents. Or Ella. He knew then, knew for sure they were all gone. Not a temporary out for a walk gone, or an emergency visit to the only doctor who'd still take them gone, or to barter for a small quail gone. Ella kind of gone.

  He threw his coat back on and ran to where Brody's uncle worked on old boats, all the way up the road to the railway station that hadn't seen a train on it since before he was born. That's where Brody went to every day after school. He said Andy needed his help, but he knew Brody just stood there most days staring at these ancient bits of machinery and imagining what it was like to live back when the trains carried people and machines to any place they wanted to get to. That was the stuff he and Brody talked about. He and Brody had never been outside of Waller. There wasn't any point in going anywhere much these days.

  By the time he got to the warehouse, his hands were frozen and he had to hold them under his coat for a bit to warm up enough to be able to pull the door open. It creaked metallically, letting him in to the barrage of voices, all adult, all stopping abruptly as he came in. Brody was leaning on the back wall, not looking at him. This, too, was full of wrongness. Why wouldn't Brody look at
him, or run up and put him into a headlock like they always did with each other? A woman separated herself from the others and slowly walked over towards him. She was smiling at him, not unpleasantly, but there were no sparkles in her eyes.

  He wanted to run away from this smile and from what he knew she needed to tell him. The ugly thing that would make this wrongness permanent. He just needed some time to unthink it all. To start his walk back from school over again. Only now he'd take a different route. He'd think different thoughts. He wouldn't kick the rocks from under the coal dust. He'd stop by the fence and erase the thing he wrote on it, the thing that would have got him in trouble if anyone saw him do it. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe somebody saw him write it and now they took his parents and Samson away as punishment. He needed to know if he'd done this.

  The woman was saying something to him, softly, but he didn't hear her. He didn't want to hear her. He turned around, his wet boots squeaking on the tiles, and bolted for the door, only he couldn't push it open now. He banged his shoulder against it over and over and over again, putting all of his weight into it. Nobody stopped him. He knew nobody would stop him then, not even Brody. He knew then nobody could undo any of this. Slumping against the wall next to the electronically locked door, he looked up at the strange woman and nodded. He was ready now. He wouldn’t let himself turn into a whimpering little boy like he did when Ella was gone.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Andy carrying a steaming thermos to him. He knew it was tea. Andy always drank tea, usually spiked with moonshine he bartered some part for. He had a feeling this thermos was spiked and he didn't want it. He and Brody had snuck plenty of the stuff when Andy had to run an errand and they were left alone in the warehouse. He kept it in the little cupboard behind the tool rack. It had a lock on it and Andy always had the key on him, but the lock was so old and so simple, Brody figured out a way to pick it with a penny nail years ago.