by Karen Healey
Hidden behind the slightly open kitchen door and spying through the gap, I pumped my fist in the air and narrowly avoided skinning my knuckles on the wall.
“Marie, Tegan remains the only subject who can tell us about experiencing the aftermath of the revival process. She’s an extremely valuable—”
“—sixteen-year-old girl,” Marie said over him. “Who should be allowed some of the freedoms she enjoyed before her traumatic and untimely death.”
Dawson shook his head. “I thought you believed in the vital importance of this project, Dr. Carmen.”
“I thought you were above such an obvious attempt at emotional manipulation, Colonel Dawson.”
Whoa. Go Marie.
“I think this conversation is over,” she continued. “We both have work to do.”
The worst thing was that I couldn’t see Dawson’s face. I had a feeling the picture would have kept me warm on cold nights. If cold nights existed anymore.
Gregor and Zaneisha were still exchanging put-upon glances as they escorted me to Bethari’s front door. She met me with squeals and ushered me into the living room.
“Mami, this is Tegan Oglietti.”
Bethari’s mother was a round, sturdy woman with an amused glint in her black eyes. She was still in her uniform and khaki headscarf, obviously having just gotten home from work.
“Thank you for having me, Captain Miyahputri,” I said, and handed over the fruit basket Marie had pushed into my hands as I went out the door. “Dr. Carmen says hello.”
“You’re very welcome, Tegan. Sergeant, Master Sergeant, would you like a drink?”
“No, thank you, Captain.”
“Where will you guys stay?” I asked.
Gregor grunted.
“Outside,” Zaneisha said. “Are you sure you—”
“Yep.”
“You can signal us on your EarRing. At any time. For any reason, if you notice anything strange—”
“What about when I go to sleep? I’ve never worn earrings to bed before.”
“Learn,” Gregor said.
Zaneisha scanned the hallway, the ceiling, the floor, and then looked straight at me. “Our martial arts training has been delayed twice,” she said. “We are starting tomorrow.”
I ignored the way it was phrased as a threat and beamed at her. “That sounds fun.”
Bethari was bouncing impatiently. “Come on, Teeg, let’s go upstairs!”
“Okay. Bye, guys! Have a good night!”
Bethari laughed as we went up. “That was mean.”
I shrugged as Bethari opened her door. “Not my fault they have to stay up all night keeping watch from the car.”
“Actually, it kind of is,” Joph said. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed. “Geya, Teeg.”
I looked at her. Then at Bethari. “Um?”
“Joph’s going to stay here and move around. And cover for us, if necessary.”
I gave up and sat on the floor. “Cool. Thanks, Joph.”
“I did some research into past-time sleepovers,” Joph said. “Do we really have to braid each other’s hair?”
“I have the only hair long enough for braiding, so let’s not bother,” Bethari said, unwinding her headscarf. Long black waves tumbled down her back. “Mami’s not going to bed for a while, and I have prayer in a bit, so we may as well have some fun while we wait. Anyone got good games? I want to kill some zombies.”
A few hundred dead zombies later, we were on our way. Bethari had dark clothes for both of us, and I rubbed her dark purple eye shadow all over my face to prevent my white skin from flashing.
“You look ridiculous,” she whispered.
“No one’s going to see me,” I pointed out, my voice just as quiet. “At least, I hope not. You know what to do, Joph?”
Joph yawned. “Keeping watch isn’t that complicated. I’ll call Bethi if anything goes wrong. Give me your phone.”
“Why?” I asked, taking the EarRing out.
“They can probably track you with it,” she said. “My parents tried that all the time when I was a ween, until Bethi showed me how to disable it.”
“Won’t they know if we turn it off?”
“Probably. So I’ll just wear it.” Joph slipped the phone into the piercing on her other ear. “There. Have fun!”
Bethari’s eyes were glued to her replacement computer. “The security screen’s going down… now.”
I wrenched open the window and started down the trellis, hugging the wall. A few decades earlier, it had probably held roses. But the roses were gone, and what remained was a convenient exit route.
Bethari, for all her apparent skill with digital crime, didn’t seem to be experienced at this kind of subterfuge. When we hit the bottom, she started giggling.
“Shhhh,” I hissed, and hustled her toward the back wall.
She boosted me up, hands steady under my feet, and then I helped yank her up and over. She landed as lightly as I did on the other side. Cheerleading obviously lent itself well to breaking and entering.
The address was a warehouse in an industrial area, a forty-minute walk from Bethari’s house. I made Bethari stop jogging as soon as we were out of the immediate range of her house. It was strange not to have streetlights; they were probably considered a waste of energy.
“People notice runners,” I said. “We walk from here.”
Bethari made a face of mock terror. “I don’t know if my nerves can take it.”
“Some fearless journo you are.”
“Speaking of! I have a lead on a story, and it’s a good one. Did you know that poorer countries get charged prices that they can’t afford for patented medicines?”
“Sure. That happened in my time, too.”
“Well, it’s still happening, and it’s, what do you call it? Totally crapular?”
“Craptacular?”
“I love your slang. Yes. Things like Travis Fuller Syndrome and Maldonado Disease kill a lot of people, but they’re easy to treat—if you have the right drugs. One course of Serbolax will completely cure Travis Fuller, but it costs about twelve hundred dollars.”
It took a second, but I converted that to about sixty dollars in my time, or way out of reach for your average person below the world poverty line. “And they don’t discount, of course.” I was watching the few passing cars. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to us.
“No. And because they’re protecting their patents and the vast amounts of money they can make on them, they don’t let anyone make generic, low-cost versions. But people are anyway. They’re stealing or reverse-engineering the formula and smuggling in the drugs, or making them right in the countries that need them most.”
“Isn’t that dangerous? Taking homemade or smuggled medicines?”
“Not as dangerous as spewing up your lungs,” Bethari said bluntly. “Travis Fuller is awful. Anyway, today my sources confirmed that there are chemists making the medicines in Melbourne, and I have a lead on a customs officer who lets things slide through. I want to do an in-depth series, talking about why people take these risks, and how the pharma companies are losing their grip on the market.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, scanning the street for watchers on foot.
“Poor regional governments aren’t even bothering to ask them for help anymore; they talk to the smugglers instead. So, of course, the companies are pressuring their governments—including ours—to introduce more sanctions and tougher penalties for home chemists who make patented drugs, and—am I boring you?”
“No. This is it.” I leaned casually against the wall and jumped when it stung me.
“Hint about the future,” Bethari said. “Don’t touch private property unless you have a handy friend with a good computer. Though not as good as her former, and much mourned, other computer. Let’s go around the side.”
The gap between two walled yards was barely wide enough to qualify as an alley, and we had to feel our way down the walls as feral cats hissed at us.
I suddenly missed Koko, who had also stayed behind with Joph.
“They don’t have much security,” Bethari murmured. “Okay. Located the closed-circuit camera controls. Just need to branch the broadcast to… huh.”
“What?”
“Teeg, I hate to say it, but you might have the wrong address.”
I turned her computer around to stare at the footage of the warehouse interior.
It was empty.
CHAPTER NINE
We Can Work It Out
“This was definitely the place,” I said, staring at the screen. It was showing night-vision pictures of a bare asphalt parking lot, dusty offices upstairs, and a huge, concrete floor decorated by only a few big scrap-metal bins—also empty.
“Well, there’s nothing in there now. And the security’s totally minimal. It’s not what I’d expect to see at a secret facility.”
“Could it be some sort of loop? Could the cameras be showing us fake footage when there’s actually a whole ton of animals in there?”
“Animals?”
“It’s called the Ark Project,” I said. “My money’s on illegal animal testing of cryonic treatments, but I’m trying to keep an open mind.”
“I was thinking a gene bank of extinct animals that they’re exploiting for genegineered soldiers, but I might watch too many movies,” Bethari said. “To answer your question, no, there’s no loop; I’d know. What we’re seeing is the actual footage.”
“Why would there be surveillance cameras on an empty building?”
“To keep out squatters? I don’t know. It obviously belongs to someone. They might just check the feed every now and then.”
“I want to go inside.”
“Hacking the locks will be more difficult,” she said. “I’m not sure that—”
“Shhh!” I could hear the distinctive rumble of a truck approaching. The cats set up their screeching again, and we moved deeper into the alley.
Even back that far, we could hear the gates open.
“Tegan,” Bethari whispered. “Look!”
On the screen, the footage of the parking lot showed the gates opening and the truck driving in. The picture on the side of the truck declared it a humanure collector.
“This is not a compost-treatment plant,” Bethari said.
“Holy crap,” I said as a man swung himself out of the passenger seat and dropped to the ground. “Bethari, can you get a close-up?”
She fiddled her fingers in the air. The camera zoomed in on the man’s face. I hissed.
“Do you know him?”
“That’s Colonel Trevor Dawson,” I said. “My keeper. And head of Operation New Beginning.”
“He’s not in uniform.”
Those loose overalls were definitely not approved army wear.
“Wait, what’s that?” I said.
Something was happening in the warehouse. One of the scrap-metal bins was moving by itself, rolling away to reveal a large metallic rectangle set securely into the floor.
“A trapdoor?” Bethari said incredulously.
The rectangle rose. It was actually the top of an elevator, about the size of my underground bedroom, but we could see only the metallic back.
“The angle,” I said urgently.
“I’m trying, I’m trying. Okay, another camera in the corner… there.”
Two large containers were wheeled out of the elevator and into the yard, escorted by four people in equally nondescript black clothing. Dawson had opened the back of the truck and was saying something to one of the escorts, a tall woman with short brown curls.
“Can we get audio?”
“Um, if the cameras have mics, I can try a subroutine….” She did more magic with her fingers, but Dawson had stopped speaking. The only sounds were the grunts of the escorts and the scrape of the containers as they were gently slid into the back of the truck.
“What the hell is in there?” I wondered.
“I would give all my teeth to know.”
Dawson nodded at the escorts, and they all straightened, saluting.
“Dismissed,” he said, his voice small and tinny.
“They’re all army,” Bethari said, sounding distressed.
“We knew they probably would be,” I said.
“I know. It’s just hard.”
We glanced at each other, two army brats in perfect accord. It was uncomfortable to think that our protectors—our families—were up to something secret, and maybe no good.
We were both quiet as the truck rumbled past our hiding place again. The other soldiers went back into the warehouse, and Bethari was watching intently as the curly-haired woman walked to the elevator.
“Black shoe alligator glue,” the woman said, her voice clear, and Bethari stabbed the air with one finger. “Password recorded,” she said. “Might be useful.”
“We are not storming an army installation,” I said firmly. “We’ll have to lure them out before we can sneak in.”
“Definitely,” Bethari said. “Let’s go home and think about how.”
We broke back into Bethari’s house as uneventfully as we’d broken out.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Joph said, sitting up from her mattress on the floor, as I climbed through the window.
I expected her next words to be, What did you find?
Instead, she yawned, stretched, and said, “I really want to go to the bathroom.”
I blinked as she ambled out the door into the hallway. “She’s really not very curious, huh?”
“She used to be different,” Bethari said, handing me some wipes for my eye-shadow-covered face before getting into her pajamas. “But even now, if you were a new serotonin-producing formula, the questions would never stop.”
I laughed and rubbed at my face, watching the purple smudges disappear from the smooth material. “How do these work?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sounding distracted. “Look. I’m not sure how to put this. So I’ll just ask. Are you sure you’re straight?”
My chin jerked up. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and swinging her feet. Her head was tilted at the ceiling, as if my answer was the least important thing in the world.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve never—yeah.”
She looked at me for a long, searching moment and nodded. “Oh, well,” she said. “It’d never work, anyway. I’m too bossy, and you’re too stubborn.”
“Plus, we don’t screw the crew,” I reminded her.
“Except for you and Abdi and your eighty gazillion babies.”
“Not happening.”
“Oh, Abdi, your beautiful voice, like a chorus of heavenly messengers—”
I knew she was just teasing, but I couldn’t help the bitterness from seeping into my voice. “Actually, no. He doesn’t even want to be friends in public.”
“Wait,” she said. “Wait, what?”
“What?” Joph echoed from the door. “He likes you. He sent you those songs.”
“How do you know about that?” I demanded.
“What songs?” Bethari said over me. “Have you two been keeping secrets?”
“Not really,” I protested. “Just that… after music today, Abdi and me talked a bit.”
“Did you, now?” Bethari was sitting upright.
I sighed and told them both about our conversation. “I don’t think anyone saw us,” I said when I’d finished.
“I know they didn’t, or it would be everywhere,” Bethari said. “And what’s this about songs?” she asked Joph.
“Teeg likes the Beatles. And that drummer who had his own band. Abdi found those songs for her.”
“Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band,” I said. “Not that drummer, Joph. The drummer, yes.”
She nodded peacefully. “He didn’t have enough to buy them all,
so I helped him find the free versions.”
“I didn’t know you two even knew each other,” Bethari said. She was looking more than slightly disgruntled.
“He’s smart,” Joph said. “I like him. Don’t you think he’s pretty, Teeg?”
“He’s all right,” I said, remembering those light eyes looking into mine as we’d made music.
“Oh, I see,” Bethari said, looking insufferably smug.
“You have to remember that two months ago I was in love with Dalmar,” I added, and then wondered about the past tense. I still loved Dalmar, didn’t I? I’d loved him for years when he didn’t love me, when I’d thought that he never would. Surely little things like him growing up, having a family, and being dead didn’t change that. “Besides, shouldn’t we really be talking about—”
I was interrupted by a knock on the door. I was still wearing my stealth clothes so I yanked a sheet up over myself just before Captain Miyahputri poked her head in, hair tousled around her face.
“Girls, you woke me up,” she said. “Could you please go to sleep and save the gossip for the morning? Later in the morning, I should say.”
“Yes, Mami.”
“Sorry, Captain Miyahputri.”
Bethari slipped out to wash up before sleep, and Joph ordered the lights off.
I pulled on a tank top and sleep shorts in the dark—shoving the incriminating clothing under Bethari’s bed—and lay down on my mattress. It shifted around me, redistributing my weight to provide lumbar support.
I stared at Bethari’s ceiling. I was expecting to stay awake for a long time, worrying about what could be concealed underneath that warehouse, and what it had to do with me. And I might possibly devote a tiny, insignificant amount of time to what Abdi had meant by the gift of those songs.
But it felt like only a second later when Bethari shook me awake, her golden headscarf gleaming in the sunlight streaming through the gap in her heavy curtains. “Colonel Dawson is here,” she said, looking nearly as scared as I felt. “He wants you to go home.”
I spent as long as I could getting dressed and packing my bag, trying to calm down. Dawson wasn’t a mind reader, but he also wasn’t an idiot, and I couldn’t afford to give anything away.