The Vestige

by Caroline George

  “Greetings. Are you in need of assistance?”

  “Yes. I am here to inquire about a secretary position within the District. Where must I go for an interview?” It’s good I didn’t eat breakfast this morning. I’d probably send it soaring onto her blouse.

  “Mr. Alastair is no longer in need of a secretary in the Congressional Budget Office.” She tilts her head and dims her smile to a frown. “I apologize for the inconvenience this information may cause you.”

  Inconvenience? More like a death sentence. Without the position, my mission is compromised. I’ll be an inoperable agent, left in the inner layer penniless and alone. There must be an available job somewhere in this building. What can I tell the receptionist to make her advocate for me?

  “Brother said I am required to work. Would you please search the database for job openings? I do not wish to leave the City because I am without a position.” I scratch the back of my neck where hair recedes to hot, sweaty skin. Light spots float across the room like fish in an aquarium, darting in figment schools, spiraling up to the arched ceiling. Knees buckle—I should sit down in a chair before my butt hits the floor. Eyelid twitches—no one will hire me if I look freakish.

  “All departments have reached quota,” the woman says. “If you leave your contact information with me, I will alert you when a job becomes available. Have a pleasant day.” She spins around in her chair and resumes work without offering a pen or paper.

  What a passive way of telling me to screw off.

  I trudge across the lobby, into sunlight that turns my silver dress into an oven and blasts through the maze of steel and concrete, reminiscent of a projector’s beams in a dark theater. I collapse onto stone steps overlooking the space station—it lies dormant amidst skyscrapers, flickers with beacons—and press my skin against cold rock to ease the heat ache.

  Over. Done. Failed. Jack is the only active agent. What am I now, a weapon stored away for safekeeping, a good card on hold for the right move, frozen like almost-spoiled hamburger meat? Dang it, I won’t be able to make rent next month or buy food. Maybe Colonel Buchanan will let me live with Jack, eat from his pantry. Maybe I won’t be a useless deadbeat…

  “Excuse me. Are you Julie Lefèvre?” A girl taps my shoulder and stumbles backward when I turn to confront her. She’s taller than most Purebloods, beanpole skinny, with mousy brown hair teased into a bouffant, and high-arching eyebrows. Not perfect. But pretty in a nice, comforting sort of way.

  “Yes, I am Julie. Who are you?”

  “Charis LeBlanc.” She smiles and sits next to me. Her severe posture relaxes into a casual slump. “I saw you leave the boarding house this morning but did not have an opportunity to introduce myself. May I inquire as to why you are here?”

  “I came to interview for a secretary position. Unfortunately, the job is no longer available.”

  “Are you in need of work?” Charis smooths her floral-print skirt. She glances at me with something close to friendliness in her blunt, brown eyes, something that doesn’t make her seem like a killer. “Do you know how to work an espresso machine? I work at the District Coffeehouse. If you wish, I will get you a job there. We are short-staffed and in need of another worker.”

  Thank you, God.

  “Oh, my goodness, that’d be swell.” I throw my arms around her bony shoulders and rock her side to side. “I work espresso machines better than computers. You should taste my steamed milk and see my latte art. I’m, like, a well-trained barista. Coffee should be my middle name.”

  She flinches, probably from the informal outburst and taps my back—the break in character, glimpse of my true identity, mustn’t have alarmed her too much. “Does this mean we are friends?”

  “Sure.” I laugh. “Of course I’ll be your friend.” Because she’s put me back in the spy game. Because in a few weeks, I’ll help bring down her pretty little world.

  ****

  Curiosity is like chickenpox. People give you a list of all the reasons why you shouldn’t scratch the pox: infection, scarring and spreading, the wrath of your germaphobe mother. But in the end…

  You scratch them anyway.

  “Who left the note on my door?” I tiptoe through patches of shadows, into the boarding house’s backyard. This probably isn’t the best idea, but I brought a gun. If a monster or murderer jumps from the hedges to grab me, he or she will get a bullet in the head instead.

  “Cousin Julie, I am over here.” Ada crawls from beneath a shrub, smeared with dirt. Her hair is matted into a woodsy knot. “I plead you to be quiet. If we are heard, my operation will be destroyed.”

  “Your operation?” I choke on a laugh and cross my arms. Cute. She’s pretending to be a spy. Maybe that’s why she left the note on my door, to pull me into her game of make-believe.

  “Yes. I trade secrets. I see people do things and hear their conversations. No one notices me because I am small.” She grips my hand and pulls me into the darkness. Her eyes glint in the dim light like animal pupils. “I have a secret to trade with you.”

  Fine, I’ll scratch the pox. “What do you want for the information?”

  “Your barrette,” she says after a moment of thought.

  I unclasp the pearl clip from my hair and place it in her small fist. “What is the secret?”

  “There were soldiers at the house earlier today,” she whispers. “I saw them when I came home from school. They were talking with Mother and Father … about you.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”

  Jane Austen, Emma

  Jack never came to visit me.

  He sends the blood bag and tubes by messenger each evening so I can transfuse on my own. First night, I stuck myself fifteen times before striking a vein. It got easier to perform the procedure after that, because I knew if I failed, I’d become a mouse in a snake tank. On day three, I mailed him an encoded letter—never received a response. Maybe he’s afraid our cover will be blown if we’re seen together. Maybe he’s busy with work. Maybe he thinks… I’m not sure what he thinks anymore.

  Loneliness settles within me like a fog on day five. Sun down. Sun up. Coffee brewing. Coffee serving. Needle prick. Blood. DNA supplying me with more time, but what if I don’t want more time? What if I’d rather trudge back to the dome and wait at its perimeter until the invasion is complete? Could I quit? Do I have the power within me to say “Fighting for others no longer matters?”

  Nash and Tally call me on the radio at night, once the sun sinks deep into the horizon. They talk about the Vestige’s progress, how they’ve recruited messengers to travel from town to town, selecting people from communities and briefing them in secret so that when the time is right, they’ll be able to bring the citizens of their towns out of the dark and into the light. Change happens in the world I left behind while I snoop around desks and eavesdrop on conversations.

  “They told us to be wary,” Margo whispered to Jed when she must have thought I was out of listening distance. “Julie must leave. I did as you requested and had brunch with her, but spending time with your cousin did not prevent her presence from being any less unnerving. We are unaware as to why the Special Ones are interested in her. She could be harmful.”

  “Do not fret, my love. Julie is not a danger to us,” Jed said in an equally quiet tone. “The Special Ones shall prevent my cousin from performing malicious acts. We are secure.”

  Suspicion is poison. It’ll kill me. Soon.

  Death takes everyone. It doesn’t pick and choose. Good people die. Bad people die. Little girls die. My sister—I visited Sybil in the hospital, laid in her bed while black goo poisoned her tiny body. She’d sleep, vomit. I’d watch cartoons and draw flowers onto her bald head with Crayola markers. My brother—no matter how many times I wash my hands, his blood still warms my skin.

  Death is the one thing in th
is universe that unites us all.

  ****

  Screw it. Jack and Colonel Buchanan won’t give orders—they’ve left me waiting for too long, treated me as a back-up plan, a spare tire in the vehicle that is our mission. I can get the information they need. Yes, I’m in a prime location for espionage, and no one will suspect the young barista delivering coffee. Two departments. Ten minutes per floor to prove myself as a Vestige operative. If I’m caught snooping—I won’t get caught.

  “Eleventh floor, Congressional Budget Office.” I squeeze myself and a full coffee tray into the lift. Feds cast me smiles so fake, annoyance shimmers in their frigid pupils like sparks from an electrical socket. They cross their arms to avoid touching me.

  I steady the tray on a gold rail. My knees buckle from the pull of gravity, and my organs writhe within me as the designated floor approaches. Ten minutes. Timer starts when the doors open. Move fast.

  Don’t stop.

  The elevator fades into a room of empty cubicles, and buckled knees become legs with determined strides. I blink to adjust my eyes to the florescent light, the new landscape. Where is everyone? Lunch break?

  Jon snuck me into the Citadel dormitory a few years ago, when he was still in college and Dad worked as an adjunct. I was sure I’d be discovered and escorted off campus—it’s not like I could hide my age, gender, and status—but Jon told me to walk with purpose, said I could make myself invisible by acting as if I belong. That day, a sundress-wearing girl became a shadow in a place she should’ve been a target. Lesson still applies—I will belong, and no one will see.

  I reach Mr. Alastair’s vacant workspace and place a cup of espresso on his desk, next to a stack of pixel newspapers. A manila folder protrudes from the pile with Financial Report printed on its tab.

  Jackpot.

  Murmurs pollute the space near the vending machines and drift toward me in unconscious pursuit. No, lunch is supposed to last until one o’clock. Who the heck are these overachievers?

  Coffee washes across the countertop—I must’ve knocked over the cup. Sparks explode from the newspapers like fireworks, crackling and hissing as they crest the cubicle’s rim. The manila folder disappears into a squealing beacon of electrical fire. Gone. Ruined. By me, the clumsy idiot pretending to be Jason Bourne or James Bond.

  What made me think I could do better?

  I clutch a handful of coffee cups, sacrifice the tray to an empty trashcan, and then, with my body scrunched to my knees, I scurry down the neighboring aisle and out a set of doors. There isn’t a single security camera beyond the lobby. Purebloods will say the fire was a misfortune, an innocent accident.

  No one will suspect me.

  The Department of Health and Human Services is a reset button on my operation’s fictional remote. I deliver coffee to various workers who fill the desks and type on translucent computers. No eye contact. Only shifty smiles, the occasional nod of acknowledgment.

  Security footage flashes onto a monitor as I give a woman her cappuccino. The small text in the lower left-hand corner reads: Human Reproduction Institute. Reproduction, as in, babies?

  Doctors appear on the screen, mixing serums in a lab. Footage from a courtyard shakes into focus moments later. People in white scrubs fill the outdoor space. Some play chess at small tables, others eat packaged sandwiches. Many of the women are pregnant. Some have infants strapped to their backs.

  “Mom … Dad.” I choke on the words and grip a divider to support my weight. Bile gurgles up my throat. Heart rattles my chest. If the Feds didn’t have a use for Mom and Dad, they would’ve killed them in Charleston. That’s their purpose now, isn’t it?

  They’re being used as reproductive specimens.

  “Are you well, Miss?” A middle-aged Pureblood catches me when I stumble into the walkway. His face is Botox smooth. “Do you need medical assistance?”

  “No, I am quite well. Your concern is appreciated.” I slide from his frigid hands and trudge toward the exit. Smears of monochrome replace the room, but the door remains in full clarity. Escape. Before they see through my ruse and turn me into a surrogate. Before my body is used to breed half-bloods. Before I’m forced to reunite with Mom and Dad.

  Pain shimmies up my legs and strengthens until I can hardly move. I drop the last few coffee cups and wheeze, gasp, suck empty air. What’s the point? Half-blood children won’t determine the Purebloods’ survival, so why create them? Why exploit the enemy race? What more do they want from us? They’ve taken everything, and we’ve let them.

  “Please rest. You appear faint.” A teenaged assistant rushes from the blur with a chair. She makes me sit and then dabs the spilled coffee from my skirt. “You are in need of a cold compress.”

  A digital map of Severance projects on the far wall with a red clock in the upper corner—336:21:05. The time shed seconds and minutes as it counts down to some cathartic event.

  “What does that clock mean?” I massage my forehead as if to erase the thought of Mom waddling down a sterile hall with a round belly, unaware that the child inside her is half-alien.

  “Once the time runs out, a virus will be released on the remaining human population,” she says through a toothy grin. “In two weeks, the invasion will be complete.”

  For the longest time after Sybil died, I’d say, “I’ve done harder things,” when confronted with a challenge because I figured I’d never receive worse news, feel worse pain, or conquer anything as catastrophic. However, coping with a two-week timeframe and lab-rat parents—yeah, this seems harder.

  “Thank you for helping me.” I rise from the chair. A sinking sensation drags down my stomach. Isn’t this what I wanted? I searched for information to validate my abilities, and I found it. Colonel Buchanan will give me assignments now that I’ve discovered our true end of the world.

  I ride the elevator down to the atrium and amble into the District Coffeehouse. Charis asks me something when I slide behind the counter, but her words get lost in the tangle of my thoughts. I snatch a bag of cookies from the pastry cabinet and then lock myself in the supply closet like a normal person.

  Tears slice my cheeks when I curl into a ball on the floor. I sob into a cookie, press my face against the cold tile that replaces warmth with needle pricks. No one can ruin my life more than they already have as long as I stay in the darkness, away from the line of yellow light outlining the room’s exit.

  Mom and Dad are test subjects. A fatal virus will be released in two weeks, and humankind will fade into extinction. I can’t change the now but maybe I can shift the then, and drive reality back to theory, but to do that, I have to stand up.

  Cookie crumbs imprint my forearms as I drag myself to an upright position. I take the cell phone-lookalike radio from my dress pocket and tune into the Vestige’s frequency. Static. An indistinct melody. That sounds an awful lot like home.

  “Calling Headquarters. This is Acorn. Do you copy? Over.”

  “Roger that, Acorn. We read you loud and clear,” Nash says. “How’re you doing in there?” His voice is loud and chipper—it brings another rush of tears to my overworked ducts.

  “I’ve been better … but I’m still alive … and that seems to be a rarity nowadays. Uh, is Colonel Buchanan nearby? I need to talk with him.”

  “Yeah, he’s in the corridor. I’ll fetch him for you.”

  Charis taps on the door—I tell her to give me a few more minutes to gather my composure, that something upset me. She doesn’t ask questions because Purebloods mind their own business and don’t lie to each other, at least, not in common ways.

  “This is Colonel Kirk Buchanan. Do you copy, Acorn?”

  “Affirmative.” I crawl behind a stack of boxes and cup my hand over the microphone to minimize my voice’s reach. “I’ve discovered information vital to the Vestige’s efforts.”

  He clears his throat. “Are you in a secure location?”

  “This is the most secure I’ll be.”

  I wait until a surge of customers cr
eates a ruckus outside before telling him about Mom and Dad, the two-week timeframe. As I talk, my words lose their weight within me, and they float into the radio frequency like balloons from a child’s birthday party, meaningless until they pop in someone’s face.

  “Your job was to wait for my orders, not go rogue,” the colonel says after I finish the brief.

  “But you didn’t give me orders. I’ve been on my own for the past week.”

  “Oh, well, that changes everything. Of course you should break protocol because you’re lonely and bored.” He chuckles. “Your mission is to wait and listen, submerge yourself in Pureblood society…”

  “I found information we need to bring down Severance. My objective has been to gather intelligence from the District. That’s what I’ve done—I’ve gathered intel. Use me. Don’t give Jack all the work. I might not have military background, but I sure as hell can do my job.”

  “What does my son think of your perspective?”

  “He won’t meet with me. I’ve been doing the transfusions on my own.”

  “Not anymore. You and Jack were supposed to act as each other’s handler. Go to the penthouse on Peachtree Street this afternoon. I’ll radio Jack and tell him to expect you.”

  “He doesn’t want to see me.”

  “I don’t care.” Colonel Buchanan slams his hand against something hard and emits a pained grunt. “There’s a general I want you both to track tonight. His job is to manage the security of the dome’s generator. Jack has been following him for the past week, trying to locate the force field’s source. Unfortunately, he hasn’t had much luck. You will join him. That’s an order.”

  “Fine.” I shove another cookie into my mouth but spit it out when the texture becomes like ash leftover from a hard rain. Pear and rosemary, the one Pureblood cookie concoction that can’t offend me with nostalgia of after-school snacks and picnics by the harbor, now make me cringe. Sweet—Jack was once sweet. A craving—Jack used to want me as much as I wanted him, endured my hurt instead of letting me bleed alone. “Over and out, Colonel.”