Knowing that I can’t just pop into the MOI building and ask for Minister Fonner, I stroll the neighborhood, trying to get a feel for it and dissipate the adrenaline which is making me jumpy. The area is largely devoted to government buildings with a few imposing homes on side streets. I suspect the ministers and other important government officials live here. I turn down one. I’m astonished to see grass in the yards, squares of brilliant emerald, but I realize on closer inspection that it’s fake. This strikes me as humorous and I squat to run my palm across the fake blades. They tickle. There’s a joke here, something about government, and appearance being more important than substance, but my frazzled mind can’t make it coalesce.
I return to the main street. Finding a shady spot across from the MOI building, I study it. The roof bristles with satellite dishes and antennas, which look anachronistic above the mellow brick and mullioned windows of a past century. When a man emerges from the Ministry, I glimpse uniforms inside. Security. I finger the disc at my neck, doubting that my Derrika Ealy identity will stand up to their scrutiny. It’s bound to fail if they want to scan my microchip—cut out when I left the Kube—or if they do a DNA check. I don’t know how thoroughly they vet visitors, but I can’t chance it. I’m not going to be able to talk to Minister Fonner in his office.
On the thought, I spot micro-drones patrolling the area outside the Ministry, from street level to the top floor. They have imaging capability, I bet, and I realize I should have disguised myself somehow before showing up here. Stupid, stupid. Trying to seem casual, I put a hand to the side of my face like I’m scratching an itch, and hurry away. I force myself to slow, not wanting to attract attention. I need to change up my appearance, but how?
I walk for fifteen minutes, turning several times at random, anxious to put distance between me and the surveillance drones. I’m paying little attention to where I’m going, when I suddenly hear Fiere’s voice in my head: Lesson number one. I force myself to slow and take a deep breath. I need to remain alert, aware of my surroundings. Otherwise, I’m dead. I turn my head casually to scan my surroundings. Houses. Smaller, more run down than the ones near the capitol, but still habitable. Before I can form any conclusions about the neighborhood, a voice calls, “Derrika!”
It takes me a moment. That’s me. How—? Who—? I turn involuntarily and see a woman coming toward me, a broad smile on her face. Brown hair sprinkled with white and gray, a hitching motion in her gait. She waves. I half-lift my hand, my brain racing. Friend or foe? Stay or run? Only Idris, and maybe Fiere or Alexander, know I’m traveling as Derrika Ealy. I stand my ground.
“Derrika, dear, so glad I finally caught up with you.” The woman arrives in a cloud of lilac and I realize she bumped into me earlier. She’s my height, but fuller of hip and bosom. Light wrinkles crinkle at the corners of her hazel eyes and bracket her mouth. Her lips smile, but her eyes remain watchful. Defiance watchful. This is the contact Idris promised me.
“You’ve been following me.”
She tucks her arm through mine like we’re old friends and urges me forward, saying, “Indeed. I had to make sure you weren’t really a Prag spy. Our mutual friend assured me you were trustworthy, but I had my doubts when you headed straight for the MOI from the train station. Can’t be too careful.”
“Did Id—”
“Ssh.” She shakes her head. “Our friend asked me to assist you as much as I could without placing myself in jeopardy. He told me what train you’d be on and I picked you up at the terminal. What’s your mission?”
I don’t know this woman, and even though I suspect she means Idris or maybe Alexander when she refers to “our friend,” I’m loathe to trust her too far. “I’d rather not say.”
She chuckles. “Good girl. You’re right—I don’t need to know. You can call me Griselda. It’s from the German. Means ‘gray woman warrior.’ I like to think it’s appropriate.” She draws a hank of hair out straight over her forehead, seemingly studying the gray strands. “In my younger years, I could have been ‘brunette woman warrior,’ or ‘woman warrior with great boobs,’ but those days are past.” She grips her bra straps beneath her tunic and hitches her breasts higher for a moment before letting them return to their mid-chest resting point.
I’m drawn to her frankness and humor. “You think of yourself as a warrior?”
“My dear, anyone who isn’t a warrior, who isn’t fighting in one way or another for a cause or something important to them, is abdicating his or her responsibilities.”
Her philosophy strikes a chord. I’m still fighting, I realize, even though I’m not using the kinds of weapons Idris and Wyck choose. I do my fighting in a lab. Perhaps there’s a name that means ‘scientist warrior woman.’ “I need a way to disguise myself.”
“Easy.”
Without my realizing it, she’s steered me almost back to the area around the train station. People come and go, intent on their own business, paying us no attention. The buildings look like old warehouses, from when freight flowed through the train station at a rate I can’t even imagine. We turn down an alley and come up behind a series of four connected buildings. Their exteriors are grimy, the gutters sag, and the loading dock doors are striped with rust. Roll down doors bar the openings where freight would have moved in and out of the warehouses, but each building has a regular door set off to the side. Griselda slides aside a segment of loose siding and holds her eye to an iris scanner beside the first door on the right. The door inches inward.
“Do you live here?”
“No.” She offers no other explanation, but motions me in. I enter. “You can wait here. I won’t be long.” She pulls the door shut before I can object. It latches with the sound of a mousetrap being sprung. I try the knob, panicky butterflies suddenly fluttering in my stomach, but it’s locked. Am I a prisoner? Has Griselda gone to summon the IPF? I need to get out.
The ground floor is one cavernous room, empty. Not a stick of furniture, not an appliance, not a rug. Probably looted during the Between. I dash up the single flight of stairs, making the metal treads clang and shake, but the second story is as barren as the ground floor, although it’s divided into a series of small offices. Peering from a dirt-spattered window, I see train tracks snaking in all directions and a corner of the terminal. Turning away, I force myself to breathe deeply and think. Idris clearly gave Griselda a head’s up about me; I have no reason to think she’s going to betray me. And little reason to think she’s not, the pessimist in my head says. I tell it to shut up. Further, there’s got to be more to this building than meets the eye—no one would bother with iris scanner security for an empty warehouse.
With nothing else to do, I take a vegeprote bar from my knapsack and munch on it as I descend the rickety stairs and begin to inspect the ground level. The flooring is a patterned blue-gray vinyl, and I take off my boots to slide the ball of my foot across it in sweeping arcs, feeling for an anomaly that might indicate a trap door. I net nothing from this exercise but a disgustingly grimy sock. I turn my attention to the walls. Two seconds of thought tells me that the best bet is the wall connecting this building with the next one. Starting in one corner, I use my fingertips to explore every inch of the wall, feeing for a seam. I’m a third of the way along the wall when I feel something at about knee height. Aha!
Excited, I drop to my knees and crab my fingernails around the seam which turns out to be a rectangle about three feet high by two feet wide. It’s small, but it’s a door—I know it’s a door. I press my ear to it and listen for thirty seconds, but hear nothing. I push on the corners one at a time and then in various combinations, but it doesn’t budge. Rocking back on my heels, I decide to hell with finesse. I sit and brace my hands behind me. Drawing my knees to my chest, I wham my legs forward so my feet strike the rectangle. It pops free and skitters across the floor in the next building.
Triumphant, I crawl forward and stick my head through the hole.
“What took you so long?”
Th
e voice startles me and I jerk up, banging my head. Griselda stoops and offers me a hand, helping me wriggle through the opening. Putting her hands on her hips, she regards me from narrowed eyes. “Actually, you did very well. I just got back myself.”
The knot on my head makes me crabby. “I’m leaving. I don’t know what this is about, but—”
“Don’t go. I’ve brought some items to change your appearance. I apologize for my little game, but I like to know what kind of person I’m dealing with when someone gets sent to me. Now I know you’re resourceful, quick-witted, and somewhat impatient.” She picks up the rectangle of mangled wallboard and looks at it ruefully. “Even better, now you know this about yourself.”
“I’m not in the mood for personality assessments.”
She ignores my petulance. “Sit.”
I move to the chair she indicates, and watch as she pulls items from a cabinet. This room is much like the one next door, except there are four chairs, a table, counters, shelves, and a sink. “Used to be a bakery,” Griselda says, following my gaze to gaping holes where a walk-in cooler and stoves might have been. “I worked here when I was about your age. Had to be in at three in the morning to start the donuts for the morning rush. I hated getting out of bed in the dark, dressing in the dark so I wouldn’t wake my sisters, biking over here, but it was worth it. The smell of baking donuts—there’s nothing like it.” She inhales deeply through her nose, eyes closed, and for a moment I think I can smell the yeasty, sugary aroma. “The owners were among the first to succumb to the flu.”
She shakes off the memories. “Let’s get to work. That platinum hair has got to go—much too noticeable.”
I give myself up to her overhaul. The not unpleasant odor of chemicals soon fills the room as she dyes my hair, including my brows and lashes, with a product that penetrates my scalp to infiltrate the root bulb; imparts a permanent curl via bio-ionic retexturizing; and cuts it.
“The bangs and curls will soften those cheekbones and fuzz your profile, making facial recognition more difficult,” she says, snipping away. I finger a snippet of glossy brown hair as it falls in my lap.
“We can’t lighten your eyes, but we can make them more green than blue,” she says, opening a drawer to reveal rows of prescription bottles. Uncapping one, she hands me two tablets and a glass of water.
I swallow them obediently, knowing the effect will only last a couple of weeks. When Halla and I first tried the eye color changing tablets in a biology class as kids, the technology was relatively new, and it tinted the whites of our eyes a pale violet, in addition to changing the irises—mine, anyway. I remember sadly how mad Halla was that the natural brown of her irises had kept the violet from taking. I’ve heard the technology is better now. The stocks of appearance-changing supplies make me suspect I’m not the first person who has received a makeover in this former bakery.
Griselda keeps up a flow of conversation as she works, reminiscing about the bakery, her girlhood in the area, and her whole family perishing in the pandemic. She talks about Atlanta’s re-birth and the infrastructure improvements that make it easier to get around, and worries aloud about reports that the locusts have become carnivorous. It takes me a while to realize she’s not saying anything about who she is now, where she lives, or what she does for a living.
I interrupt her mid-word. “Is it hard to learn how to do that—talk without revealing anything?”
She pauses with the comb in the air, and then smiles. “Smart cookie. It comes easily for me, but most people are safer if they remain silent. Once you open your mouth and get blabbing, it’s too easy to say what you don’t intend to. Remember that.” She taps me on the head with the comb.
When she’s satisfied with my hair, she trades the comb and scissors for a syringe. “Short of surgery, this is the best I can do,” she says. “Next-gen Siligen—only available at one very specialized reconstruction clinic. It’ll only sting for a moment.”
Before I can object, she’s injecting some of the material into my lips, around my chin, and even my ear lobes. The skin around my chin feels tighter after a few minutes and when I run my fingers over it, it feels less bony.
“Now for some new clothes.” She rummages in another cabinet. “Anything but white since the whole world is used to seeing you in white.”
She’s referring to the trial. She knows who I really am. I stiffen, but then make myself relax. If she was going to turn me over to the authorities, I’d be in custody already, wouldn’t I? She wouldn’t have bothered with all this. I pinch my ear. It feels plumper. I wish I could see myself, but there’s no mirror. Griselda hands me some garments. There’s no place to change in private, so I strip off my old clothes and step into the new ones, a close-fitting jacket of burnt orange that seals down the left side of my chest, and matching leggings that flare a bit at the hem. The intelli-textile fabric conforms quickly to my curves, such as they are. I don my old boots and stand there, not sure what comes next.
“You look beautiful and, more importantly, unrecognizable. I feel like a fairy godmother.” She waves an imaginary wand. “Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.”
Chuckling, she passes me a small packet. “More eye color changing tablets and two vials of Siligen. The effects wear off gradually after a month. Your hair should be okay for six months or so. I don’t know how long you’ll need to maintain this look.”
She pauses to give me time to tell her, but I don’t know either so I’m silent. Hopefully, only until I make contact with Minister Fonner. Surely he can pull some strings to allow me to work for the Ministry of Science and Food Production as Everly Jax. Either that, or he’ll summon the IPF and I’ll be executed. Either way, Derrika is only a stop-gap.
Griselda’s wry look acknowledges that I’m not going to tell her anything. “There’s also a ration card, in case you need it. Good luck.”
“If I need you—?”
“If you have intelligence to pass along, use this”—she hands me an infrared pen—“to put an X on the foot of the statue of President Iceneder in Olympic Park.”
“I don’t know where—”
“Find it! Don’t be so helpless.”
Her tone cows me momentarily, but I bite my lip and nod.
Griselda’s expression softens. “Someone will contact you within twenty-four hours of your leaving the mark.”
“If it’s not you, how will I know—?”
“The contact will work the phrase ‘troubles come in threes’ into the conversation. Your response is ‘we’re lucky they don’t come in fours.’”
It all feels very tenuous, subject to error, and I ask, “Will I see you again?” It would all seem so much more doable if I knew I could stay in touch with this competent woman.
She shakes her head. “I have my own mission. Further contact with you might jeopardize it. I’m afraid this is goodbye.” She holds out her hand.
I shake it. “Thank you, Griselda.”
“Good luck.”
Chapter Sixteen
An hour later, having taken a roundabout route, I’m back at the MOI building, observing it from the side this time. I decided on the walk over that since I can’t get to Fonner in his office, I’ll have to try and catch him as he leaves the building. I know it’s a weak plan and that any one of a dozen—a hundred—things can go wrong. He might come out with other people. A vehicle might pick him up and I’ll have no way to follow. He might use an exit other than the main door I can see from my vantage point. He might have already left; it’s past five o’clock. If I don’t make contact with him, I have no idea where I’ll spend the night.
I’m so busy thinking of what could go wrong that I almost miss him. He’s half a block away before I realize the lean figure in the white jumpsuit is him. He’s headed away from me and turns a corner as I’m watching. I scramble to catch up, weaving my way through the other people leaving the government buildings. I reach the corner where he turned and stand on tiptoe to see around a tall man talking to a man on a sco
oter.
Fonner’s out of sight by the time I edge around them and cross the street. I’m in a neighborhood similar to the one I explored earlier today, but with newer homes that look like they’ve been built on sites where older ones crumbled or were destroyed during the Between. I don’t want to draw attention by running, so I walk as quickly as I can, glancing anxiously down the first street. No one in sight. I hurry to the next one. There he is.
I break into a jog. I’m still twenty feet away when he mounts the two shallow steps fronting a house of composites, metal and polyglass.
“Proctor Fonner! I mean, Minister Fonner.”
His back stiffens and he says, “Jax.” He turns and a swift frown draws the thin black brows together. “I thought—”
I realize with a jolt that he doesn’t recognize me because I no longer look like me. I forgot. I’m closer now, looking up at him on the step. “It is me.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “Everly Jax.” I don’t want to shout my name and alert the neighbors that there’s a fugitive in their midst.
He studies my face more closely. “It is you. The hair, the chin—they fooled me for a second.”
We stare at each other for a long moment. I can’t read his face. The silvery eyes reveal nothing. He steeples his fingers and taps his index fingers together. “I’m a government minister and you’re an escaped murderer. It is my duty to report you.”
Incineration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 2) Page 11