The Killing Jar

by RS McCoy

  It was strange to think that Theo had once had a life on the outside. Of course he had, they all did, but so infrequently did he mention anything, it was easy to forget. She wondered what kind of person he’d been before.

  “We could do that. If you want. It’s only fair.” Mable didn’t see the harm in it.

  “No, we’re supposed to the Root and back right away. Where is it anyway? The badges say we’re going to Chicago.”

  She noticed his change of subject but didn’t argue. “It’s the city beneath Chicago. You know, the underground.”

  “Oh. That makes sense I guess.”

  “What?” She knew he was lying.

  “I didn’t realize it was literally underground. I mean, I’ve seen Un—I’ve seen people around town. I thought—”

  There was a moment there where she thought of laughing at him, at his ignorance and naivety. But it wasn’t his fault, not really. He just didn’t know better. In that way, Mable felt sad for him, for the bubble boy so isolated, he didn’t even know there was a whole world he was missing.

  “There’s no such thing as an Untouchable. Not really,” she explained, unafraid to utter the word that scared so many. “Those that fall out of society eventually find their way to the underground. Class doesn’t matter there. As long as you have something to offer, a skill, some kind of information or knowledge about something important, then it doesn’t really matter where you came from.”

  Theo’s brow wrinkled as if he didn’t quite believe her. She understood. She hadn’t believed it either, not until she lived it.

  “It’s a whole other world. You’ll see.” For the first time since hearing of Arrenstein’s non-negotiable condition of bringing Theo, Mable was excited. She would like showing him the other side of things.

  He shook his head and laughed a little.

  “What?”

  “You’re going to be nice to me now?” He finally looked at her.

  Mable shrugged. “Yeah, why?”

  “I thought you hated me. I nearly killed you. And now you’re being nice?” His features were serious. His smoke-grey eyes bored through her.

  The hairs stood up on the back of her neck. “Yeah, is that okay?”

  “It’s more than okay.” Theo smiled, a warm sunny smile that could melt the coolest of hearts, one she had no doubt he practiced on a few defenseless damsels. It was a smile that made her heart beat in her chest.

  DASIA

  CPI-GALLEY, NEW YORK

  AUGUST 29, 2232

  CPI felt empty without Mable. It was a massive complex and she was only one person of many, but still it felt as if a big piece of Dasia had gone, too.

  Not in the mood to work, she walked to the galley and found Georgie alone at a table of over-flowing platters. She sat across from him and asked, “No Knox today?”

  Georgie shook his head. His long brown hair waved with the motion. “Said he had a meeting with Arrenstein. You know what any of this is?”

  Dasia leaned in and gazed at the bowl. “This one is corn. Those are strawberries and the blue ones are blueberries. I don’t know what this white stuff is.” She scooped at the cream with a cracker and tasted it, but came up short. It was lightly sweet and sour. “I have no idea,” she admitted.

  “This one’s a strawberry?” Georgie held the bright red fruit between his fingers as if it might bite him.

  “Never seen berries before?” she asked with food still in her cheek.

  Georgie shook his head.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.” His thin lips pulled into a smile but his eyes remained distant, staring at the bounty between them. He looked like he could gain twenty pounds and still be skinny.

  “You’re from the city?” she asked, unsure of what to say.

  “Yeah, San Diego. Never left before I came here.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  Georgie nodded several times. “Yeah, but not really. I miss my sisters, but I don’t miss being hungry.”

  “How old are they?” Sisters seemed a safer topic than hunger.

  “Elizabeth is thirteen. Victoria’s nine and Mary’s just five.”

  “I’m guessing your mom had a thing for British royalty?”

  Georgie smiled. He’d probably heard it a thousand times.

  “And all those sisters? I bet you had your hands full.”

  His smile faded in an instant. He looked at his hands. “I had a brother, James, too. He was almost three.”

  Dasia’s heart broke a little. She had to know. “What happened?”

  “He got sick. We all did, but he was too little. Just couldn’t get past it.” Georgie’s eyes focused on his fingers, twitching and fidgeting in front of him.

  She reached a hand out and covered both of his. “I’m really sorry.”

  For the first time, he looked up at her, his eyes so clear and strong, she knew he actually saw her. The intensity of his gaze made her heart pound in her chest.

  Georgie smiled again, this time brighter. “It’s not your fault.”

  Though she knew he meant his brother, Dasia couldn’t help but feel a part of that was about Cole. It wasn’t her fault, not entirely. Maybe there was something in that.

  But she was determined to be punished for his death. It had to be her fault.

  “After James, Ma took us to the shuttle dock. I think she didn’t know what to do. She found the manager and asked him to give me a job. Over and over until he called Collectors to come get us. Nick showed up and asked if I’d join up. Now I’m here and they have a nice little house in town. Nothing fancy, but it’s better than the streets. She got set up with papers and got a job at a little shop. My sisters started classes at the center. I think James would have liked that.”

  Dasia could only nod, her voice trapped behind a wall of tears. She couldn’t let one out without the other.

  “What about your folks?” His tone was easy and open.

  Dasia pulled back her hand and cleared her throat. “Nothing like that. They were farmers.”

  “What happened to them?”

  She realized she’d spoken about them in past tense. “Nothing. They’re still farmers. Maybe not now, but they were.”

  “Because you left?”

  She nodded, her eyes down.

  “Do you like it here?”

  Dasia shrugged. She liked being away from Cole’s parents. Her relationship with Mable was exciting in way she wouldn’t have thought possible. As for CPI, she didn’t know how she felt. She didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t a home yet either. Maybe it never would be.

  Georgie accepted her silence graciously. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

  She offered him a half-hearted smile. “Thanks.”

  “You should talk about it though. With someone. I think it helps.”

  “Who’d you tell?”

  Georgie laughed for a moment. “I told you.”

  AIDA

  LRF-PQ-387

  AUGUST 29, 2232

  Calvin’s apartment was a tiny closet barely suited to hold a grown person, much less two. As an unmarried Scholar, he had been assigned the smallest possible space. A narrow bed that folded out from the wall, a desk barely big enough to hold his tablet, and a bathroom that opened to the apartment.

  That was Aida’s least favorite feature.

  But the single apartments weren’t made to accommodate visitors. The Scholars that designed them couldn’t have fathomed how this one would be used.

  When she knocked, Calvin opened the door and let her in. While in the corridor, she tried to look professional, as if she were merely making some sort of business call, but once inside, that all faded.

  “You look fantastic.” He looked her up and down as if he’d never seen her before.

  A flush filled her cheeks. “I’ve been wearing this all day,” she reminded him.

  Calvin’s face fell into the crook of her neck. He breathed in her scent as he left a warm
kiss on her skin. “Which is precisely why I didn’t get any work done.”

  Aida tried to laugh but found it wouldn’t leave her lips. He was too close, her heart pounding too hard. She couldn’t think of anything but him. A tingle shook her.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked as he pulled away. “I have enough greens for a few salads.”

  Aida couldn’t comprehend what a salad might taste like, but based on all the other foods he’d given her, it would be delicious and flavorful and textured. It would be everything the provisions weren’t.

  “Yeah, I’m starving.” It was just another way he had changed everything for her.

  Calvin walked to the panel beneath his closet, the hidden cold storage that held his secret supply of foods. “Where’d you get all that, by the way?” Aida asked as she smoothed over her shirt where he’d wrinkled it.

  “Here and there.” He smiled up at her.

  Aida could sense he didn’t care to talk about it.

  “Did you see the newsfeed this afternoon?” He held a large container of lettuce and cabbage leaves in his hand.

  She shook her head. She hadn’t even gone home.

  “The Vicereine wants increased priority to off-world colonies, particularly the in-transit and non-lunar colonies.”

  “You think that’s related to 196?” Aida couldn’t imagine it, that her work impacted the entire population of every off-world colony.

  Calvin nodded. “I think there’s a good chance of it. There is so much information in the universe, and we know only a small part of it. But we’re making good progress. It makes sense they’re moving things in that direction.”

  To Aida, it seemed like preemptive measures. There was still so much to learn about 196. So far, it held to Dr. Parr’s standards, but at some point, they would find something. It would be small, but it would be enough to cause them worry. They would have a meeting to discuss the impact of it.

  Aida had seen it time and time again.

  “What do you want to do? After we find it?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and thought. “I don’t really know. I always assumed we’d spend our lives looking. It never seemed probable we’d find it in our lifetimes.”

  “And now it does. So what do you want to do? Anything in the world, or off it.” Calvin used his small desk to hold a pair of plastic bowls into which he deposited green leaves, red berries, white dollops of creamy cheese and all sorts of other things she didn’t recognize.

  “What are those?” she asked instead.

  “Pecans. These are chopped. The nuts are actually pretty large.” He held his fingers in a circle to demonstrate the size. “I think I would go back to Earth.”

  “You would? Why?” Aida tried to hide her recoil from surprise.

  “It’s our home. As much as we’ve destroyed it, that’s where we belong. If I could afford it, I’d find a quiet place in the mountains, away from the domes and the haze. I think it would be relaxing.” Calvin’s eyes drifted into daydream as he handed her a bowl of salad and sat beside her. A moment later he produced two metal forks.

  “I don’t know what I’d do. Everything is always so planned. Maybe I’d go with one of the colonies and help them get started.”

  “You would be great at it.” His eyes grew wide with excitement. “You’re so smart, they could really use you. I could see you being great at it, having a family, helping them create government and systems on 196. It’s your planet. They’d have to let you go if you wanted.”

  Now that he said it, now that it was put to words, she could picture that future in detail. She could imagine the vibrant purples of 196 as their new environment, the homes they would build from earthen materials mixed with native ones. She could envision the family, the children she could have away from the regulations of the Scholar class. She could even imagine her life without the Scholar class at all.

  Aida doubted they would let her have it. She was here on the moon, in the LRF. “The first colonists are already in transit. They left forty years ago just waiting for us to tell them where to go. Even if we secured it as the homeworld in two years, there’s no way I would reach it in time to be useful. We’re just too far away.”

  “They improve the flight speed for intersystem ships all the time. Who knows what’ll be possible then?” Calvin leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Don’t give up. You deserve it. You’ll find a way.”

  Aida nodded absently. She didn’t feel deserving. She was pretty sure she was the worst sort of person. The type to break the law and then lie about it, to sneak around pretending to be successful when she was nothing more than a criminal.

  Calvin pulled the half-eaten salad from her hands and set it on the modest table beside the bed. It wasn’t as if she was eating it anyway. “What’s wrong?” His forehead wrinkled with worry.

  “Nothing,” she lied.

  “You’re having second thoughts?” He said it as if he were afraid of it.

  Aida shrugged. “I don’t know what I think. Sometimes I think this is so great that it’s worth the risk, and other times I’m terrified. Sometimes I want to apply for a Child Permit and go back to Earth, and then there are days when I want to go out on a colony ship and leave this all behind. I’m going crazy.”

  Calvin kissed her cheek and slipped his hand around hers. “You’re not going crazy. This is really new and exciting and your doubts are valid. We could lose our status if they found out, but I’m willing to risk it. Aren’t you?”

  “We can’t do this forever. We’re going to get caught. They’ll send me back to Earth and worse. I’ll never see you again.”

  Calvin half-smiled. “How would we get caught?”

  “They’ll notice I come here at night. Sal will notice I don’t come home. They’ll see something is different between us. Niemeyer will report us for working too closely together. Someone will notice something, and that’ll be it. It’ll be over.” She covered her face with her hands.

  Rather than sooth her, Calvin laughed. “I’m not sure who you think would be capable of that. LRF is filled with highly intelligent people that act like robots. They’ve never touched another person. They’ve never experienced love or romance or intimacy. They don’t even know what it looks like.”

  Aida huffed and slipped her hand into his. “You say that like you’re not one of them.”

  “I’m not. I’m with you. Not one of them has the capacity to understand that. Well, maybe the director, but he’s easy enough to avoid. Besides, I can’t imagine we’re a priority. He has a whole facility to manage.”

  She knew he was right. The director was intuitive and could read people in a way few others could. They would have to keep clear of him, but she couldn’t think of a single other person who could even imagine how their relationship had changed.

  “If you want to stop, just say the word, but to tell you the truth, I’ll be disappointed if you stop seeing me because you’re scared. I know you’re better than that.”

  Aida felt the stab in her chest. She was scared. She was terrified. It ate her up in those quiet moments alone, but not in the way Calvin thought. She wasn’t afraid of losing her position or her marriage or anything else. Most of all, she was afraid of losing him.

  THEO

  JEAN CARLO’S ITALIAN RISTORANTE, NEW YORK

  AUGUST 29, 2232

  In all his life, Theo never thought he would venture into the underground, especially after finding out that it was—quite literally—under ground. Nor would he have thought an Italian restaurant to be the way in.

  But that’s what Mable said. He had no choice but to trust her.

  At the shuttle terminal, she’d declined the ground transport provided via their travel badges. She said it was better to walk.

  Theo tapped a few keys on his wristlet screen and sent Dr. Arrenstein their coordinates. He would send updates ever few hours, as promised.

  Jean Carlo’s Italian Ristorante was a standard pedestrian establishment. Dim lights, homely crimson
carpet, and vast Craftsman families crowded around heaping plates of pasta and pizzas. He’d seen a hundred like it but never had a reason to go in.

  Theo couldn’t decide what was so different about this one, but he followed her in nonetheless.

  “Whatever happens, just follow me.”

  “You got it.” Theo swallowed his anxiety and went in behind her.

  Mable had clearly been there before. With a good bit of speed, she bolted between the tables and marched to a door with the word OFFICINA scrawled in a Roman-style font on the glass.

  Without a knock, Mable threw the door open to reveal a rather shocked looking man in a worn leather chair.

  “What are—” the man started. His considerable gut shook as he worked up to full anger, but he never got the chance to finish. Mable clocked him so hard across the jaw, he flew to the floor and landed in an unconscious heap.

  “Mable!” Theo shouted.

  Without acknowledging him, she reached into a drawer, moved some items about, and depressed a button hidden in the bottom. Theo gaped as a panel in the wall slid open a foot.

  Mable didn’t walk to the opening right away. First she squatted next to the lifeless body of the restaurant manager and said, “That was for Hadley, you son of a bitch.” She stood and kicked him hard in the ribs for good measure before disappearing between the panels.

  Entirely unsure of what just happened, Theo ran in after her.

  The thin beam of light disappeared, A moment later, a penetrating darkness consumed them.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked. “Where are we? I can’t see a damn thing.” Theo tapped the screen of his wristlet and produced a small square of light.

  “It won’t help,” she said through teeth gritted tight.

  He realized she was hurt. She’d hit the guy hard enough to knock him out in a single blow. “You okay?”

  “Mmhm.”

  He felt in the dark, in the direction of her voice, until her bumped into her upper arm.