by Eden Wolfe
Ariane exhaled loudly through her nostrils. "My help." She walked past him to the window of her office that looked into the square, the Tower across the other side. "I should commend your transparency if I weren't so frustrated by your inadequacy."
Roman let his breath out. He was fine with being called inadequate. In the circumstances, even he felt his own inadequacy. He'd slaved over the code of the incubates. And still, their progress was barely incremental. Certain drivers had to be dialed back without affecting the overall viability. He felt like they were right on the cusp of it now, having recognized the overlapping gene. They could adjust the levels of dependency on basic needs while sustaining muscle growth, resilience, and baseline vitals. But the adaptations to adjust for the psychological impacts of incubation - that was beyond him. It was beyond Uma. It was beyond the entire eighteenth floor.
"What is it going to take, Roman?"
He'd prepared himself for this question. "We can implement. That's not the question here. We've found enough mechanisms through our existing tools to define the structure and solve through experimentation."
"You're not answering my question, and now I'm starting to lose my patience."
Roman's heartbeat quickened. He knew she heard it. Her eyes narrowed in on him and his palms began to sweat. "We need Lucius."
"Lucius?"
Roman nodded, "I'm the last one to want to have to say this, which only attests to my recognition of my own limitations."
"You are full of words today, Roman, and yet short on meaning."
"Lucius is the only way we can overcome this. His abilities surpass the collective intelligence of Central Tower. We cannot resolve the incubates DNA problem without him."
Ariane looked back out the window. "I can't say that I'm happy to hear this."
"I'm miserable that I have to say it. That man -" Roman checked his language, "He is infuriating and arrogant. Frustrating and obstructive." Roman lifted his hands in defeat. "But I can't do this one. I can't do it without him."
"You think he can identify the weakness in the current design of incubates?"
"I suspect he already has."
"And he can address it so that they are psychologically stronger for the method of their birth?"
"I would lay my bets on it."
"Would you lay your life on it?"
Roman knew his words now would define the rest of his time before degradation began. "Yes. I would."
"Fine."
Roman closed his eyes.
"Waste no time, Roman, bring him to the Tower immediately."
"He won't come if I ask."
Ariane marched to her desk and flipped open a blank piece of paper. "I'll prepare the summons. Then you can deliver it."
"He won't come. Even with that, if he sees me at his door he'll have it decided before I even have a chance to pass him any letter."
The Queen put her pen down. "The Guard then."
"You risk making him hostile. I don't think that will serve us."
Ariane stood up. "You want me to go there."
"I think it's the only way he'll come willingly."
"You want me to walk into that virus-infected, deviant and deformed, outcast-laden ghetto? Expose myself to the dangers of those who plot behind my back, give them the opportunity to access the one they hold responsible for their conditions - me - when they are the ones who've been plotting, planning, and preparing for my demise?"
She can't be serious. Her paranoia is out of control.
Her nostrils flared. "All this because you couldn't convince him yourself."
"It's our history - "
"It's your failure. You reek of it, Roman. He's smelled it on you for years." She swiped her arm at her chair and it flew into the wall, a leg cracking against the stone. "You leave me no choice. But I'm not going without the Guard, don't you try to convince me otherwise or else I'll begin to suspect there is more behind your entreaty than simple inadequacy." She pointed her finger into Roman's face. "Watch yourself, Roman. You are on notice."
He wasn't sure he was still breathing. Her face was red and her chest lifted and fell in quick succession under the velvet gown.
"Send Irene to me now so that we can prepare. You'd better hope I can be more convincing than you."
38
Lucius
Lucius heard her coming. The Guard had always been less than subtle when trying to make a point. He inhaled deeply and looked in the mirror before they arrived.
Would have liked to bathe before the great confrontation. I've known this was coming for years. I couldn't have guessed it would be over incubation, of all things. But here we are.
He tried to smooth his hair down, look a little less the mad scientist, and perhaps a touch more the man he used to be. Not that Ariane would know what he used to look like. She was born well after his degradation had started.
She only knows me in this case of a body. Such a shame. We would have made quite the family portrait back in the day.
He laughed at himself as he shook his head; the distaste of his humor was wearing even on himself.
A knock on the door.
"Yes?"
The hand on the other side turned the handle, but it didn't give.
"Open the door, Lucius."
"Who is it, please?" He giggled again, his stomach rising and falling with it.
"This isn't a laughing matter."
"Nothing is, dear. Nothing is. I'm coming."
He opened the door, the vision of his Queen daughter with a group of guards behind looked ridiculous in his corner of Cork Town.
All this for me? What did they think I would do? Sit on her?
"Afraid there isn't room for all of you. There's hardly room for one of you. So who will it be joining me for afternoon tea?"
The first guard behind Ariane moved to step forward, but Ariane held up her hand, entered, and closed the door behind her.
"Hello, Lucius." Ariane strolled around the small apartment, looking into the bedroom area.
"Daughter."
"You consider yourself father? Not grandfather, perhaps? I certainly don't know what to call you."
"I designed the one who came before you, and I designed you better than her, but of the same code. I see it in you right now. You can consider yourself set apart from Maeva, but you are the same. Exactly the same."
"You birthed us in boxes just the same."
"Ah, now I cannot take responsibility for that. At least, not for Maeva. I didn't know that was how she would come. You, however, are a different case."
"And this is why I've come to see you."
"To talk about your birth? You were a beautiful baby, cooing gently and giggling without a care. What a time that was. Surely you remember it."
"I remember being cold and alone inside a glass prison."
"Ah, you remember that? Shame. I'd hoped that might fade into the past."
"It didn't, but I got over it. These ones don't, and I want to know why."
"These ones of what?"
Ariane sighed. "I don't want to play games, Lucius - "
"We've never had the pleasure of playing games, Ariane. I must say, I never liked that she gave you all the same name."
"Shut up."
"Something morbid in it all. You must feel their blood running through you. That foreign sensation, an invasion. None of it was ever supposed to happen this way. But then, had everything gone to plan, you never would have been born at all."
"If everything had gone to plan then men would still be running the world and you wouldn't be rotting in a studio flat in the Cork Town ghetto."
Lucius sat back in his wheelchair and pursed his lips. "Touché."
"Now that we've played your game, we need to get serious."
"I can't see why."
"You can run Roman back to the Tower with his tail between his legs, but I won't go so easily."
"I'm not asking you to go."
Ariane leaned forward in her chair, lean
ing her arm on the table in a way that made Lucius feel they were just having a chat about the weather or the status of banana crops in the East Fields.
"This virus is running rampant across the incubates. It's horrible to watch. The impact of their own code driving them to self-destruction."
“We both know there is no virus.”
“I fear for the future of the incubates program.”
"Rightly so."
"We cannot allow it to continue."
"I agree. Stop incubation."
“I mean the illness among the incubates. Stop playing games with me and come back to the Tower."
Lucius sat back. "Just stop using incubation and you don’t even need me, your problem will be solved."
Ariane’s eyes narrowed. "Incubation is the way of the future."
"The Willing Woman program was and is the only future for Lower Earth."
"You've become an extremist?"
"I'm not an extremist, nothing like it. But, like you," he emphasized, "I want the richest future for Lower Earth. It can never be with incubation. It violates a basic rule of our humanity."
"I was born in one. And I am Queen."
Do not speak the words you're thinking Lucius. Do not say it.
And you will be the downfall of Lower Earth.
Lucius exhaled, relieved he managed to only say it in his mind.
"And even you, Daughter, have seen the limits of a birth that occurs in a glass case."
"It is the very thing which has prepared me for what we must now do."
"What must you do, Daughter Queen?"
He saw her twitch at the condescension in his tone.
"We must bring forth a generation able to withstand a changing earth. Fewer caloric needs. Greater growth on reduced nutrition. Even stronger ability to withstand bacteria in the water. It's only going to get worse, Lucius. We are only just at the beginning of all this. If we are to survive it, then our women must be physically able to withstand it."
"But will they be mentally able to withstand it?"
"That's your job. You must code it in."
"I decline."
"You can't decline."
"I decline."
"I SAID YOU CANNOT." Ariane stood and the chair fell behind her. The guards flew open the door and Ariane screamed at them, "Get out! I didn't call you in here. Get out!"
The guards backed out and slowly clicked the door shut again.
Ariane closed her eyes. When she reopened them, her cheeks relaxed. Her jaw slackened and her lips parted.
"There's no one I trust, Lucius. No one but you now. I have to trust you. I need you. I never thought I would say any of this. Not to you. But I am doing my best, and it isn't good enough. Lower Earth needs better than what I have to give. Please, Lucius. Please come back."
Lucius found himself weakening. Something in his resolve lost its luster. Her green eyes sparkled even though there was hardly any light in his apartment. Her shoulders hunched over, far from the proud Queen who stood on balconies or made grand declarations.
She looks so little. So small. I can see the resemblance with Rose when she looks at me this way. She's still only twenty-three. Too young to have taken any of this up. Just like Maeva.
Her eyes implored him and he started to question his determination.
And then he remembered her code. His spine stiffened but she leaned forward, eyes wide, glazed. He thought she might even produce a tear.
She's doing it on purpose. This is how she manipulates the masses. There's nothing soft in her, I didn't put it there. That was intentional. This is all learned behavior.
Lucius felt the realization smack him straight between the eyes.
She's a sociopath. My designed daughter - the Queen of Lower Earth - is a textbook sociopath.
He spoke slow and deliberate, knowing he was inviting a battle. One that would be hard for either of them to win.
"I'm not coming."
Ariane didn't move. Not her eyes, not her lips, nothing in her face flinched for a moment. She sat back in the chair.
Time passed. Lucius didn't know how long, but long enough that he knew it was about to get much worse for him.
Ariane stood. She stepped to him slowly, her head cocked to the side. She leaned in and Lucius tried not to flinch at the sight of her face coming into his line of vision. Her breath was sweet, sickly sweet like rotting prunes.
She brushed her lips against his cheek, not in a kiss but something that resembled it. Lucius could tell she'd never done it before.
She stepped back, turned, and opened the door to the waiting guards.
"Arrest him."
39
Trudith
Anna whisked into the pub and ran to Trudith, her lava rock bouncing against her chest. Trudith took one look at her and thought it was the moment she was going to give birth.
"Anna! Slow down, we have to follow Lucius' instructions now, remember?"
"No, no, no, no."
"What do you mean 'No, no, no'?"
"It's not that, it isn't. Trudith!"
"What!"
"They're rounding people up."
"Who?"
"The Guard."
"No, who are they rounding up?"
"I don't know. They have a list."
"A list of what?"
"I don't know!"
Trudith took it in for a moment. Changes had been underway in Cork Town ever since the announcement, quiet movements of people. Not like before, not the disappearance of people who she knew had been up to things they shouldn't have. This was different. It was the older ones who were being led away, not dragged. Two weeks it had been going now and it was impossible not to see the change. Cork Town was quieter, people weren't talking. An electric sensation had been running among them ever since the Tuesday Briefing and the announcement from the Queen.
Trudith grabbed her satchel. "Stay here. Don't move."
As Anna sat down, trying to catch her breath, Trudith tiptoed outside. She didn't mean to tiptoe, but she couldn't seem to make her feet walk normally. She heard her own breath louder than any other sound as she walked toward the market area. Before she turned the last corner, she could hear voices before she saw them. The voices were calm, low. No panic or hate. She turned to see on one side of the square a group of guards, and on another side of the square, a group of older women. Older, but not so old.
A large caravan being pulled by four horses pulled away as she arrived. Trudith could just catch a glimpse of the people inside.
There must be fifty of them in there.
A face at the back of the caravan looked at her. She didn't know the woman. An older woman, her back hunched, she lifted a hand as a greeting or goodbye. Trudith couldn't tell which. She lifted her hand back. The woman lowered her head as the caravan bumped away toward the main entry to Cork Town.
Trudith looked back to the square. People were milling around, but not in their usual way. They stayed along the edges of the square avoiding the group of women in the middle. About twenty of them huddled together, none of them speaking.
In the group, Trudith saw the scarred face of her favorite vendor from the market.
She'll tell me what's going on. She always loves to gossip. But this doesn't feel like gossip. Where are they going?
Trudith walked over to her. The woman's face lit up but then she waved her arms madly.
"Stay away, Trude." She hissed from fifteen feet away.
"Why, what's going on?"
The woman's face relaxed, the scars running from her hairline down her neck. She'd been that way as long as Trudith had known her. The woman's head cocked to the side, "We have the virus, Trude. We got it."
"What? How?"
"Seems it goes for young and old. The most vulnerable among us. Just like the Queen said."
Just like the Queen said.
"So what are they going to do with you?"
"We're going into quarantine, like the little ones."
"Are
you going to the same place? Do you know where it is?"
"I don't know anything. I just know that I never thought I'd die from a virus. I saw lots of other possibilities, but not a virus." She scratched her arm. Her skin was raw and red, scars running up and down her arms like her face. She was sensitive to any kind of light. "You take care of yourself now, Trudith. You've always been a good one."
Trudith nodded her head and backed away, walking like in a trance back to the pub. A guard stepped in front of her.
"Name, please?"
Please? Did a guard just say 'please' to me?
"Trudith. I live on Fourteenth Road."
"Trudith of what line?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" the guard looked suspicious.
"I've never known." She lifted her long skirt to show her gnarled legs. They never gave her trouble anymore; she'd learned how to walk in spite of them. No one had expected she would. "Had these legs from birth, was brought here while I was still an infant."
"I see." The guard looked at her list and then flipped the pages back to front. "Carry on."
"I don't have the virus?"
"You're not on my list."
"How many are on your list?"
The guard looked down at the papers again.
"Many."
Trudith nodded and turned to continue back to the pub. It was as though she'd lost her peripheral vision. She could only see the very next step she was going to take. She had to get back to Anna, who hopefully was not putting herself into labor with the anxiety of it all.
And then it hit her.
She ran back to the guard. "Excuse me, I'm sorry, Excuse me - "
"Yes?"
So polite, I cannot get used to this.
"Do you have Anna on your list? Anna of the - um, I think she's fourth line. Maybe third actually." Her heart was beating like a gong.