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“Message received. First of all, I need to state my utter disapproval of the mission my daughter took upon herself to initiate. But I’m grateful she’s alive and well. Due to the nature of the situation, I’m leaving the East Coast Council headquarters tonight with a special ops unit. We’ll arrive at the Seattle City Center in approximately six hours. We’ll meet you on the roof of the Admin building. Out.”

“Ha! Someone’s gonna get an ass whoopin’,” Blythe laughed.

Grace stood by the windows, watching the sun come up over the green mountains. The golden light trickled through the city. It wasn’t real sunlight, but it was convincing. She wondered what would happen to the Seattle City Center and whether they’d remove the walls, like they did with the Los Angeles City Center. Soon technicians and all sorts of other people would start to arrive to utilize the city center’s resources. More and more people would migrate north. The currently uninhabited tomb would soon be teeming with people. She thought about Cari and the other natives. If the walls came down and the city came to life, it would destroy the peaceful balance between the native colonies. The tentacles of the potentially bustling city would widen and saturate the sacred lands, ripping away its purity. The natives’ home would be no more. Grace couldn’t let that happen—she had made a promise to Cari. As she watched the morning light spread throughout the city, it became clear that she had a new purpose. While she was inside the city center waiting for her mother to return, she could help with the babies and do everything in her power to ensure that the walls stayed intact. The academy would have to wait.

*

Joseph and his team of two men and two women landed on the roof of the Administrative building, where Grace and Blythe greeted them. Blythe had figured out how to open the center’s panels just above the Administrative building. She had figured out a lot about the city’s mainframe structure in a very short period of time.

“Hello, sir.” Grace saluted, trying to stay strong to keep things professional with her father.

“Give me a breakdown of the situation,” he ordered.

Grace explained the chain of events leading up to the present moment.

“There are two bodies,” Blythe reported. “Taken by my hand.”

Joseph followed the girls into the Administrative building. One team removed Sam’s body, which would be taken to Ojai village and cremated. There would be no way of locating any of his relatives since he had showed up in Ojai, claiming to be a refugee. The other team removed Ms. Atwood. They’d take her body back to the academy for a proper memorial. They would also attempt to track back exactly when Morray had taken over her body.

Joseph stood next to his wife’s still body, gently stroking her cheek. “I knew this would happen one day. That Morray would get her back.”

“It’s not permanent. We’re going to find her,” Grace said, pushing down the sob trying to climb up her throat.

“Show me the inception room,” he said.

When they entered the room, Joseph paced up and down the aisles between the rows of incubators, shaking his head. “Unbelievable. The man still hasn’t learned.”

“Dad,” Grace said. “I’ve decided I want to stay here.”

“Stay here? What about the academy?”

“I can’t leave Mom here all alone, and those babies will need to be looked after. The academy isn’t going anywhere—I can try out again after Mom’s back.”

Blythe stood at attention. “As much as I’d like to stay here and help, I need to get back to the academy. Preferably before they expel me, sir.”

Joseph nodded. “Of course. We’ll get you back down there. And Grace, I know you’re eager to help out, but we’ll need to bring in specialists and doctors who know a thing or two about babies. As well as some mainframe experts to conduct searches. But I don’t see the harm in keeping you here as a volunteer.”

“The other thing,” Grace said.

“A lot of requests for someone who broke about fifty rules.”

“We can’t take down the walls. If we do, it will destroy the natives.”

Joseph laughed. “That’s a pretty hefty demand for an academy dropout.”

“The natives have been living here since the Repatterning. Hundreds of tribes. If we take down the walls and make an open city, imagine the havoc it would cause.”

“I don’t have the authority on that decision. Something of this importance requires a western regional vote. But you can stand in and represent the natives. I can promise, nothing will happen without your input.”

Graced nodded in full agreement.

“Your first order of duty will be to assist my team with any and all requests. They’re in charge until we get a system in place up here.”

They saluted the General.

Grace slipped in one last hug before her father headed out to get Blythe back down to Silicon Valley.

27

FROM THE FORTIETH floor of the Administration building, Grace stood by the windows, looking over the quiet city. In her arms, she held a baby boy. His tiny fingers wrapped around her index finger as he cooed. She had taken a liking to the two-month-old she had named Christian. Most of the other infants had already been placed into new homes along the West Coast, but this little one still remained. Grace had developed a special bond with the boy. One she couldn’t describe with words, but through gentle kisses placed on his soft head. His bright blue eyes sparkled like aquamarines and soothed her soul. She hoped to hold onto Christian for as long as possible.

“Time for feeding,” the head nurse, Ruth, announced.

Grace took a bottle from the cart Ruth was pushing. The team of nurses came forward to begin the feeding shift for the remaining twenty-five babies. Two months earlier, when the babies had reached full term, there had been a much larger crew. The work had been broken down into precise and ceaseless shifts, but now that many of the babies had been placed, things in the nursery were far more manageable. Messages about the remaining babies were still being sent out across the country. Until they all had homes, Grace was content helping out in the nursery.

“Looks like you found your calling,” Ruth said, touching Christian’s rosy cheek.

“He’s a beauty,” Grace replied.

“Try not to get too attached. Eventually he’ll be placed,” Ruth said, with a sweet smile.

Grace continued feeding Christian. After she burped him, she sat down in one of the rocking chairs and took out a journal from her pocket. A while back, she had requested the old journals to be sent to Seattle so she could continue her mother’s research. It had been five months, and there was still no sign of Ava. Before the babies had reached full term, Grace had spent day and night with the team of professionals from the academy, searching through the mainframe to track Ava. They kept hitting walls. When it was time for the babies’ inception, Grace took a break from the mainframe to help in the nursery. The mainframe searches continued, but Grace decided to try a different approach—she wanted to look to the past for answers. She stayed up through the night, reading Lillian’s words aloud to help get the babies back to sleep. She moved through Lillian’s journals and then onto the ones written by her son, Joseph—who her father had been named after. She was currently reading one that had been scribed by Joseph’s daughter, Geneva. She opened to the bookmark and began reading to Christian. As his eyes grew heavy, she focused on written words. She believed if she kept studying the pages, eventually she’d find her mother between them.

Once Christian was sleeping soundly, she placed him back into his cradle and moved onto the next baby. The process took a couple of hours. Then there was changing time. And bath time. After a short break, the whole process would start again. Though she missed the academy and Lucas, she felt satisfied. Taking care of babies was no easy task, and it had its own fair share of grossness. In between babies and journals, she had been joining discussions about the future of the Seattle City Center. She signed up to represent the natives. So far, the only decision that had been locked in was not making any decisions until all of the babies were in homes. Grace could live with that. For now.

“Grace Strader, you have a call,” a voice came over the intercom.

Ruth nodded, giving her approval to be dismissed.

Outside in the hallway, she found a station and pulled up her call. Lucas’s hologram appeared before her.

“Hi,” she said, beaming.

“Hello, Grace,” he said with a huge smile.

“Congrats on graduating,” she said.

“Sorry you missed it. But I know you had your hands full,” he teased.

“Literally.” She laughed at his corniness. She missed him. The last time they were together was at the gala event five months earlier. Though she never said anything to Lucas, the one thing that helped her get to sleep was remembering him holding her under the stars that night.

“Talked to Marion yesterday, and she said you and Missakian received honors.”

“So did she.”

“Oh, trust me, I know all about it.” Grace laughed. She was genuinely happy for her best friend’s success. There was a time when the weight of jealousy would have suffocated her, but Marion had worked hard and deserved greatness.

“I missed you at the ceremony,” he said.

“We can have our own celebration,” Grace said, blushing. “I mean, well, if you come up for a visit or something?”

“I guess you’re staying up there? What about finishing the program and graduating? Your dream was to be a soldier.”

“I have a feeling in the coming months I’ll have plenty of battles to fight up here. They’re gonna start discussing the pros and cons of dismantling the walls. I want to be a part of those meetings so I can make sure the natives have a voice. And there are still twenty-five babies who need to be fed and changed.” She paused for a moment. “Still no luck tracking my mother.”

“I understand. Well, I know where I’ll be hanging out before I get stationed. In the mood for some company that doesn’t require a diaper change?”

Grace’s heart caught on fire. They’d have two weeks and the whole quiet city to themselves. “Yes,” she said, nodding repeatedly.

“I can make arrangements to be there tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow it is.”

“I’ll probably be exhausted,” he said.

“Why?”

“I’ll be thinking about you all night.” He winked.

She rolled her eyes and lifted her hand in a salute. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning—0900 hours. Over and out, Corporal West.”

Grace took a transporter down to the lobby of the Administrative building and stepped outside. The late afternoon sun was dusting over the city. She stepped onto the moving walkway that went through the main part of the city. As she rode along in the tranquility of the peaceful afternoon, she caught glimpses of Puget Sound in the distance. Soft pink clouds stretched across the autumn sky and reflected on the water. The pines reached beyond the boundless horizon. None of the surrounding landscape was real, but she couldn’t tell the difference. She walked to her favorite park at the end of town and sat on a bench. She stared off to the water as a gentle wind slipped through the trees and brushed across her cheeks.

In each passing breeze, she heard her mother’s whisper.

BOOKS
BY
SIMONE
POND

THE CITY CENTER

THE NEW AGENDA

THE MAINFRAME

THE TORRENT

VOICES OF THE APOCALYPSE: SHORT STORIES

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A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Simone lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their Boston Terrier.
The Mainframe
is the third book in The New Agenda Series.
The City Center
and
The New Agenda
are best sellers in Amazon’s post-apocalyptic science fiction category, and
The City Center
was the recipient of a gold medal award from Readers’ Favorite.

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A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my readers for your support throughout the series. I’m not sure what’s next, but as soon as Ava gets back to me, you’ll be the first to know. There’s a new book of short stories in the making, so stay tuned.

Special thanks to my editor, Scott Tipton, for nudging me to be a better writer and always helping me find the smartest solutions. Thanks to Laurenne Sala for being a great writing date and for getting me to that painful writer’s conference that got the ball rolling. Thank you to my eagle eye spot checkers: Nadine DeBlasio, Kat Deloian and Bill Emmett.

I have so much gratitude and appreciation for all of my astounding pre-readers. Thank you for spreading the word and supporting me in so many ways. Your pictures always warm my heart.