Everwinter: The Forerunner Archives (4 page)

Jude seems to collapse at my inference that my
Father had Thomas Judged in order to cover up
our
wrongdoing. "You hid it in the usual spot, right?" he asks.

I nod. "There's no way anyone knows where it is, but someone knows we
have
it. You need to hide, Jude. I can sweet talk my Father if he confronts me about it, but if the Deacons see your face..."

He nods back. "You're right." He looks around quickly, the paranoia visible in his eyes.

"Lay low until I sort this out with my Father," I say. "He never came home last sleep cycle. He's probably investigating this mutant that tried to break into the city and–" I cut myself off, seeing Jude's face go from shocked to horrified. "Oh, uh, you don't know about that either, do you?"

Jude shakes his head. "Nope." I quickly recount the rumor I'd heard from Mrs. Cromarty.
 

"This all has to be connected, Juno," Jude
says, stepping behind me to wrap his arms around me, making it easier and less conspicuous to whisper in my ear. "The footprints in the sand, the Box, everything."

"I know," I nod. "I'll talk to my
Father after my shift at the Gardens today. Until then,
hide
."

Jude squeezes me tight and gives me a quick peck on the lips. "I love you, Juno Quinn," he says. Then I feel his arms slip away and, by the time I turn around, he's melted into the crowd, g
one. I touch my cheek where he'd kissed me, feeling a bit of the wetness left behind, flabbergasted. 

Jude has never told me he loved me before.

"I...I don–" I start to say to myself, when somebody cuts me off.

"Juno! Hey, Juno Quinn! What can I getcha?"

I shake my head from my stupor and look up dumbly to find I'm at the head of the coffee line, staring blankly into the eyes of the proprietor, Jaq Eldin. He hates it when people take too long to order; it backs things up. The people behind me mutter their annoyance as well.

"Oh, uh, I'll have a
–" I cut myself off again. My eyes have fallen on a clock set on a support post at the back of the kiosk. "Bloody ashes!" I curse, realizing I won't be getting my much needed cup of morning coffee after all.

I'm late for work.

4.

"That'll be a half hour docked from your pay, Juno."

I check the clock on the wall. I'm only ten minutes late, but it's hardly the first time. "But
–" I begin to protest.

"Wanna make it an hour?" Cantrell cuts me off, his tone harsh, his glare like stone. Cantrell is a short man, with darker skin than most and pitch black hair combed to one side. He's only a few years older than
me, but he acts like he’s fifty.

"It won't happen again, sir," I admonish, though we both know the chances of that are pretty slim. My boss just nods and gestures for me to get out of his sight. I dart away quickly, finding the change room and slip
ping into my work bib in less than a minute. I pull my semi-short, red hair into a dirty ponytail, fully revealing the shaved sides of my head, and enter the Glass Gardens proper. 

The heat is the first thing that strikes me, as it always does. It's like a thick, moist wall. The second
thing is the pleasant aroma of fresh, dewy vegetation. Row upon row of various crops, plants and trees, extend as far as the eye can see from the head of the Gardens where I'm standing. Drought is a particularly prevalent problem in Eversummer, and so the Gardens were built to accommodate large scale food production without fear of losses. Above me, massive glass panes set into thick metal frames create seemingly random color patterns of light and shadow. Each pane is tinted uniquely, having been scavenged ages ago from ancient towers of the Forerunners. We haven’t the technology to produce such thick glass ourselves, and so salvaged what we could use. The remnants of Forerunner cities can be found all over Eversummer, though I've never seen one myself yet. They lie mostly in the Bleaklands, where air is hard to come by. My Father says they've all been picked clean now anyway; there is little left to find that wouldn't be blasphemous to possess.

A few of my coworkers give me cursory nods or good mornings as I enter, but I'm in such a crummy mood from my lack of coffee that I mostly ignore them. I make for the corn belt, near the center of the Gardens, where I'd been working lately. I duck down the nearest row and find myself relieved as the tall stalks envelop me, knowing there are no prying eyes to find me. Thinking of Jude, sick with worry, I want to cry but push the bad feelings aside, pulling my machete from my tool belt and start hacking away at the
lush leaves. The corn around me is ready for harvest. I click the radio transmitter, also attached to my belt, and a confirming series of three clicks follows. 

Then I really start working.
 

I chop the stalks just below the golden ears of corn and gently guide them to the black tilled soil for REX to pick them up later. Technically, I'm not supposed to start harvesting at the center of a patch, but I'm so desperate to avoid any and all human contact today that I'm willing to get reamed out by Cantrell again if he should find out.

He probably won’t though.

A low rumbling comes to my legs through the soil and I look back to see REX ambling toward me, his rusty gears whining in protest with every turn of his rotting axels. On the surface, REX appears to be a large flatbed on wheels, a stupid machine remnant of the Forerunners. But inside his deteriorating carapac
e, REX does have a brain of a sort, and I have often been amazed to witness it solve simple problems on its own.

"Morning, REX," I say as the machine pulls up to the first few stalks I have
lain out. A mechanical appendage, not unlike a hand, grasps the crops and flips them onto the flatbed. REX does not reply. I stop what I'm doing and wait for him to catch up to me. He does so and I wait, not moving. There is a tiny lens at the head of the machine, what you might call an eye, and I watch as it moves about now, looking back and forth between myself and the corn. REX realizes I have stopped working and is trying to figure out why. It's at this point that a small, metallic probe issues forth from beneath the machine, flying toward me at great speed. I dodge it easily, but then REX moves his entire body and I'm caught, the probe giving me a shock on the shin.

"Ow!" I protest with a smirk. It's what I get
for teasing the machine. "Did Cantrell have you programmed to do that, or did you figure it out on your own?" I ask. Everyone knows that REX was designed to record data on individual worker production, but this shock treatment is something new. Is REX turning himself into the boss? I laugh and hit the transmitter on my belt again. Immediately, REX stops inching toward me and, with a squeal of metal, darts back the way he'd originally come.

Too bad Cantrell doesn't have an on/off switch like that.

"There you are!" a nasally, high pitched voice calls to me. I look over into the next row of corn to see the plump form of Rayanne Nedaris coming toward me. I roll my eyes; I should have known REX would give away my position. "I've been looking for you all morning!" Ray exclaims, finally coming up next to me.

"I was late," I reply with a tone of finality.

"I heard," Rayanne smirks wildly. "Cantrell must have lost a gasket!" I shrug noncommittally. "I also heard," Ray continues, "that you and Jude found something on the beach yesterday. A weapon of the Forerunners or something?"

My breath catches in my throat.
A weapon?
"Who told you that?" I ask.

Rayanne gives me a sheepish look. "Well...
everyone
. The whole town's talking about it. It's not true, is it? Did you really find–"

"Nothing," I interrupt her. "W
e found nothing. Just some old, washed up garbage. Metal mostly. We were going to bring it to my Father, but a mutant tried to break into the city last night and he was preoccupied."

"Yeah, I heard that too," Ray replies.

I sigh. "One of the Deacons must have been spying on us and told somebody else who blabbed about it." Thomas Whiskeyjack's face flashes through my mind. "Somehow the two stories got intertwined. The stuff we found yesterday has nothing to do with the mutant in the city. That's all there is to it, Ray." The lie sounds convincing, even to my own ears. Hopefully, Ray will spread it around and take some of the heat off of me and Jude.

Ray squints her eyes at me. It's clear she isn'
t buying all that I'm selling, but she seems satisfied enough. "Well, thank the gods that's all it was then," she says, reaching behind herself to pull a wooden travel mug from her tool belt. She cracks the seal and instantly the sweet aroma of Krakelyn coffee assaults my nostrils. She takes a sip then offers the mug to me. My eyes blast wide open and a slick smile bursts onto my lips.

"You're a life saver, Ray!" I say, reaching quickly to take the drink.
 

Before I've got it in my hands, Ray pulls it back and says: "You sure there's nothing else going on?" She sighs deeply. "I've always been truthful with you, Juno. I've been a friend to you. You can trust me."

I nod. That was true, but Ray and I are hardly
good
friends. I think of her more as a desperate clinger trying to improve her social standing by befriending the High Deacon's daughter. "Ray, there's nothing else to tell," I say. And with that, Ray finally seems satiated. She hands me the mug. I down it in a single go.

"Hey! That was supposed to last me all day!" she protests. "Where's the coffee I got you this morning?"

"Gone," I shrug. "Already drank it. Thanks, by the way." I hand the mug back.

"Yeah, you're welcome, Juno," Rayanne grumbles. "For everything." With that, the plump girl stalks away into the corn, green leaves rustling reddish-blonde hair cut in the same fashion as mine.

"Whatever," I reply to myself, gripping my machete and, with fresh coffee coursing through my veins like wildfire, start hacking at the corn as if I am fighting it for my life.

5.

I leave work just after the eighteenth hour, the warmth of the Eversummer sun feeling like a cold draft on my skin after twelve hours in the Gardens. Usually, I would take Mainstreet across the bridge and cut through the business district t
o get home, but tonight I crisscross alleyways and parks in order to avoid prying eyes. It works, mostly, as I only run into a few people I know along the way. I can tell that they all want to talk to me, but I brush them off before our cursory small talk goes any further. I slip into our yard through the back wall door and stalk cautiously across the browning lawn to the wide double doors that open onto the patio. Yeah, we have a big house. A nice house. Two stories. But my Father's the High Deacon. The most powerful man in Krakelyn can't be seen living in squalor, can he?

It's all a joke, in my opinion.

Wealth never mattered to me; Jude's family lives in little better than a shack down by the docks. Everything about my house feels fake to me; like it was made to prove how much better we are than everybody else. I've never thought myself better than anyone in my life. Okay, well, maybe Rayanne, but she's annoying.

Every window in the M
anse is ablaze with fiery sparklights; it's cloudy at the moment, so the ever present sunlight is muted. Sparklights are another luxury we could do without, in my opinion. It's bright outside all the time. Why bother? Very few homes in Krakelyn have sparklights. They require specialized knowledge to operate. Copper cords run out of an oil fed machine spouting noxious fumes at the back of our property. I don't fully understand it myself, but I always thought candles worked just as well.

I slip t
hrough the patio doors, open to permit fresh air into the building. One of the serving women, Ryonyx, greets me upon entering with a smile. "You're just in time," she says. "Dinner is about to be served."

"I'll eat later," I reply curtly. "Is my
Father home?"

"He is," Ryonyx replies. "But he is in his study, and is not to be disturbed."

"He'll
want
to see me,” I grin.

Passing more servants, I come to the wide,
balustraded main stairwell and head up to the second floor. Paintings, tapestries, and golden candelabras line the hall, but I hardly notice them anymore. As I said, it all feels fake to me. I pass Traylor's room. The door is wide open, my little brother passed out on his bed, already snoring softly. I smile and continue on to the door at the end of the hall. 

My Father's study.

I knock and a deep, intimidating baritone answers from the other side.
 

"Come."
 

I open the door, not wasting any time. My
Father's study is a small room, compared with the rest of the Manse, but it feels positively claustrophobic to me. Relics of the Forerunners line shelves and hang from every wall, cluttering every square inch of available space. Many of the objects were discovered by me and Jude on the beach. Father doesn't like my being in here because I am so enthralled by the Forerunners, but I doubt that will matter to him today.