Incineration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 2) (19 page)

I’m not paying much attention, and bump into a woman hurrying in the opposite direction. “Sorry,” I say. The woman doesn’t pause, continuing down the street, and I become conscious that my fingers have curled around a slip of paper. It’s crisp and surprising—the woman must have slipped it into my palm. Knowing better than to examine it in public, I scan my way into the building and climb the stairs to my apartment. Barely inside the door, I unfold the strip, releasing a hint of lilac. Griselda. I didn’t even recognize her. I scan the tiny print:
2100 tonight, Centennial Olympic Park by Prem I. W

Wyck! Wyck’s here in Atlanta. My initial joy turns to worry. Has something happened? Why is he here? I hope he’s not in danger. I’m nervously pulling the strip of paper through my fingers time and again, when a knock heralds Marizat, inviting me up for dinner. It’s a good way to kill time until I can meet Wyck, so I join her, only half-listening as she talks about the challenges of her day—Minister Fonner’s perfectionism, a translation glitch with the foreign minister of New Persia, an argument with her brother—and complains about her supervisor who is always touching her, stroking her arm, putting a hand on her shoulder, standing too close. “He makes me feel slimy. I always feel like I need a shower after I’ve been with him.” She shivers.

I wish I could tell her about Keegan, the way he watches me and makes me nervous, but I can’t do that without telling her why he’s suspicious of me.  I settle for saying, “My superior, the lab director, is kind of creepy, too. He watches me like he’s waiting for me to screw up.”

We moan about our bad supervisors until it’s almost nine and then I say goodnight. I don’t even stop by my apartment, but head straight downstairs and out into the chilly night. The omnipresent humidity drapes around me like an icy shroud. I shake it off and set a brisk pace for Centennial Olympic Park. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the park enjoying the water jetting up among the five Olympic rings, circles of blue, red, black, green and yellow lights, each large enough to park three ACVs inside them. There hasn’t been an Olympics since 2022 and even then a lot of athletes refused to travel to Oslo; that’s about when people began whispering “pandemic.” When I was little, maybe six or seven, I’d gotten fired up watching the holo-images of the gymnasts the Kube’s fitness proctor used to play for us sometimes, and tried to do a somersault on the wall that separated the Kube from the IPF compound. It was four inches wide, balance-beam width, but almost six feet high. I’d fallen—of course—and broken my clavicle, earning myself forty-two demerits in the process.

I run a finger over my collarbone at the memory and scan the park as I approach. A handful of people traverse it, looking like they’re on their way someplace else, not planning to linger. The sun set long ago, so they’re blurred, featureless. Their footsteps sound loudly on the stone pavers underfoot. Strolling casually, I make my way to the familiar statue of Stuart Iceneder, Amerada’s first premier, and re-read the plaque attached to the base. This part of the park is a distance from the rings fountain, but the quiet whoosh and splash of the water jets drift to me, sounding a little bit like the waves on the beach. A sense of longing for the Kube takes me by surprise and I realize I’m homesick. Ridiculous. The Kube wasn’t a home; it was a government institution. It—

“Ev.”

The whisper comes from my left and I whirl to see a figure emerging from behind a statue of another Amerada founder.

Chapter Twenty Three

“Wyck!” I run to him and throw my arms around him, hugging him so tightly he winces.

He returns my hug and kisses me. I keep my mouth closed and the kiss is sweet but brief. He detaches himself, saying, “Idris told me you’d be brunette, look different, but—”

Griselda must have sent Idris a report. “I’m still me. How are you?”

He shrugs, grimaces, and massages his shoulder. “Good. A few bumps and bruises from our last mission. Maybe you heard? We captured the petroleum plant near Savannah.”

I shake my head.

“The Prags aren’t so quick to broadcast their defeats,” Wyck says.

We’re walking slowly, heads close, around the park. Our hands are loosely linked, swinging gently, like when we were children. Bats swoop past and a whistle blows in the distance.  An embracing couple spring apart as we round a corner and come upon them.

“How is everyone?” I ask. “Fiere—has she regained all her memories? Is Alexander getting stronger? Idris?”

“Alexander’s been working with Fiere and she’s regained a lot of memories, just not those surrounding the attack and her time in prison. She’s got a few other holes here and there, and Alexander says they’ll come back in time, or they won’t. Physically, she’s almost back to what she was. We’ve been training together. Alexander, too, when he feels up to it. He’s much stronger. I think working with Fiere, having a purpose again, has given him strength. He’s got a new medicine that seems to be helping, too. He’s still terminal, of course; I mean, we’re all terminal, right? None of us get out of this life alive.” He laughs uncomfortably.

“And you?”

“Me?” He turns his head away, as if studying the names on the memorial pavers set into the face of an empty planter. “You know me.”

I do know Wyck, as well as I know anyone, other than Halla. That’s a laugh; I don’t know Halla at all. Wyck seems uptight, wary. “What is it?” I ask, drawing him to the edge of the planter and sitting on its narrow ledge.

“Idris sent me to find out if you’ve learned anything new. Your satellite information was confirmation of intelligence we’d received from another source. Idris is more interested in the political intelligence you’ve been collecting. Who’s moving up? Who’s being squeezed out? Who is likely to become the next premier?”

I get the feeling that there’s more going on with Wyck, but I fill him in on my time at the MSFP, everything from Griselda and Minister Fonner, to my work and what I’m sure is an approaching breakthrough, to contact with scientists in other countries, and, what I’ve managed to gather about the political maneuverings leading up to the selection of the new premier. Finally, I tell him about Saben. “He wasn’t the Bulrush traitor,” I say. I steel myself. “Halla sold us out.”

“What!”

His exclamation is so loud a man walking twenty feet away turns to look at us and then picks up his pace. I tell him about finding Halla living in an area that houses IPFers, and hearing a baby in the house. “She betrayed us for Little Loudon,” I say. “I guess we can’t blame her for wanting to get her baby back.”

“The hell we can’t.” Wyck’s voice is as cold as I’ve ever heard it. Cold and implacable. “Cas died in that attack. She as good as killed him and the others.” He jumps up as if unable to be still, and paces four steps out and back.

I can tell that his feelings for Cas went deeper than I suspected. I’d wondered about their relationship, especially when Wyck insisted we wait until Cas could join us to leave for an outpost, but we’d never discussed it. “Were you and Cas . . .?”

He stops in front of me. The dark blurs his features, but I can make out the way his crisp brown hair curls over his ears, the gleam of his eyes. After a moment, his head dips in the barest hint of a nod. He takes my hand and I lace my fingers through his so we’re palm to palm.

“I love you, Ev. I really do. But not like, not the way you deserve. Cas and I—” He swallows hard and his fingers tighten around mine. “I’d wondered before him. I never felt about girls the way some of the guys at the Kube seemed to feel. The way they talked—.” He drops my hand and goes back to pacing. “When I met Cas—we talked for hours. Don’t laugh, but he felt like someone I’d known forever, like part of myself that I’d been separated from. I know it sounds mushy. I let myself accept what I’d known for a while. About myself.”

“I’m not laughing.” I’m not surprised, but I do have a question. “On the
Belle
, when you wanted to make love—what was that about?”

“I didn’t want you to go! I thought that if we . . . I wanted to love you like that, wanted to be closer to you. Cas was dead. But it’s not like that between us, is it?”

I shake my head sadly. “No.”

We’re standing, facing each other, a foot apart. I’m not mad at Wyck—in fact, I’m a bit relieved that I won’t be breaking his heart when I tell him about me and Saben—but I feel like little pieces of me are breaking off. First Halla, now Wyck. The relationships that I counted on for so many years, that helped define me, that make up all I have of my history . . . they’re shearing off or morphing into something new. I don’t want to be someone new—Derrika Ealy or anyone else. I want to be Everly Jax, working with Dr. Ronan in the lab, laughing with Halla and Wyck during dinner, sneaking away to the beach. I don’t want this life of secrecy and falsehood. I want things to go back to how they were.

Wyck interrupts my pitiful little mental foot stomping. “Idris wants you to come back.”

That’s a dash of cold water in my face. I draw back. “What? No. I’m too close with the locust solution.”

“He’s got a new mission in the works. He says he needs you for it.”

“What is it?”

Wyck hesitates. “I don’t know. He’s keeping it close-hold.”

I start walking, anger powering my stride. “I’m where I need to be, doing what I need to do. Idris will have to get along without me, whatever he’s got in mind.”
Who does Idris think he is, ordering me around like I’m a . . . a serf, or military subordinate?

Wyck keeps pace easily. “He said to remind you that he holds the ace and he’s not afraid to play it, whatever that means.” He gives me an enquiring look.

My steps slow. I can’t tell him that he’s Idris's hostage, for all intents and purposes. “Look, I’m getting useful intelligence here.  I’m accompanying Minister Alden to an appointment tomorrow. If Idris needs me to find out something specific, I can try to do that, but I can’t go back to the Defiance. The locust problem is more important. Did you hear five people were killed in the Delta Canton last week?” I plunge on, ignoring his nod. “I’m close, really close, to a solution. I’ve been working with a scientist in Australia—” I stop, and grab his arm. “Stay here.” I want him out of harm’s way. “Don’t go back.”

He looks at me like I’m crazy. “I have to go back. They need me. We’re making progress, Ev. The Prags are on the run. I’ve got a squad of my own—I can’t desert them. And I’ve got the
Belle
’s engine working now. I’m not a scientist like you—I’d be useless here in the capital—no more effective than insecticides against locusts.”

I can see by the way he holds himself that he’s proud of his position with the Defiance. He’s earned respect. He’s making a difference. Nothing I can say is going to persuade him to stay in Atlanta. Would the truth work? I consider it. No. He’d be unbearably hurt to think he was nothing more than a pawn to Idris, but he’d still go back. That’s not fair—he’s clearly more than a pawn, but I know Idris would sacrifice him anyway.

Wyck or the locust solution? Wyck is only one person—the locusts are poised to kill thousands. But I love Wyck, and the others are nameless, faceless strangers. I stare into his dear face, seeing confusion in his eyes. “Tell Idris I need two weeks. I’m close, really close. Surely whatever he’s planning that he thinks he needs me for, it can wait a couple of weeks.” Another thought comes to me. “Tell him I’m in touch with Saben and that he’s willing to give me operational IPF details. Surely that’s worth something? I can’t leave, Wyck. I can’t.  You understand, don’t you?”

He can’t understand, not really, because he doesn’t know I’m gambling with his life. He puts his hands on my shoulders and says, “Of course I do. I can tell Idris to sod off for you.” He sounds almost cheerful and gives me an encouraging shake. “It’ll be good for him to have someone not ask ‘How high?’ when he says jump, for a change.”

I muster a smile. “Don’t tell him that. Just tell him I understand his message but I need two more weeks.” Leaving the park in silence, we walk along the dark streets. Moonlight lances off the capitol’s golden spire. A fragment of conversation drifts from an alleyway.  I offer to show him my billet, but he says we can’t risk being seen together and that he has to go.  He says he has to make contact with another agent and be back at the
Chattahoochee Belle
before dawn.
I’m not an “agent,”
I want to protest, but don’t.

“I’ll see you soon,” he says, hugging me. A day’s growth of whiskers chafes my skin and I nuzzle against his jaw, letting the prickles irritate my skin. I want to keep him close.

“Two weeks,” I promise, hoping that’s long enough. If it’s not, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Part Three

Chapter Twenty Four

I try to sleep, but flop and squirm, unable to turn off my thoughts and my worries about Idris. Giving up at three, I do my exercises, shower, dress, and head to the ministry. I’ve only got two weeks—I need to use every minute I can in the lab. I get a suspicious look from a guard when I scan in at not quite four o’clock, but march past him. The lab is dark and empty, except for a line of light coming from beneath the door to the locust room; we’ve been simulating daylight for them twenty-four hours a day to stimulate their growth cycle.

Barely pausing at my station, I push into the locust room and the humming overtakes me immediately. The cages rise from floor to ceiling in rows. Farthest from the door, an enclosure holds carnivorous locusts only, and I imagine they’re fixated on me as I come in, trying to find a way out of their cage to bite into my flesh. I peek into that cage. The skeletons of laboratory rodents litter the bottom of their cage. I’m glad the feeding and watering of the locusts is the lab techs’ task and not mine. I backtrack toward the door. The cage nearest the door holds the specimens I’ve been experimenting with.

The hoppers hatched four weeks ago from eggs deposited by the females I injected with the gold marker gene have molted again and the empty carapaces litter the cages, hollow locust husks. They’re almost mature, their wings on the verge of supporting their weight and enabling flight. At this stage male and female nymphs look alike, both expressing the transgenic gold passed them by the parents I had infected with the insidious viral carrier that I hope gives these offspring two separate destinies. Males should survive the transition from nymph to adult. The females should not. Just a few more days.

I finish with the locusts and return to my computer to enter data. There’s still no one else here although the sun is just below the horizon and the dark has faded to charcoal. I give into temptation and access the DNA database. I want to see what Idris is made of, literally, what drives him. I hesitate before giving the command. I can’t do it. There’s no plausible reason for Derrika Ealy to have ever heard of Idris Ford. I’m about to shut down the program when I notice the database total again. It’s lower. Six lower than when I last searched the files. A weird feeling comes over me and I shut it down sharply. There’s no way the total should fall. No way. Someone’s tampering with the database. I don’t know what’s going on, but it makes me uneasy.

Before I can puzzle it out, the door shushes open and Torina appears. I close the program and swing around to greet her, babbling “good morning” in a voice that sounds guilty in my ears. Torina appears to notice nothing and we chat about the data I collected this morning.

“You’ve done amazing work in a short time, Ealy,” Torina says. “Let’s pray that the mutation expresses as designed.”

She heads to her station, leaving me to ponder her life outside the lab. I think it’s the first time I’ve heard a scientist talk about praying. Is Torina a church goer or is it just a figure of speech? The churches lost membership during the pandemic, but I’ve heard it’s rebounding some. I think about asking Torina what church is like, but it feels too personal. I think about Halla and her Bible which she read daily at the Kube, a habit she picked up from her grandmother. She flung the book aside after the RESCO, but maybe she’s reading it again, reciting her verses to Little Loudon.

My gaze stays on Torina, hunched over her computer. Does she have a husband, even children? I feel a twinge of shame at how self-involved I’ve been since I got here. Yes, I’ve been deliberately avoiding personal conversations for fear that in the give and take I’ll betray myself, but still.

Don’t be an idiot
, my sterner side says.
You’re here for one reason and one reason only: destroy the locusts
.
Anything else is only a distraction
.

“AC Ealy.” Minister Alden’s aide, a tall woman ten years my senior with stiffly erect posture, beckons me from the door. “The minister is ready.”

Atlanta’s Dome 2 sits almost an hour’s ride from the city center, to the northeast. We’re in an armored, six-seater ACV accompanied by IPF outriders due to an “increased risk of outlaw activity,” as the detail lieutenant whispers to Minister Alden. To my disappointment, none of the soldiers is Saben. The farther we get from the Capitol area, the dingier and more wild the city’s remains become; there are no more level streets or new construction. The houses here aren’t even refurbished; most are nothing but façades of wood or stone, caved in on one side or the other. I glimpse a spiral of smoke and frown to think people might live out here. No electricity, no water, shelters one puff of wind away from collapse. Finally, our ACV weaves between kudzu-cloaked asphalt hunks jutting up like a medieval town’s walls, encircling the city.

“The former two eighty-five,” Minister Alden murmurs. We pass a crooked sign announcing “Stone Mountain” and a swoop of elevated tracks that used to be a rollercoaster rises on our left minutes before I spot the dome. I can see the curve of clear polyglass from miles away. A robust IPF presence when we pull up outside the main entrance surprises me.

As she alights, Minister Alden remarks on it, saying, “We’ve deployed more Infrastructure Protection assets to the domes. Intelligence suggests the Defiance is targeting them. We can’t allow those malcontents to disrupt the nation’s food supply. Too many people would suffer. Does the Defiance not realize that all they’re doing is increasing the burden on the poor, the very people they say they want to ‘set free?’” Her tone is scathing. “Where will they get food, if not from government domes? The Defiance is  nothing but a self-aggrandizing gaggle of rabble rousers who take away resources better used to rebuild this country.”

Without waiting for a response, she turns to greet the dome’s managers and chief scientists who have turned out in force to fawn over her. I follow in her wake, largely ignored and grateful for it.  The familiar scent of loam and plants, a faintly bitter fragrance that seems to coat the roof of my mouth in a not unpleasant way, transports me back to the Kube and the many satisfying hours I spent working in the dome. This one is laid out the same way, but is nearly twice as big with what looks like five acres or so devoted to growing flowers. Tulips, marigolds, lilies, and orchids! What an extravagance. Thinking about Minister Alden’s comments, I wonder how they can justify not growing food. Despite my reservations, I let the vibrant colors and perfume delight me.

A veritable swarm of microdrones stream data about soil fertility and water usage, and, according to the manager touring us around, measure the amount of red light and near-infrared heat reflected from the plants to calculate the normalized difference in vegetation index.  He puffs off the savings in land and fertilizer he’s been able to realize while still increasing food production. Our tour reaches its climax when we are offered tastes of the locust-proof lettuce which is an off-putting blue-gray shade and tough to chew. The flavor is okay, though, and Minister Alden compliments the chief scientist.

“With any luck, it will not be long before we can once again grow crops outside domes.” She urges me forward with a sharp gesture. “AC Derrika Ealy, a newcomer to the ministry, is close to a break-through we hope will eradicate the locusts for good.”

I’m uncomfortable being the center of attention as surprised murmurs burble forth. Two of the younger scientists approach me and we discuss my methodology for a few minutes, until the minister’s aide signals that it’s time to depart. The soldiers guarding our ACV step aside to let us in and we’re humming forward seconds later. The minister spends the first half of the ride discussing her schedule with the aide, and issuing instructions, but then she sends the aide forward to sit beside the driver, seals off our compartment with two seats facing forward and two back to enable conversation, and turns to me.

“Well, Ealy, what did you think?”

I make a couple of polite comments about the dome’s organization and the lettuce, but she waves me to silence with a wrist flick. “Yes, yes. That’s not why I really asked you to accompany me today. I want to hear about your progress, directly from you, not filtered by Dr. Usher.”

Lifting my brows mentally at that, I give her a concise run-down on my research, methodology, results to date, and planned next steps. She listens intently, head slightly cocked to one side, face impassive. This close, I notice as many silver-gray hairs as blond ones in her neat coif.

“Lord willing and the volcano don’t explode,” I finish, “we’ll have proof—”

“What did you say? Where did you hear that?” The color has drained out of Minister Alden’s face, and her eyes are fixed on me, staring, pools of ice blue against her dead-white skin.

“Proof,” I say, puzzled. “Proof that the viral vector will successfully—”

“No. That bit about the volcano.”

“A—a friend used to say it.” Her expression makes me nervous.

“You know Alexander,” she breathes.

I’m afraid to admit it, even though she knows who I really am. Confirming my association with Bulrush seems like a bad idea. I could kick myself for allowing the distinctive phrase to slip out. “Um—”

“He’s . . . alive?” She’s leaning forward and color has flooded back into her cheeks, making her look younger suddenly. The tension in her voice seems more fitting for a question about a new flu outbreak.

“I don’t know what—”

“Cut the crap, Ealy,” she snaps. “Just tell me—Alexander Ford—Is he alive?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

She sags against the seat, eyes closed. “Oh, my God.”

Her reaction puzzles and intrigues me. Before I can make sense of it, her eyes fly open. “When? Where? When did you last see him?”

I see no point to lying. “Just before I came to Atlanta. He was ill, but alive. He was injured in the attack where I got captured, but Wy—friends helped him escape and find a doctor.”

She exhales the ghost of a laugh. “Alexander had—has—friends everywhere. There’s something about him that draws people. He commands a loyalty I—” She stops on something like a sob. “I thought he was dead.”

The aide is peering at us from the other side of the tinted partition, suspicious. I turn my back on her and face Minister Alden. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind my asking, how do you know Alexander?”

She presses her index fingers to her tear ducts, perhaps to keep her eyes from filling. Blinking twice, she composes herself, and says, “He was my husband.”

I stare at her blankly. It’s silent for a long moment. Finally, I can’t contain myself. “Your husband? But he—You—He said he and his wife—you—helped found the Pragmatist party. I thought, I assumed, his wife was dead.” My mind is whirling as I try to remember everything Alexander told me about his younger days.

“We are dead to each other,” Minister Alden said, her voice steady but her expression sad. “Divorced longer now than we were married.”

“Ma’am, if you don’t mind my asking, what happened? How did you and he meet?”

“You want my life history now, Jax?”

She doesn’t seem to notice that she called me by my real name. I take it as a sign of how hearing about Alexander has jolted her, and simply nod. Thank goodness we are sealed off from the aide and the driver.

“It’s a long story. I was born in the first decade of this century, so I was a teenager—about your age, actually—when the pandemic hit. Like you, I was a science prodigy, and I was in my third year at Stanford—that was a highly respected university in what’s now the Cali-Mex Territories—researching vaccine mismatches that can occur in the face of antigenic shift under the supervision of your own Dr. Ronan.” She smiles. “He’s really a softy underneath that crusty exterior, but nothing exists for him outside the lab.”

“He had a daughter.”

Her brows arch. “Did he? I never knew. Anyway, I traveled home—my family was in Virginia—before the Presidential Order shut down air travel—but I was too late. My mother was already dead and my father on the verge of death, my brothers missing. I’ve never learned what happened to them, but chances are they’re dead, too.” She doesn’t pause for any condolences. “The next few years . . . were a struggle for survival. The lowest circle of hell. What I’ll never forget are the smells: rotting corpses, dust, bleach, sickly floral chemical deodorizers that only made it all worse.” She shudders and sniffs. “You don’t want to hear all this and I don’t want to talk about it.

“I met Alexander Ford at a meeting, a gathering for people who wanted to establish a centralized government and realized military force would be necessary to squash the militias, criminals, and roving bands of armed marauders who were looting, killing and raping at will. Alexander was strong and thoughtful. We were immediately attracted to one another. We married months after meeting and fought together to form Amerada and pull the country back from the brink of total annihilation. We were a team. Inseparable. Unbeatable.”

She lapses into silence and I prod her after a respectful moment.  “What happened?”

“The country’s relative stability put our relationship on rocky ground, ironically. Alexander’s opinions diverged more and more from the core cadre’s as we formed the government. He argued against the RESCOs, and the procreation laws. He could have been premier, but instead, he marginalized himself by holding out for individual rights. He wouldn’t be
practical
. He refused to see that the people needed guidance, that the government needed to establish and run programs that would get our infrastructure rebuilt, and grow our population. He especially objected to—” She folds her lips over whatever she was going to say.