Chapter 15

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

JESSICA

Three days later, Trench and I have settled into a masochistic routine only broken by the alarms that drag him out into the Shadow Zone.

Wake, collect a sample, eat breakfast, spend some time in the lab with the cavrinskh, lunch, Trench leaves me to work on the new samples delivered from Margot’s, pause for dinner, work on my… capacity. Unless he goes out into the Zone. Then, I wait for him to get back and the rest of the day or night is devoted to the lab.

But today is different.

Today, while I sit on the counter and watch Trench make pancakes, the door chimes.

“Laurel again?” he asks.

I shrug and slip from the counter to go see who it is.

Familiar neon streaked hair looks out of place in Trench’s garage and when I open the door, she turns to me with a bright smile.

“Your eyes are green.” Two percent. The number comes to me unbidden. “That’s rare.”

“They are,” she places her hand under her chin as if displaying her face. “On Earth, but it’s one of the more common eye colors among Sians.”

She laughs and holds out the sample bag to me. “Mind if I come in?”

“Sure.” I step out of the way. “Should I pull out another plate?”

“Depends, what’s on order?”

“Pancakes.”

“What a positively human breakfast.”

“There’s even fake maple syrup.”

She laughs again while following me in, looking all around and it occurs to me, “Have you been to many of the outposts?”

“Only two.” She doesn’t tell me which. “But I always love seeing inside places other people don’t get to go.”

She winks at me and then says a cheerful good morning to Trench.

“What have we done for you to grace us with your presence?” He asks as he sets a plate on the counter. The dining table is still a mess of my research, and none of us want to eat breakfast surrounded by semen.

“Can’t your friendly neighborhood madam stop by for an innocent chat?”

“You tell us.”

She gives me a sly smile and then shoves a bite of pancake in her mouth so she doesn’t have to answer.

I share a glance with Trench, and we both let her eat in silence, waiting.

“Those were delicious,” she finally says when Trench takes away her cleared plate. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, why are you here?”

Chuckling, she looks toward the table and then back to me. “I’m curious about what you’ve found so far. Care to share?”

“I should say no, but you are technically an Agency employee, so it’s not against the rules.”

“Agency employees only, hmm?” She looks at Trench, “So, you’ve been keeping him in the dark.”

“He’s special.”

“Yes he is.” She winks at me. “We’ll just call him your lab assistant.”

I shake my head and manage not to argue any further with her. “Mostly, I’ve noted the main similarities to humans.”

“So many circles.” She flips through the slides quickly enough, I’m not certain she’s actually taking any of the information in, but she pauses when she gets to the bonding protein. “You need to talk to Kimba.”

“I do?”

She nods. “There’s some other component that you should be looking for with this lot.” She gestures toward Trench.

“What does that mean?” Trench asks, arms crossed tightly in front of him.

“Not allowed to say. It’s just a theory based on anecdotal evidence right now.” She pats the bag of new samples. “This has samples from two of the brotherhood. You may have to convince the rest to come down and give theirs.”

“Thanks.” Margot squeezes my arm and then goes to Trench, leaning close to say something I can’t hear.

“Goodbye, you silly kids. I’ll see myself out.”

She goes, and we both watch her go. When she’s out of sight, I watch Trench until he turns back to me. He could hear that she’s actually left.

“What did she say?”

“She assured me that Arc’s was not among those samples,” he says. “She thinks we hate each other.”

“Do you?”

Trench’s brow ridges pinch. “I don’t know.”

TRENCH

Margot had paused at my door before she left, out of sight, technically out of hearing, and she’d said one last thing before she left.

“Ask her to stay.”

I want to.

Jessica looks at the new samples and then puts them aside, heading back for the cold lab and the cavrinskh.

“You know,” she says as she pulls on the slim jacket I ordered for her. “I’ve never asked, why do they only hunt women?”

“Well, they don’t only hunt women. Something we’ve learned recently. But the prevailing theory was because they know we can’t procreate.”

“They know?” She casts a skeptical glance my way and slips on her gloves.

“If someone gave you the impression they’re not fully intelligent beings, you were misled.”

“Remember, no one told me they existed before I got here. They almost feel like a dirty little secret.”

Maybe they are.

“The Agency doesn’t advertise their existence,” takes off her glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’ve looked for information on them in the pamphlets and puff pieces, they play them off the same way humans talk about sharks. Dangerous, but not likely to cross your path, unless you put yourself in theirs.”

“There are several things that the Agency doesn’t advertise. One of them being that there are still Sian women on the planet, but only a very few.”

“Really? I would love to meet one of them.” She looks up with a quizzical twist to her lips, slipping her glasses back on. “Were they off-world when the cavrinskh did… what they did, or was there some other factor?”

“Some were off-world, others… The prevailing consensus is it’s because they can’t have children.”

She nods and says, “That would definitely solidify the hypothesis that the cavrinskh are trying to keep you from propagating.

“So, when you said they don’t only hunt women, did they also hunt men who could carry children?”

“Yes. And more recently, men who couldn’t.”

“How recently?”

“That we know of, in the last several months. But, I think Drift should explain that to you.”

“Okay.” I make a note to ask him. “What else should I know?”

“We don’t understand their language, but we think they have one or some other way they communicate. Their movements feel too calculated to not be organized in some way.”

“Do they hunt in packs?”

“No, they seem to prefer the stealth of a singular creature. We’ve only run into a group of four once. Even two together are fairly uncommon.”

She looks down at the massive creature in front of her. “This is stealthy?”

“Out in the Zone, yes. On a lab table, no.”

“Fair.” She jots down more notes. “And you never cross over the rim into the inner caldera?”

“No.” I hand her the scalpel she can’t quite reach. “They are wild animals. We respect their territory, even if they don’t respect ours.”

“Because wild animals prefer to roam freely.” Her mouth curls in a strange little smile. “I want to make a joke about marking your territory, but I won’t.”

“I don’t think that would work.”

She grimaces as she pulls out one of the creature’s organs, studying it.

“Lungs?” She turns it this way and that. “There are holes in them.”

“I wonder if that’s why it sounds like fluttering when they breathe?”

“They do?”

“It’s not loud enough for others to hear.”

“Interesting.”

She puts the lungs on a tray, slides them into the 3D modeler and taps out a handful of sentences.

The next organ she pulls out makes her grimace. “A liver. I think.”

Setting it in a new tray, she moves it into the scanner and turns on the modeling.

“So, you know they’re intelligent, but you’ve never actually gotten an intact brain to study?”

“No.”

She looks down at the creature and her expression is… sad. “Intelligent, but unreasonable. Do they always attack you when you encounter them out in the Zone?

“Always.” I help her hold the chest cavity to extract the creature’s heart. “That is one reason we try not to interact with them unless they escape.”

“What are the other reasons?” She watches me, waiting as the machine maps the heart.

“We don’t like killing them. If there was another way, we’d take it. But we haven’t found one yet. So we’re here. Protecting the border between their part of our world, and ours.”

She looks at me with eyes a little too bright, a little too wide.

It makes me want to be a little too honest. “We protect the things, and people, who are most important to us without mercy.”

“What does it take to qualify?”

“You already do.”

The sharp trill of the alarm makes me grimace, and Jess glares up at the ceiling. “I’m starting to hate that sound.”

Me too.

I strip off my gloves, wash my hands, and go to the wall screen. Pulling up the alert, I glower at the location. It’s in Drift’s sector, but our fitful leader is not at home.

Richter’s face appears in a square at the lower corner of the screen, and I see him look past me to Jess and scowl.

“I’m coming too,” he says, already strapping his gear on.

“Good, I always appreciate the company.” The tracker has locked onto the creature and the information already scrolls on the helmet readout when I pull it from the rack I’ve slid out of the wall. “Meet you there.”

Jess keeps working as I strip out of my clothes and pull on the suit, but she watches me the whole time.

“There is some activity on one of the ridges closer to the inner caldera. Richter and I are going to check it out.”

“Is it far?” she asks.

“It’s almost half way into Drift’s sector.” I pull the spear and a gun from the rack. “But, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She pulls off her gloves and washes her hands as I strap a knife to my thigh. And when she comes to me, she kisses me. Soft and sweet and somehow heartbreaking.

“Don’t keep me waiting too long.”

I don’t make any promises. Someday I’ll walk out into the Zone, and I won’t come back.