Incineration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 2) (25 page)

As soon as I let go of the handle, Keegan wrests the door open. I stumble back, whanging against the enclosure with the carnivorous locusts, and jolting my elbow. Lightning bolts of pain nauseate me. It’s all I can do to stay standing, back pressed against the cage. The whirring intensifies.

Oh, no. He’s got the flamejet.

“I am going to kill you and then I’m going to kill every bug in this room,” Keegan grits between clenched teeth. He brings up the weapon’s nozzle. “You and everything you ever accomplished will be wiped out. Gone.” Before I can move, he unleashes a jet of flame at the first enclosure, the one with my golden locusts.

The insects ignite and the interior of the cage becomes a tornado of yellow and orange flames until the charred corpses start dropping to the ground. Despair knifes through me. I must make some sound, or my face betrays my agony, because Keegan swings toward me and grins, showing all his teeth in an exultant rictus. He points the weapon’s nozzle at the cage of instars and blasts it with fire.

I see his bloody hands on the controls and they inspire a desperate plan. I have no idea if the carnivorous locusts are attracted by the scent of blood, but many animals are, including mosquitoes, bedbugs and other insects. I reach behind me and fumble with the lock, my fingers made clumsy with fear, but then it opens as Keegan’s hand tangles in my hair.

“Hiding with the locusts won’t help you this time.”

My scalp feels like it's ripping off and tears start to my eyes. He’s bringing the nozzle up, aiming at my face. The damn locusts are quiescent at first, and I think my plan has failed, but then Keegan shoves me back against the enclosure so there’s enough distance between us for him to flame me without being burned himself. As if electrified, the locusts spray out of the cage. A few light on me, but most home in on Keegan, on his nose, face, hands and neck, where the blood is heaviest. He releases me to bat at them. Flames shoot randomly from the weapon and I drop to the ground.

One locust bites my ear and another my face where Keegan’s blood dripped on me. The stings take me back to the dark, fluttery, noisy swarm in the spring. I hadn’t remembered being bitten—the torture and beatings had covered the marks and obliterated the memory—but now it comes back to me. Only a small percentage of the locusts in that swarm were carnivorous; all of the insects in this one are. I crawl toward the door. Keegan drops the flame thrower and flings his limbs about and shrieks behind me, trying to brush the locusts off. More settle on him. I get the door open and fall through it as locusts gnaw off bits of uncovered flesh. I kick the door closed.

Closing my hands around one locust after another, I tear them off me and fling them away. My ear leaks blood. My left arm jangles with pain and I can’t think through it. Several moments elapse before I cradle my elbow in my right hand and stand. Trembling, I look through the window into the locust lab. Keegan whirls like a dervish, completely submerged in locusts. As I watch, a geyser of blood spurts from his neck. The artery has finally torn wide. In less than a minute it pumps itself out and Keegan crumples to the floor. Curls of smoke drift upwards from the floor of the cages, but the flames have died out. I turn away.

No one has yet arrived at the lab and I realize that only two or three minutes have passed since I hit the alarm. The guards are probably donning protective gear and I’ll bet there’s no one else in the building at this hour. I tongue the capsule. Maybe I can still get away . . .

The lab door slams open against the wall.

A hooded figure looms in the doorway.

Chapter Thirty Two

Too late. My teeth gently grab a fold of my inner cheek and I’m about to bite down when the figure crosses the threshold, cloak swirling. “Good God, Ealy! What’s happened? You’re bloody—”

Minister Alden. Relief gushes through me.

Too overwhelmed to say anything, I motion to the locust lab. The minister strides to the window and looks at the feasting. Horror distorts her features for a moment, and then she says, “Usher? The hair—”

I nod.

“Tell me later. We’ve got to get out of here. The guards will be here any second.”

“The lockdown—” My voice is a painful rasp, unrecognizable. My hand goes to my mangled throat.

She doesn’t waste time explaining. Putting an arm around my shoulders, she hustles me to the door. We turn toward her office. As we turn a corner, booted footsteps clomp into the corridor we just left.

“Too close,” Alden whispers.

She picks up the pace until we’re almost jogging. Each step jars my elbow and sluices pain like acid along every nerve, but I keep up. I have a sliver of hope that I don’t need to die tonight. Excited male voices issue orders. The alarm keeps
blip, blip, blipping
. At her office door, Alden holds her eye to the iris scanner and then we’re inside. I’m not sure what good it will do us—the soldiers will search every cranny in the building once they find Keegan’s body and the bloody scalpel.

“Private elevator,” Alden says, shoving me through the anteroom to her inner office.

I think inanely about the many privileges of being a government minister and then Alden has opened the elevator doors with another iris scan and we’re inside. The elevator shoots up.
Up?
I look a question at the minister.

“The battles and shifting alliances during the Between taught me to never enter a building unless I knew at least two ways out besides the obvious.” She smiles grimly.

I reassess her, imagining the young freedom fighter in place of the dignified scientist and stateswoman. I can see the vestiges of that girl in her alertness and the still-fit body.

We emerge onto the ministry’s roof. Stars sparkle; it’s an unusually clear night. Not so good for evading IPF troops. The alarms cuts off and the sudden silence is a blessing. Alden hurries to the roof’s edge and I join her to peer down at one of the walkways connecting the ministry to the Capitol. It’s a good ten feet below us.

“Can you do it? Your arm?” Alden asks.

I have to. I nod. Alden swings herself over the lip and holds onto the gutter for a moment before dropping onto the walkway. She lands with a thud, in a crouching position. She stands and looks up at me, the hood falling away from her face to show blond hair. With only one usable arm, I’m not going to be able to hang before dropping and cut the drop to five feet. I just have to jump and roll. I flatten myself against the roof and inch my way toward the edge, parallel to it. Fastening my right hand to the gutter, I slide my right leg into thin air, grateful there’s not much pitch to the roof. My left leg follows and I’m hinged at the waist with my torso on the roof and my legs dangling, right hand holding tight. I know as soon as I slide down another foot gravity will win and I’ll only be able to hold on for a second.

“Hurry!”

Taking a deep breath, I inch backwards, scraping my stomach. My belly button clears the lip. My hand clenches the gutter, metal cutting into my fingers and then my weight rips my hand open and I’m falling.
Tuck and roll, tuck and roll
. I land on my feet, knees bent, and let the momentum carry me down. I tuck into a ball automatically and roll. The motion brings me perilously close to the walkway’s edge and Alden grabs my shoulder to keep me from going over. I lie winded for a moment, ankles and hips aching, and then roll away from the edge and push to my feet.

“Thanks.” My voice is a harsh whisper.

“Anything broken?”

Not waiting for a reply, Alden starts across the walkway toward the Capitol. Instinctively, we place our feet carefully so no one in the walkway will hear our steps overhead. When we hear voices below, we pause until they’re gone. On the Capitol end, metal rungs welded to the building lead from the catwalk’s roof to the ground and up to the dome. The Capitol’s dome and spire gleam several more stories above us.

“Maintenance,” Alden mutters, descending the ladder. I manage it, although it’s awkward with only one arm. Alden works her shoulder around in circles when she steps onto the ground.

“Not as young as I used to be. Everything stiffens up or falls apart when you hit sixty. This way.”

From our vantage point of relative safety, I look over at the MSFP building. Light glows from windows on every floor now and I imagine the guards scurrying to and fro, doing a lab-to-lab and office-to-office search for me. I hope they’re not stupid enough to bust into the locust lab.

“The locusts—”

Alden senses where I’m going immediately. “Don’t worry. The guards are well-trained and reluctant to enter labs when the alarms go off, anyway. They don’t know what experiments we’re conducting, but they know some of them revolve around diseases they don’t want to get. Their rumor mill has us working on combinations of hemorrhagic fevers, chemical agents and synthetic viruses that defy imagination—or even possibility! My deputy will be there by now. The locusts will definitely make recovering Dr. Usher’s body problematic,” she muses.

She leads me around the back of the MSFP building and half-way down the block to her ACV. No driver. “I came alone,” she says, as the vehicle’s doors rise.

Without adrenaline flooding my body, I wonder about her timely appearance. “Why were you at the lab?” I ask, getting into the ACV. I can’t believe how much it hurts to talk.

She seals the doors and the vehicle lifts up with a hum. “Dr. Usher contacted me. Said he had vital news to relay and asked me to meet him there. I told him we could meet in the morning, but he insisted.”

I ration my words to spare my throat. “He found out. Went to Kube and figured out Ealy is Jax. Informed on me to IPF.”

She doesn’t ask how I know, maybe figuring he told me. “Damn it. This is not what I planned—. We need to get you away from here.” She concentrates on piloting the vehicle, but I can see by the set of her jaw and the slightly narrowed eyes that she’s trying to work out how to get rid of me and distance herself from me at the same time. She makes a sharp turn and I wince when I bump the door. “But first, we need to patch you up.”

I assumed we were going to her house, but after a few more turns, she halts the ACV in an unreclaimed residential area nowhere near the Capitol. She unseals the doors and we get out.

“This way. I’ve disabled the ACV’s locator, but there’s no point in taking chances.”

In a half-crouch, she leads me through darkened backyards and across two streets. No one challenges us.  She puts out a hand to stop me when we reach a small, dilapidated-looking cottage. The high walls separating it from its neighbors seem to tremble in the breeze, and I realize they’re covered with kudzu. No lights brighten the windows of either neighboring house; it’s not that late so I assume the houses are empty. The whole area has a deserted feel to it.

“What is this place?”

“My safe house—one of them. Another lesson I learned in my twenties.” At the front door, she slides aside a timber and holds her palm to a hidden scanner. A soft click sounds and she pushes the door inward. She immediately disappears into a closet and I realize she’s disabling an alarm system. My brows arch and I can’t help but wonder what combination of forces and circumstance made her set up this hidey-hole. A hiss startles me and I whirl to see the windows are frosting. When they’re totally opaque, Alden activates low-level biolume strips that cast a bluish glow.

“Come.”

She leads me into the kitchen, sits me on a stool, and turns on a tap. With a wet cloth, she begins to dab at my various injuries, cleaning away dried blood that has begun to itch. “The bites will heal,” she pronounces, “but I need to bandage your ear and splint your arm. I can’t set the elbow, I’m afraid. You’ll need to find a doctor who can do that.”

Alexander’s name remains unspoken, but I can feel the thought of him hovering between us.

One cool fingertip touches my neck. “He tried to strangle you. Bastard.”

I nod.

“Looks like he almost succeeded. You’ll need to cover the bruises.”

“Let me see.”

Without a word, Alden taps the sensor that switches the polyglass windows to mirror function. I’m facing a horrible apparition. My left arm hangs awkwardly, dragging down my shoulder. Red welts rise on my face, neck and hands where the locusts ripped at my flesh. Blood spatters my jumpsuit, most of it Keegan’s. The bottom half of my right earlobe is eaten away and the remainder is crusted with dried blood. I put my hand to it. My neck looks the worst, a mélange of black, blue and purple-red bruises encircling it like a choker. The flesh is swollen and puffy.

“This is the second time Keegan try kill me,” I rasp.

“I know.”

While I stare at my battered reflection, Alden rifles the cupboards for first aid supplies. She piles bandages, antibiotic sealant, swabs, syringes, and other items on the counter beside me and goes to work. I wonder what other items lie hidden in the cupboards of this nondescript little house. I’m willing to bet there are ration cards in several names, and weapons. I am suddenly certain that Alden is proficient with a variety of weapons.

When my ear is bandaged and my arm cradled in a sling, she gives me an injection. “This will help with the pain and keep you alert, as well,” she says. While I’m rubbing the injection site, she opens a small, high cupboard and pulls out a bottle of Wexl. “My true emergency supply,” she says, taking a swig from the bottle. “Want some?” She proffers it.

I nod, conserving my voice. I take a swallow, letting the blue fire run down my throat. It makes me cough which hurts like hell.

“Sorry. Didn’t think,” Alden says, taking the bottle back. She pulls up a stool and hitches one hip onto it. Despite the casual posture, she still looks dignified and very much in charge. “Now, let’s talk about disappearing you.”

The words send a chill through me.
Disappearing
. A verb, implying action. Events and conversations fall into place when she speaks the words, overlapping elegantly like a fish’s scales.

Feeling like I did when I stood at the roof’s edge and looked down, down, down, I say, “I’m guessing you have some experience with that.”

She gives me a look balanced between puzzlement and wariness.

“Keegan didn’t summon you to the lab tonight,” I say, absolutely certain I’m right. “He didn’t quite trust your motives when it came to me, so he told the IPF when he learned my real identity, not you. If he’d known you were coming, he wouldn’t have tried to strangle me in the lab for fear of you walking in on it and stopping him.”

“Usher wasn’t in his right mind—”

I talk over her, every word painful in more ways than one. “You came because of my DNA registry search. When I called up records for Anton Karzov and Kareen O’Connell, it set off an alarm of some kind. An alert that went straight to the person who deleted their files. You.”

“I’m sure your imagination is a help with your research, Jax,” she begins, giving me a quelling look, “but—”

“
Don’t
. We’re way past that. You didn’t know I met Anton Karzov, did you? He’s still alive—or was earlier this year—at the lab between here and Jacksonville. I’m sure you know the one. He’s in agony, totally insane, but not un-lucid. He told us about the experiments
run by the government
, and about the test subjects: non-volunteers, criminals. ‘Enemies of Amerada,’ he called them.”

I slide off the stool and take a step toward her. She doesn’t back away.

She speaks, her voice calm. “The country was in a crisis. The flu was decimating our population. We needed to develop a vaccine. We had to prove to the citizens that we could protect them. We made the decision that, as repugnant as it was, we had to sacrifice the few to save the many.”

“We?”

“The Pragmatists. Fabienne, Oliver, a few others, and I.”

“Not Alexander.”

“Never Alexander. It’s what drove him away for good.”

“And now?”

She waits.

“Kareen O'Connell, the others. What’s the justification now for running secret labs and using non-volunteers as unwilling guinea pigs? There can be no justification. There never was. It’s inhuman.” I’ve gotten louder, but it hurts my throat despite the painkiller, and I drop my voice.

“We are still in crisis,” she says. “Amerada is still vulnerable, terribly, frighteningly vulnerable to disease, instability, famine, outside attacks. There is no other way. The subjects at the labs—they’re heroes, of a sort. They’re given the opportunity to redeem themselves for their crimes against Amerada. When I was at NAR Site 4, I—”

“You.” My eyes widen. “You were the ‘she,’ the lab supervisor, Karzov talked about. You ran the lab we discovered.”

The way she stills acknowledges it.

More of Karzov’s words trickle back. They tumble in my mind, unlocking new associations. “He said he and his wife had applied for a procreation license, that they wanted to have a child. He said something about ‘if
she
could gestate while at the lab.’ I thought at the time he meant his wife, but that doesn’t make sense. He meant the lab director. He meant you. You were pregnant. He said the lab was set up sixteen years ago—it would be seventeen by now. You paid Vestor to defend me. You knew about Keegan trying to kill me when I was small.” My thoughts barely outpace my words and I'm not sure I'm even coherent. I stare at her in mingled wonder and dismay. “You’re my mother.”