The Lethal Agent (The Extraction Files Book 2) (24 page)

LRF-PS-100

SEPTEMBER 12, 2232

Mable sat in the chair opposite Dr. Perkins’s desk and waited for her new boss to untwist her panty wad so they could start work for the day.

When at last she appeared, she’d been crying. Her cheeks were swollen and still a bit damp. Calvin held her hand as she entered, like she couldn’t do it on her own.

What the hell kind of Scholar cried? At work?

Mable bit her tongue.

“Dr. Perkins has already catalogued more than three hundred terrestrial and aerial species from the planet. With your help, she might be able to finish her report and isolate species for closer study by the end of the day. Robotics should be on standby for her decision.” Calvin released her hand as she sank into the chair, barely touching it, like she was afraid of it.

“I’ll be right next door if you need me,” he offered with a terse smile.

Mable followed him to the door and whispered, “Are you sure I should be alone with her? She looks like she’s about to kill someone.”

“This office belonged to her close friend Dr. Parr. No one has been here since his death. If it were up to her, no one would ever step foot in here again.”

She remembered the name. A recent bug host.

Mable nodded her understanding and returned to her seat. Dr. Perkins sat rigid as stone.

“Where would you like to start?” Mable asked.

“I was serious when I said I don’t need your help. I know you’re not my brother’s wife. He’s seventeen. There’s no way he was approved to select a wife, even if he was in some kind of program.”

Mable let her lips curl into a smile. “Everyone has their secrets.”

“And what’s yours?” she asked.

“I’m a Scholar with a focus on biological interdependence. They used to call it ecology, back when there were ecosystems on Earth.”

Dr. Perkins couldn’t help but let her eyes go wide with surprise. They both knew how rare a biologist of any kind was, particularly one with such a narrow and necessary focus. So few wanted to study the specifics of the dying Earth.

Mable was the particular person she needed.

As if declaring her surrender, Dr. Perkins sighed out a long breath before pulling up the native-species files on her tablet. The catalogue of species occupied the entire right side of the screen, each animal too small to be seen until she tapped it with her stylus.

In the center, the new species hovered. The first, a long creature that looked like a ribbon, had four appendages with fine, poofing hairs. It was electric blue and white with a black tip on its tapering tail. It had a decided shimmer in the blue areas.

“What do you think?” Dr. Perkins asked, testing her.

“What’s the flora of the planet?” Mable asked. She couldn’t be expected to determine anything about the creature without knowing its environment.

“Crimson shrubs and low grasses.”

Mable looked at the image as it spun, evaluating before offering her answer. “Herbivore with toxic tissues.”

“And how do you come to this analysis?”

“The mouth is narrow, here at the front,” Mable said as she inserted her finger into the holographic display, pointing to the narrow slit. “It’s too small to be a predator of any kind. The prey item eventually has to fit into the mouth. So it has to be an herbivore. At this size, it’s at risk of larger predators. The blue color is a warning that it has a toxin of some kind.” Mable was right, and they both knew it.

“Impressive,” Dr. Perkins replied. “The organism-collection probes revealed some sort of halogen-based toxin. They’ve only managed to survey about twenty-eight percent of the surface species, however, all but a few had traces of the toxin. Some had a self-defense mechanism that used it to destroy the tissues in seconds.”

Dr. Perkins assigned it the number 321, drew a box around the image, and moved it into her catalogue, presumably with other similar organisms.

Mable didn’t reveal her relief. At least she was working with someone who could admit they were wrong, that they didn’t know everything. At least Dr. Perkins was woman enough to work alongside Mable, even when she didn’t like it.

Mable had nothing but respect for that.

LRF-PQ-387

SEPTEMBER 12, 2232

Theo knocked on the door of PQ-387, desperate for some human interaction. Calvin was alone when he opened the door, dressed in a pair of business slacks and a pressed button-up shirt.

“Survived your first day?” he asked with a playful smile.

“By the skin of my teeth.”

The apartment was even smaller than the one he shared with Mable, but he didn’t mind. He caught sight of the small table covered in plates of chicken breasts, corn, green salad, even strawberries. He wanted to cry.

“How’d you get all this?” He had to know. He couldn’t go back to provisions. Whatever the secret to getting real food in the LRF, Theo needed to know it.

“Silas sends shipments up each month. You should have gotten one. You have to go down to receiving to collect it. Ask for Allison. She’ll get you set up.”

Theo was tempted to dart from the room to see it for himself.

“If you ever need anything, you can always come here,” Calvin offered. “Maggie works in PS. There would never be a question asked.”

“Thanks,” he said, unsure of what to say to the stranger. They were both in CPI, both pretending to be Scholar aliases, but Theo didn’t know him.

The knock at the door saved him. It was Aida. She wore a crisp, black shirt with broad shoulders and red, narrow-legged pants. On her feet were some of the tallest heels Theo had ever seen.

“Amazing,” Calvin breathed, looking her up and down before she curled against his chest.

Theo watched, gaping. Clearly he had missed something.

Calvin’s hands moved up and down Aida’s back, comforting and warm. It was a look, a motion Theo well knew. He’d seen it dozens of times back home in those lazy afternoons with Nate and Casey.

Theo smiled at the realization. Here, in the cold center of the moon, surrounded by the most genetically engineered population in existence, Aida had found what Theo had wanted all along.

He couldn’t have been happier for her.

Aida peeled away from Calvin and turned to Theo. “I’m sorry I’m late. How was your first day?”

“It was really boring, actually.”

Aida and Calvin laughed as the last knock sounded on the door. Theo’s pulse quickened as Calvin let Mable in, a wad of fabric under her arm. “Hey, mind if I change?”

“Sure, but the bathroom’s not really designed for modesty. We’ll give you some space.” Calvin led Aida to the far side of the room—which wasn’t more than ten feet away—where they stood with their backs turned. Theo followed suit and waited until he heard, “Thanks. I couldn’t wear that thing another minute.”

Theo turned to see Mable, hair down, with wide-legged green pants and an almost-transparent white top. He could scarcely keep his eyes off her.

With everyone in the room stripped of their Scholar façade, Theo felt trapped, like he sat in a cage and watched them from afar.

“Anyone hungry?” Calvin offered, though he must have known the answer.

Theo about jumped across the table and snatched the food up like a caveman. It took some work to sit between Aida and Mable and patiently wait. Calvin served each of them a portion of meat and vegetables, with the berries for dessert.

“So, you’re Theo’s sister, right?” Mable asked.

Aida nodded. “Aida Kaufman, before I was married. Aida Kaufman-Perkins, now.” She stabbed at her chicken with a fork and cut off a bite-sized portion.

“What was he like as a kid?”

“Impossible,” she said with a laugh.

Theo couldn’t think of anything he’d rather discuss less than his childhood.

Aida continued. “When he was nine, he took the aeronautics course. They assigned him to build a flying machine outside the current designs. No shuttles. No hovers. They had to build something new.”

Theo gulped. He knew where this was going.

“So Theo comes up with this design with some sort of backpack. It had these filament wings that would shoot out when he squeezed a trigger. He decided to test it up on the roof of the house.”

Mable covered her mouth laughing. “Oh no, he jumped?”

Aida laughed too, so hard she had to put down her fork and put her hand to her chest. “You should have heard my mother scream. Her precious son, the best of us, about to kill himself jumping off the roof to test his flying machine.” Aida’s laughs grew to the point she had to stop talking, chuckling rather than breathing.

“All right, she gets the idea,” Theo tried to intervene.

It only set them to laughing more. Even Calvin started to laugh.

“Did it work?” Mable leaned forward with interest.

“Of course it did. He somehow managed to get to the neighbor’s house on the first try. Like I said, impossible.” Aida shook her head at the memory. “Mother didn’t know whether to be horrified he tried it or impressed that it worked. He was always that way.”

Mable looked at him, smiling, though he wasn’t sure why. “I bet they loved it. I bet he was a dream child, perfectly brilliant at everything.”

“Of course he was,” Aida said, though she couldn’t have known how false that was.

“You should have seen our father’s face when I signed up for the Advanced Music class. I was pretty sure he didn’t think I was ‘perfectly brilliant’ right then.”

Aida gazed at him, her face now sober. “I didn’t know you took a music class.”

“You were at the Academy,” he reminded her. “I was fifteen by then.”

“I didn’t know you took a music class,” Mable repeated, her eyes still on him.

This time, Theo shrugged. “You never asked.”

“What about you, Maggie? What classes did you take?” Calvin asked, saving them from an awkward moment.

Mable bristled with the attention on her. “Oh, uh, lots of things, I guess. Sketching, self-defense, astronomy. A lot of biology. One paleontology course when I was fourteen.”

Theo tried to imagine what she’d been like back then. A Scholar in her classes, learning and absorbing information as easily as she always did. She would have been an eager student with none of the callous defenses she earned in the underground.

They never would have met. With his focus on nanotech and hers on biology, they wouldn’t have studied together; they wouldn’t have been matched by the Scholar Committee even if they applied at the same time. Their careers were too different.

It was only through his fall from society that Theo had the chance to meet her. Only through giving up everything else did he find out what was really important.