The Killing Jar (34 page)

LRF-PQ-387

AUGUST 29, 2232

Calvin’s apartment was a tiny closet barely suited to hold a grown person, much less two. As an unmarried Scholar, he had been assigned the smallest possible space. A narrow bed that folded out from the wall, a desk barely big enough to hold his tablet, and a bathroom that opened to the apartment.

That was Aida’s least favorite feature.

But the single apartments weren’t made to accommodate visitors. The Scholars that designed them couldn’t have fathomed how this one would be used.

When she knocked, Calvin opened the door and let her in. While in the corridor, she tried to look professional, as if she were merely making some sort of business call, but once inside, that all faded.

“You look fantastic.” He looked her up and down as if he’d never seen her before.

A flush filled her cheeks. “I’ve been wearing this all day,” she reminded him.

Calvin’s face fell into the crook of her neck. He breathed in her scent as he left a warm kiss on her skin. “Which is precisely why I didn’t get any work done.”

Aida tried to laugh but found it wouldn’t leave her lips. He was too close, her heart pounding too hard. She couldn’t think of anything but him. A tingle shook her.

“Are you hungry?” he asked as he pulled away. “I have enough greens for a few salads.”

Aida couldn’t comprehend what a salad might taste like, but based on all the other foods he’d given her, it would be delicious and flavorful and textured. It would be everything the provisions weren’t.

“Yeah, I’m starving.” It was just another way he had changed everything for her.

Calvin walked to the panel beneath his closet, the hidden cold storage that held his secret supply of foods. “Where’d you get all that, by the way?” Aida asked as she smoothed over her shirt where he’d wrinkled it.

“Here and there.” He smiled up at her.

Aida could sense he didn’t care to talk about it.

“Did you see the newsfeed this afternoon?” He held a large container of lettuce and cabbage leaves in his hand.

She shook her head. She hadn’t even gone home.

“The Vicereine wants increased priority to off-world colonies, particularly the in-transit and non-lunar colonies.”

“You think that’s related to 196?” Aida couldn’t imagine it, that her work impacted the entire population of every off-world colony.

Calvin nodded. “I think there’s a good chance of it. There is so much information in the universe, and we know only a small part of it. But we’re making good progress. It makes sense they’re moving things in that direction.”

To Aida, it seemed like preemptive measures. There was still so much to learn about 196. So far, it held to Dr. Parr’s standards, but at some point, they would find something. It would be small, but it would be enough to cause them worry. They would have a meeting to discuss the impact of it.

Aida had seen it time and time again.

“What do you want to do? After we find it?”

She sat on the edge of the bed and thought. “I don’t really know. I always assumed we’d spend our lives looking. It never seemed probable we’d find it in our lifetimes.”

“And now it does. So what do you want to do? Anything in the world, or off it.” Calvin used his small desk to hold a pair of plastic bowls into which he deposited green leaves, red berries, white dollops of creamy cheese and all sorts of other things she didn’t recognize.

“What are those?” she asked instead.

“Pecans. These are chopped. The nuts are actually pretty large.” He held his fingers in a circle to demonstrate the size. “I think I would go back to Earth.”

“You would? Why?” Aida tried to hide her recoil from surprise.

“It’s our home. As much as we’ve destroyed it, that’s where we belong. If I could afford it, I’d find a quiet place in the mountains, away from the domes and the haze. I think it would be relaxing.” Calvin’s eyes drifted into daydream as he handed her a bowl of salad and sat beside her. A moment later he produced two metal forks.

“I don’t know what I’d do. Everything is always so planned. Maybe I’d go with one of the colonies and help them get started.”

“You would be great at it.” His eyes grew wide with excitement. “You’re so smart, they could really use you. I could see you being great at it, having a family, helping them create government and systems on 196. It’s your planet. They’d have to let you go if you wanted.”

Now that he said it, now that it was put to words, she could picture that future in detail. She could imagine the vibrant purples of 196 as their new environment, the homes they would build from earthen materials mixed with native ones. She could envision the family, the children she could have away from the regulations of the Scholar class. She could even imagine her life without the Scholar class at all.

Aida doubted they would let her have it. She was here on the moon, in the LRF. “The first colonists are already in transit. They left forty years ago just waiting for us to tell them where to go. Even if we secured it as the homeworld in two years, there’s no way I would reach it in time to be useful. We’re just too far away.”

“They improve the flight speed for intersystem ships all the time. Who knows what’ll be possible then?” Calvin leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Don’t give up. You deserve it. You’ll find a way.”

Aida nodded absently. She didn’t feel deserving. She was pretty sure she was the worst sort of person. The type to break the law and then lie about it, to sneak around pretending to be successful when she was nothing more than a criminal.

Calvin pulled the half-eaten salad from her hands and set it on the modest table beside the bed. It wasn’t as if she was eating it anyway. “What’s wrong?” His forehead wrinkled with worry.

“Nothing,” she lied.

“You’re having second thoughts?” He said it as if he were afraid of it.

Aida shrugged. “I don’t know what I think. Sometimes I think this is so great that it’s worth the risk, and other times I’m terrified. Sometimes I want to apply for a Child Permit and go back to Earth, and then there are days when I want to go out on a colony ship and leave this all behind. I’m going crazy.”

Calvin kissed her cheek and slipped his hand around hers. “You’re not going crazy. This is really new and exciting and your doubts are valid. We could lose our status if they found out, but I’m willing to risk it. Aren’t you?”

“We can’t do this forever. We’re going to get caught. They’ll send me back to Earth and worse. I’ll never see you again.”

Calvin half-smiled. “How would we get caught?”

“They’ll notice I come here at night. Sal will notice I don’t come home. They’ll see something is different between us. Niemeyer will report us for working too closely together. Someone will notice something, and that’ll be it. It’ll be over.” She covered her face with her hands.

Rather than sooth her, Calvin laughed. “I’m not sure who you think would be capable of that. LRF is filled with highly intelligent people that act like robots. They’ve never touched another person. They’ve never experienced love or romance or intimacy. They don’t even know what it looks like.”

Aida huffed and slipped her hand into his. “You say that like you’re not one of them.”

“I’m not. I’m with you. Not one of them has the capacity to understand that. Well, maybe the director, but he’s easy enough to avoid. Besides, I can’t imagine we’re a priority. He has a whole facility to manage.”

She knew he was right. The director was intuitive and could read people in a way few others could. They would have to keep clear of him, but she couldn’t think of a single other person who could even imagine how their relationship had changed.

“If you want to stop, just say the word, but to tell you the truth, I’ll be disappointed if you stop seeing me because you’re scared. I know you’re better than that.”

Aida felt the stab in her chest. She was scared. She was terrified. It ate her up in those quiet moments alone, but not in the way Calvin thought. She wasn’t afraid of losing her position or her marriage or anything else. Most of all, she was afraid of losing him.

JEAN CARLO’S ITALIAN RISTORANTE, NEW YORK

AUGUST 29, 2232

In all his life, Theo never thought he would venture into the underground, especially after finding out that it was—quite literally—under ground. Nor would he have thought an Italian restaurant to be the way in.

But that’s what Mable said. He had no choice but to trust her.

At the shuttle terminal, she’d declined the ground transport provided via their travel badges. She said it was better to walk.

Theo tapped a few keys on his wristlet screen and sent Dr. Arrenstein their coordinates. He would send updates ever few hours, as promised.

Jean Carlo’s Italian Ristorante was a standard pedestrian establishment. Dim lights, homely crimson carpet, and vast Craftsman families crowded around heaping plates of pasta and pizzas. He’d seen a hundred like it but never had a reason to go in.

Theo couldn’t decide what was so different about this one, but he followed her in nonetheless.

“Whatever happens, just follow me.”

“You got it.” Theo swallowed his anxiety and went in behind her.

Mable had clearly been there before. With a good bit of speed, she bolted between the tables and marched to a door with the word
OFFICINA
scrawled in a Roman-style font on the glass.

Without a knock, Mable threw the door open to reveal a rather shocked looking man in a worn leather chair.

“What are—” the man started. His considerable gut shook as he worked up to full anger, but he never got the chance to finish. Mable clocked him so hard across the jaw, he flew to the floor and landed in an unconscious heap.

“Mable!” Theo shouted.

Without acknowledging him, she reached into a drawer, moved some items about, and depressed a button hidden in the bottom. Theo gaped as a panel in the wall slid open a foot.

Mable didn’t walk to the opening right away. First she squatted next to the lifeless body of the restaurant manager and said, “That was for Hadley, you son of a bitch.” She stood and kicked him hard in the ribs for good measure before disappearing between the panels.

Entirely unsure of what just happened, Theo ran in after her.

The thin beam of light disappeared, A moment later, a penetrating darkness consumed them.

“What the hell was that?” he asked. “Where are we? I can’t see a damn thing.” Theo tapped the screen of his wristlet and produced a small square of light.

“It won’t help,” she said through teeth gritted tight.

He realized she was hurt. She’d hit the guy hard enough to knock him out in a single blow. “You okay?”

“Mmhm.”

He felt in the dark, in the direction of her voice, until her bumped into her upper arm.

“Let me see.”

“You’re a doctor now?” Theo could hear the pain in her voice.

“No, but I took a few advanced anatomy classes. I just want to see if you broke a bone.” He felt along her arm, down her elbow and wrist, and settled on the metacarpals in her hand. Then she pulled away.

“It’s not broken. I know better than that. Just sore.” The sounds of her shoes scuffed the dirt somewhere ahead.

Theo didn’t want to tell her how nervous he felt in the dark. It was more than pitch black. It was nothingness. It was endless.

He thought that must be what it was like to be in a black hole, though it didn’t make any sense. Maybe his nerves were playing tricks on him.

When Mable’s footsteps sounded too far away, he trotted towards her, only to rake his shoulder against stone.

“Keep your hand on the wall,” she said, maybe thirty or forty feet ahead. Theo did as he was told and walked fast enough to keep up with her, at least as far as he could tell from the sounds of her shoes in the dry soil.

“How do you know where you’re going?” he asked to fill the silence.

“You learn your way around after a while.”

“How long were you here?”

“Almost a year. A few others before that. They all connect through tunnels like these. You can live your whole life without seeing the sun.”

Theo wondered what that sort of existence must be like. Then realized he’d never seen the sun either. Not really. It was a digital hologram projected onto the dome or so obscured by haze it was little more than a bright area of orange. In a way, he’d been living underground, too.

“How far to the city?”

“Little over an hour.”

Mable was fast and quiet enough that Theo felt lost and alone at least a dozen times. He wondered if maybe some sort of lurking creature of lore or psychotic Untouchable would emerge from the gloom and steal him from the world. Maybe he would write a song about it if he lived to the end.

At last, a tiny pinprick of light appeared ahead. Theo had no idea when it started, but once he saw it, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. That little bit of light was so damn bright.

“Who goes there?” A gruff voice sounded somewhere ahead.

“Hey Ryk.” By the sound of her shoes, Mable was running. Theo trotted to keep pace.

Soon enough, a man only small by Knox’s standards, stood tall and blocked the beam of light. He had a thick beard that covered his face but his chest and arms were firmly wrapped around Mable.

He pulled back and held her at arms’ length, looking her up and down. “It’s really you? My Mable girl come home?”

“It’s me.” Theo could hear the smile in her voice as he arrived behind her.

“Ooh lordy, that Katherine gonna have a fit. You best watch youself.” Then he noticed Theo.

With narrow eyes, the man shifted a hand into his pocket and asked, “Who dis?”

“He’s with me.”

The man she called Ryk squeezed her again before letting them continue on their way.

“That guy lives in the tunnel?” Theo asked, half horrified, half amazed.

“No, not really.” She didn’t say any more and Theo got the distinct impression she didn’t care to elaborate.

Not five minutes later, a sour smell smacked him in the face. He covered his nose with his hand as if that would help. “What is that?”

Mable laughed. “Sauerkraut. A lot of food here is German.”

The smells continued, layering over each other until it was such a big swirl of new he couldn’t tell one from the other. When he thought he’d reached his max, the tunnel opened into a wide cavern. Booths and stalls lined the stone walls and dim blue lights shone from the stone ceilings. Busy people moved between vendors and Theo realized he’d seen a scene like this before, the same but still so different.

It was a market.

Theo felt like Dasia, a small-time kid in a big city. There was so much, so many people, so many sights, so many things to see he couldn’t take them in all at once.

Folks of all kind wandered, from bakers to mechanics to seamstresses to electronics dealers. There were old and young, tall and short, blonde, red, and black headed. Aside from the few with dry, scaly skin and strange bald heads, it looked to be a normal affair, only unique in its locale.

Mable grabbed the strap of his bag where it fell across his chest and tugged him through the considerable crowd.

Theo could only gape and stare.

Distracted by the commotion, he didn’t see the blonde head that wove through the crowd like a shark on the prowl. Mable released her grip and ran into the crowd, only to be knocked to the ground moments later.

“Mable!” screeched a girl, maybe fifteen with blonde hair nearly down to her hips. Her arms were wrapped tight around Mable where they sat on the floor. The two were hopelessly intertwined.

“Are you okay? Let me see you. I came back as soon as I could. Have you been eating?”

Big, fat tears streamed down the girl’s cheeks as she clutched at Mable, ignoring the torrent of questions.

Theo stood in the gathering crowd of spectators, unsure of what to do or say. He could only watch as the two girls stood, still mostly latched together.

Mable turned back to him and said, “Theo, this is Hadley. Hadley, this is Theo.”

“Oh my god! You brought a guy? No way!” Hadley smiled as she wiped at her tears. “I can’t believe you got a boyfriend and didn’t tell me!”

Theo felt the blush in his cheeks.

“No, not like that,” Mable said. She turned and shot him a mischievous smile. “He tried to kill me a few days ago.”

Hadley’s pretty face twisted into a scowl, though it wasn’t as intimidating as she probably intended. She stepped forward and rammed her fist into his cheek, knocking him backward with the unexpected impact.

Mable laughed and held out a hand to help him up. “Sorry, maybe should have left that part out.”

Theo’s cheek screamed and he knew it must already be swelling. He wanted to be mad, but he knew: he deserved that.