The Sowing (46 page)

“I’m sorry, Remy.”

“I don’t want your apology.” I turn away from him, staring back towards the east where the sun is flickering over the leafless skeleton trees, turning the worn, old compass over again and again in my hand. When Tai died, everyone told me how sorry they were, but words of pity and apology are useless. Words won’t bring her back. They won’t bring Mom back. I want justice.
I want vengeance.

Behind me, I hear his slight footfalls in the crunching leaves, and I know he’s gone. I sigh and let my muscles relax, feeling the jagged rock from the boulder digging into my skin uncomfortably, keeping me awake despite dogged exhaustion. I squeeze my eyes shut, my hand clenching involuntarily around the heirloom, a bitter reminder of all the members of my family I will never see again. I lean my head back, skyward, letting the wind and the rising sun keep me company where humans cannot.

****

The rendezvous is silent and peaceful—too peaceful. There’s still no sign of Team Blue, and Soren keeps squeezing my hand, telling me that it’ll be all right; we’ll hear from them eventually. We’re instructed to stay here for at least three days while we wait for everyone to regroup. There are no more airships hovering overhead, no more soldiers sneaking up on us in the darkness. When Eli wakes up he’s fine, back to normal, and now he insists that Soren and I tell our story.

“How did this happen?” he keeps demanding. “How did you end up in Vale’s airship over the Resistance base with a renegade from the Farms and Outsider gear?”

He’s already heard Vale’s story, apparently, which he relays to me and Soren quickly. He says that’s why he trusts Vale. That and the fact that he shot a Sector airship out of the sky. I’m still not sure I trust Vale, but his offering from this morning makes me more inclined to believe him. I haven’t told anyone about our conversation, and I assume he hasn’t either.

When I tell Eli about my drugged, hallucinogenic vision of the lotus flower, his eyes darken.

“That’s what Vale meant. He said yesterday that Corine was after you because you had valuable information. I thought it had to do with the DNA. She must have realized you knew the transcription key, and she couldn’t let you get back to base with it.”

“We need to try it,” I say. “To see if I’m right. If it really is the key.” Eli nods. It takes him, Kenzie, and Firestone about a half an hour to get the computer station up and running.

“What’s this DNA thing?” Firestone asks, once everything is connected, sounding bored. If you can’t fix it or fly it, Firestone’s not interested.

“You’ll see,” Eli responds shortly.

When Eli gets his hard drive connected to the UMIT, the information transfer module, he pulls up the DNA with pictures of all the chromosomes and the endless strings of base pairs.

“I’ve seen that before,” Vale interrupts, suddenly hovering over my shoulder. I shrink back from him and he looks down at me, apologetic, but doesn’t back away. “That’s the DNA project Professor Hawthorne was working on.” His expression is grim and dark. Eli glances at me, worried.

“How do you know this, Vale?” he asks.

“I hacked into my mother’s computer a few days ago. I was looking into Tai’s death,” he nods at me, “and trying to find out what happened. Corine…” he hesitates at her name, “and Hawthorne exchanged a series of emails where she insisted he give her the DNA, and he refused. It’s why…” He pauses. “It’s why she had him killed.”

“I knew it,” Eli growls.

“That’s where I saw those images,” Vale says. “On her computer.”

“So she has it,” Jahnu muses. “It doesn’t matter. Even if she knows the key, it doesn’t matter. We have the key, too. We can unlock whatever information is stored in the DNA.”

Jogged into action by that thought, Eli loads up a decryption program he wrote when we first started working on the code. He instructs the program to decrypt the first chromosome using the cipher L-O-T-U-S. Jeremiah and Bear have by this point joined the gathering crowd and are watching over Eli’s shoulder as everyone waits. The air is tense.

“We’ll see what happens if we use it on just this first chromosome,” he says, and after a few minutes, the program responds that the decryption is finished, and would Elijah Tawfiq like to view the results? Eli enters yes, he would, and when he pulls it up, the DNA from that first chromosome has been perfectly translated into a file system with a listing that says GENETIC CODES FOR VARIETIES OF ONION. After staring dumbly at the screen for several seconds as we realize what we’ve done, Jahnu grins, and Kenzie and Eli break out into hesitant smiles.

“Fuck me,” Eli whispers. “It’s a seed database.” He starts navigating through the files. There’s a complete genome map for every seed varietal listed.

“If Rhinehouse finds out about this, we’ll be eating onion soup for the next twenty years,” Jahnu laughs. 

Eli sets up the decoding program for the rest of the chromosomes, and we all watch in silence as hundreds of file directories pop up across the screen with names like POTATO, APPLE, NUT TREE, CITRUS TREE.

“Spiraling towers hide sacred flowers,”
Eli mutters, awed. “Think of what we can do with these seeds!” Jahnu, Kenzie, and Soren are talking animatedly about how the Resistance can use these codes to make old world seeds, untainted by the OAC’s modifications, and Eli is navigating through the whole database, checking to make sure the information is complete. “Remy, your grandfather was a genius,” he sighs happily. 

But tears are dripping down my cheeks, salty and reminiscent of the sea like Vale’s eyes, decorating my face with tokens to the dead. Vale, at my side, puts his hand on my shoulder. This time, I don’t pull away. 

END OF BOOK ONE

~ Coming Next:
The Reaping
~

WHAT'S COMING NEXT...

The Reaping
, Book Two of the Seeds Trilogy, set to be released Fall, 2014. Join the continuing adventures of Remy and Vale as they delve deeper into the world of Okaria.

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Acknowledgements

We’d like to thank everyone who has supported us by reading our drafts and giving us feedback, helping us understand the science we explore in the novel, working with us on our social media platform, agreeing to read and review, contributing amazing original artwork, or just giving us an encouraging word. Among those who’ve helped along the way include: Rachel Adler; Alex Augustyn; C. G. Ayling, Kenneth Barr; Ken Floro, III; David Johnston; Zoe Maffitt; Jason Makansi; Elle Opitz; Prashant Parmar; Peter Samet; Sarah Sarber; Imran Siddiq; Kathy Smith; Rachael Spellman; John Sternberg; Matthew Steffen; Jamey Stegmaier; Sam Stragand; Aaron Till; Regina Till; Kevin Weitzel.

K. Makansi is the pen name for the mother-daughter writing team consisting of:

Kristina Blank Makansi

Born and raised in Southern Illinois, Kristina has a B.A. in Government from University of Texas at Austin and a M.A.T. from the College of New Jersey and an opinion on everything. She has worked as a copywriter, marketing coordinator, web and collateral designer, editor, and publisher. In 2010, she co-founded 
Blank Slate Press
, an award-winning small press focusing on debut authors in the greater St. Louis area, and in 2013, she co-founded 
Treehouse Publishing Group
, an author services and assisted-publishing partnership.In addition to 
The Seeds Trilogy
, she is hard at work revising her historical fiction, 
Oracles of Delphi
, set in ancient Greece.

Amira K. Makansi 

Amira graduated with honors in three years from the University of Chicago. She earned a BA in History and was a team leader and officer for UChicago Mock Trial. She has served as an assistant editor and has read and evaluated Blank Slate Press submissions since the press was founded. She is an avid reader and blogger who also has a passion for food, wine, and photography. She has worked at various wineries in Oregon and France and is approaching fluency in French. Along with working part-time for BSP, she currently works for a wine distributorship in St. Louis. In addition to The Seeds Trilogy, she reviews books and blogs about writing, food and wine at 
The Z-Axis
.

Elena K. Makansi 

Elena is a rising senior at Oberlin College where she is focusing on Environmental Studies especially as it relates to her passion–food justice. She’s also studied studio art and drawing and has had her work featured in several college publications. While in High School, she won numerous writing and poetry awards, was awarded a scholarship to attend the Washington University Summer Writing Institute, and also attended the Iowa Young Writers Studio. She also won a scholarship to represent her Amideast cohort as the “resident” blogger during her study abroad in Amman, Jordan. She and Amira backpacked through Europe together and share a passion for cooking, baking–and, yes, eating. Elena maintains a 
Tumblr
 site and a 
personal blog
, both of which focus on food, environmental activism, social justice, and art. 

Copyright © 2013 by K. Makansi

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Layla Dog Press. 

Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from the publisher. For information, contact us through our webpage at 
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is merely coincidental, and names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

Visit our website at 
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 to learn more. 

Cover by K. Makansi and 
Kevin Wietzel
.

Illustrations by Elle Opitz and Elena Makansi.

Electronic Book ISBN: 978-0-9898671-0-8