They had nothing, Dominique realized. No blankets, no food, no weapons. She slowed, called out, “Wait.” Forrest stopped. As he turned she could see from his expression that there was no need to point out the seriousness of their situation.
The sharp crack of a branch sent a fresh jolt of fear through her. She and Forrest dropped to the ground and crawled on their bellies until they were hidden by a copse of trees. Slowly, carefully, Dominique raised her head to look in the direction of the sounds.
Two defenders topped the rise a hundred yards away, both clutching rifles. She looked at Forrest, passed a silent question: Should they run, or stay down and hope the defenders missed them? Neither seemed a good idea.
A voice boomed in her head. Dominique nearly cried out in surprise. Run. Two hundred yards, directly away from them.
She exchanged another look with Forrest, who nodded. What did they have to lose? They sprang up as one, sprinted away. A clump of trees was between them and the defenders, masking their flight. They’d covered a hundred yards before Dominique heard a shout of discovery from the defenders. Ahead through the trees, she could see bright shifting colors—four Luyten, heading toward them.
We’ll carry you: Dominique, run to me, orange; Forrest, run to violet.
She didn’t want to put her life in the hands of a Luyten, but she saw no choice. As she approached the orange Luyten, it swept her up with its powerful cilia, like ropes roughly lashed around her legs and waist, pressed her to its stony body, and ran like hell.
Dominique’s head bounced and jostled; the forest passed in a sideways blur as the defenders’ shouts grew louder. A blast rocked the ground a dozen yards short of them, just as they reached a steep hill—a cliff, really. The Luyten kept going; Dominique wanted to shout for it to stop but couldn’t muster the breath. The Luyten half climbed, half fell down the steep ravine, using the cilia on all of its free limbs to clutch and scrape at the rocks and dirt as they plunged hundreds of feet.
It hit the ground upright and galloped across a shallow river, then broke into trees on the opposite bank. Forrest was nowhere in sight; Dominique wondered if they’d fled straight into an even worse fate. If the Luyten had wanted her dead, all they would have had to do was wait. But if they didn’t want her dead, what did they want with her?
What we want right now is to keep you safe, the Luyten said. Then we want to get you and Forrest to Washington, D.C.
Dominique was stunned. “Why would you want to do that?”
Because we’ve agreed to an alliance with your people, and you have expertise that can help us.
Dominique was positive she’d misunderstood, or more likely the Luyten had misspoken. An alliance? The idea was simultaneously chilling and absurd.
Yet as the Luyten slowed, and uncovered the camouflaged entrance to a tunnel in the ground, Dominique had to admit the idea also made an odd sort of sense.
78
Lila Easterlin
October 25, 2047. Washington, D.C.
Lila’s hands were shaking as she called up the defenders’ specifications—the genetic recipe Dominique Wiewall had developed to create the defenders. To introduce an entire neurotransmitter system into the existing framework, which had been meticulously designed to create an intelligent organism that functioned without that neurotransmitter, was a staggering proposition. Even with a trained staff assisting her, it would have been a challenge. But alone? It was going to take a long time. How long, she couldn’t guess, because she wasn’t sure how she was going to do it. It would be far easier if she could redesign the defenders from scratch, if she weren’t also trying to hide the fact that she was doing this. Then she could simply back up and start over with the specifications for a human brain, and design something close to a defender. But these defenders had to look exactly like the existing ones, and to act like them.
As she typed a few tentative variations, she watched the genetic code transform before her eyes. Without the Mizrahi protocol, which translated genetically expressible characteristics into genetic code, it would take years to design these changes. It was amazing, really, that she hadn’t had to think in terms of adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine since graduate school. All of that was automated.
Lila jumped as a voice blared in her head.
Minka is coming to see you about an employee. She’ll be at your door in less than two minutes.
Lila masked the program she was working on, called up a productivity report. She had no idea the Luyten was eavesdropping, but it made sense—they had as much riding on this as she.
After Minka left, Lila waited, in case she thought of something else and returned.
All clear, the Luyten said before she could resume work on her own.
When darkness came Lila texted both Kai and Erik to tell them she wouldn’t be home until late. She went on working, knocking back coffee, driven by anxiety, blocked not only by a dawning understanding of how difficult, if not impossible, this was, but by doubts about whether she should be doing it at all.
At 3 a.m. she packed up and went home. If she stayed all night it might raise suspicion. On top of that, she wasn’t making progress. Not real progress, anyway. So far she was only learning what wouldn’t work. As she turned off the lights, it occurred to her that if the Luyten were telling the truth about the defenders’ plans, then in a very real sense every day she failed to create the blueprint for the altered defenders, millions of lives could be lost. Not that she needed to feel any more pressure.
Halfway home, the Luyten’s voice blared in Lila’s head again.
Please turn around and go back to your office. Make a portable copy of the defenders’ blueprint. Take it to Oliver’s apartment.
“Are you fucking kidding me? If I’m caught carrying a copy of—” She shut her mouth, thought the rest. Of the blueprint, I’ll be killed on the spot, and if I’m followed to Oliver’s apartment, he’ll be killed.
I’m passing on this request from Oliver. You’ll understand when you get to his apartment.
“Why can’t you just tell me now?”
I could, but it would ruin the surprise.
Lila slowed, pulled into an empty Wendy’s parking lot, and turned around. The surprise? Lila couldn’t help but laugh. How long had it been since she’d had a surprise that wasn’t a shitty one?
Surprise. Your own people are dropping bombs on your head. Surprise. While you were a POW, your husband was shot a half dozen times.
This is a good surprise.
“Stop eavesdropping.”
I literally can’t.
“Then have the courtesy to pretend you’re not eavesdropping.”
That seemed to shut the thing up.
As she knocked on Oliver’s door, Lila tried to imagine what could possibly be on the other side that would surprise her. What she really wanted was to hear that she didn’t have to do this, that they’d come up with another plan to avert the coming genocide, but that seemed too much to hope for.
The door swung open; instead of Oliver, Lila found herself face-to-face with a ghost.
“Oh my God,” Lila whispered. “I can’t believe it.”
Dominique grinned. “I can’t believe it, either.”