Page 3 of A Light in the Dark

THREE

I’m willing to be tested.

Were all the men of Moonriver hunks? The first one to descend into my yard from the helicopter defined what it meant to be handsome. The wedding ring on his finger declared him to be off limits, but that didn’t stop me from admiring the scenery. Gabriella’s eyes remained wide, especially when the man introduced himself as a doctor and asked for permission to do a basic examination.

The second man to come out of the helicopter descended in a litter loaded with supplies, including twenty gallons of fresh water, two extra propane tanks, enough food for three weeks, several bags of fresh fruits for my luna moth guest, and a medical kit. Once the litter was on the ground and unhooked, the helicopter zipped away. He unloaded everything into the kitchen, and then he dug into one of the bags and pulled out an opened cell phone box. “After we have a chance to talk to you, the helicopter will be back. It’s safer for everyone this way. Normally, we wouldn’t give new phones away like this, but considering the circumstances, we—the Hunters, that is—want you to keep this charged and with you. There are several contacts with a description of what they handle inside. The passcode is on a note in the box. Use the phone for personal use as well; that’s the least we can do to thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. If you hear or see anything that indicates this wasn’t just one bad guide, give us a call. The phone is registered in Moonriver, so it’ll be difficult for anyone in Stonecreek to get the data from it.”

I would need to hide my decrepit cell, destroy it, or otherwise make certain it disappeared without a trace, a simple enough job all things considered. I took the phone’s box, the implications of his words sinking in. “Thank you. I’ll keep a look out. What about the potential bodies?”

“We have a few aquatic shifters who will be braving the waters to look for and retrieve any dead we can find. We actually dropped three of them off on our way here. I’ve been asked to issue you an invitation to come to Moonriver if you are concerned for your safety.” According to the armband he wore, he belonged to the Hunters of Moonriver. I hadn’t seen one of the badges before in person; the Hunters only wore them when outside of their city-state. He regarded me through narrowed eyes. “You didn’t enter the water, did you?”

I shook my head and gestured for him to follow me, and I showed him my rig. Then I displayed my bruised wrist and arm for him to see. “I expected these sorts of injuries when I set this up. It’s a small price to pay for the life of another.”

He examined my arm, and he nodded. “Do you know if you have shifter genetics? ”

The luna moth flew into my entry, settled on my living room lamp, and fluttered his wings.

I shrugged. “I’ve no idea. I grew up in the city-state, but I didn’t move into Stonecreek itself until a few years back. I didn’t want to be in a rental situation with the floods being like they are. The old owners of this house got tired of rebuilding their steps every year, so they sold for a pittance. DNA testing is outside of my budget.”

“It’s not outside of ours. If you’ll consent to the test being done, we’ll take your vitals, draw a vial of blood, and get back to you with your results. It’s good to know if you have the genetics. There’s nothing quite like someone being surprised with a shift, and you’ve had exposure to shifters.”

I eyed my winged guest. “To be fair, this is the first time I’ve had shifters in my home, although I’ve had two of them today, yourselves excluded.”

“Stonecreek doesn’t have as many shifters as Moonriver, but Stonecreek has more than a few,” he informed me. “If you notice any behavioral changes, make use of the phone. We’ve found the helpful types tend to pick up genetics with a little more ease than others.”

Great. Another problem I needed to worry about. “I don’t mind having some blood drawn. Can you get confirmation of my vaccination status? I had the shots from the pandemic, but I haven’t had any vaccinations since I was little outside of that.”

“We can do that, and if you need any vaccinations, we’ll give you the list. And if you received a placebo of the Earth vaccines, we’ll know in a hurry.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “After a guide misleading at least one refugee, I’m concerned. ”

I held out my arm. “I’m willing to be tested.”

“We’ll handle that at your table—and if you’re all right with it, I’ll have the doc give you a look over before we steal your blood.”

After learning that Gabriella had been set up to die, I questioned everything I thought I had known about my home. “All things considered, I think that’s a good idea.”

The Hunters’ doctor suspected I’d suffered from a mostly asymptomatic case of the various illnesses that had been imported from Earth during the exodus. From a higher resting heart rate than he preferred, swollen lymph nodes, and suspicious spots on my upper arms I hadn’t noticed, I had the markers of having beaten the disease without the assistance of a vaccination.

As I kept all my records, I retrieved them, consenting to have them copied. Both the doc, who went by Al, and the other Hunter, who finally accepted being assigned the name Wolf due to his reluctance to be identified, thought the whole thing reeked.

Moonriver had given the vaccinations to the other city-states free of charge, even the ones they’d hired to be produced in orbit.

There was a healthy universal market for the vaccines, and Stonecreek had a reputation for pushing the limits of our tech levels and the boundaries to get their people into space.

Someone planning to leave the planet could make a fortune off a few doses of the vaccines—and who better to give a placebo vaccine to than someone who hadn’t been born in the city proper? While the whole thing did reek of a conspiracy theory, the Hunters made a good enough point that I spent a great deal of time thinking about what I’d learned. The idea of leaving tempted me, but I’d made my house into a home, and I loved everything about our community when we got together to recover from the yearly floods. However, I couldn’t deny the struggles I’d endured when I’d first come to the city.

I had not been welcomed, but I’d had the money needed to buy my house—and after the first year of floods, I’d proven my worth.

Well, mostly.

The vaccination should have prevented infection altogether.

Three hours after the arrival of the Hunters, the helicopter returned, Al helped Gabriella into the litter, and everyone, including the luna moth, left. I wondered what the Hunters would learn from the shifter, but they seemed to have no problems with taking an extra with them.

They left the bags of fruit with me, which I would enjoy over the next few days.

What was going on in my city-state? I could buy into the possibility that a poorly trained guide had misled some of the refugees. If I hadn’t been vaccinated, what had been in the syringe?

My questions ate away at me, but with no way of answering any of them, I focused my attention on cleaning my home. As the electricity hadn’t yet gone out, I did my laundry, I swept the floors, I mopped the hardwoods, and I did a deep clean of the carpets and rugs. Once I finished that, I attacked the furniture, scrubbing my worries away and doing anything I could to distract myself.

As the weather tended to do this time of year, it worsened. I questioned how the electricity remained on. Once I ran out of chores, I slept, read books, and settled in to wait.

The storm lasted three days. My electricity survived the entire time, a miracle I refused to question. When all was said and done, I had no steps left, but the landing, built on a mix of concrete and slab stones, had withstood the flood’s fury. I waited for the waters to recede to the point I could spot the silt in the street. I pitied the fish, frogs, and turtles trapped in the muck, which resulted in me doing my next good deed of the week.

Once I rigged a rope ladder to get back into my home, I got down onto the street and soothed my frugal spirit, hunting for free dinner while saving what I wouldn’t eat.

While I tossed the smaller lake trout, catfish, and other species into a bucket of rainwater retrieved from my barrel, the larger ones lost their heads, were cleaned, and went into my freezer. Once out of the lake, Stonecreek’s rules were easy: first come, first served.

I rescued five buckets of fish, frogs, and turtles before I called it a day, and as long as the electricity stayed on, I’d have enough fish for a month.

The power washer came out next, and I cleaned the area in front of my steps to get a better idea of the damage. Fortunately for me, my foundation, which included the section below the landing, had held. I would need to patch where the steel rods secured the steps to the building, but the rods themselves hadn’t been shorn off, which would save me a great deal of work. If I went with stone and mortar, I could have a new set of steps built in a few days.

It would do.

After refilling the power washer’s tank, I headed up the hill, cleaning away the muck from around the foundations of each of my neighbors to get a better look at the damage. By nightfall, I’d determined we’d all gotten off lightly enough. Building new steps would keep us busy for a week or two, but the damage ended there.

In a way, I appreciated that my neighbors remained holed up in their homes while I did the initial cleaning work and damage evaluation. In the next few days, the mess from on the hill would wash down the street, but the curb, which had survived the flood itself, would keep most of it penned in. I’d be able to clean the sidewalks tomorrow without much worry, and once the sidewalks were cleaned, I’d worry about getting my neighbors to open their doors and talk to them about what they needed in the days to come.

The entire time, I wondered if I had been in Gabriella’s shoes without knowing it—and how I’d dodged her fate.

I feared the vaccination results would give me answers while forcing me to ask even more questions.

It took me three days to clean the streets, and for the first two of them, I saw little of my neighbors. Once most of the filth had been relocated off the sidewalk and onto the street, the librarians emerged, and they came armed with their endless pool of knowledge and a willingness to purchase the stones needed to build new steps. By my calculations, hiring someone to bring in a few tons of rock slabs would be far cheaper than trying to cure concrete in a place where the sky was likely to rebel on us again within a week.

Nobody wanted to spend the sort of money I had on shoring my foundation.

We replaced the lift first to get my nearest neighbors mobile again, an expense they footed and I oversaw. I fielded questions about Gabriella, but after commenting that I’d made use of the number on the commercial, I earned praise for a job well done. If anyone had any other questions, they didn’t ask.

Nobody from emergency services inquired about what had happened to my rescued guest. I could only assume that Amanda had gotten carried away in the relentless flow of people needing assistance during the storm and had forgotten about the wayward refugee.

Six days after the waters receded, the Hunters’ phone vibrated in my pocket. I checked the device to discover several text messages with my test results. I had robust non-specified shifter genes, sufficient to qualify me for Hunters membership if I wanted it along with a free ride to Moonriver. I was confirmed to be lacking the appropriate vaccinations from the pandemic. After confirmation of my medical records, they’d identified that I’d been given an experimental vaccine, one designed to counter many illnesses found during space travel.

In good news for me, I’d been properly inoculated against numerous illnesses. In bad news, the vaccine wasn’t available for the public, and the Hunters wanted me to go in for screening to see if I’d suffered from any complications. To add additional complication to my situation, they had confirmed I had natural antibodies to most Earth diseases, supporting Al’s belief I’d suffered from asymptomatic illnesses.

With the worry of a conspiracy costing refugees their lives and my status as someone who had not grown up directly in the city of Stonecreek, the Hunters of Moonriver wanted to make an official visit, invite me to their city-state for a while, and monitor who took an interest in me.

They worried that the same people who had wanted Gabriella dead might seek out some petty vengeance due to my interference.

The final message depressed me.

There had been bodies in the water, bodies that had been DNA tested and confirmed to have originated from Earth. I wasn’t told how many, but one was too many, and I mourned for those who hadn’t been as lucky as Gabriella.

I suspected Al had told more than a few truths, and Gabriella’s shifter genetics had spared her from death.

Between rounds with my pressure washer, which I used to clean every crack of the sidewalk on my side of the street, I sent a few texts, first confirming my willingness to undergo testing to determine if I needed medical care from the experimental vaccination. My second text inquired on the luna moth .

To my relief, he’d been treated for some minor issues before returning to his home, wherever that was.

Finally, I inquired about Gabriella.

The Hunter promised the woman was in good hands with them and that she’d have a welcoming home among people who would value her.

With the important things settled, I inquired when and how the testing would be done.

While it took an hour, the Hunter replied with a promise to reach out when they could safely get a delegation into Stonecreek, one that wouldn’t put me at unnecessary risk. They would need to find a way to spin Gabriella’s rescue and make certain no one in my city-state had reason to believe I was anything other than a good soul who’d rescued someone from turbulent waters.

The request to be careful worried me.

The reasons why I needed to take care piled up, forming a mountain I feared climbing. However, I couldn’t just leave people to be killed, especially not refugees who’d done nothing more than survive the death of their planet. The idea that my city-state, that the city I’d chosen to call home, would delve into such dark depths horrified me.

The need for the truth gnawed at me, beginning with the smallest of nibbles. The minutes stretched and dragged, eventually turning into hours, and I wondered over the why someone—or numerous someones—would want to make Earth’s refugees disappear. Was money all there was to it? Or was there something more to the betrayal that had led Gabriella to falling into the churning waters?

Gabriella had gotten lucky, and I mourned for those who hadn’t been so fortunate .

But what could I do?

The truth waited for me at the top of the hill, and as long as I didn’t mention my suspicions of a guide leading refugees to their deaths, I might learn something. Just like Moonriver ran advertisements in case a refugee needed support, Stonecreek put out feelers for volunteers to help settle the newcomers to the city.

I already judged my home, for even one death was one death too many, but if I didn’t try to find out what was behind Gabriella’s brush with death, who would?

That I couldn’t think of another soul in the city who would, chilled me far worse than any waters could.