Page 17 of Inceptive (Ingenious #3)

17

ZACH

Z ach’s first croaked words when he awakened were “Is Will alive?”

“Over here.”

He turned his face. Will sat beside the bed, lifting his head from his hands. His skin was normal, but his puffy eyes looked as if he’d been crying.

“I thought you were going to die,” Will rasped.

“Me die? You were the one dying.”

Will wiped his wet cheeks. “I recovered in two weeks. You’ve been unconscious for four weeks. Dante almost drained you, trying to stop the protein from spreading to my head. If you weren’t a treetop with superior blood-building, you’d be dead. I thought donating eight bags of blood to me in two weeks had damaged your brain.”

Odd how Zach’s mind functioned clearly despite the trauma. “I remember watching videos. I don’t understand the science… but I saw the images… and I can do the math. Fort Hope can’t save the Islanders. They will drain my people dry. Then all Islanders will die because there’s no cure and no uninfected food.”

Belle flew to the bed rail and peered down at Zach. “My poor Zach. Look bad. You need kissy lips from Will and feel better.” She clacked her beak, showing off fresh lip paint. “Will gave you many kissy lips and cried.” Belle dodged the swat from Will. “You did, you did, you did.”

“Behave, or I’ll give you back to Dante.”

“Nooooooo! Love my Will. Love my poor ugly Zach.”

Zach’s stomach rumbled. Will raised the bed into a sitting position. “You need to eat and rest. I saw the same videos, plus the current ones taken in the basin. I don’t know where to start explaining.”

“Start with Dante.”

“He’s the Guardian of the Carolina Sanctuary. An artificial intelligence that flows throughout the sanctuary and interacts with a network of sensors and communications. Our ancestors designed Dante with a mandate to save the human race from extinction. If the oceanic domes were lost, and the survivors left behind in the sanctuary were all dead, Dante was programmed to create the people of Fort Hope from genetic material in the vaults. He made you perfect… and um… less…”

“Intelligent, so we wouldn’t fuck up Earth.” Zach coughed a sad laugh.

“Enough talk. Your stomach’s rumbling. You need to eat.”

Zach drank cups of a green nutrient juice grown in one of the sanctuary’s underground farm levels. It tasted like grass. Bread was a chewy broad-capped mushroom. The bland food had not been exposed to the protein. “Where’s real food?”

“Get used to it,” Will said. “Unless it’s grown inside here, food is contaminated.”

“The protein doesn’t attach to me.”

“It’s excreted, finds its way into the water system, and just waits for a host. Islanders are pretty much fucked.”

Zach bit off a mushroom cap and pretended it was a muffin with fig jam. Despite the effort, it remained a chewy mushroom.

Mechanical arms assisted Zach out of bed. Will explained that the arms had worked his muscles while he’d slept. Probes had stimulated nerves, and infusions had hydrated him and provided nutrients. When Zach was able to walk around the room and pee on his own, he’d be released from the hospital. They were guests in the sanctuary while Dante calculated how the truth would affect the farmers and servants.

In a few months, when power cells were replenished, the sanctuary could house two thousand Islanders if each agreed to work the indoor farms and maintain the environment. But Islanders must be cleansed in the hospitals first. Farmers and townspeople must donate blood.

Zach and Will stared at each other. Riots would break out. No way would a peaceful screening for candidates work. No way Fort Hope would risk being drained to help the despised Islanders. Farmers might donate to save a valued servant, but they owed no allegiance to the rest of the Islanders. And servants would plead to bring in their families.

“We’re so fucked,” Zach and Will replied when Dante asked for opinions.

The two-seated vehicle carrying Zach and Will to their quarters whirred them to a lower residential level. Belle flew ahead of them, stretching her wings. The hall corridor had no windows, and the air was stale, as if pumped through dusty vents. On this level, the low ceiling of the tunnel was like the inside of a rib cage. Like being swallowed and helpless and waiting to be digested. A rib hissed at Zach when he stretched a finger up and poked. He jerked back his finger and rubbed it on the thin blue tunic that had replaced his clothes and barely covered his butt cheeks.

“Don’t touch the lifeform,” a grumpy male voice chimed. “It’s sensitive after Dante awakened it for your arrival. It feeds on a layer of stone and excretes oxygen. The long hibernation has extended its life expectancy. Eventually, it will eat through the stone.”

Before dismissal from the hospital, the men had watched a brief orientation video about sensors throughout the sanctuary. Some had personalities based on their human founders.

Belle hovered above the cart. “That’s Sullie,” she whispered. “Master Dante has many helpers. Sullie watches hallways.”

Zach remembered a video explaining that the Carolina Sanctuary, with its inside farms, robotics, sensors, and recirculating air, had escaped the meteor strikes and quakes. People could have lived comfortably inside the sanctuary until Earth’s air was breathable.

They stopped at a door. “You will stay in the director’s quarters,” Sullie said in his grumpy voice. “To enter quarters, a guest must establish recognition. Will, place your hand on the door’s keypad and say open .”

Will got out of the two-seated vehicle and placed his palm on the keypad and said, “Open.” It slid open, then closed when he stepped aside for Zach. “Your turn.”

“Zach, repeat,” Sullie said.

Zach placed his broad palm on the keypad. “Repeat,” he stated clearly.

Sullie corrected him. “Say open .”

Zach dropped his hand and said, “Open.” He thumped the door when it didn’t open. “Is it stuck?”

“The door will open when you place your palm on the keypad and say open ,” Sullie said. “An image of your face and palmprint is stored to match voice recognition when you stand in front of the door and say open .”

Zach slapped a palm over the keypad and scowled at the door. “ Open the fucking door.” The door slid open. “Stupid tech. Why not use a handle?”

Sullie sniffed. “Recognition is established. From now on, just say open when you stand in front of the door.”

“How do we get out? Are we prisoners?” Zach lurched over the threshold when Belle pecked his ass beneath the tunic.

“Use the door handle to get out.” Will closed the door behind them and showed him the inside handle. “We aren’t prisoners.”

Belle lit on the floor and raced from room to room as if searching for tasties.

A friendly, disembodied feminine voice greeted them. “Welcome to the director’s quarters, Zach and Will. I am Fran, housekeeper of the sanctuary. If you have requests, speak my name.”

Zach walked around the small gathering room, his head inches from the ceiling. He tugged down his tunic. “Um… Fran?”

“Yes, Zach?”

“Can you bring us some pants?”

“Clothing is in your bedrooms,” Fran said. “A tea grown in our indoor farm will be brought in later. Your furniture and belongings will be delivered after a controlled scrubbing and disinfection cycle has been completed.”

“Where’s the director?” Zach asked, thinking it was another sensor.

It was Dante’s voice that answered sadly. “The director is deceased. He was the last of the founders’ descendants after the basin’s atmospheric roof collapsed. It wasn’t a later meteor that struck the basin’s domed roof, but a starship sanctuary from Earth seeking a habitat after a meteor field disabled its shields. It responded to my communication that there was a safe zone near the coast for landing, and we had rooms for their crew. The starship lost control of entry. It dipped, struck the dome, and collapsed the dense layer of gases forming the outer shield. The crew died, as did the farmers working outside in the basin and living in the caves. The director and a few botanical engineers were working inside the sanctuary’s lower levels experimenting with cane as sustainable farming. In their seventies, they were the last surviving descendants. Bots salvaged parts and tech from the starship. The lifeforms breathing oxygen in the hallways are from the ship, which turned out to be the gestational ship of the chain of starships. The starship contained the genome and artificial wombs I used to create Zach’s ancestors. When Earth’s atmosphere was breathable after thirteen centuries, and the domes hadn’t surfaced, I followed a mandate to create new humans.”

Will gaped at Zach. “Explains a lot. Like why no interbreeding.”

“My creations were perfect, with balanced emotions, unhampered by petty jealousies.” Dante said, his crisp voice carrying a hint of pride.

Had Dante appeared in solid form, Zach’s gaze would have skewered him. “Why did you abandon my people after forcing them to leave the sanctuary?”

Dante tsked . “I never abandoned you. The sanctuary’s network needed a rest, then a reboot to support the new creations. Solar panels had weakened. The Grand Lake’s waves weren’t a reliable generator like ocean waves. Your people eagerly packed and migrated to the coast. What a celebration we had the day they left! The plan was for a one-year outing with plentiful supplies, allowing the sanctuary to build energy reserves. When I entered stasis, it was to be a mere nap for me, and then I would awaken with the reboot and open the sanctuary to assist my creations.”

Though the science confused Zach, Will seemed to understand. “Except the system didn’t reboot.”

The air rippled as if from a nod. “I awakened from stasis and discovered that my nap had lasted seven hundred years. The only reason I awakened was when a communication from a midcontinent sanctuary was received ten months ago. Emergency communications use a special loop bypassing a shutdown. The message triggered a reboot that brought me out of stasis. The senders had invented new technology that allowed them to search for human settlements. Lightning storms over the lake had misdirected their messages to us for the last ten years. Finally, a route had connected.”

Will’s excitement of a quick rescue deflated. “That means you awakened clueless about everything that’s happened and created Belle to scout outside.”

“I created CinderX scouts from a cryogenic vault of lifeforms to adapt to a new ecology. I chipped them to serve as my eyes and ears. I learned about Fort Hope and its basin. I learned the oceanic domes had surfaced three hundred years earlier, and the animosity was understandable, but the Island’s power grid corrupted chips, and I couldn’t gather information about the Island Federation. CinderX8 was the only scout to reach the Island. The others died.” Dante sounded apologetic.

“Not CinderX8. I am pretty Belle.” Belle fluffed her feathers. “Pteryox chased me all the way from basin to Fort Hope.”

“I thought it had eaten you,” Dante said.

“It dropped me when I barked. Bad storm blew me to the Island, and my chip broke. My Will found me.”

Will held out an arm. “Come here, my pretty bird. You saved us.”

Belle hopped on his arm and preened. “I sorry I leave you. Dante called me home.”

“Her chip regained partial communication when she reached Zach’s cabin. I needed the recordings.” Dante chided her disloyalty.

Belle shivered. “You put new chips in my neck and sent me back to spy on friends. You made me smarter and told me to hide I was smarter.”

Zach growled. “You told us you had mated! We gave you the loft for a nest.” She jumped to the floor when he swatted at her, happy to play chase and learn filthy words.

“Dante is clever, yes? Put sticky plug in, knowing you would not examine closely. Yeck.”

Will folded his arms. “Bad bird. You lied to me.”

“You lie to men and act like a woman on stage for tips,” Belle countered. “Wrong of you to tell me to steal.” She batted her lashes and hopped up to his feet to nuzzle his ankles. “We amazingly bad together.”

“I like the old Belle better.” Will squatted, nose to her beak. She smooched him.

“Love my Will. Worried for his people. Can’t cross the water. Can’t perch on the rampart and see through the fog to the Trading Post. Don’t know how sick Islanders are.”

“So that’s where you’ve been.” Will petted her crest, and she hopped in his lap. “Dante, what are the odds of an epidemic on the Island?”

“All are infected, and ingestion of the protein continues. The Island’s archives contain the same files I have documenting the protein. Your scientists will have tracked the cause of an outbreak, and it’s possible they have advanced biotech that’s produced a cure. However, a severe case like yours would have still required a blood donor.”

Zach raked his hands through his hair. “The hospital keeps a blood bank for surgeries on patients from Fort Hope. Riley’s not the only patient stranded there. Doctors will use them as blood slaves.”

“Unless a vaccine is found, all Islanders will eventually sleepwalk to their death.” Will sat on the floor, rocking with despair.

“I’ve sent messages to the midcontinent sanctuary warning them that we’re under quarantine. They share the ancient archives and should help with finding a cure,” Dante said. “But they haven’t responded. It’s likely an intensity in the lake’s lightning storms have distorted my communication.”

“The guests are agitated,” Fran chimed in. “Dante, please leave. Renew discussion tomorrow.”

“Fran—” Dante’s protest was smothered as the room shimmered.

Belle remained inside. “Hee. Hee. Hee. All alone. No one watches us in director’s quarters when Fran turns off sensors—accckkkk!”

Zach gripped her neck and tossed her outside. The closed door muffled her squalls. “ Now we’re alone to talk without being spied on.”