Page 1 of Trade (After the End #7)

Chapter One

The mimosa fronds are turning yellow at the edges—undeniable evidence of drought stress.

I snap several discolored leaves from their stems and tuck them into a worn envelope.

Leadership can’t put me off again with vague promises about forming a study group.

The trees are dying, and we can’t just ignore it anymore.

Well, some people can.

Neil Jackson can ignore all manner of reasonable requests, but I don’t blame him. As Head Administrator, the future of the bunker rests on his shoulders, and he has to balance the departments’ competing needs. I get that. He swore an oath to the Articles of Incorporation.

For the life of me, though, I can’t explain why Bennett insists on refusing to face facts.

He’s started to rush through dinner so he doesn’t have to listen to me talk about the trees.

Lately, I’m already in bed by the time he gets home from the office.

He says he’s swamped, but after twenty years together, I know when he’s avoiding me.

It’s not like I’m blaming him or suggesting this wouldn’t be happening if I was in charge.

He acts like every fight we have is really about how my father designated him as his successor when he died instead of me.

It was a shock when I learned Dad had made Bennett Head of AP—Agricultural Preservation—but that was three years ago.

It’s water under the bridge. I’m not still mad, but Bennett is definitely still defensive about it.

The fact is the trees would be struggling no matter who was in charge. This isn’t about ego. It’s about water. Trees grow—at least they’re supposed to—and if you decrease their water too much, too quickly, they die. It’s not rocket science. It’s arboriculture.

Like potatoes don’t grow as big if the soil is depleted. And the cacti do well if there is an increase in carbon dioxide in the air.

“All good, boss?” Alan the intern asks as he passes, hauling a barrel of debris for composting.

“All good.” I quickly tuck the envelope into the pocket of my coveralls, fixing my face so I don’t look concerned.

I don’t want anyone worried before they have to be.

As Dad drummed into my head since I could walk, the most dangerous threats in a bunker are fire, airborne disease, and panic, and panic is by far the worst.

“Have a good one if I don’t see you later,” Alan says.

“You, too.” I smile like I don’t have a rock sitting in my belly. I thought I had a month to prepare before confronting Neil, but his secretary called yesterday to push up our skip-level meeting.

I’m ready for the best-case scenario—Neil concedes the bunker’s most recent water allocation is shortchanging agriculture, and I have to convince him to risk Sanitation and Food Service’s ire by submitting a revised budget to the Assembly.

I am in no way prepared for the worst-case scenario—the thing that keeps me awake in bed at night while I wait for Bennett to come home—that something has happened to the filtration system, and the bunker is running out of water.

Is that why Bennett is so distant these days? Because he knows, and he’s protecting me from reality as long as he can?

That’s just not how Bennett and I work. We’ve always been a team, at our best when we’re collaborating on a project or advocating for AP together on the floor during Common Sessions, fighting side by side.

Dad called us Jab and Cross. Bennett was Jab because he’s got the charisma, so he takes the lead and gets the people on our side.

I was Cross because I follow up with the detailed plans to fix the issue.

I can’t fix a problem that no one will talk about. Neil is just going to have to pull his head out of the sand. He can’t ignore dead leaves.

I blow out a breath and brush my hands on my thighs. I need to get going.

“Gloria?” Amy, a tech in Heirloom Produce who is something of a protégé, stops me before I can get ten feet. “You got a minute?”

“For you, always.” I tune out my nerves and tune in to what she’s saying. She’s a fruit whisperer, but she’s not very confident and tends to beat around the bush, so you need to wear your satellite ears to make sure you’re picking up what she’s putting down.

“Have you seen the Brandywine tomatoes lately?”

“I haven’t. How are they doing?”

“Good, good.” She bobs her head nervously and shifts in her boots.

If this were anyone else, I’d figure she was fishing for a compliment, but Amy doesn’t like talking to people enough to bring this up for a pat on the head. Something’s wrong. Bennett hasn’t cut any water to edible produce, though, as far as I know.

Not that he’s keeping me apprised of things these days unless I ask.

“Good but . . . ?” I smile so she knows I won’t be mad to hear bad news.

“I don’t like the way they’re looking.”

They seemed red to me when I last passed by. “Too pale?”

She shakes her head. “It’s not that. I don’t know how to put it. They’re not hanging right.”

I have no idea what that means, but I have no doubt Amy is on to something. “What do you suggest?”

Amy’s eyes light up. I bet she’s relieved I’m not asking her to explain how a tomato is supposed to hang. “Bone meal. Not much. A few sprinkles for a few days and see if that makes a difference.”

“Bone meal? Done.” I like easy solutions that don’t involve water.

She smiles. “Awesome. Thanks. Great.” I wait for her follow-up question. Amy always needs a little wait time before you end an interaction. “Should I go get it now? The ladder is free.”

Good thing I waited. “No, no, let’s wait until tomorrow. I want to take a look at them first.”

Her smile falls.

“Just so I can track how they’re doing when you’re off duty,” I quickly reassure her. “I’ll get the bone meal. I need to get a few other things from second-tier storage anyway.”

She bobs her head. “Great, great. Thanks, Gloria.”

I wait, and when she shoves her hands in her pockets and drifts away to check out the lemon tree, I give her a friendly nod and continue on my way.

Everyone knows that I don’t want people up in second-tier storage, but Amy doesn’t really pick up on unspoken rules.

The techs assume I don’t want anyone near the fertilizer, and that’s true enough, but what I really don’t want is anyone sniffing around the flower boxes I have up there on a ledge hidden behind an enormous flex duct.

Dad entrusted the care of the Queen Anne’s lace, stoneseed root, smartweed, and thistles to me when I first came to work for AP. I’m fairly confident that no one in the bunker knows what the plants are called or what they’re for, but it’s not a theory I want to test.

Good thing weeds don’t require much encouragement to grow. I’ve managed to water them out of my own personal allotment so far, but if rations are cut again, I’m going to need to make some hard decisions.

The rock in my stomach gets heavier. I take a deep breath.

I’m getting ahead of myself. The water issue could just be a result of bureaucratic bullshit. Plenty of things are.

I’ll feel better once I hash it out with Neil. Bennett isn’t going to like me going over his head, but what am I supposed to do? He won’t listen. This bunker has preserved twenty-seven species of trees for three generations. We can’t let them die out on our watch.

Before I head into the maze of narrow corridors and low-ceilinged cells sandwiched between our two largest spaces—the atrium at surface level and the Assembly Hall eleven floors below—I duck into the restroom to make sure I look decent.

Cecily is in there, fixing her face, and she scoots over to make room for me at the mirror.

She’s the Irrigation and Fertilization supervisor.

We don’t see each other much socially since we work conflicting schedules, but I consider her a friend.

“Hot date?” she asks as she applies a balm to her lips with her pinky. The bright pink is a beautiful contrast to her dark skin.

“Skip-level meeting with Neil.” I drag my fingers through my short, ash-blonde hair, coaxing it into framing my face, but as always, it does what it wants.

“Madder?” I ask, nodding at the little aluminum foil square of lip color sitting on the metal shelf.

“Beet juice.” She winks at me in the mirror.

“Nice.” You can trade Food Services for beet juice, no problem, while Bennett would notice a missing madder plant. Well, he would have noticed before he got so “swamped” with work.

The one thing Bennett and I never agreed on, not even when we were kids, was contraband.

We both follow the rules and abide by the Articles, but Bennett believes it’s his responsibility to report infractions.

In my opinion, life is hard enough, and I work in Agricultural Preservation, not Safety and Compliance.

Maybe that’s why Dad picked Bennett over me. Would that sting less than what I’ve always figured—that to Dad, head of department was a man’s job, and Bennett was a man, and there’s the end of it?

I shake the thoughts away. I can’t ask Dad now, and what does it matter anyway?

It’s not like Bennett didn’t deserve the job.

He’s brilliant with plants and people, and he isn’t afraid of change.

Like with the produce. Dad talked about it for years, but in his first year as head, Bennett managed to switch the tomatoes, zucchini, and green beans from hydroponics to soil in order to conserve water.

And it still hasn’t been enough. The rock grows heavier again.

“I thought skip levels were next month.” Cecily pops her lips and checks her teeth. “Does this color look natural?”

“Very natural.” In that beet juice is natural.

No human lips are that shade, but no one is going to bust Cecily for such a small infraction, not even Bennett.

She’s a lottery winner. Winners get out of jail free.

“There must’ve been a scheduling conflict.

Barb called me this morning to move my meeting up. ”

Cecily cocks her head and catches my gaze in the mirror. “Oh, yeah?”