Bred For Blood - Part 16 - Eye in the Sky
Title: Bred For Blood
Warning: 18+ - sex/mature language & themes/gun violence/substance abuse etc. *this part contains death, blood/injuries, drug use, mentions of sexual manipulation*
Characters: AU Axel Cluney, AU Ivar Lothbrok, AU Valter x OC
Description: A bright, young survivor meets an acid-gun slinging headhunter with a knack for melting faces and connections to a prodigal Utopia embedded in the heart of a deadly forest. Violence and passion incite a battle of fealty while betrayal nips at Zed’s heels.
Note: Over the months and months I’ve developed this story, a lot of it has changed. I’ve adhered to the same general storyline I originally came up with, but it’s taken on a different life. I’m realizing I fall under the “discovery writer” category more than ever. So, thank you for taking this fun journey with me as it unfolds! I appreciate all the comments and kind words <3 Let me know your thoughts as we travel toward the end of this funky little series I started forever ago.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15
Axel gaped at his wounded palm. An uneven split forced his middle and ring finger apart at a nauseating angle. The longer he stared, the more his arms trembled from the sight of his bisected tendons. Blood cascaded down his arm in swaths, more blood than he had ever spilled, collecting in sandy globs. In his horror, he almost forgot about the man bemoaning his death several feet away. Axel tried clenching a fist, but blistering agony shot through his wrist and forearm, crackling along severed nerves and stiffening his stained fingers. Disotto had been right; he’d never use his trigger-finger again.
Acid boiled in Axel’s stomach, a mixture of anger and dread. He turned to Rex writhing on the ground, assessing his wound crusted with sand and coagulating plasma. The hunter keened over Rex’s worse condition. Again, the Zeronauts failed to kill him, though his vision grew cloudy. Axel found his knife and shifted his weight off the side of the Rover, toward the man whispering prayers through bubbles of blood. When Rex caught wind of Axel’s approach, the man cowered, shielding his face with his tarry hands.
“I’m only following orders,” the slashed man shouted. “Please! If you’re gonna kill me, just do it.”
“No, I won’t put you out of your misery. I want your death to be slow and painful. Like how you left Glott back there,” said Axel.
The hunter shimmied closer, flipping his knife in his right hand to carve off an unstained strip of Rex’s cotton jersey shirt. Rex quivered as Axel wrapped the cloth around his left hand tightly. The blue material blossomed with blood, turning a deathly shade of indigo in seconds. He went for another swath of the man’s clothing, ripping the sleeve off to fold over the hole in his hand. Axel glimpsed the open wound in Rex’s side, then looked up at his wild eyes, shifting around in their sockets like a dying animal searching for an escape.
“Tell me about this Dal guy you and your buddies were talking about. Is he your leader or something? He calls the shots?” Axel asked.
Rex spat a gob of blood, laughing as it rolled down his whiskered chin. “What do you think?”
Axel held the knife under Rex’s nose. “I think you’ll die with a few more nasty cuts on your body if you don’t tell me where I can find your leader. I’ll carve you like a turkey, my man.”
“That’s the thing about us... We don’t have leaders, just as the Unity intended. There are Brights, and there’s Uns, and it’s us against them. You kill one of us, and there’s a hundred more to take our place,” Rex claimed.
“No. It’s not you against them; It’s you against the planet. The Brights are the ones saving your sorry asses. You anarchists can’t seem to understand that we need them.”
Rex’s stone-grey eyes fluttered as he took in a trembling breath. “Why do you fucking care? The Unity wanted you dead, too.”
Axel looked down at his fake teardrop. If he hadn’t been fighting in the war, would they have considered him for immunization? It was a question Axel asked himself a thousand times, and the answer was always negative. He should have died in the storms, but he hadn’t. The spores didn’t reach the ocean, and therefore, never had the chance to infect him or the small crew of abandoned soldiers sailing home.
Axel grimaced at his stained forearm. “That doesn’t mean I want to kill every brightblood I find.”
“No. But you’ll use them to protect yourself. Just like we do,” Rex said with a sticky smile.
“Fuck you. Your little band of outlaws is exactly the people they tried to eradicate. People who only see others as slaves.”
“The Brightlings you care so much about are bred for blood. Blood that we need to survive—that you need to survive. The Unity branded them like cattle for easy picking.”
Axel rose to his knees, wincing from the slash above his ankle. “That’s the thinking that’s getting you and all your merry men killed. Rapists, slave-drivers, murderers... There's no room for you on this planet.”
“What does that make you, Mister Zee?”
“Yeah, I’m a killer. And I’ll die a killer if it means getting rid of scum like you,” Axel said, spitting on Rex’s dirtied face.
A low chuckle rumbled in Rex’s esophagus, tapering off as he shut his eyes, limbs turning limp where he lay sprawled over the sand.
Axel sat for a moment to catch his breath, then crawled from body to body, checking their pockets and patting down stiff torsos for anything useful. He found a few rounds of ammunition, a half-full pack of cigarettes, a glass pipe with a burnt and bulbous end, another butane lighter, a folded piece of paper bearing his likeness and several uncut rubies. He tossed the crack pipe and kept the rest, stuffing it all into his pockets with his left arm pressed to his side.
A dry wind swept in from the South, the direction he needed to go if he could only haul himself to a stand. He sat slumped over, unlacing his boot to get a better look at his wounded ankle. The cut was deep and gushing still. He bandaged his ankle in the same way he had his hand—with the jersey cotton stripped from Rex’s shirt. After winding the dressing around his foot, it was too bulky to stuff back into his boot, so he left it behind as he crawled toward the duffle bag of papers from Glott’s lab. He emptied his pockets into the bag, then grabbed his rifle. A grisly piece of meat from the other Zeronaut’s face still clung to the butt where Axel had cracked his mouth apart. Though he couldn’t shoot acid, the weapon doubled as a club if he encountered more bounty hunters.
Stretching his right arm behind his back, he found the mushrooms he’d tucked in his pocket. In the bright afternoon light, the brown fibres glistened, white spots speckling the meaty caps atop long, feathery stems. Axel licked his lips but refrained from ingesting the mysterious fungus he found growing inside Glott’s supply closet. The last thing he needed was to poison himself. He was already sure he would die in the desert, if not from blood-loss, then from dehydration. The mushrooms were a last resort. He pocketed them again.
Axel assessed his itinerary. Although he’d sustained severe mutilation and a punctured ankle, he came away with another gun, more cigarettes and a few hundred thousand dollars' worth of stones. Axel saw no use for the rubies, but some people still valued objects more than human blood, so he kept them. It seemed unlikely he’d cross anyone who only wanted to trade, but the stones gave him a sense of comfort in case he happened upon a post.
If he was to consider what Rex said about a hundred more Zeronauts taking his place, Axel had to assume everyone was now an enemy. How many Zeronauts were there? Had they recruited more survivors, swelling their ranks while he pissed away his time in Kinderfeld? He shook his head and wobbled from dizziness. There was no more time for contemplation. Axel had to remain present.
On foot, getting back to the domes would take days, but with two of his limbs decommissioned, it would take much longer. He took all he could carry from the Rover and packed it into the duffle bag, including his last inches of water and two mystery packs of army rations. Axel scanned the horizon, took a step and cried out from the bolt of pain in his leg. Limping without a crutch was impossible, so he lowered to his knees and crawled in the direction from which his three assailants had come. They must have had a camp or a vehicle he could raid somewhere.
In the desert heat, with the duffle bag more cumbersome than ever, Axel’s lag proved difficult. Pain blazed through his leg with every bend of his knee, and his elbows supported his entire weight plus the full bag pressing on his back. He army-crawled through the sand, stopping every few shuffles to rest.
Axel made it over a steep dune before the dryness entered his lungs and sucked the moisture from his mouth. He paused for a gulp of water and grieved over how little he had left.
When he found no traces of Zeronaut vehicles, he looked back and considered returning to the Rover. Even on deflated wheels, he might get farther than what his aching body could manage.
Turning back was suicidal. Axel couldn’t waste another hour retracing the trail he left behind. It was onward or nothing.
Exhaustion tugged at his eyelids after long. The agony of using his arms to pull himself along depleted what little energy he had. Axel retired his injured appendage and used his right arm and leg to shift himself over hills and rough patches of stone.
His muscles stretched and burned as the sun beat down on his skin. The strain on his body caught up with him quickly, and he had to rest before he passed out from weariness. Axel shifted the duffle bag over his head to shield from the sun, took another sip of water and laid in the dust with his eyes closed. Every few minutes, he snapped awake, unable to doze for more than a few minutes before panic shook him.
As the sun set, Axel ripped open a foil bag and devoured the tomatoes, slimy noodles, and bits of chewy sausage swimming inside. Any other day, Axel might complain about the meal, but in his weakened haze, it tasted better than anything he’d ever eaten. Washing down the food with his last bit of water, he tossed the package and crawled several yards before a dull pain in the back of his head dizzied him again.
Frequent breaks frustrated Axel, and the emerging fog disoriented his sense of direction. Soon the night took over, and Axel shivered from the icy touch on his inflamed skin. He was burnt and filthy, head pounding while his ankle and hand throbbed without end. Though he’d eaten and drank the last remnant of water he had, a persistent thirst scratched in his throat.
“Fuck, I’m gonna die,” Axel croaked. “This will be your fucking grave, Cluney. You’re done.”
When he imagined dying with the duffle bag full of invaluable information, Axel’s heart clattered in his chest. That discovery in the hands of those who wished slavery upon the brightbloods would be disastrous. If he couldn’t make it back to Kinderfeld, he had to make sure the secret died with him. Nobody would get their hands on Zed because of his negligence, he vowed.
He scaled the sands until his body gave out. Muscles screaming in pain, Axel rolled onto his back and looked up at the night sky through a thin veil of fog.
“I’m sorry, Lea. I’m a fucking failure. Valter... Fuck. I should have been there for you. I’m such a fuck-up. Such a selfish, stupid fuck-up.”
Axel closed his eyes and let the darkness take him under.
When the sun peeked over the hills, Axel awoke, spitting dirt from his mouth as he coughed and winced from the agony living in every atom of his body. He couldn’t believe he was still alive to see another powder blue sky. However, his shoulders had seized from over-exertion, and the only movement he made was the desperate intake of air. Anguish pinned him to the ground until he summoned the strength to unzip the duffle bag and rummage around, one-armed, for a cigarette and lighter.
Axel smoked while sprawled in the sand, watching puffy clouds sail overhead. There was only an hour of mild temperature before the sun climbed higher and burned away the moisture left from the misty night.
“Why am I not dead?” Axel asked himself.
A strong wind swept sheets of dust over his latent form, blinding him until his eyes watered. If he stayed where he was, by noon, he’d be half-buried. But he could barely move to stop this from happening. He saved his energy for rolling onto his stomach to fish the mushrooms from his pocket. It took half an hour to accomplish this, and by the time he had hold of the speckled caps, he did not argue against consuming them.
He gnashed the sponge and grainy strands to a pulp, swallowed, and hoped for the best. The woody flavour reminded him of old times taking dried psilocybin mushrooms as a teenager. What effects Glott’s fungi produced remained a mystery.
Axel sighed and tried not to think about Lea and Vee. He closed his eyes, picturing simpler times and places that brought him joy until he realized there were few scraps of memory that provided him with any relief. He had left home at a young age as his parents acknowledged his brother’s accelerated development and put their focus into nurturing his intelligence instead of disciplining a boy who laughed in the face of authority. While Axel set off to take drugs and contract sexually transmitted infections that required horse pills and multiple shots in the ass to cure, his family grew tighter without him. Vee grew into a man. Then came the army and quest for structure. But there was no structure in the military either. There were routines and discipline, but no sense of permanence. It only threw him into further chaos, showing him real horrors that made his small-time forays in local crime seem like a joke.
He remembered the boat ride home, the piercing silence of a desolate group of men who’d been long abandoned, forgotten by their superiors and the world. They were throwaways, disregarded by the country who first outfitted and weaponized them. Ivar was his only anchor to life without torment, and even he had changed from the war.
The only memory that didn’t haunt him was the recent times he’d spent with Azalea. She didn’t judge him harshly—only when he deserved it—for she didn’t understand the gravity of his past transgressions. Axel would give anything to be back in their conjoined apartment, drinking acidic wine with Vee, playing board games like they were kids again.
Behind his heavy lids, Axel saw the sun break without opening his eyes. A sliver of white light grew into a crescent, a half-moon, an eyeball with no iris. It blinked, staring at his feeble body with judgment.
What are you doing lying in the sand?
“I’m dying,” Axel answered the ominous voice overhead.
So soon?
“Maybe not soon enough,” said Axel.
How boring. Zeitgeist, the famous headhunter, reduced to dirt.
“It’s been a long time coming.”
The glowing orb sighed, giving off radiation Axel could feel. A red aura, wriggling like a crown of worms, throwing off golden hailstones that burst into a fine mist.
“When I was in the Middle East, I got the feeling I’d die like this. Maybe I’m some kind of low-level prophet.”
Predicting one’s own death is hardly a show of prophecy. You’ve spent your life doing things no regular person should survive. This death... This is a lifetime of poor decisions catching up with you.
“Am I talking to myself, or am I tripping?”
Perhaps a little of both.
“Hm... At least I’ll die high out of my mind. These scientists sure make great psychedelics.”
Axel opened his eyes and gasped at the sprawling panorama of white dollops convulsing over a roiling screen of blue. The clouds came closer, and he drew a breath in through his nose, tasting the thick air as he rose his good hand to the amoebic spectacle before him. The wind curled through, skewing the shapes into fresh forms, erasing and reforming them with every gust: flowers, sailboats, insects and gaping faces.
“Wow. That’s crazy,” Axel whispered, smirking.
The sand softened and welcomed his battered limbs into a cradle of warmth. A blissful smile unfurled on his face as the clouds continued their spastic dance across the never-ending sky, showing him dreamy visions of abstract figures.
“I wish I was home. I never took Lea out to ride dirt bikes.”
Then go home, Axel. Go back to your family. Tell them what you know. Be the hero, not just the man with the best gun and biggest balls.
“But I can’t move!” Axel whined.
The ground buzzed underneath him as though each grain sprouted legs to carry him through the desolation. Millions of tiny ants worked together to haul his body across the desert as if they understood the importance of his return to Kinderfeld. He longed to scratch the itch at his back, but his arms were leaden.
“What happens if I die and they never find out about Lea?”
Then you die, and they die not long after.
“No. Don’t say that.”
You’re the one saying it.
A sinking sensation opened in Axel’s chest as his nerves responded to the numbing effect of the mushrooms. Soon, Axel was floating on a cloud, the ants falling away as his pupils expanded, and his brain’s chemistry changed.
Take her to the Maw. That’s what Glott said. Get up and go home.
“She hates me.”
She trusts you.
“I’ll die before I get there. It’s pointless.”
If there’s no point, you might as well keep crawling.
“But I’m so comfortable. Is this what dying really feels like?”
I guess you’ll find out soon enough.
Axel sighed. “Maybe it’s not so bad... Dying.”
Sure, you can die on a cloud, smiling like an idiot, while your enemies are out there looking for a way into your home to kill your brother and rape the woman you promised to protect. Or you can keep crawling.
“Y’know, for the sun, you have a dark sense of humour.”
Better get going before someone else finds you and gets their hands on those papers.
Muddled and rash from the whiplash of the mind, Axel reached back into the duffle bag, feeling around for the hand-written documents. When his fingers skated over a smooth sheet, he crumpled it and brought the loose wad to his mouth. Axel stuffed the paper between his teeth and chewed.
Through a mouthful of paper and ink, Axel giggled and reached for another sheet but found his lighter instead.
He burned the rest, chuckling as tears poured down the sides of his head.
~*~
Zed watched Ivar’s chest expand and retract while they laid together in a nest of damp sheets. Silent, she bit down on her lip as the king turned to her, an elated smile revealing all of his teeth.
“Wow,” he whispered. “That was... Wow.”
Zed flushed from the silly look he gave her. “Stop it.”
“Lea...”
“Ivar?”
The King turned on his side and pulled her close, tucking his face under her jaw. She embraced him while staring up at the billowing ceiling. She wondered what the Chrysalis looked like stripped of all its livery. Was it still as beautiful without the ornate clothing? She shook her head and fluttered her eyes, pushing away irrelevant thoughts.
“Can I be honest with you?” Ivar asked.
“I hope so,” Zed whispered, shuffling her nose into his rose-scented hair.
“I’ve had a lot of—I mean, I’m no prude, but that was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Oh, be quiet,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Ivar drew back to peer into her in the eyes, his playful smile replaced with palpable seriousness. “I’m telling you the truth. Your body... It’s like you were made for me. You're so beautiful, I want to drape you over me forever and wear you like ear-muffs.”
“What would you know about ear-muffs, oh king of the desert?”
“Plenty.” Ivar’s smile returned. “I hale from the North. They don’t call me Viking for nothing.”
“Right,” she said.
Ivar put a little more distance between them, sensing her discomfort.
“What’s the matter? You’re okay with what happened, right?”
Zed snapped a smile over her lips. “Yes! I don’t know how many times you asked for my permission. It was only a matter of time before we...”
“Made love?”
The thermal rush of nerves returned to her cheeks. “Yes. Made love.”
“I don’t want you to regret it because I don’t. The moment you walked into this place, I swore off all other women. I only wanted you in my life. And I’m glad you pulled off whatever mischievous thing you had to get in here. Waking up to your face was heavenly.”
Zed welcomed him back into her arms. He laid his head on her chest. "I’m glad you’re not mad at me," she said. "I worried you’d send me away. But it was worth the risk."
Ivar stroked her bare skin, sighing. “It’s only for our protection.”
“But they can’t get in here. Not unless we allow them.”
Ivar stared across the room at the curtained entrance. “I don’t know anymore, Lea.”
“What do you mean?” She whispered.
“There are many hostiles out there now. More than I ever predicted.”
“How do you know this?”
“I've seen them.”
Zed’s heart plummeted, skipping a beat as a wave of dread squeezed her throat. Ivar rolled onto his back, ready to admit things to her he had told no one. Not even Axel.
“Do you remember that night I cancelled on you?”
“Yes, we were supposed to have dinner.”
I had dinner with Axel instead.
“It wasn’t because dwellers were looking for trade and shelter. It was a group of scavs looking for Zee.”
“The Zeronauts?” Zed gasped.
Ivar nodded grimly. “There’s a bounty on him—a big one. They came looking for Zee, threatening to blow up the compound if I didn’t turn him over. I said he wasn’t inside, that he’d left a while ago. At first, they didn’t believe me, but I guess I must have convinced them.”
Zed sat up in bed, clutching the sheet to her bare chest. “What did you do?”
“I suppose my acting skills paid off. They wanted to take me up on my word, search around the village, but I refused. By then, they realized the firepower we had and backed off. I didn’t expect them to return so soon.”
“But... Axel went out there. What if they found him? What if he’s dead?”
Ivar closed his eyes before tears emerged. “I know. But what can I do? He made his own choice. He didn’t want to stay, and to be honest, Lea, I didn’t want him here either. Not after what that filthy scav said.”
Zed’s nerves flared. “Now you listen to me. What Monk said was not true! I did not have sex with Axel in that camp. And if you refuse to believe me, then... Maybe I will end up regretting what we did.”
“It’s so hard to buy that, Lea,” Ivar said.
“Why? You don’t trust me?”
He gave a discourteous snicker and rolled his eyes. “Because I know Zee. A lot better than you do.”
“You’d take the word of a total stranger over mine?”
“I wanted to reject what the scav said. But he said something that struck me. Something I couldn’t discount.”
Zed glared at him. “And what’s that?”
He scoffed, unable to produce the words until he weighed the insult on Zed’s face.
“Wanna go boing-boing on Daddy’s dick?” Ivar mocked.
The heat fizzled from her face like a hot iron in cold water. Ivar shot her a knowing glance and nodded. “See? That look tells me everything. I’ve known Zee for years. We’ve shared enough that I know all his cheeky little lines.”
“We didn’t have sex! Yes, he pretended I was his slave to protect me. We didn’t know what we were walking into. He said it was a commune, but when we arrived, the Zeronauts had already taken over. They had a dozen guns pointed at us. It scared us, Ivar. You need to trust me. If you have feelings for me, you should believe when I say I never touched Axel like that.”
“What about the night you bugged out and leapt into his arms?”
Zed lowered her voice as her heart shuddered. “He was my only friend. You and I had just met, and the stories about you... I wasn’t ready. I spent a year in the desert by myself. I’d never done drugs, never met anyone like you guys. He helped me.”
“I want to believe you, Lea.”
“Then believe me!” Her voice rang through the room. “No one ever believes me! Not you, not them, not my friends when I was taken advantage of.”
Ivar cocked his head. “What are you talking about?”
Tears flowed over Zed’s cheeks as ghosts of her past breathed vexing reminders in her ear. What she read in Axel’s journal unearthed the memory she hated most and forced her to relive it in tainted colour. Now Ivar’s incredulity brought back the sting of betrayal she wished to forget.
“The first person I ever had sex with used me as a joke! He pretended to love me, and after I gave myself to him, he told everyone disgusting lies. He conned me out of my virginity. Someone who vowed I could trust him; that would protect me and make sure I was happy. I was nothing but a conquest. Bragging rights. And the worst part is... While I was being lied to, while he took my innocence, you and Axel were overseas fucking strippers! You behaved the same way that pig did! Then I finally trusted again—after you and Axel promised to keep me safe—and both of you fucked me over! Why do men only believe each other? Does what I say hold such little meaning to you?”
Ivar’s face froze.
“You are the only other person I have ever let inside me, and you’re making me regret it just like he did,” Zed cried.
“Lea—”
“Why would I lie to you? Why would Axel lie to you? He loves you like a brother, and I’ve seen how much he values his family.”
The king took her in his arms, and she rested her damp forehead on his shoulder.
“How do you know about that stuff?”
“I read Axel’s journals from the army. Vee gave them to me. He thought they might help me stop missing him.”
“Listen, I don’t know what you read in those journals, but I promise you, I’m not that man anymore, Lea. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you to him. Everyone loves Zee. Any girl I liked always wanted him because he’s famous. Handsome. Funny. My jealousy got in the way.”
“You’re all those things too, Ivar. Everyone here loves you. They made you a king, for Christ’s sake!”
“Only because Zee didn’t want to lead. But I get it, and I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I should have trusted you. Both of you.”
Lea sniffled, blinking against the remnants of tears, and hugged Ivar close. “We wouldn’t lie to you, Ivar.”
He smoothed his fingers down her spine, nuzzling into her braided hair and the closeness he’d almost chased away.
A quiet moment passed before Zed spoke up. “We have to search for him.”
Ivar shook his head. “No. We’re not leaving. Nobody is. Not while those scavengers are prowling. It’s too dangerous.”
“Ivar—”
“I’m serious, Lea. Nobody leaves. Zee can take care of himself.”
“It’s more than finding Axel. Everyone is scared, Ivar. We need medical equipment, doctors, something. People are dying here, too. Not just out there.”
A stubborn line appeared between Ivar’s brows. “We can hold out for a while. Supplies will come to us. There will be more dwellers at our door. We can start a trade with people who already know the outside. It’s too dangerous to send anyone, and we need all the men we can get to protect the village.”
Zed wanted to grab Ivar by the shoulders and shake and scream in his face, but they were both still too raw from the revelations they’d shared. She had to make calculated moves, one of them recognizing when to hold back. Ivar was bullheaded, but she had chipped away a layer of his mistrust. If she could convince Ivar to value her word as much as Axel’s, there was a chance of progress. Zed knew sleeping with him wouldn’t throw open the gates, but she made a bit of headway, and that was enough to settle her stomach for now.
"Fine. You're right. We should stay here and wait," Zed conceded.
The couple spent the rest of the morning tangled in the sheets. Zed did not suggest an excursion beyond the walls again, but maintained her resolve when Ivar let his feelings gush forth. He claimed to love her, but Zed suspected the king viewed his world through a romantic veil. Ivar couldn’t be in love. He didn’t know her well enough. But she let him revel in his fantasy.
She wondered if she was capable of love. With her trust in others injured and the state of the world in ruins, love seemed a burdensome child, hanging onto the ankles of a society struggling to recover. Fine to dabble in, like drink and drugs, but not a motto for advancement.
News of Axel’s bounty shocked her to the core. While Ivar pulsated between her legs, whispering words of praise and adoration against her neck, Zed stared at a distant spot on the wall, numb, hoping beyond hope her friend was still alive.
After breakfast, Ivar relinquished his grip on her, and she made her way to the lab to find Vee.
Zed entered the facility and found the gurneys empty. Confused, she searched the rest of the lab, turning up nothing, then made her way to Vee’s apartment. She rapped on the door, but nobody answered. She knocked harder, waited, then sighed and turned down the hall. The locked door to the incubation room opened, and Vee stepped out, looking surprised and relieved to see her.
“Lea! Finally. I was worrying.”
Zed noticed the whites of his eyes veined with red, the ditches beneath them dark and heavy. Light blond stubble lined his jaw and upper lip. It looked like he hadn’t slept since their last conversation.
“What’s wrong?” She asked.
He shook his head, unsure of where to begin listing off the things that had gone wrong through the night.
“It’s a long, long story. And I’m starving. Do you have time to sit down?” He asked.
“Yes, of course,” Zed replied, worry rushing her tone.
Vee led the way to his apartment and held the door open for her. She took a seat on the sofa and waited for the scientist to return with a plate of dry-fried zucchini cakes. The scent wafted toward her, making her stomach growl.
“So, our patient died of his kidney failure last night. He never woke up,” Vee said before taking a bite of a cake. “I wish we had hot sauce in this place. Or salt.”
“What? Are you serious?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “We expected it. He knew it; we saw it coming. There was nothing we could do.”
Zed stared at Vee, awe-struck by his nonchalance. “What about Serena?”
“That I’m not sure. I think Sheraya took her back to the Hives to be alone.”
“What did you do with the body?” Zed asked.
“I didn’t do a thing. I was too busy dealing with the incubators we lost,” Vee supplied. “Lora had the guards remove him. She spent all night sterilizing the lab while I cleaned up after the lost specimens.”
She gasped. "What does this mean?"
"The experiments are gone—failed."
The sleep-deprived man finished a portion of his meal and offered the rest to Zed, who held her hand up in refusal.
“My work is truly lost, and the guards had to bury six children and one adult last night.”
“I don’t understand,” Zed shook her head. “How did the incubators fail?”
“Well, it’s not that they failed per se, rather we failed them. We don’t have the emulsions left to simulate amniotic fluid. Like I’ve been saying for weeks: our supplies are bone-dry. The people who built this place did not supply it with enough to bring a fetus to term, or they banked on traditional implantation, and I, for one, have no idea how to accomplish that. I studied advanced chemistry, not how to create humans from scratch. As much as I’d like to play God, I’m just a fucking scientist making do with what I have—which is nothing.”
Tragedy after tragedy, woe after woe, Zed buckled and fell against Vee, shaking and scrabbling for comfort. He set his half-empty plate aside to hold her close. The misfortune already had its chance to wrack his body, hence the dark blue crescents masking his eyes. By then, Vee was almost catatonic. The dread of telling Zed the news was part of the reason he hadn’t slept.
“I tested them though... The specimens. The mutation carries.”
Zed rolled her face on his shoulder, sopping the tears from her eyes as she pulled back with a sniffle.
“Really?”
“Yes. So, that’s some good news, right?” Vee said, lightening his expression for her comfort.
She nodded weakly. “What about the mixed-bloods?”
“One carried and one did not. Mine carried too,” he said with a lopsided smile.
Despite a positive report, Zed still couldn’t find it in herself to smile back.
“Vee, I’m so sorry about all of this. I wish there were something I could do, but I’m afraid my efforts last night yielded no results. Ivar is dead set on keeping the gates closed. And... He told me something else. Something terrible,” Zed said, picking at a cuticle as she avoided her friend’s stare.
“What now?”
“He said there’s a huge bounty out on Axel. He knew about it this whole time, and he just let him walk right into a trap.”
Vee leaned back, a flat expression on his face. He swallowed and closed his eyes, tilting his head back to rest on the sofa.
“Of course there’s a bounty on him,” he sighed.
Zed continued picking at a hangnail. There was nothing of comfort she could offer, so she shifted closer to Vee and laid her head against his shoulder. Vee brought his arm around her and rested his head on hers. They stayed that way for a while, unsure of how to progress. In all the bleakness of recent times, Zed was thankful to have someone who understood the gravity of their worsening situation. Vee was the only person buoying her above the most profound depression she’d felt since losing herself in the desert.
Despite the barbed strikes against them, Zed couldn’t hold back another sombre dirge. Every shred of hope slipped from her grasp. She wanted her mother and father—someone to hear and share her sorrows and offer her guidance.
“He’s going to die out there, isn’t he?” Zed asked.
Vee squeezed her shoulder. “I don’t know, Lea. That might not be comforting, but it’s the truth. Who knows what will happen now?”
“And sleeping with Ivar got me nowhere. I feel so foolish,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I was stupid to think I could change anything.”
Though she couldn’t see it, Vee frowned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have allowed that to happen. You shouldn’t have had to resort to doing something you were uncomfortable with.”
“It was fine... Ivar was more than courteous. But I don’t think I love him. Maybe before all this, I could have, but now... He won’t open his eyes. He sees what he wants to see,” she said.
“Power can do that to men. They're blind to their surroundings. But I don’t want you thinking for that any of this is your fault or that you should have done more. You’ve done what you can. We all have. There’s nothing left to do but wait. Wait for life... Or death. It’s all the same.
“Please, I need you to at least pretend to be hopeful. I’m on the verge of a breakdown. You can’t go down with me.”
As the pair sat propped against each other, sighing and fretting in silence, the door swung open quietly, and a pair of bespectacled eyes peered into the apartment.
The thrum of Vee’s heartbeat lulled Zed’s weariness, and she placed her hand on the scientist’s chest. Locked in their embrace, Vee kissed the top of her head and rubbed her shoulder.
“If there’s one thing that’s brightened my horizons these last couple of months, it’s you, Lea. I’m glad Axel brought you here. It might have been the one moral decision he’s ever made,” Vee told her.
She lifted her head and nuzzled into his shoulder, smelling the remnants of cleaning solution clinging to the fabric of his shirt. “You’re so sweet, Valter. Even though I feel positively useless—”
“You are positively useless!” A voice cried out.
They snapped glances at the door, startled, and saw Lora standing there with her fists tight at her sides, shoulders hunched to her ears.
“Are you cheating on me with this brainless twit?” Lora continued.
Vee unhanded Zed and stood up, a stony expression wiping the calmness from his face. “What the hell are you doing in here, Lora?”
“I came to tell you I finished organizing all your files, but it looks like you’re too busy with the village bicycle to care!”
“First thing’s first, Lora, you and I are not together. And even if we were, Zed’s my friend, and I don’t appreciate you insulting her! This is my goddamn apartment. You can’t walk in here whenever you please!”
“Why? Because I’ll catch you sleeping with her?”
A fiery ball burst in Zed’s gut, igniting the anger that had been accumulating little by little until it shot up her throat. “What the hell is your problem, Lora? Ever since I got here, you’ve done nothing but spurn me! What did I ever do to you?”
“Are you stupid? Everyone here knows you’ve been sleeping with any man you can get your hands on. You’ve earned nothing, yet everyone treats you like you’re some kind of deity. You promised to help in the lab, but all you did was cause a rift and chase away the only person bringing in supplies. Now we’re screwed, and it’s all your fault!”
“Lora, stop!” Vee demanded.
“No! Someone has to say it! I’m tired of everyone giving her credit when I’ve done the grunt work and get zero thanks. You’re probably not even a real scientist!”
“Enough!”
Lora turned to Vee, malice puckering her lips. “I knew it’d only be a matter of time before she infected you, too. All you men are the same. An easy lay comes by, and you forget everything.”
“You’ve got a lot of shit to say for a lab assistant,” Zed hit back.
The ball of heat in her stomach threw off flares, awakening a fit of familiar anger that stiffened her muscles and set her jaw. When she stepped forward, Lora took a step back, and a heady rush of adrenaline caused her heart to pound and lips to curl into a sly smile. It was the same aggression she’d felt when the poachers attacked her in the desert, and while killing off Zeronauts after they’d forced her to strip at gunpoint. The sensation lent her fervency. She didn’t understand why the hostility fuelled her, but she embraced the burn, let it guide her actions.
“I’ve killed men three times your size. I suggest—if you like your bones intact—you shut your mouth and go back to doing what you do best: staying quiet and minding your own fucking business.”
Both Vee and Lora drew back from the heat of Zed’s threat. Scowling, Lora backed into the hallway, then turned and started away. When her footsteps faded down the hall, Vee went to Zed and placed his hand on her shoulder. She jumped from the sudden contact, then relaxed.
“Jesus, Zed,” he scoffed. “I know she deserved it but that was harsh.”
She stared up at him, eyes wide with remorse. “I’m not sure where that came from. I’m so tired of the accusations. Everyone thinks they know me, but they don’t!”
“It’s okay,” Vee said. “I know you. And you know you. Who cares what anyone else says? Lora’s been jealous of you since the second you walked through the lab doors. She sees every other female as a threat. Her ego is fragile.”
“Seems everyone's ego is paper-thin,” Zed muttered.
“Don’t worry about her, Zed. It’s done.”
Zed looked out into the empty hallway. Something told her the tension was only just taking form. There was a change in the air, a bitterness that permeated the domes, and she shivered, wondering what new troubles might fashion themselves in the coming days.
~*~
“Son... You alive, sonny?”
A man looked down at four sunburnt limbs—two of which crudely bandaged—jutting out from beneath a half-open duffle bag. Expecting to find a corpse under the heavy canvas, he kicked it aside and found the person alive, although for how long that life had left was a cause for concern. Though the person remained unresponsive, his blacked-out eyes roamed the sky, wide as sand dollars.
His camel sputtered as if to debate their investigative stop. He turned toward the animal, shrugged, then looked back at the gangly form upon which they stumbled.
The man aired out the flaps of his stained coat, making himself presentable as best he could.
“Can you hear me, son?”
Green-rimmed pupils dithered as a faint noise squeaked from his throat. The man in the long, thin coat retrieved a skin of water from the pack on his camel, then squatted next to the barely conscious person and poured a small measure of water between his dry, cracked lips. He swallowed, and the man in the coat smiled.
“Atta boy.”
He spied the teardrop scar on the man’s forearm, squinting at the mark to analyze its edges. It was a fake. Not unusual in these parts, but interesting to come across.
“Up for some more water?”
Another small sound drew his ear closer—something between a whimper and a syllable.
“Ma... Ma.”
“Ma? Speak up, son.”
“Muh.”
The man in the sand-stained coat tapped his chin. “Not to worry, sonny. The good doctor is in! Say, how about we take a look at that hand there? See what we’re working with?”
“M-ma.”
“Plenty of time to look for your mama after we patch you up.”
The camel snorted and received a mildly threatening look from its owner.
“Enough out of you, Rudie. I’m the one with the oats, and I say we give this fellow a hand. You have nowhere to be anyhow, so cool it, you oversized donkey. Now, let’s get you up. Ol’ Rudie here will be your chariot, good sir. Assuming you don’t intend to use that rather vicious-looking gun on us when you come-to. But, judging by your state, I don’t think you’ll be doing much of anything for a while. You’re lucky we found you, son. Mighty lucky.”
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