Emergence (Eden's Root Trilogy) (2 page)

Lawson
had always justified himself and his followers’ actions because they were non-violent. Only that had ended now too. Not that any of them should’ve been shocked. When Louis discovered that Lawson was actually a Diaspora participant who’d been cut from the colony, it became obvious that revenge was his real motive.

Unable to get his way through other means, h
e’d sent vicious thugs to attack the Seeders and had almost succeeded in kidnapping Sara. No, Fi thought, lifting her hair off the back of her sweaty neck, even if the Seeders made it back to Eden, the Truthers weren’t going to go away. They couldn’t stay hidden underground forever. Somehow, some way, Eden was going to have to defend itself.
Whatever that means
.

S
he shifted, maneuvering around her enormous belly. Frustrated by her busy mind, she settled, laying her head in Asher’s lap.

He was fiddling with their portable HAM radio
. “You ok?” he asked. Loose hair peeked from his fleece hat and hung into his blue eyes.

She smiled up at him
. “Yeah. Just starting to feel a little bit like a planet, you know?”

He leaned down to kiss her gently and she twitched away from the tickle of his hair on her neck
. He pulled away and shook his head. “You’re too tiny to be a planet, love. A moon, maybe?”

She stuck her tongue out at him and then snuggled into his leg
. She might as well have a pillow. Even a
sarcastic
pillow.

Asher turned his focus back to the radio
. The speaker crackled and fizzed as he spun the dials. “Hey, Sean? I think there’s something wrong with this thing. I can’t seem to pick up Eden’s signal.”

“What?”
Fi sat up.

Sean turned the dial
, going through the progressions like they always did, checking the signals. His eyes widened with each new signal that rang through loud and clear.

“What is it
, Sean?” Sara said.

“They’re the only ones
, Sar. I can get all the others, even the Truthers. But no Eden.”

“
But what does that mean?” Sara frowned, her voice rising. “What does it mean that we can’t hear Eden?”

T
here was a rustling in the darkness. The four froze until the animal that had been frightened by Sara’s cry skittered away and left them in silence.

Sean
stared at the radio. “I don’t know. But I don’t see how it could be good.”

“But how could anything have happened?” Fi protested
, her heart beginning to pound. “They have Gary and the security team. They’re so hidden! I mean we barely found Eden and we had direct coordinates. There must be something wrong with the radio room. Maybe with the expansion they had to be offline for a while.”

“I dunno
, Fi,” Asher said. “They would’ve told us if they were going radio silent on us. They wouldn’t leave us out here without the lifeline.” He paused, his face pensive. “Maybe we should try Jean and Luc. If Eden’s gone silent, the Nets will be as worried as we are.”

Sean turned to Jean and Luc’s signal
. The French Canadian father-son team was the first “Net,” or station, that the Seeders had set up with the radio technology and heirloom seeds. If anyone could answer their questions, it was Jean and Luc.

“Hello
, Luc, it’s the Seeders. Are you there?” Sean’s voice wobbled.

Fi
sucked in, desperate to slow her galloping heart. She needed to keep it together. There had to be an explanation.

“
’Allo? Sean?”

“Yes,
it’s me. Is everything ok? We’re trying to reach Eden and we can’t seem to get their signal.”

“Ach, Sean
.”

Fi put her head in her hands
.
No, no, no, no…

“
We can’t get Eden either. We’ve been trying for a week, and we haven’t heard a thing. Not since the last broadcast of the Lists. We’re all very worried. Where are you?”

“We’re still about a week out.” Sean’s voice cracked. “Jesus, what do you think happened?” He tugged his hand through his dark hair and Sara squeezed his leg.

“I don’t know
, but you better get home fast. The Nets are all talking about it, but we don’t want to broadcast to the Truthers too much, so we’re mostly using off-station signals. We’ll let you know if we hear anything. Please hurry!”
There was a pause.
“None of us knew what to do, Sean. They just…vanished.”

T
he radio clicked off.

“No,” Fi said, her jaw setting
. “It’s not possible! There has to be a mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”
Sean’s voice was flat. “It’s a colony of three hundred people. They can’t just vanish, Fi.”

“Exactly!
That’s my point. There has to be an explanation. There has to be!” Her mind wound into circles, spinning tighter and tighter until it circled only one thought. Just one.
Kiara
.

She
pulled her arms around her knees and squeezed, trying to head off the shakes beginning in her core. Her little sister’s safety had been her only mission for years. Getting Kiara to Eden had nearly cost her everything she had, including her life. She’d left her with Sean’s family in Eden assuming she’d be safe, that there was no safer place remaining in the world. But now…

Asher
settled behind her and folded her into his arms, but Fi felt nothing. No comfort, no warmth. She was numb. He tried to soothe her, but she could barely hear him. It was like he was talking to her from above water while she drowned.
What had happened to them all? What had happened to Kiara?
Her stomach turned and she choked back a sob.

“I know
, Fi,” Asher murmured. “I’m terrified too. But we can’t panic yet. We have to get back.”

Fi
nodded, her body forcing the motion when her mind could not. He was right. They had to stay focused. The four worked to maintain their composure, though Fi knew that they were just denying the facts. Radio silence from Eden was not just a bad sign; it was devastating. There was no explanation that could calm Fi’s fears. Until she had Kiara back in her arms, she would be trapped inside that circle in her mind. It would bind and taunt her without respite.

A flutter in her core snapped her
reverie and her hand flew to her belly.
No!
How could this happen now, when they needed speed more than ever? For the first time since she’d realized that she was pregnant, she felt a tiny seed of regret. Instant guilt followed the thought and she shook her head. It wasn’t the baby’s fault they were in this mess. It was hers. She’d just go as hard as she could. She was still the Leader after all.

“Guys,
” she said. “ I know we have to go fast, so let’s not stop anymore. I can still walk when I can’t run. We don’t need to take long breaks each day. We have to go faster than we are now.” Asher started to protest, but Fi put her hand to his mouth. “I promise, I’ll tell you if I need rest.”

Asher’s lips pressed into a thin line
, but she ignored it. He knew her too well. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she would tell them if she were tired. She was going to run until she couldn’t anymore and then she was going to walk until she got to Eden, or dropped, whichever came first. For the first time in a long time, Fi felt her old friend Death tapping on her shoulder. It seemed like He would never stop coming for the ones she loved.

They
settled in for a brief rest, trying to suppress their instinct to panic. At Asher’s urging, Fi joined him in their sleeping bag. Though she felt warm and safe in his arms, she couldn’t help her mind from wondering if Kiara was warm and safe. As Asher’s arm grew heavy across her waist, she settled in for a long night of worry. She wished she still had a working strategy like her “Pretty Dresses” of old.

When her little brother Luke had died of brain cancer, she was only six
. She learned to distract herself from fear by thinking about pretty dresses. But too much had happened since that time. Now when she lay awake in fear, there was no breaking its grip. The darkness held her down and in the early hours of the morning the “what if’s” whirled into her mind.

What if the T
ruthers had found Eden? What if Kiara was hurt or killed? What if all of her Family was lost? What if… What if… What if… It was maddening. By morning she was exhausted, but her adrenaline pushed her forward. At first light she jumped up, ready to get going.

They broke camp without eating and pushed forward
. There was no discussion about whether to walk or jog. Fi set the pace as best she could. Though her jog was more of a rolling trudge, it was faster than her walk. It was grueling, but she forced the fatigue from her mind. If her knees hurt, or her side ached, or her legs felt oxygen-deprived, she just thought of Kiara and kept going. Only when the entire group insisted that she rest would she acquiesce.
Though it was no use
, she thought. Each new sunrise without contact with Eden stung like nettles working their way deeper into her flesh. They had to get back.

T
hey’d planned to take a week to get from their camp back to Eden, but their push cut the time in half. Fall was in full explosion, with clear blue skies sailing over oceans of color. The air teemed with the smells of last growth and legions of yammering geese soared overhead, but none of it mattered to Fi. Nothing was beautiful. Nothing was comforting.
It was all just a precursor to death.

#############################################

It was mid-afternoon when they reached the hidden entryway to the Eden garage. The door hung wide and the Jeeps were gone, but that wasn’t what stopped them in their tracks. The doorway was covered with hundreds of red handprints with the capital “T” in the center.
Truthers.

Fi
started to run and then tripped, falling forward onto her knees. Asher and Sean rushed to help her. A scream roared to life in her chest, clawing to get out, and she bit down on her fist. They had to be silent.

Asher drew his sword and took the
lead as they entered the colony. They passed through the clean room into impenetrable darkness. They tread carefully, trailing fingers along the moist walls of the tunnels and listening at the intersections for any signs of life. Each time they stopped, Fi begged for a murmur, a cough, anything…but the air was still. Distant dripping broke the silence, a torturous metronome.

Where was everyone?
What happened here?
The faces of her Family floated through her mind like spirits haunting the place: Sean’s sisters and parents, the Skillmans. They were her and Kiara’s surrogate family now that her parents were gone. And the Coopers: Doc Ron and his wife Aliyah, and their son Aldy. Her eyes filled with tears as they moved toward the residences.

…
Her mentor and her father’s old colleague, Louis and his wife, Lizzie. What about them?
Oh, God
. And the kids…José and Mayra. And Sarge and Lydia and Charlie and Larry and Gary…

She couldn’t stop it
. Everyone that she loved was missing, their voices no longer echoing in the halls. When they reached the residential pods, Sean flipped on a flashlight. The first few they passed were empty and Fi’s panic intensified.
They can’t all be gone…
She raced for the Skillman pod, where Kiara had been staying. As she got within a few feet, her tears spilled over. The door was yanked off its track and the place was ransacked. The mirror above the couch was smashed, and a dripping red scrawl slicked the shatters, “
Father’s Will Be Done
.”

“Sean
.” Fi slumped against the doorjamb on quaking legs. She met her best friend’s eyes and saw her horror reflected. She whirled and stormed away, screaming. “KIARA!”

Sean was right on her heels
. “Rachel?” he shouted. “Mom? Dad? Where are you guys?”

“Lily?” Sara
was shouting now as well. “Mama?”

“Fi!”
Asher rushed after them, reaching for her. “Fi, slow down!”

Fi
couldn’t think. She couldn’t stop. “KIARA! Answer me, please!”

She streaked past
the labs, the shattered glassware crunching beneath her feet. When she reached the main field pod, she came to a dead stop. The mirror array that brought daylight from the surface filled the enormous cavern with a soft glow, despite the lack of electricity. The fields were destroyed — the crops uprooted and the soil beds ripped apart. And in the middle, the symbol of Eden, the apple tree known as “Eve” lay hewn in two pieces, her remaining fruit still glistening on the branch.

“Oh
, God.” Fi sank to the floor. “They’re gone, they’re all gone.” She wrapped her arms around herself as desolation flowed through her like a river. “Kiara’s gone. They took her, they killed her...”

A
knifing pain shot through her back and seized her lower body. She cried out and doubled over, buckled by its intensity. It faded for a moment and she breathed hard, her head swimming. Then a second pain hit her with an iron grip that was harder than the first. “Ah, God!”