Swan Song (Book Three of the Icarus Trilogy) (5 page)

“Morning....” Elizabeth said softly, trying to prompt some reaction.  Mrs. Kane briefly looked up from the page and gave a small, forced smile to her daughter.  All the women in the family could replicate that smile perfectly.  It was just one of the similarities they shared; each one of the girls had raven black hair and pleasant features, though Deborah Kane kept her hair back in a tight bun and gray was starting to set in.  The only difference between the Kane women was in their eyes.  While Elizabeth had inherited the green of her mother’s eyes, Charlotte had taken on Mr. Kane’s dark brown.  Charles Kane used to joke around that he was only certain that Charlotte was his because of those eyes; that Elizabeth could have come from the mailman for all he knew.

Charles Kane used to joke around all the time, but these days when Elizabeth looked at her father there was no levity to be found.  He had lost himself after the destruction of Eris.  His once-vibrant eyes seemed to sink into his face, the crows’ feet and the lines of his brow making him look ten years older.  The emerging gut was not helping, either.  His hairline was receding and his bald spot was rushing to meet it, but it had never made him look old until these last two months.  Unlike the rest of the members of his family, his hair was brown and he had darker skin, but he still didn’t seem entirely out of place.  He had always found a way to fit in.

The young woman looked over at her father and smiled at him briefly, but he didn’t look up from his hands.  Elizabeth sighed and lifted another spoonful of the always-stale cereal, wondering if there was anything she could do for him.  She had always considered that Charlotte was his favorite, she had his eyes and name, but Elizabeth was still his daughter.  That was supposed to mean something.

“Liz....” Mr. Kane said towards the table, prompting the young woman to look back at her father.  He was still looking at his hands, but there was a focus in his eyes.  “Why do you eat that stuff?”  Elizabeth was startled by the question, but soon enough she looked down at the cereal and wondered the same question.

“It’s healthy,” Liz said, giving the obvious answer that was obviously not the reason.  She looked to her right to find her father furrowing his brow and staring right back at her.  His eyes were glassy and he breathed out deliberately.

“You’re worried about health
now
?  Who cares about health in times like these?”  He asked, unable to comprehend his daughter’s answer.  The questioning broke his wife out of her stupor and she looked up from the same tired sentence of her book.

“Charlie....”

“No, Deb, I wanna know why she’s wasting her time eating that crap!” Mr. Kane shouted, but soon brought his voice back down.  “She doesn’t exactly need to watch her figure, she’s thinner than she’s ever been, and she’s wasting her time.  We don’t have that much of it, sweetie,” Charles said as he looked back to his daughter.  “Why not eat some of that sugary crap that everybody else eats?  Or maybe a donut of two?”  Elizabeth looked at her father and was shocked; he hadn’t talked this much in weeks.

“We.... we don’t have any donuts....” Liz said, trying to find an acceptable answer.  Her father looked at her before pursing his lips and then bringing up his hands to massage his forehead.

“That’s not the point, honey,” Charles said before sighing again.  “Things aren’t normal anymore; you don’t have to worry about shit like health food.  You can live a little, ok?”

“Charlie, we have to rely on our habits sometimes,” Mrs. Kane said, trying to ease her husband’s mind.  “This will all blow over soon, tax season will come again and Liz and I will get back to campus,” she started, but Mr. Kane slammed the table with his hands and half-stood before leaning on the table.

“It won’t just
blow over
, Deb!  This shit had been coming down on us for a long time now and we just stood by and ignored it all!  We ignored how people were being treated and how everything was falling down around us and then we found out firsthand what fucking happens!” Mr. Kane shouted, his face red and the veins on his neck sticking out.  “We found out that you can’t just ignore a problem and we found out.... we found out what happens when you do,” he said, his voice trailing off at the end and his anger turning to sorrow.  He couldn’t breathe life into the words he wanted to say; he couldn’t rip off the bandage and expose the wound.  Charles stood up and put his hands into the pockets of his slacks before looking down at the table; he couldn’t bring himself to look his wife or daughter in the eye.

“I’m.... sorry.  I’m sorry, honey, Deb.  I....I’m gonna take a walk, ok?  Might pick up some donuts or something,” Charles said, his voice dropping by the end of the statement.  He backed up a few steps before turning towards the front door.  For those few moments there was no noise except for Mr. Kane putting on his shoes and grabbing his jacket; neither woman wanted to say a word.  Liz could only stare at the rabbit food in her bowl as she heard the front door open and then close, sealing her in with her mother.

The young woman picked up the bowl and walked over to the sink, then poured the contents down the food disposal.  She turned on the water and pointed the faucet down the drain before turning on the machine, hearing the grains and rice being churned into even smaller bits.  Elizabeth let the machine stay on longer than necessary, some unknown feeling making her feel like this was important, but eventually she flicked down the switch and started to walk towards the stairs.

“Liz,” Mrs. Kane said behind her, but Elizabeth wasn’t really in the mood for talking.

“I wasn’t hungry anyway,” she said as neared the stairs. 

She had never eaten the cereal because she was hungry.

-

Jessica Abrams was going stir-crazy.  The former gladiator had run out of things to do at her apartment ten minutes after moving in.  The woman had been placed into one of the topside safe-houses pretty soon after settling into Babylon and she completely resented it.

She still had plenty of worth for the revolution; it didn’t matter that she was pregnant.

It had come as a surprise to the warrior woman.  It was true that she and Norris had never used protection, but they had never needed it.  The woman had never lived long enough for pregnancy to become a reasonable issue to worry about; none of her clones would have ever made it to the first trimester.  It was a blow to her conscience when she realized that she may have been in a similar situation before and not even realized it; dooming a love child to be killed along with its mother.

What had been even more surprising was the man that had saved the two of them.  Jessica Abrams had been pinned down with the rest of the Crows in their barracks and she had been willing to die along with them in a last stand, but Gregory Feldman had practically forced her into safety.  He had issued cryptic words to her, saying that he wouldn’t allow her to endanger two lives, but Jessica had figured that he was talking out of his ass.

Instead he had saved her and her unborn....whatever.

Jessica looked down at her stomach and knew that whatever was inside her was growing far too fast.  It was anyone’s guess as to why, but the resistance doctors assumed it had something to do with accelerated growth hormone left over from the cloning of her numerous bodies.  Jessica knew that same acceleration was the only reason that Feldman had been able to tell.  The man was a giant and looked like a brute, but he was possibly the smartest man Jessica had ever known.

Abrams looked up from her stomach and stared at the blank, beige wall opposite her.  The apartment had sparse furniture and little in the way of entertainment.  She was sitting on an old, dingy couch and there were a few magazines scattered on the coffee table in front of her.  Norris had bought them for her as a joke; he knew that she hated celebrities and how they were able to get away with their reckless behavior.  In her boredom, Abrams had already read all of them and wished that she had a wireless computer terminal.  At least that way she would be able to find something on the internet.

At least that way she would be able to talk to her sister.

Jessica had made it one of her highest priorities to at least
contact
Rebecca, but the most she was able to do was leave a message for the young girl; she couldn’t even expect a return message.  Atlas didn’t want anything to be traced back to Abrams or the resistance.  Jessica had almost decked the man right there and then, but Jenkins had stepped between them and shook his head.  Even though the kid would always be a rookie in her eyes, she knew that Ryan was just trying to make things better for her.  It didn’t help that he would be easily able to handle her even if she had gotten out of control.

She sighed as she looked down at her ruined right arm.  She was still able to curl the fingers, but she couldn’t support weight anymore.  A stray piece of shrapnel had messed up her elbow halfway through that last bloody battle.  Even if she hadn’t been pregnant, there was no way that Jenkins or Carver or Atlas would ever let her back into any operations.  She was a broken soldier.

Jessica picked herself up and walked over to the window.  Babylon stretched out before her, but only for about ten meters.  Her window had a great view of the pale yellow building across the street.  Still, it let in the fresh, only slightly-polluted air of Earth.  It was something that she had thought she had lost forever.

At least she was back on the same planet.  If all things went well she’d end up back in St. Louis eventually.  And if they didn’t...  She preferred not to think about it.  Not when she couldn’t do anything anymore. 

The fight was out of her hands.

-

Babylon had been in much better shape a few weeks ago.  Darren looked out of the tinted window of his personal car and could see broken store-front windows and revolution graffiti everywhere, but the people were more telling.  Many of the people walking through the streets of the metropolis were nursing injuries sustained during riots and altercations, but even those who weren’t involved looked weary and used-up.  The amount of homeless people also seemed to have increased, which made for quite the eye-sore.

Darren Christiansen retreated from the window and sunk into the leather seats of the company car.  He hadn’t driven himself in quite some time, the results of a corporate dynasty, and he certainly didn’t wish for that privilege now.  It would have been quite the nuisance back before this insurgency, but now it was frustrating.  Traffic was constant and there was always a new street closed due to violence and police action.  The common man wasn’t content to stay subdued any longer.  Not after Eris.

The young executive still didn’t understand why Jasper had done such a thing.  It was beyond reckless.  Darren could see the twisted logic, the men and women who were about to leave the planet were trained killers, but at most there was just under a million of them.  In a pure altercation they would be completely outmanned by the EOSF, but Jasper had decided to make an example of them.

In the process he had killed millions of family members and innocent civilians, employees of their very same company.  The only thing that Jasper Montgomery had going for him was complete control over the news, but the EFI had done their work.  They had told the true story, they had told anyone who would listen about the horror of what the Trade Union had not only sanctioned, but committed under Montgomery’s guidance.

There were a great deal of people who supported Montgomery’s actions, unaware or unwilling to listen to the propaganda and truth that the EFI was trying to share.  It was all about perception, it seemed, and these people would never believe the insurgents.  Darren would never willingly associate with those people; he couldn’t stand the idiocy of the masses.

Fortunately for Darren’s opinion of people, but unfortunate for his company, most people didn’t believe Jasper’s lies.  They knew the Fall of Eris for what it really was; Montgomery was slipping back to his brutal ways.  That didn’t mean that the populace of Earth and its seven remaining daughters were lining up to give their support to the Earth Freedom Initiative.  Most of the population had realized that the EOSF, and by proxy the Trade Union and Jasper Montgomery, still held humanity in an iron grip.

That was why it surprised Darren that this revolution was still trying to take hold.  He didn’t realize why Atlas and Jenkins and all their recruits were still fighting on; he didn’t know why they didn’t just give up.  Such a devotion to justice and equality was completely foreign to the young executive.

Darren looked out the window again to see two men fighting by a hotdog cart.  It had been decades since the businessman had deigned to eat a hotdog, he thought the things disgusting, and the fight drew his attention immediately.  He watched as the smaller man punched the vendor and continued to beat him on the ground.  After a minute of brutality the smaller man stood up and grabbed at the food on the cart.  Darren was unable to comprehend how a disgusting piece of meat would be worth beating another man like that.  His driver pulled away just as the vendor picked himself up, dragged the man down into the street and started kicking at him.