Jenny and Grey helped Albert and Héctor construct a makeshift stretcher out of metal bars and a strong hessian material used to cover some of the produce. Together they strapped the injured German to the stretcher using sections of rope.
Jenny peeled back the bloodstained fabric from Hans’ side that had a chunk of skin and bone missing. If the wound didn’t kill him, the infection would. Beads of sweat covered his face that indicated the man was running a fever.
Jenny grabbed two apples from one of the boxes and dropped them into Albert’s satchel. She’d replace them later with stock from her stall.
‘You told them you were going to the market. If you turn up empty-handed at the entrance to Waverley, the guards will be suspicious.’ She wrote him out a receipt.
‘And what should I tell them about the injured man on the stretcher?’ said Albert.
‘Tell them he tried to stop a fight between Marcus and another man. They’ll laugh and call him an idiot and you’ll put on your best look of disgust at their lack of empathy as they wave you through.’
Albert bent down to pick up the metal bars at one end of the stretcher. Héctor did the same with the other end.
‘Don’t forget to bring Isobel to me,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s essential that we meet.’
‘How could I forget? You’ve asked me ten times already.’
She smiled. Stephen and Bill Taggart had sent the Indigene here; Jenny would not let her slip through the cracks.
Albert and Héctor carried the stretcher out of the storage unit. Jenny’s smile vanished when she thought about Albert, similar in age to her but with a different start in life. She’d been a pilot for twenty years before she had given it up to help the underground movement after the World Government had abandoned Earth. Her pilot training had kept her lean and in shape; something she kept up, even now. Albert was one of the hard grafters in life; one of the forgotten people who kept things going while the skilled workers flew spacecraft, or worked as lab technicians. World Government employees had once been granted immunity from the alteration programme. That arrangement had not lasted.
Jenny’s breath caught in her throat when Albert stumbled and almost dropped the stretcher. He hadn’t even made it to the front of the warehouse. She could barely watch the two men, already battered and beaten down by the world, struggle to carry an injured man back to safety.
Grey shifted closer to her. ‘I think we should help them, at least for the first mile.’
‘We can’t let the vendors see us getting involved. You know the rules. We stay under the radar and keep an eye on Marcus.’
She loved Grey’s caring attitude; her own had been hardened over time. Her daughter, Eleanor, used to say she was too soft. Over time, Jenny had learned that life didn’t care if you were soft or hard; it challenged you regardless. Life was about how you dealt with the challenges that threatened your survival.
‘Do you think Isobel is the one we’re after?’ said Grey.
‘Stephen said that she was. Serena went to great lengths to break her spirit. She spoke highly of her ability to resist their methods.’
Bill Taggart had sent a communication stone to Earth with one of the devolved humans when the first of the ships had arrived back on Earth. The stone couldn’t maintain a live connection, but it could record and play messages. It connected directly to the Nexus, and Jenny had been using it to communicate offline with Stephen.
Grey nodded. ‘It’s still weird to hear you call her that. Serena will always be Susan Bouchard.’
Greyson used to be a lab technician, working out of New York while Serena—or Susan Bouchard in her human form—had worked in Toronto. Susan had been part of a team studying the effects of genetic manipulation on people with damaged DNA. They falsely promised results to those whose code could not be fixed by the genetic manipulation clinics. Grey had told Jenny he and Susan had argued many times about the ethics of their studies.
His genetic traits hadn’t matched the transfer criteria that took Susan Bouchard and her lab partner, Joel Taylor. It was the mass exodus of blonde-hair-blue-eyed people that had given Greyson the kick he needed to start the underground movement.
Even after her alteration, Serena had remembered Greyson Stafford. When the last World Government ship had left, Stephen had asked Jenny to find him. She tracked him down to an old curiosity shop in New York where she’d explained who she was and that Serena, even in her current form, remembered the man who had questioned her ethics and made her want to quit her job every day.
Jenny and Greyson’s similar goal to improve life on Earth had drawn them to work together and a deeper bond developed. Jenny’s connection with the Indigenes—in particular, Stephen—had helped Greyson to understand the real level of control the World Government had over its people.
She tidied up the storage room, putting everything back exactly the way it had been, minus two metal poles and the cloth for the stretcher. She would have to make a record of the missing apples she’d given to Albert. Marcus’s associate, Carl, didn’t miss a thing. She planned to tell him a couple of boys from out of town stole them.
Traces of blood on the floor remained from Hans’ blast wound. Grey had done a good job of cleaning most of it away. Jenny stood back and checked the area. Unless Marcus ran DNA scanners over the floor of the storage building, he would not find anything.
Cleaning up the storage room was the easy part. It would be harder to hide from the vendors what had gone on that day. She and Grey had just helped three men from Waverley after a fight with Marcus. They would whisper and make assumptions over what had happened. But the vendors’ fear of Marcus, who punished people for telling tales, worked in their favour. Jenny hoped they still had enough left to keep their mouths shut.
She often wondered if the vendors knew the real reason she and Grey worked at the market. If they did, how much did they care? People had lost hope that anything could change on Earth. First they’d lived under an oppressive World Government only to be ruled by another one. The only difference between the regimes was that the criminal factions didn’t hide the fact they were murdering bastards.
It was already midday. Greyson grabbed a handful of apples and Jenny picked up several aubergines. The cool vegetables felt good against her clammy skin. They carried the produce back to their stall to keep up the show for any unexpected associates, passing by or visiting. But the truth was the associates were lackeys who didn’t hold much power. They were also lazy men who rarely visited before 10am and rarely hung around for more than an hour. All they wanted was the takings to give to Gaetano Agostini. After, they would drive around town until the power in the vehicles ran out.
Jenny emptied the produce she carried into the already-full stand.
The market trade had picked up since they’d opened, and she resumed her pretence of being an unhelpful vendor. People passed by her stall, malnourished men and women who deserved a better life. It broke her heart to see their disappointment when she told them the new price of their favourite treats had gone up. But Marcus had a habit of dropping prices back down as well as putting prices up for no reason. It all depended on his mood. She traced Marcus’ mood most days back to his irritation with Enzo Agostini. More than once, she’d heard him mouthing off about Gaetano’s only son.
Jenny stopped herself from tossing free vegetables into the buyers’ bags. She must protect her identity and position in the market and keep Marcus’ trust. But it upset her to be so rude to people who didn’t deserve it. Had she not tested in the top-five percentile that allowed her to train as a pilot, she might have ended up just like them. What she wanted to do was give them some hope, to tell them she was part of the underground movement trying to liberate the people of Earth from their new prison.
She caught Greyson’s admonishing stare and straightened up. He was right; they had come too far to deviate from their plan. They had worked hard to be given a stall at the black market and get close enough to Marcus and his associates. As far as the Kings knew, the underground movement limped along following a calculated attack on their underground camp. An Indigene who had returned to Earth had fooled them into thinking he would help the movement, but they found out too late that the Agostini family had put him there. That one Indigene had wiped out half of their movement. After, their movement scattered far and wide.
After lunch, the trade dropped off and Jenny was ready for a break. She slipped on her coat with her DPad hidden inside the lining, and retreated to the storage unit to make a quick call. Only one other person besides Greyson could put her head right.
She closed the door and flicked on the light, shivering in the cold air. She entered a UUID—universally unique identifier—and her contact list popped up on the screen.
‘Call Eleanor.’
Her daughter had been a difficult child and adult; attention-seeking like her father. Jenny loved her but had struggled for many years to like her. When Eleanor had first met Greyson, she hadn’t warmed to him straight away. But Grey had a way with people that Jenny did not, and he’d won her over with his sharp tongue and down-to-earth attitude.
‘Now, why didn’t you marry this one, Mum?’ Eleanor had said to her. ‘I like him.’
Jenny had ruined her daughter by letting her get away with too much over the years. But the underground movement had given them both a chance to know each other, after they had been left behind on Earth. Eleanor had taken control of communications and tracking members’ whereabouts.
When Eleanor had first met Stephen over the Light Box feed, his polite manners and easy grace had won her over. Anton was different; more exuberant. Jenny remembered laughing when Anton had elbowed Stephen out of the way so he could get a better look at the screen. But what made her laugh more was when Stephen couldn’t stop apologising for Anton that day.
A woman in her early fifties with short brown hair and a smile appeared on screen.
‘Hey,’ said Eleanor. ‘How’s it going out there?’
‘The usual. Everything okay where you are?’
Eleanor was in one of the old subway tunnels once home to New York City’s transit system. Behind her was a sign that read Liberty Avenue and a discarded train that the movement used for accommodation. The underground medical facilities would have been their first choice, but Greyson said it was likely the World Government had destroyed their secret facilities before they left.
‘Grey and I have some news.’
Eleanor smiled wider. ‘You found her.’
Jenny nodded.
‘Where?’
‘In Waverley neighbourhood. She evaded the Kings by lying about her skills. A man who owns the local tavern there took her in.’
Jenny followed a bead of water that trickled down the wall behind Eleanor. ‘Do you and Grey trust him?’ Her daughter, a former lawyer, could usually see the truth in people before they revealed anything about themselves.
‘Time will tell. He promised to bring her here to see us. He’s a proud old man but he is good. With persuasion, he’ll see reason. I’m sure of it.’
Jenny had transported criminals before she became a courier of goods. Her former job had taught her a few things about who to trust.
Eleanor spoke to someone off-screen. Jenny noticed the increased activity behind her.
‘What’s going on, love? Have you injured among you?’
‘Nothing serious. A couple of the team ran into some trouble up top. When will you meet her?’
‘Tomorrow, I hope. Grey and I will be back this evening. I just wanted to let you know. Grey will want to talk to her somewhere in private.’
Eleanor nodded. ‘I’ll let the others know to expect you soon. What do you think she is?’
‘If Bill and Stephen sent her, she’s more than an empath. She resisted their attempts to break her. That’s all they’ve said.’
‘Or all they know.’
‘Grey and I just need to talk to her. Ask her if she’s on our side.’
‘What makes you so sure about her? We thought the same about the last few. But it’s been eight years and no progress with the devolved humans. What makes Stephen so sure about this one?’
Jenny understood Eleanor’s concerns. Several Indigenes had been sent back from Exilon 5 to help out the movement, but all were too traumatised by their experiences on Earth, a planet that had changed so drastically since their time as human. Many had never made it to the underground movement. Others had been killed by the Agostini family because they’d retreated inside themselves too much to be useful to anyone.
But one male had made it through. Grey had spent time with him to understand how he could help the people of Earth and other Devolved like him. But the Indigene had been a spy for the criminals, and his intel had led to a raid by the Kings on one of their hideouts. Jenny and Greyson, who had been in a different hideout, had separated themselves from the movement. Soon after, they had immersed themselves in local life to keep an eye on the Agostini family. They refused to let anything like that happen again.
‘There’s something else,’ said Jenny. ‘A serious problem in Waverley where our Indigene is staying. I’ve been told the life support is failing there.’
Eleanor frowned. ‘Randomly or systematically?’
‘Systematically. There’s a definite pattern to it. I didn’t have too much time with the residents to ask much about it. Look, it’s too coincidental, but this encrypted message we’ve been seeing on the DPads started broadcasting a few days ago. I’m not saying the two are linked, but it’s a possibility. Decrypting the message is the key and Grey and I need an IT expert for that.’
‘And you think this Indigene may be the expert we need?’
Jenny shook her head. ‘I still believe there’s an IT expert hiding out among the skilled workers in the Fortress. How we can use her to reach them, I’m not sure how to do that yet.’
Eleanor smiled. ‘I should have made the time to get to know you before. I always thought you were too soft to make a change.’
‘Well, you are your father’s daughter. So that makes you part mistrustful. But at least you get your tenacity from me.’