Hugh Howey - First Shift - Legacy

“You mean like cloning? That’s why it’s illegal.”

“I don’t mean cloning—and besides, just because it’s illegal, you and I both know people do it.” She took a sip of her wine and nodded at a family in a distant booth. “Look. He has daddy’s everything .”

Donald followed her gaze and watched the kid for a moment, then realized she was just making a point.

“Or how about my father?” she asked. “Those nano baths, all the stem-cell vitamins he takes. He truly thinks he’s gonna live forever. You know he bought a load of stock in one of those cryo firms years back?”

Donald laughed. “I heard. And I heard it didn’t work out so well. Besides, they’ve been trying stuff like that for years—”

“And they keep getting closer,” she said. “All they ever needed was a way to stitch up the cells damaged from the freezing, and now that’s not so crazy a dream, right?”

“Well, I hope the people who dream such things get whatever it is they’re looking for, but you’re wrong about us. Helen and I talk about having kids all the time. I know people having their first kid in their fifties. We’ve got time.”

“Mmm.” She finished what was in her glass and reached for the bottle. “You think that,” she said. “Everyone thinks they’ve got all the time in the world.” She leveled her cool gray eyes at him. “But they never stop to ask just how much time that is.”

After dinner, they waited under the awning for Anna’s car service. Donald declined to share a ride, saying he needed to get back to the office and would just take a cab. The rain hitting the awning had changed, grown fiercer. Now it sounded like bubble wrap being popped.

Anna’s ride squealed to a stop, a shiny black Lincoln, just as Donald’s phone began vibrating. He fumbled in his jacket pocket while she leaned in for a hug and kissed his cheek. He felt a flush of heat despite the cool air, saw that it was Mick calling, and hit the accept button.

“Hey, you just land, or what?”

A pause.

“Land?” Mick sounded confused. There was noise in the background. The driver hurried around the Lincoln to get the door for Anna. “I took a redeye,” Mick said. “My flight got in early this morning. I’m just walking out of a movie and saw your texts. What’s up?”

Anna turned and waved. Donald waved back.

“You’re getting out of a movie? We just wrapped up our meeting at Angelo’s. You missed it. Anna said she emailed you like three times—”

He glanced up at the car as Anna drew her leg inside. Just a glimpse of her red heels, and then the driver thumped the door shut. The rain on the tinted glass stood out like jewels embedded in wet obsidian.

“Huh. I must’ve missed them. Probably went to junk mail. Hey, have you heard of The Wizard of Oz? We just got out of this film, supposedly a remake. If you and I were still in our getting-high days, I would totally force you to blast one with me right now and go to the midnight showing. My mind is totally bent—”

Donald watched as the driver hurried around the car to get out of the rain. That sheet of gleaming black trembled, the jewels scattering as her window lowered a crack. One last wave, a disembodied hand braving the wet and cold, fingers fluttering.

“Yeah, well, those days are long gone, my friend.” Donald waved back as the car pulled out into the light traffic. Thunder grumbled in the distance. An umbrella opened with a pop as a gentleman prepared to brave the storm. “Besides,” Donald told Mick, “some things are better off back in the past. Where they belong.”

The exercise room on level twelve smelled of sweat, of having been recently used. A line of iron weights sat in a jumble in one corner, and someone had forgotten their towel. They had left it draped over the bar of the bench press, over a hundred pounds of iron discs still in place.

Troy eyed the mess as he worked the last bolt free from the side of the exercise bike. When the cover plate came off, washers and nuts rained down from recessed holes and bounced across the tile. Troy scrambled for them and pushed the hardware into a tidy pile. He peered inside the bike’s innards and saw a large cog, its jagged teeth conspicuously empty.

The chain that did all the work hung slack around the cog’s axle. Troy was surprised to see it there, would think the thing ran on belts or… well, he didn’t know how he expected the bike to work. But this seemed too fragile. Not a good choice for the length of time it would be expected to serve. It was strange, in fact, to think that this machine was already fifty years old—or that it needed to last centuries more.

He wiped his forehead. Sweat was still beading up from the handful of miles he’d gotten in before the machine broke. Fishing around in the toolbox Jones had loaned him, he found the flathead screwdriver and began levering the chain back onto the cog.

Chains on cogs. Chains on cogs . He laughed to himself. Wasn’t that the way?

“Excuse me, sir?”

Troy turned to find Jones, his chief mechanic for another week, standing in the gym’s doorway.

“Almost done,” Troy said. “You need your tools back?”

“Nossir. Dr. Henson is looking for you.” He raised his hand, had one of those clunky radios in it.

Troy grabbed an old rag out of the toolbox and wiped the grease from his fingers. This felt good, working on something, getting dirty. It was a welcome distraction, something to do besides checking the blisters in his mouth with a mirror or hanging out in his office or apartment waiting to cry again for no reason.

This was what he was supposed to be doing, not leading or being in charge. He was supposed to be the guy coiling the ropes, not the captain.

He left the bike and crossed to his shift mechanic to accept the radio. Troy felt a wave of envy for the older man. He would love to wake up in the morning, put on those blue denim coveralls with the patches on the knees, grab his trusty toolbox, and work down a list of repairs. Anything other than sitting around while he waited on far worse things to break.

Squeezing the button on the side of the radio, he held it up to his mouth.

“This is Troy,” he said.

The name sounded weird coming out of his own mouth. He didn’t like saying his own name, didn’t like hearing it. He wondered what Dr. Henson and the shrinks would say about that.

The radio crackled. “Sir? I hate to disturb you—”

“No, that’s fine. What is it?” Troy walked back to the exercise bike and grabbed his towel from the handlebars. He wiped his forehead and saw Jones eyeing the disassembled bike and scattering of tools. The mechanic looked like a starving man gaping at a buffet. When he lifted his brows questioningly, Troy waved his consent.

“We’ve got a gentleman in our office who’s not responding to treatment,” Dr. Henson said.

Jones knelt by the bike. He slid his hands inside the machine’s cavity like a surgeon reaching into an open abdomen.

A blast of static, and then Dr. Henson continued: “It looks like another deep-freeze. I’ll need you to sign the waiver.”

Jones glanced up from the bike and frowned at this. Troy rubbed the back of his neck with the towel. He remembered Merriman saying to be careful handing these out. There were plenty of good men who would just as soon sleep through all this mess than serve their shifts.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“We’ve tried everything. He’s been restrained. Security is taking him down the express right now. Can you meet us down here? You’ll have to sign off before he can be put away.”