Caeli Widger - Mother of Invention

The Colony had endured two decades with no intrusions into its airspace. Hikers had stumbled upon the Base, weird loners doing time in the desert for spiritual reasons, but Base was not of particular interest, the squat cluster of ugly tan buildings. Easily explained away as a research facility. Strategically positioned for detection so that outsiders could be intercepted and escorted away.

The intruders had always been on foot. Easily removed.

But now there it was, a satellite map on Tracy’s surveillance screen, a jumble of numbers at the bottom indicating flight position. Roving across the screen was a pulsing red dot. Something flying low in the desert sky.

Seconds later, a message arrived on his phone. LANDED. Lat 37.5775000°, Long -105.4856000°

He tapped a fast response and distributed it to the surveillance team: THEROUX DISPATCHING . Summoned Jensen, the carrot-haired rookie, for backup. The type who’d follow directions, without asking too many questions.

A moment later, Jensen pulled up in a Humvee. Tracy could practically see the kid drooling, he was so eager to bust the intruder.

“Evening, Theroux. Where we headed?”

“Admin B.”

“What? Why to an admin building? I thought we were headed for an interception.” He waved toward the open desert. “Out there.”

“Just drive.”

Jensen swung the Humvee around the central circular drive of Base and toward Admin B, one of a half dozen squat stucco buildings.

“Pull up by the door,” said Tracy. “And close your eyes.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

He didn’t really care what Jensen saw. Tracy’s own chances of salvation were over. But he didn’t mind discombobulating the kid a little.

Jensen screeched the Humvee to a halt right in front of the building. He closed his eyes.

“Now cover them with your hands,” said Tracy, beckoning toward the door, hoping Johanna was behind it with the gurney to hand off Viv and then transport Irene’s body to cold storage. Jensen raised his hands to his face, and as if on cue, Viv stepped out of the door. Tracy helped her lie flat in the back of the Humvee.

He reached over and chucked Jensen on the shoulder.

“Open your eyes and drive. Straight to the exit. Then follow this.” He pointed to his phone affixed to the dash, its GPS glowing.

Jensen accelerated sharply, the redneck in him rising as he pointed the Humvee into the open desert. Tracy gripped the frame of the Humvee with one damp hand. He was sweating despite the low temperature. The desert night whipped his face.

With his free hand, Tracy reached down and switched on the stereo. Noise did not matter here, miles away from anything. He figured the music might rattle whoever was waiting for them out there, death metal blasting in the middle of nowhere. The music was all discord and violence, a vocalist making an incoherent growl. All the Humvees played the same songs. Tracy could never discern the lyrics. He didn’t want to.

They rolled past cactus and rock and thorn trees. The moon burned brighter. Beside him, Jensen wore a manic grin. Rookie courage, all muddled up in the animal fear Tracy could practically smell on the kid. He glanced at the GPS; the target was getting closer. He palmed the slick metal of his submachine gun, an MP5. His pulse was faster than he wanted it to be; he could feel it moving in his neck.

Point-four miles, point-three, point-two.

When they were two hundred feet from the target, Tracy hit the floodlight. The beam smashed into a little chopper, a special-ops ultralight that no one from the ISA had probably ever flown. Tracy recognized the machine: a Baby Wasp. Designed for rescues in combat zones, covert reconnaissance flights.

Not for dicking around in the middle of the New Mexico desert late at night.

Tessa Callahan had done well.

2021

When the lights of the Humvee hit Luke, he’d already been shaking from the cold. The temperature had plummeted wildly since they’d left Tremble City for Tessa’s spot in the desert. It hadn’t occurred to him to bring a winter jacket. As the oversized vehicle hurtled straight toward him, headlights blinding, he began to shake harder.

The Humvee parked a dozen feet from the chopper, and a man hopped out of the passenger side. Then he opened the back door and extended his hand to help someone out. A woman, Luke could tell from her shape, wearing a hooded sweatshirt.

The man wore fatigues and carried a gun. He held the woman’s hand as they made their way from the Humvee to the chopper. Luke strained to see her face, but it was obscured by her hood. When the couple reached the base of the Wasp’s ramp, the man lifted his gun to Luke’s head.

Luke could almost feel the hard carbon fiber against his temple. His heart thudded.

“Please put that down,” he said. “Tessa Callahan sent me here.”

“I know that,” said the man. “And now that you’re here, you’re leaving. You’re going to fly the fuck away from here and never come back. My friend is going with you. You’ll deliver her safely to Tessa Callahan. If you don’t, you’ll be dead in twenty-four hours. All clear?”

“All clear,” said Luke.

The man released his grip on the woman.

Finally, she removed her hood.

Luke recognized her instantly.

She was Vivian Bourne.

The CleftKid. She looked just as she had on LikeMe, only older.

Quite a bit older.

“It’s time,” said the man with the gun. He lowered it and flicked his wrist toward Luke. “Time for all of you to go.” He dropped Viv’s hand and she stepped onto the ramp of the Wasp followed by Luke.

Luke detected the hint of a tremor in the man’s voice.

“Trey,” Luke called toward the cockpit. “Rev up.”

The rotor blades began to whirl, and the chopper lifted, pitched, and rose into the deep night sky.

2021

On Friday evening, in the room that served as the Seahorse Center’s miniature intensive care unit, Tessa sat in a nursing rocker holding Gwen’s baby girl, who was swaddled in a lavender muslin blanket, nursing from the Mammarina Tessa wore. Two lamps lit the room in a soft glow; the windows were covered with blackout shades to help Gwen and the babies sleep. Beside Tessa, Viv sat in a matching chair with the boy in the crook of her arm. He’d fallen asleep nursing, still latched onto Viv’s Mammarina. Ten days after surgery, the twins were healing rapidly, but Gwen was recovering slowly from her C-section, and breastfeeding, now her most critical duty, was challenging and painful. The babies’ mouths, she told Tessa, felt like hot pins to her nipples each time they latched. Gwen bit down on her lip and kept trying, but each feeding brought tears to her eyes.

And there were so many feedings. The babies seemed perpetually ravenous, mawing the air with their tiny mouths less than an hour after they’d nursed, demanding more.

“Let us help,” Tessa had said to Gwen, after watching her wince through another feeding session. “The lab will fast-track your supplies.”

Gwen rubbed a viscous organic salve over her nipples and sighed. “Fine.” An hour later, she allowed the techs to collect colostrum samples and take nipple moldings.

Two days later, her kit arrived: an ample supply of powdered FormuLove, which, when mixed with purified water, produced a liquid with a very strong molecular resemblance to Gwen’s breast milk. There were also two identical harnesses—Mammarinas—outfitted with pumps that adjusted the flow of FormuLove through silicone nipples, shaped exactly like Gwen’s, according to the strength of the infant’s suckle.