The First City (The Dominion Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  “How accurate is it?”

  “Very. Ninety-nine point nine percent. The machine scans specific portions of the DNA and superimposes them. There’s an extremely low error rate. The program will match any DNA that it’s given. Fifty percent match between two means blood relation. Less than five percent is no relation.”

  “You know a lot about this,” Zoey says.

  The doctor smiles sadly. “I’ve lived in the city all my life. There were a lot of people here when the Dearth hit. I ran that machine many times during those years. That was when I still believed NOA was trying to help.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “When they started bringing women and children here in handcuffs to be tested.”

  A low roar comes from outside and Lee hurries to the window, glancing down. “Four trucks just went by.”

  “They’re not stopping?” Zoey asks.

  “No. They headed toward the pier.”

  “Those gunshots were yours then?” the doctor asks. Zoey looks at Lee and neither of them say anything. “I hope you didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “We didn’t,” she says, glancing down the deserted hallway. An itching sense has begun to build on the back of her neck, extending into her hair. She reaches up, swiping fingers across her scalp, but the feeling doesn’t recede. If anything it strengthens.

  They’re running out of time.

  “How much longer?” Lee says, coming away from the windows.

  “Not sure.” The doctor moves to the machine and shrugs. “There’s no countdown or anything. I can’t tell.”

  “We have to go soon,” Zoey says, putting words to the sensation prickling her scalp.

  “I know,” Lee says.

  “Will you tell anyone?” she asks, looking at the doctor.

  He meets her gaze and holds it, unflinching. “I just bandaged a wound for you. You’re my patient, and that means I’m bound by oath in confidentiality.”

  Zoey’s lips tighten in a smile. “Thank you.”

  “It’s my job.”

  There is a louder hum, like a fan speeding up, followed by a short chiming.

  They all look at the machine. The doctor walks toward it and touches the screen.

  “It’s finished.” He glances at her, an unreadable expression on his face. She crosses the room, Lee to her right, not moving any closer.

  Her heart pummels the inside of her chest.

  She’s never been this afraid. Not in the box. Not when she’d been shot. Not even when she thought she’d never walk again.

  The fear is in her lungs, filling them up so she can’t breathe.

  The doctor tilts the screen toward her and she reads it.

  Sample—Subject 1, DNA Segment Span 1–15

  Sample—Mother, Segment Percentage Match: 50%

  Sample—Father, Segment Percentage Match: .04%

  Zoey’s mouth opens.

  She tries to breathe. Can’t.

  Tries to say something, anything. Can’t.

  She’s frozen, unable to comprehend what the screen is telling her. She tears her gaze from the digital numbers and looks at the doctor. His mouth is a thin line and there’s an apologetic look in his eyes.

  “What’s it say?” Lee asks. His voice is weak, as if he doesn’t have enough air.

  Zoey swallows, shimmers of light trying to invade the edges of her vision. She looks at Lee, blinking the spangles away.

  “We’re her parents,” she says.

  Lee’s face is bone white, the look of shock there something she can handle, but the relief that floods his features a moment later rends her heart in half, and the pieces are two different times: before she lied to him, and after.

  She realizes then that he was terrified of being the father, but even more afraid that he wasn’t.

  He starts across the room, arms reaching out to embrace her, but a sound stops him, a sound that sends a lance of dread straight to her core.

  The ding of the elevator fades as the doors open to the hallway.

  31

  Zoey watches, skin prickling with fear, as two soldiers step off the elevator and turn their way.

  Her hand goes to her back out of reflex, brushes the empty holster.

  Nothing. No way to defend themselves.

  The men’s posture straightens. They’ve spotted the three of them.

  She glances around the room. There is a single way out, through the doorway they entered. She turns, looking for a weapon. There are only chairs and partitions and medical equipment. Maybe there’s a scalpel somewhere in one of the drawers but what would a blade do against the rifles the guards carry?

  Her gaze locks onto Lee’s and he shakes his head.

  The men enter the room, weapons up, eyes hard behind them.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” one of them says. The doctor steps forward, hands out before him.

  “Please, they were just trying to get medical help.” The guard snaps his rifle around, its stock connecting with the old man’s face.

  He falls to the floor and doesn’t move.

  “You bastards,” Lee says.

  “Hands on your head.”

  Zoey glances at Lee again and they both thread their fingers together atop their heads. The men approach and pat them down.

  “God she’s young,” one of them says, and shoves her from behind. She stumbles forward, and she would run in any other scenario, make a break for it now and take her chances if it weren’t for Lee. If something were to happen to him she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  The men usher them into the elevator and Zoey has a split-second view of the lab before they’re shoved inside the car, the bioanalyzer’s screen still glowing with the words and numbers.

  They ride to the ground floor in silence but when the doors open there is a chatter of voices. A dozen soldiers stand in the lobby talking over one another; a thin, unarmed man, perhaps five years older than Lee, waits outside their circle. The man’s eyes register Lee, then Zoey, and his eyes widen slightly.

  All of the soldiers stop talking at once, and it’s then that Lee swears and lunges forward before being yanked back by one of the soldiers.

  “Ollie! You piece of shit!” Lee screams. “How could you?”

  The thin man shakes his head as their captors lead them past and to the outside door. “Knew you were up to something, Lee, but didn’t know it was this big.”

  “Why?” Lee asks, voice weak and hoarse.

  “I’m tired of this place. Going with these guys when they leave so thought I’d start off my employment with an act of goodwill.” The doors open and the night air streams in, cooling the lobby. “I’ll help myself to the money in Ray’s apartment you owe me. Don’t think you’ll be needing it anymore,” Ollie shouts after them as they’re shoved outside.

  A truck waits at the curb, idling roughly. Two new men come forward and boost them into its rear, and the soldiers who discovered them in the hospital follow.

  Zoey waits and watches them as the vehicle pulls away. Could she signal Lee somehow? Get him to move at the same time as she does? Maybe they could jump out the back of the truck and lose the men, hide somewhere until they were able to sneak out of the city like they planned.

  But she knows it won’t work; Lee’s head hangs and his hands lie loose and open on his thighs, a look of wondrous despair on his face. Zoey reaches out, drawing the barrels of each guard toward her, but she doesn’t stop. She grips Lee’s hand.

  He looks at her, but only for a second before staring back at the truck’s bed. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers.

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not. I shouldn’t have trusted him. He must’ve followed me and saw us go into the hospital.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because it’s done. Nothing we can do about it.”

  “But I—”

  “Shut up, both of you,” one of the guards says. Zoey stares at hi
m and he holds her gaze for a beat before looking out at the dark street sliding away behind them. Lee gives her hand a squeeze and she returns it, the memory of the test results slamming back into her all at once.

  Lee isn’t the father.

  She lied to him. One of the few people she trusts and loves. But she couldn’t get herself to utter the words, to crush him like that.

  Even though the conception was completely medical, it still sends a shudder through her to imagine anyone but Lee as the father. But the real question now is if it’s not Lee, then who is it?

  She makes an effort to coax her thoughts out of the tangle they’ve become, but everything is a jumbled mess. And it doesn’t help that their escape is lost, the chance destroyed as quickly as it presented itself. But there has to be another way, some kind of option she hasn’t recognized yet. There is always weakness even within the greatest strength.

  The truck slows and lurches to a stop. The smell of the ocean is stronger, and when the soldiers motion them to the pavement, she sees why.

  They stand at the edge of a pier, dark waves crashing against the rocky shoreline.

  “Move,” one of the men says, pointing with his weapon to a set of stairs descending out of sight.

  “Why are we going down to the water?” Zoey asks as they walk to the edge of the pier. To shoot you both and drop you in the ocean, she answers herself.

  “Because it’s the only way to get out there,” the other soldier says, nodding toward the shadow of the ship in the harbor.

  The room they leave her in is made entirely of steel, one bulkhead curved slightly near the floor. There are no windows.

  Zoey rubs the place on her arm where the guard grabbed her, forced her into the room as she tried to keep Lee in sight, but he was already being dragged in the opposite direction down the narrow hallway on the ship’s second level. He’d yelled something to her, but his words had been cut off as the man escorting him jammed his fist into Lee’s stomach, doubling him over.

  Then she’d been pushed into the room, the door locking tight behind her.

  Zoey grasps the door’s handle and strains against it. It barely moves.

  She turns, inspecting the space.

  A low bed is bolted to one wall, a bare mattress, no pillow. There is a bathroom so small she barely fits inside, the door missing, nothing else except dust and a few floating cobwebs in one corner. She searches the floors, corners, ceiling. There is nothing loose or moveable anywhere, the only break in the uniformity of the gray metal, a wall grate much too small to crawl through, even if she were able to pry it open.

  Zoey sits on the bed. The tension of her muscles makes her body ache and she tries to relax them but fails. The ship moves ever so slightly, causing her to sway. And even as she tries to focus on the threat before her, the impossible task of escaping not only the ship manned with armed men everywhere, but then the sea and city itself afterwards, the memory of the digital screen arrives once again. She had been so stricken with shock at Lee’s test results she hadn’t truly absorbed the ramifications of her own.

  I have a daughter.

  I am a mother.

  No question now, no doubt. It’s true, just as I felt it always was from the moment I saw Vivian’s message.

  She finally sags with the knowledge, muscles giving up their rigidity. Her helplessness is only compounded by the thought of a tiny life locked away in an artificial womb, at the complete mercy of those surrounding her, those who would have no qualms testing her uniqueness, the miracle of her existence. They may have already begun their examinations, begun to poke and prod before her daughter has even taken her first breath of air or felt the sun on her face.

  Zoey comes back to herself, gripping the door handle, twisting it with all her strength.

  It turns in her hand. She steps back, surprised and elated as she pulls it open.

  A dark-haired Asian man stands in the doorway, surprise locking him in place.

  A second passes, their gazes fused, before Zoey swings a fist at him.

  He blocks it, not without effort, managing to pin her arm to his body. With a shift of weight, he sends her reeling back. She’s already resetting herself, planning a strike at his groin with a kick, when he holds out his hands and speaks.

  “Stop. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She pauses, seeing two men behind him in the hall holding guns. She straightens and takes a step back. The man nods once and flicks a hand. The men split, disappearing to either side of the door, which he shuts quietly behind him.

  “My name is Hiraku.” When she doesn’t say anything he asks, “May I have yours?”

  She debates before answering. “Zoey.”

  “Zoey.” He inclines his head. “I’m glad to meet you.”

  “What do you want with us?”

  “To talk.”

  “Talk? That’s it?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what you have to say.”

  Zoey swallows. “Let us go. Please.”

  “What were you doing in the hospital?”

  “I injured my head.” She points to the cut near her hairline. “Lee was helping me.”

  “How do you know one another?” She remains silent, looking past his shoulder. “Is it from the place where Lee says he grew up?” Still she says nothing. “I will assume that is correct. Lee told me that all the women are gone, that they were taken.”

  She returns his gaze, calculating if she could overcome him. He outweighs her by at least a hundred pounds, maybe more. And though he must be nearing sixty years old, he is solidly built across the chest and shoulders.

  “I see you judging me, and I can assure you if you attack me again, you will lose. All I want is information, Zoey. Please. Are the women gone like Lee said?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because I can help. I’m able to father female children. This”—he gestures around at the ship—“this is all because of an accident that made me who I am. I have an obligation to make a difference if I can. And the men who have followed me believe in what will come if we can change things.”

  “If you want to change things, let us go.”

  Hiraku sighs, looking at the floor. “I cannot do that until you tell me what I want to know. If you won’t tell me, I have no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “That is what people say who have not seen the darkness of the world.”

  Hiraku turns and exits the room without looking back. The door locks with a solid click, leaving Zoey alone with the blank walls that seem so much closer than before.

  32

  Hiraku finds Shirou in his quarters, the other man standing shirtless near his bed.

  He can’t help looking at the network of scars crossing Shirou’s torso. They are like a map chronicling the years since they first met, each one containing a story, a fight, and he remembers every one; he knows his own body carries much of the same timeline. But there are other, much older scars that Shirou has never spoken about, not in all the years they’ve known one another, and Hiraku has never asked. Some memories are better unshared, left to weaken and rot in the past.

  He closes the door as Shirou dons his shirt. “Something wrong?” the younger man asks.

  Hiraku moves to the nearest seat and lowers himself into it, feeling every minute of his age. It must end soon, he thinks. Under pressure something always breaks, and before much longer it will be me.

  “Yes, my friend, I’m afraid there is.”

  “What is it?”

  “The man who was repairing the munitions factory was just found in the hospital with a woman. A young woman.”

  “What? How did she get here?”

  “She won’t say, but I must apologize, I haven’t been entirely truthful as of late. When I first brought the man to the factory to see if he could repair the machines, I told him of my accident, of our journey. He said that he had grown up in the very pl
ace I spoke of and that all the women were gone, had escaped, and that there were none left.”

  Shirou’s face darkens and he slowly sits on the edge of his narrow bed. “How can that be? What type of force could overcome their defenses?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He must be lying.”

  “I would agree, except for the presence of this woman. She is young, too young to have come from anyplace but the one we seek.” Hiraku reaches into his shirt pocket and draws out the folded paper. He holds it delicately, beginning to unfold it, but stops. “Neither of them will talk. But if this is true, if the women are gone, we are finished. Every man who has followed us, all of their sons, each life we took to get where we are, it is all for nothing.” Without really meaning to, he drops the folded paper on the floor. It lands without a sound, inconsequential, as if what is held there is already useless. They are quiet for a time, neither of them moving, until Shirou breaks the stillness and picks up the paper. He stands and comes to Hiraku’s side before dropping to one knee.

  “You are my oldest friend. I consider you a brother and would even if my own hadn’t been taken from me when I was a child. You have led us admirably and made hard decisions that kept us alive.” Shirou grasps Hiraku’s hand in his own, placing the paper in his palm. “Do not despair before it is necessary.”

  Hiraku closes his fingers over the paper, feeling its coarseness, the rough tangibility bringing him back to the present. “I’m not sure I can do what is necessary.”

  Shirou’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Then you must let me.”

  Zoey’s eyes open, and she realizes she’s no longer alone.

  She had feigned sleep shortly after Hiraku left her, wanting to lull their captors into thinking she would be defenseless if they were to come for her.

  And now they have.

  She shifts her gaze to the wall, her senses humming.

  Two distorted shadows shrink and become the shapes of men coming closer and closer to the bed.

  Wait.

  Wait.

  Wait.

  Zoey flips herself over and swings a wild kick. She aimed a little low and it catches the man reaching for her feet in the throat. He chokes, staggering back, and nearly falls into the bathroom.