Incineration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 2) Read Free Page A

a chapter of Little House , even though I have virtually memorized the book, but then put it aside.  My situation is so far outside the confines of the Ingalls’ world that I can’t even imagine what Pa would tell Laura if she were in a similar situation.  No, I do know. He would counsel her to tell the truth, but I won’t have the opportunity and I might as well slit my wrists if I do. The truth is a death sentence. Or worse, whatever that is. My mind flits to Anton Karzov, the victim of a vaccine experiment gone awry, and I visualize the boils and constant itching that make his life a living hell.  That would be worse.
    I get down on the floor and begin to do sit-ups, needing to use up some of my nervous energy.  I don’t even count; I’m going to do them until I can’t do anymore.  As I raise and lower my torso, my mind returns to the question that has plagued me since I arrived here:  Who betrayed Bulrush?  Who gave away our location to the IPF? And why? I long ago discarded the idea that the IPF just happened to locate us at that particular time. Too coincidental. Besides, I heard one of the soldiers say something about “the information” being correct.  What could that information be except our location?
    The only person I’m sure didn’t give us up is Fiere.  I saw her get shot.  If she’d been the IPF’s informant, they wouldn’t have killed her, would they? That leaves Alexander, Saben, Idris, Casanova, Milo and Gunther. I’m ninety-nine percent certain Alexander didn’t betray Bulrush. He started it, he commanded it, he was passionately committed to helping women bear their own children and raise them if they wanted to. No, not Alexander. Saben . . . a vision of his blond hair, broad shoulders and geneborn gold eyes rises in my mind. When I first met him, I didn’t trust him. I could easily have envisioned him as a traitor. Why, after all, would a geneborn leave his family and genetic destiny to become an outlaw? I’d grown closer to him toward the end, though, and he’d put himself at risk to save me and Halla from the RESCO. He’d been the first to give warning of the IPF’s approach, too, and had also been shot. For the first time, I wondered how he, injured, had made it out to the street when no one else had. Bottom line: I didn’t want it to be Saben.
    I could readily believe it was Idris. He was a malcontent, always challenging Alexander, pushing him to align with the Defiance and undertake missions against the IPF and infrastructure targets the Pragmatists needed to maintain power. I’d gotten the feeling he sincerely cared about Alexander, though, so would he have done anything that would put him in harm’s way? I think about his hot-headedness. Maybe. Probably. Fact is, I don’t much like Idris, so it is easy to paint him as the traitor in my mind, even when I have no proof.
    Two guards pass my cell, talking about the large swarm of super locusts believed to be headed this way. “There’s rumors that in the Mid-Atlantic Canton they ate—”
    The other guard elbows him to shut him up. They’re not supposed to communicate with me in any way, not even by talking to each other in my presence. It doesn’t matter—I don’t need to hear how many tons the locusts ate. I’ve heard it all before. The insects can eat their body weight in vegetation each day, so a large swarm can devour over 400 million pounds of food in one day.  The locusts plagues are the main reason Amerada hasn’t been able to rebound and re-populate the way it should have. As soon as grass starts to grow again or trees and shrubs bounce back, the locusts descend like they’ve been summoned by a dinner gong.
    Saben and I threw ourselves into the midst of a swarm trying to escape the IPF, but the soldiers still managed to capture me and I awoke in this cell days later, battered, bruised and confused, with no clear memory of my actual capture. If I were where I belonged—in a lab—instead of locked up