The Variables Read Free Page A

hands up above her head, her dress rippling like waves.
    “Josephine!” he called and he imagined himself running after her, arms flailing, reaching, reaching for her hand and grabbing her bony wrists. He closed his eyes tight and called her name again, his voice echoing and bouncing off the other buildings—the other condos and apartments, their curtains wide with people milling about, going through the motions of their day, oblivious to all facets of their tragedy.  
    When he opened his eyes, his wife was gone. The space she had occupied consumed by darkness.  
    And his feet remained rooted against the cement roof, planted over the remnants of the wine glass, crunching the pieces as he shifted this way and that—searching the void and hoping for her shape to materialize. After a long minute, a gust of wind shook him into a startled inhale. He turned and walked back to the stairwell, his hands clenched into fists by his side. When he looked one last time, silent tears stung his cheeks, and Huck wondered if he would be able to find Kymberlin’s school paper drifting on the street. He noted the wind trajectory and tried to remember which way she had dropped it. Closing his eyes, he watched her ball up the white paper and he imagined being the paper, sliding past the eastside windows, maybe landing outside the pizza parlor or the nail shop. It had to be down there; the paper was waiting for him to find it. He would find it.
    Huck must have stood there with his eyes closed for minutes.
    It was the sirens that jolted him back to reality.  
     

CHAPTER ONE

    Scott King nodded to the guard on Floor E and ran his finger across the scanner to enter Pod 4. He smoothed down his blue button-down shirt and tried to walk with confidence toward the boardroom. He didn’t know why Huck Truman, leader of the System and the new world, was calling the powerful and elusive Elektos Board together, but the air underground was tense, and the prolonged time without natural sun or freedom was wearing on the System’s inhabitants. Even Scott felt antsy, his armpits wet, his stomach churning as if he were on the brink of gastrointestinal distress.
    He wiped his forehead, and a droplet of sweat gathered on his index finger. He did not feel like facing the Board today. He did not know why Huck had asked him to bring three vials of his new virus or what he intended to do with them, but he knew that their appearance at this meeting wasn’t arbitrary. Or optional.
    Since their arrival in The System, Huck had called together the Elektos Board on two other occasions: the week they arrived to their new underground home and the day before Lucy and Grant appeared among the survivors. The first meeting, the entire Board was there in person. The master tech had not yet been able to secure remote communication. Huck had assembled his fleet of pilots and airplanes and shipped in each of his most trusted followers.
    The Elektos Board had fourteen members: two representatives from every Elektos Underground System, Gordy as vice-president and Huck as president. Huck’s daughter Blair was not a member of the Board, but had imposed herself as the meeting secretary. She sat in the corner of the room—away from the view of the other members—and kept elaborate notes that Scott was certain no one ever read or looked at again.
    At the second meeting, the only members there in the flesh were Scott, Huck, Gordy, and Claude Salvant (architect of the Systems); everyone else communicated via video chat from their distant locations across the earth. That meeting had been lively and jovial—with reports of their successes documented and inarguable.  
    Huck had accomplished the first two steps of his plan without resistance.
    Step one: annihilate the earth. Step two: relocate survivors to their temporary underground homes in the Elektos Underground Systems scattered across the globe. Each System contained a cell of people dedicated to the cause. For decades, Huck had