Bound to Ashes (The Altered Sequence Book 1) by Maranda Cromwell Page A
Authors: Maranda Cromwell
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survivors all armed to the teeth with high-tech military weapons and tech. This, I think, you’re aware of.”
She should see my bullet scars.
“What you don’t know is that we recently injected him and his commanding officers with lethal doses of Detomidine and offed the others at mealtime with high doses of Tricaine Methanesulfonate. In other words,” she smiles for the first time, “we’re free.”
“What’s this got to do with me?”
“I’m getting to that,” Alessandra explains. “The thing is, we don’t hate you or want you dead. That was them. This is us. And we need your help.”
[Alessandra]
The man I know only as E4-17 stands in the corner of the room. The room used to be storage, but was cleaned out for a makeshift interrogation room, and it makes me sick. We’re supposed to be the good guys. He looks like a war prisoner, and he doesn’t even know why he’s here. No wonder he’s angry. I would be, too. Maybe if Heydrich hadn’t wanted them dead so bad, they would have trusted us to begin with, and I wouldn’t have had to do what I did.
I grip the wire cutters tightly. His big yellow cat eyes are staring at me like he would much rather roast me to a crisp than talk to me.
I guess this is what it feels like to have your heart broken.
His shirt is torn and his shoes are worn out, and I feel like it’s all my fault. He absently rubs the raw spots on his wrists where the industrial zip ties dug into them. I’m not going to say anything about it, especially to Vinder, who’s shaking in his boots, but the zip ties are stretched. The zip ties with 175-pound tensile strength rating are stretched. Almost broken. For an under-fed survivor of the collapse of society, I’d say he’s doing pretty well.
The words that need to come out spin in my brain and buzz like angry insects. How am I supposed to explain this? The way he looks at us... furrowed, stifled, hesitant. Those cat eyes watching our every minuscule movement.
“You and your friends are the only ones that can help us survive.”
My heart’s in my throat, this better work....
“You’re lying,” he says. Of course. To him, I’m just another stranger behind a rifle scope.
“Gonna have to put a little more faith in me than that,” I answer, smiling. I hope he knows it’s sincere.
He glances away and just barely, his breath comes out as an impatient sigh. He’s either too stubborn or scared to formulate a response. He grinds his teeth.
“This building was owned by a company called Stem Incorporated, a genetics researching facility. They did vaccines and stuff, mostly. My father owned it. I grew up in the facilities and the scientists, engineers, and biologists in residence raised me. Since they’re all dead now, I’m the only one who knows how to keep this place afloat, and it’s the only reason all of us have lived here for so long. It’s more than just a bunch of offices.”
He waits for me to get to the point.
“Stem Incorporated is a fully self-sustaining facility. We have electricity even eight years after the collapse.”
I mean ‘apocalypse’, of course, but I hate using that term. It seems too impassable, too big. A ‘collapse’ you can recover from.
“We grow fresh food and drink fresh water. We can do all this because of the prototype of the Ecodome in the lower levels. It’s an ecosystem completely self-regulated and self-sustained, operating several miles underground. It was a novel idea a long time ago, but only on greenhouse scale. Ours, here, in the basement, was the biggest one ever until the one in the north was built. The northern one is big enough to house the entire state of Rhode Island. According to the blueprints we found, there’s no reason for it to have stopped working, even without maintenance or upkeep. It’s flawless. And it’s perfect for us. Even though we have one here, it’s failing. Turbines, coolers, generators, all dying off one after the other.” Like us. “We
She should see my bullet scars.
“What you don’t know is that we recently injected him and his commanding officers with lethal doses of Detomidine and offed the others at mealtime with high doses of Tricaine Methanesulfonate. In other words,” she smiles for the first time, “we’re free.”
“What’s this got to do with me?”
“I’m getting to that,” Alessandra explains. “The thing is, we don’t hate you or want you dead. That was them. This is us. And we need your help.”
[Alessandra]
The man I know only as E4-17 stands in the corner of the room. The room used to be storage, but was cleaned out for a makeshift interrogation room, and it makes me sick. We’re supposed to be the good guys. He looks like a war prisoner, and he doesn’t even know why he’s here. No wonder he’s angry. I would be, too. Maybe if Heydrich hadn’t wanted them dead so bad, they would have trusted us to begin with, and I wouldn’t have had to do what I did.
I grip the wire cutters tightly. His big yellow cat eyes are staring at me like he would much rather roast me to a crisp than talk to me.
I guess this is what it feels like to have your heart broken.
His shirt is torn and his shoes are worn out, and I feel like it’s all my fault. He absently rubs the raw spots on his wrists where the industrial zip ties dug into them. I’m not going to say anything about it, especially to Vinder, who’s shaking in his boots, but the zip ties are stretched. The zip ties with 175-pound tensile strength rating are stretched. Almost broken. For an under-fed survivor of the collapse of society, I’d say he’s doing pretty well.
The words that need to come out spin in my brain and buzz like angry insects. How am I supposed to explain this? The way he looks at us... furrowed, stifled, hesitant. Those cat eyes watching our every minuscule movement.
“You and your friends are the only ones that can help us survive.”
My heart’s in my throat, this better work....
“You’re lying,” he says. Of course. To him, I’m just another stranger behind a rifle scope.
“Gonna have to put a little more faith in me than that,” I answer, smiling. I hope he knows it’s sincere.
He glances away and just barely, his breath comes out as an impatient sigh. He’s either too stubborn or scared to formulate a response. He grinds his teeth.
“This building was owned by a company called Stem Incorporated, a genetics researching facility. They did vaccines and stuff, mostly. My father owned it. I grew up in the facilities and the scientists, engineers, and biologists in residence raised me. Since they’re all dead now, I’m the only one who knows how to keep this place afloat, and it’s the only reason all of us have lived here for so long. It’s more than just a bunch of offices.”
He waits for me to get to the point.
“Stem Incorporated is a fully self-sustaining facility. We have electricity even eight years after the collapse.”
I mean ‘apocalypse’, of course, but I hate using that term. It seems too impassable, too big. A ‘collapse’ you can recover from.
“We grow fresh food and drink fresh water. We can do all this because of the prototype of the Ecodome in the lower levels. It’s an ecosystem completely self-regulated and self-sustained, operating several miles underground. It was a novel idea a long time ago, but only on greenhouse scale. Ours, here, in the basement, was the biggest one ever until the one in the north was built. The northern one is big enough to house the entire state of Rhode Island. According to the blueprints we found, there’s no reason for it to have stopped working, even without maintenance or upkeep. It’s flawless. And it’s perfect for us. Even though we have one here, it’s failing. Turbines, coolers, generators, all dying off one after the other.” Like us. “We
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