“Where are we?” My voice is gravelly.
“A little place we call The Apiary,” he replies. “It’s a small island near the Fate of Seas, one of the first military Bases to have Trees. It’s been decommissioned, as far as most people are concerned. Not a lot of people outside Census know of its existence.”
I can just make out the ocean in the distance. All around us lie the relics of a decrepit military Base. Ancient airships that I’ve seen only in holographic history files rust out in the open. Everything is at least a few hundred years old. The only lights shine from the Base’s Trees and infrastructure. Nothing but water lies beyond the Base, from what I can tell. Behind us, rough, tree-lined, rocky crags dapple the horizon. No other signs of civilization.
Viable airships hang from the Trees’ branches, but they’re not current models. I wouldn’t know if I could fly one unless I got inside the cockpit. Behind me the cyborgs form two lines, equally spaced. Efficient. Mindless. Controlled and manipulated by a psychopathic Census agent.
Agent Crow strides ahead of me into a Tree’s trunk. I’m prodded to follow. A familiar dimness greets me inside the Tree, but the smell isn’t the same as the military Trees I inhabited as a soldier. Energy thrums and snaps in the air. There’s an overcharged, singeing scent that, if I licked my fingers, I could probably taste on my skin. As it is, I feel it in my chest. The hair on my skin rises, from the smell and from fear.
This structure, a docking station for military air-barracks that was tantamount to a small, thriving city for soldiers, has been resurrected to fit the needs of madmen. We enter a warehouse for hundreds of thousands of adult-sized canisters—cylindrical tanks filled with fluid. Blue neon light glows from the tops and bottoms of the transparent capsules. Inside each is a person, curled in a fetal position, floating. Some resemble modern Homo sapiens. Others don’t. Some are amalgamations of different species. Others are unifications of human and machine. Above us are levels of canisters as far as I can see, arranged in concentric rings like the cross section of a real tree.
Agent Crow teeters on the edge of mania. His insolent smile cuts through my haze of disbelief. “Would you like a history lesson of the Fates Republic, Roselle?” he asks. “Not the one you’ve been taught in Swords, about the nine Fates forming for the common good to create perfect symmetry between the classes. That’s mostly propaganda. I’m talking about a real history lesson.”
“Enlighten me,” I reply.
He clasps his hands behind his back, and we stroll together through a ring of the glowing tanks. “Unimpeded progress in technology and medicine has always driven our civilization forward. Some advances came with unpleasant side effects, though. Years ago, the average life expectancy expanded exponentially in a very short period. Our population was exploding. We were on the brink of exhausting all our natural resources, of bringing catastrophic destruction to the planet. We were wasting away. Something had to be done. At the same time, a powerful ruler by the name of Greyon Wenn the Virtuous came into power. Have you heard of him?”
“Of course,” I reply. Like lurking rats, we continue between the glowing containers. “Greyon was a ruthless warlord and a brilliant strategist. Brutal in his tactics, he slaughtered his rivals when they surrendered, and he set about systematically toppling every other government until he became the first supreme ruler to dominate the world. He formed a single unifying government and presided over it with unmerciful aggression.”
A sudden spasm of motion explodes in the cylinder next to me. I lurch away. Hands press against the transparent surface. An open mouth with sharp fangs gropes the glass. Black, glassy orbs bulge from the creature’s head. Gills cover its neck. Webbed fingers paw at us through the fluid. Hawthorne shoves me away from the tank, propelling me in Agent Crow’s direction.
Agent Crow snickers and keeps walking. “You surprise me, Roselle. You know our true origins. Your mentor, Dune, taught you well. You’re not as ignorant as most people I encounter.”
“Dune always said, ‘Know your past so you can avoid it in the future.’”
He chuckles. “What else did he teach you about Greyon Wenn the Virtuous?”
“Grisholm Wenn-Bowie was said to be a direct descendant of Greyon,” I reply numbly.
“Yes, you could trace his family line all the way back to the supreme ruler . . . but the same could be said about you, Roselle. The St. Sismode line directly descends from Greyon. Some say that the Wenns and the Bowies have the name, but it’s your family that has the blood.”
“They’re all dead now,” I say. “You and your minions decimated them.”
“All except for you and your mother. But the Wenn and Bowie lineages lost their nobility and intelligence years ago. We simply rectified the genealogical error. We relegated them to where they belong—a footnote in history. But getting back to Greyon . . . The world was staggeringly overpopulated and growing more so in peacetime. Greyon Wenn decreed that restrictions be enacted on procreation. His government began issuing birth cards, a rudimentary way to give permission to a couple to have a child. Firstborns weren’t the only ones allowed to have birth cards. It was based purely on genetics. Once undesirable traits were expunged, it became an issue of privilege. Cards were dispensed at higher and higher prices. Families died off. Inherited wealth became a way to ensure the survival of the family name. Finances were pooled and given to firstborn heirs to keep family lines alive. Only the elite could afford to have children.
“The government began issuing cards for secondborn children, but with the explicit provision that the child be given to the government when the secondborn reached adulthood. And voilà! The Fates Republic was formed. Of course, there will always be rule breakers, and enforcement of laws is essential—so Census was born.”
I consider trying to choke him to death, like I did with his own belt when we first met. I could probably do it. Hawthorne lingers so near, though. It wouldn’t take much for him to break my arms. I contemplate other killing scenarios as we pass more tanks. The beings inside these appear more human, despite having machine parts grafted onto them. The fine-boned lines of one woman’s face are covered in a shiny coating of metal. Her left pupil has been replaced by a protruding lens. She doesn’t move as we pass.
Agent Crow drones on. “Over time, the population scales tipped, and we slid back the other way. Our low birth rate threatened us with extinction. Depressing the birth rate was never meant to be a permanent solution to overpopulation, and even though we were living longer, the population was declining. So again, something had to be done.”
He has led us to a Census bunker. He scans his moniker under a blue light near the security doors, and they roll open. We walk a short corridor to the lifts and enter a car. The last time I was in a Census elevator, it filled with lake water and I almost died. I feel like I’m drowning now, too. The doors close, and we descend.
And still, he continues his history lesson. “Scientists were put to the task of finding a solution to our complex problem. Cloistered away from society, they lived like kings and queens on this island oasis, creating generations of offspring we affectionately refer to as zeroborns. A harvesting plant was built right here on this military Base.”