Seed: Chapter Preview by Shelly Campbell

Chapter One

I used to be David.

David had a big family. Wanted to join the army. Always got stuck cleaning out the soft serve machine at his after-school job because everyone else despised the chore. But now he’s gone and I’m all that’s left. A dead animal under glass, gutted and hastily stitched together—you know the kind where the taxidermist didn’t get the eyes quite right? That’s me. Sad display in an Embassy trophy case.

But I’m not just for show. My captors use me well.

They assign me daily field trips away from my hamster ball of a prison cell. And the places I’m sent to aren’t on anyone’s list of destinations to see before they die. Most of them necessitate a radiation suit, the complicated sort that comes with an assistant to help with donning. But tours away are a million times better than solitary confinement in a plexiglass bubble, so I go where I’m told, regardless of radioactivity.

Roger brings in my gear today. I think that’s his name. We don’t speak much. He’s terrified of me, plus I’m not the chatty type since I was shot in the chest, betrayed by the girl I fell for, then forced to be an Embassy mule. Christ, I miss cleaning the soft serve machine. There was a routine to it. It was almost therapeutic, my old life. Before I found the Pithos key, my world was a small one where I knew what to expect.

Now I’m acutely aware that my home is only one of tens of thousands of branches in our universe. And it never really was my home. I was planted there as a baby. Here and now in this world, Prime, the only reliable routine I have left is this: putting on a radiation suit and using whatever keystones the Embassy brings me to navigate to other dimensions and play fetch like a good dog.

“Same drop point and package?” I ask Roger as he hands over a familiar metal name tag with a rusted pin. Whoever Gus Fredrickson is, he spent enough time in Lumina 4 for his badge to become a keystone in that world. The drop point is the parking lot of an immense, mostly abandoned industrial lot with skeletal scaffolding clinging to its front brick façade and a utilitarian sign labelling it the Rhenhallen Enrichment Plant. The package is reliably delivered by a crew of three people in rad suits like mine. Every time I go, they hand over an insanely heavy briefcase that makes the dosimeter clipped to my suit squeal loudly within thirty seconds of holding it. The alarm doesn’t stop until I’m back in the hamster ball and a hazmat team shuttles the briefcase away.

It’s probably a power source. I think the Embassy’s got me ferrying literal nuclear fuel rods. Fuckers. Prime’s cities like to keep all their lights on twenty-four-seven. I imagine reliable power generation is an ongoing concern in a world that’s afraid of the dark.

“Same drop point and package,” Roger repeats quietly. Despite the unease in his eyes, we settle into the steps of gearing up with the efficiency of practiced hands.

Check suit for tears or seam damage.

Perform pre-use inspection on self-contained breathing apparatus.

Don cylinder over-the-head before putting on mask.

Tighten straps by pulling backwards.

Seal check and turn on air supply.

Attach keystone to wrist lanyard.

Left foot into boot and then right.

Hood over head and hands into attached gloves.

Hold up hood while aide secures side zipper and closes cover flap.

“Thank you,” I say loudly when we’re done because the facepiece muffles my voice. I’m not sure why I say it every single time, like I’m gunning for the title of most genteel prisoner. Mostly, I’m trying to ease the anxiety on Roger’s face as he raps on the curved plexiglass wall behind him prompting my jailers to roll the walls upward and expose the exit port.

His eyes are wide when he nods back at me, and he nearly cracks his head on the threshold of the opening as he backs out. Not for the first time, I wonder what it looks like when I blip. Cameras on tripods outside the hamster ball capture my departure from every angle, but I’ve never seen it. Something about it scares the shit out of Roger. Or something about me does. Maybe the residual radiation? The docs pump me full of counterrad meds every time I return from Lumina 4, but I can’t help but wonder, if they ever let it get dark in here, would I see the glow of my bones through my skin? The Embassy wouldn’t let me die, right? I’m their back door weapon in an alien war they’ve been mired in for centuries. I can ferry invaluable resources from inaccessible worlds like no-one else can. I can move goods without opening dimensional bridges that might let the enemy reach Prime, and I can do it almost instantly. Good little mule.

The Embassy wouldn’t let me die.

Right?

The inlet valve on my mask flutters as I take a deep breath of compressed air and close my eyes.

“Please stand on the mark, Mr. Enril.” A woman’s voice crackles over the intercom.

My eyes open and a joyless smile tugs at my lips, obscured by the mask. I know damned well I’m supposed to center myself on the X taped onto the acrylic floor before I blip but have no urge to appease the faceless announcer like I did Roger. Roger’s different. He climbs into my prison ball and helps me prepare for every day even though he looks like he’d rather be stomping barefoot on Lego bricks. Whoever stands in front of the microphone, examining me on the control-room screens, they’re as faceless and cowardly as the Embassy itself. The only thing they’ve ever done is stick me full of IDOCS (intravenous dynamic organic capillary system). Picture it with me: IV tubes that are actual living parasites. Yeah, they’re way worse than you’re imagining. Like something nasty you’d whip out of a sand hole at a beach, but these are hardwired to slither into every orifice you have.) And the IDOCS aren’t the only humiliation I suffer. I’m missing fingernails courtesy of an Embassy interrogator. And sometimes—usually when I’m being a disobedient little shit—the control-room operator drops the oxygen levels in here until I pass out. I get back at them by playing stupid as often as possible.

Maybe it’s not playing anymore. I wonder how many brain cells I lose each time they cut off my air supply.

The suit’s attached gloves are bulky, but I manage to raise a hand and flip the overhead camera the bird before shuffling to my designated spot. Then, I wriggle my right hand out of the glove and grip the name tag on the wrist lanyard. I’ve got my observers convinced that to blip to another dimension, I need an object from that place to act as a keystone, something to help me find my way. When I first started disappearing to other planes, it was the truth. I couldn’t focus enough to jump without a navigational crutch. But I’m practiced enough now that I only need keystones to travel somewhere I’ve never been. And this pilot project of the Embassy’s that has me nabbing resources they can’t procure through traditional means is helpfully providing me with a whole catalogue of worlds I can now blip to without needing a keystone at all. I don’t have the endurance to stay in any of those worlds yet, but I’m working on it. Let’s keep that between us though, yeah? It’s one of the only secrets I have left.

The suit crinkles as my shoulders go slack. I rub my thumb over the back of the name tag, the rusty pin and latch, and I wonder who Gus Fredrickson was, if the military killed him to bring me this. Sinking into the grooves of the letters stamped into the tag, I picture the Lumina 4 site, a parking lot with weeds punching through the crumbling asphalt. The massive low-slung industrial building with its banks of clouded windows recedes for miles into the distance like a mirage in a mirror. Sun-bleached cars with flat tires melt into pavement peppered with broken glass. Wild dogs thread between the shards with cautious, hungry gazes.

My breath hangs in my throat, cold, and dry. The hamster ball wobbles, like I’m watching it from underwater. Then, I’m outside in the parking lot and it’s sunrise. Cold, damp air fogs up the lens on my suit. Red light limns the edges of haphazardly parked vehicles. I’m standing in a spray-painted circle that’s kept clear for my arrival. My own personal landing pad. Broken glass crunches under boots as three workers in orange rad suits clomp toward me. The closest one holds a briefcase.

In this lighting, they look like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie.

Just another day on the job.

The guy holding the package has watery blue eyes that remind me of my dad. He uses both hands to hold the case out to me. But he doesn’t let go when I grab on. Instead, his gaze pins to mine with a desperation that bleeds through all the layers of his protective suit.

“Problem?” I ask.

“Embassy pricks promised to extract us months ago. Months.”

“I’m just the mule.” I shrug, but the suit doesn’t convey the movement well. The dosimeter clipped to my chest starts pinging urgently.

Still clinging to the case, the guy raises his voice over the alarm. “We’re coming back with you.”

A second man holds a steak knife in his gloved hand. Worker number three, a woman, bends over and scoops up a big shard of glass from the pavement.

Well shit. Not just another day on the job. My breathing comes faster, like bellows between my ears. The SCBA regulator is loud enough that everyone can hear it. “Alright.” I swallow, gripping the briefcase handle hard enough to pinch my fingers. “Small problem with that. We’ll have to take our gloves off. I’ve got to be touching something with bare skin to move it.”

It’s an impulsive lie and they call me on it. “Bullshit,” Knife Guy barks. “You move the goods all the time with gloves on.” He nods to the briefcase.

“That only works with inanimate shit,” I insist. “For people, it’s got to be direct contact. I’ll take you, but we have to do it gloves off.” I’m making this up as I go. Honestly, I haven’t got a clue what it takes to blip with human cargo in tow. In all the months I’ve been trapped in the hamster ball—has it been months, or longer than that? I don’t know. Point is, I’ve never done it. Moved people. The Embassy only uses me to retrieve items it considers invaluable, and human life is nowhere near the top of that list.

My dosimeter’s pinging crescendos into a loud continuous screech. I don’t have a lot of time. It’s not just the radiation. Something else will find me here if I stay too long, and I’d rather return to the hamster ball on my terms, not the-near-death experience alternative the darkness offers.

The workers have detachable gloves with quick connect gaskets. My rig doesn’t. “Listen.” I let go of the briefcase to show them I’m serious, then I glance at the steak knife. “My suit’s all one piece. Put the knife down, slide it over, and I’ll cut off one of my gloves. You each take one of yours off and we’re set, but we’ve got to do it fast if we want to keep exposure down, yeah?”

Knife Guy snorts. “Exposure? Talk to me about exposure once your hair falls out, your balls shrivel up, and your teeth turn to chalk. I’m not giving you the knife, Embassy rat.”

“Shut up, Gregory.” The woman with the glass shard shoulders past him and presses the broken piece into my hand. “Will this work?”

“Let’s find out,” I say. I have absolutely no intention of finding out, but I smile enough to make my eyes crinkle so she can tell through the facepiece that I’m harmless. Her gaze drops as she flicks the quick release on her glove’s wrist gasket. The guy with the briefcase sets it down to free up his hands so he can deglove too.

I don’t hesitate. As soon as their attention is off me, I dive between them, snatch up the case, and blip back to the hamster ball, leaving three howling workers in my wake.

Seed: Book Three of the Dark Walker Series by Shelly Campbell

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