Amarantox Plains
“Run!”
The tiny girl didn’t understand many of the words spoken by the cannibals, but she understood that one.
Above them, a strange flying machine had appeared, its curved metal belly glinting in the desert sun. From the near side, a gush of flame erupted against the hard-packed ground ahead, engulfing shrubs and people alike. Screams, worse than when Brother Eli had been butchered, pierced the desert stillness. Men, women, and children fell in flames.
As the familiar scent of burning flesh filled the air, the girl’s stomach twisted; she’d eaten to survive, but the smell still made her want to cry. Hot embers settled around her, singeing her skin. She fell to her knees.
“Jesus loves me, this I know…” Her song was as dry as the dust she knelt upon, her tears cool upon her heated face.
Blackened cannibals lay scattered across the scorched earth, either screaming in pain or silent in death.
The cone of fire eased as the bird settled to the baked dirt. Several figures emerged from inside the belly of the beast.
She kept singing as they moved toward her.
Angels?
She didn’t know what angels looked like, but these were green. A hazy sunlit halo surrounded the face of one man. When he held out his hand, she thought of her last meal. Then took his hand without hesitation.
CHAPTER ONE
Conversion Laboratory
Haldanian Protectorate
Tula checked the monitor again as the boy’s blood pressure spiked above one eighty. Stress was a normal part of the procedure; he was well within tolerances.
“Okay, Jo Boy. You good. Good.” She looked into his frantic eyes and willed him to be calm. The Cannibal dialects were simple and straightforward, so there was no way to prepare captives for the experience of conversion. But Jo Boy seemed to be a quick learner, and she’d spent the last week and a half building his trust.
She pulled a sweet out of her sheer lab coat pocket, an expensive treat, but one of the best motivators she’d found when it came to teaching new Converts. “Is it okay?” she asked the gene tech.
He nodded his permission and bent back over the screens, his naked, green skin stretched tight over each of his vertebrae.
The equally naked adolescent strapped to the lab table jerked against his confinement. “Ow, ow, ow.”
“I know, it hurts.” She spoke in Cannibal. Time enough for him to learn Haldanian during Integration.
She placed her palm on his shaven head, looking for the telltale hint of yellow in his skin signifying the chloroplasts were taking hold. The jade tint of her own hand would have been vibrant if not for the sickly florescent lighting down in Confinement. She spent far too much time down there.
“Like tattoos. You will be strong.” The only way to convince these Outsiders to accept conversion was to put it in terms they understood. Strength. Survival. They would come to understand later how they were participating in making the world better.
Jo Boy flailed against his bonds, a high-pitched squeal rising from his throat. Tula cringed, remembering her own conversion, the burn of the genetic cocktail coursing through her cells worse than any sunburn.
Showing him the candy, she asked, “Be still?”
He quieted a little as she pressed the sweet into his mouth.
“Sure it won’t bite?” The booming voice from the door behind her startled Tula and her patient alike. “Dr. Macoby, this one has not been cleared for conversion.”
Her gaze darted to the electronic gamma pad next to the tech’s computer before she turned to face her glowering supervisor. The copper strands around his neck matched the beaded hoops at his ears, but the adornments failed to disguise his chartreuse skin. Must be due for another treatment. She didn’t dare say it out loud. Vitus was a true Haldanian, born and bred, but to his shame he suffered from a condition called Ripening. He had to undergo routine gene therapy to fortify his chloroplasts.
“The Board approved his conversion this morning.” She kept her voice firm. Vitus would pounce on any show of weakness.
“Where’s the telomerase acquisition form?” Vitus made clearing new Converts as hard as he possibly could. “And he seems a bit old. Did you get a Verification of Consent?”
“He’s in the early stages of puberty, but still a child by Ordinance three one seven. No need for consent.” Barely. Tula had rushed Jo Boy’s conversion because getting Verification of Consent from an adult within the time allotted in Confinement was nearly impossible. And non-Convert prisoners would be euthanized. “I have the telomerase acquisition form on my gamma pad.”
Vitus snorted. “I’m sure he considers himself quite grown up. Those mongrels start breeding at the first sign of a pubic hair.” He rearranged his necklaces over his own hairless chest and peered down at the quaking Jo Boy. “And if I don’t have the proper forms on my desk, the conversion stops. Now.”
“Sir -” the tech began.
“Don’t be an idiot, Vitus. To stop the procedure now would kill him and waste the resources we’ve already put into him.”
“You’ve put into him. Without permission. And I still think this one needs a Verification of Consent.”
“The Board didn’t think so.”
“The Board know how old he is?”
Tula stood and retrieved her gamma pad. This was an old argument. “He doesn’t even know how old he is. I thought our mission was to bring enlightenment to the Outside. To make the world safe again.”
Vitus shrugged, his earrings swaying. “You can’t trust a convert.”
Tula’s face burned as his gaze lowered to her wrists. A shiny patch of pink scar tissue covering most of her right forearm had not taken the chloroplasts during her childhood conversion, and served as a constant reminder of her roots as an Outsider. By force of will, she met his gaze again. “You look like you could use a little therapy yourself, sir. Jo Boy should be done in another forty minutes if you want to come back.”
An angry flush obliterated what green remained in Vitus’s skin.
The tech turned away to his computer, but she knew he was smirking. No one liked Vitus. It didn’t help that he thought he was too good to allow his own Conversion Team to oversee his treatments.
“I want to see that paperwork before you go home today.” He spun and stalked from the room in a jangle of copper beads.
