Free Seed by Rob Ziegler Page A

door. It spread open with a fleshy whisper as they approached. Kassapa turned.
    “She must have told you something. Given you some clue.”
    “No.” Sumedha kept his face blank. His body felt squeezed by the lie. Kassapa’s pupils dilated: recognition.
    “We want the order to come from you,” he said. Sumedha nodded. He breathed, let the emotion flow through him. He did not suppress the tears streaming down his cheeks. Empathy filled his siblings’ faces.
    “Send them, brother,” he said. “Send your advocates.”

CHAPTER 6
    gent Doss!” The knock came loud, persistent, formal. Too fucking early to be anything other than official.
    Doss ignored it. Kept her eyes shut, afraid if she opened them she would see snow. Falling like ash out of the frozen Siberian sky, down through the grated hole in the ceiling to bury her under mute drifts.
    “Agent Doss!”
    “Shit.” She opened her eyes.
    Her rack, like all apartments in Sec Serv lower-echelon personnel housing, was roughly the size of a footlocker. A sink, hot plate, wardrobe. She stretched the half-pace to the shower/toilette combo, swiveled the toilette from its hole in the wall, vomited a long string of bile. Thus began her morning routine.
    The knock grew insistent.
    “I do not fucking hear you,” she yelled at the door.
    Next in her routine: get up, stretch, hydrate. A quart of water. It took twelve seconds to make the bed—she counted off in her head. Anything under fifteen was acceptable. Finish by bouncing a 2038 Georgia quarter off the spread up into her inverted palm. She held the coin in her fist, inspecting perfectly clipped nails.
    Her father had seemed gigantic the day he’d given Doss the quarter. It was her first clear memory of him. An olive duffle slung over shoulders wide as a wagon yoke, heat shimmers rising off the Fort Stewart tarmac behind him. The end of a long tour in Saud. He’d grinned spectacularly in the roar of a four-prop angling for takeoff. Leaned down to press the coin into her tiny hand, his fingernails perfectly filed half moons. It was fate, he’d said, that a Chinese officer from across the world would end up with an old coin in his pocket from the very state where Sienna Doss was born. Fate that Doss’ father should take it back and give it to her. Doss had watched her face reflected in the sheen of his boots.
    “Agent fucking Doss!” Again, they pounded the door. They were definitely going to fuck her routine. “Agents Fiorivani and Dumont.” Sec Serv then, but Doss had never heard of either of them. “We have orders to take you to the capitol.”
    “Fuck off!”
    “Negative. Fucking off is definitely not within our mission parameters. Open the door.”
    “I have three more days of mandatory leave. Your mission parameters include a definition of the word ‘mandatory’? I’ve already passed my psych evals.”
    “I have been fully briefed on the meaning of the word ‘mandatory,’” the voice called. “It means you get your ass up, get functional and come with us. Now.”
    “Do me the favor, guys. Agent to agent?”
    A pause. Then more knocking.
    “Fuck, alright! Give me ten.”
    “You got five. And you’re dining with sharks, so get tight.”
    She got herself Sec Serv tight: navy slacks, white blouse, Kevlar blazer, black boots polished clean as onyx, hair pulled into a severe ponytail. Carbon fiber .45 holstered at the small of her back. She opened the door.
    Two agents in Sec Serv civvies stood in the narrow cinderblock hallway. White teeth split the coffee face of one agent as he looked Doss up and down.
    “Didn’t know you’d be such a tall drink of tasty.”
    The other agent stepped forward, spoke the statutory Gov greeting: “For the people.” He stood several inches taller than Doss’ six feet. She stared up at crew cut blond hair, crazy green eyes— savage was the first thought to enter her mind. “I’m Fiorivani. That’s Dumont.”
    “For the people,” Doss said. She took in