Free Incubation (The Incubation Trilogy Book 1) by Laura Disilverio

too late. Noticing that two scooters are missing from the docking station, I mount one and zip toward the evergreen orchard. The breeze I’m generating fans my hair. The fields are quiet, empty of workers, and I fancy I can hear the plants growing, inching their way through the loam to the surface, extending their leaves, soaking up the carefully calibrated light. It’s peaceful.
    If only my thoughts were equally peaceful. I glide straight to the far end of the dome where the copse is. The evergreen plot is densely planted with trees that are all over seven feet tall, and is a favorite spot of young lovers trying to find some privacy since the bushy limbs provide a fair amount of cover. They should be called “everpurples,” though because we’ve genetically engineered them to produce deep purple needles that seem to deter the locusts. I wonder if this is where Halla and Loudon got together. Evicting that thought from my brain, I slow and maneuver the scooter between the trees. The light is dimmer here, a natural twilight. I breathe deeply of the pine scent that always relaxes me. It doesn’t work this time. I dismount, prop the scooter against a trunk, and whisper, “Halla? Wyck?”
    “Hey, Ev.” Wyck emerges from between two conifers. His usual insouciance is missing; he’s strung taut with tension.
    Halla steps out from behind him. She hugs me without saying anything and I cling to her for a minute, relieved that we’re okay.
    We sink to our haunches and huddle together. I outline the plan I’ve been working on all afternoon. “Our first priorities are food and water,” I say. “We’ll also need maps, which I can get from the lab’s computer; weapons, if we can find them, for hunting and protection; a tarp or something to use for shelter. We can’t risk taking a train, so we’ll be walking a lot. We can only take what we can carry. Even assuming we can cover twenty miles a day, it’s going to take us three-plus weeks—if we’re damn lucky—to get to Atlanta.” The list seems pitiful, inadequate, naïve.
    Not until this afternoon did I realize how little I know about what exists outside the Kube. Oh, I can label the cantons on a map, list the sites of the last major flu outbreaks and the location of the most recently discovered mass grave with more than six hundred thousand bodies in it, and pinpoint the battleground where the Maddow rebellion against the Pragmatists was put down, but I have only the haziest idea of the topography between here and Atlanta, and even less knowledge of what we’re likely to encounter on our journey. There are outlaws, of course, but I have no idea how many or where. There is wildlife, some of it dangerous. If I had more time to plan I could collect information from the computer under the guise of lab research, but we’re out of time. With Halla’s physical looming tomorrow and discovery of her pregnancy certain, we have to leave tonight.
    “I can get weapons,” Wyck volunteers.
    I don’t ask him how or what. I just nod.
    “I’ve already got some food squirreled away,” Halla says, “and I can take more from the nursery once it’s lights out.”
    “I’ll go to the lab,” I say. “I can get hydropure pills and maps”—I cross my fingers, hoping that’s true—“and maybe some other stuff that will be useful. We’ll need fire starters, for one, containers to drink from and cook in. We should each bring whatever might be helpful for getting food, protection, or shelter, but only what we can carry easily.”
    “We could take the scooters,” Halla says.
    “Unrecharged, they should have a range of a hundred to a hundred fifty miles,” Wyck offers.
    “Good thinking,” I agree. “They might get us a third of the way there.”
    “We’ll have to remove our locators,” Wyck says.
    I’d already realized this, and I nod. In unison, we look at our forearms. There is only one way to dislodge the locators, and it won’t be pleasant. Still, we have no