Free Breach (The Blood Bargain) by Macaela Reeves

room decorated only with a little desk topped with office supplies and a chair.
    Richard strode into the space, lighting a few of the candles on the desk from his book of matches.
    “I’ve fallen behind on my ag reports, with winter right around the corner this stuff really
    needs to be trued up and filed.  Projections for next year completed, workers assigned for the spring, the whole nine.  I’ve got most of it done, just needs another pair of eyes and my scribbles translated to actual English.”
    “I think I should be able to manage that.”  I was blessed with my mother’s bubbly oversized handwriting.
    “This is your desk.” He pointed to wood table in the small eight by eight space, like it could be anything other than a desk.
    “There are some textbooks on the side there to help you brush up as you are new to agriculture.”
    “Great.  Thanks Richard.”
    “No, thank you for helping me with all this.”
    With a smile and a wave, he left me to it.  The chair squeaked when I pulled it out, but it accepted my weight with surprising comfort.  I’m sure this room used to have a computer and a phone in it, now it was just some paper and a pen.
    I felt weird sitting in that little room.  Being on the wall so long this felt like a cage.  A small windowless cage.  Sure I had candlelight, but that only made it feel more antiquated.  I imagined myself a political prisoner in the sixteen hundreds.  No, a princess locked in a cubical.
    Oh save me handsome prince from these diabolical paperclips!
    Yuck.
    I flipped open the book, delighted to find the first chapter was a history of maize. The Native American Indians used to plant corn before we knew what corn was.  Flipping the page I found colorful pictures detailing the many uses for corn in the pre-outbreak world.  Cereal, oh I remembered the sugary deliciousness, gasoline yep, food, sweeteners the list went on and on. Now it was just food.  Food for us and the animals; we ate the kernels, they ate the husks.  I had to suffer through till Chapter 3 before anything mentioned planting and how it was done.
    Even then most of it was foreign to me; all this talk of cultivation and mulch.
    When I got bored of corn, I pushed the green textbook to the side and grabbed the one documenting the fantastic existence of potatoes, learning more about a spud disease called scab then I ever wanted to know.
    The longer I sat there, the more I felt a rising panic on what I had signed up for.  I wasn’t made to be locked in a box.  I didn’t want to sit on my bum all day and stare at numbers and words.  It all felt so...old world.  If I sat here every day, I’d lose my muscle tone, without my agile reflexes and strength I couldn’t defend myself.  If I couldn't’ defend myself...
    I looked at the picture in the book in front of me, of the smiling wife cooking while children ran about.  That could be me a few years from now; stringy and weak from lack of activity, relying on Cole to defend me and half a dozen children.
    You’re not a suit.  You’re a soldier.
    With Rylie’s words rattling around my brain I shut the book.  Surrendering to the urge to get out of the tiny space, I transferred the figures Richard had given me to the two copies requested and dashed out of the room.
    Richard’s office was around the corner from my own.  Unlike my starkly decorated tiny room, his was overflowing with memorabilia from every pre-outbreak sci fi series you could think of.  If definitely felt a lot homier than mine did.  Perhaps tomorrow I needed to bring in a fern, throw pillow or something.  Hell, even a ‘hang in there kitty’ poster would be better than blank drywall.  I wrapped on the door with my knuckles, although it was already open.
    More of an announcement than permission.
    “Where do I put these?”  I held up the pile in my hands, like there was any question as to what the ‘these’ was.
    Richard rose from his chair and came over to inspect my