Season 1 – Chapter 3

September 24 – 0010 AF (After Fall)

They loaded the core and the data modules in the Highlander and drove.

Emma was in a fitted charcoal dress and low heels, her hair pinned back, a small bag over one shoulder. Thomas is in a dark suit and white shirt. They dressed for the world they were entering.

The Fringe in the morning was already loud. Vendors are setting up, children are cutting between the stalls, a generator is running somewhere behind a corrugated wall, and two men are arguing over something at the edge of the road. Emma watched it through the glass as Thomas drove. She had lived on its edge for ten years. It still surprised her sometimes how much life a broken world could hold.

The checkpoint came into view twenty minutes later. A concrete wall running as far as she could see in both directions, thirty feet high, the gate cut into it wide enough for two trucks side by side. Above it the words “SECURITY CHECKPOINT” in letters a foot tall. The Fringe ran right up to the concrete and stopped.

Thomas slowed into the queue. Three trucks ahead. A cart being hand-inspected to the side. Armed guards at the gate and more inside it.

Emma straightened in her seat.

The guard took Emma’s credentials first. She pressed her thumb to the reader and looked straight at the camera. A pause. Green light. He handed them back without expression and moved to Thomas. Same process. The reader beeped once and the light went green.

The gate opened.

Thomas eased the Highlander through.

Thomas drove and Emma watched the city through the glass.

The streets were wide and clean, the buildings along them maintained and bright, their facades uncracked and painted, windows intact. A restaurant on the corner with tables outside, white cloths on them, people eating lamb and roasted vegetables with actual herbs, wine in glass glasses. A boutique with dresses in the window, fitted and new, colors that hadn’t faded.

Men and women in clean pressed clothes, moving through the city with unhurried ease, spending without calculation. Children fat and laughing, chasing each other between the tables while their parents argued over restaurant reservations and weekend plans.

At several intersections officers in body armor moved in pairs, weapons holstered, visors down. Drones drifted between the buildings in slow deliberate arcs, their cameras rotating.

The abundance and the order so thoroughly woven together that you had to look twice to see where one ended and the other began.

The administration building rose fifteen stories above the center of New Austin, glass and steel maintained and clean against the sky. Thomas pulled into a parking bay on the east side and cut the engine.

They took the cases from the back and walked in through the front entrance.

The lobby was high-ceilinged, had poured concrete floors polished to a shine, exposed steel running the length of the ceiling. A security desk staffed by two men who checked their faces against the system and directed them to the elevators without standing.

The elevator moved so smoothly they barely felt it. It opened on the fifteenth floor onto a wide corridor, the city visible through the glass wall at the far end.

Jonah’s office door stood open at the end of the corridor, the room beyond it visible from where they stepped off the elevator.

Jonah Mercer was at the window when they came in.

Jonah’s office ran the full width of the building’s top floor; the city spread out below three walls of floor-to-ceiling glass. Emma stepped through the door and stopped. Dark wood paneling along the interior wall, a painting above the credenza that had survived the Fall better than most people had. A bar cart in the corner holding bottles she hadn’t seen since before the Fall. The long table at the center with its leather chairs pulled back. The desk is solid and uncluttered; the chair behind it deep leather, dark, and wide, its arms worn smooth from use. That Jonah Mercer had decided what survived and what didn’t and had been right about it every time.

Early forties. Lean. Dark hair cut short, dark trousers, and a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. He turned and his eyes went to the cases first, then to Emma, then to Thomas.

“Emma,” he said. “Thomas.”

He crossed the room and shook hands with both of them, his grip brief and dry, and gestured to the table. The city spread out behind it through the glass, fifteen floors below, ordered and clean in every direction.

Emma set her case on the table. Thomas set his beside it.

Jonah stood across from them with his hands loose at his sides and looked at the cases.

“Walk me through it,” he said.

Emma opened the first case. The core sat in its housing, the processing cluster intact, the damage on the left side visible but clean.

Jonah leaned forward and looked at it without touching it. His face was still. Then something moved behind his eyes and was gone before Emma could name it.

“Command class,” he said.

“Your intel had it as standard,” Emma said.

“My intel was wrong.” He straightened. “Functional?”

“Ran a full diagnostic. Clean across every indicator,” Emma said.

He nodded once and looked at the second case.

Emma opened it. Six modules in their hard tray.

Jonah looked at them for a long moment. His eyes moved across each one, left to right, slow and deliberate. “Intact?”

“Sealed. Undamaged. Exactly as we found them,” Emma said.

He said nothing for a moment.

“I’ll take everything,” he said. He named a price for the core. Fair, above market, no negotiation. Then he named a price for the modules. It was more than Emma would have asked and he said it without hesitation or explanation.

Emma kept her face neutral. “Done,” she said.

Thomas checked his comm. “Credits cleared.”

Jonah walked them to the door himself and shook hands with both of them and closed it behind them.

The elevator opened onto the lobby, and they walked out into the afternoon.

A bar sat half a block from the administration building, its chalkboard catching Emma’s eye as they passed. Aged whiskey. Fresh oysters. A short menu written in careful chalk.

Thomas held the door.

The bartender set two menus on the counter, and Emma didn’t open hers.

“Pappy Van Winkle,” she said. “Two.”

He reached for the top shelf without comment and poured. Emma picked up her glass. Thomas picked up his. They touched them together, and she looked at him over the rim and felt the grin coming before she could stop it.

“Five months,” she said.

“Six,” Thomas said. “If we’re careful.”

“We’re never careful.”

“No,” he said. “We’re not.”

She laughed. Actually laughed, low and genuine, and Thomas smiled, the lines around his eyes deepening, the corners of his mouth lifting, warm and unguarded.

She finished her glass and felt the whiskey move through her, warm and loosening, settling into her shoulders. She set it down and ordered another round.

“Oysters,” she said.

Thomas signaled the bartender without looking away from her.

They came on ice with lemon and a mignonette that had been made that morning. Emma ate the first one and closed her eyes for a second. Cold and briny and clean, the kind of thing that existed purely for pleasure and made no apology for it. She opened her eyes and found Thomas watching her, his eyes warm and unhurried on her face.

“Good?” he said.

“Obscenely,” she said.

She pushed the plate toward him. He ate one, and she watched his face and felt the whiskey and the oysters and the credits and the man beside her in a dark suit settle warmly into her chest.

She ordered another round of whiskey and didn’t think about the Fringe or the facility or what Jonah intended to do with the modules. She thought about the bar and the good whiskey and the score that had paid out beyond anything they’d planned for and Thomas beside her looking at her like nothing else in the room existed.

“There’s a hotel two blocks over,” he said.

Emma looked at him. The whiskey and the oysters had settled warm and liquid through her, and he was sitting beside her in that suit with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his eyes on her, focused and direct; the job was behind them now and nothing between them but the evening. She felt the want move through her, low and insistent, pooling warm and wet between her hips, and she didn’t look away from him.

Thomas reached over and covered her hand with his, his thumb tracing slow along the soft inside of her wrist, and she felt it land low and hot between her thighs. His eyes were dark and full of hunger, a look she knew as well as her own name.

She set her oyster shell down.

“Get the check,” she said.

The hotel was a block and a half from the bar, its lobby clean and quietly expensive, with a desk clerk who processed their credentials without comment and handed Thomas a key card.

The room was on the eighth floor, had a city view, a bathroom with hot water, and a bed dressed in sheets that cost more than anything in their bunker. Emma ran her hand across the linen and felt the weight of it, cool and expensive under her palm.

Thomas closed the door behind them, and Emma turned, and he was already there, his hands at her waist, his mouth finding hers before she’d fully turned around. She kissed him back with everything that had been building since they walked out of Jonah’s office, the credits clearing, the whiskey, the oysters, his thumb on the inside of her wrist, his eyes on her over his glass, her hands going to his jacket, pushing it off his shoulders, and he walked her backward toward the bed without breaking the kiss.

His jacket hit the chair and his hands found the zip at the back of her dress, slow and deliberate, his mouth moving from hers to her jaw and down to her throat. Emma tilted her head back and let him and felt the dress loosen and his hands spread warm across her back, her skin responding to every point of contact.

“You’ve been thinking about this since the elevator,” she said.

“Since the truck,” he said against her throat.

She laughed low and pulled him back up to her mouth.

His shirt came off in her hands, and she took her time with what was underneath, her palms moving across the hard plane of his chest and the old scars she knew by feel, her mouth following until his breath caught and his hands slid into her hair. The power of knowing exactly what she did to him moved through her, warm and certain, pooling low.

She pushed him back onto the expensive sheets and looked at him for a moment, his eyes dark and hungry, his chest rising and falling, completely hers.

She smiled and closed the distance between them.

His hands moved over her, unhurried and deliberate, his thumbs tracing the curve of her hips, his mouth finding the hollow of her throat, the soft skin below her ear, every place he knew made her gasp and staying there until she was flushed and pulling at him with both hands.

She arched into him and pulled him down to her mouth and felt the full weight of him settle against her, warm and solid and exactly what she wanted.

She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him closer, and he gave her what she was asking for, slow at first, his eyes on her face, dark and focused and completely on her, nothing else in the room existing for him in that moment. She held his gaze and let him see all of it, the want and the heat and the specific pleasure of a man who knew her body as well as she knew his.

They found their rhythm together, slow then urgent, the expensive sheets twisted beneath them, the city glittering beyond the curtains, none of it mattering except his hands and his mouth and the low sounds he pulled from her that she would never make anywhere else.

When she came it moved through her in long slow waves, her hands gripping his shoulders, his name on her lips, and he followed her over the edge with his face buried in her throat, his whole body shaking against hers.

They lay tangled in the sheets afterward, her head on his chest, his hand moving slow through her hair, the city quiet beyond the glass.

“Six months,” Emma said.

Thomas laughed, low and real, the sound of it rumbling under her cheek.

She pressed her lips to his chest and smiled.

She turned toward him in the morning light coming through the gap in the curtains, and he was already awake and wanting, and she pressed into it and kissed him slow and unhurried. This time was slower than the night before, quieter, his hands moving over her with a tenderness that made her chest tight, her face tucked against his throat, both of them taking their time because the morning allowed for it.

Afterward, they lay still for a long moment. Then Emma got up and found her dress.

They had breakfast at Margaux, a corner café a block from the hotel, its tables spilling out onto the pavement under a striped awning, the morning sun warm on Emma’s bare shoulders. Real coffee in ceramic cups, thick and dark, properly roasted, the kind that had disappeared from the Fringe before the first year was out. Eggs with herbs. Bread that had come out of an oven that morning, still warm enough to melt the butter. Emma ate slowly and watched the city wake up around them and didn’t want it to end.

Then they drove home.

Hannah was on the back balcony when they came through the airlock, her coffee on the railing, her sketchpad open across her knees, the river visible through the trees a hundred feet below. She looked up when she heard them, took them both in once, and looked back down at her sketchpad.

“Good night?” she said.

“Good night,” Emma said.

Hannah almost smiled and said nothing else.