The Deep Beneath Read online

  H.A.L.F.

  Book One

  THE DEEP BENEATH

  NATALIE WRIGHT

  A Boadicea Press Book

  Copyright © 2015 by Natalie Wright

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author. For permission or other information, contact the author at: [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales is coincidental.

  For teaching tools and book group discussion questions, please visit the website: http://www.NatalieWrightAuthor.com.

  H.A.L.F., The Makers and associated logos are registered trademarks of Natalie Wright.

  For Pete

  and

  Sarah.

  In loving memory of

  Molly, 1998-2014.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  December, 2014

  As I write this, it has been over four years since I had the idea that would become H.A.L.F.: The Deep Beneath. This book would not be possible without the assistance and support of many people. I am especially grateful to readers. Whether I’ve met you at a festival or comic con, or maybe we’ve interacted on Wattpad or other social media, reader support keeps me writing. Thank you to all who have supported my work.

  While the process of writing is a lone endeavor, book creation requires a team. I am extremely grateful for the fabulously talented people that helped to create the book you hold in your hands. Thank you to Dane at eBookLaunch.com for creating a great cover and “The Makers” logo. Thanks to Deborah Halverson for content editing in 2012 and to Bridget Magee for an early read and encouragement to keep going with the story. Much gratitude to the wonderful Alyssa at Red Adept editing services for her razor-sharp eye for detail and helping me see the story that The Deep Beneath could become. Thanks again to Pauline Nolet for fabulous line editing. You are the best! And thanks to digital formatter extraordinaire Jason Anderson.

  A huge thank you to beta readers Michelle, Tasha, Ian, Shaila and Stephanie. Your comments helped but your brow beating to get it finished helped even more!

  Thank you to Mom, Michelle and Sarah for your continued support of my crazy dream to be an author on my own terms.

  And as always, thank you to J.R.F. for how you love, encourage and support me in immeasurable ways. This one’s for you.

  “[H]istory is not driven by most of us … As a rule, majorities are ruled. It’s the fanatic few, at whom we may laugh one day and cower before the next, who are history’s engine. It’s a minority of single-minded maniacs who can take a holy place and make an unholy mess.”

  – Jeff Wells, blogger for the webzine Rigorous Intuition: What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt Them

  Prologue

  1998, Arizona, U.S.A.

  Lucia lay on the well-worn couch, its cushions drenched with her sweat. Her shirt was hitched up, exposing her swollen belly to the hot air. It was July and storm season. The usually dry air was as pregnant with moisture as Lucia was pregnant with child. The swamp cooler chugged away, trying to lower the temperature, but it gave little relief. Perspiration pooled beneath her breasts heavy with milk. Lucia felt like a stuffed turkey roasting in the oven.

  She rubbed her naked stomach. I hope you don’t plan on stayin’ too much longer. It had been a week since her due date passed with not so much as a quiver of a contraction.

  Though she was hot and uncomfortable, Lucia didn’t have much else to complain about. She’d gone from living on the street to the small apartment on the base that had been her home for more than nine months. The apartment wasn’t fancy, but it was clean and furnished with simple but well-made furniture. Meals were delivered to her door like room service. It was a prescribed diet that tasted a bit like bark bathed in dirt, but it was free, and she didn’t have to cook it. The first thing I’m gonna do when I get this thing out of me is eat a double bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake.

  A nurse visited her daily to take her blood pressure and give her prenatal vitamins. Lucia even got a massage once per week. “It enhances blood flow to the fetus,” the massage therapist had explained.

  But instead of feeling like a pampered princess, Lucia felt like a girl locked in a tower. She’d had no contact with anyone from her former life, such as it was. And the armed guards outside her door reminded her that she was not free to go.

  Lucia had willingly given up ten months of freedom. It was a small price to pay for the promise of what lie ahead for her. Easy street.

  Lucia had never known an easy street. She had been walking on the sidewalk outside the food bank from which she’d come when a black sedan with darkly tinted windows pulled up beside her.

  Instinct told her to walk faster, and she did. But the car kept pace. Lucia knew better than to look behind her. “Keep your eyes forward and never make eye contact,” her friend Melina had told her. Curiosity got the better of Lucia. She looked back at the car.

  There was a clean-cut white guy in a dark suit in the front passenger seat. He rolled down his window. “Do you need money?” he asked.

  “I’m not that kind of girl,” Lucia said. Her threadbare shirt and stained jeans had been hand-me-downs when she’d gotten them. She wore sneakers that were one size too small and no makeup or jewelry. Lucia didn’t carry a purse to steal, and no one would mistake her dirty well-worn clothes as the threads of a streetwalker. So what do they want with me?

  It was nearly evening in the worst part of town. The sidewalks, typically full of people loitering in front of small mom-and-pop stores, were now empty. There was no one around to see it if the men in the car decided to snatch her.

  Lucia broke into a run, wishing there were more people around. She felt the car still stalking her. Her heart hammered away in her chest, and a thin film of sweat covered her back. Lucia’s hands were so sweaty and her arms so shaky that she dropped the bag of groceries that she’d gotten from the food bank. It was all the food she had to get her through to the next week, but she couldn’t worry about that now. All she could think about was putting one foot in front of the other.

  When Lucia got to the crosswalk, the light was red. The man in the car shouted out to her, “It’s not like that. We’ve got honest work for you. A thousand bucks just to sit down and talk about it.”

  Lucia did not turn to look at the man. She caught her breath as she contemplated what to do. Ahead was the way to the makeshift shelter where she and a few others lived. If she got across the street, she could go there. But that also meant leading the men to a dead end and to her street companions. If she turned right and kept running, she may make it to the library. It was still open. There she would be safe. And she may be able to outrun them. They had to wait for the cars in front of them to get through the light. If she stayed … Lucia had never had a thousand dollars all at one time.

  But no one ever approached someone on the street and offered honest work. She turned and looked into the rolled-down window. There were two men with neatly cut hair, wearing dark suits with white shirts and nondescript ties. They didn’t look like drug dealers or pimps. Clean-cut white guys in an impeccably detailed but simple black sedan? They’re either feds or Mormons.

  “A thousand cash now to go to an office and talk to some doctors,” the man said. He flashed a wad of cash at her. “And if they accept you and you accept them, a quarter mil.”

  Lucia’s past jobs had consisted of working at a car wash, cleaning houses and being a bike cou
rier. And at the present moment she was without employment entirely. She didn’t even have a GED. She’d never see that much money if she worked her entire life.

  “You say it’s honest? What kind of honest job pays that much to homeless people?” She tried to look the man in the eyes, but he wore dark sunglasses that kept his eyes and any thoughts they’d betray secret. With the sun now low in the sky, there was no need for such dark glasses. Honest people don’t wear sunglasses in the dark.

  “I assure you, there is nothing illegal involved. We work for the government.” The man flashed a badge, but Lucia couldn’t see it well enough to tell what it said. “It will all be explained at the meeting at our offices. And after hearing about the job, if you decide not to take it, you still get the thousand.”

  Lucia had left her last foster home at fourteen, and now at nineteen, she’d been on the street for close to five years. Her funds had always been measured in tens, not thousands. Lucia thought of what she’d do with that thousand dollars. She’d take Melina out to a steak dinner, and they’d eat until their bellies were nice and fat. And she’d have enough to pay for a GED class and a locker to store her books in.

  Against every instinct and contrary to every rule of the street ever taught to her by Melina and other friends, Lucia got into the backseat of the car. She was alone in the roomy seat that smelled of leather and aftershave and money.

  The meeting turned out to be in a small office in a two-story building on the east side of Tucson. It was well after five, so the receptionist desk at the front was empty. The two men, still wearing their dark glasses, escorted her to a small conference room where an older man and a middle-aged woman sat at a round table.

  They introduced themselves as Dr. Randall and Dr. Sturgis. But they didn’t look like medical doctors to Lucia. The man, Dr. Randall, was nearly the age of a grandfather. He had kindly pale, grey eyes behind thick glasses with black frames. His hair looked like he’d missed a couple of haircut appointments, and his clothes were at least two decades behind the fashion. Dude look’s like he’s straight out of the 1970s.

  Dr. Randall explained that if she qualified, she’d be a surrogate mother. “You will receive a thousand for this meeting today, another five thousand to complete medical testing for fitness. And if you are qualified and if you deliver a live birth, you will receive a quarter million dollars plus a lifetime pension,” he’d said.

  “What’s a pension?” Pension sounded a bit like parole, and if a pension was anything like parole, Lucia was sure she didn’t want a lifetime of it.

  “Pension means that you would get a monthly payment. And lifetime, well, of course, that means for the rest of your life.”

  That sounded a lot better than lifetime parole.

  “Money for the rest of my life? For being a surrogate mother? Me? You’re trippin’,” Lucia had said. Lucia was too busy most days trying to find food and avoiding the dangers of living on the street. She wasn’t about to bring a kid into her world, so she’d never thought much about being a mother.

  “I assure you that I am not trippin’,” Dr. Randall said.

  Dude tryin’ to be cool, but I bet he ain’t never been close to cool.

  “I ain’t exactly mother-of-the-year material, Doc.” They had found her coming out of a food pantry. Lucia hadn’t been to the homeless shelter for a shower in over a week. Her long, black hair was dirty and oily. Her skin was dark enough to hide a lot of the dirt on her, but she knew it was there. They could probably smell her from across the small round conference table. Why me?

  The female doctor with piercing blue eyes spoke. “You are healthy, aren’t you?”

  “I ain’t been to the free clinic in a long time, so I can’t say, but I guess I am.”

  “And you do not smoke, use drugs or drink alcohol?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then you are more fit to birth a child than most women in America,” she said. The woman’s lips pulled back in a thin-lipped grin that revealed a row of perfectly straight, overly white teeth. But the smile did not reach the woman’s steely eyes.

  If Lucia had met only with Dr. Sturgis, she likely would have said no, taken her thousand and run from the place without looking back. There was something about the woman that she didn’t trust.

  But Dr. Randall had reached out his spotted grandfatherly hand, patted hers with it and smiled warmly at her. “It’s a chance for a better life. What do you have to lose?”

  Lucia had no family, no property save for the $9.82 in her pockets, and only a few acquaintances like Melina that she’d met on the street. All she had to lose – all she had to give – was her freedom. Ten months of freedom traded for a life of financial ease. She’d buy a house where she and Melina could live. She’d be able to go to the market and buy enough food that she’d never feel hungry again.

  Lucia pushed herself up from the couch and waddled to the bathroom for a washcloth. She padded to the small kitchen, filled the cloth with ice and lay down again, resting the ice pack on her forehead. The ice brought instant relief from the heat.

  For nearly ten months Lucia tried to find the catch. But the only catch she’d ever found was the requirement of secrecy. She’d signed a paper promising that she’d tell no one anything about the surrogacy. The fine print stated that the penalty for blabbing was life in prison. Once it was all over, she’d be relocated and given a new identity. “Like a witness protection program,” Dr. Randall had said. The secrecy and relocation didn’t bother Lucia. Who was she going to tell? Melina was her only friend, but she’d only known her for a few months. Yeah, Melina would worry for a while, but Melina would forgive her when she showed up with wads of cash. And like she’d argue with being relocated from living in the streets to a place with a ceiling and four walls?

  The doctors had answered every question she’d put before them. All except for one.

  “Who’s the mother and father? I mean, for this kind of money, it must be someone famous, huh? Like will I carry the president’s secret super baby or something?” Lucia had never succeeded at anything, and she had to admit a strange thrill at the idea that she could be a part of something important.

  “Or something.” It was the only answer given.

  Without a straight answer from the doctors, Lucia’s imagination tried to come up with its own answer. She imagined she carried a clone baby made with JFK’s DNA, or maybe a super baby that was part Arnold Schwarzenegger, part Madonna.

  But no matter how many scenarios she worked out in her head, they all felt wrong. For a reason she couldn’t explain other than to say it was a mother’s intuition, Lucia felt sure that the being inside of her wasn’t human. Or at least not entirely human. While the medical doctors that Lucia regularly saw had assured her that the severe morning sickness she’d endured would end when she started her second trimester, the horrid sickness continued, month after month. She’d also suffered horrible stomach cramping that Lucia thought for sure were contractions but which the doctors said weren’t. Lucia felt as though her body was trying to eject the baby out of her. Like it was a foreign object that her body wanted to expel. Lucia knew it was probably silly and irrational, but she was afraid of the baby inside her. Like what is a tiny baby going to do to you, Lucia? Worst it can do is spit up on you, she chastised herself.

  Lucia had taken to referring to the baby as ‘the little monster’. She rubbed her swollen belly again and the being inside her kicked. The little monster kicked hard, or at least it seemed hard to Lucia. She’d never been pregnant before, so she had nothing to compare it to.

  It kicked again, and Lucia drew her hand away. Just a few more days, little monster.

  The ice had helped a bit, but still rivulets of sweat dripped down her sides. The little monster kicked again, but this time straight up into her rib cage. The kick was hard enough to force air from her lungs.

  Lucia thought of the quarter million, and it eased the pain a little. Considering the lifetime pension relieved the discomfort
quite a bit more.

  Though she doubted the being she held inside her was normal, she could not deny the maternal feelings that nature had given her. She had no desire to try to keep the little monster, that was sure. But she didn’t wish it harm either. Whatever it was, she hoped it would be well taken care of.

  With nothing else to do, Lucia had time to think. Maybe too much time. She thought about the ever-present armed guards milling around outside her door. When she first started her job as a surrogate, the guards had been all business and rarely talked to either her or each other. And at first, she thought they were stationed outside her door to protect her and the baby she carried.

  But as the months wore on, they’d loosened up quite a bit. She heard them outside chatting with each other and laughing throughout the day. And they said ‘hello’ and ‘good morning’ to her when they saw her. One day she had moseyed outside to get fresh air, and she hadn’t gone more than ten feet when one of them came after her.

  “Where ya’ going?” he asked.

  “Just taking a walk. Need to get some air and stretch my legs.”

  The guard looked back at the other and shrugged. “I’d like to let you do that, but we’ve got orders to keep you here.”

  She’d thought about continuing her walk anyway to see what he’d do. But he tapped his rifle, and she returned to her apartment. She then knew that the guards weren’t there to keep her safe, but to keep her from running. And with the military component of the whole thing, maybe what she carried inside her was somehow dangerous. And if it was dangerous, what would they do to it?