Page 17 of The Program

My laughter dried up quickly. She wasn’t wrong…

‘Okay, okay. What are we actually looking for?’ she asked, bringing us back around to the task at hand. We really did need to bring back some sustenance for the women at the camp. They would need all the strength they could get.

The problem was, I wouldn’t know if something was edible until I saw it. ‘You’ll know when I know…’

She pursed her lips at me. ‘Well, that’s useful.’

I rounded on her, hands on my hips. ‘Hey! I know I’m smart and all, but I’m not all-knowing. I have no idea what planet we’re on so I have no clue what most of these plants are or if they’re even safe to eat. I’m doing my best, okay?’

Her expression immediately softened when she noted my distress. ‘Okay. You’re right. Let’s just keep looking.’

???

We made it back to the camp with our arms laden with a bland array of nuts (not testicles) and roots wrapped in leaves. I made sure we only picked the items I knew for a fact were safe, leaving behind the ones I was unsure about. Our nanites may give us a boost when it comes to healing illnesses as well as injuries, but I didn’t know how they’d been reprogrammed to allow for the pregnancies. It wasn’t worth the risk.

It wasn’t exactly a feast, but it would be enough to keep every afloat until we could find a safer place to settle down. Then I could hunt actual meat and roast it on a fire.

I carefully placed my leaves on the ground before the women so that the contents didn’t spill into the mud and gestured for them to eat up. Libby followed suit, and we each took one leaf full of the small meal and gobbled them up. I made sure to take less than the others since I’d snuck a few into my mouth while picking them.

‘Is that it?’ the two heavily pregnant women asked simultaneously and derisively.

‘It’s all we could find on short notice,’ Libby snapped back.

‘I’ll take it if you don’t want it,’ the redhead suggested, reaching out as if to grab the leaves from them.

They pulled them close, glaring at us while they shoved handfuls into their mouths.

‘We can hunt for meat when we find some place to settle. For now, it’s this or nothing,’ I told them. They didn’t seem to grasp the fact that we were no longer being fed on a regular basis by other people. We needed to scrounge up our own meals now, and right now this was it.

When everyone finished eating (which didn’t take long, since there wasn’t much to begin with) I watched as they snuggled into their pairs and tried to settle down to sleep on the uncomfortable forest floor. Sure, there were leaves and such that would have normally created enough cushioning on a regularnight, but with the way everything was saturated from the rain it didn’t make for a comfortable resting place. There wasn’t much else to do but try to use each other’s bodies as pillows and our body heat as blankets.

With the makeshift shelter protecting us from the worst of the dribbling rain and the thickly compacted trees working to prevent any severe gusts, I tucked Libby’s smaller frame tightly into my side. She shivered against me so I wrapped myself more securely around her and rubbed her arms, attempting to create more heat with the friction.

‘I’ll stay up tonight,’ I told her. ‘You get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.’

‘But you need rest, too,’ she argued.

‘I’m fine, Libs. Eating helped.'

I felt her brows dip against my collar bone. ‘Did it really? There wasn’t much…’

‘Yes, Libby. I swear I’m fine. I have enough energy to survive the night without sleep,' I gestured to the brand with its steady green shade.

She mulled over my words and studied the tattoo before answering. She knew I wouldn’t lie to her, especially not when it came to our survival. I would never risk her like that, and the ink on my skin provided the extra assurance she needed.

‘Okay…’ the end of the word was mangled by her yawn, and I increased the motion of my hands on her arms to try to speed up the warming process. She hated sleeping in the cold.

It didn’t take long for her to drift off in our embrace. A few of the others were quick to follow, though some stayed up like me. I was the only one who stayed up throughout the whole night, though. The others took turns sleeping and keeping watch.

At one point I felt my legs go numb from sitting still for so long, but I didn’t dare move. The rain stopped, the light dimmed into darkness, and I kept my senses open for any signs of danger. I listened to every rustle of every leaf, every snuffle and squeak of every animal. A few times the padding of larger paws crept closer before turning away again, and I knew we were going to have issues with the predators stalking us if we didn’t find somewhere to settle soon.

One thing was clear as I studied the sleepy women around me, new life growing in their wombs. Whatever planet we were on, this was going to beour home, and we were going to have to learn to live harmoniously and build our own community in order to survive what was to come. We needed safety in numbers because The Program was never going to let us go without a fight.

CHAPTER 6

REECE

My leg bounced as I sat on the thin bed and stared straight ahead at the bland metal walls. The single bulb in the ceiling was dim, but the reflection from the metal was what truly illuminated the room. Sometimes I would try to find shapes in the reflections before settling for speaking to my own as if it were an actual, separate being that could respond. After spending so much time alone in this cell my brain could run away from me. It only took a couple of weeks before I’d started seeing things.

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