Page 1 of Brood
ChapterOne
Four-hundred sixty-five people alive on Level One of the Refuge yesterday.
Four-hundred sixty-three today.
The kitchen crew gets a new report first thing in the morning because we’re responsible for preparing and packaging daily rations for everyone on this level, precisely measured to meet every individual’s caloric and nutritional needs.
A few months ago, I was promoted to head taster, so it’s my job to make meals as appetizing as manufactured protein blocks, tank-raised tilapia, and modified vegetables can taste. This morning, adding raisins and a little sweetener to the breakfast oatmeal was an easy fix, but the protein sandwiches for lunch are a challenge. I’m still working on them three hours into my morning shift.
Bella is getting impatient. She was trained as a nutritionist, and she’s waiting to calculate the portion size so the packagers can get to work.
I take a small bite of my latest effort, trying not to scowl as I chew.
Bella shakes her head. “Cadence, give it up. Protein block will never taste good.”
“I know. But this batch tastes worse than normal.”
“No, it doesn’t.” We’ve had this conversation countless times, and her voice reflects it. “The protein block is made in exactly the same way each time from our reserve of pre-War protein powder and soybeans. The variations in taste are your imagination.”
“I don’t think so.” I swallow back any more arguments since they go nowhere. Bella’s spouse, Trevor, is the head of Provisions. Naturally, he wouldn’t lie about how the protein block is made.
But I’m not wrong. Every batch tastes slightly different.
“We need to finalize the sandwich,” Bella says, bringing me back to the task at hand.
We have only one kind of bread—a dense, dry brown loaf that’s nutritious and easy to produce in large quantities—so there’s no way to improve that. I slice the protein even thinner, separating the slivers with lettuce and tomato and adding an avocado spread of my own creation instead of our standard dressing. I taste the sample mini-sandwich, and it’s a lot better.
Not great, but better.
Bella is in her early forties, but we’ve worked together closely since I started in the kitchen at thirteen. I like her better than anyone but Danny. She rolls her eyes as I chew. “Cadence.”
“Okay. Go with it.” I push the sample toward Bella. It takes effort not to snatch it back to improve it even more.
She groans in exaggerated relief as she works on her tablet. “There’s no space for perfectionists here. People need to eat, whether it tastes good or not.”
“But we’re all happier if it’s tasty. Surely you’ve noticed the difference since I took over from Barry.”
Our previous head taster was a bad-tempered man who knew how to schmooze the council chiefs but was too lazy to put any effort into his job. He always prepared the bare-bones recipes on file, and we ate nothing but nutritional slop until he died of a heart attack.
There have been a lot of heart attacks in the Refuge for a couple of decades now, and it’s not because of poor diet or lack of exercise. It has either infiltrated our genes or is a consequence of spending entire lives in an underground bunker with artificial light and recirculated air.
But better to die in our forties from a heart attack than to live the even shorter, animalistic lives of the ferals who survived on the surface.
Bella glances up and catches me staring at an empty spot in the air, lost in my own thoughts. “Daydreaming about your birthday?”
In three days, I’ll be twenty-one. I can finally have my spousal ceremony and marry Danny. We’ve both consistently passed our monthly physical examinations with high marks, so we’ve been approved as breeders.
“No, I’m not,” I reply to Bella. “But I’ve been waiting to get pregnant all my life. I can’t believe the time is finally here.”
“Don’t expect miracles,” she tells me. “Most breeders don’t manage even one pregnancy. And those who do usually only get lucky once.”
Bella and Trevor had one baby a year after their spousal ceremony and have spent more than twenty years trying and failing to get pregnant again.
Even managing once permanently improves a woman’s status. Babies are getting rarer and rarer, and none of our doctors or geneticists can figure out why.
“I know. But Danny and I are hopeful.”
She shakes her head again, although she’s secretly smiling. “It’s good to be optimistic.”
