FRESH KILLS: Bonus Chapter!

I am so shocked by the warm reception of my newest project, FRESH KILLS. While this project is still on submission (meaning, we're still shopping for the perfect publishing home for this book!), my mailing list has grown significantly, and I know many of you are itching to read. As a thank you for all of your support, I wanted to share a bonus chapter of FRESH KILLS.

So please enjoy chapter three, and I hope to have more to share soon 👀 If you're not subscribed already, please do sign up for my newsletter. You'll be the first to know about publication updates, ARCs, and bonus content!

Without further ado, please enjoy a bonus chapter of my forthcoming YA dystopian thriller, FRESH KILLS.

CHAPTER 3

The van rolls under a massive PARK PANGEA arch before approaching a twenty-foot solid black gate. Just above it, a metal arch reads “Southgate”. We stop for a second before the doors lurch, slowly revealing a long dirt path that eventually disappears into the jagged mountains in the distance. The park really is right at the foot of Drakensberg. The sight of the mountains loosens the tightness in my chest, but only a little.

My stomach twists up instead. All I can do is imagine what’s happening to Lacey right now. I gotta call Dr. Sawyer as soon as we get settled. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans, and I notice Phoebe’s got this blank stare in her eye as her gaze shifts over the mountain range. Her hand is shaking, lingering just over her cross-body.

“Phoebe?” I ask. “Are you good?”

Not that I care. She just looks like she’s possessed or something.

She blinks a few times. Probably expelling the demon. “Of course I am. I just thought I forgot my blush.”

       I roll my eyes. “You don’t need blush, we’re going to be on a game drive for the first week. Did you read the itinerary?”

       She rolls her eyes at me. “Yes, I read the itinerary, Erica. I can still look presentable.”

       Conway laughs, and I can’t help but snicker at her reaction as the van takes a left turn, approaching a large, clay building with a faux straw roof. It’s only made to look like a rondavel, the huts you usually see in rural areas here. But it’s too big, and it looks like it has automatic doors. Leaves it looking more like a caricature than anything.

       When we pull in front of the main doors of the strange building, the AI shuttle voice says, “Please leave your belongings on the shuttle and exit left.”

       We pile out of the van. There are no rail tracks here. I wonder when we transitioned from the railway back to normal terrain. The shuttle sports tires now, like any other bus. They must fold up underneath it so that it can traverse both the ground and the railway. Genius.

       Everyone is quiet, and I follow their gazes. They’re taking in the landscape. It is amazing; sprawling mountains, so close it feels like I could reach out and graze my fingertips across the tops. The vibrant valleys below are dotted with cloud shadows. From up here, we can see a good portion of what I think is the park. There’s a vast, dry savannah at the entrance, but eventually, it breaks into grassland and then, as it approaches the mountain bases, jungle. It seems unnatural to see so many biomes in such a tiny space.

       The Drakensberg is so big, and for a fleeting moment, those jagged peaks remind me that I’m not big. I’m small, and my problems could be small too.

       But they’re not. My stomach tangles up again and I return my attention to the building. I was right about the doors; they’re sleek, blacked out, and made of glass. As we approach, a woman steps out.

It’s her. Dr. Tahira Puja.

       She’s beautiful, just like her pictures. Long, dark hair falls in perfect barrel curls, her brown skin is smooth and buttery; big, white teeth glisten between her lips.

       “Ah! The rest of my Lucky Seven! Welcome to Quarantine,” she sings.

       Even as she speaks, I feel like I can see the giant gears turning in her giant brain. I want to ask her a million questions, and I don’t even know where to start. We all smile at her, but we must be a bit awestruck because none of us speak for a second.

       “Quarantine is the safe part of the park. I want you to remember that,” she says, her tone becoming slightly more serious. “The animals roam here, not us.”

       I swallow hard, glancing back at the park. No fences. No enclosures.

       “Nice to meet you, Dr. Puja,” Phoebe says eagerly. I feel immediate second hand embarrassment. “I’m so excited to learn from you this summer.”

       Puja shakes her hand, but diverts her attention to the rest of the group quickly. I try not to snicker. “Are we ready to see where the magic happens?”

       We eagerly follow her through the screen-printed doors that read “GENESIS II”.

       “Why is it called Genesis II?” Xavier asks. “What happened to Genesis I?”

       Dr. Puja laughs. “We got an upgrade, silly! Genesis I is deeper in the park, but we don’t use it anymore.”

The inside is pitch black except for the floor. I can’t tell if there are walls or ceilings anywhere at all. It’s like we just stepped into a void with only a narrow tile floor to walk on, lit by tiny buzzing bulbs every couple of feet.

        “It’s a bit disorienting, I know,” Dr. Puja starts as we step into the Genesis building, clearly sensing our apprehension.

       “What is this?” Conway asks, peering up above us as if it’ll change the fact that there seems to be no ceiling.

       Dr. Puja laughs, looking at us over her shoulder. “Vantablack.”

       “It’s a shade of black so black that it absorbs light completely, right?” Phoebe asks. “I saw it on Instagram.”

       There’s a smile in Puja’s voice when she replies. “Not quite. Vantablack isn’t a color. It’s a material. The darkest material on earth. It’s made of carbon nanotubes, which absorb 99.9% of visible light.”

       “What’s the point of it?” I ask.

       “We’re working with very delicate, old DNA and organic materials inside the Genesis lab. We can’t have any unmonitored sunlight getting in.”

       “Is this supposed to be like a double entendre?” Dr. Puja is quiet, so I continue. “I mean, that Vantablack logo is on everything.”

       “Ah, yes. Vantablack is the name of one of our early backers. They funded the new Genesis lab and, quite honestly, most of the park. But no, it just happens to be the best material for the job.” Puja winks at me.

       “My P.I. tried to look into them,” Phoebe whispers to Xav.

       “And?” he asks.

       “Nothing,” she says.

       Xav doesn’t reply.

       Finally, I get an indication that we’re nearing the end of the hallway. There’s a little round light floating just ahead of us.

       Dr. Puja stops at the light, pulling a badge from her belt and tapping it against the circle. It beeps before turning green and the wall in front of us slides open, revealing a massive round room. It’s incredibly bright in comparison to The Void. I almost have to squint when we walk in.

       “As you can see, Genesis is a brand-new, state of the art facility,” Dr. Puja says proudly, opening her arms as she turns back toward us.

       “Was this funded by the Thylacine project backers?” Melody asks. She’s not even looking at Dr. Puja. Her eyes can’t seem to settle on any one thing, and I don’t blame her. This place is totally overwhelming.

       “Indeed it was.” Dr. Puja beams.

       “Is it here?” I ask. I know everyone else wants to know.

       Dr. Puja only glances over her shoulder and smiles. The smile is impossible to read. I press my lips together.

       Genesis is a stark contrast to its exterior; designed on the outside to look like a traditional South African house, but there’s nothing traditional about this place at all. The room is bright, but the light is all artificial. The floors are glossy slate tile. The lab is filled with work tables, some cluttered with papers and microscopes, some with computers on them. Genesis is busy; filled with young people in lab coats and goggles, bustling around with pipettes and test tubes.

       But it’s the edges of the room that draw my attention. There are huge glass aquariums filled with bright blue liquid and translucent tubes dangling from the tops.

       “We will do a full tour after the game drive,” Puja tells us, addressing our obvious overwhelmed curiosity.        “But for now, we have a little icebreaker activity planned!”

       Phoebe stiffens, making a face at me. If she don’t like icebreakers, that’s her problem. I got no issue getting to know the other interns. It may well be the first time I meet anyone who didn’t grow up in Willow Lake.

       Somewhere out of the bustle of lab employees, a very tall, stringy looking ginger appears, clad in a dark green button up and khaki cargos. He looks like a cartoon character as he springs out in front of us, half-startling me.

       “Hello, hello!” the ginger says with a clap and all the energy of a thousand suns. “My name is Alex and I’m your program manager this summer! Are you guys ready to dive into our icebreaker activity?”

       Alex is met with resounding, awkward, crawling silence.

       He claps again. “Cool—well, that’s what this is for, right? Let’s head over to the BioSim workbenches!”

       My eyes are on Dr. Puja, who has successfully faded into the background of Alex’s hyperactive introduction. I half expect him to break out in interpretive dance. Puja feathers at the edges of the group and Melody beats me over to her, digging into her bag for a notebook. She starts reading questions off and Puja answers them energetically. That’s alright. I’ll have time to ask her questions later. Conway lingers by me, elbowing the back of my arm.

       “You alright there, Duck Tape?” he asks.

       I press my lips together, trying my hardest not to think of home. I’ll feel guilty if I get wrapped up in things I can’t control. Mama did that all the time, and look how she ended up.

       “Yeah,” I say, keeping my tone even, though my voice tries its hardest to shake.

       “Can’t believe they’re making us do this bullshit,” I overhear Phoebe saying to Xavier.

       “I know, right,” Xavier agrees.

       I peer over my shoulder at them. She looks like she’s trying real hard to earn his favor. He got this silent, kind of judgmental air about him that seems to make people want him to like them. Even I feel it. It makes total sense to me why she’d try to suck up to him.

       “What have you been up to this summer so far?” Conway asks.

       I glance at his wrist, which has a rope bracelet wrapped around it with a little gold pendant. There’s a firm tanline under there. Without thinking, I reach for his wrist, which makes my stomach flutter. I think I feel him jolt under my touch, but I try not to notice.

       “‘R’?” I ask, tapping the pendant. I find myself hoping it’s his mama’s initial or something, but looking at him now, I have a feeling it ain’t. He’s too hot to not have someone back home. It was naive to think otherwise.

       A deep blush immediately rises in his cheeks. “Uh—R is for Rachel.”

       I lift my brows, immediately jumping into self-preservation mode because I let myself hope this insanely gorgeous guy in my internship was actually single. Not that it would’ve mattered. I’m sure nothing would’ve come of it anyhow. He probably flirts with everyone like this.

       “Oh? Is that your girlfriend?” I tease, wiggling my brows at him.

       “We’re not…” he shakes his head, laughing as we turn a corner down the corridor behind Alex. “No. She was. But she’s not…now.”

       I don’t think I buy it. He looks honest, but I still don’t believe him. My eyes linger at his full lips, and I look away. “Really? Do you just wear all your ex girlfriends’ initials then?”

       He swallows, and for a second I wonder if she died or something. His reaction is really stiff. “No, I don’t. It was kind of recent. She moved to China. So.”

China? I lift an eyebrow, looking him up and down. He has on a stark white pair of OnClouds that look like they never been worn.

       “Oh, well, I’m sorry about that,” is all I say in the end. “When did she leave?”

       Conway swallows. “Christmas.”

       He recovers his attitude quickly. “What about you? Got anyone back home?”

       I almost burst out laughing as we follow Alex up a set of metal stairs that lead to a door labeled “BioSim workshop”.

       “That’s funny,” I say, shaking my head.

       Alex scans his badge on the door and it clicks open.

       Conway holds my gaze, pulling me to the side to let Phoebe and Xav, who are giggling their assess off, pass us.

       “Why’s that funny?” he asks, his fingertips grazing the back of my hand as Melody and Dr. Puja enter the room. “You’ve never had a boyfriend before?”

       I blush, brushing past him and into the workshop. “No,” I say. “I haven’t.”

       “I’m sorry, Rikki, but that surprises me,” he says as we approach a set of workbenches at the front of the room.

       “Are you making fun of me?” I ask, my cheeks suddenly feeling hot.

       “No, I just—you’re beautiful. I thought—”

       “Okay, team!” Dr. Puja says, clapping loudly and drawing me out of this conversation just in time.

       My heart’s drumming, and I finally look around us to take in the room. The walls are slate grey and lined with glass aquariums. Each one hums with a little fluorescent light inside of it, but from here, it’s impossible to tell if the tanks are inhabited. Big metal workbenches sit in the middle of the room, situated in rows. Each workbench has a small, half-circle globe protruding from the center. Two other kids are already sitting at a bench when we walk in.

       One is a kind of stocky, olive-skinned guy with dark curly hair, the other a petite Black girl with long mermaid braids. They’re talking quietly, but their heads snap up at Puja’s command.

       “Poppy and Steven arrived earlier today. You’ll all have a chance to get to know each other, don’t you worry,” Dr. Puja announces, making her way to a wooden stool at the front of the room. A big projector shines on the black wall behind her, lit up with shiny drawings of carbon bonds and chemical equations I haven’t learned yet.

       “We’re going to pair you up and get started on this activity, so…” Alex refers to his iPad and starts splitting us up, pointing the groups to our workstations. “Phoebe and Steven,” he says, gesturing to the table at the back of the room.

       Phoebe practically jumps with joy as she heads toward the muscly, brooding guy at the back of the room. I roll my eyes.

       I kind of hope I don’t get stuck with Conway.

       “Conway and Melody,” Puja says, and I let out a tiny breath of relief.

       “Erica, you’re with Poppy,” Puja says, gesturing to Poppy, who gives me a toothy grin and waves.

       As I make my way over to the benches, I peer inside the little globes. They’re actually terrariums. Each one has a different biome inside of it. Conway and Melody have a desert, Phoebe and Steven have an ocean, Xavier, who got paired with Alex, has an alpine mountain biome. Phoebe and Steven immediately start flirting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they just started making out on the table.

       “Hi,” I say to Poppy, sliding into the seat next to her. “Erica Calder. You can call me Rikki.”

       “Poppy Evans,” she says, reaching her hand toward me.

       I shake it.

       “Oooh,” Poppy says, her eyes catching on our terrarium as Alex stands from his workbench and starts talking about himself. “We got a forest. How cool. Look, see that bird?”

       I lean in. I thought the biomes were AI or something, but the closer I look, the more real it looks.

       “Woah,” I say absently.

       “That’s a macaw, I worked exclusively with birds back home, and—” Poppy cuts herself off, seeing now what I’m seeing. She leans even closer. “Wait, what…?” 

       “Ah, I see you’ve all started to notice your simulators aren’t exactly what you’d expect. There are no screens here. These are actual biome simulations—hence the name, BioSims. Not computer programs. True, fully contained biological replicas of our world. Dr. Puja developed these a couple of years ago to simulate weather patterns in a miniature, controlled environment. If you tap your workbench, a screen should light up for you.”

       Me and Poppy stare at each other with pure excitement for a moment before tapping the bench simultaneously. It lights up, becoming a screen itself. Tons of options come to life—sliders to change barometric pressure, temperature, precipitation. There are options for weather, natural disasters, and even climate over a period of time, which you can also change.

       I don’t know how this works. I don’t even think I got the capacity to understand it. I lean down, pressing my chin against the edge of the bench, and the view of the biome changes. I’m on the forest floor now. There are animals. A little deer scurries across a clearing. A sloth disappears into the cover of a nearby tree.        An eagle comes from behind the view, soaring right down the path.

       And I can hear it. Birds calling. The tapping of rain on strong, fresh leaves. The rush of a river nearby.

       “Holy shit,” Poppy says, holding her hands over the glass dome. “I can literally feel the humidity and the breeze.”

       Enthralled, I lean closer and inhale. The smell of wet soil. Around the room, everyone has become totally obsessed with the simulators. Dr. Puja is smiling, arms crossed over her lap, as she soaks up the pleasure of seeing her inventions revered.

       “This is how Park PANGEA started,” Dr. Puja explains. “As you know, our previous work was in Kruger National Park, and while that was all very important, something else became extremely clear to us. Conservation didn’t matter anymore.”

       All of our heads snap up.

       Before anyone says a word, she starts talking again. “It didn’t matter to the people we needed it to matter to.”

       Now it makes sense why she did this. All of this. She needed to get their attention.

       “That’s why you brought the thylacine back,” I say, my voice echoing through the cold room like I’m speaking into a microphone. My cheeks prickle with embarrassment. 

       Dr. Puja nods. “Conservation relies on funding. Awareness. And it’s hard to make people care about something they already have—especially people with the kind of money we need to make a real difference.” For a second, I swear her eyes flash at Phoebe, which draws my brows together. “It’s much easier to miss something when it’s gone. We don’t want to lose our animals before we realize how much we need them. So we got their attention.”

       “Damn right, you did,” Xavier hoots. Everyone laughs, making the room feel a little less sterile.

       “The seed funding from the thylacine was everything we needed to bring PANGEA to life. So, this year, the program will look different than previous cycles you may have seen on social media. I wanted to explain why. And now, I want to show you how.”

       Puja moves toward Poppy and my workbench. Everyone turns to watch her as she stops in front of our table. Conway and Melody get up and stand next to it. Puja lays her hand on our workbench and selects the climate change button. A slider appears. On the left, ice age. On the right, a major global warming event. In the option box, she has “on course” selected.

       “This option just means, if nothing changes course from where we are climate-wise, present day,” she explains before sliding the knob all the way to the right. Poppy and I exchange worried glances as she sets the timing. Five years in twenty seconds.

       And then we watch five years unfold right in front of our eyes.

       The global temperature tracker at the top of the board raises 1° in the first five seconds. Then 2°. It rains less. Heat radiates from the globe. The trees start to sweat, the moisture inside them turning to vapor. The forest turns foggy, and then the trees start to dry out. The buck we’d seen hopping over streams and snacking on vegetation just minutes ago is hardly more than a skeleton with skin merely draped over his bones. 

       My hand flies up to my mouth, eyes flicking to Puja, expecting her to turn it off.

       She doesn’t.

       The global temperature rises by 3°. For a whole three seconds, there’s no rain at all. Then a monsoon.        The trees go all brittle, and the globe starts looking more like a savannah than a rainforest. A jaguar collapses over the bones of the deer, a monkey falls from a tree, bats patter the ground instead of raindrops. Then, the fires.

       Whatever animals are left are hiding.

       The raging fire flares out of the globe, sending me jolting back. The heat from it is real. The fire is real. A little monkey sprints away from the flame. Everyone looks terrified, unsure how different this is from watching a movie or playing a video game. 

       “Please, stop!” Melody cries into her palm.

       I reach for her wrist, squeezing it. “It’s okay. It’s not real.”

       Conway leans toward the table. “Is that true, Dr Puja?” he asks. “Can the animals…feel this?” He swallows hard. “Like, are they real?”

       Puja looks both proud and somber at the same time as she presses a large red button at the top left of the bench. “Of course they’re real. This is our rainforests,” she paces over to the desert biome, replicating the global warming settings there, “our deserts,” she continues to Phoebe’s workbench, “our oceans,” she slides the dial over, and sea creatures boil, pale, and rise to the top. “In five years.”

       By the time she’s done talking, all of the biomes are destroyed. Boiled, charred, and shriveled. I rest my chin on the workstation again as embers crackle over burnt vegetation, the smell of smoke filling my nose and making me cough. Bones litter the charred earth, and I wonder, like Conway did, if they felt any pain.        Her answer was a non-answer. In my heart, I just know they can’t actually feel pain. It’s a simulator.

       Puja intentionally chose not to answer Conway’s question. No one else dared to ask it again, and maybe that was the point. To let us wonder. A few moments of silence ensue, but Puja’s face is even. She’s practiced; waiting for the horror to fall into acceptance, and then, in time, curiosity.

       “So, thus begs the question,” Puja says when everyone’s shoulders have finally relaxed. She floats to the front of the room, more god than woman now. “How do we stop it?” Poppy slowly raises her hand.

Puja laughs. “You don’t need to raise your hands here, guys. We’re equals. Speak your mind.”

       “Well, for example, I’m from Houston and we have one of the highest outputs of greenhouse gasses. A lot of it comes from the ranches, you know. And I think, if we could regulate them, put more pressure on large corporations, big oil, textiles, construction—” Puja is shaking her head, and Poppy stops mid-ramble, confused.

       I bite my lip, thinking hard.

       “Anyone else?”

       “I don’t understand, what else is there?” Steven says. “Other than policy—”

       Puja shakes her head again. “You guys are thinking too small. Think about what we’ve done here. You’ve all worked in veterinary clinics with different specialties—think back to your experiences.”

I think about her thylacine, wondering if it’s more legit than that dire wolf they supposedly brought back to life a few years ago, which was basically just a gene-spliced grey wolf. Everyone is looking around now, like the answer will fall out of the sky and land in our dumb smooth brains.

       “I’ll give you a hint: the ice age. It was warm before, and then the weather drastically changed. How did the animals survive?” Puja prompts.

       “Well, that’s different,” Xav says, shaking his head. “The mammoth took like two-hundred thousand years to turn wooly.”

       Puja’s eyebrow lifts. He’s onto something. Melody is flipping through her notebook like she wrote the answer down somewhere and just can’t remember it. I glance at the BioSim in front of me, pressing the reset button. The whole terrarium falls away, disintegrating into a gelatinous substance before regenerating in a matter of seconds, now in the biome of my choosing. Deciduous forest. I move the slider to the “ice age” side and alter the settings to “best case scenario”, which I assume is what would happen if we cleaned up our act, like, yesterday. For the next 40 seconds, the forest turns to frost. Tiny deer freeze to death, but the ones with longer fur don’t. And then their fur gets even longer. They get bigger. The wolves are fluffier with bigger, longer teeth.

       I glance behind us at the walls, filled with terrariums. Inside them, the miniatures that feed into the BioSims move around with no clue in the world that they’re fractions of animals. 

       It clicks then. I think I know what they’ve been doing here.

       My heart races with the excitement only a lightbulb moment could provide. “What if we could speed up evolution?”

       Puja’s face splits into a smile. “And so we did.”

       Dr. Puja ain’t a woman at all. She’s God.