Broken

Chapter 1-1

Chapter One

Julia Innes pushed away the mound of paperwork on her desk and stood, then went to the window of her office, which overlooked Los Alamos’ main street. It was a bright early fall day, the sky blue, a few puffy white clouds scudding by. The slender aspen trees in the planters spaced along the sidewalk were just beginning to turn gold.

Looking at the trees and their reminder of the turn of the seasons, she realized that the Dying had struck exactly one year ago. September twenty-sixth. The world had been upended, and the few survivors of that hideous plague were still trying to put the pieces back together. Whether they’d been entirely successful or not, she wasn’t sure.

Oh, they’d definitely made progress. The residents of Los Alamos had been thrilled to have her in charge. Or maybe they’d just been so glad to have Margolis gone that they didn’t care who else led them. And bringing Miles Odekirk, their resident genius, back with her to this stronghold of the Immune had also helped. After all, it was Miles’s devices that had ensured their ongoing protection from the rampaging djinn, those otherworldly beings who had been so systematic about purging the world of the few humans the Dying had spared.

Only not all of the djinn sought vengeance and death. Some of them were friends, allies….

She wanted to shut her mind down before it finished that thought, but too late.

Lovers.

Not for her, of course. And she really didn’t want to think about that. She shouldn’t be thinking about that. Hadn’t she already spent the last six months doing whatever she could to drive him out of her mind?

Zahrias al-Harith, leader of the djinn and Chosen community that had first resided in Taos, and then had moved down to Santa Fe at the orders of the djinn elders, whose word seemed to be law…except when it wasn’t. Julia still hadn’t quite figured out the dynamics of djinn society, and she supposed it didn’t really matter. After all, she wasn’t Chosen. She’d never have to deal with any of the elders directly.

But Zahrias was a different matter. She knew how foolish it was to allow him to occupy her thoughts. He’d never given her the slightest encouragement, had never said one word to her that wasn’t neutral and polite and purely business. Never given her even one glance —

No, that wasn’t true. If he truly had been all business all the time, then she would have had much more success in finding a way to push him from her mind. But there had been a look or two, quiet, smoldering, glances that she couldn’t make herself forget. It was those glances that prevented her from allowing herself to put him out of her mind, or at least make herself think of him only as the leader of the community in Santa Fe and nothing more.

Because they still had contact from time to time. True, she’d had no reason to speak to Zahrias directly, but Miles had installed a ham radio in Julia’s office so she could communicate with Jessica Monroe at the house she shared with her djinn lover Jace. The radio also came in handy for the times when Julia needed to speak to Lauren, Zahrias’ assistant. Not that Lauren was going to be assisting him for much longer; she was due any day now, the child she was having with her own djinn partner about to make his or her entrance into the world.

At any rate, Julia was in contact with the Santa Fe group enough to know how they fared — not that there was all that much to report. The world had been quiet for the past six months. Maybe there were still survivors being hunted in other regions, other continents, but she had no way of knowing for sure; the radio remained silent, except for the limited bands the Santa Fe and the Los Alamos communities shared. Sometimes the echo of that emptiness would come to her in the depths of the night, when she couldn’t sleep. What if the small band of survivors here in Los Alamos were truly the only people left alive in the world who weren’t Chosen or djinn?

The thought chilled her. Unfortunately, Julia knew there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. If it weren’t for Miles Odekirk, she and everyone else in Los Alamos would also be dead. But his devices hummed away, keeping all djinn from encroaching on the little mountain town. He and his girlfriend Lindsay had built enough of the innocuous-looking boxes that the community was well-protected. There were even enough extra that foraging parties could take a device with them when they went down into Española, looking for supplies.

Girlfriend. Julia wasn’t sure she even wanted to explore the irony of that situation. Even Miles Odekirk, the weedy, antisocial physicist, had somehow managed to get partnered up, while she was still alone. One of her duties was keeping track of the supplies in Los Alamos, and who got what in exchange for the work vouchers they used instead of money. It hadn’t exactly escaped her attention that Lindsay Adarian, Miles’s girlfriend, had been acquiring a new box of condoms once a month without fail. Julia couldn’t help wondering how they had time to use up so many, considering they seemed to spend most of their time in the lab.

Her phone rang then, and she moved quickly so she could pick it up. Even as she did so, she couldn’t help marveling at this supposed commonplace, that here in this post-apocalyptic world, they still had phones — well, in this building, at least — and electricity and running water.

When she spoke, she made sure she sounded brisk and cool. No way would she ever allow anyone to know that she’d been staring out the window and brooding over her current lovelorn state. “Julia here.”

The caller was Natalie Ortega, the woman who oversaw the town’s radio dispatch system. “Hi, Julia. You said you wanted to know when Sue Nichols went into labor. Brian just called me to let me know they were headed for the medical center.”

“Thanks, Natalie. And Ellen’s been contacted?”

“She’s already at the medical center.”

“Great. Thanks for the update.”

“Absolutely.” Natalie hung up then, and Julia slowly replaced her phone’s handset in the cradle.

Sue and Brian’s child would be the first baby born in Los Alamos after the Dying. Julia knew that people had been quietly pairing up for some time, but no one else had seemed too interested in repopulating the earth; Lindsay and Miles were definitely not the only ones going through boxes of condoms with some regularity. So far Sue’s pregnancy had been completely uneventful, and Ellen O’Donnell, the nurse practitioner who was among the Los Alamos survivors, had said she didn’t anticipate any problems. She’d delivered quite a few babies, and besides, they had the facilities at the town’s medical center to ensure that everything went well. This baby would be born in a clean, modern hospital. No worries at all.

But Julia couldn’t help worrying. If anyone had asked, she would have shrugged and said that she was the appointed leader of the town, so it was her job to worry. But her concern had deeper roots than that. True, everyone here was immune to the djinn-caused plague that had wiped out so much of the world’s population. However, what if the baby wasn’t immune? What if it got sick the moment it emerged into the world?

Borrowing trouble? Maybe. Even so, Julia felt as if she couldn’t stay here in her office and wait patiently for the news, good or bad. She knew Sue’s labor could take hours, and there wasn’t much point in going to the medical facility right away. On the other hand, she also knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate if she didn’t go.

She gathered up her purse and headed out, passing the empty reception desk. With a twinge, she remembered how Jessica Monroe had once sat there, answering the phone, doing the busywork generated by Captain Margolis’ obsessive need for control. But Julia didn’t want anyone manning that desk now. Yes, she had people who worked for her, but she answered her own damn phone, and her assistants had their own offices where they could perform their tasks at their own pace and without being disturbed.

Anyway, Richard Margolis was the last person she wanted to be thinking about right now. She’d been more or less successful in shoving him to the more remote corners of her mind. He was only an unpleasant episode in her past, something not worth dwelling on. The djinn in Santa Fe had him safely locked up. He couldn’t hurt her or anyone else ever again.

The breeze caught at her hair as soon as she headed out into the parking lot, swirling the long, dark gold strands around her. Occasionally she’d thought about cutting it — having her hair so long really wasn’t all that practical — but she hadn’t yet been able to bring herself to bite that particular bullet.

It was just far enough from the municipal center to the medical facility that she drove rather than walked. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot — Ellen’s Subaru, and a big old Blazer that Sue and Brian shared. The couple were among the first of the Los Alamos survivors to pair up; neither of them had been married when the Dying hit, Sue divorced and Brian a bachelor, and so they didn’t have the loss of a significant other to overcome before they felt themselves ready to move on.

Julia also spotted Shawn Gutierrez’s red Chevy pickup, and frowned. Why would he be here?

Former fireman, she reminded herself. He was the only other person in the community with any kind of medical training. It wasn’t too surprising that Ellen would want him here.

His presence would make things awkward, though. For the past few months, he’d been subtly attempting to see if Julia had any kind of interest in getting together with him, even though she hadn’t been exactly encouraging.

And that was completely stupid of her, because Shawn was not only extremely good-looking, but a very nice guy to boot. She should have jumped at the chance to erase the last bits of her attraction to Zahrias. Instead, she’d spend two months politely but consistently shutting him down.

She allowed herself the faintest of sighs as she pushed open the front door to the medical center and went inside. Only a few of the overhead fluorescent lights were on, just enough to see her way to the stairs so she could head up to the obstetrics ward on the second floor. Yes, they had electricity here in Los Alamos, but Miles had drilled into everyone the need for conservation. They relied mostly on solar and wind, and had backup generators for the days when those resources failed them. That meant only turning on the lights they really needed.

The obstetrics ward, on the other hand, was completely lit up, and looked bright and cheerful, with its warm oak-laminate floors and softly painted walls. Julia heard voices coming down the hallway to the left, so she went in that direction and then paused outside the door.

Sue was already in bed, gripping Brian’s hand and panting furiously. Ellen had apparently just finished checking her blood pressure, since she was in the process of taking off the heavy black cuff when Julia peeked in. On the other side of the room, Shawn Gutierrez looked on, although he didn’t seem to be actively involved at the moment.

His eyes met hers, and she made herself gaze steadily back at him and lift her eyebrows. He nodded in reply to her unspoken question, then murmured something to Ellen before stepping out in the hallway to join her.

“How is she?” she murmured.

“Fine,” he replied. “Vitals are good. Contractions are coming about two minutes apart, so we don’t have too long to wait.”

“That seems…fast.” Oh, who was she kidding? She didn’t know jack about childbirth or contractions or any of that stuff. She’d been an only child, and her former fiancé had made damn sure she didn’t have any close friends, so she’d never been around anyone — except in the most casual of circumstances — who’d been pregnant.