Down Deep

Chapter Twenty One - Zdana

She felt horrible. Her whole body was stiff and ached. Three days at a terminal fighting to recode the A.I's security, had taken its toll on her. Last night she had finally cracked through the code stopping her and was able to reprogram it. The moment she relaxed, Grant had marched her back to his house, fed her and made her sleep.

As she crawled from Grant's bed she noticed the man was not to be found and the house sounded quiet. A glance at the clock told her it was almost eleven in the morning. Her stomach grumbled reminding her how much she had neglected it the last three days. Grant had been sure she had food, but her focus had been on the A.I and nothing more. Her momma coming in and giving her a good thump on the back of the head was the only thing that had drawn her out of her thoughts. The Deeps woman then glared at Grant and yelled.

'That's how you be do'n it.' Zava then turned from the room and walked out. Grant had given her a sheepish smile as he handed her a bowl of what he called chicken chowder. It had been as good at the chili they tried.

Leaving the bedroom, she was greeted with the smell of something wonderful. Grant was at the stove stirring a steaming pot of something. He smiled as she joined him kissing him. His hand ran down her side warming her insides.

'I thought we weren't breaking into the new rations until the old stuff was gone.' She said looking to the yellow lumps in the pot with red chunks of meat and bits of green things.

'Southwestern eggs.' He explained. 'The old rations are all but gone. The Uptop is apparently pissed about a major shipment of penzite from the mines going missing yesterday from their storage area. On top of them thinking you all murdered me, they decided not to send down the quarterly rations.' Zdana frowned to him confused. 'Stine was looking over your notes about starting up the device. When he saw how much penzite we were going to need, he panicked. We do not have enough left in that deposit, so Orick took a team up and stole back what we already shipped up and a lot extra.' She shook her head wanting to find the two men and slap the stupid out of them.

'Those were long run calculations.' She said annoyed 'They should have come to me and I would have told them what we need. There was no need to risk themselves.'

'Zdana.' Grant pleaded drawing her attention. 'You are only one person. You cannot do this alone. The new council wants to help ease your burden. Running to you with questions every few minutes sort of defeats the purpose.' She shrugged not sure what to say. 'Take a seat and let me feed you. Then we will go and yell at your dad and the mayor.' She did as suggested but grabbed her portable terminal on the way. 'There are no new alerts this morning. It looks like Control has given up on finding the source of the surge.'

'They still have some teams on it.' She sighed activating the terminal. 'They are just not trying too hard to find what caused it. So long as the reactors are stable, they think it was something in the outpost, which makes it not their problem. Lucky for us that most city people are just lazy.'

'Hey!' Grant said indignant. His eyes were full of amusement however.

'You are not a city person.' She told him thoughtfully. The first day she had seen him, he had been panicked and confused, which was normal considering the situation. However, he bounced back faster than any other political prisoner that had been sent to the Fens to die. 'You were more like us when you came down then some who were born here. There were some that came down knowing why they had been betrayed, that did not adapt and simply let themselves die.' Grant blushed before dishing out each of them a good portion. 'What is eggs?' She asked dubious of the strange looking mixture.

'A protein.' Grant replied sitting down. 'Try it. I think you will like it.' She took a fork full into her mouth and was presently surprised. 'You looked happy last night when I force marched you to bed. Did you figure it out?' She nodded.