Luka and Danna

Luka and Danna, a scene from Dead and Gone,

a work again in progress

Luka touched the blade against his beautiful Danna’s throat and held his breath.

Born outside convention, his mother gave him as much as she could. She gave him the Gathering and Galen, the physician, the teacher. Not his father. She’d not given him any father at all. But Galen delivered him and eased his mother through her last agonies and out of this world.

Danna would not be put through that pain. He would see to that. Nor would he let her suffer her father’s bigotry.

Dr. Porter was insane. What kind of man would kill his own grandchild? No matter how “normal” it might be. There was no reason to believe that this baby would be “less than” in any way. It might tend back toward the norm, yes. But not necessarily anything less than Level I.

Luka measured Level I both mentally and physically. His IQ in the high 130s. He stood a little shorter than the norm for the Martian Colonies, but on a par with Earth-born. Danna was off the charts. She was the product of her father’s research, his amalgamation of the best available genetic material. The result of her father’s ambition. And now she had defied the man.

Luka loved her and she was carrying his child – Luka's child, not the great Dr. Porter’s engineered child.

Kneeling on the bank of a rushing creek, her head bowed, Danna held her dark hair back with her right hand and waited. She had wiped her car’s memory and destroyed her mobile.

Across the creek a green swath of grass defied the late snow. Both held in early morning shadow. The sun glowed against the top of the cliff face rising high above them.

Luka let go his breath. A thin red line followed the blade. The blade so sharp that she felt nothing. He applied pressure to the small cut just below her left ear. A chip, smaller than a grain of rice popped out into his hand. This was the last link between Danna and her father.