I STEPPED OUT INTO THE CHAMBER, WHICH MUST HAVE BEEN THE INTERIOR of the largest ring on the station. The hollow space was curved, walls and ceiling stretching in a cylinder that could have fit my entire house across without scraping off the paint. And it was filled with trees. Trees, bushes, undergrowth; an entire forest seemed to have sprung to life inside this ring. The air was misty, and off in the distance in either direction the ground rose as if up a hill.
High above, set into the ceiling, were bright lights, casting the whole chamber in the rosy-white light of early morning.
A ladybug flitted by my ear and I ducked. In the distance, I heard lowing, as if somewhere in this massive space we could find other animals as well. I looked back to see if my friends had their mouths open in awe, too. Howard was digging with his toe in the dirt to see how deep it went. Eric was hopping from buttressed root to buttressed root, testing out his half-g powers.
Savannah hopped up next to me. “Wow.”
I leaned into her, relieved that someone else realized how wild this was. “Yeah.”
“I mean . . . he kills all those bees . . . and then he makes this?” She shrugged. Now that gravity was working on us again, wisps of her hair that had escaped its ponytail hung down in straggles around her face, and she swiped them away from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I don’t like him at all, but this is impressive.” She turned and called to Anton. “Is this what happens to your Eureka Cove flocks and colonies after their ‘completion dates’ on the island?”
Anton nodded. At least he didn’t kill them, like we’d thought.
“We’re trying to make life sustainable in space. This is merely the first step. We have to see how these species do long-term in confined spaces and under lower gravitational forces than they are used to. Eureka Cove was the first stage. This is stage two.”
“It’s amazing!” said Eric. “It’s like a whole forest!”
Nate bounced lightly on his toes. “I told you this place was amazing. Scary . . . but really awesome, too.”
Anton gazed out over the woods, beaming with pride. “There are fields on the other side, for the farm animals. We can walk down there and see them if you like.”
I looked at him. This was the Anton I’d met at dinner the other night, passionately arguing for the future of the human race. Somehow I’d forgotten that after seeing his warehouse of dead bees and knowing that he’d set out to terrorize people. I still didn’t agree with his tactics. I never would. But somehow, I understood where he was coming from, now that I saw the end goal.
“Has Dani seen this?” I asked.
“She hasn’t been up here since we got this new ring complete,” he said, then frowned. “Actually, she hasn’t come up at all since soon after the rediscovery of Omega City. I suppose it was because she was too busy sabotaging everything we were doing for the benefit of her father.”
I didn’t like the way his tone had turned bitter and mocking.
“Was she allowed?” I asked.
“Of course!” he snapped. “Dani was a senior Shepherd official. She didn’t need anyone’s permission to come—” He stopped, probably remembering how Dani wasn’t even allowed in Omega City.
“You knew Dr. Underberg was sneaking onto this station,” I said. “And Elana was doing everything in her power to keep Dani away from him. Maybe she hasn’t been up here for a year because Elana wouldn’t let her.”
Anton looked pensive. “Dani never said anything. I just thought she’d lost interest . . .” He turned away, looking out into the forest.
“I bet she would have really liked this,” Savannah said to him.
His eyes didn’t lose their faraway glaze, but a hint of a smile crossed his features. “Probably. She always said she never saw a future for us. But this”—he spread his hands—“this is the future I see.”
I stared out at the habitat. Was this where humanity was headed? Giant wheels in space, spreading outward forever?
“Why would Elana want to ruin this?” I asked. “She’s a Shepherd. Isn’t this the whole point of being a Shepherd?”
I hated the Shepherds and I’d never dream of laying a finger on Infinity Base. It was like Omega City itself, a testament to the will of human achievement. This wasn’t a couple of astronauts floating around inside a glorified tin can. This was life. In space.
Anton whirled on me. “What are you talking about?”
I folded my hands defensively. “That’s what she said, back on the ground. That she couldn’t let Dr. Underberg’s data get out, no matter what, even if it cost her Infinity Base.”
She’d said it twice, in fact. Once when we were still underground, hiding outside the biostation while Elana and Dani loaded my unconscious father into a hypothermic torpor pod, and again on the phone, when she thought I was Dani and she was launching my dad into space.
He narrowed his eyes for a moment, as if trying to parse my words, then shook his head. “You must have misunderstood her. Elana has spent years on this project. It’s our group’s crowning achievement. Everything she does for Guidant is so we have the funds to make this possible. The smart courts, her consumer tracking software—”
“Right,” I said. “The ones that invade our privacy and keep tabs on anything we’ve ever bought.”
“It’ll make a billion dollars,” said Anton. “Each of these rings cost a billion dollars. Space isn’t cheap, but everything we do, we do for humanity’s future.”
Elana had said that, too, on the phone. Guidant Technology had paid for Infinity Base. And by protecting Guidant, she could pay for a hundred space stations. But if Dr. Underberg released his data on Guidant’s program hacks, the company would be ruined, and the Shepherds would lose all their income.
I wondered if I should tell Anton that. If I were really a Shepherd—really believed all the things Shepherds had been taught to believe, like Anton and Dani had their whole lives—what would I want?
On one hand, Anton clearly loved this station. And as strange as he was, I had to agree with him on that. I’d never seen anything like Infinity Base. Omega City had been awe-inspiring, but this place was literally out of this world. I couldn’t imagine that he’d ever want to let it get destroyed.
On the other hand, Shepherds were weird. Anton shrugged off killing millions of bees. He didn’t seem to understand why Dani would want to protect her own father. They lied to the whole world and destroyed people’s lives and kidnapped entire families to get what they wanted and it didn’t bother them. If Elana could just make him another space station, maybe he wouldn’t actually care if this one was destroyed.
I wasn’t sure which answer was right, or which one would be playing the game the way we were supposed to. This was probably the type of thing Dad would be better at figuring out.
“How many animals are there in this ring?” Savannah asked, probably to fill the awkward silence.
“I actually have an exact number,” said Anton. He turned to a panel set in the wall and pressed a button, opening it up to reveal a double row of machines.
“Robots!” Eric exclaimed. He hopped down from the root he’d been standing on and bounded over with long leaps.
The ones on the top were flying drones, like the machines we’d seen feeding the sheep at Eureka Cove. The ones on the bottom had six legs and looked more like cat-size tarantulas. As they came online, each detached itself from its charging bay on the wall and fanned out across the space. I ducked when the flying drones buzzed over my head and hopped up on a branch as the spidery ones skittered past me on their way into the forest.
Eric took one look at the spider ones and jumped onto a low tree branch. I didn’t blame him.
“This is a recent project I was really proud of. Each of these drones has specialized programming to care for one species or one creature, depending. They work a bit like a tracking dog. You feed the drone a bit of the animal’s DNA, and it will follow it inside the habitat. It’s an excellent way to keep tabs on the animal—the drone will bring food or medicine as needed, and report back data on its habits or any special needs it might have. We have these guys all over the place, watering plants, checking on the silkworms, all the day-to-day tasks. It helps keep our staff requirements low.”
“Wow,” said Savannah, watching the robots flit here and there among the wildlife. “It’s nice to know you don’t just want to kill animals.”
Anton ignored that. “What I wanted to do was give this technology to wildlife conservationists back home. Imagine if you could track each individual member of an endangered species with a drone. I was especially keen on getting drone protection for species endangered due to poaching, like tigers and rhinos.”
“That’s great!” said Savannah. “Why haven’t you?”
“I will,” he insisted. “It’s just . . . it’s a very expensive project, and there are more immediate commercial uses for the technology at present.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Like the military,” Nate said. We looked at him and he shrugged and hopped clear over a tree root nearly as tall as he was. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes.” Anton did not sound happy about it.
“Ha!” Nate sounded triumphant. “Take that, brain damage!”
“How did you know?” I asked him.
“Because that’s how it works,” Howard answered for him. “That’s how it always works. Scientists invent things, and the military uses it first. Worked with the space program, works with the Shepherds.”
“We already have drones in the military,” I said.
“Yes, but imagine you could train a drone to only shoot people with certain DNA markers,” said Anton. “You could even feed it the DNA of a terrorist and have the drone root them out. Like a robot assassin.”
I went cold all over. “So then all you would need to target someone is to feed it a bit of their DNA?”
Those spidery drones had just gone from vaguely creepy to absolutely terrifying. And the ones flitting about my head were even worse.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry!” Anton called, laughing as I ducked as one buzzed my head. “It’s not like they have guns or anything on them. These are just feeding drones. The worst they can do is drop pellets on you or mist you with antibacterial spray.”
One of the spider drones skittered close to Eric, who punted it into the far wall.
“Hey!” Anton said sharply. “I just finished telling you how expensive they are!”
“What is it with this guy and bugs?” Eric asked.
“These are robots,” said Anton.
Yeah, scary robots that wanted our DNA so they could target us. Creepy. “Can you put them away?” I liked the forest, but I could do without the killer robots from outer space.
Anton rolled his eyes, then turned to the panel in the wall, and all the drones zipped and skittered back into their little pen. “I never understood why people think animals are so cute, but robots are so creepy.”
“I don’t think all your robots are creepy,” Eric said helpfully. “I really liked the waiter at the restaurant that time.” He looked at me and shrugged helplessly.
Well, Dad said we didn’t have to be perfect supporters of every single Shepherd project. And tarantula robots were a perfectly natural thing to fear.
Still, the forest was beautiful. We wandered the full length of the ring, enjoying both the feel of up and down, however slight, and the pretty plants and miniature animals. Alongside the sheep and goats were bunnies, birds, and even lizards. I felt light, and not just because I weighed less than fifty pounds. It was easy to pretend to like the Shepherds in this outer-space park. I wasn’t sure I was even pretending, after a while.
Anton looked down at his wrist, where his digital watch face buzzed and beeped. “That’s odd,” he said. “I’m getting a call from the main chamber. Maybe Dr. Underberg has woken up again.”
He pressed a button on the side of the face. “Hello?”
“Anton.” It was a woman’s voice. Elana’s voice.
I stumbled on my next step and tumbled head over heels into the undergrowth.
“Elana?” Anton’s voice cracked on the words. “What are you doing here? How did you get up here?”
“I took the second shuttle the moment I realized what Dani and those children were up to.”
“You—you should have told me you were coming—”
“Why? Would it have stopped you from betraying me?”
“Betraying you!” He gasped. “We had a plan, yes, but I’ve been talking with our guests, and I think there’s a way—”
“First Dani, now you. And you wonder why I’m here myself?” She sounded more annoyed than truly angry. I recalled what Dani had said about Elana back at the biostation. You don’t get to be the leader of the Shepherds and the head of a multibillion-dollar tech company without making sure that the people who work for you are obeying your orders.
“Elana, what are you doing?” Anton asked.
“I’m taking care of our problem,” she replied. “Once and for all.”