23 - VALE

Spring 20, SA 106, 21h49

Gregorian Calendar: April 8

 

 

“You can’t be serious,” Miah says.

“Why not? Afraid you can’t handle it?” Squall waggles a thick finger in his face. I shake my head. Dinner’s been going on for hours and we’re still sitting—more like leaning—at the table as yet more bottles of mead are passed around. I have no conception of the number of people who have come and gone. In the distance, soft strains of what sounds like a trio of guitar, mandolin, and flute float on the air and more than once I’ve been tempted to find who is playing and ask to join them. Although I can pick out a few tunes on the mandolin and can play pretty well on the guitar, I was never as proficient at either of them as I was at the piano. Still, the music tugs at me.

Long ago, in what seems like another age, my dad and I built a guitar from scratch so he could give me yet another physics lesson, this time about acoustics, using something I loved: music. I can feel the wood and the steel strings vibrating across the frets at different frequencies, transforming science into music, merging science and music.We use science to create art, he’d said, and art to reveal science. The strings of an instrument vibrate to certain frequencies to give rise to music just as the strings of quantum theory give rise to bosons and fermions, protons and gravitons, Riemann surfaces and branes and the whole of the universe. I can see his fingers on the old-fashioned lathe, hear the earnestness in his voice, how he wanted me to understand the connection between beauty and nature, art and science. The pinprick of tears bites at my nose. When did everything go wrong? I’ve clearly had too much to drink.

Remy’s been polite all evening, but she and Miah have been doing most of the talking while I’ve been trying to not make her mad again. Soren and Osprey are holding each other up, barely, and it appears Miah has finally gotten over his fear of the food—and the drink. True to his ability to make friends anywhere he goes, he and Squall have already become fast friends.

“No way you can down that bottle faster than me,” Squall pronounces, already far beyond tipsy. I size them both up. Squall is definitely the heavier of the two, but Miah is taller and has always been able to hold his liquor. After his recovery, he’d even taken to drinking that sewage Eli, Firestone and Rhinehouse had been brewing during our short stay at Normandy. The worst tasted of dirty socks with a hint of onion and the best tasted of just plain dirt with notes of old leather and mossy rocks, which, surprisingly, wasn’t half bad.

“What’s the wager?” Miah asks.

“Wager?” Squall quirks his nose in confusion.

“What do I get if I win?”

“Eternal glory and admiration,” Osprey says, slurring her words, her head lolling slightly up against Soren’s shoulder. “And a horse.”

“A horse?” Miah perks up. “Whose horse?”

“His horse,” Osprey responds, nodding vaguely at Squall. “Thas how it works. You win, you get his horse. He wins, he gets yours.” Squall nods very seriously.

I lean across the table to Osprey. Soren eyes me suspiciously, but something’s changed between the two of us—at least he’s not threatening my life every half-second, now, which is a vast improvement.

“Is this what every night is like for you all?” I ask.

Osprey grins. “Oh, no. Not every night.”

“It’s a miracle you all manage to stay out of sight,” I reply, “considering what a racket you make.”

“We have our ways,” Osprey replies, dimples appearing in her cheeks.

“You’re on.” Miah says finally, clapping his hands as everyone around him cheers. Obviously not concerned about the fact that the horse he’s been riding for the last four days is not his to gamble, Miah jumps up when Squall rises. Squall holds his palm up the same way he did to Osprey earlier in the day, and Miah presses his hand against the Outsider’s.

“I’ll be the judge,” Remy pipes up from beside me. She scrambles to her feet and stands next to the two of them with her hand held high over her head. “When I drop my hand, you pull out the corks and drink. Okay?”

“Gorra have a Ou’sider judge, too,” Osprey slurs, using Soren’s head to push herself to her feet, tilting into Remy. “I’m rea-ah-dy.”

“Okay?” Remy looks between the two competitors, both of whom have a bottle in hand. By this point everyone at the table is leaning in or standing to watch the competition.

“Go!” Remy’s hand slices through the air. Squall whips out his knife, digs into the cork and pulls it out with a pop! and starts guzzling while Miah reaches around him and bashes open the bottleneck on a nearby rock to create a wide-mouthed opening. He tilts the bottle back and gulps directly from broken rim, and before Squall is two-thirds done he slams his empty on the table, making dishes jump and cups totter.

“Sayyid wins!” Osprey whoops and Remy hugs Miah as he catches in midair another bottle someone tosses him as a prize.

Miah bows, then takes Squall’s knife, pops out the cork and holds it up in a toast. “To Squall and his horse!”

“To Squall and his horse!” the crowd toasts and laughs. Miah takes a long pull and hands it to his new friend, who does the same, finishing the bottle and slamming it down just as Miah had. Miah’s got a big smile plastered on his face, and when Osprey leans over Soren’s drunken figure and whispers, “I was lyin’ about th’orse,” he doesn’t even notice.

Remy and Osprey take their seats again, but Osprey’s arm stays draped across Soren’s shoulder. She leans into him and their foreheads touch as if they’re co-conspirators plotting some elaborate scheme. Remy glances at them and turns toward me, her eyes dark pools into which I could swim forever without ever needing to come up for air, a place where I could cleanse myself, where I could atone.

“Love at first sight, or what?” she says, the beginnings of a smile plays around her lips.

My heart thuds so loud I wonder if she can hear it, and I look askance at her.

“It wasn’t so long ago you were in his arms.” I say, keeping my voice as neutral and disinterested as possible. Hope, next of kin to fear, wells up, filling me to the brim with a rushing sense of anticipation. Osprey plays absently with Soren’s hair as she stares down the table, eyes unfocused, and he’s propped up on one elbow watching her while his other arm is wrapped around her waist, his thumb tucked into her belt, tracing lazy little circles against her skin.

“Soren and me…” Remy pauses, purses her mouth, and opens it again. “It’s complicated. We love each other—at least,” she lets out a little laugh, “—we do now. But we were never in love. We just figured that out … recently.” She chews the side of her lip and stares straight ahead, avoiding my gaze. I take that as a sign not to push the issue further, even as words bubble up from my throat, threatening to choke me. I swallow hard.

But now she’s leaning closer to me, her gaze coming up to meet mine, and I can smell the sweat on her, the honeyed mead someone sloshed on her skin earlier, can almost taste the sweetness on her lips. And then I notice her brow is knitted, her face shaded with concern.

“Where is Chan-Yu?” she whispers. “No one’s even mentioned his name.” Her words, calm but unnerved, settle me quickly. She’s perfectly coherent, and though her eyes are tired, determination is etched across her face as she looks up at me, worried and tense. She is unable to let go, to forget what brought us here, even at a moment like this. “Do you think he’s still alive?”

“Osprey would have told us if he wasn’t,” I say.

“What if they don’t know?”

“We’ll ask tomorrow. No one’s thinking about politics now.” I nod toward Squall who, now standing behind us, is introducing Miah to another one of the Outsiders. The man greets Miah with a generous embrace, but the expression on his face when he looks at Squall is so tender it splinters my heart. What would it feel like if Remy looked at me like that?

“I guess you’re right.” She chews the side of her lip and stares straight ahead, avoiding my gaze.

“Want to help me kill this?” I ask. I offer her a half-empty bottle next to me with the best smile I can muster. She frowns up at me, though, catching my eye for a half-second before she glances away again, almost as if she’s disappointed. But then, a moment later, she shrugs

“Sure,” she says. She takes the bottle from me and presses it to her lips. Would that I were….

“Ey, Vale!” I turn at the sound of my name. Miah stands a few meters behind us, one arm slung over Squall’s shoulder, who, in turn, is holding hands with the man beside him. “Our hosts insist it’s the guests’ turn to entertain. Soren was going to play something, but he seems to have disappeared.”

I turn around and realize that indeed Soren and Osprey are no longer at the table. A quick glance around confirms they are nowhere in sight. By the way they’ve been clinging to each other all night, it’s not terribly difficult to guess where they’ve gone.

Squall shakes his head and laughs. “Skaarsgard doesn’t know what he’s in for.”

“Now, now, Squall,” Miah says, in a falsely serious voice, “we should allow our friends their modesty, you know….”

“Osprey? Modesty?”

When I finally muster my courage and glance over at Remy, relief floods through me. She’s smiling, too, laughing at Miah and Squall poking fun at Soren and Osprey.

“Your friend speaks highly of your talent, Valerian,” Squall says, in the oddly serious way all Outsiders except Osprey seem to speak. Chan-Yu had it too, I remember, always talking as though he were making a speech. “Come, come, we have played for you all night. The rules of hospitality say it is your turn now.”

My heart starts pounding in my ears. Here? Now? In front of Remy? And yet, even as the fear thuds through my veins, it’s exciting, too. I miss music more than anything else about my old life, and now’s my chance to play something, anything.

“Come on, Vale!” Miah roars.

Remy nudges me and gives me a small smile. “Play nice, Vale,” she says. “We’re diplomats, remember?”

I stare into her amber eyes, my mind flashing through every moment that’s brought us here. How could I forget?

I stand and cross the rough, uneven floor of the cave to where a torch—a real torch, of tar and wood, not like the biolights we use in the Resistance—silhouettes a guitar resting against the rock wall. I pick it up and sling the leather strap over my shoulder, remembering and reveling in how comfortable it feels against my body. My favorite thing about the guitar, unlike the piano, is how you feel every note vibrate, both in your chest and in your hands, your fingers. You feel the music in a whole different way.

I look out at the group and think maybe I could warm up with an old drinking song since we’re half sloshed. I strum a few chords and try to remember the tune and lyrics I’d found in an ancient yellowed songbook in the library at the Academy. I clear my throat and close my eyes to count out the beat and get the rhythm right, and then I launch into what the book said was a song that had been sung in bars for hundreds of years.

 

I've been a wild rover for many's the year

I've spent all me money on whiskey and beer

But now I'm returning with gold in great store

And I never will play the wild rover no more

And it's No, Nay, never,

No, nay never no more

Will I play the wild rover,

No never no more

 

“One more verse is all I remember,” I say. But this time, I’ll call out the lyrics and you sing along.”

 

I went in to an alehouse I used to frequent

And I told the landlady me money was spent

I asked her for credit, she answered me nay

Such a customer as you I can have any day

And it's No, Nay, never,

No, nay never no more

Will I play the wild rover,

No never no more

 

“One more time on the chorus,” Squall hollers. He, his partner, and Miah, sing and sway as others join in, some barely staying on their feet. We end up doing the chorus again and then the group claps and slaps each other on the back. Someone yells, “Give us another!”

I run through a few stanzas from the embarrassingly short list of songs I know how to play, and when I start to pull the guitar strap off my shoulder, someone calls out, “You can’t end a night like this without a love song, now can ya?”

A love song? I rack my brain, but I have no idea what to play. I glance up at Remy and it hits me. The perfect song.

“Okay,” I say to the group, “I’m going to end on another very old song. It’s not a sing along and it doesn’t even have a happy ending, but I’ve always thought it was pretty. So, here goes.”

The crowd is seated now, quiet. Waiting. I clear my throat again. This is a song Remy will know. Her grandfather loved it, and, in a round-about way, he was the one who introduced it to me. I play the first few chords and her eyes light up, a smile spreading across her face.

 

The water is wide, I cannot cross o’er, and neither have I wings to fly.

Build me a boat that can carry two and both shall row, my love and I.

 

I was never much of a singer, and with a few months of rust on my vocal chords, I’m pretty stunned I don’t sound horrible. Remy’s grandfather, a great traveler and collector of stuff from the Old World, had found many of the old recordings and songbooks and had donated them to the Academy library. Remy played an old recording of this tune for me one afternoon when we were first becoming friends—or something more. It was so pretty that after Tai was killed, I taught myself to play it on the guitar, thinking maybe one day I’d be able to play it for Remy and remind her of happier times. Little did I know my chance wouldn’t come until three and a half years later—in a cave in the middle of the Wilds, surrounded by Outsiders, as far away from the Sector, from our old life, as we’d ever been.

 

There is a ship and she sails the sea. She’s loaded deep, as deep can be.

But not so deep as the love I’m in, I know not how I sink or swim.

 

I meet Remy’s eyes, she smiles, and I don’t know how I get through the rest of the song.

 

 

“Drink this,” Osprey places a cup in front of Miah. It’s barely daybreak, and we’re all bleary-eyed—especially him. He stares up at her as she pours another cup and sets it in front of me. There’s a whole spread laid out on the table before us and people are coming and going, eating their breakfasts, laughing and talking before going off to do who knows what. Miah drains his cup, shudders, and holds it up for more.

“What is this?” he asks.

“Water, potassium and ginger root. It’ll help. That mead is probably stronger stuff than what you’re used to.” Miah looks up at her and squints.

“This will cure my hangover?”

“That and some good old grease. Eat some sausage, too.”

“You sure?”

“Worked for Skaarsgard. We’ve been up for a while now.”

Miah rubs his temple and cocks an eyebrow at her.

She looms over him, a challenging stance set in her hips. “You got a problem with that?”

“No,” he holds his hands up. “No problem. No problem at all.”

I manage a laugh even though there’s a steady thrum at the base of my neck and the morning light seems altogether too bright.

“Problems with what?” A tall woman with wide, prominent cheekbones and hair so black it looks like curtains of silk on her shoulders sits down across the table from us. With her is a woman who looks like a more beautiful and softer version of Chan-Yu.

“No matter.” Osprey waves the subject away. “This is Idris and Soo-Sun,” Osprey introduces us and, with a mischievous grin adds, “Make sure you stay on Idris’s good side. She bites.”

“Only when necessary,” Idris says, and I catch a flash of a smile. Osprey laughs and then takes off as quickly as if she really were a bird, launching herself after some faraway prey.

I study Soo-Sun without trying to be obvious, but finally ask, “You look a lot like Chan-Yu. Are you related?” She holds my gaze, her face expressionless. I go on, a bit awkwardly. “We were hoping he would be here. I want to thank him for saving Soren and Remy.” For saving me.

“He is not here,” she says finally, but then falls silent again without answering my question. I take a swig from the cup in front of me and pick at the plate of fruit, sausage, and bread in the middle of the table. The silence is heavy and unwieldy, but I don’t want to be the one to break it. Even Miah can sense it and he picks his head up off the table and watches Soo-Sun.

“We’re all anxious to talk to him,” I finally say.

“We’ve had only one communication from him since that day,” she says, her voice neutral.

“The day he left the Sector?” I ask.

She takes a drink without answering and glances at Idris, who gives her a slight nod. “Yes. Osprey was the last to hear from him. We are almost certain he is not being held by Sector forces.” I sigh with relief, but then catch myself as she continues. “We fear, then, he is dead. Otherwise, he would have returned to us.” Her gaze drifts out toward the horizon. “We are bound to the same goal, and if he has failed, it falls on me to complete it.”

I start to open my mouth, curious and surprised, wondering what she’s talking about. Bound to the same goal? But Soo-Sun’s eyes shift above and behind me, and I turn to see Remy approaching. The openness I saw on her face last night has faded, replaced by the same familiar determination I’ve gotten so used to. But her expression is somehow softer. More open. Maybe.

“Squall says to be in the clearing in the center of camp in fifteen minutes,” she says. “We’ll have a chance to make our case then.” She glances at Soo-Sun and pauses. “Are you related to—”

“Yes,” she cuts her off. “Chan-Yu is my brother.”

“Where—” she starts, but again Soo-Sun interrupts.

“We will talk more of this later. Now it is time to prepare for the gathering.” She stands, touches Idris’s shoulder lightly and leaves the table. Miah and I finish eating, down a few more glasses of ginger water, and follow Remy back to the center of camp. We pass through the maze of small buildings, the bedrolls of people who appear to have slept outside, and families in different phases of food preparation or packing and unpacking traveling gear. The whole encampment seems transitory, like no one actually lives here, but instead it is a giant staging area for people who are constantly in various stages of coming and going.

When we get to the clearing, we meet Squall, Soren, and Osprey and another woman, older, with silvery hair. She’s as tall and lithe as Osprey, for all that she looks to be at several decades older. Woven mats have been placed in a circle around a fire pit in which glowing embers flicker and spark, radiating a comforting warmth. Soo-Sun emerges from the trees on the far side and lowers herself to sit on the mat beside Squall, and Remy, Miah and I do the same, arranging ourselves across the pit from the Outsiders. Squall waits until we are settled to begin.

“I trust you enjoyed your dinner. You are the first guests we’ve welcomed from either the Resistance or the Sector.” I wonder if they’ve had any unwelcome guests, prisoners or captives, and what happened to them. “As you may have already ascertained, we are a transitory lot and we come and go as we please. Right now, I’m afraid we”—he indicates the woman next to him—“are the only Elders here. Although we were reluctant to bring you here, the make-up of your group intrigues us—the son of a former chancellor and a current one, an Alexander, and, of course, Jeremiah Sayyid, whose presence among you is particularly interesting given his family’s history.”

“Me?” Miah and I exchange confused glances. “Are you talking about my dad’s work with the Resistance?”

Squall’s brows knit in confusion. “It is your mother that interests us.”

“My mother?”

Squall looks back and forth between me and Soren. “We thought … does he not know?”

“Does he not know what?” I demand, now as confused as Miah.

Squall turns to Soren. “Do none of you know?”

“Is this about his mother’s death?” Soren asks, his voice low, cautious.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Miah demands. My blood pressure is rising as well. Miah and I weren’t friends when his mother died, but I know it was a traumatic time simply because he’s only mentioned it once to me, and only to tell me that she had, in fact, died. When I tried to press the matter, he politely—but tersely—asked me not to inquire further.

Squall holds his hand up to calm him. “We assumed you left the Sector with Valerian when you discovered the truth. Is this not the case?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Miah’s on his feet now, looming over Squall, the angriest I think I’ve ever seen him. He still hasn’t put back on all the weight he lost from his illness, and with his thick mop of hair and bristling beard, he looks rangy—and not a little dangerous. “I left because Vale told me about his mother, about the SRI attack, and that she had directed Chan-Yu to kill Soren and Remy. Since I’d never been one of her favorite people, I figured she’d come after me if she found out I knew about her crimes and, especially, if she knew my dad was working with the Resistance. But most importantly, I left because my best friend needed me and that’s what best friends do.”

A surge of affection and respect flushes through me. I’ve never been more proud to call someone a friend—a brother. And it doesn’t escape me that Soren must know something about Miah’s mother—something he’s obviously never shared. “Somebody better tell me what my mother has to do with any of this.”

“Why don’t you take a seat and—” Squall starts.

“I’ll take a seat when I fucking want to!” Miah shouts. Soren and I are both on our feet beside him, and Squall’s leapt up as well, his hands out in a conciliatory gesture, even as his eyes narrow dangerously. Miah turns on Soren. “What do you know about this?”

“I’m not sure what I know,” Soren says, apologetic. “I’m sorry, Miah. I should have told you a long time ago, but I never had any proof. When I left, I knew it would be too dangerous to try to contact you. And when you showed up with Vale, I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what, goddamnit?”

“Your mother didn’t die of influenza. I don’t know what she died of, but I think she was in a clinical study run by—” Soren casts a venom-filled glance at me—“the OAC. I think she was used as a lab rat to test … something. I don’t even know what.”

“And just how do you know this?” Miah’s voice is shaking.

“I don’t really know anything. After the lab massacre when…” Soren pauses for a moment, looks down. He blinks a few times and I lean in a little closer—is Soren Skaarsgard crying? His strangely blue eyes shine in the morning light when he looks back up at us. “When Hanna died … I couldn’t let it go.”

Memories once buried rise and flash through my mind: Hanna Lyon, the girl Soren and I used to compete with at piano competitions, a friend of mine until she disappeared into her studies at the SRI and we lost touch. She always had a thing for Soren, but I never knew there was anything going on between them. She was in Tai’s class at the SRI when the gunman came in and blew them all to pieces.

“I didn’t understand what happened or why. So I started looking into the massacre, into your mother’s death, into my parents’ fall from power. It’s all connected, Miah, I’m just not positive how,” Soren breathes, as though the air is being pressed from his lungs. “Your mother died a week before Philip Orleán came to power, of a disease that never existed. Influenza was a cover-up. I think she was the result of a lab study gone wrong. It was part of Philip and Corine’s research, their contingency plan to stop the famine devastating the Farms at the time.”

“What?” Miah turns to me, his face slack, his mouth open, questioning, but what can I say? I couldn’t speak if I tried. I feel compressed, bowed by the weight of adding one more death to the list of those I must atone for. There’s nothing I can say or do to change anything my parents have done, but the idea that they are responsible for Miah’s mother’s death is too much to bear.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper.

“Why would a healthy woman volunteer for a study that could kill her?” Miah protests. “She was perfectly fine, then she was sick, then she was dead. I never even got to hold her hand.” Miah’s broad shoulders are slumped. “They burned her body, wouldn’t even allow me a ceremony.”

“This is why we are interested in her death.” Squall says. “Please, Jeremiah. We will tell you all we know.” Miah sinks back to the ground next to me, and I watch him, hoping beyond hope that this doesn’t change our friendship, that he can forgive me whatever role I’ve played in this. Soren sits next to Osprey, and for the first time in ages, I empathize with him. I can only imagine what it must have cost him to carry this knowledge around without knowing how to share it with his old friend.

Soo-Sun, who has been quiet and calm thus far, finally clears her throat and speaks up.

“My brother Chan-Yu was not the only Outsider to climb high in the ranks of Sector bureaucracy, although he did go further than anyone had before him. We have others, too, who work in the Sector: nurses in the hospitals, assistants in the printing facilities where the MealPaks are produced, Enforcers on the Farms, soldiers in the Defense Forces. When Rachel Sayyid died, the Sector was in a time of turmoil.” She nods at Soren. “Chancellor Cara Skaarsgard was unable to control the crop destruction caused by a mutated virus, and the resulting famine and riots were devastating.”

Remy, sitting almost across from me, looks confused. It occurs to me that Soren may never have told her any of this story, that she might not know anything about the political intricacies of his parents’ fall from grace. A large part of the story is missing even for me—I never did find out what happened to Soren’s parents after they transferred away from the capital.

Soo-Sun continues: “From what we’ve gathered, Corine Orleán began testing possible biological solutions as soon as she was certain her husband would win the Chancellorship. These clinical studies involved modified strains and combinations of various intestinal bacteria. The goal was to modify the way humans absorb calories and nutrients, in order to enable the starving people on the Farms to break down a wider variety of food and to more efficiently turn more of the calories consumed into available energy. A simple idea, in theory, and a noble one. But, as I’m sure you all know, gut bacteria are notoriously fickle. One slight imbalance can upset the whole system. With modified bacteria and new strains introduced to the intestines, the risk is even greater. Some of Corine’s test subjects died during the trials. We believe Rachel Sayyid was one of them. But some lived, and genetic modifications to the DNA of the crops themselves eventually curtailed the disease while steps were taken to modify the chemicals in the MealPaks to prevent further danger to the workers.”

“Ah,” Soren says quietly.

“We believe the biggest difference between the Orleán faction and the Skaarsgard faction was that the Orleáns were willing to use citizens in their clinical trials before all the precautions were taken while the Skaarsgard faction was more cautious. It was a difference of degrees.”

“How do you know all this?” I demand.

Soo-Sun looks at me patiently.

“We know many things, Valerian Orleán, that you would not suspect. We have ways of finding things out that do not always involve stolen passwords and open backdoors.”

I open my mouth to retort and then shut it again, remembering how Chan-Yu had the same way of answering and yet not answering my questions.

“So my mom was a lab rat,” Miah says, his voice thick with grief and anger.

Another debt I have to pay. How many lives do I owe?

As if sensing my unease, Miah turns to me, his brows knitted and jaw clenched. He pokes me in the chest, hard. “Don’t you fucking apologize, Vale. It’s not your fault. Don’t make this whole thing worse by apologizing for something you didn’t do. This isn’t about you. Just let it go.”

Surprised, I nod. But my hands are clenched into fists, and I can’t seem to unfold them.

Squall takes up after Soo-Sun, his words quiet but resonant. “We are interested in your family story, Jeremiah, not only because of your powerful friends, but because of the threat your mother’s death represents. After the clinical trials were concluded and the famine officially ended, research in that direction went dark. We suspect Corine either ordered the research discontinued—or, far more likely, took it up with her own personal research team.”

“She could use it as a weapon,” Soren breathes. Squall and Soo-Sun turn to him in unison. “Bacteria are so easily transmutable,” he says. “If she could isolate one or several of the strains that proved deadly, she could drop it like a bomb on our heads.”

“This is our concern as well,” Squall says impassively.

Remy leans forward, suddenly eager. The steely determination has replaced the confusion from a moment ago.

“So you’re with us, then?” she asks. “You’ll help us?”

The elegant older woman at Squall’s side finally speaks up. She glances at Remy with a hint of disdain in her expression.

“What help would you have us give?” she asks, her voice austere and off-putting.

“This is Chariya,” Osprey says as an introduction. She sounds deferential for the first time since I’ve known her. Reverential, even. “She was a citizen of the Sector, too. Long before the Resistance was born, Chariya left and is now one of our Elders.”

“We need your knowledge, your manpower, your resources,” Remy says, cool as a seasoned diplomat. “We need invisible lines of distribution throughout the Sector, so the Resistance can penetrate the food distribution system and, without the Dieticians’ knowledge, substitute safe, unmodified food for inclusion in the MealPaks. You can help us. You can show us how you move, where you travel, how you get through Sector territory unnoticed. We have the information we need and will soon have the means to produce enough seeds—Old World, unmodified, heirloom seeds—to start a revolution. And with your help, we can grow enough to wean the whole Sector off the modification programs without anyone even knowing.”

“And if we were to help you, what would the Resistance offer us in return?” Chariya asks, her expression immutable.

“What the fuck!” Miah shouts, throwing his arms over his head. “You want to make tit-for-tat bargains while the OAC uses people like lab rats and slaves? You want to sit here and talk contracts and deals knowing Remy’s family was destroyed, my mother was being murdered, Soren’s parents were lobotomized? Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

Miah’s on his feet, and I am too, my hands on his shoulders, trying to calm him, but he’s pushing my hands away and won’t let me speak. But then Chariya stands up in one fluid motion, tall and strong and somehow far more imposing standing than she was sitting. Miah clenches his mouth shut and folds his arms across his chest, glaring at the impassive, fearsome woman before us.

“Before you accuse me of bargaining, cutting deals for lives, or being unsympathetic to the atrocities committed by the Okarian Sector, you should know our story, Jeremiah Sayyid.”

She brushes past us and the other Outsiders in our group are on their feet as well, following her without question. Soren follows Osprey’s every motion, and Miah turns in a huff, his curiosity getting the better of him. In seconds, it’s just me and Remy, and then she meets my eyes.

“So much for diplomacy,” she says, shaking her head as she leaves, brushing so close I can smell the intoxicating woody, earthy scent of her hair.