26

ALORA

FEBRUARY 20, 2147

The moment I reappear in my bedroom, I know something is wrong. My bed is unmade, and the drawer on my desk, which I hid my DataLink in before shifting to Bridger’s room, is open. A quick peek inside reveals my DataLink missing. Oh, God, no, this can’t be happening. Not today, of all freaking days.

I speed outside my room living area. Tara is sitting on the couch. Her mouth parts when she sees me. “Where have you been? Didn’t you hear today that they’ve imposed an earlier curfew on us? Professor Kapoor wilded out when she couldn’t find you.”

Adreneline kicks in. I rush out into the hallway and find Professor Kapoor, Watson Hall’s warden for this week, standing to my left. She’s speaking into her DataLink. I can just make out my DataLink in her other hand.

“What’s going on?”

I look to my right, where Everly is peeking out from her room two doors down from mine. I whisper, “I’m in trouble.”

Understanding dawns on her face. She waves me into her room. “Okay. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I take it you were caught out of your room?”

I nod.

“Did you at least have the sense to leave your DataLink in there?”

Another nod from me.

“Okay, that’s good. Just follow my lead.” She loops her arm through mine and leads me out of her quarters, laughing loudly. I do the same, but it sounds so fake. “Hi, Professor Kapoor,” Everly calls out. “Is it curfew time already?”

Professor Kapoor turns around and fixes me with an intense stare. “Cadet Mason, where have you been?”

“She’s been with me,” Everly says, grinning. “We have a test for Professor March in a few days, and we were studying together. I need all the help I can get.”

The professor advances upon us, holding up my DataLink. “If that’s the case, why did I find this in your room?”

My mouth is dry. So dry I don’t think I can speak. Everly glances at me, her eyebrows raised. I look down, thinking. And then I see a large bruise on my arm from my space bending practice. “I hurt my arm today, and the DataLink was making it worse. I didn’t think it would be a big deal to take it off for a while.”

I hold up the injured arm so Professor Kapoor can inspect it. “That does look bad,” she says. “How did you do that?”

I’m not sure who at the Academy knows that I’m a Dual Talent, so I just stick with a generic answer. “I fell on it in class. Ask Professor March; he was there.”

A long few seconds follow before the professor says, “Next time you decide to visit Cadet Darville’s room, take the DataLink with you. I was in the process of reporting you missing. And try to remember that curfew has been moved up to nine o’clock until further notice.”

“Yes ma’am. I will.”

After Professor Kapoor leaves, Everly follows me into my room. “So where were you, really?”

Tara chimes in, fixing me with a frosty stare. “Yes, Alora. I’d love to know.”

Everly doesn’t know I’m a Dual Talent, so I can’t say that I shifted to Bridger’s room. But maybe I can let her think I somehow found a way to sneak out. “I was meeting up with a friend of mine,” I say. “And I missed the announcement that curfew had been changed.”

She waits for me to say more—and to give her a name, I’m sure—but I really can’t do that. So I feel like the ultimate jerk as I say, “I’m sorry, I can’t say who it is. We’re in a kind of complicated relationship right now.”

Tara tries, unsuccessfully, to smother a snort.

Everly grins and claps her hands together. “Oh, is this an illicit romance? That would be brilliant.”

Through the doorway, Professor Kapoor’s voice drifts in. “Cadet Darville, go back to your room!”

Letting out a loud sigh, Everly starts to retreat. At the doorway, she turns back and says, “I want the full scoop if you ever get to announce the name if this mystery person.”

“You got it,” I say, blushing. “Thank you for helping me out. I owe you one.”

She smirks. “Oh yes, you do.”

As she leaves, I realize how much I’m starting to like Everly. It’s amazing how quickly I’ve been able to trust and count on her as a friend—especially when I remember that, when I first got here, I was too afraid to be around anybody at all.

Then I frown, thinking of Bridger, Zed, and Elijah, and how I’ve come to count on them, too. Maybe I was being too harsh earlier. But I can’t give up on our plans. Just like them, I want to find out what General Anderson is hiding. I’m not going to let fear dictate my every move anymore.

So I need to talk to the one person who could have answers for me. And it has to be tonight.

I stay up with Tara for a little while longer, filling her in on what happened with the guys. Then I excuse myself to go to bed, telling her I’m exhausted.

In my bedroom, I activate the lock on my door, hide my DataLink in my drawer again, and hope like hell that Professor Kapoor doesn’t come back to check on me. The slight weight at my chest reminds me of Bridger’s gift—my Jewill. This is perfect. Remembering from my tutoring lessons how Jewills are activated, I press the black stone for several seconds, only letting it go when I notice a faint shimmer around my body.

Then I close my eyes, visualizing the blonde woman I’d dreamed about all my life—Halla Fairbanks. For years, I had nightmares of her and my mother, along with my father. The scene was always the same—Halla standing over my mother, who was lying in a pool of blood in our apartment. I also dreamed of Dad, with his hands stained in blood. He was forced to leave Mom behind to take me to the past stay with Aunt Grace. The problem is, I didn’t know who the two women were until Vika restored my early childhood memories with a Mind Redeemer the night she tried to murder me.

I concentrate on Halla’s blue eyes, her finely chiseled features.

Before I open my eyes again, I notice a distinct chill in the air—and when I peek, it’s completely dark. Then there’s a sharp sound, like an alarm. A light snaps on, and I find that I’m standing in a small bedroom. Light blue walls, wooden floors, white covers on the full-sized bed—with two people in it. The person on the right is Halla. She’s sitting upright, eyes darting back and forth as she searches the room. She reaches into a small table next to her bed and extracts a silver stunner from it.

“Whoever you are, show yourself immediately. The second I see so much as a hint of your cloak, I’ll shoot,” Halla says, holding the stunner with a shaking hand. As she says this, she scoots closer to the person on the other side of the bed and leans protectively over them.

I take a few steps closer to that person. It’s Vika. Or a clone of Vika, anyway. The last time I saw her, she was completely insane and Bridger had to kill her in order to save me. But right after that someone cloaked appeared and uploaded her consciousness, along with that of Bridger’s father. I have no idea what to think about this version of Vika. Is she also insane?

“I said show yourself!”

That unnerves me. She’s nervous, meaning she’ll fire at anything. So I call out, “I will, but please don’t shoot. I think you know me. I’m Alora Mason.”

Halla presses a button on a DataPad that’s on the bedside table, which seems to deactivate the alarm. Then she cocks her head to the side. “Let me see.”

Hoping she won’t shoot, I press the black stone to deactivate the cloak. I wait for the longest few seconds of my life. I’m not sure what Halla is thinking. Her face is a blank canvas as she studies me, her icy gaze never giving any hint of emotion.

“What is it?” I ask. Her scrutiny is making me way too uncomfortable.

“I’m trying to figure out what’s going on. I knew you were also a Space Bender, like Vika. But how the hell did you get here? Did General Anderson send you?” she asks with a faint trace of anger in her voice. “If he did, then he violated our agreement.”

General Anderson. So he’s definitely in on this—but to what extent? In 2126 he appeared to be against cloning Dual Talents from the past and using them to create more. It would make sense if he was the one responsible for cloning Bridger’s father, but not Vika. So why would he help Halla?

“The general didn’t send me,” I say. “I’m just trying to find out what exactly happened to my dad.”

Halla’s face takes on a bitter expression. “He’s dead.”

“I know, but I’m trying to figure out how General Anderson is involved in all of this. He’s been up to something behind the scenes, and I want to know what. I have the right to know. It’s affected my whole life.”

“Well, that’s not my problem. You need to go now, before you wake Vika. It’s not time for her medication yet, and I don’t want to have to deal with any unpleasantness as a result.”

I have no idea what she means by that, and I don’t really care. “Look, I apologize for breaking in like this, but you’re my last hope. And since you’ve gone to so much trouble to erase every trace of your existence, then you and whoever helped you must be hiding something. So either tell me what I want to know, or I can let the DTA know you’re here. Because it seems obvious to me that General Anderson is the one who helped you.”

I hope she can’t tell that I’m bluffing, because I have no idea where we are. I step closer to the window in the bedroom to peek out, but it’s still too dark.

Halla stares at me hard, then flashes a rueful smile. “You know, you remind me of Vika.” She glances down at her. “The old Vika, anyway.” She scoots out of bed and says, “Come with me. I don’t want to wake her.”

We enter a tiny, open space that doubles as a kitchenette and living area, with only a small blue couch, TeleNet screen, and a table to eat at. Halla leads me to the table.

“What do you want to know?” she asks once we’re seated.

“Why don’t you start with Project Firebird,” I say.

Halla closes her eyes for a moment before asking, “How did you find out about that?”

“I’ve been looking for answers for a while.”

“Right,” she says, now tapping her precisely filed nails on the table. “Well, to start, I was an assistant to the doctor in charge of resurrecting the clones. While I was assigned to the project, I was a part of a team that scoured the past for any indication of natural-born Dual Talents. We had luck finding them occasionally, but they were all Mind and Time Benders or Mind and Space Benders. Nathaniel—your father—was the first Space and Time Bender. Once we uploaded his consciousness, it was also part of my duties to assist in his revival and subsequent training. The former head of the project felt it would be better for the subjects if the same people who were present with them at their revival stayed with them throughout their acclimation to our time.”

I swallow a few times, trying to push the vision of Dad at the moment of his resurrection out of my mind. Trying to forget about his screams.

“Once Nathaniel was conscious, we had to erase his memories of his former life almost immediately. But we also had to let him retain enough to keep him from becoming a Null. We told him those residual memories were just dreams—that his real memories had been lost when he was in a shuttle accident.”

“So you basically took his life away, and gave him a fake one.”

“That’s accurate.” She yawns and pushes back from the table. Reaching into a cabinet behind her, she extracts a small vial filled with a blue liquid and injects it into her neck. “That’s a little boost, since you woke me up early. Would you like some? You look like you’re exhausted, yourself.”

I am exhausted, but I have no idea if she’s telling the truth about the liquid. “No thank you. I just need answers.”

“Of course you do,” she says in a flat voice as she leans against the table. “Okay, so I was at the part where we gave Nathaniel a new life. The DTA wanted to train him to join the military. Our general at the time thought it would be a seamless transition, since he was already a soldier. And it was, until the drug that was keeping him from going insane stopped working.”

“Did they ever come up with some other drug to give him?

“Oh, they tried, but by then he was already suspicious. He stole a Mind Redeemer and managed to recover his memories. That’s when he became a liability.”

“My mom said the same thing. That their relationship was good up until a certain point, then she called it off. I don’t think that went over so well with him,” I say.

“I remember. Of course, we knew when you were born that you had the genetic markers for being a Space and Time Bender. My superiors decided it would be in your best interest for us to leave you alone while you were a baby and toddler, but when you were six they felt it was time to examine you and run a few tests. That’s why I was ordered to bring you in. However, Nathaniel found out, took it the wrong way, and kidnapped you.”

“And we both know the rest,” I say bitterly. “But what about you and my father? Were you two involved before he met my mother?” I feel my face growing hot. I mean, who wants to talk about their own father having a child with another woman?

Halla sits again, now looking amused. “Oh, no. That’s not how it worked. One of Nathaniel’s roles was to provide his genetic material. The DTA wanted a Time Bender within the organization to carry the first child from his gene pool, so I volunteered.” Halla gets a faraway look, smiling. “When Vika was born, I instantly fell in love with her. And I swore I’d do anything to protect her. I knew from the beginning of the pregnancy that she would also be a Dual Talent, and therefore constantly tested and scrutinized.”

“Is that why you had her cloned the first time?” I ask gently.

Halla’s eyes take on a glassy sheen. “That’s something nobody should have to experience. It was the worst day of my life. I knew Anderson would never allow me to go back and save Vika, so instead I cloned her. It wasn’t that hard. The cloning labs are still in use, but only for people that the government wants to clone. The division that the labs operate under is classified Top Secret. All I had to do was hack into the system and input a false identity for Vika.”

“Wait a minute. You’re telling me that people are still being cloned?”

She nods. “Only certain important people, and the approval has to come straight from the president or the Secretary of Temporal Affairs. The same thing goes for the Departments of Telepathic Affairs and Teleportation—if any Space Bender or Mind Bender is to be cloned, approval has to come from their direct leader.”

“What about ordinary citizens?”

“I don’t know about that. All I know is that for the general public, cloning is illegal.”

I think for a moment, stunned by what this means. “So you’re basically telling me that even though General Anderson is the head of the military division, he can’t decide who can be cloned?”

“That’s right. After Vika stopped responding to the drugs stabilizing her and disappeared, Anderson told me he’d discovered what I’d done to Vika. Because it was illegal, he used it to blackmail me to go back to 2013. He just told me I’d be expected to clone two people who had been shot, no questions asked. I had no choice. You can imagine how shocked I was to find it was Leithan and Vika, and that you and Bridger were there. But I was under strict orders. I came back, falsified Leithan’s identity at the lab so that a clone of him could be created. Anderson’s end of the bargain, aside from keeping my secret, was to help me leave the country. That’s why I’m in London now. Cloning is legal here, and the drug they use to stabilize clones here seems to be having a better effect on Vika, as long as it’s administered on time, every time.”

I sit up straighter. “Wait, General Anderson just let you leave? I thought the DTA never let Time Benders go.”

“Well, in our situation, we both had information that the other wanted to keep hidden. Don’t ask me why he wanted to clone Leithan, because he never told me. He just said that the events had already happened and that he just needed to find the person who was supposed to carry them out. And that person was me.”

Suddenly, we hear a loud scream from the bedroom. Halla jumps to her feet. “I have to administer her meds, or she’ll completely wild out on me. I can’t let that happen.”

Grabbing a vial from her fridge, Halla hurries into the bedroom. I follow and see Halla reach Vika just as she’s sitting up, now crying. “Oh, god, oh no, no, no, please don’t shoot me,” she says with a low moan.

Halla gathers Vika into her arms, crooning something softly to her. With her left hand, she takes the vial of clear liquid and injects it into Vika’s neck. A few seconds later, Vika relaxes and pulls away. “Hi, Mom. I had the worst nightmare.”

“Hi, sweetheart,” Halla says in a strained voice. “I have a guest that I need to see out. I’ll be right back. Why don’t you go ahead and get dressed?”

Vika pouts for a moment. “I’d rather stay in bed. But I guess I will if you say so,” she says in a quiet voice. “Can we go to the park today? I really don’t want to go to the lab again.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Halla says.

I start to follow Halla back to the kitchenette, but Vika reaches across to her nightstand and picks up a small digigraph that I hadn’t noticed before. “I love you, Dad. I love you so much.”

I freeze upon hearing those words. Ignoring Halla’s command to leave Vika alone, I cross the distance to her bed and snatch the digigraph from her.

“Give it back! That’s my dad! You can’t have him!” she screeches.

But her words, along with everything else, fade away. I feel like I’ve been sucked into the Void. On the digigraph is a short scene: Vika sitting in the kitchenette, blowing out candles on a small, chocolate birthday cake. There’s a man standing next to her, smiling just like a proud parent. He’s bald, and deep burn scars cover his face and hands. But the eyes are the same deep blue.

It’s my father.

Halla snatches the digigraph from me and gives it back to the sobbing Vika, then grabs my arm. I cry out in pain as she squeezes the bruises from shifting earlier today. She ignores me and pulls me out of the bedroom.

In the hallway, I manage to snatch my arm away from her. “You didn’t have to do that,” I snarl.

“Yes I did,” she says in a low, murderous tone. “I want you to go now.”

I’d like nothing more than to do that, but I’m not going anywhere without the truth. “I’ll leave just as soon as you tell me why you lied to me about my dad and where I can find him. And remember, I can tell the DTA where you are if you don’t.”

Halla’s eyes narrow to slits. “Fine, but when I do, I never want to see you again.”

I follow her back to the kitchenette, where the sun is just beginning to shine through the tiny window. I can barely make out the tops of tall buildings and shuttles moving through the pink and orange sky.

“Here’s what I know,” she begins. “Officially, Nate was declared dead. He had been captured and the transport shuttle he was on exploded. The blast came from within the shuttle itself, but we never figured out exactly what happened. Three bodies were accounted for in the rubble, and they were declared to be those of Nate, the pilot, and the arresting officer. And life went on for Vika and me. So imagine my shock when Nate appeared here shortly after Vika and I moved in. He refused to tell me how he pulled off his escape. He would only say that he shifted just before the explosion and he’s been living in exile ever since.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. He refused to tell me. And no matter how many times I’ve told him to leave us alone, he keeps coming to visit Vika once a month. It makes her so happy, so I stopped trying to make him stay away. We have an … unusual relationship, to say the least.”

“Have you ever tried to track him or anything? You have to have wondered where he’s living,” I say.

“I’ve told you everything I know. Now, please, go. And don’t come back. I barely have Vika under control. The doctors here think it’s because she was cloned more than once. Their drugs keep her more stable, but she must have the doses every six hours, exactly. That’s the price Vika and I had to pay.”

“I’m sorry, I really am,” I say. Halla’s as much as a victim as anybody else, just wanting to protect her only child. And I find myself wanting to know more about Vika. She’s my half-sister, after all.

Maybe one day we can work something out. But only after I figure out what is going on at the DTA.