9“LIA? ARE YOU AWAKE?”

Eyes open.

*00:02:33*

Eyes closed.

“Lia?”

I open my eyes again. No, I am not dreaming. Michael really is here, standing over my cot, an uncertain expression on his face.

“I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

Yes. No. I don’t know. Go away.

The words don’t seem to make it from my brain to my mouth, for he continues to stand there, staring at me expectantly. Maybe the defect has spread; maybe I can’t actually speak anymore. I am a dud, after all. For that matter, maybe my entire body is shutting down, piece by piece, and one day I won’t be able to move at all.

Can I move?

Reflexively, I try to sit up. My torso swings upright, the muscles stiff but still functional. My voice dribbles out in a croak. “How did you find me?”

Michael immediately plops down on the cot next to my legs, “How did you find me?” apparently translating to “Make yourself at home” in his head.

“Well,” he says, “Wednesday I came by the bay on Seven, just like I promised, only I couldn’t find you anywhere. I figured I probably just missed you, so I hung around awhile, but you never came back, and then I had to go home. Yesterday was pretty much the same, only instead of waiting I went looking for you in the hub. So then today it occurs to me that maybe they reassigned you to a different bay, only you couldn’t tell me because I never gave you my link number. Deficient of me, right?”

I nod uncertainly.

“So I asked one of the officers, and they sent me here. And what do you know? Here you are!”

I blink a couple times, my sluggish brain having to go over his words a couple times before actually latching on to what he said: He thought they reassigned me. So it never occurred to him that I might have misled him on purpose. Well, why would it? He still thinks I’m his friend Lia. I’m tempted to tell him the truth, if only to get him to leave me alone. Of course, knowing Michael he would probably just laugh it off as one of my wild stories.

Lia’s stories. One of Lia’s wild stories.

“Are you sat?” Michael suddenly puts in. “You don’t look so good.”

Am I satisfactory? My throat is burning with thirst, my mouth feels like cotton, and my bladder is ready to burst. I haven’t eaten in almost two days. Plus, I’m a dud. So no, I’m not sat.

Not that I can say any of that to Michael.

“I’m sat. I’m just really tired,” I finally answer, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave.

My stomach picks that moment to let out an angry growl, and Michael laughs. “A little hungry too, it sounds like. Come on, get up! I came to invite you to eat with us.”

I don’t intend to, but somehow I’m standing up, grabbing my toiletry kit, and—at Michael’s wrinkle-nosed request—heading for the shower units. I remember to stop at the laundry station on my way over, emerging from the showers in the first clean clothes I’ve worn in days. Luckily, the lines are short this time of day.

I half-expect Michael to be gone by the time I return—there is something surreal about his presence, about having a friend who is not actually my friend—but he’s still here, sprawled over my cot and playing some sort of hologame on his chit. When he sees me approaching, he ends the game with a twitch of his index finger, tapping his chit to turn off the projector. The hologram disappears as if sucked back into his palm. “Ready?” he asks as I stuff my things beneath the cot.

No.

“Yes,” I answer anyway, and follow him out.

We grab the lift up to Five, then take the path between Green and Blue Quadrants. Neither of us says much, not until we reach the end of the path and Michael asks, “Have you ridden the SlipStreams yet?”

I shake my head, not really sure what he’s talking about but fairly certain the answer is no.

“Well, they’re great. You’ll love them.” He frowns. “You don’t still get motion sick, do you?”

Before I can ask what he means, the doors out of the hub slide open, ushering us into a crowded train station. I find myself on a wide platform situated between two sets of empty tracks disappearing into tunnels at the other end of the room. Some benches take up the middle of the platform, but few people bother to sit, instead standing in small groups chatting. The wait must not be particularly long.

As if validating my hypothesis, a low rushing sound penetrates my consciousness. I glance to the tracks on the right, listening as the sound draws closer. With a flash of silver, the SlipStream pulls in, long, sleek, and slender. The doors open and passengers begin to emerge. My eyes are drawn to a set of arrows on the wall above the tracks, one pointing toward the rings and the other toward the hub. As I watch, the arrow pointing toward the hub goes out and the ring-ward arrow lights. I glance over my shoulder at the other track just in time to see the hub-ward arrow light. I nod in understanding. Two trains run on opposing schedules, one at the hub while the other is at the rings. It makes sense.

I follow Michael onto the train and take a seat next to him along the opposite wall. He toys with something small and silver as we wait for the other passengers to board, quickly sticking it back in his pocket when he catches me watching him. I get the weird impression that he’s nervous. Strange, since he’s the one who sought me out. He couldn’t suspect what I am, could he? No, or I would be sitting in a holding cell down in the security station, not on the padded seat of a SlipStream train.

A whistle sounds, and thirty seconds later the doors shut with a hiss. The SlipStream begins to move, slowly at first, then picking up speed. Picking up speed a lot.

My stomach lurches at the kick of acceleration, and I gasp slightly. What was it Michael mentioned earlier? Motion sickness? Apparently, Lia and I have something in common, after all. Too bad it’s the propensity to get sick on fast-moving vehicles. I grab onto the seat in front of me, tuck my head down, and close my eyes. Perhaps it’s a good thing I haven’t eaten in two days.

After a minute, my muscles unclench as my body starts to adjust. The ride is fast, but it isn’t rough, and the track goes in a straight line. I dare to lift my head.

Without warning, the track drops out from under us. My lungs seize, breath stricken from my body as the SlipStream soars down a steep curve. Fear squeezes my ribs as I struggle to take a breath.

*00:02:32*

*00:02:31*

Fear turns to full-blown panic as the numbers in my head suddenly drop without warning. Oh, slag! Not here! Not now!

The downward drop gentles and then suddenly we are curving up the other side of the slope. The pressure from the drop abruptly removed, my lungs release. At the same time, the train begins to slow, and just like that, the ride is ended. Around me, I hear the others get up, but I continue to sit, frozen as I stare at my inner clock.

*00:02:31*

Every muscle in my body tenses as I wait for the numbers to turn, but the time remains the same. Only after a good thirty seconds have passed with no movement do I start to relax. Whatever the reason the count started, it is now stopped. I just wish I knew why it started again at all. It’s been two days since my ill-fated countdown. I gaze at the numbers in consternation, a petrified realization dawning on me as I grasp their meaning.

All this time I’ve been so focused on my failure, on the fact that I didn’t fulfill my mission, that I forgot one of the most basic tenets of unexploded ordnance.

Even duds can be dangerous. Even duds can still blow up.

“Lia? It’s okay, it’s over.”

I raise terrified eyes to Michael’s face.

He blanches. “Hey, I’m sorry. I knew you got a little motion sick sometimes, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.” He pats my shoulder awkwardly and glances over his shoulder at the door. “I don’t want to rush you, but if we don’t want to take another ride . . .”

I lurch to my feet, immediately understanding. Quickly, we slip through the incoming passengers and off the SlipStream. As soon as my feet hit the platform, I feel myself calming. Was that why my time restarted? From the panic of being aboard the SlipStream? I shake my head. I don’t know. I just don’t know.

The idea terrifies me, this new understanding that I could go off at any time without warning, but I push the fear away. Going Nova is my purpose; I’ve known that all along. So it’s a bit disconcerting not to know when or where it may happen. That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I may not have failed after all. I may still have a mission, a purpose. An identity.

“Are you sat now?” Michael is asking, and I turn my attention back to my surroundings. We are in a train station much like the one in the hub, with twin tracks running along either side of the platform. Sliding doors at the end of the room match the ones on Level Five. The familiar looks help ground me, and I answer his question with an affirmative.

“Shall we go?”

At my nod, he leads the way through the sliding doors. I follow him, assuming the chamber on the other side will be some sort of residential version of the hub.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Gone are the cargo bays and corridors, the dull walls and metal deck plating, the lift station and the bustle of military personnel. Gone are any indications that we are on a space station at all, and in their place?

Paradise.

Lawns, sidewalks, streets, buildings—I would think I was planetside if I didn’t know better. The manmade structures are neat and well-kept, with greenery of all kinds adorning the area. Ivy and other vines twine in decorative whorls up the building walls, and flower beds create artistic clumps of color in red, violet, yellow, and orange. Trees, too, have been planted along the walks and streets, creating the illusion of the outdoors as well as granting shade from the lights above. When I glance up, I cannot even see the ceiling, just the bright light of late afternoon.

I step slowly along the cobblestone walk, feeling like I’m in some sort of dream. No, not a dream. A memory. A memory of home.

As if guessing my thoughts, Michael speaks. “It’s a lot like home, isn’t it? Aurora, I mean.”

“Aurora,” I repeat. Images surface in my mind of a place that looks much like this, a place with a park full of white flowers where a boy named Michael used to push a girl named Lia on the swings. Michael’s right—it is a lot like home. Just not my home.

I wonder if I even have a home.

“It’s beautiful,” I tell him, and I mean it. Perhaps underneath the flesh and blood I’m only a machine, but even I can appreciate this place. The open spaces, the greenery, the profusion of color. Even the atmosphere holds a soft quality, the air in here so fresh that the sour-sweet scent permeating the hub has faded into nothingness.

Michael notices me sniffing. “It even smells like home, doesn’t it? A fresh, earthy sort of smell. I think it’s the nutrient mist they pump into the rings all the time.”

“Nutrient mist?”

“It’s like pumping fluoride into the water to keep your teeth strong, only through the air instead. It’s supposed to keep everyone healthy by supplying vital nutrients that are missing from the artificial station air and food. They don’t bother doing it in the hub, though, since everyone lives in the rings. That’s why the air in the hub always smells so sterile.”

I nod, off-handedly wondering if that’s what accounts for the difference in smell between the two places. Craning my neck, I glance between a couple houses to spot what might be a park. I wish I could see more of this place, but the buildings and trees prevent any long-distance views.

“Is there somewhere we can see it all?” I ask.

Michael grins. “Your wish is my command.”

He leads me down a couple streets and along a park, the way a slight but steady climb. We are almost to the end of the street when we reach a squat apartment building. We take the stairs all the way up, pushing through a door and out onto the roof. As far as apartment buildings go, it is relatively short, though still tall enough to lift us up over the trees and give us an unrestricted view of the ring.

Huge curving walls enclose the habitat on each side, the upper slopes disappearing into the bright ceiling. Tiers of farms have been built into each wall, like gigantic steps with pathways cut into them to allow workers access to the beds, while the city lies nestled in the lower curve of the ring itself.

I turn away from the walls and look down the length of the city. In the distance, the ring stretches out in one long, sweeping curve, the buildings and farms sloping steadily upward with the ring until they disappear from sight around the bend. The view behind me mirrors it. So the city is situated along the outer edge of the ring, I realize. Which makes sense when I remember the way the rings spin around the hub. It also explains the sudden drop on the SlipStream, the way it curved around down and then up. Well, whatever my impressions on the ground, from here there can be no mistaking the city for what it is—a manmade habitat.

I lean on the short wall surrounding the roof and watch the people down below. They bicycle through the streets and jog along sidewalks, sit in parks and chat on benches. Like dolls constantly in motion, not necessarily hurrying, but . . . thriving. Thriving is the word that comes to mind. Without thought, my lips curve in a smile.

“Pretty cosmic, huh?” Michael asks, leaning on the wall next to me, and I nod. “A few years ago, one of the big water mains busted and half the city almost flooded. Luckily, they got it fixed before very much was destroyed.”

Destroyed.

The smile slowly fades from my face. If I fulfill my mission, this whole station will be gone. Not just the monotonous slabs of titanium and glass layered one on top of the other, but this mini-world growing within them. Strange. I never really thought about the place I would destroy. For a moment, I’m almost glad I didn’t go off. I’m almost glad I didn’t go Nova.

Then the moment passes.

My stomach suddenly rumbles, loud enough for Michael to hear. “We’d better get you fed,” he says with a wink.

I expect us to head back to the door we came in, but instead Michael takes us down the fire escape on the side of the building. He halts midway down, climbing through an open window then reaching back to help me step over the sill behind him. I glance around what is obviously a kitchen, wondering where we are.

An older woman with thick stripes of white in her hair looks up from the stove. She doesn’t seem in the least surprised at our appearance through the window.

“Michael,” she greets.

“Gran, this is Lia,” he says with a nod in my direction. “Lia, this is my grandmother.”

She takes me in for a long moment, eyes scanning down my jumpsuit and back up, and for a split second I panic. Did Lia know her? Does she recognize that I’m not Lia?

“Welcome to our home, Lia,” Michael’s grandmother says with a quiet smile. “Michael’s told me a lot about you. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

So we—or rather, Lia and his grandmother—haven’t met before. I breathe an inward sigh of relief. Michael seems to have accepted my identity as Lia with blithe unconcern, but this woman seems sharper, somehow, and I can’t help thinking that if anyone could see through me it would be her.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Taylor. ‘Ma’am’ made me feel old when I was thirty. Now that I’m twice that, it makes me feel positively ancient.”

“Aw, Gran! We all know you’re only twenty-seven,” Michael says, throwing an arm around her shoulders and smacking a kiss on her cheek.

She laughs and pats his hand. “My grandson, the charmer. You better be careful around this one, Lia,” she warns, but I can tell she’s only teasing. I feel a strange pang in my chest as I watch them. The affection between the two is almost tangible. Once again I feel like an intruder, a voyeur, spying on something everyone else takes for granted, but which I will never possess myself.

“Hey, when’s sup going to be, Gran?”

I turn as a teenage girl slouches into the room.

“Teal.”

“How do you know my name?” she asks, brow creasing in confusion. She glances at Michael, and her face abruptly clears. “Oh, you must be her.”

“Not her, Space Face. Lia.” Michael puts in. “From Aurora? Or are you too oxygen-deprived to remember?”

Teal makes a face. “If anyone here is a deficient, it’s you, Michael.” She gives me a sidelong glance, wariness clear in her gaze. “Sure, I remember Lia. Sort of.”

She reluctantly extends her hand for a low five, and I give it a light slap, the universal teen greeting coming without thought. I use the moment to study Teal.

She’s younger than Michael by a few years—she’s about thirteen, maybe—which means she would have been six the last time she saw Lia. I’m not surprised she hardly remembers me. A memory suddenly flashes in my head—a little girl with scabby knees and frizzy braids flying out in every direction, racing through the playground behind Michael and me.

Her hair is painstakingly straightened now, her legs long and smooth beneath her faux-denim skirt, but I still recognize her as Michael’s little sister from so long ago. Upon closer inspection, I realize she’s actually an inch taller than me, and I feel an unreasoning stab of jealousy. No, not my own jealousy. Lia’s jealousy. She always hated being short.

“No one in this room is a deficient,” Michael’s grandmother declares, “and Teal, supper will be in about ten minutes. Please set the table. Lia, you’re welcome to join us.”

“I’m just going to show Lia around first, ’kay?” Michael says before I can answer.

The apartment is small but comfortable, with two bedrooms, a living room, and bathroom in addition to the kitchen/dining room we initially entered. The décor is an eclectic mix of furnishings tending to blues and greens, and the whole place feels homey and bright. A far cry from the austere cargo bay and transport where I spent my last few weeks.

We end the tour in the back bedroom. Twin beds are set on opposite sides of the room and a sheet is strung up in the middle like a makeshift curtain. I sneak a peek at each side. It’s not hard to tell which side is which. Teal’s side is done in shades of purple, with makeup and hair accessories cluttered atop the dresser and clothes lying over the bed. Her walls are programmed with digitals of her and her friends. In comparison, Michael’s side is surprisingly tidy. The forest green spread has been pulled up more or less neatly over the bed, and except for a grav-ball vest hanging over a drawer, his clothes are put away. A starscape completely covers his walls.

Michael tosses himself down on his bed. “Teal and I have to share now. Not like on Aurora. It’s a serious dis-sat.”

“Try sharing a room with a hundred other refugees,” I throw out sardonically. “Then come tell me about it.”

He doesn’t reply, and I pull my head back from Teal’s side. He’s staring at me, a slow grin widening his face.

“What?” I ask, suddenly worried I said the wrong thing.

“Nothing. It’s just that you sounded more like you than you have since I met you. Here on the station, I mean.”

“I did?”

“Well, yeah. You’ve been so quiet, so withdrawn. Not like you were before.” He must sense my dismay, for he quickly adds, “It’s okay. I get it, you’ve been through a lot. It was just nice to see a little of the old Lia for a minute.”

He smiles directly at me, and I almost take a step back. They’re a punch to the gut, his smiles. Lighting up his entire face, warming his eyes until they glow like embers on a cold night. Just like you could warm your hands by a fire, you could warm your soul by his smiles. Assuming you have a soul, that is.

I look down at Michael’s dresser and finger a hologlobe perched there. Do I have a soul? Can someone like me have a soul? Maybe if I knew what I was, I could answer that question. A genetically engineered bomb made out of some scientist’s DNA, I know that much, but beyond that. Everyone seems to believe I’m Lia—Michael, Teal, their grandmother. Although to be fair, Teal was only six the last time she saw Lia, so it’s doubtful she’d be able to tell either way, and Taylor never met Lia at all. Still, Michael believes I’m Lia, so I must bear some resemblance to her, though whether it’s through a surgeon’s tools, genetic manipulation, or some fluke of nature, I have no idea. Perhaps they chose my DNA from a scientist who resembled Lia in the basics, and then implanted characteristics to make me even more like her. I wish I could remember the scientist whose genes were used to create me. I wish I knew what my creator looked like. For that matter, I don’t even know what Lia looked like! Suddenly the desire to see her seems far more important than it should. An idea occurs to me.

“Michael, do you have any digitals of us?”

“Digis? Oh, sure. Let me see.” He goes to the wall control and types in a few commands. The starscape in the middle section blinks out and a series of images appear. Two kids—running across a lawn, riding bikes, seated at a table in front of a birthday cake. It’s the last image, though, that holds me spellbound.

Two kids sprawl across a porch swing caught in mid-motion. The swinging must have jarred the girl, for she looks like she’s going to fall off at any moment, her feet dangling and her arms flailing, her expression a mix of excitement and surprise. The boy is laughing as he clings to her waist, and I know without a doubt that she didn’t fall. He wouldn’t have let her.

A strange sensation wells up in my chest, and I find it hard to swallow. I shake it off and force myself to concentrate on the image. The boy is unquestionably Michael; even with the difference of seven years I can see that. So I shift my focus to the girl. Small, with long blonde hair and pale skin—in the basics, at least, we resemble each other. I can’t make out her eye color, but my gaze traces over the shape of her face, the length of her nose, the curve of her jaw. Our faces seem similar, but how similar I’m not sure. I wish I could look at myself in the mirror, make the same observations on my own face that I am on hers.

“This one was always my favorite, too.”

I glance over in surprise. There is a wistful look in Michael’s eyes, the like of which I haven’t seen on him before. Is he missing those days on Aurora? Or is he missing the girl in that image, instinctively knowing in his heart that she’s gone and will never come back?

“Would you have known me by looks alone?” I ask suddenly. “That first day on Seven, outside the bay. If you hadn’t seen my picture on the screen, I mean.”

Michael blinks. “I don’t know. I never thought about it.” He looks at me for a minute and shakes his head. “I’m used to the way you look now. I can’t imagine you looking any different. Why? Do you think you’ve changed that much?”

Outwardly I shrug, but inwardly all I can think is—

Oh, Michael, if only you knew.