16THE SWING DANGLES, limp and drifting, from the bar overhead. I clutch the chains and drag my feet through the dirt below. Around me, the playground is abuzz with activity. Children, hanging from the monkey bars and riding the merry-go-round, swishing down the slide and running through the field. White flowers dot the grass at intervals; white flowers with blue centers.

I pick a blossom near my feet and twirl it around in my fingers. Of all the children on the playground, only I am on the swings. Only I am alone.

No, not quite. There she is, another girl off to my left. My eyes zero in on her. She is blonde, like me, with green eyes and small hands. A jump rope whistles around her head, her feet striking the ground in cadence with her voice. I strain to make out the singsong lyrics.

“Cross my heart and hope to die

Stick a needle in my eye

My past is gone, my life’s a lie

All I have left to do is die.”

I gasp, climbing off the swings and moving toward her, compelled by the sound of her voice. The song continues:

“Wait! Before my time is through

I have one secret left for you

A way to start a ticking clock

A key to loose a stopped-up lock.”

A group of boys kicking a soccer ball run in front of me, and I lose sight of the girl. I push against them, straining my head as I try to spot her through the crowd. What secret? What key?

“Cross your heart and hope to die

Stick a needle in your eye

We both know you’ve earned this pain

And now it’s time to die again.”

The boys are gone as quickly as they appeared. I take a step forward, and stop. The girl has vanished as well. I turn around, looking for her, but the children have all disappeared, the playground empty and still. “Wait!” I call into the silence. “Who are you? Where did you go?”

No answer.

Something catches at the corner of my eye, and I turn toward the school. The clang of the school bell bursts from the building. Not just the building, but the swings, the bars, all around me, raucous and pulsing, pulsing, pulsing—

The klaxons jerk me from a sound sleep. Strident and shrill, they wail through the cargo bay in high-pitched pulses, and I’m up and staggering off my cot before I even realize what’s happening. What the . . . ?

Pressing my hands over my ears, I wrench my head left and then right, trying to figure out what’s going on. Are we under attack? Is the ceasefire at an end? Or is this Plan B, the Tellurian’s backup plan when I didn’t go Nova as intended? I brace myself for weapons fire, for the earthshaking impacts of deton-cannons exploding against the station’s hull, but the telltale bangs don’t come. Not yet, anyway.

I dare to lower my hands the slightest bit. “What’s happening?” I yell at a young woman in sweats a few feet away. She stares at me, eyes glazed in fear, and I scream the question again. Her eyes blink, and this time she manages to shake her head at me. She doesn’t know either. In fact, no one seems to, the other prisoners stumbling about in various states of dress, frightened children clinging to bewildered parents with crying infants in their arms, uncertain whether to run, and if so, where to go.

Before I can formulate a plan, soldiers pound into the bay. Their orders are barely audible over the shrieking of the alarm, but I realize from their motions that they want everyone up and following them. I fall in with the mob of refugees stampeding toward the bay entrance, certain that at any moment we’ll be annihilated by some terrible weapon of mass destruction.

A terrible weapon of mass destruction. Even in spite of the urgency, the irony of the situation isn’t lost on me. I would almost find it humorous, if I wasn’t so utterly terrified.

Stumbling over the lip of the bay entrance, I almost fall before a random hand rights me. We are practically jogging now, and I struggle to look around through the dense crowd. From what I can glimpse, the main level is in complete chaos, refugees from two locations being herded through the area while various spacers and station personnel hurry toward their ships or the lifts. Soldiers urge them on their way, quick commands bringing order to the chaos. In fact, for a mass evacuation at seven in the morning, they seem to have things surprisingly well in hand, their sharp eyes watching to make sure no one is trampled in the rush even as they guide us into yet another storage area near the center of the level.

The walls are reinforced—a bunker of some sort, or as near as they have in this part of the station. I take a seat against the wall as directed, smashed up between a large man with a handlebar mustache on one side and a little girl with a red ponytail on the other. The stench is almost overwhelming in here, the sour-and-sweet smell practically burning my nostrils as I sit amid the crush of bodies. I pinch my nostrils together, but it doesn’t help. I can still taste them, like a thick film of odor clinging to my tongue. I try to ignore it, again listening for the sounds of attack, but I hear nothing besides the ceaseless howling of the klaxons. My hands shake, my palms sweating and slippery despite my best efforts to stay calm. If only Michael was here to hold my hand.

As if some divine presence read my mind, a hand suddenly slips into mine. I start in surprise and glance down to find the red-haired girl staring up at me. She can’t be more than eight, and whether her parents survived Tiersten or not, they don’t seem to be with her. She has a death grip on my hand, her palm tiny within my own. My own fear ebbs slightly as I stare at her pale face, and I squeeze her hand back.

“What’s your name?” I lean down and ask her, as much to distract myself from the situation as her.

“Kaeti.” She has to repeat it three times before I hear her.

“I’m Lia.” I take a look around the bay, hoping to find some redheaded adult anxiously searching the crowd for their child, but no one stands out. “Are your parents on the station with you, Kaeti?”

She shakes her head.

“An aunt or uncle maybe?”

Another shake.

“Anyone?”

“There’s Lela,” she says, and after some more questioning I determine that she’s an ex-prisoner who has taken Kaeti under her care along with a couple of the other orphaned children. Against all reason, I feel a sudden sense of kinship with this child. We’re nothing alike—not in looks or age or even origin. Not even in experience, for my years at Tiersten are only a fake, the memories someone else’s rather than my own. Neither of us has parents, though; neither of us has family. We’re both alone, and in that I find a similitude between us that speaks to me.

“I don’t have any family either,” I admit. “I have a friend, though. His name is Michael. What about you?”

Kaeti blinks at me a few times, and then begins speaking haltingly about one of the other refugee children. It’s strange. Here I am, crammed into a reinforced bay while the station’s alarms scream bloody murder, somehow having a conversation with a little girl I didn’t even know existed ten minutes ago. I’m so absorbed in the experience, it actually takes me a minute to realize the klaxons have stopped sounding.

A murmur sweeps over the crowd, everyone wanting to know what’s going on. A voice suddenly booms from the public address system.

“Emergency Drill Beta has now been completed. Station facilities and transit services will be reopening momentarily. All personnel are now free to resume normal activity. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Emergency Drill Beta? So these past thirty minutes of terror were nothing more than a test?

Around me, I hear cries of outrage, the other former prisoners no more happy about the ordeal than I. Still, there’s nothing to do but collect ourselves and start the shuffle back to our respective holds, to sleep if we can or begin our morning routines if we can’t. I’m waiting for the mob in front of me to move when my chit vibrates. I answer the incoming link.

“Morning, Lia.”

“Michael! What’s going on? Did you go through that too? Was this really all just some sort of test?”

The questions tumble out of my mouth one after another, and Michael laughs. “Hey, power down, Li-Li, everything’s sat. It was just a drill.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You mean you’ve done this before?”

“Sure, all the time. We have a drill for every possible scenario that could ever happen—drills in case we come under attack, or there’s a hull breach in one of the rings, or there’s an overload in the hub’s power reactors. That’s a fun one—they actually separate the station for that one. I had to watch an informational holo and pass a test on them when I first moved here. Everyone does. I guess they didn’t make you guys do it since you aren’t permanent residents. They’re just to prepare us in case something goes wrong and a real alarm goes off.”

“A real alarm?” I ask nervously.

“Yeah, there’s these small alarm boxes situated around the station, in case there’s a fire or a relay explosion or something. Only the officers can set them off, though, so don’t get any ideas.”

He winks at me, and I find myself doing one of Teal’s signature eye rolls. As though, out of the two of us, it would be me who had the ideas.

Michael starts chuckling. “I remember my first drill, about a month after I moved here. I was determined not to look like a null, to play it cool rather than vaccing out like most newcomers, so when the siren went off I took my time moving to the shelter. Trouble was, I forgot that the SlipStreams lock down fifteen minutes after the alarm goes off, so by the time I got there it was closed. I was trapped in the hub! I had no idea what to do.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, an officer found me and took me to one of the hub shelters. Gave me a real jawing out, too. The only reason he didn’t give me a fine was because I was a minor. You can bet I never missed another SlipStream after that.”

Despite my irritation over being woken up so early for a drill, I find myself smiling. Leave it to Michael to get stuck in the hub during an evacuation drill!

“Anyway,” Michael continues, going all serious, “I was linking because I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For walking out like that last night. I was a total drone.”

“No, you weren’t—”

“Yes, I was,” Michael interrupts. “Or as Teal put it, ‘How could you just walk out on Lia like that? Is your brain completely deprived of oxygen, Michael?’”

I can’t help laughing. Michael’s imitation of Teal’s scornful tone is dead on. “Did she really say that?”

“Uh huh. You know Teal. She’s never afraid to say what she thinks.”

Teal defending me? I can hardly believe it. Though her hostility toward me did seem to lessen temporarily when I asked to wait for Michael last night, he and I are only closer now. If anything, I would appear to be even more of a threat to their relationship in her eyes. I wonder what changed her mind.

Then again, maybe she wasn’t really defending me, but was just mad at Michael for leaving her to entertain me all night.

“So do you forgive me for acting like a de-oxygenated drone?”

“Of course.”

“Teal said you would. You’re truly one in a galaxy, Lia.”

Well, two in a galaxy, I almost say, thinking of the real Lia and my discovery from the night before about being her clone. Instead, I just thank him for the compliment and wave goodbye as he signs off to go to school. With the hold half-empty now, I find it easy to join in the march back to my cargo bay. As I walk down the corridor, I catch sight of the alarms Michael mentioned, unassuming gray boxes situated at regular intervals along the station walls. Curious, I check one out. It’s a simple device, with a scanner for the officers to swipe their chits and a keypad to enter the specific alarm code. Shaking my head, I just hope we never have cause for a real alarm to go off.

To my surprise, Kaeti is still beside me even with all my dallying. She follows me the rest of the way to the bay and watches as I pull out clean clothes from my locker. She sits on my cot while I change behind a cargo crate, and even after I return from the hygiene units she’s still there, waiting for me. Somehow I made another friend, and I’m not entirely sure what to do with her.

I’m saved from having to figure that out when a tired-eyed matron comes running over. “Kaeti!” she calls, relief evident in her voice.

“Lela?” I hazard as she gathers Kaeti up in her arms and looks at me curiously. She nods, and I tell her my name.

“Thank you for taking care of Kaeti, Lia.” She glances around. “Do you have family here?” When I shake my head, she adds, “Neither do I. Kaeti is my family now.”

Once again, I feel that sudden sense of connection, that feeling that I’m not so different from everyone around me after all. Even after Lela leaves with Kaeti, I think about them, the orphaned redhead and the lonely matron. Maybe families aren’t just born, but made. My mind flicks to Michael, to Teal and Taylor. Maybe, just maybe . . . But I don’t let my mind finish the thought.

It is only as I’m sitting down to breakfast in the cafeteria on Nine that I remember that strange dream I had this morning, just before the alarms went off. I struggle to recall it, but all I can seem to bring back is this one stanza, repeating over and over in my head.

Cross your heart and hope to die.

Stick a needle in your eye.

Your past is gone, your life’s a lie

All you have left to do is die.

Afternoon finds me hanging out at the counter of a bar frequented by traders and other assorted spacers. Technically, I’m not old enough to be there, but the proprietor is a friend of Captain Kerr’s, and he lets me hang out there so long as I don’t try to drink anything I’m not supposed to. It’s as good a place as the docking rings to suss out potential odd jobs, with the bonus that I don’t have to spend so much time walking around.

I sit at the bar and listen to the patrons as I sip a bubbler. Everyone is keyed up after this morning’s drill, their talk focusing less on their usual runs and more on the political situation between the Tellurians and the Celestians. Some think the morning’s drill is indicative of a breakdown in negotiations between the two governments, though so far all reports indicate the negotiations—still via viewscreen only—are going well. Others disagree, believing, like Michael, that the drill was nothing more than that—a drill. After all, just because a ceasefire is on doesn’t mean the war is over.

A burly spacer with a moustache and stained shipsuit plunks down on the stool next to me. He hails the bartender.

“You just get in?” the barkeep asks as he delivers a beer and scans the man’s chit.

The spacer nods. “This morning.”

“How long are you here for?”

“A few hours. Just long enough to refuel and get on my way again.”

“Heading out or in?” After hearing enough trader talk over the past couple weeks, I know the bartender is asking if the trader intends to head out of the Celestial Expanse or deeper in. With New Sol being the main portal into and out of the expanse, most traders stop to refuel here when crossing the border.

“Out,” the spacer replies taking a pull of his beer.

“That’s daring.”

“That’s suicidal,” another voice interjects. Looking over, I see another man pull up to the bar, an empty glass in his hand as he signals for a refill. He’s the physical opposite of the spacer, tall and thin and clean shaven, his two-piece uniform spotless. “Take my advice, friend, and stay out of alliance space.”

The trader gives the other man a scornful once-over, easily determining from his natty appearance that the man is no spacer. “What would you know about it?” he says with a snort.

“Only that what the Tellurians claim is going on over on their side of the border isn’t so.”

“How would you know that?”

“Because I was over there.” The tall man points to a patch on his sleeve. “Lionel Merrins, holorecorder for GNS Reporting.”

The credential is enough to catch the spacer’s attention. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s really going on over there?”

“I’m not sure—”

“Ha!”

“—but I do know it’s not what they’re saying. For instance, that little blow-up at Tiersten a couple weeks ago? It was no accident.”

Tiersten? What was a casual interest in the conversation ratchets up ten degrees at the mention of the colony. I inch across my stool, trying to get closer to the discussion without being noticed.

“Go on,” the spacer says.

“The Tellurians are trying to claim it was a malfunction in the power relay, but my ship was right overhead in orbit when it happened, and let me tell you, that blast was not a malfunction. It was sabotage.”

“Sabotage?”

“Oh, the Tellurians fed us this slagheap about a breakdown in the power grid, but we had the readings. That was a bomb, plain and simple. Of course, we couldn’t report it, not with a Tellurian war cruiser breathing down our necks, but anyone could see that spaceport was blown to kingdom come. Like a little power relay could do that.”

“You think the prisoners sabotaged the spaceport? That’s completely glitchy. The Tellurians already released one group of them. With negotiations proceeding, there was no reason to think they wouldn’t be next.”

Merrins leans in, lowering his voice slightly. “It wasn’t the prisoners. It was the Tellurians.”

The spacer lets out a laugh, his rapt attention dissolved. “The Tellurians? Now why would they blow their own spaceport?”

“Because these aren’t your typical Tellurians, but a splinter faction. Word is the alliance is in the middle of a civil war.”

“They’re not happy about the situation with New Earth,” the bartender speculates.

“That’s what I’ve heard,” the newsman confirms. “After three years of stubbornly defending their half-assed claim, the alliance government has suddenly decided to turn it over to us? It makes no sense, not with all the resources down on New Earth ripe for the plucking. All it would take is for a few of the alliance’s major commonwealths to band together, and they’d have a faction to be reckoned with.”

“Do you really think they’d start a civil war over it, though?” the spacer asks doubtfully. “A war no one in the expanse has even heard of?”

“Why not? People have gone to war for a hell of a lot less. And of course they wouldn’t want us to know about it, would they? One sign of weakness, and we’d be all over them. The alliance government would do anything to cover it up.” Merrins shakes his head. “I doubted it at first too, but the things I’ve seen and heard over there . . . Tellurian ships firing on other Tellurian ships, strange acts of sabotage, the Tellurians inviting in Celestian traders only to turn around and fire on them when they try to land or leave. Whether it’s civil war or not, something is going on over there, no doubt about it.” He takes a pull of his drink. “Be smart. Stay home and do a local run. The milicreds aren’t worth getting mixed up in whatever’s going on over there.”

The spacer shakes his head. “I appreciate the warning, but a man’s got to make a living.”

“It’s your funeral.” Merrins raises his glass to the spacer, and the other man returns the gesture. The newsman leaves then and the spacer goes shortly after. I stay at my seat and ponder everything I just heard.

The explosion at Tiersten a deliberate act of sabotage? The Tellurian Alliance embroiled in some secret civil war? It all seems too farfetched to believe. The newsman was probably just putting the spacer on, having a laugh at his expense while he killed time in a bar between assignments. It certainly seems more likely than all the crazy stuff he spewed! Still, I can’t help thinking about the attack on Kerr’s ship and those images I saw of Tiersten. Now that I think about it, it did seem like an awful lot of damage for a relay malfunction.

Reluctantly, I consider Merrins’ assertions. Assuming the Tellurians really are involved in a civil war, my presence here raises even more questions, top of the list being: was I sent here by the Tellurian government or this Tellurian splinter faction? I can’t imagine what this supposed faction would gain from sending me. Surely their hands would be full just fighting their own people without worrying about the Celestians. Unless their purpose was to destroy the ceasefire? If they could disrupt negotiations with the Celestians, maybe it would allow them more time to get their hands on New Earth. That doesn’t explain how Tiersten ties into all this though. It seems like more than simple coincidence that the site of such large sabotage happens to be the colony I—or at least the real Lia—spent time in.

I shake my head, unable to even begin to answer all the questions this new information inspires. Once again, I curse my faulty memory. I’m sick of being in the dark, of not knowing who I am or what my purpose is. Why can’t I just remember what happened?

I pause. Maybe I can’t remember what’s going on, but perhaps there’s another way I can find out.