26“. . . TAKEN WHEN AURORA COLONY FELL, I lived in an internment camp for two years along with ten thousand other civilian blah blah blahs.” I roll my eyes at Doc Niven. “Come on, do I really have to do this again? I know it, I swear.”

The doc just raises an expectant eyebrow. With a sigh, I start again.

“My name is Lia Johansen, and I was a prisoner of war. Taken when Aurora Colony fell, I lived in an internment camp for two years along with ten thousand other civilian colonists. My parents died in front of me from starvation and sickness. Oh, and I wept for them. There, see?”

“Good,” Niven says. “Now remember, this will be your core memory once we activate the biochip. You’ll probably be able to access a scattering of other memories from your past, but the biochip will block anything recent.”

“What will happen if I try to access anything off-limits?”

“The biochip will automatically reroute your mind back to your cover story.”

Doc Niven grabs the tool he used to insert the chip and puts it in the sterilizer. I can’t help raising a hand to my eyes as I remember how he inserted the biochip behind my left eye, the clock behind my right. He used a local anesthetic, so it didn’t hurt, but the way he popped out each eyeball and put it back in will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. At least, it would if I remembered it for the rest of my life. Once the biochip is activated, I won’t remember any of this.

I shiver at the thought. Somehow out of everything that’s going to happen, it’s losing my memory that scares me the most. Not going Nova, not dying, but forgetting who I am. Forgetting why I’m doing this.

“We won’t actually activate it unless it’s really necessary, right?” I ask the doc, though I already know what he’ll say.

“Wherever we end up deploying you, it will most likely be necessary. The enemy knows of our resistance; they’re watching for us to make a move. They’ll have their psychics out in force, looking for anything out of the ordinary. We can’t chance them finding out what you are before you can complete your mission. Suppressing your memories is the only way we can make sure they won’t discover your mission if they force you to undergo a psychic check.”

I sigh and look down at my hands. “I know.”

Water runs in the sink. “How’s your nose? Does it still hurt?”

Still looking down, I shake my head. “No, it doesn’t hurt, but I can’t smell anything anymore.”

“That’s normal.”

“I can’t taste anything, either.”

A towel swishes through the air. “I’m not surprised. A large part of taste is smell. It’s not uncommon for people losing their sense of smell to lose all or some of their abilities to taste as well. It may pass, or it may be permanent. Even if it comes back, your sense of taste will probably be weak. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I hear his footsteps come back and then his large hands take mine and squeeze. He gently turns my arms over and runs a finger over each forearm. “They’ve healed well. No one should be able to tell what’s underneath the skin.”

Raising my head, I look at the doc. The skin of his face is sagging, and his hair has gone almost completely white. The look in his eyes is ineffably sad. He manages a small smile when he sees me watching him.

“So many expectations, and on such young shoulders! You’ve lived so much life in your two years here. We have no right to ask more of you, but we do anyway. Not for our sakes, but for humanity’s sake, for the Celestians’ sake. You may be their only hope. And they don’t even know it.”

I look away. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Then all you can do is die knowing you did your best. We all did our best. If there truly is a higher power up there, may He look down and protect us all.”

“That’s it? Trust to a higher power?”

The doc chuckles at my incredulity. “Well, I could go into a long lecture on the workings of the clock and biochip if you want, but you won’t remember it anyway.” Niven releases my hands and chucks me lightly on the chin. “Have faith that it will all work out, and it will.”

My thoughts turn to my parents. “I’m not sure I have any faith left.”

As if reading my mind, the doc asks, “Have you visited them lately?” I shrug, and he shakes his head, chiding me. “Go see your parents. They don’t have much longer. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

I give him a look. “They don’t have much longer, or I don’t?”

“Unfortunately, both.”

My parents are in a building on the other side of the compound. I wander slowly across the deserted grounds. The place is far from impressive—a few buildings, a ruined lookout tower, and a force fence stuck on a plot of dull dirt adorned with clumps of yellowed grass.

When Tiersten Colony was first settled, this place was constructed as one of a few dozen weather control stations to guard against the lightning storms and dust devils. Continued terraforming over the years eliminated the worst of the storms and made most of the control stations unnecessary. Ironically, this one was abandoned altogether a couple hundred years ago when the tower took a stray lightning strike. Now it’s the final retreat of our resistance cell, for however long we can hold out. Once this place falls, there is nowhere else to go.

Not that I’ll still be here by the time that happens.

I look around me and grimace for about the thousandth time since coming here. It’s an ugly place—both the weather station and the land around it—all brown and yellow and brown. I heard a scientist once say that we could terraform Tiersten for a million years and it would never look any better than this. Tiersten is just one of those planets. Probably why the Tellurians ended up turning it into a penal planet instead of a real colony. Internment camps full of Celestian POWs, broken weather stations, and one misbegotten resistance cell—that’s all that can be found here now.

A movement on the far side of the tower snags my attention. I squint, catching a glimpse of dark hair and olive skin. Storm, just a few years younger than me and the only other child left in the resistance. Not that Storm is his real name. No one knows his name, for he never speaks. The kids at the internment camp all said he was brain-damaged. They all said he had been struck by lightning. Stormbrain, they called him, Lightning Rod. I asked him once if what they said about the lightning was true. He just looked at me with those strange brown eyes of his—intelligent eyes that seemed to belie the rumors.

“I drowned once,” I’d finally offered when he didn’t answer. “Back on Aurora, when I was really little. They say I actually died for a minute, before the rescue workers brought me back.”

He only shook his head at me, though what he was saying “no” to, I had no idea. But the terrible scars on his right hand, burned into the fleshy ball of his thumb and radiating up through his palm into his fingers, told me something had happened to him.

Someone calls my name and I turn. Captain Jao, the commander of our dying resistance, is hailing me from the back corner of the fence. I stiffen momentarily; then with a final glance at Storm, I reroute my steps. One can’t ignore the resistance commander, no matter how much one might want to. He nods at my perfunctory greeting. His sleeves are rolled up, and he’s tinkering with the control box on the corner post.

“How is the work on the force fence coming?” I ask, noting the red light on the post is unlit.

“I’m trying a new frequency, but I’m not optimistic,” he admits, adjusting one of the nodes. “For all our hopes, the force fence certainly didn’t protect us at the internment camp. The most it will probably do is warn us the enemy’s here, and by the time that happens . . .”

“It will be too late,” I finish. It’s exactly what happened at the main internment camp where we were previously headquartered. By the time we knew they were there, the enemy was already in the camp. No one within half a mile of the main fence escaped—not the thousands of Celestian POWs or the resistance members hiding in plain sight among them. Only a handful of us managed to flee through the back. A resistance cell of over a thousand reduced to thirty-eight in the span of an hour.

No, I correct myself as I think of my parents. Thirty-six.

“There’s a scientist on Aganir who’s supposedly had more success using the fence to keep them out. No one else has had any luck replicating his success, though. Maybe we should have settled the resistance on Aganir instead of Tiersten. Not that I’d want to live there—nasty place, it’s like breathing underwater in a garbage dump.” Jao flips a switch and the red light goes on. “There! That’ll have to do. Days like this, I really miss your mother. She was a genius with this sort of thing. Well, even if we had her help, it would still only be a matter of time.”

I shy away from the mention of my mom and concentrate on his last comment. “Surely the resistance lives in other places besides Tiersten and Aganir.”

Jao shrugs and shuts the control panel. “Scattered pockets here and there, maybe, and we still have a few ships out there that remain ours. They’ll do their best to slow the advance of the invasion, to try and hold the quarantine and keep anyone from leaving Tellurian space. If they can find a way to violate the ceasefire and sabotage any peace talks with the Celestians they will, but . . .” He spreads his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

He doesn’t have to finish. I know as well as Jao that Tiersten was the main home of the resistance, and with the internment camp fallen, it’s only a matter of days, weeks at most, before the last of the resistance falls. Jao doesn’t have to tell me that. Despite the fact that I’m only a teenager, the captain has never tried to sugarcoat the truth for me. It’s one of the things I like about him.

Used to like about him. It’s one of the things I used to like about him, when I still liked him. Today, though, with my stomach roiling in dread at seeing my parents, I can’t help wishing he’d lied just a little.

“That’s actually what I wanted to speak with you about,” Jao continues. “The ceasefire has been made official.”

I swear softly. “When?”

“We picked it up on the coms this morning.”

“It won’t be long before the enemy tries to push into the Celestial Expanse, then.”

“No.” He takes a breath. “It gets worse. The first official act by the ‘Tellurians’ now that the ceasefire is official will be the return of five hundred ‘prisoners of war’ from Tiersten Internment Colony. A gesture of goodwill, you see.” Jao’s lips twist at the irony.

My heart sinks as I realize what’s coming. “Can’t we find some way to tell the Celestians? To warn them about the invasion?”

“The Celestians will never believe us. You know that. How many times have we tried to tell them over the past two years? How do you make someone believe in something you can’t see, hear, touch, smell?”

“But the psychics could show them the enemy. If we sent in a member of TelPsy—”

“We sent in a list of psychics as long as my arm! Dozens of good people, to planets and stations across the Celestial Expanse, all sent to spread the word in the only way we could.” Jao’s voice lowers. “And do you know how many came back? Do you know how many were ever heard from again?”

I lower my head, already knowing the answer. “None.”

Jao sighs. “And the few times we managed to bring a Celestian official here, someone important, they disappeared off the face of the galaxy before they ever made it home again. The enemy was always one step ahead of us.”

“You think they’ve already infiltrated the Celestial Expanse.”

“Yes, but not in force, not beyond the point of no return. They’re going to use the internees to start their real invasion. How many prisoners of war are on Tiersten alone? Thirty thousand? Forty? That doesn’t even count the internees on the main prison worlds. We can’t let those prisoners reach New Sol. We can’t let the ceasefire hold.”

“I’m going to be on that initial list of five hundred prisoners being sent into the expanse, aren’t I?”

“We always knew that you would be our last resort. One final hope when all else failed.” Jao looks away. “With our inside knowledge of the main internment camp, it shouldn’t be that hard to get you in. A little hacking into their records, and no one will even know you’re not supposed to be there.”

I briefly close my eyes. I always knew I would be deployed at some point, that I would be responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. It’s just they weren’t supposed to be people I knew. Tiersten prisoners I’d lived with and worked with, hung out with and hoped with. Maybe they’ve been suborned by the enemy, but how can I complete my mission knowing that I’ll be ending any hope of freeing them one day?

“Is this going to be a problem?”

My eyes open. “No.”

“Because if it is, Doc can probably—”

“I said it’s fine,” I answer a little too sharply. I strive for a more reasonable tone. “You know this is likely to be a trap, right? Sending out the five hundred prisoners from Tiersten? The enemy is trying to draw us out.”

Jao nods. “I know, but I think if we manage things right, we’ll slip right past their trap. Your biochip will have to be activated. Otherwise, if they have any of our weaker psychics under their control, a casual touch could expose you. Once you’ve left, we’ll sabotage the Tiersten spaceport by blowing out the main power relay. This should prevent any more prisoners from being shipped out.”

“Sabotage the spaceport? An undertaking of that sort would take every last person we have! Even if you succeed, it’s unlikely anyone will survive.”

Captain Jao doesn’t answer. Not that he has to. We both know it’s better to go out on our terms than the enemy’s. I’ll be making my own last stand even as Jao and his people make theirs. After that, the Celestians will be on their own. We just have to hope that what we’ve done will be enough.

I meet Jao’s eyes and finally nod. As I’m walking away, his voice calls out to me one last time. “Lia!”

I stop, though I don’t turn.

“You know I wouldn’t send you if I had any other choice, don’t you? That if there were any other way, I would take it.” Defeat colors his every syllable, and if I hadn’t believed it before, I would have known it now.

The resistance is dead.

“Yes,” I whisper, so softly I know he’ll never hear me. “I know.”

A soldier greets me at the entrance to the control station. The basement in the station is a relic from the past, a leftover from when the dust devils had free rein over Tiersten. Now, it’s used as a holding area for two very special prisoners. My parents.

Cool air enfolds me as I make my way down the stairs into the basement. Something clanks in the far recesses of the sub-floor, and my heart jumps. I do not want to be here. I do not want to see them. I almost turn around and leave, but I force myself to continue. Doc’s right. I should see them once more before I go. I owe it to them.

I owe it to myself, to remember why I’m doing what I’m doing.

The guards sit at a table playing electronic ping pong. I purposely avoid looking at the screens monitoring my parents and instead watch the guards swing their tip-pads at the holographic ball. How long has it been since I played a real game? Any sort of game? With someone my own age? Not since the internment camp anyway.

“Here to see your parents?” Cavendish asks, hitting pause on the game as she gets up.

I nod, and she gives my shoulder a pat. A burst of comforting sympathy rushes through me. I pull away and give her a look. “Shouldn’t you be saving your powers for something important?”

She gives me a wry grin. “Who’s more important than you? Come on. You’ll feel better once you get this over with.”

She takes me down the hall to a door, and I stare through the small window that looks into the room. A bed, a couple of chairs, a table, a few books. We took very little with us when we fled the internment camp, most of it practical stuff like food and weapons, but when it comes to the few niceties we have, almost all of them ended up here—that scented soap of Cavendish’s, Niven’s grandmother’s chenille throw, even Jao’s stash of chocolate-covered pretzels. Not that anyone begrudges my parents the little extras. You can’t begrudge people you pity.

Cavendish keys in the codes to take down the force fence and unlock the room. For a long moment, I don’t move, fear freezing me in place.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”

Her words tear me out of my trance. I do, and yet I don’t. At last I shake my head. “No, I can do it.”

“Okay then. We’ll be keeping an eye on the monitors just in case.” She taps the chit under her ear. “Link me when you’re done.”

I nod. Then, taking a deep breath, I open the door and go in.

It’s the smell that hits me first. Sharp and sour, like an astringent, but with a pale, sweetish after-odor. I gasp. It’s the first time I’ve smelled anything in two weeks. I knew, theoretically, of course, that I would smell something when I came into this room. I just didn’t expect them to smell like this.

“Hi Starshine.”

I tense at the sound of his voice, and slowly turn. “Daddy.”

He’s sitting in a chair not immediately visible from the window. Revulsion flies through me at the sight of him, and I fight the urge to recoil. He looks worse than last time, far worse. His gray eyes are completely sunken in, his cheekbones practically slicing the air through the slack skin of his face. The yellowish cast over his skin, as though he was suffering from jaundice, is new, and his body, already thin the last time I saw him, is positively skeletal now. I can barely see in his shrunken form the man who raised me. He looks as though he’s being slowly eaten away from the inside out.

Which is, of course, exactly what’s happening.

“It’s good to see you again.”

I nod and glance away, unable to return the sentiment. My eyes fall on my mother where she lies on the bed, asleep. She doesn’t look nearly as bad as my father, thin but not skeletal, eyes ringed with dark circles but not sunken. Her skin is still the pale, creamy white she passed down to me. In sleep, she looks normal, as though she’s simply overworked and exhausted, and not . . .

“How’s Mom?” I ask.

“Hanging in there,” Dad answers after a second. “I’ve given up trying to explain things to her. Without psychic abilities of her own, she’s unable to fight the reality distortions being forced on her. Her perceptions are just too skewed at this point to accept the truth. Maybe it’s for the best. She’ll live a lot longer if she doesn’t try to fight it.”

Not like him, though Dad doesn’t say it out loud.

I swallow hard, wishing for about the millionth time that my parents were whole and healthy, and we were somewhere far away from here, somewhere they could never reach us. I push away the thought, knowing it for the futile thing it is. “None of us may live much longer.”

“The force fence?”

“A warning, nothing more. Jao said if we still had Mom, things might be different, but not now.”

“No, now she would just sabotage the work without even knowing why, and do a damn good job of it too. Remember the roamers?”

I laugh softly. “That’s Mom—best mechanic in the galaxy.”

She was infected on our flight from the internment camp, she and one other from our party, though of course no one knew it at the time. On the run, with the enemy bearing down on us, Dad and Cavendish didn’t have a chance to check everyone. It was only when we were finally able to stop for a short break later and caught Mom tearing out the intelli-wires from the roamers that we knew.

She’d been taken by the enemy.

Mom managed to disable three roamers before we caught her, though we’d been stopped less than ten minutes. Dad liked to joke that it was some kind of record. That’s Dad—always able to find something to laugh about even in the darkest situation. Or maybe it’s just his way of showing that no matter what happens, he’ll always love us. He’ll always be proud of us.

It was only as they were subduing my mother that the other one showed itself. Corporal Sanderson had time to get off one shot before a rifle blast took him down. It was an accident; Jao didn’t mean to kill him, just disable him. No matter his intentions, the alien, suddenly unbonded with its host’s death, fled for the nearest possible replacement. My dad.

That’s how, in just a matter of minutes, I lost both parents. Infected by the same filth that had taken down the entire Tellurian Alliance in only three years.

“So how are you doing?” Dad asks quietly, and I realize my jaw is clenched tightly enough to make my teeth ache. Pain chokes me at the question.

My parents are dying a slow, horrible death, the resistance is nearly crushed, and in a week I’ll be going Nova on five hundred of my former friends and compatriots. I’m dying inside. My spirit withering up and drying, its edges curling up like a browning leaf at the end of autumn making its final fall. How am I doing? I can barely walk and talk and breathe, the pain is so great.

“I . . . Daddy, I . . .” I suddenly can’t talk, can’t breathe past the horrible pressure smothering my chest. I slump forward, bracing my hands on my knees as I gasp for air that doesn’t want to be breathed. Every inhalation now is a fight, my body both fighting breath and fighting to breathe at the same time. I should com Cavendish, but I can’t seem to do anything.

Cold hands cover mine and suddenly a rush of love bursts through my chest. It spreads under my skin and fills my veins, and then I can breathe again, my lungs unlocking and air flowing in.

It’s okay, Starshine. It’s okay. Our time together has been so short, but I still love you more than anything in all the galaxy. You’re my girl, my light in the dark, my starry, starry night. You are strong. My beautiful, strong girl.

My father’s voice fills my mind, gentle and loving, and I mentally gravitate toward the voice, wanting to be near him, just him, with every fiber of my being. I slide though the psychic connection before he realizes what I’m doing, wanting to burrow myself in his mind like I used to burrow myself in his hugs.

Wait, sweetie—

Something grabs me, impaling me on its claws and yanking me in deep. Slimy and acrid and pulsing, it wraps around me, smothering me, choking me, consuming me alive. The cord connecting my spirit to my body starts to thin, and I scream, fighting against it with all my will. But the dark thing is stronger. It bites down on me with a thousand mouths. Pain shrieks through my mind as I feel myself being eaten alive.

A light bursts around me and the thing falls back. Its grip loosens, and in that brief moment, hands grab me and shove. I snap back like a slingshot, and suddenly I’m back in my own mind.

Eyes jolting open, I frantically backpedal, falling over my feet as I try to get as far away from my father as I can. My butt hits the floor, but I continue to scoot back, away from his stricken face until my back hits the door.

“Starshine, I—”

“Stay back! Stay away from me!” I push myself against the door, helpless to do anything but watch as Dad raises his hands and slowly backs away. His knees shake as he collapses back in the chair. Then he does something I’ve never seen him do before in my life.

He puts his head in his hands and cries. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m so, so sorry.”

Over and over, he just keeps saying it, until I start crying too, not out of fear and hurt, but shame. Shame that for even one short moment I couldn’t distinguish my dad from the dark thing that lives inside him now, eating him alive one second at a time.

This is the reason I have to do what I’m going to do. This is the reason I have to go Nova. Because if my going Nova will prevent even one kid from losing their parents the way I have, it’ll be worth it. No matter what the cost.

After a while, I realize Cavendish is linking me, asking in frantic tones if I’m all right and telling me she’s coming in.

“No, it’s okay,” I reassure her. “I’m okay.” I’m not going to flee this time.

Cavendish clearly doesn’t believe me, but she does back off at my word, though she stays poised at the outer door, ready to let me out the minute I call.

After a while, my dad wipes his face and lifts his head. He looks so exhausted, as though he just ran an ultra-marathon on a brutally hot day. No wonder he deteriorated so quickly these past few months. How could he not, fighting that thing inside him every second of every day!

“Is that what it feels like then? That horrible, slimy thing wrapped around you all the time?”

He shrugs. “You get used to its presence after a while. It doesn’t speak, not in words, but it pushes perceptions into your mind. False understandings that distort reality, making you believe that what’s true isn’t, and things that aren’t real are, all meant to influence the way you act. Eventually you learn how to fight it, to push it back.” Dad glances back at the bed where Mom is still sleeping. A wisp of a smile touches his mouth, and I know what he’s thinking: Mom always could sleep through anything. He turns back to me. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think your mother can feel hers at all. Most of the infected can’t.”

I nod. It’s how they were able to sweep through Telluria so easily. Their bodies, incorporeal and beyond our range of sound and vision, simply invaded us one after another and no one even knew they were there. Except the psychics. It was the Tellurian Psychics, TelPsy, that finally discovered what was going on. They’re the ones who formed the resistance; they’re the ones that started teaching the rest of us to fight.

My knees wobble a little as I get to my feet, and I reach for the table to steady myself. My hand knocks into the lamp, and it falls before I can catch it, shattering on the floor with a loud crash. The figure in the bed stirs and sits up.

“Arron?” my mom says, squinting a little as she rubs sleep from her eyes. “What’s going on?” A smile lights up her face as she glances over and sees me. She climbs out of bed, stretching as she comes near. She gives her husband a playful slap on the shoulder. “Arron! Why didn’t you tell me our daughter had come to visit?”

Dad looks down. “We were just having a little father-daughter talk before you got up.”

“A talk? Judging from the casualties, it must have been some conversation,” she says, spying the broken lamp. She peers at me more closely, no doubt seeing the tear tracks on my cheeks, and her face creases with concern. She looks at Dad again, and her expression suddenly clears. “He wasn’t telling you that story about aliens from New Earth taking over the galaxy, was he?” She laughs. “Your dad was just pulling your leg, silly. You know that, right? Everything’s fine, I promise. Come here, sweetheart.” She opens her arms to me.

I stare at her, my beautiful, brilliant, amazing mother. My mother, who sabotaged three roamers during our escape, all the while thinking she was fixing them. My mother, who thinks her husband is suffering from cancer. My mother, who used to beg me to let her out of this cell, because in her mind she’s been wrongly imprisoned for some minor transgression. My beautiful, brilliant, amazing mother, whose open arms are the most wonderful and terrifying thing in the entire world.

And that’s when I finally flee.

Consciousness comes back in a rush. I jerk upright from my spot on the floor and almost bang into Shar where she crouches above me.

“What the h—” she starts to say.

“They’re here!”

“What? Who’s here?” Shar glances frantically down the length of the tunnel in either direction. “I don’t see anyone. Where are they?”

“Everywhere,” I whisper, horror dawning as I finally understand why I’m here. Why I can’t simply turn my back and walk away. “They’re everywhere.”