29“THIS IS LUNAR!” MICHAEL SAYS for about the tenth time in the last half hour. He’s pacing rapidly back and forth, only pausing every few seconds to throw me an Are-you-vaccin’-me? look.

“Yeah, I think we’ve already established that,” Shar replies snidely. “Now are we going to do this or not?”

The three of us are assembled in Michael’s room, Shar and I sitting in a semi-circle on the carpet while Michael paces. Teal and Taylor are both out, and the bedroom door is locked. Still, my palms are sweating as I contemplate what we’re about to do.

I linked Shar on my way to Michael’s. I knew he would need proof to pick up his entire family and take off, and I intend to give it to him.

Once Shar arrived, I talked over the plan with her in a hushed voice while Michael was in the bathroom. Unsurprisingly, she was not happy about it.

“Are you completely glitching?” she demanded, in somewhat more than a whisper. “What if you start seizing again? Or actually die this time?”

“Then you’ll have Michael to help you dispose of my body.”

She gave me a black look. In response, I just held out my hand. Fear and suspicion in her eyes, she slowly took it, only to drop it almost immediately and back away.

“Your clock! What did you do?”

I let my inner eye drift to the ticking mechanism.

*—:—:—*

“I remembered how to deactivate it . . . and restart it,” I added before she could get too excited.

“Then you’re really going to do it?”

“I have to. You know the reason why, and now I need you to show Michael as well. Then both of you need to get on the nearest transport and get the hell off this station.”

To make my point, I grabbed her hand and transferred all my remaining funds into her link account. Shar watched the transaction in silence. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

I just laughed. “I haven’t been sure of anything since I stepped foot on this station. I am sure of one thing, though: This is the expanse’s only chance.”

Shar stared at me, for once her face completely unreadable, her silence stretching out so long I started to sweat. At last she nodded. “So be it.”

“Just don’t let Michael see my parents or what I am. I can handle his shock, but not his pity.”

“Show the Spectre but not your dad? How am I supposed to do that?”

I shrugged. “Just show the part where I’m inside his mind, I guess. Leave the rest—” My voice choked and I stopped, swallowing a few times as though it could somehow negate the aching in my heart and the lump in my throat. “He doesn’t need to see the rest of the stuff with my parents, okay?”

Shar nodded, understanding and pity clear in her gaze. She’d seen my parents; she understood why I couldn’t bear to see them again. Not like that.

Now I give Shar a speaking look as if to say, Don’t forget—no bomb, no parents. Shar gives me a look back as if to say, I hate you. Now seal your mouth and let’s get this over with.

Ah, if only I wasn’t dying in just a day and a half, I’m sure Shar and I would end up best friends for life.

“Well, Michael?” I ask him. Still muttering, he drops down to the floor between me and Shar, completing the circle. I reach out and take both of their hands.

Compared to my first experience, the link is surprisingly easy this time. The intense fear from before is muted, almost nonexistent. Either Shar feels more confident now that she knows what to do or she’s figured out how to hide her feelings. It helps that I know exactly what I want to show Michael. With the memory block already partially opened, we glide easily into my memories. It’s strange having not one but two presences in my mind, but I push past the oddness and concentrate on showing Michael the important stuff. More memories have trickled in since my initial link with Shar, and I try to go back to the beginning as far as I can, showing memories of my time with Jao, Cavendish, and the other members of the Tiersten resistance. Our flight from Tiersten when the Spectres invaded is just beginning when from far away I hear a door slam open. A voice intrudes on the memory.

“You know you’re not supposed to lock the door, Michael, and if you do, you should at least use a password that’s more than three letters. Michael? Hello? Anyone home? What are you do-ing?”

A fourth presence suddenly enters the link. Shar starts to pull her hand away from mine to break the link, but I tighten my grip. Let Teal see! She has as much right to know as Michael.

The scene at Tiersten ends as we make our escape, and I move on to the memory chip, my false identity and my meeting with Jao. Now all I have left to show is what we’re fighting.

Even knowing what’s coming doesn’t prepare me for that first flash of terror as the Spectre grabs me. Instinctively, I try to flee the memory, but it’s too late. The experience is too powerful, rolling over me like a tidal wave, and all I can do is clutch the hands in mine tighter as I relive the horrible sensation of being eaten by the Spectre in my father’s body.

Fear. Revulsion. Horror. The combined emotions of not one but four people explode through my mind. They rage through me like a fire, and I cry out, the sensations too huge to contain. Stop, stop, please, let me go!

Then it’s gone, the emotions evaporating as quickly as they arose, my mind empty and alone once again. I blink my eyes open and realize I’m no longer holding Shar’s hand. She yanked her hands out of the circle to shatter the link.

Silence reigns for a long moment, then everyone’s voice breaks out at once.

“Oh my God, Lia! Was that one of them?”

“Johansen, say something! You’re not going to die or vac out or anything, right?”

“It’s okay, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“What the Hell was that?!”

Teal’s panicked shriek is enough to shut the rest of us up. Her body is visibly trembling, her hand resting on Michael’s shoulder. She must have tried to shake him earlier to get his attention, and that was when she accidentally entered the link. Shar and I exchange a look.

“You’d better sit down.”

Explaining is not easy or quick, but I manage it eventually. Teal is pretty overloaded, unsurprising considering her last minute addition, and even Michael seems pretty shaken up. I don’t blame them. Still, I manage to explain the situation well enough with a little help from Shar, who sits next to me rubbing her head and refusing to look at anyone. The only thing I don’t tell them is that I’m the bomb. Better for them to think I’m some junior demolitions expert than know the truth.

Michael shakes his head, rubs his face, and then shakes his head again. I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever seen him utterly speechless. I wait with bated breath for him to speak.

“So it’s all true—what you told me before, about being a Tellurian agent sent here on a mission. You’re really not Lia.”

“I’m sorry, Michael. I wish I was, but I’m not. They just gave me her identity so I could get on the transport with the other prisoners. I don’t know what happened to the real Lia. Maybe she’s still on Tiersten.”

Or maybe she’s dead.

Michael bows his head. He doesn’t need me to say it. After a moment, he continues. “Then you’re really going to blow up the station to keep these aliens, these Spectres, from spreading?” When I nod, he asks. “If they’re incorporeal, how do you know a bomb would work?”

Well, technically I don’t. I’m a prototype; the first of my kind. However, even if I don’t manage to destroy the Spectres, I should still be able to accomplish my primary mission. I blink. Primary mission? Oh, keeping the Spectres from spreading, I suppose. “I’m—it’s a special kind of bomb.”

“Is everyone infected by these things?” Michael asks, glancing around the room fearfully, as though the Spectres might be floating around him at this very moment.

“No, so far it seems to be just the ex-prisoners, and a few officers as well,” I add, remembering the officer I encountered on Level Two my very first day on the station. “You, Teal, Taylor, Shar—all of you are okay. That’s why you have to get off the station, now, before it blows.”

“But you can’t!” Michael bursts out. “You can’t just blow up the station. Think of all the innocent lives you’d be taking. Maybe the infected ones can’t be saved, but the rest . . .”

I shake my head sadly. “Oh, Michael, don’t you understand? Every single person on this station is already lost.”

I watch his face fall as the implication sinks in. Even if we stand by and let the infected refugees go, all the Spectres won’t simply get on those transports and leave us in peace. The majority will go, using the convoy to spread through the expanse in every direction, but some will stay. Enough will stay.

I’d lay odds that within an hour after that convoy pulls away carrying its terrible cargo, there won’t be a single free person left on this station. I know because that’s the Spectres’ MO. They bide their time, waiting and breeding, until they’ve finally bred enough new Spectres to take every human at once. Then they attack. It’s exactly what happened on Lunar Base 3 and Argos Station. It’s exactly what happened at Tiersten Internment Colony. They came, they multiplied, and when the time was right, they struck en masse. Now the same thing will happen on New Sol. I can only assume the reason we aren’t all slaves yet is the convoy. Compared to a fleet of ships ready to ferry them throughout the expanse, what’s one small space station like New Sol to the Spectres? No doubt they’re waiting for the convoy to arrive to make their move. With the convoy due to arrive soon, it’s only a matter of time. Hours, if I’m right.

The others look grim as I tell them about it. Even Michael’s objections are silenced by this horrible piece of information.

“So why didn’t you just blow up the transport on your way here?”

Teal’s level tone cuts through the silence with ease. I glance at her in surprise. “The transport?” I ask. “Well, I didn’t take out the transport because . . .”

The transport! I suddenly remember the nagging feeling I had when I first disembarked, like there was something I hadn’t done, and understanding bursts through my brain. I was never supposed to blow up the station. I was supposed to go Nova on the transport!

It was my clock; that’s what threw me off. It didn’t start until right after I arrived on the station. I’d thought it started too early, activating right at the most dangerous moment, when Rowan was checking me in. Only it didn’t start too early; it started too late. The memory is coming back to me now, filtering back through the hole in my mind.

“It’s all timed out now. Your clock will activate approximately thirty-eight hours before your arrival. Once it starts, your real memories will come back. At that point, it’s imperative you don’t have contact with any possible psychics. In fact, it’s best to avoid having contact with anyone at all, if you can help it. The transport should drop from the jump path approximately three hours before arrival. You’ll have roughly one hour to get to a console and transmit the contents of the data chip—you know where it will be hidden—to the station before you go Nova.”

It makes so much more sense. Why blow up a station full of innocents when you could just blow up a transport full of enemies? Well, the refugees themselves are innocents, but they’re already lost anyway. So what went wrong? Why didn’t my clock start up?

I think back to my trip on the transport. Nothing really jumps out at me, only . . . the door control. It malfunctioned a week into the trip and gave me an electrical shock. I blacked out and felt dizzy for two days afterward. What if the shock damaged the chips in my head? It would explain why my clock didn’t activate on time and why it didn’t count down correctly once it did. It would even explain why all my memories didn’t come back the way they were supposed to once the clock started. All this trouble because of some stupid door control? I bet the doc never imagined that possible contingency.

I want to put my head in my hands and moan, only now understanding the full extent of my failure. By going Nova on the transport, I could have taken out the Spectres and derailed the peace talks all in one shot. Now because of my failure, New Sol is lost and the Celestian delegation is only days away from setting foot on New Earth.

Looking Teal in the eye, I sadly shake my head. “Because I screwed up. And now everyone on this station, and maybe even the entire expanse, will pay for it.”

Sitting in the tunnel next to the SlipStream, I stare at the wall as my thoughts chase round and round in circles. Destroy the station, don’t destroy the station. Kill thousands of innocents, don’t kill thousands of innocents.

Go Nova, don’t go Nova.

I know what I have to do, and yet my heart feels sick with grief. Must I really destroy a station full of people with hardly a second thought? My head says yes, but I can’t help wondering how much good will come of it in the end. I’m just one girl and this is just one station. Even if I stop the Spectres here, they’ll just find some other way in. Jao suspected they’d already started infiltrating the Celestial Expanse. For all we know, half the expanse is already infected.

My thoughts flash back to the resistance, and I shake my head. For every one thing I know, it feels like there are two pieces of information I don’t know. Am I merely a last-ditch effort to save a race that’s already doomed? Or some small part in a much bigger plan, too small to see beyond the boundaries of my own insignificant place in it? If only I knew. If only there was another way.

Michael’s voice still echoes in my head: All those innocent people.

Well, at least if I go Nova I won’t have to live with my guilty conscience afterward.

After admitting my failure, I’d waited for the blame. For the others to round on me in anger for ever setting foot on this station and screwing up their lives. But it never came. Instead, Michael started speaking with Teal in a low voice about where they might obtain passage off the station, and what to tell Taylor, and whether they could warn anyone else. He asked Shar for her link number, explaining at her confused expression that it was so he could link her with the details for their passage.

I smile slightly as I remember the look of surprised wonder on Shar’s face. Had she really expected us to just leave her, a refugee with no creds and no connections, alone to find some way off the station in just thirty-some hours? Yes, I realized looking at her face. That was Shar. She looked after herself and didn’t ask anyone for help. But that’s the thing about Michael. With him, you never need to ask.

My smile falters as I imagine his expression when he learns I’m not coming with them. Even as he’d spoken of passage I knew I should tell him, but I just didn’t have the heart to do it. How could I explain that I’m not some junior secret agent with mad demolition skills, but a bomb? And not just a genetically engineered bomb forced into this mission by my very birth, but a volunteer as well?

“That’s very generous,” Jao says, taking my release form and wadding it up in a ball, “but I can’t let you volunteer for this assignment.” He tosses the form in the garbage can next to his desk.

“Why not?” I demand, pulling it out and un-wadding it. “Because I’m still a kid?”

“Well, yes,” Jao says frankly, “and because this whole plan was a mistake from the get-go. The Nova technology is untested; we don’t even know if it’ll work. We’ll find another way. Besides, your parents would die if I let you do this.”

“They’re dying anyway!”

A pause. “I’m sorry. It was poor choice of words. I didn’t mean—”

“No, it was the perfect choice of words. Don’t you see? That’s why I have to go. I can’t just sit here and watch them die.”

“I know it’s hard—”

“No, you don’t!” I cry. From across the room, faces turn our way. I lower my voice. “You don’t know.”

“We’re going to figure out a way to save them, I promise. The daily inoculations Doc’s giving your parents to keep their Spectres from multiplying seem to be working. Cavendish tells me none of the usual signs are there.”

“What does it matter? You still can’t cure them.”

“No, but it’s only a matter of time before we figure it out.”

“We don’t have time! You know it as well as I do. We have to move soon, and I am our best hope of succeeding.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, precisely because of my age. They’re on the lookout for Tellurian resistance fighters. Tellurian adult resistance fighters. I’m a kid and a prisoner. I’m the last person they’d suspect.”

“It would depend on where we inserted you,” Jao objects, but I can tell he’s weakening. For all his doubts, I am our best option, and he knows it.

Jao hesitates, not unaffected by my words. I drive the final stake home.

“You infected my dad. You owe me.”

The memories have been coming back more rapidly now. Sometimes in bits and pieces, other times in whole chunks. I now know my favorite color (blue), my favorite food (lasagna), and my favorite sport (track), not that the last one was too hard to guess. All these things that I would have given anything to know just one week ago now seem so utterly pointless. I still don’t know the one thing I desperately want to know though. Who I am.

Maybe I was originally engineered to be a weapon, but clearly I became more than that in my couple short years. I had parents who loved me, friends in the resistance, and even more than that, I had free will. I became an individual who could and did make her own choices. Surely I must have had a name, an identity of my own. Something they called me before turning me into Lia. I suppose it really doesn’t matter anymore. Still, it would have been nice to know my name—and my adoptive parents’ names—before I died.

Pacing back and forth, I stop and lean against the tunnel wall, listening to the rush of the SlipStream as it makes its way back and forth. It’s early evening; I should go to the cafeteria and get dinner. I’ve hardly eaten anything all day. None of us really had any sort of appetite after the link. Even now I’m not really hungry. Still, it would be something to do, something besides pacing and thinking. I could even eat my favorite food now that I remember it. Not that I could taste it.

I don’t go, though. I just can’t seem to comprehend eating when my whole world is about to end. Literally.

“Michael said you might be here.”

I turn at the familiar voice. It’s Teal. “What are you doing here?” I ask, faintly surprised to see her here. Except for her question about the transport, she was strangely silent during my entire explanation a couple hours ago. I wonder what she thinks of everything. Even now, her expression gives nothing away, her eyes guarded and dark.

“I came for the truth.”

“You were in my mind; you saw it.”

Teal shakes her head. “Not what you told us. What you didn’t tell us.”

I freeze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re a good liar, Lia—or whoever you are—but not good enough. There’s something you’re not telling us, and I want to know what it is.”

Damn! I should have known that while she was sitting there silently, Teal was examining my every gesture, every word, every explanation, looking for the chink in my story. Well, she found it, though she doesn’t know what it is. Clever Teal! I hesitate, unsure how to answer.

“I’m not leaving until you tell me, so unless you want Michael on the station when the bomb goes off . . .” Teal trails off, not having to finish the sentence. She knows I know there’s no way Michael would leave without her. At last, I sigh. Maybe it will be better this way.

“I can’t come with you all,” I finally admit. “I can’t leave the station.”

Teal blinks. Whatever secret she was expecting, it wasn’t that. “Why not?”

I hesitate. “Because there is no bomb—”

“What?”

“I am the bomb.”

Teal’s mouth drops open. For a long time she just stares at me, utterly speechless. Then something sparks in her eyes, some piece of emotion formerly missing from her guarded expression, and I know she believes me. “How?”

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I volunteered for this mission, and I’m going to finish it.”

“That’s why you were going to leave before,” Teal says slowly, her brain kicking in now that the initial shock is past. “That’s what you meant when you said you weren’t leaving Michael, but for Michael.”

I nod. “My countdown clock malfunctioned. I’ve been living on borrowed time since I got here. I knew it was only a matter of time before I went Nova—blew up—and took everyone on the station with me. I couldn’t let that happen to Michael. I didn’t remember why I was here or what I was supposed to do then. It was only when I finally remembered . . .” I shrug helplessly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I’m so, so sorry!”

I’m not even sure what I’m apologizing for exactly—abandoning Michael? Lying about it? Even volunteering for this terrible mission in the first place? All I know is that I’ve never felt so much regret in my life. It pours out of my heart and fills up my veins until all I can do is apologize, over and over, as though only words can temper the outrush of grief.

I collapse on the floor, hands over my face, and at last the apologies peter out. Shoes scrape over metal, and I feel Teal drop to the floor next to me.

“I’m sorry, too,” she says softly.

I glance over, confused, and she waves a hand roughly by the area of her cheek. It occurs to me that she’s apologizing for the sound slap she delivered me in the cargo bay. I flap my jaw a couple times, bowled over by the utter absurdity of her apologizing for something so small and stupid in the face of much more terrible regrets. So bowled over that I start laughing. Teal’s giggles join mine a second later as she gets it, and for a long time we just sit there and laugh our heads off. It’s only when tears threaten that we force ourselves to stop. We sit together against the wall, trying to catch our breath.

After a while Teal whispers, “Michael will be so devastated.”

“You can’t tell Michael!” I say, alarm shooting through me at the idea.

Teal sits bolt upright. “Are you kidding me? Of course I can’t tell Michael! He would completely vac out if he knew, do something totally deficient trying to save you and then ruin everything. We can’t let that happen,” she adds softly.

She raises her serious face to me, her eyes infinitely older than thirteen at this moment, and I suddenly realize that more than Michael, more than Shar even, she understands exactly what’s at stake. For a brief moment, I don’t feel quite so alone anymore.

We sit together awhile longer, shoulders brushing and hands touching, neither wanting to leave this moment. Not with the future we have before us. Out of the blue, she suddenly speaks.

“If only there was some way to separate ourselves from them. Get all of them in one place and all of us in another.”

I blink, momentarily thrown by the change of subject. Opening my mouth, I start to tell her it’s impossible, then stop. Most of the Spectres have been staying in the hub, the infected prisoners confined there by station rule and the unattached Spectres seeming to prefer congregating there with their kin.

“Well, most of them are in the hub,” I say slowly.

“Most?”

“I have smelled them in the rings. Not nearly so many though, and only off and on.”

Teal looks at me sharply. “Are they in there today?”

I think back and nod. “Yes, I’m certain I smelled them outside the SlipStream station.” I stare at the tunnel wall, eyes unfocused as I think back to all the times I smelled them. Why did I smell them some days and not others? Was it simply dumb luck or was there a reason for their presence, or lack thereof? Something Jao said to me comes back.

There’s a scientist on Aganir who’s supposedly had more success using the fence to keep the Spectres 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.

Breathing underwater in a garbage dump.

A light suddenly goes on in my mind. What if they had it wrong? What if it wasn’t the fence at all?

“Teal, are the misters working today?”

She frowns. “I’m not sure. Gran would know. Why?” At my exhortation, she links Taylor. Excitement builds in me as I hear the answer.

“Unfortunately, they shut off again yesterday morning,” Taylor tells us. “The repair team only got them working again an hour ago. They tell us it’s a valve problem—apparently the main valve hasn’t been opening and closing properly, resulting in too little mist sometimes and too much at others. Why? Is this more research for your project, Teal?”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks, Gran.” Teal links off, bringing her sharp gaze to bear on me.

“It’s the misters!” I exclaim before she has a chance to ask. “There’s something in the nutrient mist they don’t like. Maybe it’s not enough to kill them, but it certainly seems to put them off.”

“I thought they didn’t breathe.”

“They don’t, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still sensitive to the air around them, the way we’re sensitive to air temperature or smells. Maybe the nutrient mist just smells bad to them. Or feels bad to them, whatever their equivalent of smell is.”

I tell Teal about Aganir, and she nods. “Then if we could get the nutrient mist going full blast again . . .”

“We might be able to force them out of the rings!” I finish. We grin at each other, ecstatic at the possibilities. Then reality sets back in and my smile drops from my face.

“It won’t work. Even if we could get them out of the rings, it wouldn’t matter. The bomb is too powerful. I’ll take out the entire station when I go regardless of where I am. I’m sorry.”

“Maybe not.” Teal thinks for a second. “In fact, maybe you don’t need to go Nova at all.”

Not go Nova? My mouth drops open at the thought. Could it be that after steeling myself up to accept my fate there’s a way to avoid it after all? “Tell me.”

Teal leans in, and in quick, terse words, explains her plan.