Running from the warehouse, we’d planned to upload the footage as soon as we could. But with no one out to get us right away, we had time to spare. The first priority was to check on news of Bethari and Joph.
For once, Soren came in useful. The headline story of his ’cast was still the absence of his four classmates.
“He says we’re all on vacation,” I said, scanning the accompanying transcript. “Soren knocked on Ms. Miyahputri’s door, and some guy was house-sitting. He implied I’d had a nervous breakdown, and you guys were going with me while I recovered in the country somewhere.”
Soren, of course, was delighted by this news and talked about it at some length, complete with excerpts from my interview with Hurfest, dwelling lovingly on the bits where I’d appeared the most upset and furious.
“I really hate that guy,” Abdi said, leaning over my shoulder.
I nodded, tapping my fingers against my thigh. “This isn’t good news,” I said slowly. “But at least it’s not bad, either. No reports of finding their bodies in a ditch.”
Abdi nodded and did something to the boat controls. “Do you want to upload the footage now?”
“I was thinking about that,” I said. Seeing the interview extracts was an unpleasant experience, but it had given me an idea. “Let’s try something else.”
It was a seven-hour trip to the mainland, and Abdi stopped arguing with me at about hour two, having gone from outright opposition to making sensible additions that gave us a much greater chance of success. We studied the maps on the boat computer. Instead of going straight for Port Phillip Bay, we headed for a much quieter destination along the Great Ocean Road, near the small township of Kennett River.
Despite my confidence in our plan, I was nervous. So many things had already gone wrong.
“Weather’s not good,” Abdi said as we got closer to the mainland, eyeing the boat computer. “There are supercell storm warnings.”
“That sounds bad.”
“We’ll make it there well before it gets serious,” he told me. “It’s actually good; there should be fewer boats on the water.”
“But you can manage the boat all right?”
“I’ve done this before,” he said, not for the first time.
“Not in Australia.”
“The Red Sea is a challenge,” he said. “Bass Strait is easy.” He paused. “Easy-ish. Relax, please? Trust me.”
I did. I just didn’t trust the weather. By the time we got close to land, the sea had gotten noticeably rougher and the wind was blowing hard enough to make me hold tight to the handgrips when I went on deck. The bay itself was sheltered enough, with a nearly deserted sandy beach. Abdi kept a sharp eye on the depth gauges as we went in, sonar guiding him through the rocks. There was a chunking sound as he dropped the anchor.
I eyed the beach. It looked depressingly far away. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. Close as we can get with this keel. The currents should be all right, though.”
“Augh,” I said, and started taking off my shoes and pants. The T-shirt could stay on, but swimming in jeans wasn’t something I wanted to try.
Abdi stood still and stared.
“Oh,” I said, remembering that our nighttime explorations had been in that solid dark. “Uh, so, yeah, should I do a little dance?”
“No, this is good,” he said, and pulled off his own outer clothes.
Abdi in underwear. Mmm.
The actual swim was about as unpleasant as I’d thought it would be, even with Abdi taking the job of towing our supplies behind us. My eyes stung, and salty water went up my nose, and every time seaweed brushed me, I was convinced it was a shark. And sure, the oceans are warmer than in my time, but that doesn’t translate to actually warm. I was shivering by the time I found sand under my probing feet, and my fingers were clumsy undoing the knots Abdi had made on the tarpaulin wrapped around our things.
“I think I like the Red Sea more,” Abdi said.
“Would you show me someday?” The question popped out before I could think, and I immediately wanted to grab it back, but Abdi tilted his head, smiling.
“I would like that,” he said softly. “If I can, I will.”
I hugged him, wet body to wet body, and neither of us mentioned how unlikely it was that I’d ever visit those faraway waves.
Putting on dry jeans over wet underwear was not the funnest, but the important things were the two computers, safely wrapped in our clothes, and the little knife, which I stuck back in my pocket.
We trekked up the beach to the highway and waited behind a pile of rocks. This was the most uncertain—and most morally dubious—part of the plan. But we needed transportation, and we didn’t have much choice.
It always seemed to come down to a lack of choice.
Abdi spotted the car before I did, moving smoothly down the long highway toward the distant city. The white van looked similar to a builder’s van from my time—with the exception of the solar panels on the roof instead of ladders.
I ruffled my already ruffly hair. “Do I look pathetic enough?” I asked.
“Pout more,” Abdi suggested. “You look cute when you pout.”
I smiled, but it was wobbly.
“I can do it,” he said.
“I’m smaller. Less threatening.” Before we could argue further, I jumped over the rocks and ran toward the approaching van, waving my arms in frantic patterns. “Help me!” I called. “Oh god, please, please help me!”
The desperation wasn’t feigned. We could try it again, but every missed opportunity would decrease our chances of the plan working. The van slowed to a halt, and I didn’t have to fake my relief, either. “Oh, thank you! Thank you so much! Please help me!”
The driver opened his door and jumped out, his blue eyes filled with concern. “Are you all right, ween? What happened?”
He was alone. He was old, a few white hairs still clinging to his bare scalp, the skin nearly translucent with age. And I held my little knife to his wrinkled throat and said, “Please don’t move.”
He froze. Abdi jumped the rocks and pulled the EarRing, very gently, from the man’s ear.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as Abdi went through his pockets and pulled out his computer. “I’m so, so sorry, I really am.”
“There’s money in the glove box,” he said. “Take it. Please don’t hurt me.”
“We need the car,” I said miserably.
“Please don’t kill me. I have grandchildren your age.”
“We won’t kill you, I promise. Just don’t fight.”
Abdi climbed into the van and looked at the dashboard. “Bring him over here, Tegan.”
“Please,” I said, and pushed him very gently toward the open door.
“Voice code, please,” Abdi said.
The man leaned over and mumbled something at the steering wheel, and Abdi coaxed the engine into action.
“You’re Tegan Oglietti,” the man said suddenly. “I thought you had a breakdown.”
“No. The army’s trying to keep secrets.”
Abdi shot me a pained look. “Sir, there’s a town about an hour’s walk down the highway. We’ll leave you water; all you have to do is follow the road. Maybe someone will pick you up before then.”
The man was looking at Abdi square in the face, no longer quite so frightened. “What’s your name, son?”
“Abdi.”
“Well, Abdi, I’m Jack Harrison. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the weather reports, but there’s a superstorm coming in from the east and I don’t walk very well. If you plan to leave me out in the open, you may as well cut my throat now and get it over with.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “Those rocks there should give you some shelter.”
Abdi bit his lip. “Tegan, I think we have to take him with us.”
I stared at him. “He’ll try to take the car back. We could lose everything, for good this time.”
“These storms are dangerous, Tegan. No one might drive by in time.”
“Abdi, this is important! We can’t risk screwing it up again.”
Mr. Harrison was silent and motionless, only his shifting eyes following our faces.
Abdi looked directly at me. “I guess Dawson thinks what he’s doing is important, too. Worth making some sacrifices for.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Isn’t it? I think this is how it starts, Tegan. You make a decision that might hurt someone in pursuit of something that helps a lot of people further along. And then you make worse and worse decisions, and then you’re willing to sacrifice more people—”
“I am not Trevor fucking Dawson!” I yelled. My hand was shaking on the knife, and I pulled it farther away from Mr. Harrison’s throat in case I accidentally hurt him.
Abdi waited.
“All right! Bring him, then.”
Mr. Harrison’s hands were trembling, too. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“We’ll have to tie you up,” I warned him, and made Abdi take the knife while we got him into the back of the van. I was getting really good at securing people. “I’ll ride in the back with you,” I said, and put the knife on the other side of my seat, well out of his reach. He followed it with his eyes.
“I really wouldn’t,” Abdi said, leaning in. “If anything happens to Tegan, I will be angry.” He climbed into the driver’s seat. After a moment, the van started gliding down the road.
“Where are we going?” Mr. Harrison asked.
I wasn’t prepared to be that trusting. “You’ll see when we get there,” I said, and settled in for the long drive home.
The Father’s computer had even more spy apps than Bethari’s. Despite the address being private, we managed to find it with very little trouble, and Abdi parked the van outside a pretty suburban house much like Marie’s. Small upstairs, probably huge downstairs. Solar panels. And a garden. Funny, I hadn’t thought he’d be a gardener.
I raced through the rain that had started to fall in heavy drops, signaled the door, and waited. This bit, at least, might be fun.
He didn’t make any pretense of nonchalance. The door swung open immediately, and Carl Hurfest stared down at me. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
“That’s a long story,” I said. “Really exciting, lots of action and drama. Wanna hear it?”
“Get in, quick.”
“Just a second.” I signaled the van, and Abdi came out, guiding Mr. Harrison before him.
Hurfest’s eyes narrowed as he saw the strips of cloth tying Mr. Harrison’s hands. “What’s this?”
“We’ll tell you,” I promised. “Inside.”
We told him everything.
We had to; there was no way he was going to give us access to his networks without getting as much information as he could. He was angry enough that we wouldn’t let him talk to a few army contacts to verify my story.
“Either your contacts don’t know anything, or they do andthey already didn’t tell you,” Abdi said finally. “And if it’s the second, what do you think is going to happen? The moment you get in touch with them, the army will be banging down your door.”
Hurfest looked unconvinced. “If we don’t warn the army, whatever the Father’s planned for this starship might go ahead as soon as they know you escaped for good. Are you willing to take responsibility for those deaths?”
“The Inheritors think murder’s a sin,” I said, more confidently than I felt. But even though he’d ignored the cryostasis of thousands, the Father had been clear that actually causing deaths was a no-no. “They’ll make sure no one gets hurt.”
Hurfest grunted. “People can find excuses for all kinds of sins if it suits them.” He sat back and eyed Mr. Harrison, sitting on the couch with his hands still tied in front of him. “What do you think?”
“They carjacked me, threatened me with a deadly weapon, and took me hostage,” Mr. Harrison said. “By my reckoning, they’re also guilty of trespassing, privacy violation, illegal data access, theft, and multiple counts of assault.”
I flinched. Abdi slipped his hand into mine.
“But dead weens in a freezer…” Mr. Harrison shook his head. “Put the footage on the tubes. The police can sort out who’s most to blame.”
“Stockholm syndrome is so popular this year,” Hurfest observed.
“So you won’t do it?” I said, my stomach plummeting. “You don’t care?”
“Oh, I care. I’m a cynical bastard, but I’m not a sociopath. I can also see the story of a career when it’s handed to me on a big shiny plate.” He gave me a direct look, and I began to let myself hope again. “Okay, this is the deal. I can bounce the raw data to a couple dozen colleagues as coming from an anonymous source. Between them, they’ll verify what they can and spread the story. Barring a massive natural disaster or one of the big nations declaring war on another one, in half an hour, it’ll be the only thing anyone is talking about.”
“But?” Abdi asked. “I think there is a but.”
Hurfest nodded. “But it’s not going to be enough,” he said. “In a week, they’ll all be talking about something else.”
“But it’s the facts!” I protested. “We can prove it; we have the footage we filmed in the warehouse; we have the Father’s records of the Ark Project and the footage of the starship—it’s all true.”
“That won’t matter,” he said. “Trust me, Tegan, it won’t. If you want to get through to people, if you want to make them understand why this is important, it needs to be personal. It needs a human face.”
“Dawson said the same thing. He said I was the face of Operation New Beginning.”
“You are. Which is why it has to be you. A journalist reveals a military conspiracy and human-rights abuses—big deal, journalists have been doing that for centuries. Only rarely does it make a difference. If the Living Dead Girl discovers that she’s been betrayed and tells the world about it, it might be a different story.”
It was such a little thing, after everything we’d gone through. But he wanted me to talk to the whole world—not rehearsed, not with Tatia’s guidance and lots of makeup to hide behind. Just me, by myself, telling everyone my many faults and mistakes. Exposed, with everyone watching me.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered.
Hurfest sat back and spread his hands. “I’ll send the data anyway. But I’m telling you what’ll happen if that’s all we do.”
Abdi squeezed my hand. “Start from the beginning,” he suggested. “Tell them where you came from. You can do this.”
I thought of Marie, who’d driven off to lead them away from me. I thought of Bethari, who’d never hesitated and backed me all the way. I thought of Joph, who’d been bleeding and screaming at me to go.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
Hurfest nodded. “I thought you would.”
It made me feel better to realize I still didn’t like him or his smug, self-righteous face. But just because I was doing what he wanted didn’t mean I wasn’t doing the right thing.
It took him no more than a minute to send the data and turn off his EarRing and computer, as a zillion bells and whistles started. “Colleagues wanting to talk to me direct,” he explained. “They want access to my source. Come on, we can get a secure signal from my bedroom. It’ll be easier if we aren’t all watching you talk. Abdi and I will work on finding a place to move to when they trace the signal.” He looked at me. “You know they will trace the signal, don’t you? They’ll find you eventually.”
I nodded.
Abdi went with me as far as the bedroom door and kissed me softly on the threshold. “You can do it,” he said again.
I kissed him back. My throat was too tight to speak, but I squeezed his hands in mine. Then I let go and sat cross-legged at the foot of the narrow bed, while Hurfest hunted out a clean computer and signed me in to a newscasting service, bouncing the signal through half a dozen bases.
“The storm’s starting in earnest,” he said. “That ought to buy you some time.”
“When you’re ready,” I said, trying to sound composed, and Hurfest gave me a silent three count with his hands.
I think I saw a glint of respect in his eyes before he withdrew.
I’m still not sure where the words came from. I thought back, that’s all, to my first lifetime, to my last day. Where else would I start but at the beginning, with my name?
I leaned in and spoke, hoping the computer was picking me up properly. “My name is Tegan Oglietti,” I began. “One of my ancestors was a highwayman, and another was a prince.”
And now you know.
There was some trouble when they tracked the signal to Hurfest’s house, and we had to flee, stealing bikes and riding through the storm. We let Mr. Harrison go when we went, and Hurfest stayed behind to slow down our pursuers by giving them false information about our direction. I hadn’t expected that of him. I guess you never know about people.
Even dying down, the storm was pretty rough, but we made it to a safe house Abdi knew of that had belonged to one of the medicine-smuggling teams. They must have all been alerted and cleared out when Abdi went missing, which is how I was able to tell you about him and Joph being involved. We broke in and set up there.
But we’re not going to get away again. We knew they were coming, too close to evade, and I only needed the time to finish. I can hear them outside now. I don’t know what else I can tell you.
Maybe I should go back to the beginning again. I’m Tegan Marie Mary Oglietti. I was beloved of Dalmar; befriended by Alex; tolerated by my brother, Owen; and cherished by my mother.
But that was in my first lifetime, and I don’t think I’m done with my second.
The Beatles sang that all you need is love. It would be nice if that were true. But, like everyone, they wanted a lot more than love alone; they wanted wealth and glory and freedom and peace. They wanted to travel; they wanted to investigate their spirituality; they wanted their children to be happy and safe. Love is a good start, but we need more than that to get through.
My mother’s last words to me were, “Now you can go and save the world.” I died before I could. Some legacy I left you, huh?
But I give you this legacy, too: You can make a difference. You can help.
Not by yourself, not just one person. But I’ve been talking for a long time, and Abdi tells me there are nearly a billion people watching right now, one-tenth of the entire world. There are people boosting this signal in Samoa and Nigeria and Euskadi. There are people commenting and ’casting back. There are over two dozen nodes set up to verify the Father’s evidence and half a dozen more already planning expeditions to Mount Ossa to force the people there to open the doors. The reporters who used to bug me at school are ignoring the media lockout lists and are heading to refugee camps and those hidden warehouses all over the country. Government representatives are getting hard questions from their constituents. They’re all denying any knowledge, which is a pretty good sign they can be pushed into doing something about it. Someone’s started a fund to defend us, and it’s already raised a lot of money. Someone else has started the Free Tegan campaign before I’ve even been arrested. Others are trying to find Bethari and Joph, hacking away at government databases.
It’s really bright outside, and they’re shouting stuff at us.
Oh, the bastards. They brought Marie. She’s out there now, telling me to give myself up.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. The secret’s out, and there’s no reason to kill us, but on top of everything else, I broke the supervised-only media clause in my contract pretty thoroughly, and I still belong to them. I’m going to need a really good lawyer, or I don’t think they’ll ever let me go again. I hope Joph and Bethari are all right. I hope Zaneisha can forgive me when she knows why I ran. I hope Mr. Harrison and Carl Hurfest didn’t get in trouble. And if they hurt Abdi, I don’t know what I’ll do.
But I’m giving myself up now. Without Marie, I’d never have met Abdi or Bethari or Joph, and they wouldn’t have made it possible for me to discover the secrets of the Ark Project. Without Marie, I would never have escaped from Dawson.
Without Marie, I could never have told you this story.
It’s my turn to help her, if I can, and so I have to go.
Thank you for listening.
Good luck.
Good-bye.