24 - VALE

Summer 5, Sector Annum 106, 5h55

Gregorian Calendar: June 25

“What time is it?” I whisper, as quietly as I can, for at least the fourth time.

“Five hours fifty-five minutes,” Demeter says patiently. The sky outside my window is already a brilliant blue, promising a cloudless day.

I’ve been awake for at least three hours. I slept fitfully, still in my clothes from the day, knowing that Remy wouldn’t get a chance to sleep, that my teammates don’t have the luxury of feather pillows and down comforters, knowing that today could be our only chance to destroy the empire my parents have built. I try not to get too impatient, wondering when I will be woken by the guards, or by my parents. Will they believe my plea from last night, hear that all I want is a compromise, a reconciliation? Will they ask me calmly what I know about the revolution at their doorstep? Or will they drag me out of bed, throw me in a cell, and lock me in with Aulion until I tell them everything I know?

“What’s happening?” I ask Demeter.

“The march is gaining steam. Defense Forces are gathering on the edges of the crowds, and the chancellor’s airship has arrived at Assembly Hall.”

I might be locked in my room, but Demeter can tell me everything that’s happening. By monitoring the Sector navigation system, she can see every Watchman’s steps, every hovercar’s movement, every airship in the sky. By tapping into the security feed, she can see through the eyes of every camera drone in the city.

I hear boots pounding outside. Is it time? The door is thrown open, and a bright light from the hall illuminates my room. I sit up in an instant and throw an arm over my face, shielding my eyes from the light. But I have no way to defend myself when a strong pair of hands forcibly turns me onto my stomach and shoves my face into the pillow. There is pressure against the back of my head and for a moment I panic—are they trying to kill me? I start to fight back, kicking out against my attacker, and then feel cold metal against my wrists. Handcuffs. The pressure lets off my head, and I am pulled out of bed and down the hall, a pair of hands on each elbow. I might have slept fully dressed, but I took my boots off. I am hyperconscious of my bare feet against the floor as they half carry me down the hall.

I guess they went with the drag-me-out-of-bed option.

I don’t bother to resist, choosing instead to stumble along with them as they rush me down the stairs and out the back door to where there’s a small airship landing pad. This is okay, I remind myself. This is good. This is all part of the plan. There are two more soldiers waiting there. They watch as the first two—I realize now they’re black ops, not SDF—load me onto the waiting airship and push me into one of the seats. One of them throws my boots at me, as if I can put them on with my hands pinned behind my back, and the second pair loads up behind us. All four of them remain at my side as the ship lifts into the air. The destination must have been pre-programmed, because no one so much as touches a control panel, and the airship starts gliding without direction.

Where are we going? I want to ask.

“Destination programmed for Assembly Hall,” Demeter says on cue.

I wonder where Moriana is, if she, too, has been dragged from her bed, handcuffed, and loaded onto an airship. Or is she sleeping peacefully, undisturbed by this morning’s events? Demeter is silent, and I can only assume she knows nothing.

It doesn’t take long to get there. It’s not even a ten-minute flight from the chancellor’s mansion to the capitol complex. My mind is racing so fast I can’t keep track of my thoughts. I remember the meditation exercises Remy and I did a few nights ago, and I tell myself: breathe.

But my head is spinning, too full, too chaotic. Instead of clearing my mind, emptying myself, I focus on channeling my thoughts into what must happen next.

As if anticipating my questions, Demeter whispers, “Everyone’s okay.” For now.

The airship lands on the rooftop docking bay at Assembly Hall, the same place I began and ended my days when I was Lieutenant Orleán, Director of the Seed Bank Protection Project. I want to erase that part of my history, to take some of Remy’s charcoal and black it all out, paint over it with vibrant new colors that tell a different story. But I can’t change who I was then. I can’t change what I did. All I can do is fight the battle in front of me today.

As soon as we’ve landed, the soldiers lift me to my feet. The bay door slides open and they drag me off the ship. I keep my feet under me as they race ahead, toward an elevator, where one of them puts his eye to a retinal scanner and keys in the code to the top-security basement level. The elevator drops with a whoosh, but judging by the hollow pit in my gut, I’m guessing my stomach opted to stay on the roof.

The elevator door opens. The soldiers pull me between them down a windowless hall. I know now where we’re heading: the Security Center. I’ve only been in there twice in my life. There’s a giant vidscreen in a half-circle on the wall that allows officials to view live or recorded footage from every single camera drone in the Sector. Built for crisis moments, national emergencies, or even war from beyond our boundaries, the C-Link database was partially designed to navigate and control all the drones in the system. Algorithms were created to enable the C-Links’ personalities to filter video data, displaying only the most important footage from well-placed drones to those watching.

General Aulion, flanked by four soldiers, is waiting outside.

“Stand down,” he orders the soldiers behind me. They release their grip. One of them pushes me forward, and I find myself face to face with Aulion.

I wish I still had that fire extinguisher.

“Search him,” he orders. “More thoroughly than those fools last night. I want to know how he’s helping those damn rebels outside.”

As the two soldiers step forward and take off my handcuffs, the outer door to the Security Center slides open. I recognize the stony-faced servant who attended me during the weeks when I was a prisoner at the chancellor’s estate, the same servant who brought me Remy’s message encoded in Les Misérables, and who handed me the teacup that contained Demeter’s new incarnation. Soo-Sun. Our eyes meet as the door closes behind her. She stands for just a second, watching me. I notice she has an empty platter in her hands. The peyote. Did she give Corine the tea?

I dare not acknowledge her as the soldiers pull off my jacket. “Hands over your head,” one of them commands. Soo-Sun turns away, walks down the hall, stands with her back to the wall attentively like a servant awaiting a command. I comply, and one of the soldiers pulls my shirt off. He spins me around, pushes my hands into the wall so my limbs are exposed. The other guard produces a long, thin instrument I recognize as a subcutaneous scanner. She rubs it up and down my whole body, searching for implants, weapons, or devices. When nothing beeps, they push my hands back to my side and turn me roughly around to face the general.

What’s this?” Aulion asks, stepping forward, noticing the acorn at my neck. He reaches his gloved hand to my throat. My heart pounds. With more finesse than I would have believed possible, he puts his fingers under the fine gold chain around my neck. He pulls it up and away from my chest, letting the pendant rest against his fingertips. “An acorn?” Aulion stares at it. His voice is so quiet I can see the soldiers behind him lean forward ever so slightly, straining to hear. “I’ve seen this before.” His eyes harden, and for a moment it looks as though he’s disappearing, gone, remembering something from a different world. Then he snaps back, his stony grey eyes zeroing in on me. “On the neck of a dead Outsider.”

His hand clenches around the pendant, and he jerks the chain. A mild sting at the nape of my neck, and the pendant comes free, swinging loosely in his hands.

I take a deep breath. It’s okay, I remind myself. You don’t need the pendant for this to work.

“There’s an Outsider out there,” I jerk my head to indicate where the march is happening, ignoring his question, “with plans to put a knife in your heart.” I pause, cock my head to the side, as if thinking. “Soren Skaarsgard is with her. Personally, I’m betting you won’t make it through this day alive.”

He narrows his eyes.

“Soren Skaarsgard is going to die today,” he rasps, his hot breath on my face. “Along with his Outsider friend. As for you, I have no doubt your parents will find some way to exonerate you, to spare you once again. But rest assured, Valerian, the moment you and I are alone, when this whole thing is over, I’ll slit your throat, and your pathetic story will finally come to an end.”

He drops the pendant in the pocket of his military jacket and, finally, takes a step back. Soo-Sun, I notice, is watching this whole encounter, though her expression is still as stoic as a statue’s. Aulion’s eyes never leave mine.

“Anything else?” he barks.

“Nothing detected, sir,” the soldier with the scanner replies.

Aulion nods. He turns to the door to the Security Center behind us, and holds his hand out to the DNA scanner. As the needle descends to prick his skin and confirm his DNA, I watch out of the corner of my eye as Soo-Sun turns away from us and walks down the hall, back to the elevator that leads to the rest of the building.

She knows Aulion has the pendant.

Before we walk in, the guards pull my hands behind me and slap the cuffs back on. The outer door opens, and I am flanked by four soldiers as I follow Aulion into the Security Center. Inside is a second identity check, and here Aulion presses his eye to a retinal scanner that emerges from the wall. A few seconds later the inner door slides open, and I walk in to see the enormous curved vidscreen lit up by dozens of separate video feeds, some small and tucked into the corners, cycling through different angles and images, others blown up into larger-than-life size and spread front and center across the screen.

“Laika, show us what’s going on in the city’s east quadrant.” I recognize both my father’s voice and the name of his C-Link, and sure enough, the videos quickly change, bringing up feeds from the team of marchers coming in over the Bridge of Remembrance. Have they identified any of my teammates? Demeter hasn’t updated me, so I assume for now, everyone is safe and no one has been targeted.

As I walk into the room behind Aulion, my wrists bound behind my back, shoeless and shirtless, clearly a prisoner, the first thing I notice is Moriana.

She’s standing at my mother’s side with a shiny, new holographic plasma in her hands and her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. She is not handcuffed. She is wearing shoes. She hardly looks like she was dragged from her bed by two large soldiers and searched with a body scanner before being allowed into the Security Center. She glances up at me as I stare at her, the muscles in my jaw tensing, my worst fears confirmed. She doesn’t even acknowledge me, glancing back down at the plasma as if I am no more to her than a speck on the wall.

I never should have believed you.

“The cameras in here are linked to the firewalled C-Link database,” Demeter says. “I can’t access them. I’ll be relying on aural input only.”

“Vale,” my mother’s voice rings out, sharp and commanding. “Good. You’re here.” I force myself to turn away from Moriana. I glance around the room to see who was called when the security briefings came in and the full extent of the protest became clear. There are several members of the Board of Directors, every member of the OAC Corporate Assembly’s Security Committee, and two of my father’s advisors. Everyone in the room is wearing light military clothing, designed for movement, not for glamour. No one is here this morning to look pretty. Everyone is prepared for action.

Corine has a saucer in her hands, and she takes a sip of the liquid in her teacup as she surveys me from across the room. I stare at the teacup, hoping against hope Soo-Sun did her job. Corine takes another sip and then sets the saucer down on a nearby table. She marches over to me, and heads turn as the whole room waits to see what will happen.

“Tell us everything you know about the march.”

“I don’t know—”

“I am tired of being lied to!” she shouts. “I am tired of trying to save you, to redeem you, to bring you back to the security of the world we built for you. You fought for the Resistance. You shot Sector soldiers—our soldiers—for them. You have worked against everything we once fought for together. You have lost your way, and I am tired of picking you up and putting you back on the right path. Now, I only want the truth. Tell me what they’re planning, Vale, and maybe one day, when all of this is over, our paths will reunite again.”

I gape at her. It’s the most forthright she’s been in front of me—in front of anyone, I’d wager—in years. When I was a child, she would have storms of rage where she would shout, throw things across the room, punch the walls with a violent energy I didn’t recognize and didn’t know how to contain. Only on very rare occasions—maybe three times before I was fifteen—did she do this in front of me. Most of the time she was wise enough to cordon herself off in a different part of our house, or walk outside to a secluded spot in a park. But I could still hear her, sometimes, through the walls or windows. Later, I realized that as twisted as it was, I actually enjoyed seeing her in those moments—she was normally so polished, so presentable, that her fits of anger seemed like the only times I ever got to see who she really was.

She hasn’t shouted at me, or anyone, like this in years. At least to my knowledge. I’d thought she’d gotten past them, but this reminds me of those old moments, when I could see the raw and honest Corine, the one who finally took off her mask and revealed the monster below.

Aulion, standing slightly in front of me so I can see his face in profile, smiles. He recognizes a kindred spirit, I think bitterly.

I start talking. If Soo-Sun did her job, and Corine’s tea is more than just leaves, all I have to do is buy time.

“It’s a peaceful march,” I say. “Mostly Farm and factory workers. Some from the city, Resistance members, and even a few Outsiders. All they want to do is be heard. All they want is to be healthy, to be given the right to choose their futures, to be—”

“Don’t philosophize, Vale,” Moriana interjects, rolling her eyes. “We’ve heard it all before.”

Philip, for his part, looks no more certain now than he did last night. If anything, he looks deeply unsettled. His cheeks are pale and his eyes bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. He’s not paying much attention to the drama unfolding between me and Corine. His eyes flit to us occasionally, but for the most part he is watching the action on the vidscreens with all the attention of a worried parent at the bedside of a sick child.

“What do the marchers hope to accomplish?” Corine asks.

“Nothing,” I respond, “except to voice their pleas for freedom, for the right to choose their own paths.”

Corine turns to the people watching us, the board members and political advisors, people in the highest positions of power in the Sector. They wear boots of the softest leather, sip from engraved teacups, and dip silver spoons into tiny pots of clear, golden honey, even here in this top-secret room in the bowels of Assembly Hall. I remember the drawing Remy did for the vigil: fruit and vegetable plants sprouting out of human skulls planted in the earth. It occurs to me that to these people, giving the Farm workers freedom is the same as destroying their way of life. If I learned anything from my obsession with history at the Academy, it was that great wealth and political oppression always go hand in hand.

“As you know, the genetic modifications we have been preparing for weeks are ready for implementation. Every individual with an entry in the Personhood database has a tailored profile of epigenetic changes ready to be delivered through the cure to the parasitic pathogen.” Moriana meets my eyes as Corine speaks, addressing the whole room. “Those assembled here are our most trusted advisors and councilors. In light of today’s march, should we begin implementation?”

“I’m on it, Vale,” Demeter says into my ear. “I’m going to see if there’s anything I can do, any way I can stop it.”

But I know already that the odds are slim to none she can stop the whole machine of the OAC as it shifts smoothly into high gear, prepared to forever alter the lives of the millions of citizens of the Okarian Sector.

Several people glance around at each other before raising their hands, or—in one or two cases—shaking their heads in a confused no. One of the women I recognize is the President of the College of the People, Olivia Renteria, one of my father’s advisors. Philip swivels slowly, looking at Corine as if he’s just now hearing her, just now becoming aware of what’s happening in the room around us.

“I count a majority,” Corine says. She nods at Moriana. “Miss Nair, I am dispatching you to OAC headquarters to organize dissemination of the modifications. I want every single citizen of the Sector inoculated against the parasite and injected with their personalized nanobots by this time next week.”

Moriana nods curtly, turns on her heel, and marches out. As she walks away, she pauses at my shoulder.

“You forced our hand, Vale,” she says quietly. “If you hadn’t brought five thousand Farm workers down on our heads, Corine might actually have listened to you.” She pauses. “But now it’s too late.”

She sweeps by me and is gone.