Charlie sits on the other side of a large, circular table, between three men and one woman. All of them wear matching navy blue uniforms with small golden moons pinned to their chests. These are the five scientists and military leaders who rule Kiel.
The unease worsens in my stomach. Cadet Waller should’ve warned us they’d be here. This means I have to make all of them, not just Commander Charlie, agree to the truce I want to make.
The only other time I’ve seen all five Developers together was the day I completed my Extraction training, when I became an official citizen of the Core. I shook hands with each of them, and they offered me congratulations. Behind their warm, smiling exteriors, I’m sure they were celebrating that they’d soon have one more person to use as a pawn for their own purposes.
Right now, it seems we’ve interrupted them. They’re in the middle of communicating with someone via a live video hologram on the table in front of them.
“If you want this to work, I’m going to need it as soon as possible,” the person on the video feed says. I can’t see his face from this side of the table, but he sounds like Colonel Parker, the soldier Charlie sent to the Surface yesterday morning to oversee the transport of all the child workers from the internment camps into the resident buildings. The colonel must still be in one of the outer sectors or else he’d be talking to his commanders in person.
“You’ll get it,” Commander Charlie says. “Be patient.”
He glances up at the others and me. The wrinkles around his eyes are exaggerated by tension. Whatever he’s talking to Colonel Parker about, it’s causing him stress.
“We’ll talk again soon,” says the woman sitting on Charlie’s left-hand side. She shuts off the video hologram as we approach the table.
The back of my neck prickles as the eyes of the Developers focus on Lieutenant Dean, Skylar, and me. There’s a stark contrast between us and them—them in their navy blue suits and slick white gloves, us in our disheveled uniforms with the smell of war clinging to our clothes. They sit with their shoulders back and their hands clasped on the table in front of them, emitting authority and power. Commander Charlie isn’t the only one who looks stressed; the others have sweat on their foreheads and tightness around their mouths.
I don’t know what they’ve done so far to combat the Mardenite invasion, but I don’t think they have a handle on the situation yet. They aren’t confident they’re going to win. That knowledge makes me breathe a little easier. Hopefully it will make them more willing to accept my help.
“Commanders,” Dean says, saluting them.
“Thank you for coming,” Commander Charlie says, clearing his throat. “We’re glad you made a safe return. I apologize for not dispatching a rescue team sooner, but it took us some time to clear up the transmissions you’d sent. I hope you understand.”
“Of course,” Dean says, sounding calm. “Thank you for sending a rescue team, nonetheless. Without their help, we might still be stuck on the Surface.”
“I’m glad you were able to survive until our people found you.” Commander Charlie’s gaze pauses on my face, studying my features. He’s looking for a sign I’m still under the control of his serum. I don’t have a smile painted on my face like I did the last time I saw him. “Clementine, did you follow the orders you were given?”
I stare resolutely back at him. But my palms are sweaty. “No, I didn’t.”
He shakes his head, disappointed. “Even after we discussed what would happen if you disobeyed. I expected more of you, I must admit.” He makes a tsk sound.
He can’t control you anymore. Don’t let him scare you.
“I lost the extra syringes of your serum during the Mardenite attack,” I say in a steady voice. “And the serum wore off. It wasn’t my intention to disobey you.”
“I can confirm she’s telling the truth,” Dean says without hesitation.
“If you wanted me to follow your orders,” I say, “you should’ve made a serum that didn’t have to be readministered.”
Charlie’s jaw twitches. I have a feeling he’s angrier than he’s letting on. “We’ll discuss this more later,” he says. He looks at Lieutenant Dean. “I understand the rest of your crew was captured during a Mardenite attack.”
“That is correct,” Dean says. “And at least four soldiers were killed.”
“Where is the mission commander, Lieutenant Sam?” the woman sitting next to Charlie asks. Her hair is a bob of graying brown, and her lips are painted bright red. Her skin has a tautness that makes me think she must’ve had operations to reduce her wrinkles.
“He’s incapacitated from a field injury and he’s been taken to the health ward,” Dean says. “I took over his command after he was injured.”
The woman smiles at Dean, an exaggerated smile that stretches her painted lips. “You must be Lieutenant Dean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you must be Skylar, and of course you’re Clementine,” she says, looking at each of us in turn. There’s a curious spark in her eyes when they land on me. “I’ve heard a lot about both of you, but I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person, except for at your citizenship ceremonies. Commander Charlie usually speaks for us in public so the rest of us can focus on keeping the sectors running smoothly.”
Funny, I was under the impression Charlie made most of the decisions on his own, and the other Developers simply existed for show.
“You may address me as Commander Regina,” the woman says. “I’m the head of culture and public relations. This is Commander Talbin, our head of history.” She gestures to the man on her left, the eldest Developer, a balding man with a nervous twitch in his fingers. “Commander William oversees health care.” She motions to the man on the other side of Charlie, a man with a thick black beard. “And this is Commander Marshall, our head of science and technology.” The dark-skinned, gray-haired Developer on the far left side of the group nods his head.
Commander Marshall must be the father of Fred, the man I met in Karum prison, who first told me about the existence of the planet Marden. He had unknowingly helped Charlie construct the bomb that nearly destroyed all of Kiel’s outer sectors. Fred was training to replace his father as a Developer before he rebelled against Charlie. But in prison, Fred began working for Charlie again in order to escape execution. He handed over information about me to the Karum doctors in order to help them break me. Fred hasn’t stopped working for the Developers since.
“Please, take a seat.” Commander Regina gestures to the empty half of the table. “We know you all need rest and medical attention, so we’ll try to make this as brief as possible. But we need you to give us a full account of what happened on your mission.”
“It’s crucial you tell us as many details about the Mardenite attack, specifically, as possible,” Commander Marshall says.
Dean takes a seat at the table and I follow suit, sitting between him and Skylar. I set my helmet on the table.
I can’t help staring at Commander Charlie, wondering why he’s letting these other Developers take over the interrogation when he’s the one who supposedly called us here. Maybe it’s my imagination, but he looks a bit uncomfortable.
“Can we bring you anything?” Regina asks. “Some breakfast, perhaps?”
“Breakfast would be wonderful,” Dean says.
Regina signals to Cadet Waller, who relays an order to someone through her ear-comm. In the meantime, Dean takes a deep breath and launches into the story of our mission to invade Alliance headquarters. “We departed for the Surface yesterday at Core 1300 hours. We landed a mile away from the facility the Alliance rebels were using as their headquarters, just before night fell. We loaded the X-wings with explosives and infiltrated the compound’s tunnels, following instructions from Beechy and Skylar to break through the security barriers. The rebels didn’t seem to have been alerted we were coming, but by the time we reached the center of the compound they’d boarded their transports for a counterattack.”
I’m holding my breath, waiting for Dean to come to the part that could incriminate me, the part where I shot Sam. But he skims over many of the details of the fight. He doesn’t mention Sam or Sandy getting shot, or that the explosives were detonated sooner than they were supposed to be.
“We overpowered the rebels and they surrendered,” he says. “So we set the timers on the explosives and departed the Alliance compound. This is when things stopped going smoothly. Our comms started malfunctioning before we were out of the Alliance tunnels. We couldn’t make any contact between our X-wings. That’s when we caught sight of the Mardenite fleet invading the Surface.”
Skylar abruptly cuts in: “You had people tracking the fleet’s movements. We shouldn’t have run into this sort of trouble without any warning.” She speaks in a calm voice, but I can sense her annoyance underneath.
“You’re right, and we apologize,” Charlie says stiffly. “It was a mess of miscommunication. Our trackers informed us the fleet was on course to make an early arrival about an hour after you left for the Surface.”
“They’d quadrupled their speed in a very short amount of time,” Marshall says. “They must’ve had an extra fuel supply on board they were saving for the final stretch in order to catch us off guard.”
“Warning transmissions were immediately sent to all military personnel in the outer sectors, including your crew,” Regina says. “Unfortunately we weren’t aware they hadn’t reached you until it was too late. Please continue with what happened next.”
The door opens and someone comes in with three trays of breakfast food for the three of us. Hot shir cakes with sweet syrup and yazo juice. I pick up my fork and take small bites of the cake as Dean continues the story. I need energy after everything I’ve been through in the past twelve hours, but I don’t want to overwhelm my body by eating too fast.
Dean tells the Developers how the raiders attacked us as we tried to escape the valley.
When he gets to the poison gas, Charlie’s brows furrow in concentration. “Please describe the effects of the gas.”
“A burning sensation all over the skin,” Dean says. “Fever. Dehydration. Temporary loss of consciousness.”
“The medic from your rescue team informed us most of you were still feverish,” Marshall says. “What about any of the other symptoms?”
“The burning is still a bit of a problem,” Skylar says with a grimace. “Though it’s not unbearable anymore.”
“We’ll get you checked into the health ward for treatment as soon as possible,” Regina says before turning to me, the only one who hasn’t spoken yet. “Clementine, can you describe your symptoms for us?”
I rub the handle of my fork with my thumb, considering whether or not to tell the truth. I know it means something that the poison gas didn’t affect me like the others, and I have a feeling the Developers might have some idea why. There’s a strong possibility I’m about to arm them with knowledge they could use against me. But maybe if I tell the truth I can finally get some answers.
“The only symptom I had was the burning sensation on my skin,” I say. “But it went away after a couple minutes.”
A look passes between Regina and Charlie.
Out of the corner of my eye, Skylar gapes at me. She must’ve thought I’d had other symptoms and I was just keeping quiet about them.
Dean doesn’t look surprised. In fact, he seems like he’s purposefully avoiding my gaze. The short conversation we had in the forest, right after he’d stirred from unconsciousness, comes back to me: He asked how I was feeling, and when I said I was in a lot less pain than him, he said he had a feeling I might be. He somehow knew I’d be resistant to the poison.
I wonder what else Dean and the Developers have been keeping secret from me.
“Now, what happened after the poison bombs fell?” Regina asks, tapping her fingers curiously on the table.
“The Mardenites landed their ships and captured most of our squadron,” Dean says.
“Did you see this happen? Or did you wake up and, finding them gone, assume they’d been taken?”
“I saw it happen,” Skylar says. “When I recovered consciousness, I went back closer to the crash site and hid in the trees. I saw the aliens drag people inside their raiders.”
“How many were captured?”
“At least seven soldiers, along with Commander Charlie’s daughter and her husband, Beechy.”
I’ve never seen Commander Charlie’s cheeks turn so pale. “Sandy was taken?” he asks. “You’re sure of this?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”
“They were still alive,” I say. “We can rescue them. We can bring them home.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Regina says gently. “They’ve been gone for several hours now. There’s a good chance they’ve already been slaughtered by the aliens. The Mardenites are vicious creatures.”
“No, you’re wrong,” I say. She has to be wrong—Beechy has to still be alive. “They wouldn’t have captured them if they only meant to kill them in the next couple of hours. They would’ve kept bombing us from the sky until we were all destroyed.”
“Regardless,” Regina says, brushing my comments aside, “attempting to rescue the prisoners isn’t something we can accomplish right away. At the moment we have bigger problems.”
I look to Charlie, hoping he’ll argue on my side for once. He might be a monster, but he has tried to protect his daughter in the past. Yet all he does is press his lips together in silence.
“What’s the current situation on the Surface?” Dean asks.
“Not good,” Charlie says tersely. “Due to the fleet arriving ahead of schedule, the transfer of the child workers to the Surface city was still under way when the invasion began. There were transports stuck in the Pipeline on their way to the Surface. Detonating the Stryker bombs would’ve caused too much damage to the lower sectors. Not to mention Colonel Parker’s squadron—a good chunk of our army—was still in the city. We couldn’t get him and his men out in time.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
Charlie’s jaw is so tense, I’m afraid to know the answer. “The Mardenites began their first wave of attack. Colonel Parker’s troops were able to take out some raiders from the ground, but not enough. The Mardenites dropped poison bombs all over the city, we’re guessing the same ones they used to attack your party. The child workers inside the buildings were affected, as well as the squadron of soldiers. Many of Colonel Parker’s men are deathly ill. They were forced to retreat to underground bunkers outside the city limits.”
“And the raiders?” Skylar asks.
“We’ve spotted a few ships scouting here and there, but most are well outside the city limits. It’s likely they’re gathering for a second, larger attack. We anticipate it coming within the next twenty-four hours.”
“So there’s still time,” I say. “You need to get everyone out of the city. Empty it before the next attack.”
“We’re not abandoning the Surface without a fight,” Regina says. “It would only be a matter of time before the Mardenites discovered the entrance to the lower sectors and invaded the Core.”
I gnash my teeth together in agitation. “But if you leave the child workers in the city, they’re all going to die.”
“They will die when we trigger the Strykers, but it’s a necessary sacrifice. They’ll help us destroy the fleet.” The fake, sweet smile Regina gives me makes me want to cut her eyes out with my fingernails.
My stomach jolts. They’re still planning on going through with Operation Stryker.
“When will you trigger the Strykers?” I ask.
“Once Colonel Parker’s squadron is safely out of range, as soon as the next attack begins.”
“Triggering the Strykers won’t demolish even half of Marden’s fleet,” I say, spitting the words in my anger. “There will still be enough raiders to overrun the Surface. Your plan isn’t going to save you, but it’s going to cost you thousands and thousands of lives. And what will you do next, when the raiders continue their attack? You won’t be able to keep the lower sectors a secret forever. They’ll find their way to the Core and they will slaughter you.”
Regina looks amused by my frustration, but Marshall asks me in a serious voice, “What would you propose we do instead? Do you have a better plan?”
My mind races to collect my thoughts. I need a plan that would protect the child workers in the city, even if the Developers refuse to get them out. “If the city falls, it’s like you said—it’s only a matter of time before they’ll discover the entrance to the lower sectors. So you should draw attention away from the city. Send more ships and soldiers to the Surface, immediately. Target the raiders wherever you can.”
Regina frowns, but the rest of them—even Charlie—look thoughtful. I have them paying attention to me, so I need to keep going.
“While you’re keeping the raiders occupied,” I say, “send another fleet of ships to attack their battle stations. Without those, they won’t be able to refuel their raiders or pack more ammunition, and they won’t have a means of escaping. We take out the stations and we’ll have a much better chance of winning the war. You can rescue our people they captured while you’re there. You can bring Commander Charlie’s daughter home.”
Charlie hesitates. “Of course, I intend to do everything I can to bring her home.”
“But what you’re suggesting would require an incredible amount of ships and firepower,” Marshall cuts in. “And we have no familiarity with the layout of the battle stations, or their weaknesses. Trying to put a plan like this into motion in the next twenty-four hours…”
“So send probes to the stations and collect as much data as you can,” I say. “I know you have the weapons and forces for this; you’re just afraid to use them because of the casualties. And you should be afraid. You haven’t seen their raiders in person, but they’re at least as powerful as our battleships, if not more, and they have thousands. The Mardenites are going to wipe out our entire race if we don’t stop them.”
There’s silence around the table. Charlie, Regina, and Marshall look at each other, having some silent conversation. I wish I knew what they were thinking, but their expressions give nothing away.
Finally, they look back at me. Charlie’s mouth is tight. Regina is the person who answers. “Thank you for your advice, Clementine. I’m hopeful we can make your plan work.”
I frown. Is she joking? I didn’t expect them to agree so easily.
“However, there are some things we need to discuss with you first,” Commander Charlie says in a slick tone. His eyes have grown cold again.
Of course, there’s a catch.
“Lieutenant Dean, Skylar, you’re dismissed,” Charlie says, motioning to the door behind us. “Cadet Waller will escort you to the health ward.”
Skylar lets out a sigh of relief as she stands up without a glance in my direction. But Dean looks at me before pushing his chair back. There’s a warning in his eyes: Cooperate with them.
The two of them head out of the room with Cadet Waller. She pauses in the doorway, calling someone in to remove the breakfast trays from the table. I let the man take mine too though I didn’t finish my food. I’m not hungry anymore.
I fiddle with my hands in my lap, nervous again. But I need to stay calm. Whatever Commander Charlie and the others want with me, I can handle them. All I need to do is show them I’m not afraid.
The door slides shut behind Cadet Waller, and I’m alone with the Developers.