Attention: ALL
Subject: Recreation
This month’s new activities include karaoke Mondays, dawn meditations in the courtyard, Thursday improv classes, after hours art club, and puppetry for change. All events hosted by Entertainment dept unless otherwise noted. Walk-ins welcomed, or sign-up using your home comm calendar.
—Entertainment
Viveca breezed into the courtyard alongside a crowd wearing workout clothes and carrying mats. Those exercising set up on one side, where short bushes had begun to outgrow their planters. One had sprouted tiny white flowers.
Viveca went the opposite way, and, after petting a spindly tree’s lowest branches, she waved me over. She wore a shiny, silvery blue knee-length dress.
I walked toward her like my boots weighed a hundred pounds. Just because I didn’t have a plan didn’t mean I was ready to face what she wanted to tell me. No more than I could face what I already knew. Did she know the RC would invade? Was she going to say why she didn’t trust Andrek? I could hardly make my body respond with my head this full.
“You slept,” she said once I was a few steps away. She sat on the grass and touched the ground in front of her. “That’s good. I know how hard it can be after a meltdown.”
I sat too, and let her take my hands in hers. There was something eerie about the way she looked at me, as if she were reading me. Could she see the fleet in my face? Could she hear herself pleading with Halle?
She was so still, like statue-still. I wondered if this was a new mask I hadn’t seen yet.
A haunting melody floated toward us, and it took me several full seconds to realize it was music from a tablet. The exercisers had started yoga poses. They’d lit incense too, a musky rose that sent wispy tendrils through the courtyard.
Grass tickled my ankles. It’d be just like me to develop an allergy to the only piece of outside I’d ever enjoy again.
“What did you want to tell me?” I asked. Her hands were cold, and they held mine tight, so I didn’t let on that my brain was mush and we only had a few days or weeks left to live.
“Bear with me, all right?” she asked. “Just let me finish before you ask questions.”
“Oh,” I said, except that wasn’t exactly an answer, so I added, “Fine. That’s fine. I’ll listen.” For now, at least. But once I got the chance, I was not going to only ask polite questions.
I needed to know what she knew about Andrek. I hadn’t begun to wonder what might be so important for her to share yet. So of course, in the moment before she opened her mouth, my thoughts revved to warp speed, trying to anticipate appropriate reactions for even the wildest possibilities.
I like you.
Easy.
Kiss her. Keep kissing her whenever possible until the final kablooie.
I know your parents cheated to get you here.
Shrug and say, “Who doesn’t know that?” and wonder why that mattered anymore.
Including you in the memorial was a bad idea.
Awkward, but probably not wrong. Disagree and press family relationship. Or don’t, because we’d both likely be included in the next memorial after the RC swallowed us with its fleet. Either way, I participated. Go me.
I’ve been sending messages to Earth—
Feign surprise; ask why—
Because (insert her reason).
Try to understand and weigh turning her in versus minding my own business till the world ended anyway.
That was as far as my imagination got. Warp speed was exhausting.
“I didn’t lie to you. I never met Faraday in person,” Viveca began, her velvety voice pitched only for my ears. “I did know her though, Lane. She was my mentor, my friend, and she saved my life more times than I can count. When I send you her correspondence, you’ll see. That’s why I couldn’t send it before. Because I wanted to explain first.”
Her words ricocheted through my insides like a pinball, setting free a cascade of questions. I clamped my mouth shut, because I’d said I’d wait, but I couldn’t control what my face did.
She didn’t see me anyway. Her eyes were either closed or staring unfocused at the grass.
Eyes my sister saved.
“I started wrong,” she muttered, her fingers tightening over mine. Too tight, like she was measuring my bones. “I have to go back further, or it won’t make sense.”
“All right,” I said then bit my lip, since I was supposed to stay quiet till she finished. Maybe it didn’t count if she hadn’t properly started.
One of the yoga folks ripped a loud, squelchy fart. Somehow nobody laughed. I guessed they were all very serious about yoga.
I rocked uncomfortably and fixed my gaze on Viveca’s nails. She’d cleaned them of polish, but they shined even brighter.
“Should we leave?” she asked. “I thought it would be relaxing here.” A new song began with a shrill whistle, and we both winced. “Can I bring you somewhere?”
“Quiet?”
“And private,” she promised.
She led me out of the courtyard to the medical department, into a darkened office all the way in the back. Nobody bothered to ask where we were headed.
Her hand in mine—it was different than in the courtyard, different than catching my hand in her hair. It felt intentional. A togetherness. I ought to be thinking about her and Faraday, lifesaving, but her hand was heaven, and here at the end of the world, a soft, strong, gorgeous hand in mine was enough to hold at one time.
“Sit wherever you want,” she said, turning a switch that activated panels of warm golden light around the lower walls of the room.
The office had a meticulously organized desk, two couches, a wall of built-in filing cabinets, and some kind of art sculpture that looked like a bathtub inside a dome of its own.
I walked up to the sculpture and ran my palm over the dome. It was nearly the size of a single bed.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? Joule built this for me, but it wouldn’t fit in our quarters. Patients love it. Actually, this could be perfect. Do you want to try it? After what I said, I imagine you’re rattled. Hang on a moment, and I’ll get it ready.”
I leaned against the door as she did whatever she was doing. The dome came off and retracted into a clear slice of plastic, like an orange wedge but only the peel. Underneath were two molded tubs, one sitting inside the other at an angle.
The whole contraption rested on a short platform, the top of which looked like the drain on Chef’s espresso machine. It was oddly beautiful for plastic, with deep purple to lavender staining in the simulated grain.
“The water beads are sanitized after every use. Go on in. Wait!” She pulled me backward so sharply as I was about to step in that we toppled onto the couch, her leg sliding between mine, her whole body pressed on top of me.
My veins sang with electricity.
Kiss her, my body screamed, but I said nothing and stared into her eyes an inch from my own.
I bit my lip hard. She wanted to talk about my sister, not us. There was no us.
She scrambled to her feet. “Sorry about that. You’ll want to take off your jumpsuit and boots. Socks too. And bra, if you want. I’ll wait.”
I started to ask why, but from this angle I could see for myself. The tub was filled with water beads, like the kind used in stress balls, and it looked so inviting. I undressed quickly, eager to climb in.
She helped me get situated on the smaller bowl. It tilted to provide the perfect backrest. The beads parted easily, slipping around my limbs in the most delicious way. I drew my knees up, and they poked through the beads like icebergs.
Viveca told me to relax while she fetched us drinks. Apparently, she had a lot more to say.
I dipped my hand under the surface and thought a bowl full of bubbles was the best possible place to process the end of the world.
Then she told me her story. Her truth.
Her parents had been obsessed with my sister, turned out. That explained the wallpaper in her quarters. “Dad thought if one kid like Faraday existed, why not two, though he was far more interested in your sister’s social reach and influence than her message. If he could recreate that in me, it could change his whole business model. But I was a huge disappointment, though I tested well and made great marks. I don’t get along with people. You’ve seen it. They meet me on paper, and everything’s fine, then they meet me in person and call me abrasive and arrogant. Cold. Bitchy. Not worthy of public attention.”
I tried not to react and continued weaving my fingers through the cool, viscous beads of sensory bliss. I was glad she didn’t stop to ask what I thought of her at first, since I hadn’t liked her simply because my parents had. On paper, anyway. Meeting her only worsened her paper impression.
“I did my best to act like her, all warm and friendly. It was so unnatural for me. Fake.”
Same, girl, same.
“When I was ten, I realized my mom was faking too. For my dad. He was—” she took a labored breath “—abusive.”
An “oh no” squeaked out of me in sympathy. She didn’t complain.
“Verbally and physically. She was Fijian, so she’d lost her family, her whole country. He made sure she had no one but him, and she let him, for my sake. I didn’t know what to do, so, like the kid I was, I reached out to my hero. I never expected to hear back.”
We were getting to it. I heard it in her voice. It got softer and less formal, with a tremor at the end of the long vowels. I lowered my knees and stretched the length of the tub. Buried legs, buried questions.
“She referred me to a therapist,” Viveca said. “Her therapist. Do you understand what that meant to me? How special I felt that she cared about me, a strange kid? My mom came along, and eventually we made a plan to leave. We were going to get away and—”
I thought she was choking, but no. Viveca was crying, two great rivers that met at her ocean chin. I didn’t know what the right thing to do was.
“You don’t have to tell me this,” I said, breaking my agreement to keep quiet. “It’s not my business.” If I’d had any willpower to leave this tub, I might have gone to her. I didn’t think she wanted me to though.
“No, Lane! I do. Can you not look at me till I finish? I’m not even halfway through.”
“I—Yeah, sorry. I’m listening. Not looking.” I forced my gaze to the beads. Clear, grape-sized spheres of perfection. They glowed in the low light.
She took a few moments to collect herself then told me the worst story I’d ever heard. Her dad had discovered their escape plan and “put an end to it.”
The abuse escalated. Her nanny got involved somehow. He hurt her too.
Her mom had stopped eating. Viveca kept talking to the therapist secretly, but her mom couldn’t, or didn’t.
“It’s like—” her verbal masks had fallen away “—the more obvious the struggle gets, the less willing people are to examine it, but that’s when I have to look the hardest or else I can’t breathe.”
I trailed my fingers over the surface, my lips gratefully sealed, because no words of mine were equal, or on the same scale, to the pain she held.
“She overdosed that summer, or that’s what the doctors said. I think it was him,” Viveca’s voice was so quiet I could barely hear it over my own breath. “Your sister, and our therapist, they helped me run away with my nanny. I was only twelve.”
My insides twisted into fractals, completely at odds with the glorious slickness of the beads against my skin. The pasty white woman in the pictures was her nanny, because her mom, her real mom, was dead.
“I thought if I ran far enough, he’d eventually leave me alone, but he convinced people I died too. If you’re a rich white man, you can make people believe anything. And Faraday eventually gave him a new obsession. Spaceships. His ultimate fantasy, owning the future.
“So, I went on with life, as much as one can on the run. I changed my name, relaxed my hair, graduated high school online, and tried to leave him behind me. The only way I stayed ahead of him was through your sister’s contacts. Her fan club as well as her friends.”
It was getting hard to think and listen at the same time. I knew parts of her story somehow, like it’d been scribbled in the margins of pages I’d already read.
Viveca wasn’t her name. She knew my sister, and they shared a therapist. Her dad was rich, white, into spaceships. But she couldn’t have recognized Andrek as an RC soldier; she would have been far away from all that by the time he was drafted. It nagged at me that I still couldn’t figure out why she didn’t trust him, what she could have possibly seen in him to make her suspicious.
“Dad found me. I don’t know how. He sent me a message on a private channel I’d forgotten I still had, telling me not to join the collective, even if they accepted me. I told Faraday it wasn’t safe, but she said to come anyway. That it’d be okay, since we were leaving soon, that he wouldn’t be able to hurt me again. She couldn’t see him anymore, what he really was. What he’ll always be.”
I shivered even though the tub was pleasantly warm. Her fingers raked over her face in a slow, slow motion. Hair dripped like thick syrup. It was all too much.
“It’s my fault, Lane, don’t you see? That’s why I have to stop him. It wasn’t me he wanted. It never was. It’s the ships the trust will build, the power he’ll own if they’re his. He’ll do anything to get them, kill anyone. That’s why I tried to get people to listen from the moment we got here, to make them see the danger.
“But nobody wants to believe in monsters. I think even Faraday lost sight, at the end. People think they can ignore evil, and it will just go away. Like they can reason with it, buy it off, work things out. But he’ll never stop. Never.”
I locked eyes with her, a fire building in my brain as the pieces clicked together. These were so close to my words from yesterday.
We were talking about the same monster.
“Your dad,” I started, watching her closely for confirmation but not needing it so much as dreading it, “is Brand Masters.”
She tore her gaze away, and I felt set adrift.
He’s on his way here right now, I wanted to scream, but how did I argue with a girl shedding her most painful history while letting me, the leftover, enjoy her tub? I’d let myself ache over the mere embarrassment of cheating my way into the trust, while she’d been carrying this knowledge that her evil father hunted her across a planet and murdered thousands of people. His business model.
I gripped the tub handles and tried to hoist myself to my feet, but she jumped up to stop me.
“You might as well relax. I mean, please sit. I’m not done yet.”
“You get in too, at least,” I said.
She didn’t take long to think. When she climbed in, she sat across from me, her long legs making a wall over and around mine.
Now was not the time to notice her skin, her warmth. Her bra straps were wide sapphire ribbons, and her eyes glinted like fire. This was not the right time to feel things.
“He’s coming,” she said.
That stopped my heart for a beat until I realized she probably didn’t mean right now.
“Right now.”
Oh. I gulped. Apparently, she did.
“He’s not coming here, though. Not yet. I’m sure that’s what they’re thinking in ops. Attacking isn’t his style at first, not for the real prize. He’ll go after another base first to chokehold our resources, then a second to damage our relationships with our Earth allies, if the first goes well. He’ll want us good and scared and hopeless. Then he’ll come. When we’ve lost any spirit to challenge him.”
“How do you know all this?”
She looked away shamefully, then straightened her back. The movement sent beads spilling over my skin, sucking me closer to her.
Don’t be the spy, I thought loudly, certain she couldn’t be helping the RC. I vouched for her before I knew anything, and I needed that not to backfire.
“I’ve been monitoring transmissions and skirting the lockdown since we got here.”
Dammit, dammit.
“There are at least two other trustees messing with communications from what I can tell, though operations is only looking for one. Nobody here understands what they’re up against with Brand. People seriously believe the glitches and false messages are pranks! But it’s all related, along with the missing supplies. This is how Brand’s insiders operate. We have to outmaneuver him.”
“Huh.” Of all the things she’d told me, this was the only part that seemed unbelievable.
“Huh what?”
“You think you can outmaneuver your dad and his fleet? Better than Commander Han or President Marshall and all the great minds my sister handpicked? You haven’t even been able to hide that you’re sending messages to Earth during the communication ban. Joule got hauled in for questioning because you used his tab, right? I vouched for you, but they know!” It came out different than I wanted, but I couldn’t unsay it.
The way her eyes heated made me wish I could.
“I’m not being conceited. These are simply facts. I’ve spent the last ten years learning everything about my dad’s strategies, and my whole life learning how to avoid the danger he poses wherever he goes.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and studied my face. “Nobody alive knows him better than me.”
My brain coughed up “Andrek,” but I squashed that down. Besides, Andrek said he barely knew Brand, having only met him a few times.
“If you know all this stuff about him that’s the only way to save us, then tell my parents, or Commander Han. They’re the ones who—”
“The ones who ignored my petitions about backup security plans, because nobody listens to someone fresh out of grad school. The only way they’ll listen to me is if I tell them who I am, and I haven’t run this far from my father to claim him now. To give up the whole life I’ve built.
“And if I tell them what I know without admitting who I am, I’ll end up being their top suspect for the missing supplies and glitching systems. All of it. No, I have to find who Brand’s contact here is first and expose them without throwing myself in the fire.”
I chewed on her words, on her logic, on the way it felt inside my ears and clanging through my head. The puzzle hadn’t come apart yet. In fact, it’d grown into a 3D model that was likely to take its first breath soon.
My parents would probably hush me and say I was being dramatic if I brought them this story of hers. They hadn’t wanted me to know about the fleet; they’d have been happy sending me off to work and bed, blissfully ignorant. They so much as told me the only way they saw people our age having an impact was if someone older manipulated us.
Trust had to go both ways.
“There’s some time left before he’ll make his move here. If I can figure out who he’s talking to, it could buy the trust a few more weeks. Maybe months, if we’re lucky, to figure out better solutions than simply waiting for help from Earth. I’ve no doubt skipped over key details, and you’ll have more questions, but this is what I couldn’t risk you finding out the wrong way or thinking I used her memorial to cover it up for the wrong reasons. You deserve to hear it from me.”
“But then what?” I blurted, feeling mocked by the now-indefinite stretch to the end of the world. “Assuming we find out who’s talking to the RC on our own, what difference will that make? He has a fleet. What do we have, head games and hot lunch?”
“We?” she asked, a smile lurking in the curve of her lips.
I could say no, that I misspoke. I could wrench myself out of this bead palace, march straight to my parents, and leave this whole mess for smarter, older, and stronger people. I could do that easily, and it wouldn’t be my fault if the world ended anyway.
But what if I could have a tiny part in saving us? Not just protecting Andrek or Viveca’s secrets from each other, but stopping the monster who’d killed my sister?
Fuck, it was all so much bigger than my sister. It was families, countries. And all those smart, old, strong people had let Brand and his ilk get away with his routine, over and over again.
I crossed my heart then snaked through the beads to find her hand. “We.”
She grinned. “We have the element of surprise and access to everything they know.”