Attention: ALL
Subject: Privacy Update from Command
Internal communications are now being monitored and recorded for security purposes due to the increase in anonymous postings in the community forums. Please be mindful that words have weight, and divisive messages will be investigated thoroughly in accordance with MCO Ruling 11.3.
Department heads will be reviewing safety procedures with each shift over the next three days.
—Commander Han
Andrek hadn’t come home, and he’d missed breakfast again. I could have messaged him, but everything I thought to write felt like nagging. If he wanted me to know what he was doing, he ought to tell me without me needing to ask.
I plunked balls of dough on the floured counter and rolled up my sleeves, annoyance biting at my nerves. Squeeze and pound. I couldn’t sort through this mess, and it stirred me up all wrong. Was this what jealousy felt like?
No. I knew jealousy.
I was Faraday fucking Tanner’s sister. Jealousy was hot and gnarly like a web of vines growing out of a dark pit. So I wasn’t jealous. I was annoyed, and it wasn’t about them having sleepovers.
“It’s totally not that,” I mumbled and slammed more dough on the counter. Somehow I’d slipped from being his number one for “always” to not hearing from him all day and going to bed to not-sleep alone at night. I’d become a zero.
Any minute our lives could be overrun with RC soldiers, like Blackstone was despite their defenses, and who knew what would happen to us after that. Andrek must have known how stressed I was.
This would change. Today.
Preferably with us still together.
I kneaded, and I stewed another hour. I was all into this dough, pushing and pulling, and squeezing and rolling, and I completely forgot what I was making.
I was pretty sure that people were talking to me, but I was gone.
In. It.
My sister stayed with me, in my head, the whole time. Guiding my fingers and pushing my back, like I was the dough and she was the ghost that drove me as one hundred balls of dough turned into tight wads, sealed and stored in silver bowls. Her whispers to save the trust were non-stop and the only other words I could find of hers in my head were snippets from campaign speeches.
It was super unhelpful. I needed her private words in my head now, her jokes and personal stories, things only her real friends would recognize. That was what I was supposed to bring to the accord table, not the stuff everyone else could repeat.
I wished I could climb inside the Meat Team’s brains and borrow their calm. Looking lightly at life, able to experience without being swept under, analyzing the worst things imaginable and saying, “Yeah, that sucks a lot, but it’s been worse.”
I didn’t know how to do that. I tried hard, but I still felt it all: My sister was always going to die. Maybe not then or that way, but death was always going to come for her. But because she’d died when and how she had, other things happened differently—the launch, the presidency, my family coming apart at the seams. An infinite number of ripples, but the death itself had never been avoidable.
I would die, and so would Andrek, V, my parents, everyone. Even the trust, even the moon and sun and Earth. All temporary. Imagining otherwise wouldn’t change the endings.
These thoughts made my head throb, and I felt the surface of my skin touching my clothes, my socks, the hair whispering over the back of my neck, and the tight elastic of my hairnet. Couldn’t stop feeling it all. I was too inside me, this machine of flesh and blood and bone that would inevitably also die someday. Having feelings about it didn’t change the facts.
Hope was a racket then, only ever for rent.
I’d leveraged all my hope through Faraday though, and she took it all with her.
“What’s that?” Stephan lifted several bowls off the counter and stowed them on a cart.
“Nothing,” I muttered as I spread out the final seal. “I’m not feeling great.”
“Distant? Moody? Disturbed?”
“Wow, Stephan.” Any other morning before yesterday, I might have elaborated. Everyone working near us would have chimed in, making up games and keeping the mood moving. We’d have joked about anything at all and ended shiny with tears of laughter. Except, after hearing about his past in horrible detail, I couldn’t bring myself to let my sadness out, especially not for it to get turned funny.
“Out with it already.” He yanked at his apron which had slipped low over his chest and hung it on a nearby hook. “I can tell something’s eating at you. I know you don’t want to put bad vibes into the food.”
I wiped my hands on my own apron then grabbed a rag to wipe the counter. He was right about not putting my yuck into the food. “Besides the obvious and the RC slowly eating up the moon? My boyfriend’s forgotten I exist.”
“That all?” His tone was so flippant I drew back. Maybe he was feeling some kind of way about his storytelling yesterday too.
“No, that’s not all. I’m not sleeping.”
“Welcome to the club.”
He was definitely not funny today.
I knew I should ask him if he was all right, except I was too deep into feeling hopeless and annoyed about it to worry about him too. I scrubbed the counter harder, but the flour dust wouldn’t budge.
“Sorry you’re suffering too,” I managed. “Thanks so much for your support.”
“I just don’t think you’re the only one wound up. You’re definitely not the only one who can’t rest. And if your boyfriend’s ignoring you, he sucks and doesn’t deserve you. End it and spare yourself the drama.”
This crimped my already frazzled nerves. “That’s not what I want.”
I hoped that wasn’t what Andrek wanted. He would’ve said something, wouldn’t he? Had he said something, and I’d missed it? An ache to go to him bloomed in my chest. I had a plan to fix things, but whether or not I was successful wasn’t up to me. Besides, I still had to get through my shift without letting the despair all the way in.
“Maybe it should be though. If you were my girl, I’d never treat you that way.”
“Maybe mind your business!” I dug harder over the counter surface as if adding more pressure would wipe away everything I didn’t want to be real.
Stephan put his hand over mine with the rag. “It’s clean, Lane.”
I stared at the counter, certain there were still specks dusting the surface. “But it’s not.”
Off work at last, I hurried about the kitchen, gathering ingredients Chef said I could take without denting our week’s rations. I’d sent messages to Andrek, Joule, V, and Halle to go to the second dome, on “urgent business.”
It was urgent. The RC had swallowed two more of our allies on Earth, Dad had told me. I didn’t tell anyone why we needed to meet or who else was coming. Ironic considering what I planned to say.
“We have to talk.”
I steeled my voice against the stone-hard look V shot me. She was the least interested in this outing, because even though she hadn’t heard from her Earth contact yet, she wanted us to practice what I’d say when she did.
“About secrets,” I finished.
She and Halle held hands on the far edge of the tablecloth. Joule was on the other side of V, with Andrek trying not to be tense beside him. Maybe he wasn’t tense.
It was probably just me.
We had the second dome, called “The Orchard” in my sister’s models, mostly to ourselves. “It’s the original dome, donated and planted by a consortium of the other research stations the same time the collective was formed,” Joule had said.
Its rows of young trees weren’t all so young, and they were heavy with fruit and tall enough to picnic under. The real sun beat down non-stop through the transparent exterior, and if we stayed long enough, we’d be here to watch those panes shutter for the fabricated night.
Joule called it “the turning of the tide,” explaining how even trees needed sleep.
It smelled like spring, and the circulated air swam with pollen and insects. Fat, lazy bees buzzed nearby, ignoring us and our sandwiches on their way to richer harvest. If I didn’t raise my eyes too far or high, I could imagine we were truly outside, or in some pastoral painting of pre-melt Earth.
“What I mean is this sucks,” I said this part fast, because both V and Andrek seemed ready to interrupt. “It sucks when I know what I want to say, but for one reason or another I can’t get the words out. Like, they don’t work the way they do in my head.”
V took the longest breath in history, and Andrek stared out the dome the way he did, but Halle and Joule nodded.
“Spectrum squad.” Halle winked.
“But this is different than just that. Harder. Because the words aren’t mine to say.”
It occurred to me, several hours into this plan, that it could explode in my face. Full failure, total break up, no more boyfriend, no more almost-girlfriend, no new friends.
I could end up locked out of V’s confidence, abandoned by Andrek, rejected by Joule and Halle. Just me alone, still not sleeping, and not helping save anyone from a damn thing.
“Food first.” I started unpacking our meal. One side benefit of getting the trustees’ nutrition records and having my own tablet was that I was able to make each person’s perfect sandwich, bulking up or trimming out ingredients according to their recorded preferences. After the focus group, I was also an expert in label-making. I’d brought a case of water tubes, pretzels, popcorn, and leftover pudding cups. The pudding got frozen by accident, which Chef said turned it into something she called a windy frost. I’d have to clean carefully before we left, because two pounds of unexpected waste could tip the ecosystem and I could already see specialized ants creeping toward our blanket.
“They’re not my secrets, because they’re yours, Andrek.” I pinned him with my gaze, catching his attention with the pitch of my voice and giving him a water tube. I’m talking to you. Easier when he was close, when I could touch him to say what was underneath.
He rolled his shoulders and drank it one gulp, which I read as let’s hear it then.
“And yours, V,” I continued. “Because I’m tiptoeing around the both of you, and you’re being weird about each other, to each other. At each other. How can I ever get to know Joule when y’all do this?”
I went with “weird” since “suspicious” or “flat-out wrong” were both too direct, and both V and Andrek deserved the chance to say, “Fuck this, Lane,” and storm away with their secrets intact. If they wanted.
“I don’t want this, like this, anymore.” I handed a tube to V, who’d gone full guard, and I held my palm out a second too long after she started drinking. “And I think, I mean, I need you to consider telling each other what you trusted me with. And Joule and Halle. So things can stop being weird and maybe get a whole lot better for everyone. Before this is all over, or you know, maybe instead of letting our world end, we choose to stop Brand together.”
Even the ants paused when I said Brand’s name. We don’t want to work for him, they said. I wondered if they’d heard about the RC’s labor camps and forced drafts too.
“Whoa,” said Halle.
“Huh,” said Joule.
V said nothing, showed nothing, and Andrek’s temple and jaw throbbed.
How dare you, his clenched muscles said, but at least he hadn’t left. Yet.
I let my hands do what they wanted in my lap and hoped as hard as I could that they both cared enough about me to understand how much I needed this, or at least cared enough about the trust to hear what I was asking.
“This is an end-of-the-world picnic. As in, the trust won’t exist much longer unless we save it, and also I will literally burst if I have to keep secrets from either one of you any longer, so please for fucks sake will you—”
“Brand Masters is my dad, and I’ll die before I let him take the trust.” V pulled her knees tight to her chest. I recognized this pose.
“Finally! Finally, finally, finally!” Joule threw his long arms out over his head, his hands swinging at the wrists. The trees swung with him, caught in his breeze. “I couldn’t take it one more minute either, Lane. Thank you, science gods, thank you.” He sighed contentedly several times in a row, as though he’d been short of breath for weeks.
I got it. Something rotten that had been rattling in my stomach for days crumbled, and I felt looser and lighter.
Halle danced a circle around the tablecloth. She wasn’t forming words exactly, but the noises she made were loud and sounded relieved. After the first round, she stopped to grab a water before continuing.
“Finally,” she exclaimed between gulps. “Finally!”
Andrek hadn’t moved, not even to get clear of Joule’s swinging hands.
“He’s your dad,” he said, enunciating each word somehow without changing his expression.
“That’s what I said.” V quirked an eyebrow. “I disowned him and ran away after he killed my mom.”
“You…” Andrek rocked in place. “And he…”
I tossed a sandwich to Halle, and Joule stood and took his, I guessed to give me some space to reach both V and Andrek.
“Andrek,” I said nice and slow, hoping it’d help him snap out of whatever fog V’s confession had slipped him into.
He looked right at me for a moment, and there was so much packed there it sent me reeling. I was wrong; I’m sorry; I’ve been a jerk; how you managed not to burst already is basically a miracle.
I nodded in response, waiting for the words.
“Wow, so, wow. I completely read you wrong,” he told V, and one of the other rocks in my stomach burst into powder. “From the first day it was like you were digging for information, and I thought—damn. All wrong. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry, truly. So here goes. I was in the RC. Not by choice. I was drafted. Now you know. That’s my secret.”
V blanched, her eyes widening. “So, you know then. What it’s like, what he’s like. What he does to people.”
“Yeah.” Andrek issued a strangled sort of noise inside that one syllable. “I do.”
I gave him a sandwich, letting my fingers linger. When Faraday was alive, and my mom had said some hurtful thing in passing, not thinking about how I’d hear it, I could go to my sister, and she’d understand. I’d never have that again, but somehow I’d given that to V and Andrek. This was winning.
I reminded myself this was what I wanted for all of us. Honesty and openness. I hadn’t expected it to sting so much to see them gain what I’d lost for good.
“That’s it then,” I said, unwrapping the last two meals and passing one to V. “Eat.”
Halle and Joule sat, only now we were in a circle. Fruits thudded into the nets tied below the branches. I risked peeking further past the trees and caught the rolling white horizon of the moon outside and the velvety black sky. This time, when that view sent my heart pounding, I didn’t flinch. I simply chewed my food and looked.
I’d never be used to this, but it didn’t mean I was ready to give up.
“I have to get something off my chest too,” Halle said. “And don’t you dare lecture me, V, because you got me and Mom tangled up with the accord, and I’m still freaking out. So I’ve been stealing fertilizer. I’d rather die fighting too.”
“You’ve done what now?” The insides of V’s sandwich spilled onto the tablecloth.
“That’s incredibly unsafe,” Andrek agreed. “Tell me they aren’t rigged.”
I couldn’t help but laugh because they were on the same side.
Joule’s face contorted, jaw wide. “Halle. All this time you’ve had me helping you build bombs?”
“Uh huh. I figured you knew. You never asked.”
Joule covered his mouth with both hands, muffling the repeating I didn’t knows.
“And what did you mean about being tangled up with the accord?” Andrek asked Halle, but looped V into his confused stare. “You don’t mean the war crimes accord.”
“We do,” V said. “But we’ve hit some snags. My contact went dark.”
Andrek rubbed a hand through his hair. “That’s too bad. The accord could solve a ton of problems, and not only here on the moon.”
“We know,” I said, though the news about V’s contact had hit me like a brick. I was so hopeful that finally there was something important I’d be able to contribute. Not like, “Lane saves the day!” or anything, but also… maybe that? I knew if Faraday were here, she’d be far more invested in reviving her accord than getting a holiday in her honor.
“We won’t give up yet,” Halle put in. “Maybe there’s some other way to track down your contact? And—” she laughed “—if there is someone else working to get the accord going, they might succeed even if we’re stuck.”
Andrek met my eyes, and his were butter soft. “I might have some channels to go through. It’s worth a shot.”
“Okay,” V said. “Let’s do that then.”
“Anyone else? Horrifying secrets? No?” I asked, but the others shook their heads, maybe still stunned by Halle’s confession. None of us seemed to want to circle back to it. I sure didn’t.
“Then we can talk about what we’re doing and work together now, right? We’re trying to find the spy, who isn’t V or the comm department, but so far, we’re not having much luck, or at least I’m not. But maybe you know things we don’t, Andrek?”
He did. I saw it in his jaw twitch. “We haven’t found the leak either.”
“And it’s not you,” V said, like she was still open to the idea.
“No. I’ve entertained some ideas if we end up having to surrender, but—” Andrek stopped himself, probably because he’d acknowledged the not-so-secret official surrender policy. “You already know about that too, don’t you?”
“I didn’t tell!” I threw in, in case that was what he was thinking.
“We all know,” V said. “The only thing I didn’t know is that you’d worked for my monster father. I wouldn’t blame you if you were still in touch with other draftees. I’d think it was stupid and irresponsible, but I’d get it.”
“I’m not, though,” Andrek cried.
“But what if you were?” I wondered.
Joule let out a long “Ohhhh,” as Andrek and V turned to me.
“What do you mean?” they asked in unison. I chalked that up as an end-of-the-world picnic victory.
“What if you play like you want to work with him?” I suggested.
“Viveca would be a better choice for that, I think,” Andrek said.
V huffed. “It can’t be me, not until I get other things ironed out. But I’ll help you do it.”
“I suppose that could work. And that might help with your accord too.”
“Not my accord,” she said. “Hers.”
“Ours now, if we pull this off.” I meant it. For anything we had to last, everything that had been Faraday’s must become ours.
“I don’t like it though,” V continued. “If we get caught, we’ll look more guilty than ever.”
“We all will,” Andrek agreed.
“Nobody has to like it. Forget like!” I hated it, and I didn’t want to show how much. “But we’re running out of time! The RC’s been at Blackstone for days already. Dad says they’ll be lucky to last the night.”
Andrek balled up his sandwich paper. “Lane’s right. We’re out of time.”
“Shit,” I said, and everyone else’s faces echoed it.
V dabbed her mouth. “Honestly, I’d prefer it if we don’t try to contact him first, rather we should start with your old squad mates. But we’re racing a ticking clock now, so we’ll have to be methodical and fast. There’s only one other base worth taking before he comes for the trust.”
“What about Guanghan?” Joule asked.
“Nobody will mess with Guanghan,” V said. “Not unless they want all of China retaliating.”
“Let’s start now.” Andrek retrieved his tablet from my makeshift picnic basket, but then he hesitated. “Except, Lane, can we get a minute to talk? Just us?”
That familiar and so adorable twinkle in his blue eyes almost got me. “Is it about us? Because, if it is, but it’s not because you want to break up,” I choked out the words, my mouth desert dry, “we should include Joule and V.”
Andrek’s Adam’s apple yo-yoed. “You think I want—God, no. That’s what you think? Oh, Lane.” He patted his chest and reached for me, his thick eyebrows drawn. Pleading.
I fought the urge to crawl over the remaining water tubes and climb in his lap. Sleepy me wanted to. But knowing he didn’t want us to split did this weird thing to my chest, all that fear about losing him poofed away. In its place was something else entirely, something hot and whistling that I didn’t recognize.
“Good call,” V said. Her arms crossed tightly, and there was a hint of this thing inside me resonating in the hard set of her mouth. “Because you two—” she cast a simmering between Andrek and Joule “—need to make up your minds about showing up for us. We get it. New love. High drama. But if we’re talking about clean slates and being honest, what’s been going on isn’t working. And it’s made it impossible to concentrate.”
Joule frowned. Did he not understand? Andrek hung his head, so I was pretty sure he must.
“You’ve been sucky boyfriends,” Halle explained between bites of sandwich. “Maybe not the absolute worst, but not close to good. Look at poor Lane. It’s like she hasn’t slept in a week, and V—Sorry, babe, but it’s true—You’re so high-strung you’ll break a bone if you sneeze.”
“I’m fine!” V snapped.
“I’m not.” I zipped and unzipped the top of my jumpsuit.
“I... I know,” Andrek said, feather light.
“And they’ve both got their own baby love whatever going on too, but look how they’re handling themselves,” Halle scolded. “Putting the trust first every day like damn goddesses. You boys should take a lesson.”
“Is that true? Am I sucky?” Joule’s frown had doubled in size. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he cried. “I thought I was helping!”
“Helping who? Not me, when you stop honoring our schedule,” V said, her masks slipping more every second.
Joule tapped his fingers against his thumbs one at a time, and I watched him, rapt by the beautiful rhythm of his stim. I tapped too sometimes, but it wasn’t precise or nearly as fun to look at. A feeling I couldn’t totally understand tightened inside my stomach. A hollow almost swishy sense that told me if I ever saw Joule cry, I would have to cry too.
Maybe I had been jealous before, but of Andrek, not Joule. I’d had a rough time admitting I liked V at first, and I was doing the same thing with Joule. The feeling in my stomach sat a lot like fear, like I was afraid to let myself like him.
“I’m sorry!” Joule said, and my stomach twisted with certainty. I did like him. “I thought when you saw what we’ve been working on, you’d understand. Tell them, Andrek. It doesn’t matter if it’s not finished.”
“Oh!” Halle squealed. “See, V? I told you it’d be all right. It’s another surprise!”
“Tell us what, Andrek?” I couldn’t stand being on the outside anymore, and I regretted opening this talk to the group so soon. “You said you don’t have more secrets. What kind of surprise makes you skip out on me for days in a row?”
His hands raked over his knees. “Because of your parents, Lane. How am I supposed to tell you anything when half our mornings together get railroaded by you and your parents fighting? They’re my bosses, remember. I have to spend the rest of the day with them while you’re working and getting a break.”
“Yes, but—”
“I know, we’re supposed to keep work separate and all, but you don’t know what that’s like for me. They’re hurting too, like you wouldn’t believe,” Andrek spilled out. “I’m not saying they’re right or that I’m taking their side. That’s not it. But I’m stuck in the middle of the three of you, and I can’t make anyone feel better. Not without making it worse for somebody else, so, yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I’ve been doing. I thought about how to say this a million times, but could barely face it myself. And it’s not an excuse for bailing on you and flaking out. I’m sorry for that.”
I opened my mouth, but words didn’t come. Andrek wasn’t avoiding me, not exactly, and it wasn’t only some new relationship honeymoon with Joule either. I hadn’t been thinking of his feelings. Definitely not about how awkward that must have been for him, caught between me and my parents. Their pain and mine. Somehow that was worse than me being in denial about my jealousy about him and Joule.
I didn’t know how to fix any of this. If it was even possible.
“You still haven’t said what the surprise is,” Halle chided.
Andrek glanced between Joule and me, the weight on him now clear as day.
My breath tasted rotten, and my cheeks burned. I’d been the sucky one. Selfish and self-absorbed.
Joule pushed to his feet and offered Andrek a hand up. “The most prudent option is to show them. Finished or not. No more secrets.”