Attention: ALL
Subject: Earth Weather Update
With great sorrow, we share the latest developments of this year’s hurricane season: five islands lost in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean; 4 million casualties; 19+ million displaced souls. For more details, please refer to the attached documentation.
—President Marshall
I dipped out for work early, to miss my parents and their demands, and went straight to the private dining room, avoiding the rest of the staff. Chef was off today, but I expected she’d pop in around lunchtime like usual. I silenced notifications on my tablet so I could concentrate. I didn’t want to hear anyone’s excuses about Andrek or their updates about plans they were making without me.
It was probably for the best. I needed to stick to what I knew.
Mix the spices. Season with care. Shape the dough and bake it just underdone so nothing got ruined in the reheating.
Nobody needed my questions forcing them three steps backward to explain things to me. And if they did explain—V’s method of plunging past all pleasantries or Joule’s zillion words a minute, all details weighted equally—what was I going to add besides my worry? What had I ever added? And why did I let myself care so much? It wasn’t like they sat around wondering what I thought about them, twisting themselves into knots about being enough, doing enough. They were always enough for each other, while I wasn’t even enough for myself.
Stop.
Faraday’s voice.
Fantastic. This was happening again.
“What do you want from me?” I yelled. “I’m sleeping now, going to group, and I mostly remember to eat. I’m doing your stupid holiday and everything, so you can leave me alone!”
“I said stop and let me pass.”
That was not my sister, and it was not in my head.
It was my mom. What was she doing here?
“I don’t care if the room is closed,” she said. “I need to see my daughter right now.”
I ran to the door and opened it to find my mother pushing past someone with a cart loaded with reserve water crates from the back-storage freezer. Three tablets bulged out of their back pocket. Curious.
“What’s going on?” I asked her, but I peered beyond her to see who the runner was.
As their cart collided with the door to the eastern hallway, a hairnet dropped on the ground behind them. Dark curls caught the light as he turned the corner.
Stephan.
“Why haven’t you answered your tablet?” Mom looked me over, but for what I didn’t know. Her hair was a wreck, grizzled gray strands pointing all directions like they were static charged.
“I’ve been busy working. Where’s Dad?” Why wasn’t he with her? And why would Stephan be carting water crates around?
I didn’t think he ever got a tablet assigned either, let alone three.
“You missed dinner too,” she said and sent her gaze roaming over the tables behind me, stacked high with bain-maries ready for the freezer. I registered what she meant, that I’d been in this room hours longer than I realized. Again.
My shoulder twitched in a half-shrug. “I’m fine here. I’ll be finished soon.”
“Someone else can do that, Lane.” She touched my back, catching me as I tried to turn away. I didn’t like the look of her, the storm brewing. “Come home.”
“I can’t leave things like this. Nothing’s labeled. No one else will know what needs to be done with it,” I said, but my mind flicked again to Stephan, my thoughts speeding forward. No way he’d suddenly get issued three tablets. Why would anyone need three?
And there was no reason to be lugging the reserve water anywhere, because the whole back freezer was on a lift that went straight down.
Unless he wasn’t taking them to the subbasement.
Unless he was stealing them, because he was the white, first shift, second wave trustee guy who’d also been sabotaging systems. Probably using those hidden routes through the trust he showed me.
I’d thought he was my friend.
I didn’t want to believe this.
But I did.
Because even if he’d played like my friend, Stephan was a brother for real. With his family suffering a world away that he would do anything for. All he had here was work—no friends, no hobbies, nothing.
How could I not have seen it before? He’d been in front of me the whole time.
“They’ll manage fine,” Mom said, startling me from my thoughts enough to make me wonder how long I’d been staring at the door. “Can you please come home so we can talk?”
“I don’t think I can,” I told her. “I have to talk to Han right now. I think… I think I know who the leak is. Brand’s spy.”
“Home first,” Mom insisted, and the tone of her voice left no room for argument. “Message her on the way.”
I had to quicken my steps to keep up with her, but I managed to type “Stephan from the kitchen is the spy,” before reaching the hallway.
Where it was strangely empty. No guards, not even mine anymore, though Mom was just talking to him. Nor the knots of off-shift trustees who tended to mill outside the washrooms and rec areas.
A heaviness moved between Mom and I, but no matter how many questions I asked or how hard I pressed about Stephan being the spy, she didn’t answer until we were in our living room. At that point, Han sent me, “I’m on it. Thx.”
Mom palmed the door locked and stood with her back turned for a full minute before she heaved a sigh and faced me. “It doesn’t matter now. The RC. They’re at the shipyard. I need you to promise me you won’t leave here until I say it’s clear. Keep these doors locked and stay inside.”
I shivered, though the temperature was the same as ever. “Mom, I—”
“It can’t be like before when…” She stopped herself from saying it, but I knew what she meant. Like Faraday’s campaign when I’d snuck out of the collective repeatedly. Like the night she’d died, when I was supposed to be snuggled in our flat, watching my sister accept the election results from a screen. “Promise me, Lane. You’ll stay here, no matter what.”
Those words again. They stung extra coming from her, though I didn’t know why.
“I can’t stay,” I said. “There’s no bathroom!”
“I’ve got all that covered. Water tubes, protein bars—I know you hate them but they’re necessary—dried fruit. You won’t like using it, but I’ve got a bin for waste. Whatever you need, actually need, you’ll find packed in the crate stored under my bed. Sanitowels, the works. Rest, play games, do whatever you want, but stay inside. Safe. If we’re lucky, this will be over in a matter of hours, days at the most, but you’re set up for weeks if need be. Be smart, Lane, and do what I tell you.”
I followed her to her bedroom as she talked. She unloaded the crate onto her bed and sorted the packaged meals like a robot while my thoughts whirled a tornado inside me, muddying my capacity to listen.
“Why did you bring this stuff here?” I asked, because what she said didn’t make sense. “What about the subbasement? Is that where everyone’s gone? That’s where we’re supposed to be safe, you said. We can wait the RC out there.”
She touched me, which I wasn’t expecting, and I nearly jerked away out of surprise. Both her hands on my upper shoulders. “There was an incident. Right before I came to get you. We won’t be able to unseal the subbasement until it’s resolved, so none of the supplies we set aside are accessible.”
“So, we can’t—was anyone—what kind of—”
“We didn’t lose anyone,” she told me, holding me still. “But now you have to stay here.”
“What about you?” I knew full well that I was ignoring other important matters. That the lockdown scheme had failed the very moment we needed it. That she wanted me to barricade myself in our quarters for the unforeseen future. That she still hadn’t told me where Dad was.
Mom wrapped her arms around me, close this time, and she felt so much smaller than I remembered her being. Breakable. “I have to go deal with the fallout. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“But what about the peace accord? Can’t that help us? Andrek said it was handled!”
“I’m sure I don’t know why you’re bringing that up now, but please, for once in your life, just—” She released me and shook her head. More white hairs sprang free. “I can’t lose another daughter. Keep your tablet near you, but don’t watch the feed, okay? And lock the door behind me. Double check it, to make sure. I love you, baby.”
Then, like Andrek, she was gone.
I left the door open a while, watching as she broke into a run halfway down the hall.
I locked the hatch door and double checked it, the way she wanted, but I also turned on the home comm and cranked up the volume as I skimmed through my missed messages, waiting and hoping to hear more from Han about Stephan.
The screen lit with an image of President Marshall, a handful of security officers and operations assistants, my father, Andrek, Joule, and Joule’s supervisor, all boarding the underground tram.
Andrek had said he wouldn’t be alone. No wonder Han wanted to keep me busy, because she was planning to send half my family into the fray.
“The RC has graciously offered to host diplomatic negotiations on their ship, which is where the president and her envoy are heading now,” said a husky feminine voice. “Our hopes travel with her and her team that the parties reach a swift and peaceful resolution. We will report all updates as we receive them.”
I returned, stunned, to my parents’ room and surveyed the piles upon piles of foodstuffs and whatnots. Stephan may have started the stealing and hoarding, but it obviously hadn’t stopped with him.
How long had Mom been gathering these things? Did Dad know? Did he help her?
I couldn’t believe the RC was here. Really here. In the trust.
I could, but it was happening so much differently than I’d imagined, even with V’s warnings.
There weren’t soldiers swooping down from the sky like last time.
No explosions. No gunfire.
No one screaming and running for their lives.
This was like… when I’d been young and neighbors would pop by for cake and coffee, gently rapping on the back door and leaving their muddy shoes on the stoop. One moment they’d be outside and the next they weren’t.
Only I knew the RC wouldn’t leave as politely as neighbors, no matter how quietly they arrived.
I couldn’t say this was worse, because the last invasion I’d lived through had been a massacre. A nightmare.
This was scarier somehow. Sneakier.
Like it was business as usual, minimum ruffled feathers.
This was how our freedom ended, surrender served on a silver platter, delivered with smiles and apologies for the inconvenience of coming all the way here.
Thank you, sir, we are so pleased to be of service. This thing we built with our sweat and tears, take it. Really, it’s no trouble for us to let your spy sabotage our peaceful community. We don’t mind in the slightest. We hope we’ll be happy and safe being your dutiful servants. Do whatever you like with us.
You think you deserve it, so of course you should have it.
You want it, so it’s yours.
We are yours. Everything is yours. The Earth, the moon, the vastness of space.
Take it all.
And me, the youngest, the least of us—my task was to hide, to survive, and to keep my dang mouth shut.
I wouldn’t.
I couldn’t.
I already knew how much survival weighed when everything beautiful was murdered.
I swiped at the piles, my arms crashing like bulldozers, sending the collection scattering to the floor. Then I kicked the bed for good measure.
I didn’t lock the door behind me when I left.
I didn’t even bother to see if it closed.