Attention: ALL
Subject: MCO Relocation
MCO operations in Masdar have been forced to relocate due to intragovernmental pressures amid the recent influx of refugees seeking asylum within the collective. Temporary accommodations have been made, but a permanent residence for our Earth-bound operations has yet to be designated.
Unspeakably horrible things happened in the kitchen overnight. I was grateful none of my coworkers were here to see me deliberately dosing food. Would they hate me for this? Blame me? Would anyone let me back in a kitchen again?
I did what I was told I must, trusting there was no other way.
Hairnet tight, gloves secure. Measure and pour. No tasting, not today.
Stir and shape. Bake and cool. This was what I could do for my sister’s dream and those of us still clinging to it.
Then I thought of Stephan and felt queasy. He didn’t know he was caught yet, but this might prove to be the worst day of his already awful life.
Brand’s voice blared from the intercom, and it set my nerves on fire.
V, who’d watched me work in silence for hours, inhaled as if the air itself had filled with poison. That wasn’t far from true.
“I thought we had an agreement. In exchange for my protection and extensive resources, I was going to allow this social experiment to continue uninterrupted. I’m a benevolent ruler, a loving father, but like a father I cannot ignore willful disobedience. I cannot allow defiance to go unpunished.”
He talked and talked.
I worked, wrapping each sticky portion into colorful waxed papers. I couldn’t block him out, but I could do this, one sorry snack at a time.
“Your leaders promised me a peaceful transition. That was a lie, whether of ignorance or duplicity, and it makes what must be done next messy and uncomfortable. It’s a shame. I was looking forward to us all being friends. One big family reunited.”
V slammed her fists onto the counter. It was the first time I’d seen her react to Brand all night. She closed up instantly, smoothing her face the way I was smoothing wrinkles in the wax paper.
“Are you finished?” she asked.
I stacked the wrapped protein bars, willing them to be something else. Anything else. “I hate this.”
“I know,” she said. “If it’s any consolation, so do I.”
Brand was still talking, but we were acting like he wasn’t. It didn’t matter what he said now. He was playing a game with his words, but we were the ones controlling the board. He was just too arrogant to notice.
Halle walked up to us. I hadn’t even noticed her entering the kitchen.
“Han’s waiting for us,” she said quietly, attempting a smile. “Are we ready to go?”
Something in her face—no, something missing in her face. Her sweetness.
What we’d seen had spoiled all of us.
Then I got an idea.
I’d give them a choice. It was the right thing, the human thing, to do.
The trustee hostages would recognize me, and they’d know to choose dessert over the nasty protein bars. They’d pick dessert, and they’d be fine.
Eventually, they might even forgive me for what I almost did to them.
Some of Brand’s soldiers might opt for dessert too, but there would be enough of us to overpower them. There had to be.
“I’ll need fifteen more minutes. Twenty max,” I answered as I dashed to the freezer, pausing only to set the oven temperature. “Do you want to help, Halle? We’re baking cookies.”
We rode in a Rolar, a fancy solar-powered rover that was part awesome and part death trap and our only alternative to the tram. It was supposed to fit six, which sounded like it’d be roomy for four, but it was a terrible lie. Each seat was hard molded metal, and mine squeezed my thighs like it was designed for people half my size.
Halle drove. She was the only one of us certified in heavy machinery.
V sat next to her in the front. I was in the backseat with Stephan and crates of medical supplies and water tubes, plus the food crates. He’d asked a lot of questions when we set off—why Halle and V were here, what the trust’s plan was aside from delivering lunch, did we know anything about the bombs in the hangar—but V shut off her helmet’s speaker, and eventually Stephan stopped asking.
I was glad my own helmet blocked my view of his face. I didn’t think I could stand to look at him yet. I couldn’t help but think of the hole he’d dug for himself, placing his family above all of ours. It was deeper than he could climb out of alone, but he was alone. So alone, there was nothing left of him to fear.
We’d spent so much energy trying to find the spy, but for all the trouble they had caused, Stephan was a used tissue now, an afterthought, and he didn’t even know it. And Danny—whatever Brand held over her must be just as pitiful. Her mother and brother had been lost and probably dead from the attack that killed Faraday, but even if one had survived, they were collective folks, committed to our cause. How could they ever forgive her?
Han’s plan to deal with Stephan and Danny seemed more than fair to me, though I dreaded seeing it unfold. I wanted to hate them, but how could I? What wouldn’t I have done for my own sister? What wouldn’t she have done for me? Even for her memory, I had taken risk after risk.
This ride should have been amazing, like these seats ought to have been roomy. Instead it was a pensive, miserable agony. When we hit a natural ramp with enough speed, we coasted over craters like we were flying. I was too worried to be afraid, and too in my head with doubt to properly worry.
Every second was so dangerous, and anything could happen.
We could still be riding to our deaths.
I imagined Andrek was here in the Rolar with us, and Joule too. Imaginary Andrek gripped my gloved hand in his while Joule regaled us with disturbing details, like “A speck of dust could puncture our Rolar’s hood and rip a suit open or pierce our brains. We wouldn’t know it was happening before the air outside leeched in and froze us.” Just for instance.
My mom had been extremely upset to hear Han’s plan for us when I checked in on her, back before we started this hellishly beautiful drive of doom. Chef had come to wish us luck, and Milo and Cheese, and their we’re-all-Lunars, but the phrase had a new meaning now that I was out here in the black. Now it meant “Do the thing you do; we need you,” and I believed it from my whole pounding heart to the tips of my hair.
Dr. Fromme had invited V and me in for a hug with her and Halle. Then Han told us how long we’d have to wait to leave as she checked my tablet and secured it within my suit.
Nobody said goodbye.
It was such a long ride. The sky was so close, spotted with diamonds, as we rolled and bounced over white ridges. We made clouds of dust each time we landed, and I panicked every time, because I couldn’t see much of anything out the front window.
I was probably the youngest person in history to experience this. The four of us definitely were. I put a hand on Halle’s and V’s shoulders, though I couldn’t really feel them through the padded suit and gloves.
The orchard dome loomed into view through the clouds of dust.
The approach seemed to take an eternity. The fate of the trust rode along in silence, but I still heard my mom’s argument with Commander Han in the room next door ringing in my ears:
“She’s my daughter, Han,” Mom had said, her voice wrenched with emotion, her fears weighing down each word. “Barely more than a kid! I don’t care how much they know or what they’ve gotten mixed up in. You can’t send the youngest of us into known danger.”
Han, implacable. Steel. “Danger there, here. They’re hardly innocents anymore, not after the lives they’ve had.”
“Not my Lane! She’s—”
“You don’t honestly think she’s untouched by the traumas she’s witnessed. You can’t do the job you do and believe that.”
“I did the best I could to protect her.”
“And now I must do the same for all of us. Lane has a vital role to play, one I don’t believe anyone else could fill. People know her, and her food. That’s critical. And Masters asked for Viveca, your daughter’s girlfriend, specifically. Would you rather I send her in alone? Because if I send her with security, he won’t let them so much as exit the Rolar.”
“Of course not! But you have to know the risk you’re taking.”
“Believe me, I know. And so do they.”
We knew all right. I hoped that mattered.