Attention: ALL
Subject: EMERGENCY PROCEDURE CODE RED
COLONY SECURITY HAS BEEN BREACHED. Hazard gear highly encouraged. Proceed to home quarters immediately for facility reset. Failure to comply could result in severe injury or death.
I knew Brand by his voice first, that whine of his couched inside bravado.
He was unabashedly loud, and sharp, as only a cishet man could be. He had the presidential envoy separated, minus Andrek, all lined up to face him.
Guards patrolled the line, weapons ready, though they outnumbered our people ten to one. I tried to keep my gaze low or on Brand, while he pretended he didn’t see us, but there was no way he didn’t, no way he hadn’t heard the honking sound the airlock made when we entered. No way he hadn’t noticed the hollow clanking of our boots on the metal floor.
I hated him.
I hated him so much it turned my stomach to have my eardrums touched by his vibrations.
I was going to be sick.
Brand Masters, in the flesh, had all of V’s physical poise but none of her grace. None of her beauty. He had a broad but underweight build, a domineering stare beneath thick black hair speckled with gray.
He was shorter than his presence felt, his leathery face creased with lines that snaked like dry riverbeds. Really, he made no sense in person—how sure he was of himself and his greatness—when he was only a little man. A sour-mouthed, red-cheeked, piss of a man who spat when he talked and gestured like he never learned what hands were for.
That hair though. I hated him extra for wearing V’s hair.
Her monster father.
My sister’s murderer.
I couldn’t get my helmet off fast enough to take a proper breath, but I managed not to vomit. The noise I made drew his attention.
“Verona, my dear,” Brand said, claiming V immediately. “How wonderful it is to see you alive.”
V removed her helmet but didn’t answer. She looked past him to President Marshall. “I need to assess the wounded and begin treatment for radiation burns. We’ve brought refreshments. Enough for everyone.”
“So cold still. All business. As you were then.” Brand acted amused, but I didn’t buy it. He was annoyed. He wanted her to pretend this was a happy reunion. Still, he motioned to a soldier who came forward to check our gear. I wondered if they expected more bombs.
As the soldier opened the crate Stephan and I carried and fished around inside, Stephan flinched. He’d been watching Brand like he anticipated something. The soldier waved us on without finding my tablet.
“This must be your paramour, eh? Halle Fromme?” Brand trained his eye on Halle dismissively, then me. “Plus the lesser Tanner girl. Lane the lunch lady. I’ve heard a surprising amount about you.”
Icicles speared through my chest. Whether it was Stephan or Danny telling him about me, Brand would have all sorts of personal information.
I clamped my teeth shut and dropped my gaze, willing him to move on.
I was nothing, no one, I let my posture say.
My eyes shot to Andrek, because of course I knew exactly where he was, in the void I’d deliberately not looked toward, and I knew that he was still armed, still blood-spattered, and still watching me. I wished I could say it was easy to tell if we were still us, but beside Stephan and Danny’s betrayals, those promises seemed too far in the past, not in his ice blue stare.
Brand opened his arms wide. Welcoming. “Come here, my boy. Let me thank you for your tireless efforts on my behalf.”
Stephan dropped his side of the crate and stepped toward Brand. It seemed like the man was going to hug him, but then he ended up extending his hand at the last moment.
Stephan didn’t take it. I got a little thrill from the refusal, as if it were proof of Stephan’s humanity, his himness despite his treachery.
“Where are my siblings? Were they… on your ship?”
This nearly ruined me. Stephan had honestly believed Brand would reunite him with his family. That was unbearably sad.
“Of course not!” Brand said. “I wasn’t going to bring children on a military mission. Join the others. You’ll see them soon enough.”
V looped her arm through mine and Halle’s and led us to the line of hostages. “Wait for the signal,” she whispered. “We need to be ready the moment Han connects you.” She knelt to treat the first in the line, a presidential aide.
I dragged the cart further along, grateful for the nudge into action, until Halle picked up the other side. She and I offered cookies or protein bars to the trustees—they accepted the cookies eagerly after a wink from me. Joule held my hand when I passed him, and so did my dad who whispered, “Please be careful,” under his breath.
Halle talked softly to each trustee, instructing them to put their helmets on as soon as possible.
“Take heart,” Halle told them. “Help is coming.”
I hadn’t seen Danny among the other trust guards, though I’d looked for her. Maybe Brand had made her change uniforms to match his other followers.
Soon enough, we’d finished with the hostages, and we gave the crate to a soldier to pass what was left to their fellows.
So much for choice. No cookies remained for the RC.
All around, helmets slid open.
Mouths bit.
Chewed. Swallowed.
I imagined I could hear each morsel grinding between teeth and tongues, slipping down throats into eager intestines.
How much longer would it take? At triple the dosage I normally used for sleep, it should be kicking in any minute.
From the corner of my vision, I noticed Andrek pocketing his meal without opening it. A shiver of relief crawled up my spine.
Brand unwrapped a protein bar but hesitated to eat, used it to gesture instead. “Verona, Verona, Verona,” he chanted as he strutted around her.
She was with President Marshall at the far end of the hostage line, pulling her eyelids open and checking for whatever people check for in the semi-conscious.
“You know how I feel about being ignored,” he warned.
V stiffened and leaned away from the president. She moved to the next in line, repeating her procedures. She tested for fever and concussion, examined exposed skin for burns.
Brand hovered behind her and finally took a bite.
Crumbs fell onto the top of her head.
Halle nudged me with an elbow. We put our helmets on, securing them to our suits. Most of the trustees had done the same, but Brand wasn’t watching them.
“Look at me, child,” Brand demanded, and his oily tenor rippled with menace. “I said look at me!”
V turned, her face a blank canvas, then she went on to the final hostage, her gaze sweeping discreetly over me.
I craned my hearing for the message from Han, but my tablet was still quiet inside my suit. Nothing yet. I shook my helmeted head.
“You have some nerve,” Brand sputtered, spit flying. “After everything I’ve done for you, to build us a legacy, to shield you from charlatans who want to use you up for their own ends. You treat me like this, as an enemy. I am your father, and I will not be denied!”
He reached for her, his hand like a claw, and I screamed her name.
She whipped around, and, in a blur of motion, she was on her feet. Whatever nonchalance Brand had lost in his annoyance, she had absorbed. She grew taller and stronger as he shriveled.
“What have you ever been denied?”
“Everything!” he yelled. “I wouldn’t have had anything if I hadn’t taken it for myself.”
V stowed her tools in the medical bag carefully and scooped her helmet off the ground. “Like my mother, you mean.” Her tone was calm but brittle. If she was afraid, and I was sure she was, she’d buried that fear beneath layers of righteous anger.
“No, she—I made her my wife. I gave her the world, like I plan to give you!”
V walked past him like he was nothing and joined me and Halle. “We’re done here,” she said, taking off toward the airlock. I was in awe of her strength, not letting his twisty words under her skin.
“I didn’t say you could leave.”
Soldiers stepped into our path and pulled us apart, holding me and Halle tightly but not laying a finger on V.
My gaze roamed to Andrek, though I didn’t know what I expected from him at this point. One friend against a hundred enemies might as well have been zero.
V sighed. “Are we your hostages now too?”
“I’m not through talking to you,” Brand said. He tried to collect his bravado, but it failed to snap fully into place. “Why do you hate me so much? All I’ve ever done is love you.”
“You’ve never loved anyone but yourself,” V spouted. “Love isn’t control. It isn’t violent or cruel. It doesn’t demand anything in return, let alone try to steal affection.”
I heard her words plainly, but they became something else in my head. This was what Faraday meant when she’d complained about our parents. They weren’t anywhere near as horrible as Brand, but they sure were demanding. And controlling. That was why it was so hard to believe they loved me, while I could believe and feel it from my friends, our happy hand. They didn’t ask me to be anyone but me.
“You’re on thin ice, Verona.”
“I don’t care what you think.”
“But you care what they think?” Brand pointed at me and Halle, and the soldiers pushed us to our knees.
When my joints met metal, I tried not to cry out. The tablet dug into my ribs, but I didn’t dare draw attention by adjusting it. At least the helmet hid my tears. V had a job to do, and I didn’t want to make it any harder.
Brand strutted closer to V and spun her around, forcing her to look at us being small and helpless. “This one, the doctor’s kid, who plays in the dirt. And that one, a damn lunch lady. They matter to you? I understood the boyfriend, but these two… They’re beneath you!”
“You’re wrong.” V straightened her shoulders and glared at Brand, unwavering. “They are not beneath me. They’re beside me.”
“I’m the only one beside you!” He shook her as though trying to force her to relent, to see the truth of their connection. “You’re always making me chase you, but I know. I know that’s your game. There’s nowhere left to run, and we can be a family again.”
She didn’t wrench herself free of his grasp. She barely reacted to him, even as he shook her harder and harder. Again, she looked my way, but I couldn’t give her what she wanted yet, even though she’d just given me the whole world, defending me and Halle. Saying we were her equals, that I was her equal. Brand was an absolute tool not to notice what love looked like when he was standing right in front of it.
Hold on, V. Just a little longer.
“I didn’t raise an ungrateful brat. That was always my money in your pocket as you charged around the world, and you kept taking it. Knowing I could follow every dime straight to you.”
Brand went on and on, loving the sound of his voice apparently. I was grateful for that, if only because my tablet was still silent.
Han will come through, I told myself. Our allies had rallied and were going as fast as they could. It should be any minute now.
Sweat rolled down my face, fogging my vision through the helmet.
“And that hero of yours, that hippie freak with all her utopian horseshit. She brainwashed you. You needed her out of your way to come into your own. I did that for you!” His voice hardened. Iced over. My sister’s corpse was a present to his daughter, frozen there in his mind. He understood nothing. “You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t paid for your tutors, your degrees, your whole life. Trace the money, baby, like I know you have. So you know how much I love you. How much you need me.”
V was shaking on her own now, trembling all over. And when her face turned to me, it killed me that I still couldn’t give her the signal. It didn’t matter how wrong he was. The words still hurt. I understood her masks better than I ever imagined I could, because it was all right there in front of me. Her desperation to please, to be loved and accepted, to be seen. She was just as insecure as me inside.
But then my tablet vibrated inside my suit, and I nearly screeched. Somehow I stopped myself and scratched at my chest, activating the live call.
Han’s voice whispered through, so low no one else noticed. “Wrap it up,” she said. “Call’s connecting in less than a minute. Milo’s got it ready to link into the PA.”
V saw me almost freak out and graced me with a tiny nod of her chin.
This was what love looked like. Partnership. Trust.
“I’m here now, baby. For you.” Brand brushed a lock of hair from V’s cheek.
He was not wearing gloves, I realized with a start. That would go badly for him.
“I want to give you everything you want.”
V steadied, mostly. She croaked a little, asking, “Even if I want everything?”
“Especially then,” he said with a laugh. “That’s how I know you’re mine.”
A beat passed between them, and I ached to see it. She searched his face openly, hungry to find anything human there but finding only the monster she knew. A tear fell, rolling down her cheek.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Dad.”
He dropped his hands. His eyes blazed. “Okay?”
“No!” Halle cried, struggling against her soldier’s grip. In response, the soldier knocked her unconscious with an abrupt shake that smacked Halle’s head inside the helmet.
I was so upset already, seeing V reduced to this charade, that I was numb. She was V, the unbreakable, though I was watching some part of her break with each refusal. At least Halle didn’t have to witness it anymore.
This has to happen, I reminded myself. V could do this, and not only because she’d spent two decades exhausting herself to prove she was exceptional.
Because she was. Exceptional.
But, like my sister, V saw what was exceptional about everyone, and she didn’t try to stand alone. And unlike my sister, V was getting a second wind.
V looked right at us, through us, but spoke to Brand. He didn’t know how many ears listened through my tablet. It must have been in the hundreds by now.
“I’m your daughter. Your heir and legacy. I won’t run anymore. Is that what you want to hear?”
I hated this moment for her almost as much as I relished it. Get him, V. Hook him in his own trap.
“Of course, it is,” Brand said. “Finally!” He hugged her to his chest, not seeming to care that her arms hung limp at her sides, the helmet dangling. “Of course! Soldiers, stand down a minute and come meet my daughter. She’ll be in charge one day.”
“I think there’s someone else they’d rather hear from,” I said, my voice croaking as the soldier holding me tightened their grip.
From within my suit, a child’s voice came clearly, then it reverberated through the PA speakers.
“Stephan? Are you there? I can’t hear you!”
Stephan, who’d been loitering between Brand and the soldiers, sprang to motion, running to me and yelling. “It’s me! Oh my god, I can hear you! Lane, tell her I can hear her!”
“He’s listening,” I said loudly, then heard my words clip through the PA. “We all are.”
“Stephan, the French lady rescued us from the camp! You said the RC would help us, but they lied! But we’re all here now. We’re going to be okay. They’re bringing us food and new clothes too.”
I spoke into the tablet, “We’re so glad you’re safe. And together. It means everything to your brother.” Stephan was at my side now, but he couldn’t seem to make himself respond, so I explained for the sake of the rest of Brand’s soldiers. “Brand promised Stephan his siblings would be safe and cared for. Instead he dumped them in one of his hundreds of labor camps where they’re basically starving. How many of you got the same promise for your families?”
“Is that true?” the soldier behind me yelled, their voice breaking.
“Stop this circus act,” Brand screamed.
“And Danny, wherever you are,” I continued, shrugging off the soldier’s grip without resistance. “We have a message from your brother. Go ahead and play it, Cheese.”
“Whatever Masters promised you, he lied, Danielle. He’s kept me as a prisoner all these months just for leverage over you. I had to—He made me bury Mom in a mass grave.”
The soldier behind me dropped to their knees and moaned so terribly I knew it had to be Danny. Brand was yelling too, but I couldn’t make out his words over her sobs.
All the trustee hostages had their helmets on. So did Andrek, but V’s dangled uselessly in her gloved hand.
Brand had his arm around her neck, as though he was clinging to the moment when she’d called him “Dad.”
“The signatures are in and finalized, and the Free States Accord has ratified the renewal of the United Nations, with full authority to press charges for crimes against humanity,” another voice announced through the speakers. The French president. “We’ve liberated eleven camps today, but this is only the beginning. RC soldiers, if you hear me, your families are now under our protection. If you surrender peacefully, your charges will be much less severe. It is time to choose sides.”
The soldier holding Halle stumbled, tilting like they were about to fall.
Then another soldier did fall, sprawling woozily in front of my dad and the president.
“What did you do?” Brand screamed as he clutched V’s neck. “Soldiers! Kill them now. Kill them all.”
The soldiers still on their feet raised their weapons sluggishly, but their attention was clearly torn between Danny and Stephan’s anguish and Brand’s rage.
V twisted away from Brand, but he lunged for her, knocking her helmet far across the dome floor.
Then Andrek saluted the remaining camera.