27

“THERE YOU ARE!”

My father has rounded the corner without me noticing, Selina behind him, with the skin between her brows pinched deep. She sees my face, the confusion and slow dawning of suspicion upon it, and then fires a fierce glare at Travis.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” my father continues, oblivious, as Travis gives Selina an innocent smile.

“Me too. I was just about to take you back to the border,” Selina says.

My father rounds on her. “Don’t be ridiculous—he’s only just arrived. I think he should stay the night.”

“But the funeral is over and that’s what he came for and—”

“What kind of a welcome is this?” My father comes and wraps an arm around me. “This is my son. I haven’t even had a chance to have a conversation with him. He’ll stay for the wake and he’ll stay for the night and that’s the end of it.” When Selina draws a breath to argue, he carries on over her. “He knew Alejandro. We can’t just pack him off, and anyway, you’re in no state to drive, Selina. None of us are.”

“I’m not sure that Carl wants to stay,” she says, looking at me in the hope I’ll take the cue and ask to leave. I don’t know whether it’s because I was on edge when we arrived and she thinks I’ll leap at the chance to go, or whether she’s so desperate to get rid of me she isn’t thinking straight. Either way, I’m not ready to leave yet.

“I’d really appreciate being able to stay. Thanks, Dad,” I say, feeling his hand tighten and crush me into his side.

Travis slinks off round the corner as Selina sighs, seeing that she’s not going to win. I don’t know if it’s because he’s one of the oldest or if it’s been agreed upon, but it seems my father is de facto leader here now and she’s not going to challenge him. At least not today.

“We’ll be back in the hall soon,” Dad says to her. “I just want five minutes with my son.”

He holds me at arm’s length as Selina rushes off, calling Travis’s name, no doubt about to quiz him on what we discussed. Her concern goes beyond any kind of basic social decision to keep me on the outside. Maybe Collindale briefed her to keep me at arm’s length from the rest of the Circle, worried that I would tell them what really happened. That doesn’t sit right with me though. It would make more sense if she was someone the US gov-corp had here on the inside. If she’s one of them, more than being one of the Circle, does that mean they told her what happened to Alejandro?

“You look well,” my father says, and I realize I haven’t really been looking at him. “Tired, but healthy.”

So many times I’ve fantasized about laying into him. Sometimes it’s punching him, but more often it’s telling him exactly what I went through because of him. But now I am here, in front of him, it feels like a barrier is between us, one of my making. He looks so happy, and while that enrages a part of me, it also makes me reluctant to shatter something so fragile. So I say nothing, knowing he will speak soon enough.

“I was so afraid I wouldn’t get the chance to see you again,” he says, letting go and steering me out toward the fields. “But God led you back.”

“It wasn’t God,” I can’t stop myself from saying.

“Still not a believer, then?” He glances at me and I see genuine worry in his eyes. “Do you still shout at people when they talk about their faith?”

I shake my head. “I grew out of that. Now I mostly let them damn themselves with their own ignorance.”

He winces. “Well, I suppose that’s better than nothing.” He leads us between two rows of maize, brushing the stalks with his fingertips. “There’s so much I’ve wanted to say to you, and now that I have the chance, I can’t think of any of it.”

“Yeah.” I give him that much.

“I was so worried about you. But look at you. You landed on your feet. Made a career for yourself. The Noropean Ministry of Justice! That’s fantastic, son, absolutely fantastic!”

The anger builds. I’m waiting for an apology I fear will never come and all the while, behind the tidal surge of shit, that highly trained part of my brain is working on what Travis said. If he hacked Gabor and found out whatever is in the capsule—I knew it wasn’t possible to keep its contents secret all this time—then my owner has known what the contents were for even longer.

“You were a late bloomer, that’s all.” My dad’s chatter cuts through the processing. “I was so afraid that attitude of yours would be the undoing of you, but—”

“Just stop there,” I say, unable to listen to this shit any longer. “That attitude of mine? Haven’t you thought about why I was the way I was?”

“Oh, teenagers just—”

“No. Just . . . no. You stayed in bed for—what?—two years. You stopped caring for me when I was six, Dad. And I know you had a breakdown and it wasn’t a deliberate thing, but, fuck. You don’t get to stand here now and say I had some fucking attitude problem.”

“But, son—”

“You switched off and then some guy turns up, speaks with you for—what?—an hour. Then you sell everything and move us to another country to live with fucking morons who think that living in a commune in the middle of nowhere is the best way to cope with the world. And not only that. What’s the first thing you do when we arrive? You take away the one thing that kept me going when you checked out.”

“Are you still upset about the damn bear, Carlos?”

“It’s not the bear. It’s not the chip that was inside it; it’s not the fact you took away the best start for me in the real world. It’s not that. It’s . . . it’s . . .”

“Because it sounds like you’re still angry about that. I told you at the time, those things aren’t good for you. Listening in on you while you grow up, feeding all those gov-corp lies to you—”

“That data would have gone into my adult chip, Dad. I would have had a head start. My APA would have known what I was good at before I even did!”

“It’s not natural. I can’t believe you’re still bearing a grudge about this.”

“Fuck!” I yell at the sky, stepping away from him. “It’s not the fucking bear, Dad. It’s the fact you think it was me that had a problem here. I was a child you just uprooted and dumped in this backward cult and every goddamn time I tried to talk to you about stuff, you just spouted shit about God or just told me to go away because you were with Alejandro. You didn’t give a shit about me. No wonder I was angry! No wonder I had an attitude!”

His mouth has fallen open and he’s staring at me like I’m an alien.

“And then when I can finally leave you’re just like, ‘Well, see ya, son. Good luck!’ and you didn’t even give me a single fucking dollar. I had to steal the food I took with me. And you stood there with that righteous fuck and just waved me off?”

“I couldn’t stop you from leaving.”

“You could have made sure I was okay! You could have given me enough cash to last long enough to get a visa! I was a nonperson, Dad. Do you know what it’s like out there when you’re not lily-white and don’t officially exist?”

“I hoped that you’d come back.” His voice is barely a croak. “I thought you’d walk it off for a couple of days and then when you got hungry you’d be back.”

“What, like some dog? Some fucking dog without a mind of its own?”

“No, like a boy who didn’t know what he wanted.”

“But you didn’t come after me, did you?” His stupid, staring eyes infuriate me. “Did you? Not one letter, not one fucking phone call. I could have been dead, for all you knew!”

He shakes his head. “No, Carlos, I always asked Alejandro to check up on you when he traveled. When he told me you were recruited by the Noropean Ministry of Justice I knew you’d be okay.”

“Recruited?” The last sticks of the dam inside me break. “They bought me from corporate-sanctioned slavers. The last real choice I had was when I walked out of this place. Then it was one exploitative fuck after the next and now . . .”

I rein myself in, stopping myself in time. I’m shaking like I’m on far too many stims and I have to keep swallowing down a lump in my throat that feels like an orange is stuck there.

“Oh, God, I didn’t know,” he whispers. “Alejandro said there are charities, that one of them probably—”

“No. There wasn’t any fairy-tale rescue. I’ve spent twenty-three years being fucked over by one person or another, and when I think about it, Dad, when I look back and think about how I got to the place I am now, I see you at the root of it. You and that man in the ground over there.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, new tears falling down his cheeks now. Are they for me or for himself?

I wait for some moment of glorious release, for those two small words to make me feel whole again. But nothing happens. “Is that it?”

“Lo siento, hijo,” he says again, reaching toward me. “I had no idea. No idea at all. I’m so sorry.”

He touches my shoulder and I swipe his hand away. But he reaches for me again, weeping and sniveling, and I ball my fist but his arms draw me into an embrace and then the fight goes out of me and I sob, really sob, for the first time in years.

When I come back to myself I feel quieter inside. And so tired. I pull away from him and just sit down in the dust, exhausted. He sits beside me and blows his nose loudly.

“I’m a terrible father. I knew I was, but not how much. Now I do. You’re right. I switched off and then I ruined your life. I wish I could say I thought I was doing the best thing for both of us, but really I was thinking about myself and just . . . telling myself it was good for you too.” He sniffs loudly. “I nearly fell apart when Carmen went off on Atlas and they left us behind. But I hung on and hung on and tried to get by. And then those journalists, they wouldn’t leave me alone and . . . Well, I don’t have any excuse. I should have asked for help. I should have been there for you. Your mother wasn’t. I had to be and I wasn’t, and I’ll never forgive myself for that.” He blows his nose again and shifts on his backside so he’s facing me. “You’re healthy, aren’t you, Carlos? No illnesses?”

“Is this supposed to make you feel better?”

“Answer the question.”

“I’m fine. I’m healthy and I’m fit too. It’s one of the terms of the contract. I have to keep myself fit and well otherwise . . . otherwise it’s not good.”

His mouth narrows to a thin, down-curved line. “This contract. You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“Dad, it’s not that simple. I can’t just not go back. There would be trouble.”

“Fuck the Ministry of Noropean Justice. Fuck this contract of theirs. You’re staying here.”

I pull my hand down my face, the fatigue making it such an effort. “I don’t belong here. Christ, after all I’ve been through to get away from this place, you think I want to just stay and—”

“You’re staying here, Carlos, until I sort some things out. I wasn’t there for you before. I am now. I’ve already put some things into motion, now I know I’m doing the right thing. But I can’t say anything until tomorrow morning, no matter how much I want to. I just can’t. Okay? But trust me. I won’t let you down now.”

“I’ll think about it.” I don’t have the heart to tell him that all his paternal will and bluster can’t fight my real owner. Nor can I tell him I’ll wait until the morning, not when I might decide to take Travis in the night, or just make a run for it by myself. “Look, this jet lag is kicking my ass. I just want to have a rest, maybe come back to the wake later. Is that okay?”

He nods, stands and helps pull me to my feet. “I’ll show you where your room is.”

“I need my bag,” I say as we start back, thinking about the package inside it.

“Anything you need, son,” my father says, his arm back around my shoulders. “It’s all going to be fine now.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him I think he’s a fool. The world just doesn’t work the way he thinks it does.

—

I follow him back past the buildings to the carport, drawing into myself. I feel like I’m in some bizarre fugue state, the winter sunshine at odds with the sense I should be fast asleep in my bed on the other side of the world, my surroundings shifting into nothing but a poorly rendered background in a shitty mersive I don’t want to be in.

It doesn’t stop me churning through the evidence, even though there’s no case here. I’m a product of my training and right now the constant analysis is a comfort. It’s the only thing I can be sure of about myself: what I can do, rather than the nebulous, dissatisfying and frankly narcissistic bullshit of feeling uncertain about who I am.

My father’s behavior is new grist for this inner mill as he chatters on the way to the car. He is nothing like the man who lurked at the back of my memory all these years. There’s an energy to him I associate with Alejandro, and, more than that, he seems to be filled with . . . What is it? A hopefulness for the future? Is that because I’m now fitting into the role of the prodigal son? I’m here and able to give him the chance to make good. No, it’s more than that.

He’s at least three stone lighter. He moves like a man in his prime, with purpose and vigor. He’s filling the air between us with the most inane crap and it makes me wonder what he really wants to say and can’t. What has transformed him so? This is more than a man healed; this is one with renewed purpose. Travis said he was here for a reason bigger than any one man. Is that reason the same thing that has rejuvenated my father?

And then there is that moment every investigator craves, that perfect clarity that comes when the discomfort of ill-fitting pieces suddenly reposition themselves into the cohesive shape of a previously hidden truth. Like I’ve been scraping away in the dirt, revealing jagged edges, not knowing if they all belong to the same thing, and then all of a sudden the soil has fallen away and the object has been pulled free. Those edges are no longer isolated oddities. The whole piece is visible.

Travis said he already knew what is in the capsule . . .

If the capsule isn’t, in fact, just the cruelest joke being played against humanity, it can contain only one or all of three things: religious messages from the Pathfinder, details of the tech advances they made in the building of Atlas, and the famously secret coordinates of the place they thought they would find God. If Travis knows those contents already, others could too. Someone like Alejandro, who has been traveling the world, finding the best disillusioned scientists and plucking them from their miserable lives to plant them here instead.

And of course Gabor knew the capsule contents all this time too. The life pod built into my seat on the airplane slots into place. It was insanely overengineered because that wasn’t what it was designed for. Gabor had the capsule contents for at least ten years, probably even more. A huge number of his companies were involved in the Mars mission, one that has famously made a loss. A man like that doesn’t go into ventures for love. He was testing the technology left behind by the insane genius that was the Pathfinder.

Travis bought his way here—the Circle wouldn’t let in an outsider that close to someone as powerful as Gabor with rival interests without a big sweetener. Perhaps Travis brought details he learned from Gabor’s operation that the Circle didn’t get hold of. Perhaps Travis has simply told the Americans how far Gabor’s project is coming along.

Like a crude paper plane drifting into the same airspace as two supersonic passenger airliners racing each other, I stumbled into rival projects racing to follow the Pathfinder. My owner isn’t a love-struck obsessive with strange ideas about what marriage is; he’s a man terrified that his pet hacker, his renegade slave, is going to scupper his plans.

No wonder this place feels so different. It’s evolved from the gentle sanctuary for those unable to cope with modern life that Alejandro founded into a research facility pursuing a goal of marrying their religious faith with their skills. These people, many who were at the top of their scientific field, are in the peak health and fitness required of those about to undergo something physically demanding. The patents, the crop experimentation, the farming drones—it’s all obvious now. They’re preparing to leave Earth and follow Atlas.

The bang of the car door being slammed shut makes me jump. My father has my bag and smiles at me as I blink at him. He hasn’t mentioned any of this. Is he planning to leave me behind, like my mother? My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache. He said he’d put things into motion—did he mean I didn’t need to worry about the MoJ contract because he plans to take me with them? Do I even want to go?

I follow him into one of the new buildings, wrestling these fucking useless emotions back into place, and with them the speculation about his plans. Regardless of whatever hopes he may have, it’s clear Selina wants to get me out of here. I need to be careful. I am not in a safe place.

The corridors are narrow, the interior more like a warren than the inside of a building this size. Of course; they’re preparing for life on board a ship where space will be at a premium, and probably testing print and build techniques for when they reach their destination. The room my father leads me to reminds me of a cabin I had in a game set on an old twentieth-century submarine. There’s not even a window.

“It’s small but comfortable,” he says, putting my bag on the bed. “There’s a bathroom through that door. Is there anything else you need?”

I shake my head.

“Well, rest up and come back to the wake when you’re ready. I’d love to introduce you to some people here.” He turns for the door and then pauses. “It’s not like when you were here before, son. These people are quite brilliant and not just hiding from the world. Don’t write them off.”

“When did it change?”

“We got our act together a couple of years after you left.” His eyes are shadowed by a deep frown. “It was so hard, not being able to share it with you. I think you would have been much happier here. Alejandro, he . . . Some things became clear to him and he . . . he led the changes here. I wish I’d handled things differently with you. But I am going to put it right now, son. You don’t need to be afraid anymore.”

“You could have sent a letter.”

“By the time Alejandro found you again you were in the Ministry of Justice. It wasn’t possible.”

I frown at him. Not possible? Then I realize Alejandro would have been afraid I’d tell my superiors, ones belonging to a different gov-corp. I probably would have back then. I would have done anything to kill his dreams and he knew it. Then I remember the American lawyers and Collindale’s pressure during the investigation. Of course the Circle isn’t acting alone—how could it be? The US gov-corp is backing this project and protecting its secrets. The last thing they would have permitted is contact with a young man recently acquired by a rival gov-corp law-enforcement agency.

“I understand,” I say.

He leaves the room and bids me good-bye from the corridor and I close the door on the sound of his receding footsteps. I sit on the bed, trying not to think of this room as a prison cell. I last a minute before opening the door. As if my own father would lock me in. I look both ways down the corridor, satisfied that I’m alone here, and close it again. This time I lock it from the inside and feel better for it.

There’s only one facet of this object I still can’t see clearly: why Alejandro killed himself. I’m torn between needing to remove the last bit of dirt and see the whole goddamn thing before me for what it is, and, just as much, running away from it all. I notice a tiny digital readout set into the wall near the pillow displaying the time and date. There are six and a half hours left before my forty-eight are up. I have to make a decision. Do I trust my father—the man who has never once in my entire life come through for me—to come up with some sort of solution as promised (do I even want what I think he’s planning?), or do I kidnap another slave and take him back to his tormentor in the hope I’ll be tormented less? Or do I just cut loose and go on the run, back to being a nonperson again, unprotected by any laws, devoid of any rights?

There’s another choice. If I’m right and there are two rival space programs created using knowledge that was supposed to be gifted to the entirety of humanity, surely there’s a moral obligation to tell the world? There are scientists here who could have been working on something for the benefit of everyone. There are resources being pumped into this instead of combating so many ills in the world. Is it right for an elite few to just fuck off and leave everyone behind again? Some pundits claim that Atlas set back global health and scientific development by more than fifty years, simply by stealing the best and brightest and a hell of a lot of natural resources too. Should I just let that happen again?

I lean back until my head rests against the wall. Run away or kidnap a fellow slave; stay quiet or blow the lid off a potential global conspiracy . . . Are these the first genuine choices I’ve had in so many years? It feels so much harder than I ever fantasized it would. Some small, fearful nugget inside me craves Milsom standing over me, in person or virtually, telling me what to do. Is that because I’m weak or because it’s been trained into me so deeply I don’t know how to live as a truly free individual anymore? Does anyone?

“Come on, Carl!” I say out loud to myself. No amount of longing or worrying or philosophizing is going to do a fucking thing for me. I break it down into several smaller choices and consider the first: whether to open the package or not.

The thought of not knowing what’s inside soon overrides any concern about being upset by its contents. Whether that’s my natural curiosity or the years of MoJ conditioning to never be able to leave a case incomplete, I don’t know and I don’t have any fucks left to give about it. I unzip my case and take out the package.

It’s plain on the outside—no name nor any hotel details, presumably hand delivered by someone capable of breaking into a hotel room. Having done that myself many times, I know how easy that is.

I tear it open at one end, tip the box inside onto the bed and open that. I expected it all to be paper inside but, in fact, there are only a few sheets, folded in half. The rest of the package is made up of small packets wrapped in plastic with a strange bobbled texture. They’re numbered, each numeral handwritten with a thick black pen. An envelope rests on top of the packets and the sheets of paper. “Read this first” is written on the front. I untuck the flap at the back and pull out a couple of sheets of letter paper.

These packets contain a satellite phone that can be used without a chip, which has been disassembled and wrapped in a special plastic to make it invisible to scanners. Enclosed is a list of instructions to put it back together again. On the other sheets of paper are what I pulled from the cloud space belonging to a certain individual whom I thought was murdered. It makes interesting reading. When you get to the end, call me on the number below. ND.

The number is based in England, a long string of digits. I’ve never made a phone call with a handset before, but I’ve seen numbers like this being dialed in old films and period-setting mersives. I lay the letter and instructions to one side and pick up the sheaf of papers.

Two of them are just lists of names. Collindale’s leaps out, as do a few very high-profile US gov-corp CEOs and other higher-ups. The third sheet is a list of mining companies and mining sites all over the world, along with details about how each of them is owned clandestinely by the US gov-corp. The fourth is a list of accidents and “natural disasters” that have taken place in Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Korea, various locations across the African continent and even Australia. The last page is text and my eye skips to the end to see “Alejandro.” It’s a printout of the digital version of his suicide note.

I look away, letting the flicker of dread calm. I want to know so badly and yet I’m afraid of what it was that pushed him to that point of no return. If I know the same as he did, will I be destroyed too?

I need to know.

To the leaders of the world’s nations and governing corporations,

Everything you have been told about the security of the capsule left behind by the Pathfinder is a lie.

The contents of the capsule have been known by the US gov-corp for the past forty years. They stole it from Cillian Mackenzie’s computer before the capsule was sealed and buried. They just took some time to work out what to do with it.

During that time, ignorant of plans being made, I was trying to put my life back together after failing to make the final cut and leave on Atlas. I pulled through. I helped a couple of other rejects and I realized I actually had a gift Cillian Mackenzie overlooked: I knew how to help people that others had discarded. I founded the Circle, and I went and found all of the other people he and the Pathfinder threw away. I gave them somewhere safe to heal. I gave them a place to reevaluate their lives and reconnect with God. We were happy.

Then the US gov-corp approached me and said that they wanted to build a second Atlas and follow the first. We talked. They knew I had the skills to lead the project and a lot of the people already at the Circle would be ideal to carry on the work they’d started. We were secure—no security risks from chips and no way for outsiders to come spy. I made a deal with them. I’d form the project team and keep it all secret and they would bankroll it and give us the raw materials and resources we needed.

Nine days from now the capsule will be opened and you will be led to believe that this is the first time the knowledge within will be available to benefit the whole world. Sixteen days from now, project Rapture will reach its fruition. The Circle, and almost ten thousand people selected by the US gov-corp, will leave Earth in one hundred pods. They will connect in orbit to form Atlas 2 and go to follow the path forged by Lee Suh-Mi forty years ago.

I was supposed to leave with them but last week I discovered a secret US gov-corp memo detailing how I will be left behind. They don’t want to me be on Atlas 2. They believe my power and influence with the core of Rapture, made up of members of what the world thinks is still the religious cult called the Circle, could be a destabilizing influence on the ship and ultimately on the final colony. They plan to tell me that they want me to stay behind and put together a team for a second Rapture.

I looked into this. There is no second Rapture planned. The US gov-corp has systematically stripped certain global resources to near-total depletion. They have falsified records to hide the resources they’ve been buying, and in many cases stealing, from other gov-corps and minor governments. Contained is a list of mining projects that, if any of you investigate thoroughly, will prove my point. The US gov-corp has also taken care to remove any other threats to this project in countries deemed unsavory. I enclose a list of so-called accidents and fake natural disasters that have been carried out to either kill key foreign scientists or deprive those entities of resources to enable them to build their own rival programs. All of this took place without the knowledge of me or my fellows at the Circle. I suspect that Europe has their own program, as they have approached me but haven’t provided details, as I refused to deal with them. I will not give my expertise to a gov-corp that treated so many I care about so poorly when democracy failed in my country of birth.

And so I am forced to face the prospect of being left behind a second time and I cannot go through that again. I cannot. I will not. To the Circle, I say this: I am sorry. I cannot go with you and I cannot, in all good conscience, hide what I have learned in recent days about our sponsors. To the US gov-corp, I say this: how can you choose ten thousand people and leave billions behind to war and struggle? To the remaining world leaders to whom this letter will be sent on completion, I say this: pursuing Atlas to find God is something all of us should have the right to do. The Circle can help the world, not just an immoral elite. Save them and you will save yourselves.

I thought I was a godly man but I have been a servant of Satan, and now I go to hell in the hope my death and this letter will save the rest of you from being consigned to the same fate on Earth. God save your souls. Madre de Dios, forgive me.

Alejandro Casales

Beneath the printout of Alejandro’s suicide letter is another handwritten note from Delaney.

Tell the Circle that if they give me a space on Atlas 2, I won’t give this to the press and stop Rapture from happening. I’ll give you until 24 hours before Rapture, and then I’m blowing it all open. The way I see it, Moreno, is that Alejandro and Theo are dead. They all thought Alejandro was going with them, so there must be two spaces on that ship. They should be ours. Naal.

I set the paper down next to the little packages and rest my head in my hands. There was a lot of unresolved shit between Alejandro and me but I’m not so cold that I feel no sympathy for him. I know what it feels like to be left behind.

In all of the documentaries, all of the articles, all of the ridiculously inappropriate “think pieces” about who Atlas left behind, there were two characters they built up for their puerile narratives. I was one, the tragic abandoned child with the appalling mother willing to put herself before her own baby, the victim of the ultimate maternal crime in the eyes of a misogynistic media. The other was Alejandro. A brilliant man tipped to be Suh’s second in some of the articles written before Atlas left. Written before it was apparent just how well Cillian Mackenzie positioned himself in the project and how powerful his influence was. Alejandro and he were too similar, too good at manipulating people for there to be room for both of them. Alejandro had the religious faith but it seemed that wasn’t necessarily a desirable trait to have in Mackenzie’s fabled personality tests. When Alejandro was excluded from the final pick, he was cast as the lesser man, the one outplayed by Mackenzie and left behind to nurse the proof of his inadequacy.

Of course, when Alejandro turned it all around and founded a cult he wasn’t the loser anymore. The Americans applauded his strength and faith as a visionary when he left Europe to settle his chosen few—and his rapidly increasing wealth—in the US. The Europeans called him a fraud and the Noropeans laughed at him, thinking he was nothing more than a narcissist gathering sheep to adore him and assuage those insecurities caused by being left behind.

But he was none of those things. He genuinely wanted to heal others that Atlas left behind, and in doing so, heal himself. Of course he said yes when the Americans gave him the chance to follow the Pathfinder. He loved her. He thought she was God’s finger, pointing the way to him. He was being given the chance to follow God’s plan without Mackenzie getting in his way.

All that, only to discover that he was being left behind a second time. No wonder he broke. It was his life. He put everything into following that woman, twice, only to have someone else deny him what he felt was his destiny.

My abandonment is nothing in comparison. I just existed. He devoted himself, worked so hard, only to have it all destroyed again.

And finally I understand. The anger evaporates. All of that petty bitterness about the way he was living, about the luxury he was squandering, and he was carrying this the whole time. It was nothing to do with the love of those he’d saved not being enough. How could he live while ten thousand people raced to God off the back of his efforts? How could he ever look up at the sky without being crushed with bitterness? What would he have left to live for when the Rapture left him behind?

Now that brilliant man is gone and those who drove him to suicide are sitting smug and happy, thinking that his desperate attempt to take them down with him has failed.

Rapture. The name says it all. Tired of waiting for God to do it, the Americans have decided to manufacture their own ascent into the heavens as the chosen few. If they plan to take ten thousand, as Alejandro said, they’re not planning to come back. The first Atlas was a one-way trip, but it took only a thousand people, and they were from all over the world. If the US sends up their top ten thousand—as judged by gov-corp standards and religious bullshit—the ones left behind will be thrown into chaos. There’s no way the US could have made a plan for those people without blowing their cover. They are just fucking off and damning the ones left behind.

And what of Gabor’s project? He’s managed to keep it under wraps thus far, but now that Travis is here, the US knows. How long will it be before some “natural disasters” befall key locations and people in Europe?

Delaney has to release the information. The rest of the world needs to know. Gabor will be taken down and I’ll go back to the MoJ having busted the biggest global criminal conspiracy of this generation. My forced debt to them will have been paid off and I will be free. Really, truly free to live where I want, to grow my own food and—JeeMuh—to find someone to love.

Alejandro’s death won’t have been for nothing.

I put the phone together and switch it on. It works, to my relief, so I dial the number. It rings three times before being picked up.

There’s silence for a moment. “Hello?” I say.

A pause. “Who’s speaking, please?”

It’s a woman’s voice. My hackles go up. “I want to speak to Naal Delaney.”

“That isn’t possible, sir. Naal Delaney was found dead this morning. This is the investigating officer and your voice will be run through—”

I end the call. Poor fucker. In less than a minute the Noropean MoJ will know I phoned a recently murdered journalist with a piece of archaic technology from the other side of the world. I wonder what Milsom will make of that.

If either the US gov-corp or Gabor found out enough to want hir dead, they’ll clean up the data trail leading to the contents of this package. I grow cold at the thought of being the only person in the world who has the chance to blow it all open. I have a phone but no numbers to call. I have all this knowledge but no means to disseminate it. I have to leave.

I pack it all back into my case and unlock the door, but just as I’m about to open it there’s a knock.

“It’s Selina. We need to talk, Mr. Moreno.”