“Isabel is gone,” Dad said flatly. “According to the R-Troops, she’s still alive, but they don’t have a handle on her exact location.”
Adrienne made a choking noise, covered her mouth with her hand.
“I told them everything,” I said, staring at Dad.
He gave me a thin smile. “Well, that just saves us a step, doesn’t it? Please, sit down.”
I stumbled forward. My thoughts felt thin and wispy, like dry-season clouds. Isabel was alive. That was the one thing I could hold on to. Isabel was still alive.
I sank down in my chair. Harriet sat beside me. The twins didn’t move. Dad didn’t protest.
“Star’s End is lost,” Dad said, leaning forward over the table. I slumped back in my seat. Isabel is alive. It repeated in my head like a refrain. Isabel is alive. “The Radiance.” Here Dad glanced at the twins. “Did Esme explain that much to you?”
Adrienne fixed him with an icy gaze. “Esme told us everything that you did.” Her words dripped poison. Dad just smiled.
“Good,” he said, unfazed. I hated him in that moment. “The Radiance destroyed the estate, but with the help of the R-Troops and—” He stopped and looked at me. His face was unreadable. “—and Isabel, they have been permanently sealed in their dimension.”
One of the Ninety-Nines snorted. “Let’s hope it’s more permanent than the last time you said that.”
Dad looked at him coolly. “We went over this. It’s permanent. We had a weapon we didn’t have last time.”
I felt dizzy. Who was the weapon? The R-Troops? Isabel?
“Are you sure you don’t know where Isabel is?” I demanded.
“Trust me,” Flor said, turning to me, smiling cruelly, “if we knew where she was, we’d have her up here with us.”
“You better not be lying to me,” I snarled.
“Esme, stop.” Dad’s voice sliced through the room. “Isabel is gone. As a Ninety-Nine, you have the right to know, and I’m telling you: We don’t know where she is. She aided the R-Troops in sealing off the Radiance’s dimension. She was able to make it back into our world and then she vanished. We lost six R-Troop soldiers tonight, but we didn’t lose her.”
“You can’t expect me to believe that,” I said. “People don’t just vanish in the Four Sisters.”
Dad looked down at his hands. “They can when the world slips into chaos. Which it did last night.”
He lifted his gaze. I glanced over at Daphne and Adrienne. They had both sunk down to the floor, still holding hands. Daphne’s face was wet with tears.
“Because we were able to secure the Radiance,” Dad continued, and that was how I knew the discussion about Isabel was over, “we are not going to evacuate Ekkeko.”
“What?” Harriet leaned forward. “Don’t be an idiot, Phillip. Again.”
Dad glared at her. “This is not your decision to make, Sergeant Oxbow.” He paused, gathering himself up. “Evacuation is costly. It’s dangerous. We are still in the middle of a war with OCI, and we have been working overtime to ensure they don’t find out the truth about the destruction. We have begun seeding out reports that the attack was the result of anti-corpocracy rebels, which will, if anything, engender some sympathy for us from OCI, at least from their populace. It might serve useful for us in the long term.”
He smiled. I wrapped my arms around my chest. It made sense, actually. Secure the Radiance. Hide the truth so there wouldn’t be panic or riots. Let people keep living their lives while we worked to protect them.
This was exactly what I had wanted.
“You can’t do this,” Adrienne said, standing up, her face flushed with anger. “You can’t lie to the people—”
“We lie to the people all the time,” Dad said. “You and your sisters lap those lies up every time you turn on one of your precious Amanan dramas.”
Adrienne recoiled, just for a second. The fury twisted her face again. “You won’t get away with this. People will find out—”
“People don’t want to know,” Dad said. “People want to feel that they are safe.” His face hardened, and he switched on his lightbox and set the projector to glow above the table. I sank back in my chair. I didn’t know what he was doing. I was sure it couldn’t be anything good.
A holorecording began to play. A man wearing prisoner’s clothes, sitting in the cell of an exile ship.
“What is this?” Adrienne demanded. “Are you saying you would exile us if we try to tell the truth?”
“No,” Dad said.
A woman stepped into the recording. She wore a gray Coromina suit and carried a slim briefcase, and I knew, suddenly and with a sick lurching in my belly, what Dad was showing us. What he was threatening my sisters with.
The woman strode forward. The prisoner sat up. Said something we couldn’t hear. Sound was unimportant. The woman set down her briefcase, opened it, pulled out a long, thin hypodermic needle. The man stopped talking. Stared at her. Through the flicker of the holo, I could see my sisters’ faces growing paler and paler. I could hardly breathe.
The woman, in one quick graceful motion, slid the needle into the man’s throat. He didn’t even have time to fight back. He just slumped down on the bed and lay there, unmoving, as the woman gathered her briefcase and left.
Dad let the holo play for a few moments longer. Daphne covered her mouth with her hand. Adrienne’s features had gone slack with fear.
“You are my daughters,” Dad said, switching off the holo. “But if you break the silence of this meeting, I will have you killed.”
The word kill hung on the air, sharp and glittering.
“You’re all monsters,” said Adrienne. “All of you.” She looked at me. I looked away. Under the table, Harriet grabbed my hand and squeezed, but it wasn’t enough.
“Sometimes, you have to be,” said Dad. “Better you learn that now.” He stood up. “Our official story is that the rebels attacked Star’s End with a bioweapon. That gives us an excuse to seal off the area completely, which the surviving R-Troops are doing as we speak. They’re also evacuating the village, just to reduce the likelihood of anyone snooping around. However, Coromina headquarters will stay in place, as will the company enclave. I’m having a house prepared for us right now. We should be able to return planetside in a few hours.”
“You can’t do this!” Adrienne said. “You can’t just pretend like nothing has happened.” She looked over at me. “Esme, you can fight this! You’re a Ninety-Nine! You can tell people the truth!”
For a moment, I was stunned: had she forgiven me? But I also knew I couldn’t help her. I knew I would fly down to the planet and I would keep up Dad’s lies, because if the truth came out, Ekkeko would be consumed with fear. We’d be weakened enough that OCI would destroy us, assuming we didn’t destroy ourselves in the panic first.
And if we lied, if we set everything back to normal, I would be able to engender change in the company. The only way to do it was from within. I wished Adrienne could understand that.
And maybe I’d be able to find Isabel, too.
“Adrienne,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.” I felt the burn of tears. I’d cried too much tonight.
“See!” she screamed. “See! You never really cared about us! You never really cared about Isabel!”
The Ninety-Nines shifted in their seats, looked to Dad for guidance. He just pressed a button on the table, and the door flew open, and a pair of station medics rushed in. Daphne jumped in front of her sister, shouting, fighting them off as best she could. I leapt to her feet.
“I won’t let you kill her,” I said.
“I’m not killing her,” Dad said. “Calm down, Esme.”
The medics slid a needle into Daphne’s arm, then Adrienne’s. They immediately calmed, and the medics guided them down to sitting. They weren’t dead, just dulled. They looked out at the room with glassy eyes. Daphne laid her head on Adrienne’s shoulder.
“It’ll wear off in a few hours,” Dad said. “We’ll need
to keep them under close observation, at least until they understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
I trembled. I wondered if I should protest. If I should scream like my sisters had, and fight, and demand the change they wanted. But it wasn’t the change I wanted, was it?
My change was smaller, safer, more likely to succeed. My sisters might hate me for the rest of my life, but at least I could shape the company the way Dad had shaped me. I could make it in my image.
I slid back into my chair. Everyone was staring at me. I hoped Harriet understood what I was doing.
“I think this sounds like an excellent plan,” I said.
NOW
When Esme stepped off the shuttle after her trip to Amana, her thoughts were fuzzy, from space travel and from the conversation with Adrienne, and she knew she couldn’t handle the board right now, or anyone at the company. She had contacted Will when she landed, and he agreed to meet her at his house in the village, claiming he could sneak away from the office early. He didn’t live in the enclave, and Esme had never asked him why. She was afraid the answer would be that he wasn’t allowed.
The house was in a shabby little neighborhood surrounded by trees. Esme didn’t know if it was the same neighborhood where Laila had lived all those years before, but it was how she had always imagined Laila’s home. The houses were painted in bright colors to match the flowers blooming in the yards. Will’s house was a bright, lemony yellow, like the sun.
For once, Esme was grateful Will lived there and not in the enclave. No one in these houses would know about her decision yet. They were pearl divers, retail workers. Even the rumors wouldn’t have reached them. When they looked at her through the curtains of their windows, they wouldn’t see past her suit. And that, she was used to.
Esme rapped on Will’s door and then crossed her arms over her chest. A breeze blew in from the direction of the sea. The door opened.
“Hey.” Will smiled at her. “Glad to hear the trip went well.”
Esme nodded and slipped inside. Light paintings blinked on the walls, out of sync with one another. She stretched on his shabby sofa and slipped off her shoes, dropping them on the floor.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I can’t believe both of them agreed to come back.”
Will sat down on the floor beside her, one arm draped over the cushion beside her head. “It’s because you went to them,” he said. “They don’t hate you as much as you think.”
Esme snorted. They did, and she understood why. But she didn’t say anything.
For a moment, the two of them sat in silence. Esme listened to the wind rustling the hibiscus bushes outside the windows. Will cleared his throat, and she dropped her head to look at him. She expected him to say something about her sisters, or about her father, but instead he said, “I wanted to thank you, by the way.”
“What?” She propped herself up on one arm and studied him. He picked at a loose thread on the sofa. This wasn’t like him, not making eye contact, exposing his nervous tics.
“For shutting down weapons manufacture,” he said.
“You heard about that.” It wasn’t a question. “I wanted to tell you myself, but I had to rush off to Amana—”
“It’s fine.” He looked up at her, his eyes clear. “I just—I wanted to thank you.”
Esme’s cheeks warmed. She smiled at him, felt that easy comfort she always did when they were together. “I’m giving the engineered soldiers full citizenship, too,” she said. “I don’t know if you heard that part.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and she knew he hadn’t. Her heart fluttered. Yes, Will had it easier than most of the soldiers, because he was one of the first batch of R-Troops, because during the rebuilding period, the company had decided he would serve them best as a liaison while they rolled out the next wave of R-Troop soldiers. He had this house, he had his light paintings on the walls. But that didn’t make him a true citizen.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice rough.
“I’ll have to fight the board about it,” Esme said. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling; she was afraid if she looked at the brightness in Will’s expression any longer, she would start crying. “So, it may be a while. But I’m changing this company from the inside, just like I always wanted.” She spoke to the ceiling fan turning in its slow lazy circles. “No more exploitation. No more war.” She sighed, twisting her hands together, and tried not to think about what Adrienne had told her, about corpocracy all being exploitation in the end. No. She didn’t believe that. It was like when she was younger, when she worked for PM. It was the company’s job to provide for the citizen-employees, not the other way around.
“You brought your sisters home,” Will said. She felt a weight on her hand—it was Will, scooping it up in his own. She looked at him, smiled. “You can do this.”
“I didn’t bring all of them home.”
Will didn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t pull away. It wasn’t supposed to be appropriate, a company CEO and an engineered soldier. A citizen-employee and a product. But the company didn’t work that way anymore, did it?
“About that,” Will said. “I have an idea.”
Esme sat up, sharply enough that her head spun. Will dropped her hand; she could still feel the warmth of his touch. “An idea?” she said.
Will took a deep breath. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “Yeah,” he said. “But you’ll need to promise me your silence.”
Esme frowned. She felt a tightening in her stomach. “Will,” she said slowly, “what are you involved in?”
He stared at her for a long time. His hands dropped away from her shoulders, like he was afraid he shouldn’t be touching her anymore.
“Will?” Esme said.
“I know who’s responsible for the security breaches,” he said. “I’ve known for a long time. But they’re the ones who can help you find your sister.”
• • •
They couldn’t take a driver, and Will told Esme to change out of her suit—it would be uncomfortable, he said, and now Esme understood why. They had left Will’s house and walked down to the place where the woods grew in thick and heavy. Esme was dressed in some of Will’s old clothes, everything clinging to her in the wrong ways, baggy where it should be fitted, tight where it should be loose.
When she saw the woods, Esme stumbled back.
“You recognize them,” Will said.
Of course she recognized them. For two thirds of her life, she had lived within walking distance of these woods. She had crept through them to get to the beach when she was a teenager; later, she had torn through them, terrified, when the Radiance broke their restraints and burned Star’s End to the ground.
“I told you it may be hard for you,” Will said in a soft voice.
Esme squared her shoulders. “It’s fine,” she said, her voice clearer than she expected. “I’ll be fine.”
They pushed through the underbrush. Will led the way, hacking at the vines with a clearing-blade, the electricity humming as he swiped it through the air. Already Esme was sweating, and tiny insects buzzed around her head. Had the woods been this dense when she was younger? Or had one of the staff gone out in the cool mornings to clear the underbrush so she and her sisters could pretend to be explorers in the wild?
Will and Esme worked their way through the woods. The path was unfamiliar, but Esme knew where they were going: the ruins of Star’s End. Will had told her that much, when he explained why they had to go on foot. It buzzed around in her head: Star’s End.
She took deep breaths, sucking in the hot, humid air. The clearing-blade sang. Branches rained down around them, the ends singed and still smoking from the blade. She wondered if they would pass the cemetery where the first Isabel was buried. If she would even recognize it, if the flowers they had planted on Isabel’s grave would have grown until they were part of the jungle.
Will stopped and then held out one
hand to stop her. Up ahead was just more forest, thick and impenetrable, but Esme knew Will could See things she couldn’t. He could hear the voices of the others in his head, calling out to him.
Another deep breath. She didn’t feel like the CEO of the Coromina Group in that moment. If the board found out about this, she would be exiled from the planet immediately. Well, if they found out about it without the right spin, she told herself. She could work this to her advantage. Make it part of the new direction of the company. Bring these outsiders into the fold instead of kicking them out into the black. She already knew a place for them in her version of the Coromina Group.
“They’re ready for us.” Will turned to Esme. Sweat beaded above his eyes. His hair was soaked with sweat. “Are you ready for them?”
For them, yes. For Star’s End? She didn’t know. But she nodded anyway.
“Stay behind me,” Will said. “Keep your hands in the open.”
Anxiety buzzed in Esme’s brain. She did what he said, holding her hands up as if she were prisoner. Will led her forward, swinging the clearing-blade with an easy grace.
And then they were at the house.
Esme let out a strangled gasp and threw one hand over her mouth. House was the wrong word. It was the ghost of a house. She could see the framework, and part of the roof was still standing. But the rest of it had been reduced to a pile of charred rubble already half-overgrown with vines. The gardens were gone. The plumeria maze had been subsumed into the forest.
There was nothing of her childhood here.
Someone emerged from the rubble—a soldier, identical to Will. He raised one hand in greeting, let out a shout. Immediately, five more soldiers materialized out of the trees. They all had Will’s face. All of them, Esme had last seen thirteen years ago, when she announced their existence to the world.
The six soldiers who had been lost in the attack. They hadn’t died at all. They had simply settled here, in the palace her father had built to his own success.
She pressed herself against Will, her hands up in the air, and tried to control her trembling. Will shut off the clearing-blade and slipped it into his belt. He lifted his hands, too. “You know why we’re here!” he called out.
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