“Thank you?”
“And what happens when you’re tortured into giving up where you got the boat?”
“Found it drifting.”
“And how you knew how to remove the silicon chip from your back?”
Kozo sighed.
“Hey, buddy, I get it. The project will fall someday, I promise you. But you’ll be dead if you get within fifty miles of that island and I can’t tell you not to go and be brave and save her and everything because I was a dumb ass kid once, too. But I need you to let that sit in—your bravery, while noble and understandable, will kill you. That’s not bullshit, that’s real.” Ethan paused and seemed to drift. “But you make a lot of sacrifices along the way in this world. I mean, I let my sister take off without me…I had to trust her to come back to me.”
“Did she?”
“Yeah,” Ethan said and curled his lip. “Yeah. I mean…sort of. Actually, I don’t know yet. I’m still waiting. Hey. Goodnight.”
Kozo bowed. He didn’t know what else to do.
“Oyasuminasai.”
Chapter Nine
Kymberlin Island
THEA
The guards annoyed her. They walked behind her, poised to escort, making it impossible for her to take the long ride to her grandfather’s suite in peace. She was determined to get through the whole ordeal without either of them saying a word to her or her to them. She almost succeeded until she heard one mumble something about a stolen dog and she turned on her heels to confront him.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” she said with growing animosity. If she’d been given a chance to craft her own story, it would’ve been something thrilling and still complimentary.
She marched in a straight line to the big door at the end of the hall where her grandfather’s office was transformed into hospice care. Bypassing his own security, Thea stormed inside and shut the door on them all, hardly noticing as a group of nurses and aides rushed out, to give her privacy and space.
The head nurse hovered and handed Thea a schedule.
“He’ll be up soon,” she instructed and pointed to the list of activities she could choose to do with the stubborn old man. Read his favorite books to him, watch an old show, help him journal his thoughts.
“Ask the bots to pull up the courting ceremony,” Thea said. She put the list of activities down and settled into a chair by her grandpa’s bed. His breath rattled in his chest with each inhale and exhale, a line of drool ran down his cheek to the pillow, and his swollen hands lay by his body. In her younger years, Grandpa Huck had been quite fit and active, but a stroke left him incapacitated and slow. While his communication suffered, his rule lived large. Gordy—his mouthpiece—worked all sorts of angles for his father.
It ran in the family.
“Heya, Grandpa,” Thea said. She extended her leg and propped it up on the table in front of her kicking her other leg on top. Her full body perpendicular to Huck’s, she watched as his chest rose and fell, his eyes twitched, and she wondered what the man dreamed about in his drug-addled sleep.
Huck didn’t stir.
The head nurse moved a communication bot closer and cleared her throat. “Open channel. Play banquet room.” The projector in the bot began to broadcast the courting ceremony happening a few stories below them. The cameras scanned a half-full room with people milling about and visiting, locating seats and shaking hands. Music funneled through the speakers, so she couldn’t hear the conversations, but she was sure they were light and sunny, brimming with anticipation for the day. Thea leaned forward and tried to see if she could find her mother or cousin in the crowd, scanning each face for familiarity.
At age twenty, she knew only a few people close to her who’d opted into the Health and Wealth track. Most Islanders her age waited a few more years before agreeing to a path; they were offered time after all and wasn’t that true freedom?
The camera panned to a new section and there he was, Maverick James.
Even his name inspired a sort of worthy swoon by all who said it—always both names as if they were tethered together: Maverick James, pride of Apollo. A perennial bachelor, he made quite a name for himself on his Island of Science and Exploration, turning his experiments into elite celebrations.
Thea’d never been invited. She partied with him once on St. Brenden, but never at his own place—the idea required her to relinquish too much control.
He made everyone who attended sign away their rights to talk about it, ever. Banishment to Copia was the punishment for divulging his experiments or his work.
Amira’d been once but she wouldn’t budge on the details, even though Thea was fairly certain the Copia threat didn’t apply to her cousin.
Maverick James was a paranoid narcissist who pontificated every courting ceremony about the lack of merit in finding a lifelong partner. He lacked nothing in sexual relationships, companionship, nor work stimulation. Apollo was Maverick’s playground and as long as he was the Island’s mayor, he would always exercise his freedom to the edge of reason.
Thea watched as Maverick wandered the room. He grabbed a glass of wine—no doubt her grandfather’s Pinot, vented in a climate controlled winery on Arukah. He appeared to chat to quite a few women, flashing a bright smile, fake no doubt. Men approached him, too, and he’d offer a wink and flirt. Maverick James didn’t like boundaries and he was already forced to live on an Island.
The head nurse appeared at her shoulder again and she set a small bowl of applesauce and other mush beside her legs.
“If he’s hungry,” the woman said.
“Are you leaving? Gordy said sit, no one said anything about feed,” Thea pouted. She didn’t like the way the woman blanched at the question, giving her a stern and cutting glare. Huck, in his sleep, smacked his gums, his tongue protruding grotesquely from his chapped lips.
“My breaks are timed with your visits,” the nurse intoned. “If you have an issue with my worker’s rights, why don’t you take it up with the boss?” She nodded to the half-dead guy in the hospital bed and turned on her heels to exit the room before Thea could ask her to do anything else.
Her grandpa remained unmoving and she toed the bowl with the applesauce, moving it away from her leg space. Back on the screen, the ceremony was starting and the background music died away as Blair took to the podium.
“Mute,” Thea said and the communication bot went silent.
She wasn’t interested in her mother’s ancient as the sun courting introduction. By now, everyone was aware of the background and its purpose, they just came to see the matches and drink the wine so they could gossip about it the next day.
Blair appeared to wind down and Thea sighed and said, “Unmute,” and her mother’s voice filled the room. Huck stirred and Thea froze, hoping it didn’t wake him. If she could get through her timeslot without having to pretend to enjoy feeding her grandfather gross food while he smacked and growled, the day—with the burning incident included—might be salvageable.
“…it’s always asking a lot for the people of these Islands to believe with all they have that we are working toward human optimization at every level. This is not the courting of the Old World or the end, as some have said, of romance,” a smattering of knowing laughter from those successfully paired rotated around the room. “Here is your partner, your match, your chance to emerge whole and happy and on a path of generational riches beyond your imagining. We fight for our children. For the children, we raise to understand their duty to this earth and to be its protectors, its restorers, its visionaries. And we fight,” here Blair stopped for emphasis, “for your happiness. True and whole. With that, it is with great excitement that I present this ceremony’s couples.”
Thea pretended to vomit and gag, rolling her eyes.
She heard a chuckle and turned.
He was awake and staring at her, his eyes hooded and fatigued but still sharp.
With a raspy voice, her grandfather said, “You don’t approve?”
Thea dropped her legs off the table and didn’t confirm or deny her opinion. She gave a wishy-washy back and forth head shake and shrugged.
“I don’t disapprove,” she said. “It’s just not for me.”
“You’ll never court?” he asked.
“Nope,” Thea answered.
“It doesn’t have to be for you,” Huck said. He coughed and coughed and Thea realized he was gathering up a mouth of phlegm and needed to spit. She grabbed a small towel off the desk to the right of the bed and held it up to his mouth, grabbing and wiping away the mucous without thinking about how it felt in her hand, warm and mushy. She tossed the towel straight into the trash to avoid gagging.
The nurse could figure out what to do with it after that—she’d done her good deed.
“I know,” Thea answered, looping back. She sat back down in the chair and pushed the plates of food forward. “Hungry?”
He waved the notion away. “Turn it up,” he said and pointed to the communication bot. Thea vocally controlled the volume and watched the first match of the night between two young men from the Southern Islands as they shook each other’s hands with tentative excitement. The next was a girl from Kymberlin and a much older widower from New Cochran, who embraced stiffly.
Then Amira stepped forward wearing a black dress and large orange platform shoes. The crowd in attendance at the ceremony cheered for her involvement and her cousin dutifully blushed and ducked her head in false-shame. The camera zoomed close to her big bright white smile; Thea looked for similarities in her cousin’s face with her own—bone structure or coloring that would represent the tie between them—but she couldn’t find any. Where Thea was fair, Amira was dark; Thea short, Amira tall. Gordy’s Island partner originally hailed from Morocco before he fancied her at a singles brunch not long after the Great Divide.
Gordy was romantic and he believed his Islands were romantic.
His wife, however, fancied the guard placed outside their suite and perhaps didn’t understand the extent of the Truman surveillance. Their divorce was quick and vicious. His two daughters though? Amira and Soraya stayed with Gordy, and her ex-aunt went from future wife of the Elektos leader to a never-mentioned memory.
When the Trumans decided they were done with a person, that future was sealed. Thea heard all about her family gossip from her mom, who trusted Thea with nearly every fact and bawdy tidbit about each person up and down their family tree. The disappearance of her one-time aunt, however, stuck with her.
She watched as Amira worked the crowd and put her hands to her cheeks, flushed.
For a flash of a moment, the camera panned to the expectant father’s face. Gordy seemed legitimately tense, and Thea smirked and stole a look back at her grandfather.
“He’s acting like he didn’t hand pick this man. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looks nervous,” Thea said and she clapped her hands. She realized she sounded like she might enjoy watching the forced merriment of people putting their hopes in an algorithm. Everyone but Amira, of course. Thea was certain.
Huck chuckled and clicked his tongue. She turned to look at him, away from the projection.
“I made the match,” he replied, the left side of his mouth drooping. “The system we created made the match. I made the match.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Thea said and she reached out to pat his arm. “Your algorithm.” His skin was paper thin and cold; she felt the outline of bones underneath. At her touch, Huck withdrew his hand and pointed to the projector, forcing her attention back. He began to cough and hack. Thea looked to see if there were more thick towels nearby, but she kept one eye trained on the ceremony.
“Volume up,” Thea said to compensate for Huck’s hacking.
Her mother’s voice read the match. “With great joy for whatever future these two may have together…you all know the creed by now: your equal and your other half, a friend and companion who shares your values, with blood and test confirmed…my darling niece Amira Truman to…” a stop, albeit brief, “Maverick James.”
Thea’s ears perked up and had she taken a sip of water, she’d have been certain to spit it all over the bot. She planted her feet firm and turned to watch the screen with visible shock and humor. A vague smile appeared on her lips and then her jaw dropped open. She sat there, mouth open, smiling a bit when she realized this must have gone terribly awry. Well, shit. Maverick James. Her mother’s voice went up at the end like it was a name she wasn’t expecting either, and there’d been a murmur through the audience like people expected a joke.
Amira’s face was stricken with confusion and grief. She did her best fakery, too, but Thea knew her too well. Her cousin was seconds away from fainting or vomiting, or both, as she’d turned white and kept blinking into the audience.
The camera followed Maverick as he bounded up the stairs with a grand gesture of bravado and swooped Amira into his arms, kissing her and setting her down all in one fluid motion.
Amira appeared stunned. She fanned herself and sucked in a breath. Thea couldn’t help but snicker and stomp her feet with excitement; in a way, she regretted watching the whole thing from ten stories above the action. Had she just sucked it up and went to Amira’s ceremony, she could have felt first hand the energy change in the room when his name was announced. The wave of a whisper, shocked.
“I did this,” Huck said with a sneer.
“Did you?” Thea asked with a mirthful clap of her hands. She turned to him and watched as he took in the actions on the projector—his granddaughter visibly shaken by the forced intimacy with a grade-A asshole. “She might kill you, then. Might want to keep your part a secret. Just between us.”
“A secret between us,” Huck repeated, pondering the words. “Yes. Secrets between us, Thea.” She smiled and didn’t know if he knew what he was saying. She turned away.
“Uh-huh, Grandpa.”
Maverick James was attending because he was settling down? The pretty-boy scientist who built robots and seduced anyone who walked in front of him and killed people if they crossed him…was now dating her cousin as her perfect, algorithmically, partner?
“Don’t call me that,” Huck said, a rattle in his voice. He coughed and coughed and pounded on his chest with his fist.
Thea abandoned the ceremony footage and went to his side. She grabbed a towel and held it beneath his mouth, so when the cough found purchase, he could spit. He did and she balled it up immediately and threw it on top of the other towel covered in saliva and mucus.
Lungs and voice restored, he tried again. “Don’t call me that,” Huck said to her. He grabbed on to her wrist and Thea pulled back as if his cold fingers burned. His grip tightened and he squeezed as if he intended to hurt her if his strength was up to the task. His deep blue eyes, pools of intensity, bore into hers and she knew he was holding his tongue. His hands began to shake. “I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t want you here—“
“Right, well, I’ll leave…” she tried to say as she pulled away.
“Call for nurse,” Huck demanded to the communication bot and he released his grip. Thea took a step back and rubbed her forearm, watching the outline of his fingers slowly disappear off her skin.
A young nurse entered and rushed up to Huck’s side.
“Where’s my nurse?” he asked.
“She’s on a break, Mr. Truman. Is there something I can get for you?”
“No,” he coughed. “But I’m done with this one. Get her out. And then come back to feed me.”
“Oh, okay, this is Thea…your grand—”
“Nope. I’m done with her, please,” Huck repeated and he balled his hand into a fist and pounded it once on his mattress.
“Of course. I’m sorry. Yes, Ms. Truman, please come with me and we can walk this way and,” the nurse stammered, upset and flustered at the request. She kept her voice light and bright the entire way, smiling to Huck and motioning for Thea.
Thea picked up the pace and rushed out of the office to
the elevator, cradling her arm.
She heard the nurse call after her in a whisper and she turned as the young nurse skipped forward, looking apologetic. Wringing her hands, she grimaced as she approached.
“Oh, Ms. Truman, I wanted to say I’m so sorry for your grandfather’s behavior. He’s been a real beast lately and it’s not you—” she glanced quickly down at the red marks.
Thea smiled and then laughed. She put her hand over her heart. “Bless you,” she answered as the elevator doors opened. “I’m fine.” She stepped inside and pushed the button to head back to her own room. “The way I see it? I just got forty-five minutes of my life back.” She flashed a peace sign at the bewildered nurse as the doors closed and the magnetized box scaled down into the chaos brewing below. She allowed herself only five seconds to feel anything but happy about an opportunity to get the hell out of that room.
Chapter Ten
The Colony,
formerly Jackson Lake, Wyoming
The Grand Tetons
LARKSPUR
The entire walk back home, Lark debated her next actions. Spying gathered a wealth of information she didn’t understand and asking about those secrets outright landed her with irritated and dismissive adults. But this was huge—losing the protection of the Children of the Lake over some runaway?
It didn’t make sense.
It didn’t fit into the world she’d known.
Who was worth risking their lives over? Who was worth losing the perimeter for? How could her parents sacrifice fifteen years of stability? Or, if Elijah was wrong and there was no girl, how could the Fathers abandon the Colony so easily? They took an oath.
The more her brain spun and wound itself into a maze of possibilities, cross-checking each one with the facts at hand, the more she became fatigued. She knew her parents. She certainly didn’t agree with them all the time, but she knew their hearts—and nothing, she thought, nothing was worth the loss of their sanctuary.
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