“Talk in specifics,” Felix ordered.
“She arrived a few days ago by hoverbike with three others, all dressed like products. We thought it was a drill. One died in the chase. One escaped. The mistress was hurt.”
“Let me guess,” Felix dragged out. To Yalena’s distress, he didn’t sound concerned anymore. “She looked like a product, but she had master DNA.”
The clone must have nodded. “We were prepping her for production when we found out, so we nursed her to health instead. When she woke up, she said she was your ambassador.”
“What about the other two?” The note of calm in Felix’s voice was an illusion of safety.
“The dead one was salvaged for production. Five products of his type are in the completion phase. The mistress stopped us from producing the other one.”
Felix’s voice grew murderous. “Where is she now?”
Even from afar, Yalena could hear the clicking of nails against a tablet.
“Her card was last used to check the hangar log. She’s here.”
Slowly, as if savoring the click clack of his boots, Felix walked away from the clone and addressed the thousands in front of him. “Oh, Yalena? Come out, come out wherever you are.”
But Yalena wasn’t the scared girl that had once found herself unprepared in a room full of Fians, drowning in their vibes. She almost let her eyelids close, humming on the inside, a monotonous, drowsy melody. A vibration that soothed her vibe and erected a mental wall around her.
“It’s only a matter of time now,” Felix said with venom. “I don’t even need to ask them to remove the helmets.” His shoes squeaked as he took a turn through the rows of clones. “I can sense your clumsy, panicked vibe for miles.” His steps sounded faster, more confident by the second. Then he stopped. “Let’s look each other in the eyes, shall we, Troian?”
But he was nowhere near Yalena. Instead, Natalia undid her helmet slowly, then suddenly flung it off in one quick swipe, smacking Felix’s chin on one side. “Guess again.”
Chapter 14. The Message
Yalena broke rank, sprinting straight for the hoverbikes. With more clones around her than she could count, she was surprised they didn’t block her exit. Perhaps they thought she was rushing to Felix’s rescue. By the sound of the fight, Natalia was holding her own against the Fian leader.
At the end of a corridor between two lines of clones, Yalena finally saw a hoverbike in reach. She swung herself onto it and swiped her access pass to activate it.
The engine vibrated almost silently, but Yalena stepped on the gas to make it roar. A thousand helmets turned to her. Yalena launched through the formation, lifting the bike on its back wheel. Wall after wall of clones split in front of her to avoid the hoverbike.
Yalena let the vibe pull her to the spot where Felix had recovered from Natalia’s desperate first blows. When Yalena reached the circle of reluctant clones around them, Felix had his hands up in the air, his eyes glued to Natalia.
“Easy,” he said to her. “I’m not going to hurt you. They thought you were a clone and injected you, didn’t they?” He reached out with his vibe, emulating strength and leadership, even honor. “You’re one of my people now. I’ll protect you.”
Natalia trembled visibly. “You’re a liar.”
“Not about this,” Felix said. His vibe now exuded pride, confidence and a protectiveness Yalena had never sensed on him before. “The tests must have been failing because a product isn’t exactly like a human. But you... You’re like one of the founders. You’re a real Fian now. Join us.”
The army of clones stood frozen. They didn’t even try to reach Yalena. They were watching, fighting to make sense of Felix’s words.
Yalena stepped on the gas and dug the front tire in so the hoverbike spun around and knocked Felix to the ground with its rear end.
“Hop on,” Yalena called to Natalia. Doubt filled her heart for the second Natalia stood still, but then the Moonie ran to the hoverbike.
Both palms planted on the floor, Felix spat dark blood, before his eyes fixed on them. “There’s no way out, Troian.”
Natalia’s arms tightened around Yalena’s waist. A silent urge to hurry out.
Felix squared his shoulders and stood up smoothly, like he was made of steel. “You’re outnumbered, Troian.”
“We are, but we’re also Fian,” Yalena’s voice echoed in the vast hangar. “Go on, set them on the masters. If they haven’t already, that’s when they’ll realize they can fight you.”
A line on Felix’s forehead deepened. Yalena used that second of indecision to lift off into the air. From that vantage point, she saw the rest of the Fians scrambling to mount a weapon on a tripod. It swung around with ease, taking aim.
“Oh, holy stars!” Natalia gasped.
Yalena’s hands tightened around the handles. “Hold on!”
A thousand Veronicas stared at them as the Fians opened fire. Yalena raised the front shield and the fiery droplets that reached it dissolved before her eyes. She made a sharp turn and then another, trying to avoid the line of fire. The hatches that usually let the hoverbikes out were down low. She’d have to land to get to them. She steered away from the Fians, flew over Felix and landed with a deafening bang at the very end of the hangar. The clones who were last in the matrix formation dispersed around the hoverbike, confused. They still didn’t dare attack them.
The sound of Felix’s shoes against the floor echoed in Yalena’s mind, the vibe of blind hatred overpowering her. She steered the bike toward a hatch and swiped her access pass to open it. A click behind her told her that Natalia had pulled on her helmet.
The hatch opened as a wall behind them closed. Then they were flying over the vast sparkling-white ice. Yalena was afraid to look back and see a swarm of hoverbikes sent after them. But in her rear-view screen, she only saw four, each with a single Fian aboard.
“You got in his paranoid head,” Natalia said. “He’s afraid to order the clones to fight Fians.”
Yalena sped up. “We should be so lucky.”
She angled the hoverbike down, hoping to shake their tail by zipping around the jagged rocks below. She was grateful Natalia didn’t try to direct her flying, a subject the Moonie usually had a few thoughts on.
They swooshed past the first line of rocks, but they were too narrow to provide cover.
“We need to lead them away from the crash site,” Yalena said. “Get them lost in the rocks.” But she wasn’t sure how to do it. “We need to switch. You’re better at this.”
“Are you crazy?” Natalia screamed from behind. “We’re not making a pit stop to let them catch up to us.”
Yalena didn’t doubt her instinct. “We can’t lead them to the crash site. It’s our only way out.”
She spotted an entrance into the underground caves and dove straight for it.
“What are you doing?” Natalia protested. “What if it’s a dead end?”
“They’ll assume we know it’s not.”
The tunnel hid them from view immediately and Yalena only dug deeper into it. At an intersection, she took a narrow path leading further into the ice. She parked the hoverbike and turned off the engine.
“When they come in and sense us, a part of me will be glad an idiot like you didn’t make it.” Natalia’s complaint didn’t distract Yalena.
She took the distress signal sparks, broke them in half and drew a circle around Natalia and herself. The hot material melted the ice into a shallow pool. Then she shushed Natalia and took out the lights.
They held their breaths for mere seconds before the ice around them vibrated with the frequency of more hoverbikes. Just in case the water barrier wasn’t enough to dull their vibes, Yalena willed herself to be calm, cool, even stoic. The hum grew louder, then faded out as the Fians chasing them continued down the other path in the cave.
Yalena breathed a little sigh of relief. “There must be someone on the surface, waiting to see where we’ll reappear, but if we wait a li
ttle, they’ll have to expand their search area, and they might not be able to react fast enough when we exit.”
“As usual, your sentences reek of wishful thinking,” Natalia remarked sullenly.
Yalena didn’t waste her energy with a reply. Instead she flicked through the hoverbike apps until she found a recorder.
“We might not have time to do this later,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Leave a message for Eric.” Yalena’s stomach twisted when she said her brother’s name. She hadn’t even allowed herself to think of him, of everyone back at STAR Academy, or of Alec. “They need to know the Fians are coming. They need to know what their plan is, or else every single human might end up exposed to Novofex.”
Natalia stood still while Yalena, trying not to let her voice waver too much, recorded a short message for Eric.
Then, the girls switched places. Yalena nodded to encourage Natalia to take them out of the cave. With any luck, the Fians would be too confused and slow to follow.
They shot out of the cave at full speed. Yalena turned back, despite the risk of it making her dizzy. She only spotted two of the four hoverbikes that had initially chased them. They were scouting the rocks further down from the cave exit.
“They’ve seen us,” Yalena said. “But we’ve got a head start.”
Natalia sped up so fast that everything turned into a blur, and Yalena had to look forward to avoid a dizzy spell. They were at the crash site before long. Yalena slid off the hoverbike as soon as it had touched down. She ran to the closest one of Veronica’s clones, who was fixing the wiring in an open side panel.
“It’s Ronnie,” the clone said, as Yalena had instructed the three of them to do, so she could always refer to them by name.
“They’re here, they’re after us.” Yalena panted, while Ronnie’s face stiffened.
“The repairs aren’t done,” she stuttered.
Dread clenched Yalena’s stomach. “Can the ship fly at all?”
Ronnie gaped at her. “It can, but...”
“Then we have to go.” Yalena whirled around to look for the others. “Vero, Nicky?”
They came running from inside the ship.
Yalena trembled as all three of them lined up in front of her. She wanted to take them with her; she couldn’t bear the thought of the three of them fighting in that war, not after everything they’d done to help her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Where we’re going, I can’t take you. You’d die on Nova Fia without the injection.”
“And the injection would kill us,” Vero said.
Yalena nodded slowly. “But we won’t let Felix get away with it. I need you to be brave.”
They stared at her unblinking, listening.
“The Fians think themselves masters of the universe. They’re going to a planet full of humans, like Natalia, like the girl you were all cloned from. Millions of them, all with different faces. He’s going to pit you against them and use Novofex to turn them into Fians. The humans...they’ll be blindsided and horrified to fight you. We have laws that forbid what he did to you.”
Nicky clicked her tongue. “We need to warn them.”
Yalena presented them with the memory chip from the hoverbike. “It’s all here. The entire explanation. I need you to smuggle it and hide it from Felix at all cost.”
Slowly, they nodded.
“Who do we give it to when we reach the planet?”
“Not when you reach it.” Yalena shook her head. “It would be too late by then. I’ve included a channel frequency to a place called STAR Academy. You will request to speak to Eric O’Donnell and you’ll trust him alone.”
Natalia threw a quick look over her shoulder. “They’re coming!”
Yalena scanned the skies, spotting four hoverbikes speeding toward them. “You’re going to tell them I made you do the repairs and that you followed my orders because of my Fian blood. You’ll say you fought us and tried to stop us from escaping.”
Vero stepped up, handing a laser beamer to Yalena with determination. “I guess you’ll have to make it seem convincing.”
Yalena took the laser beamer with pursed lips. “You saved my life. I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget you.”
They didn’t seem to have the time or experience to reply to such an emotional statement.
“Remember,” Ronnie said quickly, “The ship can only fly short distances and the landing system hasn’t been re-calibrated. Soft-surface landings only.”
Yalena swallowed, trying not to think about that. Natalia had already run inside the spacecraft.
“Don’t hesitate,” Vero said.
Yalena raised the gun and shot in her direction. She only brushed the girl’s shoulder with the laser, but it must have stung. Vero fell to her knees. Yalena took a similar shot at Ronnie’s thigh and Nicky’s back, so she fell face first.
Guilt snagging at her from inside, Yalena looked away from a fight scene a lot more convincing than she’d expected. “Be brave,” she whispered, turning to the spacecraft. “Show that bastard that he can take a human away from humanity, but he can never take humanity out of the humans.”
Inside the spacecraft, Natalia had buckled herself into the first pilot seat. Yalena quickly slid into second pilot position. By the time Felix and the Fians lowered down their hoverbikes, it was too late to stop the launch. Natalia counted down under her breath, and then they lifted off the ice moon, watching the rocks, clones and Fians turn into insignificant dots.
Part II
ERIC
Chapter 15. Echoes of a Failure
Yalena’s words haunted Eric all throughout the trip back. Every time he looked over at Heidi, he knew they’d made the right call. Underneath the cover of that certainty though, an ugly monster reared its head—fear.
Whenever Eric’s eyelids closed, he saw the flash. One quick spark. A second. That was all it had taken to split the timeline of his life in two—before and after his father was erased from existence.
Now, Eric had left Yalena behind. After a lifetime dreaming of a family, a mother and siblings, he’d just left his sister, his best friend, out there in the belly of the beast. He’d left her in a place where each second could be that flash that took her away from him forever.
Eric squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment.
The air scrubbers had worked overtime to refresh the air, given the extra few people on board, but the crowded Eagle still felt stuffy. The silent corpus of the Eagle told him most of his classmates, if not all, had sunk into dark thoughts as well.
Childishly, Eric wished he could mope around. The idea of returning so soon and empty-handed made him feel less of a leader with each second that passed. His mind flooded with opposing ideas that pulled his attention in all directions, paralyzing him. He yearned to go back and get Yalena. Instead, all he could do was use his diplomatic talents to help her from Unifier. And deep down, what he really wanted was to quit. Not because he doubted he was good at his tasks, but because he was drowning. It was all too much. He needed it to stop.
Every time his thoughts took that turn and made that admission though, he sighed deeply. Quitting was not an option and Yalena had been right in pointing out why.
Heidi.
There had been no one to protect Norma, to push her out of harm’s way, but Eric and Yalena had to protect Heidi. She couldn’t do this, she couldn’t fight next to them like just another classmate, like a soldier in the ranks. He’d never be able to pinpoint the moment he’d started thinking of Heidi differently. It had been gradual. She signified what both Yalena and Eric had lost—a mother, the strong figure that linked a family together.
They couldn’t sacrifice her. Not to any cause. That was his real mission and failure was not an option.
Jen squeezed his hand, bringing him to the present moment. “Are you all right?”
Eric cleared his throat. “I’m better than I’ll be when I have to face the Trinity.”
�
��Jea’s going to be on your side.” Jen’s loop-through ponytail shook as she nodded. “And Chris is always a jerk, so I wouldn’t take that to mean anything.”
The grave expression in Bako’s dark eyes and the warning he’d issued at send-off flashed into Eric’s mind. “It’s not them I’m worried about.”
Eric watched the little Belt station come into view and fade away. They didn’t have to pass it on the way to Unifier, but he had insisted. With everything going so wrong so fast, a part of him wanted to make sure it was still there. That Felix hadn’t blown it to pieces while the third-years were being hunted by those reptiles.
The Belt station seemed intact. With a sigh, Eric accepted Josie’s request on the comms.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice was shaky.
“We suffered some losses.” Eric felt his pulse in his throat. “The teams were too big for a recon mission. Yalena stayed behind to finish it with those left on the Chameleon. We’ll help out on this end.”
Josie didn’t question the new plan, but the silence that fell over the line did that for her. Failure was all the Trinity—the ambassadors chosen for the near worlds—would see. Months of preparation and only failure to show for it.
“Five people,” Eric whispered to himself. “A quarter of the third-year class. Gone in under an hour.”
When they arrived at Unifier, it was clear that the news of the mission failure preceded them. Josie must have relayed the message.
One purple panel was already dark, waiting for them. Even though it had been just over a week since they’d left the station, Eric couldn’t shake the feeling that too much had happened since. His feet weighed him down even in the 0.7g on Unifier.
Cooper wasn’t there to receive them, which meant he wasn’t alone. He’d never have resisted the urge to come check on Heidi.
Eric went straight to the commander’s office. Alone.
He’d been there a thousand times. Perhaps his first memory of it was when he’d sneaked into the food storage, eaten too many breakfast biscuits and the security guard had had to bring him up there to his dad—both for breaking into the food storage room and for throwing up biscuits all over the corridor. Back then, Eric had marveled at the top view from his dad’s office and fallen asleep on the two-seater couch.
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