by Malinda Lo
She ran to meet him, hugging him as soon as he entered the ferry. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice muffled against his neck. As she held him she was nearly overwhelmed by how clearly she saw his interior landscape. Adrenaline lingered inside him like a wire still reverberating.
His arms tightened around her, relief sluicing through them both. I’m fine, he thought.
She pressed her hands against his back as if to make sure he hadn’t sustained any wounds, and cameras flashed. They sprang apart, startled.
“This isn’t a photo op,” David’s mom said coolly.
The photographer backed away. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Grace Li frowned at him and directed David and Reese away from the photographers. “Let’s go join your parents, Reese.”
As they walked across the ferry, Reese asked, “What happened? I called your phone but you didn’t answer.”
“I must not have heard it. It was so loud out there.” David’s face was pale and he looked as queasy as Reese had felt when she first boarded the ferry. “The police had to escort us from the taxi. We got a call on the way here saying there was a security situation.”
They sat down side by side, their parents taking the row ahead of them. “There was a guy with a gun,” Reese said.
“I heard,” David said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Reese glanced at their parents; they were talking in low voices and occasionally looking at her and David in concern. She turned to David and whispered, “I heard voices this time—like you described. It was so weird. I’ve never heard them before.”
“Really?” David grimaced. “I think I could feel the crowd’s emotions too. It made me want to throw up afterward.”
She saw their parents eyeing them and she reached for David’s hand, linking her fingers with his so they could communicate without speaking out loud. His pulse was rapid, his body still hypervigilant after the experience outside. Has it ever happened to you before? she asked him. Do you think our abilities are changing?
They must be. I think it might have happened before, like when we were in front of your house at the press conference. I didn’t really understand it, and maybe it was because I was holding your hand. But today it was way more intense.
I have to learn how to block the crowds or else I’m going to go crazy.
You and me both.
The ferry door clanged shut and the engine rumbled on. Reese turned her head to look out the window. The boat was leaving the dock.
CHAPTER 9
Reese didn’t think she had ever been to Angel Island before. Alcatraz, yes. She remembered a school trip there in sixth grade, and the frightening dankness of the abandoned cells. She had learned about Angel Island in social studies class, how the island was once an immigration station that detained thousands of Asian immigrants—mostly Chinese—for months and sometimes years while they waited to be admitted to the United States. She couldn’t decide if it was fitting or unfortunate that the Imria were now on Angel Island, decades after that immigration station had closed.
“Have you been here before?” Reese asked David as the ferry approached the dock.
“I came here last year with my Chinese school class. We visited the immigration center. It was depressing.”
“Why?”
“You can see where the immigrants wrote these poems in Chinese on the wall while they were held there. They were prisoners, basically. You can stand in the room where the men slept, and with all the writing on the wall, it’s like they’re still trapped there.” He paused. “It doesn’t exactly make you proud to be an American.” His words were edged with sarcasm, and she could hear the subtext clearly: My country did that to people like me.
Reese didn’t know what to say to that. Before she and David had kissed, she had rarely thought of him as being Chinese American—he was just David—but somehow the change in their relationship caused her to recognize his racial background in a way she never had before. The comments online following their first press conference had been especially sobering—and disturbing. In the last few days when she had gone online to read the news, she had tried to resist reading the comments, but she had given in to her curiosity. She had been appalled by how casually people threw out racist comments on the Internet. David couldn’t escape the fact that he was Chinese American. He was loved and gushed over by Asians, especially the Chinese, but he was also heckled and judged for being Asian. She had never anticipated that his race could come with so much baggage, and she wasn’t sure what she should do about it.
David saw the pensive expression on her face and asked, “What’s wrong?” He put his hand on her knee.
She avoided his gaze and looked out the window at the approaching island. “What you said about Angel Island made me think about those comments online. It’s so awful. I didn’t know people still thought that way.”
“You shouldn’t read that stuff.”
“They’re a bunch of assholes,” she said vehemently. “What century do they think they’re in?”
“Forget about it. There’s nothing you can do.”
“But it’s awful,” she said, finally looking at him. Tension radiated through him from his hand. “Don’t you want to smack them, at least?”
He smiled ruefully. “Sometimes. But how would that improve anything? Besides, you have to look at the big picture. Those racist comments are coming from a minority of haters in the US. There are way more people on this planet who look like me than like you. I’m not going to waste my time thinking about people who hate me because I’m Asian.” His words were confident, but there was an undercurrent of anger mingled with resignation running through him, and it made frustration boil up inside Reese.
Before she could respond, the ferry came to an unexpectedly abrupt stop. David removed his hand from her knee, and she could tell that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Not really.” But she got up anyway and followed the others off the ferry.
It had been cool and foggy in San Francisco, but the sun was shining on Angel Island. A metal ramp led from the boat to the landing, a wide concrete expanse with an information booth to the left and a café visible down the paved road to the right. Two people in dark gray suits were waiting—a woman and a man whom Reese did not recognize—and behind them were stationed National Guard troops, weapons at the ready. When everyone had disembarked from the ferry, Reese counted about three dozen people in all, including her family and David’s. For the first time in a long time, she did not see Agent Forrestal or any other men in black. I guess they’re not invited, she thought.
“Welcome to Angel Island,” said the woman in the gray suit. Reese guessed that she was Imrian, because she had the same quality that Reese had seen in Dr. Brand and Agent Todd—a presence that made Reese feel as if she recognized them, even when she had never seen them before. Reese wondered what had happened to Agent Todd; he had vanished after the bunker at Area 51 exploded. The woman continued: “We’ll begin today with a press conference in front of the visitors’ center. Afterward, we’ll bring small groups of you to tour the spacecraft. Please follow me.”
It was only a few minutes’ walk to the visitors’ center, where folding chairs were arranged in rows on the lawn across from a two-story white building that reminded Reese of a colonial home. The lawn extended down to the cove, which was empty except for the ferry. Up front, facing the folding chairs, a podium was flanked by a dozen more chairs where several individuals were already seated. As Reese drew closer, she realized they must be the other Imria, because Amber was among them.
Disconcerted, Reese averted her eyes, and then felt self-conscious. She had known that Amber would be there; this wasn’t a surprise. Reese’s parents took seats in the last row, and she, David, and his parents filed in after them. Once she was seated, Reese deliberately looked at the Imria. The man and woman who had greeted them were speaking to someone else Reese recognized: Dr. Brand. Mos
t of the Imria were dressed similarly, in gray or navy suits. Some of the women wore skirts; some did not. Amber was wearing a sleeveless charcoal-gray dress that made her look as if she was going to a business meeting. Her short blond hair was swept back, and she kept her eyes trained on her hands, folded in her lap. Reese found herself feeling slighted by the fact that Amber didn’t acknowledge her, and then she was irritated by the seesaw of her own emotions.
She was relieved when a tall, dark-skinned man approached the podium, giving her something else to focus on. “Welcome,” the man said. He had short, straight black hair, and he moved with a fluid elegance that belonged on a stage, not on a windswept beach in the middle of San Francisco Bay. “I am Akiya Deyir, designated ambassador of the Imria, and I am very glad to convey my people’s greetings to you.” His accent was slight but noticeable, giving his formal language a foreign lilt. When he said the word Imria, it seemed to have more syllables than the letters called for.
He continued: “We are grateful to the state of California for allowing our ship to land here on Angel Island, where we shall remain as talks continue with the leaders of your world. We regret that our presence above the city of San Francisco has led to congestion in the streets, though we are happy that you are interested in knowing more about us. We realize that you have many questions, and we will do our best to answer them as well as we can from now on. To begin, today we are pleased to announce that we will address the nations of your planet during the General Debate at the United Nations on September fifteenth, approximately one month from now in New York City. We look forward to the opportunity to open a truly universal dialogue about cooperation between our peoples.”
As Akiya Deyir spoke, Reese began to notice the similarities between him and Dr. Brand and Amber. They all had an alertness to their features, a precision to the way they moved, that made humans seem a bit sluggish in comparison.
“Twelve days ago,” Deyir said, “when our ship touched down in Nevada, our goal was simply to retrieve the members of our Earth-based team who had been mistakenly detained by the US government.”
Reese was surprised by his explanation. The night before she and David had escaped from the underground bunker, Amber had told her that the US was going to execute her and the other Imria. Reese didn’t think there had been any mistake about it, and she wondered why Akiya Deyir was spinning the story to put the US in a positive light.
“We’ve been working with the US government since 1947, when we first made contact with the Truman Administration and subsequently drafted the Plato Protocol, which outlined the terms of our cooperative research agreement. We’ve had researchers stationed in Nevada since then, but in June there was a misunderstanding between our researchers and their US counterparts. We decided that we should remove our researchers and reconsider some of the agreements we had made with the United States. However, during the retrieval operation, one of our own people, Amber Gray, was shot.”
Amber did not look up at the sound of her name. Reese wondered if Amber had been told to be as unobtrusive as possible, because it seemed abnormal for her to be so demure.
“Our first priority was making sure that Amber recovered from her wound, so we left Earth to focus on treating her,” the ambassador said. “You may remember that President Elizabeth Randall stated that she thought we were gone—and it’s true, we were gone for a short while. However, it was always our intention to return, as we hadn’t fully resolved our misunderstanding with the US government, and we also were concerned about Reese Holloway and David Li, the two teens who were detained by the government after our departure.”
Hearing Akiya Deyir say her name made Reese stiffen. She inched over in her seat so that she could touch David’s arm with her own. What do you think he means by “misunderstanding”? she asked him.
I think he’s hiding something, David thought. The birds, maybe?
Because the government was using Imrian DNA on the birds?
Exactly. The government was stealing Imrian DNA and using it in a way the Imria didn’t like.
“Before I address what happened to Reese and David, let me say that we Imria appreciate President Randall’s offer to begin our relationship anew,” Deyir said. “We agree that the shooting of Amber Gray was an accident and we do not intend to press charges. We also wish to begin our relationship anew, and this time, in a public manner involving all the peoples of Earth.” The ambassador paused and smiled. “Now, allow me to introduce you to Evelyn Brand, who has been working with the United States government for almost two decades and has been our primary point of contact with your people until today. Evelyn will be explaining the details of the research she has been directing, and she will announce a special project that we hope to launch very soon.” He turned to Dr. Brand as she rose. “Evelyn?”
She took Deyir’s place at the podium, and he sat down in an empty seat nearby. “Thank you, Akiya. And thank you,” she said to the audience, “for coming here today. I’d like to especially thank David Li and Reese Holloway and their parents for joining us. I met Reese and David through a very unfortunate situation, when their car crashed near my research facility. We Imria have a saying, nig tukum’ta nu nig tukum’ta, which translates roughly to ‘there is no coincidence.’ I’m certain that if that accident hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here today telling you about our research, which we believe will be life-changing for all of humanity.”
Reese braced herself for the wash of attention as everyone turned to look at her and David. Beside her she heard David take a quick, short breath. The Imria looked too—including, at last, Amber—but unlike the curiosity Reese felt from the humans, she sensed nothing from the Imria. The quietness of their collective gaze was somehow more unsettling than the humans’ interest.
Dr. Brand continued: “Since my arrival on Earth, I have carried on the research that my predecessors began, cooperating with the United States government under the Plato Protocol. That research focuses on awakening latent abilities of the human brain. Humans and Imria are biologically similar in many ways, but humans do not possess the ability we have to share our consciousness with another. We call this susum’urda, and it is vital to our society.” Dr. Brand pronounced the word soo-sum oordah. “It allows us to have true empathy. True connection. And we would like for humanity to have this ability to connect as well.”
A reporter asked, “How does it work? Is it like telepathy?”
“Telepathy might be your best word for the ability, but susum’urda—this sharing of consciousness—is not about reading someone’s mind from afar. We accomplish the shared consciousness through physical touch. When your hand touches something warm, your brain is able to understand the difference in temperature. Similarly, when one Imrian touches another, they are able to understand the other’s interior temperature, so to speak.”
David nudged Reese with his knee, and thought: But we didn’t have to be touching when we were at Plato.
She glanced at him. We haven’t really been able to do that since then, though. Do you think that was a fluke?
I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like the Imria can do it. There’s also the crowds thing. Dr. Brand hasn’t mentioned anything about that.
“Developing a procedure to give this ability to humans has been very difficult to do, even though we believed that humans could be perfectly capable of it if certain neural pathways were opened to allow it,” Dr. Brand said. “Some human children actually have similar abilities at birth, but because they’re not developed during childhood, the brain naturally closes off those neural pathways during adolescence. It was only this past spring that we perfected what we’ve come to refer to as an adaptation procedure, which enables the human body to adapt to the addition of Imrian DNA. It is this DNA that opens up the neural pathways in the brain that allow for susum’urda. After the initial procedure, in which Imrian DNA is added to human DNA, the subject is placed into an adaptation chamber. This chamber is very much like an incubator. It helps the
human body to accept the Imrian DNA, and takes over regulating many common body functions during recovery.”
“Is that what happened to the teens? An adaptation?” one reporter asked.
“Yes. When David and Reese were discovered after their car accident, they were brain-dead. I knew that unless we performed the adaptation procedure on them, they would not survive.”
Reese had never heard this before. Did this mean she owed her life to the Imria? The thought didn’t sit well with her.
Dr. Brand continued: “The procedure put them into a healing coma for several weeks, during which the chamber—and the Imrian DNA—worked to repair their physical injuries. One positive side effect of the Imrian DNA is that it also promotes much faster healing. It was truly a last-resort effort. Had they not been on the verge of death, we would not have tried it, because at the time of their accident, the procedure was still in testing and was not one hundred percent safe.” Dr. Brand smiled. “We were overjoyed that Reese and David reacted so well to it. We are so happy to see them safe and sound today.”
Everyone turned to look at them again, but Reese noticed that Amber was the only one of the Imria without a smile on her face. She seemed pensive rather than happy.
Dr. Brand said, “I’m also very pleased to announce that we are going to make this procedure available to as many humans as we can.” A dozen questions were shouted at her all at once, and she held up her hands. “I will answer as many of your questions as I can, and my associates will be available during your tours to take your questions as well. Additionally, information on the adaptation procedure will be provided in the précis that you’ll receive later today.”