by K. Makansi
“He’s fully conscious, though it may take him a few moments to readjust to all the input.”
The rest of the room pans into focus as does the full sensory array of my body. Plush pillows against my neck, silk sheets, warm leggings. Dark green walls adorned with paintings, mirrors, a plasma screen by the door. Words, numbers, and charts scroll down the screen. To my right, a short, neat stack of books, exactly where I left them. My bedroom. The chancellor’s mansion. I am surrounded by the comforts of my past, yet I am not comforted.
I focus on the faces. There, a scarred man. Burn marks on his neck and face. Peppered grey hair and a permanent scowl. I fight the urge to recoil. General Aulion. A woman in a grey coat to his right. A doctor, or a dietician, I’m not sure which. Young, with black hair and dark olive skin. I search my memory for a name, but I can’t find one. I don’t know her. She puts her fingers to my temple, presses gently, and turns back to the plasma. A whole new set of data appears.
“Where’s my father?” My voice comes out unbidden, hoarse. “Where’s the chancellor?”
Corine’s smile never fades.
“Your father will be here in a little while.” She reaches a hand out to rest on my shoulder. “Oh, Vale, we’ve missed you so much.”
“How do you feel?” the doctor asks.
For a moment, I contemplate silence. I want to brush them away, turn my head, ignore them. I want them to know I am not on their side. But then I remember.
Remy.
My footsteps pound against the metal floor as I sprint down the hall, out of the building, toward the soldiers who are doubtless pursuing Remy, Chan-Yu, and Miah.
“Guide me, Deme,” I say. I’d already switched channels so I’d be communicating with her alone, and not on the mic with the rest of my team. “Take me to them.”
She knows I’m not asking her to take me to my team.
“Left,” she says. “There’s a surveillance drone there. It’ll ID you and report your location to the grid.”
I veer left. I stare grimly into the blind eye of the drone, which dutifully photographs me and then starts flashing red. Alarms sound through the streets. I turn away, fleeing, keeping up the guise of the fugitive on the run.
“I need to make a scene,” I say. “Distract them for as long as possible.” I have to give Remy time to escape, to get out of the city, to get away from the people who want her dead.
“Straight ahead. There’s a six-story complex with a docking bay.” I take off running. “Head for the roof.”
“What now?” I throw the door open and take the stairs two at a time. “Are you suggesting I throw myself off a building?”
She doesn’t respond.
She’s never done that before.
“I’m okay.”
“Any nausea or headaches?”
“Headache, definitely,” I say, forcing a chuckle. “But it’s tolerable. How long have I been out?”
The doctor’s faint smile flickers, and she glances at my mother, whose gaze remains steadfast.
“What do you remember?” the doctor asks, dodging my question.
“A building. Stairs. I remember climbing. And then I remember falling.”
I hold my hands up in surrender. With twelve soldiers surrounding me and a twenty-meter free fall behind me, my options are drawing to zero.
“Target surrounded,” one of the soldiers says. A second later, a creature from my nightmares emerges. Scar tissue rips across his face and neck, burn marks from a fight I’m thankful I didn’t have to witness. Grey hair. Stiff lips. Hooded eyes.
He stands as rigid as he did during my military training, staring across the roof, his expression unreadable. The sneer he wore when he confronted Soren in the interrogation room, the condescension, is gone, replaced by something colder.
“You look like you’re ready to throw your life away,” he says, his eyes meeting mine as he takes a step forward.
“I don’t think of it that way.”
“Everything you’ve ever fought for has been destroyed.”
“Not everything. Not yet.” The same words I whispered to Remy just days ago. Everything is a lie, she had said. Not everything, I told her.
“Do it,” he says. I can hear scorn in his voice, disbelief, the conviction that I am a coward. That I don’t have the strength to make the sacrifice for what I believe in. That I am still a child, afraid.
So I turn, a half step, away from the soldiers, away from Aulion, away from the sightless eyes of the weapons staring at me.
Fly, little bird, I think. Fly, Remy.
I step off the ledge.
I love you.
“Luckily, there was a rescue drone not far from your location,” the doctor is saying. Lucky? I bet my life on those drones. “It detected movement patterns similar to those normally associated with a desire to jump.” Rescue drones were designed to patrol the skies of Okaria to prevent suicides. With catch-nets, perimeter monitoring, and thermal tracking, the Sector had reduced the number of suicides by free fall to less than ten a year. When I stepped off that ledge, I knew my chances of hitting the ground were slim to none. The goal was never to kill myself.
“We came so close to losing you,” my mother says, her eyes fixed on me, burrowing deep. Digging for something—the truth. She leans in, presses her arm against my body, clutches my hand, her skin white as bone. I can’t hold her gaze. I let my eyes roll back as if I’m about to black out again, then struggle to regain focus. I stare at the minute lines in her hands, lines that match the grain of the wood dresser behind her. Polished, shiny, hard. It’s difficult to believe she is flesh and bone. More likely something I’ve dreamed up, a monster of many faces, some that draw me in, some that repulse me. “You’re so lucky to be here now.”
I close my eyes against the swirling nausea in my gut and lay my head back. With more effort than it took to step off that ledge, I finally meet her eyes. I force a smile and squeeze her hand.
“I know,” I say, after a moment. I cough, clear my throat, and then ask again, “How long was I out?”
My mother looks away and sets to smoothing one of my blankets, pressing it against my thigh until all the creases are gone. General Aulion hasn’t moved. He stares at me the way he did on the rooftop. His expression is calculating, appraising, but neutral. I’ve got to be careful.
“You were unconscious about two weeks, but—” the doctor hesitates as though that was only part of the story, but my mother interrupts.
“Doctor, General, would you please give me a few moments alone with my son?”
Aulion narrows his eyes, and moves toward the door. The doctor checks the neural scanner one last time before following in Aulion’s footsteps.
My mother sighs softly when the door clicks shut, as though relieved by the privacy we’ve been granted. She turns and gives me a sad little smile, one that looks more honest, more real, than I remember.
“Oh, Vale,” she says, and despite the honesty, I hear the grasping, the pretending-to-understand, in her voice. “I know the last few months have been hard.” Hard? It was the first time I felt truly alive. “It’s been hard for me too. Ever since you graduated, I knew the time would come when you’d have to look at your father and me and see the hard choices we’ve made.” Like executing a classroom full of students, or ordering death without trial for prisoners? “I always knew there was the possibility you wouldn’t understand what was at stake, that you would judge us for our choices, that you would hate us for what we had to do.” Tears cloud her eyes and she blinks a few times, but she never pulls her gaze from mine even as she chokes on her words. “You can’t imagine how I felt when I saw you step off that ledge. You can’t imagine a mother’s horror when you’ve come a second away from losing a child.”
I don’t have to imagine, I think, anger clawing at me. I saw Brinn Alexander the night Tai was murdered.
I keep my mouth shut.
“Please, Vale, promise me,” her hand strays to my cheek, just lik
e it did when I was a child, “whatever you may think of me, of your father, or of the world we’ve built, please, promise me that you will never again try to take your own life.”
I could tell the truth. I could tell her I will never promise that, that nothing could stop me from stepping off that same ledge again or jumping in front of a Bolt if it meant saving my friends. I could tell her that nothing will stop me from dying, if it comes to that, for the things I believe in, for the people I love. But here in this den of deception, where will the truth get me?
Feeling like I could bite through graphene, I nod, try not to grit my teeth with the lie. “I promise.”
She lights up and a smile changes the contours of her face, softening it, rendering it even more beautiful. She squeezes my shoulder, her grip strong and confident, as if by force of will she can keep everything under control.
The door swings open, the minute squeal of the hinges grating against my ears, exacerbating my headache. My vision goes black around the edges, but comes back clearer a moment later. I look up to see my father standing in the doorframe, his black hair greying at the temples, lines around his eyes I don’t remember from before. Philip Orleán, Chancellor of the Okarian Sector. The man I once thought could do no wrong. I study his face, see the telltale signs of aging, and a choking sadness wells up from somewhere deep within. These are my parents. I can’t escape that, no matter what they’ve done.
He strides to my bedside and drops to his knees. Takes my hand in his, brings it to his lips. I steel myself and watch him as if he’s a stranger. I try to smile. I fail. His betrayal somehow seems less political, more personal, than my mother’s. I can barely look at him. My skin burns with fresh anger.
“Vale,” he says, his voice catching, “son, it’s good to have you back.”
I’m not back, I want to scream. I’m a prisoner. No different than Remy and Soren were all those months ago.
“It’s good to see you, too, Dad.”
“We have so much to talk about,” he says, glancing at my mother.
“It can wait,” she says. “There is still a lot of medicine in your system—” Drugs, you mean “—and they may interfere with your cognitive abilities.”
“I feel fine,” I say, not wanting to miss out on anything, any piece of information, anything I can use to get out of here. “We do have a lot to talk about.” I ask my question a third time: “How long have I been asleep?”
“Doctor Nguyen was correct that you were unconscious for about two weeks.” She glances at Philip. “But you’ve been awake intermittently for the last few weeks.”
“Weeks?” I force myself to keep my voice at a reasonable volume. “What day is it? When was I awake? How long has it been since I—”
“It’s been six weeks since you fell,” my father interjects. Fell, he says, like it was an accident, instead of threw yourself off a building.
“If I was awake before, why don’t I remember anything?”
“Vale, there’s something you need to know,” my mother says, “something we should have told you before. But it’s a long story. Perhaps it can wait until tomorrow.”
“I feel fine.” I try to sit up, to prove I’m ready.
“Are you sure?” Something in my father’s voice tells me he’s dreading the coming revelation as much as I’m longing to hear it. “Here, let me get you something to drink,” he says, pushing himself to his feet. He pours a glass of water from a pitcher on the dresser, and they both watch as I take a long drink and then hand the glass back. Corine looks to my father, who tilts his head in an almost imperceptible nod. She takes a deep breath and turns back to me, now gazing at the headboard behind me.
“Three years ago, the OAC’s research on human genetic modification took us in a very exciting direction. We discovered a new method of splicing genes using nanotechnology, one that would allow us to target specific cells and cell types and modify them.”
I hold my breath.
“It was groundbreaking research,” my mother continues. “With this kind of technology, we realized, we could begin to disrupt the Dieticians’ MealPak additives and go straight to the source. We could alter human biochemistry directly without having to rely on a constant supply of medicines to maintain profile fidelity.”
Profile fidelity. My heart is pounding. I can’t tear my eyes away from her.
“In the initial stages, we used test subjects,” my mother continues. I don’t bother to ask whether those “test subjects” volunteered to be tested or not. “But once we knew it would work, we went directly to implementation.”
“Only a few were privileged enough to receive these optimizations,” my father says, his expression utterly calm. “Your mother and I, of course. Top-ranked military staff, including several members of Corine’s Security Directorate unit.”
The black ops.
“Several researchers in my trusted group at the OAC volunteered as well,” my mother says. “All in all, twenty-five people were selected or elected.”
In the woods, when I left Okaria, I never went through withdrawal, even though Miah did, even though everyone in the Resistance talked about it like it was a rite of passage.
“And I was selected.” My voice is dull. My head feels as though it’s been filled with cotton. I can’t quite remember how to focus my eyes. I stare at my mother’s ear, to give the impression that I am looking at her, while I struggle to regain control of my vision.
“Yes, Vale,” she says. “Two years ago, your Dietician replaced the usual compounds in your MealPak with a gelatin that contained the nanobots that would alter your DNA to optimize your functioning capacity and align it with your medical profile. We were able to implant genes that improved your strength, speed, endurance, spatial imaging, memory, mental processing, creativity, and language skills. We gave you everything you ever could have wanted from your mind and body.” What do you know about what I wanted? “Since then, your MealPaks have been a placebo. Food, untouched, unaltered.”
“But, from a policy standpoint,” my father says, “we couldn’t introduce these modifications to the general public until we were sure they worked long-term. If not, we’d have to continue supplementing the genetic alterations with Dieticians’ cocktails to ensure full effectiveness.”
“Those who were selected had to be kept in the dark, so as not to compromise the integrity of the experiment. If you had known, you might have behaved differently. Since then, we’ve been doing routine checkups and analyses on everyone who was optimized,” my mother continues. “When you …” she pauses, searching for her words, “when you came back six weeks ago, we used that opportunity to continue your analyses to see how your optimizations had held up under duress. Using neurodisruptive technology, we temporarily disabled your ability to form new memories.”
So you could run your experiments in peace.
“So we could make sure you were as healthy and high-functioning as ever.”
I am a piece of equipment to be fixed, a tool to be utilized, a machine designed to operate according to your plan. I am your feather.
Six weeks have passed since I last saw Remy. Six weeks since the Resistance was destroyed. Where have Remy, Soren, Miah, Chan-Yu, and Linnea been all that time? Are they in custody? Were they able to escape? Are they even alive?
What do I do now?
My mother leans in close and again presses her hand into my shoulder. I meet her eyes, wondering if I’ll see any spark of the humanity that once kept her alive, or just gears clicking behind her pupils, keeping time to a drumbeat of deceit.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you,” she whispers. She sounds so genuine, even vulnerable. But beyond this veneer of the caring, doting mother is the cold face of a woman who felt she couldn’t involve her son in the first place. The two-faced monster emerges in my fuzzy vision: a mother proud and protective of her perfected creation; a mother refusing to grant her creation freedom from her twisted vise of lies. “But we wanted it for you. We’ve only eve
r wanted the best for you, Vale.”
I don’t understand, I think. I can never forgive you.
“I understand,” I say. “I forgive you.”
3 - REMY
Spring 62, Sector Annum 106, 14h05
Gregorian Calendar: May 20
“Please don’t ever do that to me!” A high voice cuts into my solitude from across the park.
“I would never.” The second voice is lower, with a tremor of laughter. “How could anyone do that? Kidnap their best friend?”
I’m passing the time sitting on a bench in Reunion Park. This park is the heart of the city. To my right, about four kilometers down the Rue Nationale, is the campus of the Academy and the Sector Research Institute, the SRI. To my left, down the same street in the opposite direction, is OAC headquarters. And dead ahead down Rue Jubilation, through a grove of beautiful, century-old elm trees, is the capitol building, its glass structure arcing gracefully against the sky. The city’s most famous monument, a maze of trellises and hanging gardens arranged in the shape of a sunflower, the symbol of the Okarian Sector, is at the end of Rue Jubilation. This park is one of the best places to eavesdrop on the wealthy and privileged citizens of Okaria—and those who serve them. Nearly everyone who works at one of those buildings will pass through this park at some point during the day.
It’s an unseasonably chilly day for so late in spring. This works in my favor, giving me an excuse to wear a thick scarf and pull my hood up over my hair. Even so, I can’t risk walking outside without my disguising makeup on, especially if I want to loiter here. Reunion Park is the closest I dare come to the places I used to know as well as the back of my hand, and even here, I feel like I’m walking on the edge of a knife.
It’s worth the risk. Under the guise of sketching on my plasma, I’ve been listening in to the conversations of the rich and powerful all day. I’ve only caught snippets, but it’s been enough to get a feel for the mood of the city. From what I can tell, most people still think of Vale as a celebrity. They’re curious about what happened to him, and how he’s recovering from his time as a hostage of the Resistance. Many believe that the Orleáns are holding back pieces of the story, but everyone seems confident that all will be revealed in time. The prevailing attitude is that since Vale has been returned to his loving parents, the terrorists will be taken care of, the renegades brought to justice, and all will be well in the perfect world of Okaria.