by s. Behr
But the larger Hailey saved me from having to ask again when she said, “You are a direct descendent of the Creators Council of this Ark.”
“Okay. That didn’t help,” Kai said.
“Kai is right,” I said, looking back at my Hailey. “Aren’t we all sort of descendants? That’s what you told me when I first came here.”
“Yes, you could say that for the rest of this group, but you, Princess Violet, are directly related to them. Genetically. You have all the markers. All nine. No one in Amera can boast the same thing, at least not yet.”
I reeled from this new straw of information. “How would you know that?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know the answer.
“I checked,” she said with a smirk.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Lance interjected. “What about the codes?”
“They are still relevant,” The Ark Hailey replied. “But those were always meant to be a breadcrumb trail. The codes were left, as you know, in a way that was meant to bring a civilization or a society here to rediscover this Ark. The Ark was meant to open gradually, and it was never meant for one person. The chances of that happening were exponentially low. Violet is as close to a scientific miracle as we will see in any generation.”
“So that makes Violet like…the Queen of the Ark?” Lily asked.
“We can call her that if it pleases her, Lady Lily, but her genetics is only the key. Her training will be what grants her true command of the Ark.” My Hailey’s usual riddles left me feeling like I knew less than before she answered.
“What about all that ‘she’s in charge of you,’ stuff,” Siri said, mimicking my Hailey perfectly. “What about that?”
“Prince Siri, there are protocols.” Both Hailey’s said in unison.
“Of course.” I blew a hair off my face. “Protocols. Oh, how we love those.”
As I stepped onto the sanitizer pads, I flinched, waiting for the jets to come on. Two painless minutes later, we were cleaned and pulling on our Ark uniforms.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Lily said as she ran her fingers through her long hair that was so pale it was almost the same shade as the Ark walls.
“Yeah, that wasn’t,” I agreed, eyeing my bracelet that Hailey had conveniently disappeared into. “I guess I just remembered it differently.”
“Nope. I had Hailey reset the sprays. The first time was a little too exciting,” Lance said with a loud clap.
“Wait, I’m not dressed!” I pulled my pants up and turned to see an opaque energy wall between us and them.
“You have no worries, Princess Commander Violet,” Ark Hailey said flatly. “The modesty settings have not been adjusted.”
“Hmm, didn’t know you could do that,” I grumbled.
“It is part of the decontamination protocols. I thought she would have told you. She must have been distracted.”
My Hailey materialized, meeting Ark Hailey’s stare. “She didn’t have anyone with her to be modest for.”
They exchanged identically pleasant smiles.
“Three pads, four boys,” Lily said with a smirk they couldn’t see. “Don’t take too long. I’m ready to see what all the fuss is about.”
“After you,” I heard Leo say.
“You are the guest here, Your Highness. After you,” Lance offered.
Lily leaned against the wall and whispered, “Is there any way to clear that wall up?”
My cheeks flamed. “Put your hands on the sensor. It seems you do need a second phase cleansing.”
She laughed until the sensor pricked her fingers. “Thorns. Literally,” she cursed. “Thanks for the warning.” She rubbed her fingers. I took my turn, and when my skin was sealed, the energy barrier swept through the room, and the four men appeared dressed.
Lily smiled. “It’s like I’m seeing double.”
Leo and Siri had always looked similar, but in the identical Ark suits, they looked as close to twins as the Yzers. When all of them completed the second phase, the doors to the sanitizing room opened into the Ark, and a hush fell over the group as Lance and I led the way to the kitchen.
“The usual Major Yzer?” Ark Hailey asked with a wide smile.
Lance answered her with a grin to match. “Yes, please.”
He practically skipped over to the dining table that I had never used and sat down as six identical sets of silverware rolled up in cloth napkins rose up from the middle of the table.
“Guys. Have a seat,” he said as he unrolled his napkin and tucked it into his shirt collar.
“Why do you need forks and knives for ration bars?” I asked, looking at my wrist, noticing that Hailey had once again conveniently turned off her projection.
“Ration bars?” Lance asked like I had tree roots growing out of my head.
“Yes, ration bars, about this big, nuts, honey, some dried fruit. Ration bars,” I said with a huff. “What I had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for fifteen days straight.”
“Wow, you missed out.” He clapped his hands, rubbing them together. “Ration bars are for the Homeland. Here at the Ark, we serve only the best.”
My hand sat on my hip as Kai jumped into the seat next to his brother, and the rest followed as the smell of breakfast wafted through the air.
“Seriously? Bacon?” I exclaimed in disbelief as my mouth watered. I pulled up my chair as the plates that had lifted out of the table came to a stop. The others had begun eating hearty portions of eggs, bacon, and pancakes.
“This is the best,” Lance said as he tossed his brother a packet of some kind of sauce. After a bite, Kai agreed. “We need to take this recipe home.”
“Yes, because that is the most important thing we need to take away from this place,” I said, crossing my arms. I looked at all the food, but I picked up the coffee instead. I prepared it the way I had every day I had been here. I took a deep, creamy drink. This was the Ark I knew. For the first time in more than a day, I felt a step toward normal and pulled my plate toward me and took a bite. My hollow stomach ached for more, and the room fell silent as everyone concentrated on their meal as if it might be their last.
“So, is anyone going to pop the bubble in the room?” Siri asked as he scraped the last of his eggs onto his fork.
Lance had already cleaned his plate, and after polishing off the rest of his juice, he answered. “The ladies have already heard our reasons for secrecy, so I don’t see the need to keep that to ourselves.”
“Security,” Leo said, as everyone looked at him like he was reading our minds. “That was my guess, anyway. With everything we know about your Homeland, it’s pretty brutal.” Leo sighed, and added, “We understand the concept of bloodlines here as well.”
“Do we ever,” Siri seconded Leo with a grimace. I guessed that a twenty-eight-term legacy did affect him as much as his brother.
“Okay, that’s out of the way. What do you want with the Ark?” I asked, pushing my plate away with half the food uneaten. “How did you find it and the codes in the first place?”
Lance gazed at me with a fierce look in his eyes. “Are you going to eat that?”
We stared at the plate between us, and I shook my head. “Answer my question.”
“Which one?” he asked as he collected my plate and began polishing that off, too. He was essentially the same as his brother, but Kai didn’t seem to eat half of what Lance did.
“Where are you putting all of that?” Lily asked.
Shaking my head, I interjected, “Enough with the food. How did you know this place was here?”
“How did you?” he asked with a swallow and a smile.
It was like talking to Hailey, except in a large male form that I could punch in the face.
“What my brother is trying to say,” Kai interjected, “is as the princes here know, our city in the Homeland is comprised mainly of the descendants of the first humans that came from Amera.”
“Or at least the Colonies that were here,” Lance added.
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sp; Kai continued. “The other cities in the Homeland have different reasons for coming together, but most of it was cultural, same as us.”
But it was Lance who explained further. “It was easier to govern with similar languages and customs.”
With a nod, Kai said, “In the beginning, we had agreed to share knowledge, but there were some things the first group from this continent didn’t want to share with the Federation.”
“An insurance policy in case things didn’t work out,” Lance elaborated.
“Do they always do this?” Siri whispered to Lily. She shrugged and said, “I only found out there were two of them this morning. I was late to the game in this department. If anyone should know, shouldn’t you?” Siri’s head whipped around to face Leo, the brothers having words that the rest of us could only guess at.
“Hey, the rest of us have to use our mouths to speak,” Lance said as his spine straightened.
“My apologies. I was just asking my brother if he really thought we needed to hear him speak,” Leo said evenly.
“And I answered that everyone needs more of my wisdom,” Siri said with a lopsided grin.
“Oh, tumbleweeds,” Lily exclaimed. “Let the twins finish.”
I had to admit seeing them together was a little unsettling, add in the ping pong conversation, and my head started to ache. I didn’t know how long we could be out of the city before too many people noticed, but I wanted to find some kind of understanding between us before we returned.
If just knowing about the twins put their lives in danger, then there were rules in this game that I did not understand. But I was not going to be a reason why someone else would be hurt, even if I barely knew them, and one of them had been a general pain in the dirt since I first saw him. My sides ached just thinking about the rock Lance threw. Our ancestors were enemies, and he was human. But the more I learned about them, the more I knew that my mother had been right. We were more similar than either side wanted to admit.
“You were saying,” I encouraged either twin.
This time it was Lance who spoke. His grin disappeared as he leaned forward, his hands folded on the table in front of him. He looked me in the eye, and his voice was thick with a rumble I could almost feel as he asked, “You want to know what I want from the Ark?”
“Yes,” I answered firmly. If he was trying to scare me, I was done playing that game.
“I want a way to feed my people. A sustainable way to keep them from starving, so that my little sisters don’t have to worry about which one of them might die today. Which one of them has to stay hidden and miss out on half her life because another faction, another country, is willing to slit her throat to get what they want.” His face hardened. “I don’t want to ruin what you have going over here. Amera is great. It’s as close to paradise as you will find in the world today. Your people are safe and fed every day. They don’t need the Ark, our people do.”
“It’s not yours to take,” my Hailey countered. His Hailey remained silent.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” he continued, his hands raised in agreement. “I want diplomacy to find a way to work together. That’s the dream, isn’t it? What the people wanted?”
“No, the people wanted to survive. They didn’t care how or what came after,” Leo said evenly.
“Look, whatever your people might think, we want no part in trying to enslave you or any other archaic myth,” Kai said, his face earnest. “Our family’s priority is to its people. But our ancestors shared these colonies the same as yours. We didn’t win the genetic lottery. Hell, we didn’t even win the geographical lottery, and we chose that. I get it. You have no reason to help us. We have nothing to offer. But we are not thugs.”
“But you don’t speak for all your people,” Leo countered coolly.
Siri began, “And now there is the Southern Alliance to consider. If they are behind these attacks—”
Kai slammed his fist on the table. “If? Who else could it be?” he thundered. At that moment, he looked every bit as fearsome as his brother could.
Siri sat up straight, his trademark grin gone, his jaw set, and his eyes flashing a seriousness I didn’t think he was capable. “From what your parents say, the other factions in your federation have fewer reasons to want to work with us. If your tech is any indicator of what the playing field is, then we have a lot of other people it could be. We can’t take anything for granted.”
Kai scoffed. “You think this is a power struggle in the federation? Our people may be a lot of things, but wasteful is not one of them. We don’t have the time or resources to pick a war with your people. No one in the Federation does. Why would we want to anyway when you’re the best people in the world suited to help us? Everyone in the Homeland can agree on that. No one from our Federation would jeopardize this convention. I don’t care what corner of the Earth they crawled out of when the ice melted.”
The table fell silent, everyone lost in their own heads.
“Okay, I think we need a break,” Lily declared. She stood and stretched. “Vines! When I woke up this morning, all I could think about was Penelope. I didn’t know that I was going to end up having to worry about the whole world. I’m not a princess. My abilities are average at best. My opinion may not matter much, but I just wanted to say that no one deserves to live like that, and after everything that happened yesterday, if there is anything I can do to help, I’m in.”
With a small smile, she walked into the hall. I followed her and left the boys to stare at each other. Lily was right. I needed a moment to process—we all did.
I found her leaning against the wall, hugging herself in that way I knew she did when trying to soldier on and keep it all bottled up inside. She might have been willowy and beautiful—the perfect image of what a princess from Neyr should look like—but my friend was every bit her father. I knew what kind of steel ran through to her roots.
“You are better than any princess I know,” I said as I and wrapped my arms around her.
“That’s not possible, at least until you become Queen.” She smirked as she squeezed my hand.
I shook my head. “Lily, you have always had a faith in me that I never understood. I don’t even know why you bothered, half the realm loves you, and that’s only because the other half hasn’t met you yet.”
“Vi, you really are a wallflower. I may not be able to grow a garden with a yawn, but I do have one ability I get from my dad, and that’s reading people. I knew the moment I met you who you were. And every day since I met that five-year-old princess everyone was wilting over, you have done nothing but prove me right.”
I hugged her tight. “I love you, Stargazer.”
She pulled back. “You haven’t called me that in years, not since we were kids.” She smiled.
“Yes, I think it’s time to take that one off the shelf.”
“What are we reorganizing?” Kai asked as he came up from behind.
In the span of a day, my life had changed again—this time assuredly forever. I had learned things I never dreamed possible, and I knew I would never forget what happened at Heart’s Cove. I couldn't live in a time where little girls like Penelope or her sister were used as bargaining chips.
I turned from one to the other and said, “The world?”
“What do you suggest, Major Yzer?”
“Me? Hmm. I have always been partial to the name Iolani,” he said.
“You want to name one of the greatest creations of mankind after a palace?” my Hailey asked as if Lance was not taking this seriously.
“It’s just a name,” Lily said with a huff. “People name their babies all the time. Surely, we can pick one that isn’t a tongue twister. When you go home, she has to stay here with us. Oh, showers and sunshine.”
“I like the sound of that,” Ark Hailey said with a small grin. “Sunshine.”
“Then it’s settled,” Lance declared. “Nice to meet you, Sunshine.”
After that debate was over, I asked Su
nshine to give the abbreviated welcome speech and tour, much to Hailey’s dismay, but I told her quietly, “You and I have other things to do.” I stepped out of the commissary and into the hallway.
Since we arrived, I had been waiting for the chance to finally get Hailey alone. “If you knew from the day we met that I was this miracle descendant, why did you put me, and Jane for that matter, through the inquisition?”
Hailey, not looking remotely sorry, answered. “The markers might have told me who you came from, but it told me nothing about who you were. I needed to know, and asking might never have been enough. I needed to see it for myself.”
“So in just a few short weeks, you think you know me?” I asked.
“I knew the creators. I knew what they wanted. When we made the decision to go back to Hattan, I knew it was a risk. But from what I learned about you in the two weeks you were here, let’s just say, I knew enough to put my faith in you. After this week and everything that has happened, I didn’t have to read the secret files your parents keep about you to know that you’re special. You just haven’t had the chance to prove it yet. But I know that if the occasion should arise, you will.”
I felt my cheeks warm, and I didn’t even have it in me to be mad that she had snooped around in my parents’ private files. “Wait. They keep files on me?”
Hailey gave me a weary look. “Yes.”
“And?” I asked impatiently.
“You told me to stop snooping,” she answered.
“Yes, but you already did. Why won’t you tell me what you found?” I asked, worried. “Some things are better left unsaid.” She frowned. “This is one of those things.”
“Well, why did you bring it up?” I asked.
“I just wanted you to know that I make my decisions with all the information available to me.”
“Thanks. I guess.” I expelled a heavy sigh. “With everything that’s going on, you’re probably right.”
“Of course, I am.”
We turned a few corners, and I finally concluded there would come a day when I would be ready to face whatever Hailey found, but this had been a month of so many truths. I wasn’t sure if I could handle any more insanity. I stuffed the thoughts into a corner of my brain, where I hoped my inner voice had hid.