Reclaiming Shilo Snow

by Mary Weber

  No argument from her. She took in the crowd that was closing in, yelling about their bets on the FanFights, yelling for the three kids a group had surrounded who were going at it in some kind of knife match. Yelling for the hovercar occupants to come out and play with two sickly children being offered at a low, low price.

  They whipped through the under-city, dodging support beams and hanging signs and pipes, and then suddenly were headed up, up, up to burst outside into the evening air.

  Inola exhaled the breath she was holding. So whose fault is it, Inola?

  The security hovers blasted out behind them. They lowered to the street and melted into the thickening traffic. People headed to the markets, she realized after a second. After a day around the arena, they were looking for more entertainment. Other types of entertainment.

  “You okay?” Jerrad asked.

  “Yes. Take me home, please.”

  His voice hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Just wondering if you got what you were expecting, madam.”

  Reflections of the children’s faces back there in those cages, those hovels, those sellers’ tents, flashed across her gaze. Faces of children just like hers.

  “If you want to help your kids, head to the black markets.”

  She looked up at the planet. Looked at the city growing larger in her front window, and ground her teeth. So whose fault is it?

  Maybe there was a reason her daughter wasn’t willing to be controlled.

  “Yes. I think I got it,” she whispered.

  The pink sunset faded quickly to purple city lights and flickering ad-lined streets. Between their glow and the cooling evening air, everything gradually eased back to looking normal. Neat. Tight. Packaged up in a bomb that had gotten rid of the evidence so now life could go on as usual—business could go on with FanFights and parties and poverty. And no one the wiser.

  No one the wiser except Sofi and her. And those who’d truly lived it and seen what the children had seen. What her own children had seen. On Delon and in the markets.

  Question was, what were they willing to do about it?

  “Madam, in the rearview.” Jarred interrupted her thoughts.

  Inola checked and saw the security hovers slipping in and out of traffic.

  Then frowned and peered closer.

  The blue hovercar was back.

  17

  SOFI

  The delonese stopped talking. Claudius stopped waving. Alis stopped sipping her drink beside Miguel. Sofi braced. For what—she didn’t know yet. But every nerve was trembling as Miguel stepped between her and Ethos’s disconcerting face and pulled Sofi away to dance, or rather, to hide in a giant room full of other dancers. They floated through the bodies as his arm smoothly slid around her waist in calculated performance, while his fake expression softened. “You look like death. No offense.”

  Maybe I am dead, she was beginning to think. And for that matter, she wasn’t sure if Miguel was even real anymore. Was he a figment of her mind too? She slid a hand to his exposed skin where the edge of his shirt met his neck and softly pinched it.

  He raised a brow and cracked a slip of a questionable smile.

  “Making sure you’re real.”

  “You noticed also?” He tipped his chin down. “And what’s the assessment?”

  “Your heart beats the same,” she whispered.

  His gaze landed on hers. On her eyes, her nose, her lips. And he offered her a careful smile that was all him and not the pretend one he lent the covers of magazines. It was the same one she’d seen another lifetime ago—after everyone left a party he’d hosted and they’d gone for a walk along the rooftops of an old carnival. They’d held hands and talked about the differences of their worlds. His wild life. Her gaming guild. Except now that smile was less certain. Less hopeful and completely devoid of any thought of what he could get from her—only indicative of what he’d failed to give. Even in this moment. As if he could communicate through it everything of the past eighteen months.

  “Sofi, the Delonese . . . What they’ve got down there—what I think they might be planning—I . . .”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “So, when I make a move, you’ll understand—”

  The note from Heller fluttered into mind. “Don’t make it in vain. The access codes are inside.” She shook her head.

  “Sof, I’m sorry.”

  “Shh.” She put her index finger to Miguel’s lips. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t need to waste the moment apologizing for this bloody mess. Especially when she was about to ruin it by saying she had a last-ditch plan that involved nabbing the smallest Delonese from the shuttle and holding him hostage as they both went down in a blazing fire of death.

  He smiled and pulled his mouth away. “No, I need to say this.” Then paused in the middle of the room, between the fifty Delonese bodies swaying to a music that was both ethereal and incredibly irritating. “I’m sorry for what I did to you.”

  She slowed. Inhaled. Oh.

  Oh.

  His expression grew serious. She watched his throat move as he swallowed. And somehow knew what the words were he’d left unsaid yesterday.

  “I should’ve been better for you,” he whispered. “I should’ve come looking for you all those months ago.”

  Her heart shifted in her chest. She knew it because suddenly her ribs were too tight and her lungs couldn’t find air.

  “Sofi . . .” His voice turned raw. “I should’ve called.”

  Three simple words.

  Three stupid, simple words.

  At a time like this.

  Those three words brought down everything that sheltered her heart. As if the wall of ice she’d built that day she’d sat on the floor of her apartment, believing he’d moved on, suddenly shattered back into the pieces she’d thought she’d been. The pieces of herself she’d collected through their rejection, through other boys, through the fake smiles and her hatred of him every time she’d seen him on the tele.

  “Every single day for the past eighteen months, I’ve wanted to say that.” He pushed a hand through his hair and his eyes turned dark. “I would’ve. I should’ve. I just . . .”

  She let her eyes hang on his. She went to speak. To agree. To say, yes, he should’ve and she would’ve been angry but perhaps she also could’ve come round and understood that he was different. That he was better. More than better.

  Because she now understood.

  That he was someone she respected—and that meant more to her than love or lust or romance.

  He saw it. She didn’t know how, but the glint in his eyes and the tension of his jaw said he saw what she was thinking. He nodded and opened his gaze and, in that moment, offered the only thing he had left that he was in control over.

  Himself. He leaned in until his lips brushed her ear and his scent of day-old cologne entwined with her hair, her heart, her lungs. “So this is me calling now.”

  The music stopped. Her world stopped.

  “To tell you I don’t deserve you. And if things were different right now, I’d tell you I’m different, but that if you’d have me, I’d be yours.”

  “Miguel, I—” Before she could say any more words, Miguel’s fingers dissipated in hers and she was left gripping air. The room flickered, suddenly bright with that blasted overelectrified telescreen sensation.

  “We don’t have more time,” Ethos said from somewhere. “We need the information now.”

  What? Where’d—? Sofi turned to see what Ethos was doing—and found the entire room stalled and staring at her. The Delonese. Claudius. Danya. Sofi spun back to find Miguel—to find where they’d taken him, what they were going to do to him—when a rather tall twelve-year-old boy with deep eyes and sun-kissed brown skin, who probably smelled like an Old North Carolina summer, stepped out from behind Danya and lifted a finger to his lips.

  Sofi’s heart melted and froze, and cracked wide open as every particle in the room disintegrated.
>
  She stared at his face.

  The aliens kept chanting.

  Her lungs stopped breathing and the room began glitching.

  Shilo?

  18

  MIGUEL

  The last thing Miguel knew was it all turned slippery—the room, his head, his heart. As if the world was sliding from his grasp and dripping from his veins as he was sinking, sinking, sinking. He reached up to stop them, and to save her. “Sofi.” But his mind kept falling back in time, through images flashing.

  His childhood.

  His brothers and sisters, madre, padre, aunts and uncles. All relishing the muggy heat as they laughed and called him “good boy” and sipped their cervezas in lawn chairs on the grass beneath wide Los Angeles magnolia trees. He remembered the fiesta for his cousin—right before the city had been bombed and an earthquake took most of it off the map.

  His mind flickered forward to their deaths—to another bomb—this time in Old Colorado during World War IV, when he’d come home at nine years old to find their bodies strewn through the rubble. He’d barely had time to grieve before being swept up by Corp 19 as a personal “assistant” to an underling. Rubbing shoulders with the elite. Learning what they wanted, what they loved, how they lived, and what he could attain if he flattered and fawned enough.

  Until he’d learned enough to flip the game over and, within a few years, have the world flatter and fawn over him.

  His mind skipped to his first kiss with a girl whose name he couldn’t recall. And his last kiss—with Sofi, eighteen months ago.

  He lifted a hand to rub his neck where that ache just kept growing. Why is it flaring? What is wrong with my spine? But then more memories rushed in, like a vidscreen on fast-forward. Flooding their colors and noise until his nerves felt raw and his brain hurt and he could hear himself swearing and calling Sofi’s name.

  Ambassador Ethos was suddenly there, in the dark with him. “We have a system of peace and simplicity,” the alien said. “A way of life we’ve lived far longer than your planet has even existed. We’ve learned from our wars and mistakes centuries ago. Whereas, let me show you your world today.”

  The lead ambassador held up a handscreen and brushed his fingers over it. A video popped up showing a newsfeed from Earth on which Nadine was speaking. Even with the sound off, Miguel could determine the gist of her message. A real-time stream scanned the rioters frothing over Corp 24’s Altered device. Picketers had switched from marching with signs to throwing mini explosives up in the air and into store windows where Delonese products were sold.

  Miguel’s head felt heavy. He massaged his burning neck again and tried to focus as Ethos swiped the screen, pulling up a homemade vid from someone at one of the black markets. The fact that the lead ambassador had access to someone’s handheld enough to tap in and watch along with them was disturbing in itself. But the images of what was happening to those children—let alone the fact that the individual filming was doing nothing to intervene—made his skin flare. They brought up memories of what had been done to him as a preteen after his parents passed.

  The alien shut off the handheld and looked down at Miguel with giant black eyes. “Your people seem to have little value for each other aside from squandering their neighbors for selfish perversion, as we’ve just seen. In contrast, not only do we value your people enough to use them—we use them for good. Nothing is wasted when we dismantle them—”

  Miguel let his fist fly this time and landed it on Ethos’s cheek, only to discover the Delonese’s face dissolve in midair along with the rest of his body.

  ¿Qué? Miguel tried to figure out where he went, but his vision started flickering faster. Flinging him like a slingshot from experience to experience. His first UW meeting as Earth’s youngest ambassador at seventeen. Followed by the first time he saw a child in the crowd with that vacant stare. Like the faces of others in the black markets—children who’d been sold and used by regular humans and left scraping to survive like dogs. Except most people treated their dogs better.

  His neck and spine were throb, throb, throbbing. He ground his teeth as the pain transported him into new places, new scenes. As if his life were a book and he was falling from page to page. Like a dream where you try to run or scream but your body won’t cooperate.

  He began to shake, his muscles jerking—clenching in reaction to the mental overload. The Delonese were ripping out parts of him.

  He watched the scenes fly away and his head screamed to slow it down.

  Slow it down, Miguel. Focus. Hold on to one.

  He reached out to grab the next scene that came up. And locked eyes with it—with her.

  Sofi.

  They’d known each other for three weeks and he’d flown her to the only drive-in left in Old America. They sat on top of the hovercar and watched the screen and fading sun as the couples in cars around them kissed.

  “Tell me your favorite memory,” Sofi whispered.

  He winked. “You sure you know what you’re asking? I have a lot.”

  “Nope. Not allowed,” she said in her very serious, life-is-worth-something tone. “You only get one.”

  Fine. He opened his mouth to tell her about the places he’d traveled and the famous people he’d met. About the adventures cliff diving and rock climbing . . . Then stopped.

  And told her instead of the one time his padre had said he was proud of him. They’d been sitting on the hood of an old Ford truck, not unlike where he and Sofi were sitting now. Listening to mariachi music and watching the ranch hands farm the orange tree fields. And for no reason whatsoever Padre had put his arm around Miguel’s shoulders and said, “I’m proud of you, hijo. You’ll be a good man.”

  Miguel’s voice clouded and his throat turned warm. He looked away.

  He had brought Sofi here to try to convince her to sleep with him, but that no longer interested him.

  Because rather than looking at her with hunger, he’d just bared his soul as a friend. And he couldn’t recall the last time he’d had a female version of one of those.

  “Now you tell me yours,” he whispered.

  “The day Shilo was born,” she said in her simple voice. “Ella had died a few months before, and Mom and Papa were smiling. My family was my home.”

  Sofi leaned over and put her hand on his chest, right above his heart, and placed her head there too. She gave him a soft peck before tapping his heart. “Your father was right. You’re a good person in here, Miguel. Whether you believe it or not.”

  He barely spoke for the rest of the night, even when he flew her home.

  Just inhaled the gift she’d deposited, in the raw spaces she’d excavated.

  The gift of believing he was someone more.

  Until . . .

  It all began dripping away . . .

  Her voice. The setting sun.

  The sweet taste of her soft kiss.

  Miguel frowned. What is happening?

  His mind was black again—and that fog rose, surrounded by the presence of Ethos.

  Something in his mind was changing—leaving—as if bit by bit pieces of his soul were being carved out and tossed away. What in—? What were they doing to him? His very chest was ripping open. The pain unbearable. It was all spinning around. Sofi’s voice, her face, their friendship.

  The Delonese crooned—their voices swirling faster through the dark. Their unity chant ringing in his ears, drowning him in its verses before birthing him anew from its promises.

  Until it all froze. Midair. Midsip. Midsong.

  And she was standing there in front of him in the black void. Bitter tears lacing her cheeks. She was crying. Why was she crying?

  He shook his head, but pieces of his memory were missing. He’d known her once. This girl staring at him.

  And suddenly he was crying too—because that place in him she’d altered was disappearing.

  Which was when he picked up swearing at them because he needed to remember. He swore and kept her face in focus until
it was gone and there was nothing to yell about anymore.

  In fact, he couldn’t remember why he’d needed to in the first place.

  And then the darkness lifted. His vision cleared. And he was back in the beautiful domed hall—where the famous Delonese opera singer was belting out her song and the aliens were dancing, and Claudius and Danya were grinning beside him while Alis was laughing.

  Alis. He frowned. There was something she’d done. Something he was supposed to recall. But then her voice called out for more tea and asked Miguel what he thought about the Council meeting that morning and turning up the unit productions with Delon. And it suddenly occurred to him that everything was alright after all.

  “Have you seen Sofi around?” Alis leaned over to ask after he’d nodded his support of pushing the vote through.

  Miguel frowned. “Sofi who?”

  Alis’s voice was smooth. “Sofi Snow. Corp 30’s game-head.”

  Miguel felt his brow widen. The girl who bombed her brother? Why would she be here? “Wasn’t she just on Earth’s terrorist most-wanted list?” Poor kid. He couldn’t imagine what anyone had done to make her want to harm her own family member by blowing him up like that.

  19

  INOLA

  Inola changed into her nightclothes and then double-checked her handcomp. No more of the messages. No more on Delon or the ambassadors.

  Nothing more on the blue car. Yet.

  Good.

  She logged into her private server and pulled up the internal in-box of the attorney general. Then strode into the plush, gray living room of the fiftieth-story suite she occupied on the far end of the city, where one side of windows looked across the skyscrapers and business blocks, and the other gave a wide view of the dark, unlit water.

  In the background the tele was playing vids of her kids. Old ones she hadn’t watched—hadn’t even thought of—in forever. But something about today—the mood, the fights, the stupid black-market jaunt—had made it seem appropriate. She’d put the vid on when she arrived home and went to take a shower. And for a moment it’d felt like being back eleven years ago just before everything had changed. She’d driven home for a visit with them and their father and found them playing out in the fields.