by Mary Weber
“You know our Corps already have gear we can use.” Nadine’s hair wisps breezed across her temple in the chilly wind. Much softer than she appeared on the tele, Inola thought. Much humbler and more normal than while in the public eye. She pulled up her coat hood.
Inola decided to like her. Even if her suggestion was a shade naive. Look how someone had just taken out her head of Corp security in a matter of seconds.
“No offense, lady, but your Corp 24 tech isn’t on the same level as mine or Mama Inola’s. And Inola here will likely have hers manhandled by some of Gaines’s thugs. Meaning without me you’re both going to be hurting. And without you?” He paused and grinned at them both. “I won’t have an opportunity to do my girl, Sofi, a public favor and stick it to the UW Council.” He turned without awaiting a reply and, with a casual cluck of his tongue, led them to a black door set into a black wall with black lights flickering off it.
“When we’re finished, you’re welcome to camp here or get your security teams to take you back to your Corps—if you trust them to do so. I can show you both which ones I’ve tapped and know are clean. Like your guy Jerrad,” he said with a glance at Inola. “He was a good one.”
Inola swallowed and nodded. “He was.”
Music thumped through the walls from inside the black building, making the thumping grief in Inola’s throat all the heavier.
The sign on the door said “Mom’s Basement.”
26
SOFI
Sofi and Miguel arrived at the Shuttle’s next room together, and she half expected another med group of Delonese to be inside.
Instead, it was eerily quiet. Like a white-walled ghost town the size of a small apartment complex. In fact, the whole ship was eerily quiet. Except for those bloody sirens going off.
She kept expecting peacekeeping soldiers to come running, but from the maps she’d pulled up, it appeared Sofi had accidentally managed to seal all the rooms on the shuttle when she’d locked the one she’d escaped from. Including the flight deck where she’d identified Ethos and Alis had been, according to the internal vidscreens. Except now that space showed up empty.
The moment she and Miguel slipped into the med space, the lights came on—and her heart leaped up her throat.
Ambassadors Danya and Claudius were there, lying on med beds. Cords in their neck just like she and Miguel had unhooked from.
But the others, the kids—their bodies, their feet, their faces—were covered in sheets from head to toe. White. Cold.
Like a morgue.
Miguel slid his hand to her back and she looked away as something in her chest fractured. Like a chunk of ice falling off a glacier. Oh gad, what had they done to them?
“Sof, let’s just start with Danya and then make our way down?”
She nodded and strode to Danya’s side, slipped fingers onto her arm, and noted that she didn’t move, just like Miguel hadn’t. And yet Sofi could see her lids twitching.
What nightmares was Ethos neurologically feeding Danya?
Sofi shut her eyes to block out the kids, the sirens, and how freaking freezing it was in the room and in her breast. And let her mind dive back into the vessel’s tech systems.
Her entire body jerked at the shock. She would’ve thought a few tries in she’d be able to maneuver it better. Instead, each time felt like higher doses of information flooding her mental pathways, overloading them with chemical reactions. The Delonese were lashing out against her system intrusion again. It felt like spikes around her, as if they were trying to decide what the hacker was and whether to flush it or weaponize it.
Sofi pulled back from the planet’s mainframe and focused on the information the shuttle contained.
She found the memories. The ones the machines had stolen and stored. The ones of the Delonese Danya, who, according to her files, had become far more human than the Delonese were comfortable with, and of her husband, Salim, and their two small adopted children. She saw Danya’s memories of their wedding. The look on Salim’s face, and the expression in Danya’s mirror as she was getting prepared. And whatever Sofi had thought she’d known about the woman—she became acutely aware she knew nothing at all.
The woman was in love. With her husband, her life, her kids. She was in love with humanity and the life she’d gotten to live on Earth thus far. More than the life she’d led before on Delon.
It felt intrusive, looking in on her world like this. Sofi shut it out, but not before deciding that if they survived this, Danya was a woman worth knowing. Not for her position, but for the very good depths of her soul. Which was odd, considering Sofi hadn’t even wondered whether Delonese had souls or not.
She tweaked the data streams and finished the upload along with a few of the ship’s informational vids, just like she’d seen in the hall. Then opened her eyes and waited.
Five seconds later, Danya uttered a gasp, her eyelids flew open, and the cord in her neck released as Sofi exhaled.
She left Danya to Miguel and moved on to Claudius—this time keeping his memories private. She didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to see. Not because of his history but because of Miguel’s. She’d lived the last year and a half assuming the worst, and she’d hated him for it. She didn’t want to relive the years before that in vivid detail. So she simply redirected the codes and waited until he woke, memories back intact. Then moved on.
To the children covered in those white sheets.
Behind her, Miguel was helping Danya and Claudius. Explaining. Adjusting.
She placed her hand on the first sheet and carefully lifted enough to see a young girl’s face. Five years old perhaps. Pale. With blue lips and eyelids and a cheek that kept twitching. It was the child who’d spoken to her in the hall and again in the Delonese garden room.
Sofi felt her pulse. It was there. She exhaled and suddenly noticed there was no cord at the base of the skull. Just a round blue dot behind the ear.
Gently Sofi poked it. The girl’s lashes fluttered.
Sofi gripped it between three fingers and tore it off as a memory shot through her head of doing the same to herself one day in the Delonese labs at the age of twelve. The medics had been terrified and furious from the expressions in her recollection. Good.
The child’s eyelids flickered again, then opened. “Sofi,” she breathed. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Sofi smiled in confusion. “You have?”
The girl nodded forcefully. “Shilo told me you’d come. He said so in my head.”
Sofi glanced around the room. “He did?” How? Is he here?
“But—” The child suddenly appeared about to cry. “Ambassador Ethos said things in my head too. Things to ask you that I didn’t like.”
Sofi’s chest clenched. She leaned over and embraced the child. “Shh. See Claudius and Danya there? He did that to them too. And we’re going to keep him from ever doing it again.”
She hoped.
She beckoned them over, then hurriedly rose and patted the girl’s head before moving on to the next sheeted child. And tried to keep her hands and heart steady.
Danya came behind to join the girl as Sofi went on to the next and the next and the next. Checking their pulses, pulling their blue feeds off.
She’d gotten through fifteen before she heard a soft gasp of awe. She swerved around to find one of the boys staring up at Miguel. His eyes huge. Round in recognition of who this most famous man on Earth was. “I saw you before,” the boy whispered. “When you got us from that room. And you’re sometimes on the tele. I know, because my friend’s mom likes you,” he added sheepishly.
“Well, she clearly has good taste.” Miguel squatted on the floor and, within moments, had six kids crawling on him.
“Speaking of taste, what do you kids think of my outfit?” Claudius interrupted. “Too much? Too little?” Sofi glanced back again to find he’d wrapped a sheet around himself like a diaper, and the children burst into chuckles.
“Just setting us all at ease,�
� he said at Sofi’s appraising eye.
“No, no. It suits you.” To which the kids started giggling all over again.
“Where are we going?” one of them asked.
“Are we actually going back to Earth this time?” said an older boy.
“See that girl there?” Miguel pointed at Sofi. “She’s pretty smart. Like, really smart. I bet she even knows how to fly a ship and get us home.”
Sofi frowned. Could she in fact fly this ship? She raised her brow. Huh. She actually hadn’t thought of that.
She couldn’t think of that now. She continued down the row, waking the rest of the kids.
It wasn’t until she reached the end of the room that the awareness dawned. Shilo wasn’t there.
She spun around and glanced at all their faces. Their beds. Their big eyes. And felt the panic begin to set in. It took a millisecond to dive back into the shuttle’s mainframe and rescan the three levels of hallways and blocks of rooms searching for any other dots or firewalls. Then rescan again.
Her chest couldn’t get enough air. Her lungs deflated too quickly. The map showed the human dots in this room. That was it. They were all here.
She stopped. She couldn’t breathe. Shilo. Isn’t. Here.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to—
Hands wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her into a body that smelled softly of cologne even after all this time. Miguel’s fingers brushed her cheek as if amid the crowded room and voices he knew what she was thinking.
“He’s here, Sof. You know that.”
“He’s not. Miguel, I’ve searched my head, I’ve gone over the ship repeatedly, and there’s no one else.” She peered up into his face, her voice barely more than a whisper on the verge of breaking, as the keening grief and fear rose inside her. Threatening to tear her apart.
His eyes studied her. Strode over her cheeks and chin and grief-stricken gaze. And simply said, “Then look again.”
She stalled. If he never spoke one word to Sofi again, or even went back to a life he’d previously lived, she’d still die a million deaths to defend him in this moment. For this gift.
He believed her.
She wasn’t crazy.
She kept her gaze on his face as she opened her mind and, instead of invading the ship’s portals, listened to them. To the wires, the electric nerves, the beat, beat, beats that represented each individual the tech security was tracking.
The heartbeats. Unified. Beating in sync. Like drones in a hive.
Except for one.
It was the faster, stronger beat of a heart being concealed by a slim-suit in ghosting mode.
Her eyes warmed and widened. She grabbed his arm and tore from the room—barely remembering to mentally force door codes to open for the hall, and then again for the one three sections down. It slid up in silence.
The lights flickered on.
And Sofi burst into tears.
27
SOFI
Sofi stood beside Shilo’s hoverbed and held her brother’s hand as she released the cord of wiry fingers from his skull.
He didn’t move. Didn’t seem to breathe. Didn’t blink.
They waited. Sofi moved her hand up his arm, to his chest, and tried to find his heartbeat as her fingers trembled in nervousness against his black slim-suit.
When her fingers began to shake harder, Miguel slipped his hand over hers. And she swore she could feel his chest clenching with the same awareness—that something was very wrong.
Shilo wasn’t waking.
“Miguel—”
The next second one eyelid popped up and a giant smirk slid across the kid’s face. “Admit it, you thought I was dead for a sec.”
Sofi shrieked.
Then punched his arm before falling on him laughing and weeping and telling him off with some very strong words that their mother would’ve been appalled by.
He sat up and tackled her with his awkwardly long twelve-year-old arms. His black eyes and brown skin and grin flashed just as golden as Sofi’s in the yellow lighting. “About time you figured it out. Thought I’d be using a cane by the time your brain kicked in.”
“I knew you were communicating with me.” Her smile shone through her tears. “You had me thinking I was hearing your ghost! You could’ve at least explained a little clearer.”
He shook his head and tugged her arm to pull himself closer. “It didn’t work like that. It took me forever to figure out what was going on—let alone how to find and connect with you. At first all I could do was send you images. Then when you reached the planet I could use a few words, but it was hard.”
“You shielded me and Miguel when those guards were looking for us. I heard your voice.”
Shilo smirked. “Nah, you shielded yourself when you tapped into the coding in that wall vid. I just guided you.” He leaned his head on her shoulder. “But it was like a haze, Sof. Like I was swimming in numbers and time and they kept asking me questions about you and me—and how our brains work.”
Sofi peered up at Miguel, whose eyes seemed suddenly quite misty. She swallowed and laid her cheek on her brother’s head. “And what’d you tell them?”
“That I had no freaking idea and they could go to—”
“Language, dude.”
“Says the person who just cussed me out for playing a joke.”
“That wasn’t a joke, it was sick. And—”
“But, Sofi, I like the way our brains work.” Shilo’s young face grew serious. “I like that I could reach out to you and know that you heard me.” He rubbed his cheek with his fist. “I don’t know what they did to us as kids, but I’m not scared of it anymore. Because it helped you find me.”
28
MIGUEL
When Miguel was five, his older neighbor informed him that only wusses cried and real men were stoic.
At the time he’d had no idea what stoic meant, but he’d gone with it because older neighbor boys were suave. More than that, he’d touted it—to the point he became the preeminent stoic noncryer who had mad skills over all the other wusses. A trait that came in handy during his early years after being taken in by the politicians.
At least that’d been true up until this moment. Now? Now he was standing in a room, with the woman he respected, as a tear slid down his cheek and off his chin and onto his rather soiled dress shirt. And surprisingly, he felt not one bit wussy or stoic. He simply felt . . . emotion.
Miguel stepped back, only to be seized in a hug from that awkward twelve-year-old boy, who looked strikingly like his sister. “No offense, but you used to be kind of a jerk. Good on you for fixing that, dude.”
Miguel actually had no idea what to say to that. So he simply patted Shilo’s back and said, “Me too, kid.”
“Excuse me.” One of the children stood timidly in the doorway, waiting. “Claudius said you might need to see this.”
Right. They were still on a shuttle. In space. With Ethos. Diablos. His head was still hazy.
The child led them out into the hall where a number of walls were flashing on like enormous telescreens, displaying a feed from Earth.
“This is being streamed right now,” Danya said softly.
Sofi’s face appeared on-screen and, beneath it, the banner “Imminent Terrorist Threat #1,” while the voice-over declared, “According to Delonese Lead Ambassador Ethos, the Earth ambassadors Alis, Miguel, Claudius, and Danya are still in the process of negotiations on a new trade deal—and are in high spirits as to the successful outcome of continued support in the Delonese and UWC relationship.”
“Where is Ethos?” Claudius asked with a “hey dude, glad you’re alive” nod at Shilo.
Miguel glanced at Sofi. She was already shaking her head. “I’ve internally checked everywhere on the ship. Even pulled back all ghosting mechanisms—”
“He took a small shuttle,” Shilo said. “I just scanned for it and a small pod left a half hour—”
“You can mentally acce
ss our tech too?” Danya lifted a brow.
“Not as well as Sofi. But it’s like I can hear her thoughts. When she’s tapped in, I can piggyback and look around.”
Danya stared at them both with the sharp edge of a smile. “They’re going to hate you both.” Then grew serious. “More than that, they’re going to—”
“Try to kill us.” Sofi nodded, then shrugged. “They’ve already reacted to my intrusion of their system, but I don’t think they’ve figured out how it’s happening yet. So, best of luck to them.”
The wallscreens lining the hall flashed to more vids of protestors, with rioters holding signs on different streets throughout the world. Miguel barely caught a glimpse of each scene before it moved on—but enough to see they weren’t protesting Sofi. They were demanding the Altered device be released for mass use.
It flipped to a new topic, showing excited faces awaiting the final FanFights. Many already lined up outside of the Colinade, holding their places to get in.
Miguel peered at the time on the screen—it was morning in Old Manhattan. The fights were set to begin in nine hours. The banner scrolling across the screen’s base blipped on and began announcing a countdown.
“With the announcement only five hours ago of this year’s voted-in contenders, the Fantasy Final Five is already making big waves,” the voice-over said. “Seen here are pics of our most important and jaw-drop-surprising contestants ever—Corp 13’s winning player, Matthers Smith; Corp 24’s vice president and interim CEO, Herron Zain; Icelandic Region Ambassador Alis; Corp 24’s i-reality star Nadine; and in the biggest shock of the day, Corp 30’s very own highly respected CEO, Inola Snow.”
“What?” Sofi turned, disbelief etched across her face.
“Are they joking?” Shilo frowned. “They can’t do that.” He glanced at Miguel. “Can they? I mean, she’s like a major world CEO. And she’s my mom. They can’t just force her in like that.” His tone was angry.