by Anna Vera
And for the first time ever, it occurs to me that my league could actually disappear like all the others—“in less than thirty seconds”—and how would I handle that?
Have they already been debriefed on PIO Morse?
Likely, a quiet part of me says. And if you go blabbing to them about it, you’ll only look like a jealous fool . . . and a snoop, who’s read a document so top secret, admitting to knowing about it could forfeit her own life . . .
No, I won’t tell them I know about it.
I’ll keep it to myself like everything else.
i haven’t spoken to anybody in my league for three days.
Merope stopped by last night—an act of desperation that led her to wasting nearly thirty minutes rapping her knuckles loudly against my pod’s doors, despite the late hour. I’d sat up ramrod straight in bed, heart pounding.
Let her in, I’d begged myself. But I didn’t.
Eventually she stopped knocking and resorted to pleading and bargaining, and I almost caved in then, but only didn’t for fear of looking like a total imbecile.
Later, I told myself, I’ll tell her I wasn’t even in my pod. That I would’ve answered had I been.
When she stopped pleading and faded into total silence on the other side of my doors, I went still. I hadn’t realized how it’d feel to hear her give up. In a fit of masochism, I’d leapt up and darted to the doors, pressing an ear against them to listen to each and every one of her footsteps as they walked away, widening the gap between us.
And I could’ve stopped her. I could’ve opened those doors with a press of a finger and invited her in, and we could’ve talked all this petty bullshit over.
But honestly, if I’d done that, what would I have said?
That I’ve been avoiding everybody intentionally?
How pathetic.
We’ve been all but birthed from the same womb, and yet this is what’s standing between us. My shame. My pride. My bitter and unyielding jealousy.
I’ve built up a wall without realizing it. Instead of spending my final days with my league, I’ve been wasting away under the scalding afternoon sun with Huckleberry.
My time outdoors has gleaned a bronze to my pale cheeks and a few streaks of white highlights in my silver hair. I’ve grown used to dirt under my nails, the feeling of the hot afternoon sun seeping through the silky weight of my hair and rolling down my scalp like hot wax.
And despite looking like I’ve accepted this as my future, I haven’t yet. It’s still dreamlike. Maybe I’m still in denial. I can’t shake off the pang of loss; the memory of a gun weighing down my palms, the cold bite of its steel. Like a phantom limb, I feel like it’s there, but it isn’t. And won’t ever be again.
But my body still aches for it.
I’ve reached my final day of training. Just as I’m getting my potting tools put away, Huckleberry approaches me, nodding at the book at my side.
“Who’s your favorite character?” he asks.
I dust off my hands, cracking open the book to where my bookmark is placed: Much Ado About Nothing. “I like Beatrice.”
“She’s a strong female character—unlike her sister, Hero.”
“Hero is strong in her own ways.”
“Perhaps,” Huckleberry argues, wiping sweat off his forehead in the dying sunlight. Never before did I foresee myself in a gray groundskeeper uniform discussing Shakespeare’s Works with some old guy without any friends, but here we are.
He looks at me softly. “Congratulations. Starting tomorrow, you'll begin working the grounds independently.”
“Independently?” I chirp.
Huckleberry looks over his beefy shoulder. “You’re going to be responsible for the Plantation. It’s a great starting job, caring for all the plants, the crops. You’ll do well.”
“But I . . . I’ll be working alone, then?” Huckleberry gives me a solemn nod as he starts walking away. I shout, sounding more desperate than I’d like, “What about returning your book?”
“Keep it,” he says. And he doesn’t turn to look back.
4
i finish waiting for the irrigation system to run its full course, offering the supervision required of me between the dusty pages of Shakespeare’s Works.
When the lawn is so wet it’s soggy, I crank off the irrigation system, place my book aside, and raise a hand to shade my eyes from the beams of buttery sunlight.
I can see Earth, a looming ball of indigo patches and jagged continents, topped in a swirl of clouds.
I’ll never get there.
I’ll live and die, and never get there.
Shaking off a grimace, I finish my work—rolling up ropes of green hoses, storing equipment—and return to the new locker that I’ve been assigned in one of the lower levels of the spaceship, where other unqualified-to-fight specimens go. We’re all corralled together in a locker-by-locker neighborhood of despair.
My closest neighbor is a girl who’s always covered in an oil-slick layer of black grease. She’s a technician, keeping the cogs and joints of the ship lubricated, working alongside an assembly of approximately twenty others.
We don’t normally bump into each other, but today I leave the arena a little later than usual. Her hair is black and coiled in a tight mini-bun, kept well out of her bubbly, round face.
She was in Pavo’s league before getting disqualified for what they called an “irrelevant skillset”—anything that can’t actively help others, or kill the Muted—and for being mentally “unsound.”
Naturally, we get along well.
I snag her eyes as I approach my locker, dragging off a pair of dirty gloves. “Nova.”
“Eos,” she says by way of greeting while slamming the door of her locker with a little too much enthusiasm. I see she’s crying.
I stare, eyes pinched. “Bad day?”
Nova regards me miserably. “My league received their official deployment date.” I raise my brows. “Twenty-four hours from now and they’re going to be on Earth.”
“Lucky bastards,” I growl, returning my eyes to my locker.
“But it’s not just that . . . There’s another thing.” She leans on my locker, speaking as I dig through it. “But you have to swear you won’t breathe a word of it.”
“You must be desperate, to be confiding in me.” I give her a long stare before indulging her. “Okay. Go for it.”
“Something really bad is happening.”
“How bad?”
“The last four leagues deployed have disappeared as soon as they stepped foot on Earth’s soil.”
I wet my lips, suddenly fully alert. “Disappeared?”
PIO Morse.
Four leagues disappearing, presumed dead.
But how does Nova know this?
“Their microchips suggest they died.”
I try to disguise my panic. “Suggest they died?”
“The cause isn’t clear.” Nova scrapes a nail against grime on my locker absently. “Their organs failed simultaneously . . .”
“What could cause that?”
“Nobody knows,” Nova says, eyes gravitating to mine like two dull moons. “But I don’t think it’s the Muted.”
I raise my eyebrows in a yeah-I-don’t-think-so kind of way.
“The Muted are vicious killers, but not even they are capable of killing that quickly—the way a dose of poison, or decapitation, or a bomb going off might.”
“Right,” I agree grimly. “Who told you all this?”
“My brother.”
“Oh.” Just then, I remember—her brother is Ares, the boy who sparred Apollo before and lost. “He’s the specimen whose skillset is manifesting fire?”
Nova gives a slow, disdainful nod.
Nova and Ares are two of the only biological siblings birthed here on the Ora, a
ll because of Ares’s skillset. With an ability as rare as his, they tried blending the same genetics twice to produce a sibling with an equally special power.
But when Nova was born with eyes capable of seeing colors outside the known spectrum—an ability entirely irrelevant to the act of killing the Muted—it was a huge letdown.
So now she’s a technician, and her brother is going to be one of the biggest contributors to our Purpose in recorded history.
“I’m afraid for Ares,” she says, chewing a nail. “What if he and his league disappear like all the others?”
“Pavo has it under control. Those other four leagues were from other branches.” I arch a brow. “Everybody knows we’re the best branch in all of the Ora. Whatever it is that happened to the others, won’t happen to us.”
But despite how convincingly I say so, fear runs an icy finger down my spine. What could possibly lurk at Earth’s surface, so ferocious and menacing as to be capable of killing more than one trained specimen simultaneously?
It couldn’t be native-borns. We’re allies.
So what could it be?
I store my work things in my locker, closing it. “Let’s meet tomorrow, shall we?” I offer casually. “I’m going to go ask a few questions; I won’t say much, and I’ll only speak to those I trust.”
“You’re going to talk to your ex-league, you mean?”
I grit my teeth at ex-league, then nod. “They leave in just three weeks,” I add softly. Voicing it aloud makes me feel unwell.
“Tomorrow,” she agrees. I pat her on the shoulder by way of saying goodbye, but she stops me, gripping my sleeve with a startling wildness that stops me cold.
“What is it?” I say.
“Have you ever wondered . . .” She stops, pursing her lips as though they were speaking without permission, and stares at the fire alarm in the corner. With a shake of her head, she adds, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.” I nod slowly, plagued by the strangest sense of utter foreboding as I leave.
I stroll absently through the Ora’s dark hallways, lights sputtering and dying overhead as I pass. What’s killing them? What’s waiting for us?
Specimens churn in surges as they pulse through the arteries of the spaceship’s innards, flowing down hallways and spewing into others, like blood through veins.
I find myself in front of my pod all too soon.
It occurs to me that I won’t be sleeping here another week from now. I’m being relocated to a lower-level pod, closer to the lockers pertinent to my ranking.
Soldiers are reveled, located on the main-level, while the rest of us lurk in the shadows, tucked away in the spaceship’s bowls, ignored and unappreciated.
I’ve been avoiding this place, but I will miss it.
I press a fingertip against the glass pad and the doors open with a swift sigh of air, abandoning the shadow-cloaked throat of the hallway in favor of my room. Not a second later, I’m startled by a shift in my periphery.
I freeze.
Merope gets off my bed, where she was sitting. The springs wine and jiggle, still compressed by Lios, who remains seated at the foot of the mattress.
Cyb is leaning against the window, looking out.
I back up a few steps.
Merope’s hands are in her pockets. “Don’t get mad.”
They’re dressed in deployment uniforms: black fabric that feels foamy to the touch, tucked under native-born attire so they blend in upon arrival. They have guns holstered, ammunition in bags, an excited edge to their demeanors—the way all specimens do when they’re readying to deploy.
I am paralyzed by jealousy.
“Why would I be mad?”
“You’ve been avoiding us.” Cyb’s grey eyes look colorless in the dim lighting. “Don’t you want to say goodbye?”
“Goodbye? Why so soon?”
“We could be deploying as early as tomorrow.”
“What?” A spate of fear takes flight in my chest and cracks like erupting fireworks. “I thought you were deploying three weeks from now?”
Yet again, I think of PIO Morse. Their Purpose is special and extraordinary—they won’t be following typical deployment protocol or procedures.
I chew a lip, realizing if they deploy tomorrow, it would be in anticipation of Pavo’s league disappearing like the four other leagues before it.
Merope walks closer, violet eyes edged, regarding me with open scrutiny. “What do you know, Eos?”
She knows I know.
Is there anything I can hide from her skillset?
Lios and Cyb swivel their heads sideways, beholding me with such sterility, an outsider would assume the four of us were a group of strangers—not best friends, not family.
When I don’t reply, Merope grips my wrist in hers, her hold as strong as a vice. Though she’s able to detect us Empathetically from a distance, her skillset ability amplifies with physical touch.
Every skillset feels different. Apollo’s, so far, has felt the most unusual. While Onyx’s feels like a smear of white noise, his was a pounding heartbeat.
Merope’s feels like dipping your toes into hot water, having a wave of it roll up your legs and seep into your body.
I try pulling my wrist away. “Don’t read me!”
“Why not?”
“All you have to do is ask and I’ll answer.”
“Answer, then!” she snaps in a very un-Merope-ish way.
I grab a fistful of my gray uniform, twisting it nervously in my hands, drowning in the impatient quiet.
Admitting what I know is also admitting I didn’t tell them.
I’ve been so obsessed with myself—my path, my career—and being unjustly angry at my league for getting what I’ve always wanted . . .
I can’t believe I justified keeping PIO Morse to myself.
“I know about PIO Morse,” I say at last.
“What!?” Lios exclaims reflexively. But when I try to repeat what I’ve just said, I realize I can’t. It’s as though my jaws have been glued shut by an invisible force.
Because they have been glued shut by an invisible force.
Cyb’s skillset.
She glares at me so intensely, I feel like I’ve got a thousand accusatory fingers pointing at me from all directions.
“You do not,” she whispers gravely, “need to repeat that.”
Lios’s jaw tightens. “Eos, I don’t know how you found out about our mission, but you cannot—cannot—let anybody else know you’re in on this. Do you understand?”
Cyb’s skillset releases; I rub my stiff jaw.
Merope asks, “How did you find out?”
“When I went to turn in my termination order, Pavo’s office was empty, so I let myself inside—”
“You went inside?” Cyb echoes, appalled.
“Just to lay the slip on his desk. But that’s when I saw he had a letter open, and it wasn’t in Mentor’s Language.” I lift my shoulders apologetically. “Couldn’t help myself.”
“You read it,” Lios says, shocked and impressed. Cyb lets out a long-winded hiss of breath. “I can’t believe Pavo would be so careless as to leave it out.”
“Well?” Merope interjects, absently rubbing a thumb over her inner wrist—scarred lightly by a microchip implant, a true mark of a soldier. “What did the letter say?”
“The basics,” I say cryptically.
“Which are?”
“Pavo’s group is deploying first. It said PIO Morse’s success was vital to the Project—and if it isn’t achieved by our branch, it’ll be passed on to another.”
When nobody replies, I realize this is old news.
“And,” I add breathily, “if Pavo’s league fails, you’re the ones who’re going to replace his league on Earth. Immediately.”
A deathl
y stillness ensues.
Cyb cocks her head, lips a rictus of hopelessness. “It’s kind of strange, isn’t it, that there is even a need for a backup league in the first place?”
This is when I realize they don’t know everything.
I’ve got to tell them.
“PIO Morse isn’t an easy Purpose to fulfill,” I confess, a raw edge to my voice, looking at Merope—every part of her coiled and ready to spring.
“You think there’s actually a chance Pavo’s league will fail?”
“There’s a very, very real chance,” I tell her.
“How is that?”
“The last four leagues, all from Branch 12, have failed to complete this mission. They are believed to have died almost immediately after landing on Earth.”
Lios rakes a nail over his stubbled chin. “From what?”
I echo Nova’s earlier response. “Nobody knows, but it killed them in a way a Mute isn’t capable of doing. We’re left without a single clue as to what it is—”
“Except,” Merope interjects suddenly, “that whatever it is, it doesn’t want our Purpose fulfilled.”
Cyb addresses Lios. “What could it be?”
He doesn’t answer. None of us do. If the Muted aren’t to blame, it’s impossible to say what is—unless it’s the native-borns trying to kill us, but why would they? They don’t know all the details of the Project. They only know that specimens exist and are meant to help protect them.
We’re supposed to have as little interaction with them as possible for this reason, but what if somebody, specimens from another ship, slipped up? What if they told the native-borns we are living safely in space while everybody else dies?
Even though we’re trying to save the world, would that even matter to them? Would they be so furious with the Project for keeping some people alive, and leaving the rest, that they’d go so far as to kill specimens?
If we die, you die—that kind of thing?
I clear my throat. “Have you been briefed on the details?”
Merope spits an angry sigh. “We’re not to be briefed until thirty minutes prior to when we’re set to deploy. They don’t want to risk anybody else finding out what we’re doing.”