by E. E. Giorgi
I stare in my sister’s eyes and see Dad. They’re the same color and shape.
“I miss him so much,” I say.
Akaela nods and hugs me while Ash squirms against my chest. I take him from her arms so I can look away and not show the pain in my face. My bionic eyes don’t cry. Maybe it would hurt less if I could shed tears.
Akaela sends a nervous look to the crowded hall and then stiffens and averts her eyes.
“Is it them up there?” she whispers.
I know exactly whom she’s talking about: Yuri and Cal, the evil brothers. They stand with their parents—both Kiva Members—next to the podium, away from the rest of the people. I can’t stand looking at their faces. Neither can Akaela.
“You’ve got to come out and tell the truth about what those two pieces of scum did to you,” I tell her. “If nobody makes them pay for it, they’ll come back for revenge.”
Mom sewed Akaela’s sail. The gliding frame is still at the shop, under repairs, but Akari, Lukas’s uncle, is optimistic they’ll be able to reinstall it. But my sister’s biggest wound is inside, I can see it in her eyes. She wouldn’t even talk about it if I didn’t prod it out of her mouth.
“Look,” she hisses, her voice low so our words get lost in the general murmur filling the hall. “Tahari pardoned your Wela on the basis that what you did wasn’t stealing but retrieving evidence that Uli was a traitor and a murderer. He hasn’t officially spoken about how you came out of Wela.”
“He’s pardoned us for that too,” I reply. “He doesn’t need to say it, but it’s pretty clear.”
“Have you not listened to what people are saying? Everyone’s talking about this. They have a hard enough time believing somebody like Uli could be capable of murdering so many people. If it comes out that three kids breached the sanctity of the Kiva, all hell will break lose.”
“It doesn’t have to come out. Tahari’s not like Uli. He won’t betray us.” Funny how I just said that, and yet I’m not one hundred percent sure myself. Once that trust is breached, you can never look at the people around you the same way.
Akaela shakes her head. “I just don’t want to push it. Yuri and Cal’s parents are both Kiva Members. If I start making accusations, people will dig further into the story. Right now they all believe we confronted Uli and that’s how Wes ended up badly injured and I almost got chopped up on Uli’s autopsy table. They think Tahari awakened you from Wela.”
“Lukas and I went straight to him as soon as we got back to the Tower,” I say. “Nobody else saw us. Our secret is safe with Tahari.” If I can convince my sister, I can convince myself too.
“If I talk about what Yuri and Cal did to me that night, I’ll have to explain what the heck I was doing out flying in the middle of the night. They’ll probably come back with more accusations of stealing.”
I let Ash climb up my shoulder and squeeze my sister’s arm. “I can’t believe you’d rather do nothing about this. For somebody who knows no fear—”
“I’m not scared of them.” She narrows her eyes. “Believe me, I will get back at them and this time they’ll get what they deserve. But I do fear for you, Athel. The Mayakes aren’t good at forgetting.”
The murmurs from the crowd quiet down.
“I think Tahari’s about to start,” Akaela says.
The excitement is palpable.
I nod. “It’s going to be an epic speech.”
I know it will. The Mayake people have learned a painful lesson today. Survival doesn’t just happen. You have to conquer it, fight for it.
I turn to Lukas, still seated on the floor with his eyes glued to his data feeder, and prod him, hoping he’ll forget his video game and pay attention to Tahari instead. “What do you think, Lukas? Isn’t it going to be epic?”
Lukas has been very withdrawn for the past forty-eight hours, devoting his attention almost exclusively to video games. I can’t blame him. At least Akaela and I still have our mother. He’s got nobody left but his uncle.
Mom squeezes past Akaela and me and squats down next to Lukas. She wraps her brand new hand around his shoulder and prods him to stand up and come closer so he can listen to Tahari’s speech. I think she’s officially adopted him.
Tahari steps to the podium and clears his throat. “Brothers and sisters,” he says, and then looks around the audience with dark, hard eyes. “Are we really brothers and sisters?”
The words are harsh. They hit home. People look at one another, their heads bowed, their shoulders slouched.
“Never before had we doubted our identity,” Tahari says. “We are brothers and sisters, have been for many generations. Yet today we face our worse enemy: ourselves. When betrayal comes from our own, who are we going to fight?”
Nods of approval weave through the crowd.
Tahari clasps the edge of the podium. “Uli was one of us, one of our very best. He was in charge of many of our implants and looked over their correct functioning. Believe me when I say he used to be a good man.”
A general uproar welcomes his last words. He raises a hand and presses on with his point. “Uli was indeed a good man when I started working with him, many years ago. Greed took over him. Greed and the quest for immortality. Despite our technology, we’re still very much human. We’re mortal, and our defects go beyond our genes or limbs or malformed bodies.” Tahari punches his chest and lower his voice. “For as long as we feel envy and hatred and greed we are defective, and those are things no implant will ever fix.”
A voice rises from the crowd. “But Tahari, we’re dying.” Lukas’s uncle is speaking. “Our technology is aging, our implants are no longer adequate.”
“Yes,” Tahari replies, raising his voice over the murmur of approval. “You’re right. If we don’t do something about it, we will die. In fact, we shall die at our own hand. If we don’t act now, we will see brothers kill their own brothers in the name of survival. It’s happened in the past and we’ve just witnessed it now. The city of Astraca, the home our fathers built over a century ago, was destroyed by the Gaijins. But we, the Mayake people, will rise over such despicable deeds. Instead of turning against one another, we will stick with one another and fight together.”
His last words send a vibe of energy through the crowd. Men raise their fists and nod. Women hug one another. Lukas lifts his eyes from the screen of his data feeder for the first time.
“Today,” Tahari says, his voice louder. “Today I say to all of you: we will fight. We will march to the Gaijins and demand back what has belonged to us from the beginning: our technology, our lives, our survival. Today, my fellow brothers and sisters, I declare war on the Gaijins. We will bring down their fire factory and either succeed or die fighting.”
The uproar is complete now. People cry, hug, pat one another on the back.
Mom has tears in her eyes. I know what she’s thinking. She’d probably hoped for a peaceful resolution. I know that’s what Dad would’ve wanted too—that’s why he’d volunteered to talk to the Gaijins in peace.
I’m sorry, Dad. The time for a peaceful resolution is gone, now.
I squeeze Ash to my chest thinking, This is the time. I’m ready.
I put an arm around Mom’s narrow shoulders and whisper in her ear, “If we don’t do this, Dad will have died in vain.”
She nods. She’s still crying, but she nods and hugs me back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Akaela
It’s raining ashes again. It always does when we’re mourning, as though the sky knows of our pain and sheds its own tears. I still believe it even though I know the ashes don’t come from the sky. They come from the Gaijins’ factory.
I ride Taeh all the way to the Bridal Veil Waterfalls.
Uli took it all away from us. Our faith in mankind, our trust, our loved ones. He didn’t even leave us a body to mourn, only a pile of scattered bones and a handful of used electronics that he was planning on recycling and reselling.
I let go of Taeh’s reins
and cup my hands around the one thing I’ve got left of my father: the piece of metal Kael brought back from his expedition to the Gaijins’ factory. We thought he’d gotten it from the factory, when instead he’d collected it from a pit near the landfill. Our men are still excavating the site where Uli dumped their biological parts. They’re also investigating the deaths of the past six months, all due to battery failure, most likely caused by Uli himself so that he could harvest their implants.
I squeeze Dad’s piece of metal in my hands, then return it to my pocket. Did Uli act alone? Or did he have accomplices, other traitors lurking among the meek Mayake people?
I can’t get rid of the thought, just like I can’t get rid of the last memory I have of my father, his blurred face made of dancing lights, telling me, “You’re special, Akaela. Wake up, Akaela, wake up.”
You saved my life, Dad. I couldn’t save yours, but you saved mine.
He told me I’m special.
I have technology that no other Mayake has. Technology worth killing for, Dad said. He was right. Mom told me Uli knew about my special implants, the only one my parents had entrusted with the secret.
The breeze picks up, gray ashes swirling in the air like snowflakes that have long lost their charm. I inhale and swallow the pain, my eyes dried up of tears.
I kick and Taeh sprints to a trot. The mesa sprawls in front of me. Up here, the river is at its widest point. It spreads into a U and then drops into the waterfalls. I inhale the mist rising from the falling water and feel the breeze on my face. A new memory replaces the sad ones, Dad taking me to ride out on the mesa, when I was little, and teaching me how to fly.
My heart quickens.
I love you, Dad, I think. I love you.
I prompt Taeh, and as we descend down to the riverbanks, I push her to a gallop. And so we run, the two of us, our movements in sync, toward the waterfalls, wind whipping ashes against my face. My sweet Taeh trusts me so much that she indulges me. I let go of the reins, set my feet on top of the saddle and spread my arms.
“Go, Taeh, go!”
The flap between my shoulder blades clicks open and my sail—dutifully fixed and sawed back in one piece by my mother—stretches out and swells.
This is how you taught me, Dad.
He’d hold my hand as he’d push the horse to a gallop and watch me soar right above his head, never too far, never letting go of me, just enough to feel the wind carry me.
I stand on my horse’s back and, right as Taeh swerves at the edge of the waterfalls, I dive.
For you, Dad, I think, jumping off the cliff and into the waterfall mist. This jump is for you.
~ END OF BOOK 1 ~
Thank you for reading! Please consider
leaving a review: it helps the author
and it helps other readers.
Thank you!
Also from E.E. Giorgi
CHIMERAS (A Track Presius mystery)
MOSAICS (A Track Presius mystery)
GENE CARDS (A Skyler Donohue mystery)
Set in the Apocalypse Weird world:
IMMUNITY
Subscribe to the author’s newsletter
to receive exclusive free stories and be
notified of forthcoming books:
http://eepurl.com/SPCvT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Akaela is my first venture in the Young Adult genre. After many years writing adult thrillers like Chimeras and Gene Cards, I decided I wanted to create something my kids would enjoy. Akaela is dedicated to them, the love of my life and my hope for the future.
As always, none of my work would be possible without the help and support of my fellow author friends and beta readers: many thanks to John L. Monk, author of the Jenkins Cycle, for lending me his amazing editing skills; to Carol Kean, book critic at Perihelion Science Fiction, for her heart-warming enthusiasm and for shaking her fist at me every time I Italianize English or Anglicize Italian; to Kat Fieler, for her invaluable feedback and support; to Sam Point, because when everything else fails I can always count on him for the right answer; to Moira Katson, author of The Light and Shadow Trilogy, and Chris Pourteau, author of Unconditional and The Serenity Strain, for reading the very first version of Akaela; to David Walters for his incredible support and for making sure all my commas are in place; to Karen Alaniz for reading everything I write no matter the genre; to Debbie Stapleton for catching all my plot holes; to Teresa Cypher and Carolyn Fahm for reading not once but twice; to Emily, Seraphine, Jennifer, Jessie, and Elisa for being my very first Young Adult readers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
E.E. Giorgi is a scientist, a writer, and a photographer. She spends her days analyzing HIV data, her evenings chasing sunsets, and her nights pretending she's somebody else.
BLOG
PHOTOGRAPHY
GOODREADS