“Whatever,” I say. “Just let me sleep, then.”
Frustrated, Vandemeer deliberately reaches down and turns off his watch.
“You’re going to have to trust me,” he whispers. “Have you ever considered that I might benefit from your success, Emmett?”
I throw him a dark look. “Like, you want my money?”
Vandemeer laughs. “No, not like that. You might have noticed that Babel believes in healthy competition.”
“Healthy? I’m in a hospital bed.”
“You know what I mean,” he replies. “You aren’t the only ones competing.”
He can’t be serious. “What? Best doctor gets a bonus? How does that even work?”
“We were allowed to choose,” he says. His cheeks color in embarrassment.
“Choose?”
“I chose you and Kaya. We receive a large bonus if we are the primary caretaker of the top performers. The better our patients do, the more money we get.”
I nod. Of course. Babel’s fundamental belief is competition. Give a person an incentive and then remind him that someone else is working toward the same reward. They’ll both work twice as hard, and Babel only has to give out one prize at the end. It’s smart, but it means that the higher-ups don’t just see us as chess pieces. They see everyone as chess pieces. Vandemeer’s an actual flesh-and-blood doctor. He gave up other pursuits to have his strings pulled by Defoe on Genesis 11. All for a fat bonus. Deep down, he’s no different from me.
Vandemeer nods once and heads for the door. I call out just before he leaves.
“Do you know what happened? With the sword?”
Vandemeer’s features darken. He really doesn’t like that I got hurt. I know now that it’s more than just false concern. His success depends partly on mine. Maybe he really cares.
“Someone used a piece of nyxia to recreate the sword,” he answers. “It was swapped with the blunted version we keep in the armory. The copy wasn’t great, but it didn’t get noticed.”
“It was Jaime,” I say.
Vandemeer’s face betrays nothing. “They’re still investigating.”
Back to diplomacy and the careful, calculated responses of a Babel employee. He might want me to trust him, but he’s a little too much of a chameleon for that. I file away our conversation under W for Wishful Thinking. The door hisses open and shut as he leaves.
I close my eyes. In my mind, I can still see Jaime. The step forward into my punch, the forward thrust of his sword. I can also see the surprised look on his face. A stubborn part of me calls it acting. The realistic part of me thinks he didn’t have a clue. It’s not hard to trace the sword back to Roathy. He used it in the fight before. He could have manipulated it at any point, knowing he wasn’t actually going to fight Isadora. All he had to do was switch the blades and hand them to Jaime. I hate having so much anger and no direction for it.
Either way, I’m stuck in here. And they’re out there.
There’s no scoreboard in the med unit. I can only imagine the truckloads of points they’re all snagging in my absence. I have no idea how long I’ll be in here, how far behind I’ll be. I press a button that dims the harsh fluorescence overhead. In the softer glow, I open the English version of the book Kaya read to me. Apparently I asked Vandemeer for it when I was first brought down to get stitched up. I’ve never really read on my own. Too many cousins to babysit. Too many nights watching Moms sleep on the couch. Sitting there and listening for her next breath. And the next. And the next.
I never thought of escaping into a book.
So as I read, I’m surprised how quickly the words take me from the hospital bed and into the woods. I’m the one swinging into imaginary lands on hanging ropes. I like it there. But I don’t like it when I’m the one facing the bully in the school hallways. I don’t like it when my friends leave me and I’m all alone. The words of the book echo.
Words about being tricked, about being invited into a new world, only to be abandoned. The character in the book feels stranded, like an astronaut left alone. I wonder why Kaya hasn’t visited. Or Bilal? Setting the book aside, I flip the lights. I don’t like the words in the book or the way they make me feel. I close my eyes against the pain in my side and the ache in my heart.
Sleep comes eventually, mercifully.
DAY 25, 7:38 P.M.
Aboard Genesis 11
The slightest twist sends fire up my side.
“Careful,” preaches Vandemeer.
He has me move patiently through yoga exercises. Lunges and squats and deep breaths. Without painkillers, it’s a slow process. Far slower than I want it to be. Already six days have passed. Vandemeer refuses to tell me the scores, and the others don’t visit. Not even Kaya. I’m the lonely astronaut from the book.
“Why didn’t you just use nyxia to heal me?” I grunt. Vandemeer has me flat on my back, lifting my legs six inches off the floor. It’s second-level hell.
“Doesn’t work,” he says. “If nyxia causes a wound, we can’t use nyxia to heal it.”
“Seems limited.”
I sit up. He motions for me to spread my hands slowly while dipping my chin.
“It’s the way the substance works,” he says. “Nyxia was purposed to cut through you. If we try to use nyxia to heal the wound, the substance refuses. It’s smart enough to recognize its own work and it won’t undo that work. Make sense?”
“That’s creepy. You understand how creepy that is, don’t you?”
Vandemeer coaches me through a deep breath and a neck roll. “It’s an interactive substance. The matter is far more clever than Babel likes to admit. We don’t quite know how it all works, but we’re learning every day.”
“So the nyxia is all connected?” I ask.
“How do you mean?”
“You said it knows that nyxia was used to cut me open. So doesn’t that mean it knows what the other nyxia did? Like they’re connected somehow?”
“Or the new nyxia recognizes a change in your cells. We don’t really know.”
I shrug my shoulders back.
“Seems stupid to put that much faith in something you don’t understand.”
“Electricity, gasoline, vaccinations. You can’t make progress without taking risks.”
“I guess,” I say. “But are you sure we aren’t all going to get cancer or something?”
“Everything causes cancer,” Vandemeer deadpans. “Except for nyxia. We’ve tested it.”
“On what?”
He steeples his fingers. “Classified.”
I laugh. Then my ribs feel like they’re being kicked by a pair of giants. I collapse to the floor in pain and Vandemeer tosses a towel at me. “Great job today. You’re close.”
“I’m ready.”
He ignores me. “Let’s run a few more diagnostics tomorrow. Your range might still be limited. Fighting in the pit won’t be easy, but most of the other tasks should be fine. Sound good?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sounds good.”
“In the meantime,” Vandemeer says, tapping his data pad, “I have a surprise for you.”
A screen unfolds from a compartment in the wall. It looms over my hospital bed. I give Vandemeer a confused look. “You missed your first scheduled call home. I took the liberty of setting you up for one while you’re down here. The call will patch through in two minutes.”
“Are you serious?”
He smiles. “I’m serious.”
With that, he backs out of the room. I forgot that I’d get to see them. I hadn’t realized how much I missed them. I miss Moms handing me my book bag every morning and pulling me in by the neck to give me a kiss. I miss Pops reclined in his favorite chair, reading out box scores from yesterday’s games. We may have been poor, but at least I knew what I was waking up to every day. The next three years will be an experiment in the unexpected and unpredictable. I stare at myself in the reflection of the black screen. I’m not ready for this, for any of it.
Two minutes of waiting fee
ls more like thirty.
Then light flickers to a steady glow. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath. I try to settle against the too-soft pillows as pixels resolve and my pops fills the screen. I can’t help searching for Moms in the background, but she isn’t there.
A smile splits his face. “There he is. My boy.”
“Hey, Pops,” I say. “I miss you. You and Moms both.”
My face hurts from smiling, from trying not to cry. He apologizes for Moms. He doesn’t have to say why she’s not there, because I understand. It hasn’t been easy for her to travel, and I’d guess Babel’s communication center is a road trip for them. He’s quick to remind me that she loves me, to say the words she’d say if she weren’t so sick and tired and beat down. It guts me to know that just three weeks has put me a few million kilometers away from them. I hate that I can’t smell the factories or his thick-scented soap. Smiling, he rubs a finger and thumb over the edges of his mustache.
“What’s this?” he asks. “You working a little facial hair?”
I run a finger above my own identical lip. The stubble there is thicker now.
“You think I should shave it?” I ask.
“Up to you,” he says. “Just make sure you use shaving cream. Take a close look at which direction the hair is going and shave with the grain. Not against it. Got it?”
I nod. “Thanks, Pops.”
He’s all smiles. “So tell me about everything. How is it?”
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s hard, but we all started out not knowing anything.”
“So you’re doing well?”
“I was,” I say. “A few bumps since then, but I’m getting into my zone.”
He nods encouragingly. I don’t have the stomach to tell him that I almost died. All it would do is make him lose even more sleep.
“Well, it’s just the first few weeks. A season isn’t won or lost in the first couple games. Remember the Lions’ last run?”
“They started out 0–4,” I answer.
“People overreact. Thought the world was ending in Detroit. They made their run, stuck to their plan, and won it all.”
I’m nodding. He’s right. Even if I’m down a few thousand points, I still have a long way to go. The others are going to get sick, injured. All I have to do is keep steady. Be better than two other people. Do that, and I return to Detroit as a king. Thinking about Detroit just has me thinking about PJ, and my boys, and before long my heart’s hurting even more.
“Who’d they pick up in the draft?”
“This back out of Wisconsin,” he answers. “Great motor on him.”
“How we lookin’?”
He grins. “I think it’s either us or London this year. Should be a hell of a season.”
Hearing about Detroit fills my heart up. I ask for more.
“PJ keeps coming by,” he says. “Asking about you. He’s a good kid when he’s not trying to prove he’s unbreakable. I always think of him as the kid who jumped through our window.”
I grin. Like most of our childhood stories, the window thing was my fault. I pointed out that superheroes are born through trial. How could we know whether or not PJ was superhuman without a few experiments first? I had him run timed sprints, lift my dad’s weights, and jump through a window at full sprint. His parents kept him away as long as they could after that. Which was about a week. We were too close to separate. The memory feels like it happened to somebody else in some other life.
“I miss him.” I think about the fact that none of the other competitors have visited me. I thought of Kaya, Bilal, and Katsu as friends. But they haven’t visited, not once. “I miss all of you.”
“We miss you too. But right now, you have a mission,” he reminds me. “You work hard and keep your head up and we’ll be right here when you get back. All right?”
I nod, but can’t quite meet his eyes. He believes in me more than I could ever believe in myself. “Pops,” I say. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything.”
I ask what’s been gnawing away at me. “Am I a bad person?”
The playfulness vanishes from his face. He looks at me like he’s checking for scars.
“Did someone tell you that? These Babel people?”
I shake my head. “No, I just feel it. I get so angry. At the other kids, at myself.”
“Emmett.” He says the name like a reminder of something forgotten. “You’re the best of me and you’re the best of her. Ever since you were little, that’s the way it’s been.”
“I don’t feel that way,” I say.
“You’re off in space fighting a war against nine other people. You can’t expect to always feel like yourself. Just don’t lose who you are. Are you a bad person? Of course not. Does that mean you’ll always do the right thing? Of course not. No one’s perfect.”
“I just want to win. More than anything.”
“Win or lose”—he shrugs, like they’re the same—“I’m proud of you. We all are.”
Would he be proud of me if he knew what I did to Roathy? Or how I provoked Jaime because he was different? I feel the shame bottlenecking in the narrow alleys of my heart.
“Hey, that reminds me,” he says. “Your moms started treatment. These doctors that Babel suggested are amazing. She—”
But the feed gutters out before he can give me a taste of more hope. I stare at my reflection in the blank screen. A lonely astronaut in the pitch. I lie back and snag my player from the bedside table. I scroll through songs for a while.
The one I choose has thick beats that blend at the beginning before smashing against each other in the chorus like titans. All my chaos runs into the music. I play the song three times, louder and louder, until all I can hear is music, the pulse and the beat.
DAY 28, 5:30 A.M.
Aboard Genesis 11
On the morning I’m scheduled to return to action, I wake up to a shadow in the doorway. Smooth as silk, Marcus Defoe glides into the room. I haven’t seen Defoe during my recovery. I look around for Vandemeer, but he’s gone. Defoe pauses at the foot of the bed.
“Back to full health?” he asks.
His tone makes it sound like we’re at a bus stop and he’s asking about the weather.
I nod. “I’m ready.”
“Good. You’re falling behind.”
Everything in me wants to ask how far. Or to tell him it isn’t fair, that I’ve been cheated. But he doesn’t care about that. It’s all a part of the game to him. I stay silent. I try to look unconcerned. I want him to believe I can make up every point. Secretly, I want his approval.
“I’m here on personal business,” Defoe says. He swipes his data pad and a door hisses open on my right. I’ve spent a full week in this room and I’ve never even noticed it. A Babel guard shoves a bound and hooded figure into the room. My heart thunders inside my rib cage. What is this?
The man’s legs buckle, and he falls to his knees on the floor of the med unit. Defoe unmasks him. Gray hair slicked with sweat. Pudgy, unshaved cheeks. I watch the blood trickle from his nose, dripping down to stain a white collar. He’s one of the attendants. I’ve never bothered to look at their faces. Except for Vandemeer, they’ve all been the same.
“Emmett,” Defoe says. “This is Dr. Karpinski. He attempted to have you killed.”
Everything inside me goes cold. I’m a moonless night, the darkest cave.
Karpinski whimpers. The sound stirs something darker and colder inside me. He’s stocky and well into his forties. Why would he want to kill me? Everything about this is wrong. He looks like a tortured soul, but I don’t care. I want him to be punished for what he did.
Defoe’s watching me.
“He tweaked the footage afterward, but the trail inevitably led back to him. He’s Roathy and Isadora’s caretaker. He hoped to help them by fixing the competition.”
My hand instinctively settles on the spot where the sword plunged past my ribs. Karpinski doesn’t ask for mercy or forgiveness
. He just breathes thick breaths and stares at me with blank raven eyes. Defoe tosses something. It slides to a rattling stop at the foot of my bed. A sword. Karpinski’s dead eyes flicker down to it.
“This is how things will work, Emmett,” Defoe explains. “In China, Dr. Karpinski would be tried and executed. In most of the United States, he’d be given a life sentence without parole. Were he an Adamite, he’d be Gripped to the Eternal Tasks of the Maker.”
My mind won’t stop spinning. What does Defoe want? I try not to look at the sword at my feet. I try not to think about how it might feel in my empty hands.
“And while there are several international treaties regarding the fair use of space, we’re a little outside of everyone else’s jurisdiction. This is our territory, and our laws are different.”
“How?” I ask coldly.
“We’ve activated Primal Law in this case. Do you know what that means?”
“First. It means first.”
“Precisely. In this case, the first affected. The chief offended. Dr. Karpinski planned and executed an attempt on your life. You are the first. Thus, the judgment lies with you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Defoe nods at the sword. “Do you think that Dr. Karpinski deserves to die?”
My fists tighten. “Yes.”
“Then swing the sword.”
I bend down to pick it up. The handle is nyxia, but the blade isn’t. Light shivers down its silver length as I hold it out. Karpinski deserves to die, but I don’t know if I deserve to kill. The blade weighs so little; it would be easy. I fix my eyes on him.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
He looks at the ground. “They made me do it. They threatened me. I didn’t know.”
“Dr. Karpinski forgets he’s an adult,” Defoe says. “Even if his recruits asked him to do this, he made his own choices. He’s the responsible party.”
I look back at Defoe. “What happens if I don’t do it? Will he go to trial?”
Defoe shakes his head. “Primal law. If the most offended can forgive, so can we.”
“So, what? He just gets locked away?”
“Of course not,” Defoe replies, like it’s obvious. “He returns to duties.”
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