The Last Hope

by Krista Ritchie

I pop the tape in and press play.

  “It’s Day One,” Prinslo says. Hum and static fill the background. Her voice is like gravel, and it becomes worse and worse in each recording. Until the very last, I always have to strain my ears to pick up each word.

  The wind. The cold. It was painfully scarring her vocal cords.

  She continues, “I’ve just landed in the Free Lands. It’s colder … much colder than we originally thought. I’m struggling to make it into Grenpale. But I must.”

  Originally, the plan had been to leave Mykal in Bartholo, but there was still that problem. Mykal was a Babe. He would dodge his deathday at eight years old. Too young to have that happen in a crowded city. So Prinslo did the only sensible thing: she took him to the villages where there weren’t any Influentials around.

  But she faced another problem.

  There aren’t any orphanages in Grenpale.

  There was nowhere to leave him without drawing even more suspicion.

  “Day Two,” Prinslo says in the recording. Slight pain drips along her voice, and she chokes on certain words. “I had to swap the babies. Moura’s child for a little boy in the village. His own mother just died. Kickfall … was supposed to be his last name … I heard.” She sniffs, but not from the cold. “The Saltarian baby—I couldn’t … I didn’t want to take him to the city. He’ll serve a better life on Earth. My escape pod, the one I have for emergencies … for myself. He’s inside. I set the coordinates for Earth for … the cottage on the hills. M should know what that means. I’m sorry … I’m so sorry.”

  Moura’s cottage.

  I arrived there.

  Moura used to give me ancient comics, ones with superheroes. She’d tell me that I was like Earth’s superhero. An alien who appeared on a planet, come to save the human race. But it was something to make me feel good. Because my birth home wasn’t destroyed. My father hadn’t died. I didn’t just end up on Earth by coincidence. I was sent there.

  Yet I still fell in love with the people.

  Still wished to fight for them.

  “Day Seven,” Prinslo says. “I’ve finally made it into the city. I dropped off Hull’s baby boy in Yamafort. On the steps of an orphanage. I waited out of sight until I saw a young woman open the door. She took him inside. He’s safe. I know he’s safe.”

  After that, communications with Prinslo became less active.

  “Day Ninety-two.” Her voice is hoarse. “I’m still in the Free Lands. It’s safer here. No one around. I don’t think I could last undetected in the cities or villages. But it’s cold … less casia. I can’t see the stars. The sky.” She cries.

  Moura told me that homesickness plagued her. Among other things. Loneliness. Isolation.

  “Day One hundred and thirteen. I can feel her kicking in my belly. She’s strong. I won’t be able to make it to Yamafort this time. I’ll have to leave her in Bartholo.”

  I traced the cities on a map. A rough sketch of the Saltarian countries. Earth only had intelligence of a handful of the cities, and Moura scolded me when I embellished some of the drawings with extra trees. You don’t know that belongs there, Moura reminded me. Make it right or not at all.

  I made it right.

  “Day One hundred and fifty,” Prinslo rasps. “She’s beautiful. My baby girl. She’s beautiful. She’s gone.” She cries harder this time. “I left her in Bartholo … an orphanage. The birth went well. I cut the umbilical cord myself and kept her warm in the hut. She’ll be okay. I think she’ll be okay.” Static clings to the recorder, and the first time I heard it, I always thought she cut out. But minutes later, her voice is back and deeper: “Now begins the waiting. I’m going to check up on them every three hundred days. Year Eight, I’ll find Moura’s boy in Grenpale. He’ll be the first I talk to and I’ll tell him the truth. Of his purpose. Then we’ll go from there.”

  It seemed easy. Hide out in the Free Lands. But I can’t even begin to imagine what she endured out there.

  “Day … Two hundred … sixty-one.” Prinslo’s voice is barely distinguishable over the hoarseness and guttural rasp. “I can’t … seem to catch … it’s … so … cold.”

  That was the last recording.

  After a year with no communication, she was declared dead.

  Court’s and Mykal’s birth fathers were both C-Jays and volunteered to carry out the rescue operation for the three children. But they never made it to the planet. A Saltare-2 battlecraft intercepted their approach, and they were shot down in the galaxy.

  After that, Moura told me that too much risk was involved. No more rescues. No more attempts to even send someone else down to be a new liaison. The Earthen Fleet had already lost too much.

  It was decided within days.

  The three children were failed assets.

  Moura said that they could have used different Death Readers when they first pricked their babies, but they purposefully used the same device on all three. Knowing this act would permanently change their kids’ body chemistry.

  In the event that Prinslo died—in the event that their children would be abandoned and lost—they knew there was a chance, a very small chance that their kids would find one another after they dodged their deathdays.

  Becoming lifebloods was the last hope of their survival.

  Numbers.

  They needed numbers. And three was better than one.

  Years went by, and I sometimes returned to the recordings to remind myself that I wasn’t alone. There were … had been … maybe still are three people who’ve experienced the same as me. Growing up on a foreign planet, surrounded by people different from me.

  But most of the time, the story of the three lost children was just a forgotten memory. Something that passed by without notice. Because the chances of survival after they dodged their deathdays—it’d be too small, too inconceivable.

  If someone didn’t find them and kill them for it, they’d die from the madness of not knowing why, or the harsh cruelty of the weather.

  To find them alive.

  That was the biggest surprise of all.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Franny

  They left us to die on an enemy planet.

  Failed assets. Chills keep nipping my body at those two words.

  Failed. Assets.

  I botch most every plan I’ve ever made, but gods, our parents botched this one good. I still hear Prinslo in the pit of my ears. Raspy and dying out, my mother’s voice stolen by the cold.

  “She’s beautiful. My baby girl. She’s beautiful. She’s gone.”

  My eyes glass and sear, not understanding if I’m sad or furious or just relieved at finally knowing the truth. And I imagine a time where we were on the same planet together. Me and her. So close, but only for a little while.

  Now I understand why the admirals were scared of us learning this. Why they’d made Stork promise to keep their dying wish right before they traded their lives for ours. They were worried we’d hate them if we knew the truth, and if our loathing was strong enough, there was a chance we wouldn’t even want to save Earth.

  If they’re with the gods, at least they can rest knowing those fears didn’t come to fruition.

  I can’t dwell solely on the past, not now at least. What the eight of us do next will decide everything: our future, the future of the human race.

  And the future of Earth.

  I was a Purple Coach driver. I was a nobody to most, and now I’m about to make a choice that affects two thousand human lives and the life of this baby and all of us.

  We all know that we have two painful choices. Continue the mission as planned and bring the baby to Earth. Saving a planet and its people. But ripping a child from her parents and home.

  Or we find the baby’s parents and leave her in their care, committing Earth to inevitable invasion. And possibly annihilating the human race.

  We think silently on our own. We also think among each other, trying not to start a stew. And when we take a vote, the decision is ma
de.

  Not unanimously.

  When everyone goes to bed, I hole up in the quiet wheelhouse of the barge. Unable to sleep, I sit on the velveteen sea-blue captain’s chair and skim my hand over the wheel’s cylindrical wooden spokes. Shaped more like fancy balusters.

  Nobody on the docks can spot me. An abundance of gold-painted seashells are strung along the glass windshield as a curtain.

  I look next to me at the co-captain’s chair, and I whisper, “Do you think we’ve chosen right?” A dresser drawer lies on the velveteen seat, the newborn nestled inside and wrapped in a woolen blanket that Mykal sewed.

  She stretches her teeny tiny arm with a squeaky noise. I wish that were a resounding yes.

  Her empty bottle rolls on the ground as the barge gently rocks. Using the very last of our bills, Kinden and Court snuck out earlier and bought milk meant for newborns. She didn’t have a bad reaction to the Saltarian milk, and she sucked the bottle dry.

  Peering over the drawer, I run my thumb over her soft cheek and tufts of green hair. “You’re beautiful,” I murmur, and then a lump knots my throat.

  “She’s beautiful.” I hear my mother again. “My baby girl. She’s beautiful. She’s gone.”

  I lean back and try to concentrate on Court and Mykal, who have managed to fall into a slumber.

  It matters little to them. Their parentage. Their history. Because they didn’t believe it’d have a real bearing on their future.

  They only wanted answers for me. So I could be at peace with the knowledge. And really, I think Court was afraid of the truth. Afraid that it’d hurt more to know, and maybe it has.

  Our parents sacrificed their lives for Earth and for us, but they also left us on a foreign planet without giving us a choice and I know their guilt must’ve been insurmountable.

  Tears sting.

  The baby lets out a soft cry.

  “Shh,” I whisper—like a blink, the baby vanishes with the drawer. She was only next to me for a few minutes anyway. She must have teleported back to Court.

  “Can’t sleep?” Stork asks, quietly walking into the wheelhouse. Eyes still bloodshot and swollen. He takes a seat, and leans back, the co-captain’s chair squeaking. “It’s not like the weight of a literal world isn’t on your shoulders at all.” He sports a halfhearted smile.

  “It’s on your shoulders too,” I sling back.

  “Must be why I’m awake with you.” His smile softens, and we share a tender silence with so much less strain.

  Stork would’ve been in pain no matter if he broke or kept the admirals’ dying wish. But letting us share in his burden has lessened a brutal tension. And he was finally able to tell me exactly why the admirals never referred to him as their son. He said that Moura, Hull, and Voss each had a child, ones they left to die. He was something else to them. Not something more or less. Just different.

  We hold each other’s gaze for a long beat, and he asks, “Do you wish I never told you about Prinslo?”

  “No,” I say strongly. “No. I’m so glad you did.” I blink back tears.

  “Do you really think Court is right?” Stork asks.

  During the vote, Court had one final remark. He stood up and said that he had given up on people, after his country imprisoned him.

  He wouldn’t risk his life for anyone’s cause, and then he told us, “But I’m here. I’m on a Saltare planet, and it’s not for me. I’ve been here for you.” He looked to me with no trace of anger or self-hatred.

  I felt him, and it was as though he accepted that he could be the person he longed to be, and that slowly, without really realizing, it was already happening.

  “I want to be here for them,” Court professed. “We have the chance to save people. Thousands of people, and this time, it will mean something when we do.”

  He’s not all cold and dead inside. So much of Court is very, very alive.

  In the wheelhouse, I keep my eyes locked on Stork. Do I think Court is right? “I think you’re both right in your own way.”

  While Court voted to save Earth, Stork voted to find the baby’s parents.

  I think at the start of this, we’d all predict the opposite vote. Even Court and Stork would too.

  Stork bends farther back on the chair, his eyes swimming softly against mine. “I can’t repeat history.”

  I know.

  He said as much. I still remember what he told everyone before he voted. “I had a good life on Earth. I was loved, and I know she will be there, but I look back in time … and I was stolen from my mom’s arms. A mom who died giving life to me … and what good did it do? What good did dropping you three on a foreign planet actually do?”

  I don’t want to make the same mistakes as our parents.

  I don’t want to botch it as badly as they did.

  And I was torn between both choices. I still am, even after deciding. Maybe I always will be, and I wonder if our parents had the choice, if they’d do it all differently again.

  Keeping a hand on the wheel, I turn my body more toward him. “Really, how big is the chance that we find the baby’s parents and they let us take her to Earth?”

  He tilts his head. “Big enough for me.”

  It was big enough for Padgett, Gem, and Zimmer.

  Mykal and Kinden voted with Court to just leave now, and I was left to choose Stork and the baby or to choose Earth with my lifebloods.

  Thunk.

  The drawer meets the wooden floor.

  Stork and I glance down at the space between our chairs, the baby cooing softly and slowly smacking her lips.

  And I whisper to her, “Stork Kickfall doesn’t want us to steal you away.”

  He smiles in real amusement, looking at me as he tells the baby, “Franny Bluecastle wants to steal you out of your drawer.”

  I voted to save Earth. Court is here for me, and I’ll be here for him. With my vote, there was a four-to-four tie. We have no time to convince anyone to switch sides, and so when Stork tossed a coin, we agreed that we would be all-in on whatever the gods, or luck, chose.

  The baby wiggles her toes.

  “Don’t fret,” I whisper to her, “we’re going to find your parents.”

  * * *

  To find the baby’s parents, our only clue is Riktor. The Fast-Tracker who stole a pouch from her blanket. We hope the pouch has some information about her origins.

  I remember that Riktor’s name tag said THE PREMIERE HOTEL. We depart quickly for the hotel at 5 o’morning before the sun crests the mainwater.

  We’re unsure how long we have before Commander Theron posts clear images of our faces, and when that happens, we need to be off this planet. Hopefully the baby will be with her parents by then.

  Right now, she’s strapped to Court in a makeshift sling. Gem had taken several purple scarves from the hostel, just to carry some broken gadgets she found lying on the docks—and Mykal used the fabric to secure the baby to Court’s chest.

  He isn’t complaining about being in charge of the newborn. I think he’s grown attached, more than he lets on. Court rubs her little back often. Sometimes I sense her tiny hand grabbing on to his finger. And then his lips gradually tic upward.

  None of us dawdle. Together, all eight of us locate the Premiere Hotel, a glass building lost in fluffy clouds. The main entrance is twenty stories high, and we can’t take an elevator up and traipse inside like we’re Influentials.

  We have no bills, and we all look like FTs.

  “There should be a backdoor entrance on the first floor,” Zimmer tells us. He’d know better since he worked in hotel hospitality on Saltare-3.

  Algae and barnacles shroud the first few floors of the hotel, and a dock wraps around the base of the building. Sailboats and canoes tied up. We walk along the slick pathway, water sloshing on the wooden planks—just do, don’t think.

  I breathe in.

  Breathe out.

  Listening to the here and now.

  And we find an EMPLOYEES ONLY door.

&
nbsp; Once inside, I realize the Premiere Hotel is startlingly beautiful. No gold finery or oil paintings, but glittering sea glass in wondrous shades of green and blue dangle from the ceiling. Chiming melodically as they clink together.

  And this is just their hallway.

  “There should be a locker room for staff,” Zimmer whispers. We file down the hall and find the locker room easily.

  Slipping inside, wooden cubbies with electronic passcodes line the room in long rows. Some Fast-Trackers hurry like they’re late for work, and others leisurely chat and take their time dressing.

  No one recoils at our sight. I wouldn’t either if new people sprung up at Purple Coach. I’d keep my head up and worry about my day. Not anyone else’s.

  Zimmer picks a row where a short girl of thirteen or fourteen years buttons a teal uniform: short-sleeved formal shirt and thigh-cut shorts.

  Her eyes ping to each of us, and she brushes a curl off her tan cheek. “New hires?”

  “Yeah. We start today.” Zimmer peers around. “Which chump wants to give us the tour?”

  She chuckles. “No tour. Baxley likes to throw the FTs in cold. You’ll just pick things up along the way. If you’re a bellhop, take the elevator to the lobby. Sweepers, grab a cleaning cart in the supply closet and ride up to the guest rooms. Only go in ones with VACANT signs.” She points to a dresser. The surface is an electronic screen. “Master keys are in the second drawer, uniforms in the third. If you’re new hires, your handprints will open up the dresser to get them.”

  Mykal mumbles behind me, something about hating technology.

  Court steps in, propping a casual arm on Mykal’s shoulder. “Heya, do you know if Riktor still works here? He’s a friend of a friend. Thought I’d say hi.”

  And thieve back the pouch that wart thieved.

  “Sure, he’s senior staff,” she says. “He cleans out the elegant suites. You’ll find him on the top floors.”

  Zimmer nods in thanks, and as we go, we’re about to forget the master key and uniforms. We only need to find Riktor. But Gem and Padgett falter before we leave the locker room.

  “It’ll be useful to have a keycard that can access all rooms,” Padgett says beneath her breath.