I laughed hysterically. “Are you kidding me? Why should I go anywhere with you liars?”
“You don’t have a choice,” Andronicus interrupted. “Now, I want you off my ship in the next five minutes, or else you’re going to be reporting to the Anesidoran high council and I don’t give a damn about family ties. You can rot on a pillory for all I care.”
My dad reached for my arm, but I ripped it away from him. “I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.”
Andronicus closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. I’d done the same thing a million times before, and my stomach clenched in revulsion at the thought that this could be a family trait. “Five minutes, Rose.”
He stormed down the hall. My mom turned to me, and I could see the gears turning in her head, switching tactics. She was going to try to say something soothing to calm my temper, but I was ready for her. I broke in before she even got a chance to open her mouth. “Who are you people, anyway? It’s like you’re total strangers. You locked a huge part of me away inside myself. Don’t you care about me at all?”
“Of course we care,” my mom protested, her voice filled with hurt. “Why do you think we did it in the first place?”
“To control me,” I spat.
“No. To help you. Laura, you don’t remember what it was like after… the incident. You were wild with grief, with anger. There was nothing we could do. You said you didn’t want to be Anesidoran anymore. We couldn’t erase that part of you, Laura, but we could suppress it. It seemed like that was the only thing we could do to help you. We were desperate. We were willing to try anything.”
“It was wrong. It was fucked up.”
My mom’s eyes glistened with tears, but she wouldn’t let them spill over. She squared her shoulders, looking at me ferociously. “I see that now. But that’s hindsight, Laura. Nobody knows intrinsically how to be a perfect parent. All that mattered to me was making you stop hurting.”
“You shouldn’t have erased me, you should have stopped them. You’re Anesidoran royalty! You could have stopped them. You let them take Shailene,” I snarled.
“Laura, your mom couldn’t do anything to stop it,” my dad said then, putting his hand on my shoulder. I brushed him off. “The I.G.A. is too dangerous, especially for people like her. People like you. We didn’t dare reveal our family to them.”
“What the hell does the I.G.A. have to do with it?” I asked. “They rescued Shailene. The Anesidorans were the ones who took her.”
My dad narrowed his eyes in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“She doesn’t know, sir,” Damien said over my shoulder.
I whirled on him. “What don’t I know?”
“It’s what I was trying to tell you just now,” Damien said. He seemed hesitant, but I was about ready to throttle the information out of him, and I was pretty sure he knew it. He took a step away from me. “We didn’t abduct Striker Peterson, or any of the other Swordsmen. It was the I.G.A.”
My breath caught in my throat. “What?”
“It’s true, Laura,” my dad said. “Believe me, I know. Remember, I used to work for them.”
“But why? I mean… How?”
My dad let out a scornful snort. “The government figured out a long time ago that superpowered humans made the best soldiers. They made an illegal deal with an Anesidoran separatist faction—a black market arms dealer. They combed the local middle schools and high schools, looking for teenagers with certain physical characteristics. Anyone who stood out on their sports teams or had high scores on their physicals in gym class. They don’t even think of these kids as people. That’s why they call them ‘lab rats’.” He crossed his arms. “They facilitate the abductions themselves.”
“But I don’t understand,” I said. “The I.G.A. are the ones who saved Shailene.”
“Of course they did,” sneered my dad. “If you want someone to fight for you tooth and nail—be willing to sacrifice their very lives for you—what better way than to create a debt? If the experiments believe that the I.G.A. are their saviors, they’ll be more than willing to use their powers to help the agency in their battle against the ones who did this to them.”
His words from before—“The I.G.A. are not your friends”—echoed in my ears. Oh, my God. How could I have been so stupid?
“Is that why you left, Dad?” I asked in a small voice.
He didn’t meet my gaze. “I wish I could say that was why, Laura. But…” He glanced at my mom. She put her hand on his shoulder, as if to let him know it was all right. Dad sighed and nodded. “About twenty years ago, the I.G.A. shifted their tactics. They discovered that some Anesidorans were… reproducing with humans, to use their terminology. Having kids together, like…” He swallowed. “Like your mom. And you.”
“And me,” Damien put in cheerfully.
“Right,” said Dad. “I’d been dating your mom for a while at that point, but I’d only recently found out that she was part Anesidoran. The I.G.A. put me on an assignment, to take out a—a subject of interest. Up until that point, I’d believed the lies they were spinning about the war. I believed, like you did, that we were under invasion, that the Anesidorans wanted to destroy us. But after I found out about your mom, my perceptions started to change.”
“He didn’t know at first who I was,” Mom explained. “But when we got engaged, I told him. And that’s when I found out he worked for the I.G.A.—he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone where he really worked, so he always just said he was a government contractor. But obviously there was a bit of a conflict of interest there when he learned the truth.” She sighed. “I introduced him to my parents, and my dad told him about his work on Nibiru-Earth relations.”
“Rosie’s father made me realize that what the lines the I.G.A. had been spinning us weren’t true. He was a reformer, a diplomat. But the I.G.A. wasn’t interested in his diplomacy. Shortly before my last assignment, he was assassinated. The government tried to manipulate it to appear as though an Anesidoran separatist faction had been behind it. There were a number of groups on Nibiru who didn’t want to stop the abductions, who didn’t want to give up until every human was like them, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. But I was starting to have my doubts by then.”
“I didn’t believe that he’d been killed by an Anesidoran, and neither did your grandma,” Mom said. “We had a feeling the I.G.A. was involved. The whole thing was just very suspicious.”
“And then I got put on this assignment,” Dad said. “They told us this subject was a terrorist, a high-ranking Anesidoran who’d abducted hundreds of humans to be experimented on. They said she was the mastermind behind a plot they’d uncovered to attack the U.N. building. Whoever she was, she was dangerous, right?” He shook his head in disgust. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the ‘subject of interest’ was your mother.”
My mouth opened involuntarily. “Mom?”
“Yeah,” my mom said. She turned away, pacing the hall in agitation. Even after twenty years, she was obviously still really upset. “They’d killed my dad, and now they wanted to kill me. Because they realized that half-Anesidorans were stronger than regular lab rats. We had powers beyond what the I.G.A. and their traitor technicians could invent in a lab. So we had to go.” She shook her head. “My dad had done everything in his power to keep Tonio and me a secret. All my life, I’d never understood why. But then they found me, and it became all too clear.”
I felt sick. “So what happened?” I asked, dreading to find out the answer.
“When I figured out that Rosie was our mark, I had to warn her. I tried to slip away from my partner, but he was too fast. He figured out what was going on. And…” He trailed off, looking at his hands.
My mom ceased her pacing and put her hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault, Phil.” To me, she said, “Phil and your dad got into a fight. Phil was trying to get his gun away from him, and… it went off. The bullet went clean through his partner, and g
razed your dad as well. Fortunately, his wounds weren’t severe.”
Dad stared off at nothing. “I didn’t want it to work out that way. But I had to protect your mom. So I went back, filled out a report. I said we’d been successful in taking out the mark, but that Jon had gotten killed in the crossfire. I asked for a dispensation for psychological reasons, and I got it. It took almost a year, but I got it. By then, your mom had gone into hiding. After I left the I.G.A., I changed my name and joined her. We moved around a bit before settling down in Everett. You probably don’t remember; you were only two or three when we moved to the ranch.”
“And we’ve hidden from them ever since.” I shuddered, folding my arms and looking down. “Why didn’t Tonio tell me any of this?”
“He doesn’t know most of it,” my mom said. “It’s safer for him that way. He was only eight years old when Dad was killed. We’ve tried to keep him in the dark about the I.G.A.’s involvement as much as possible. I don’t think he even knows about their lab rat program. The more he’s able to live his life like a regular human, the better. And the same thing goes for you, Laura. We would never have told you if you hadn’t gotten mixed up in it all. Twice,” she added bitterly.
“I really screwed up this time,” I said in disgust. “After the way I blundered in, the I.G.A. must know all about us now.” I broke off. “Dad, you and Janice knew each other before. Does that mean she…?” Did she know what had happened to my dad all those years ago? What was going on within her agency? She’d taken Shailene in after the abduction, but had she been a part of the kidnapping to begin with?
My dad sighed. “I don’t know. I doubt it, though. Most of the worker bees at the I.G.A. don’t know what’s really going on. A lot of them are regular humans, like I was—I told you the truth before, Laura. I wasn’t an abductee.” He shook his head. “But if word got out, the lab rats might rebel.”
So Janice probably didn’t know, but she’d started to piece it together. That’s why she’d had that file about my dad in her backpack. I wondered if she’d figured out who I really was yet? If the I.G.A. knew my mom was still alive—if they found out about me, or Tonio—they’d come for us.
They might even send the Strikers for us.
I felt like I was going to throw up. I’d been wrong all along. I’d believed that the Anesidorans were behind the abductions. It had made so much sense. After all, there’d been the jail cells I’d seen earlier at the base when I’d rescued Shailene; but I realized with a jolt that I hadn’t actually seen anyone in those cells. I’d just assumed. They’d fit my narrative, and I’d accepted it without question.
There was just one thing that didn’t make sense. Slowly, I said, “But if the Anesidorans only take volunteers now, why are they kidnapping the Strikers? And brainwashing them like this?”
“We are not kidnapping anyone,” a smooth, deep voice said. I looked up to see Andronicus striding down the hall. “And it’s been more than five minutes. It’s time for you to go.”
I ignored that, pushing past my parents and storming right up at him. “Oh, yeah? Then what do you call it? All the Strikers have disappeared one by one, and I saw them leave with you.” I whirled on Damien. “And you, Mr. Simple.”
“That was part of our new peace negotiations with Earth. The ones you seem to be so eager to completely destroy.”
“Peace negotiations?”
“We called the I.G.A. out on their secret lab rat program,” Damien explained, coming back out into the hall. “They agreed to return the Strikers to us in exchange for some other concessions.”
I blinked two, three times. “Excuse me? They just traded you the Strikers? Like they’re a goddamn sports team?”
Andronicus looked past me to my mother. “Rose…”
“Don’t you bring my damn mother into this,” I snapped. “Look, I agree that what our government has done to you guys is fucked up. But in case you forgot, the Strikers are still people. You can’t just take them without asking their permission.”
“We don’t have time for this. Damien, escort them off the ship.”
“Yes, sir.”
I ripped my arm away when he reached for it. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Oh, but you are,” Andronicus snapped. “And I don’t want to hear one more word out of you, or I can’t guarantee that your girlfriend will make it back to Nibiru in one piece.”
My heart stopped. Just totally stopped. It felt like a brick wall had slammed against my chest. “What do you mean, my girlfriend?”
“Andre, you can’t make threats like that,” my mother snapped, giving him a warning look. “You have your Strikers. Let us take Laura back home in peace.”
“What do you mean, he has his Strikers?” I shrieked. I’d left Shailene back at Gam-Lam. She’d been safe. It had only been an hour or two at this point. She had to be safe still. She had to be.
My mom pulled me away from Andronicus, trying to talk soothingly. “Shailene called us earlier, Leelee. That’s how we knew you were here. She told us what you’d done, and said she wanted to surrender.”
“WHAT?”
Andronicus rolled his eyes and turned away. Clearly, he was done with me. “Damien, get them to the transport shuttle.”
“No!” I screamed, fighting against Damien as he grabbed my arms. “Let go of me! Damien, I swear to God—Ana, do something!” But he’d closed the door to Ana’s room—her glorified prison cell. I’m sure it was locked from the outside. The Anesidorans weren’t any better than the I.G.A. They’d tricked her, just like I thought. I twisted around, looking at my mother imploringly. “Mom,” I begged.
“I’m sorry, Laura,” she said, avoiding my eyes.
I screamed and fought, kicking and pulling as hard as I could. But Damien was too strong. No matter how I struggled, I couldn’t get away.
I was trapped.
The three of us sat alone in the otherwise empty cabin of the transport shuttle. Damien had left to go find a couple sentries to escort us back down to Earth. I’d screamed and cried myself hoarse, and for nothing. There was nothing I could do.
I stared down at my hands sullenly.
“It’ll get better, Leelee,” my dad said, patting his hand on my shoulder in that annoying way of his, where he smacks you firmly enough to reverberate through to your ribcage and doesn’t seem to notice.
I set my jaw and didn’t respond.
On the other side of me, my mom said, “Laura, this was Shailene’s choice to make,” in what I was sure she considered a reasonable voice.
“Oh, yeah, definitely,” I replied. “The fact that her mom and all her closest friends had been taken definitely didn’t coerce her or impede her judgment in any way.”
Mom sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Did you give the the note, hon?” my dad leaned forward to ask across me.
“Oh, I forgot,” my mom said. “Here, Laura. Maybe this will make you feel better.” She shifted in her seat and pulled a piece of lined paper out of her pocket. She handed it to me, and I unfolded it. I didn’t recognize the handwriting, but I recognized her words.
Laura,
I know what you’re trying to do. I know you didn’t tell me because you were trying to protect me. But I can’t just stay here alone while everyone I care about—and that includes you—is in danger. The other Strikers are my family. I can’t just leave them. If only one of us comes out of this safe, I want it to be you. Please. Please stay safe.
Shailene.
Hot tears bit at my eyes as I reread the note over and over. “I’m sorry,” I said at last, “is there a bathroom on this thing?”
“In the back, in the cargo section. I’ll show you,” my mom said, starting to unfasten her seatbelt.
“No,” I said—or snarled, really. “I’ll find it myself.” I pushed myself out of my seat and hurried to the back of the shuttle, my vision watery.
The bathroom was larger than the pathetic closets you get on commercial airlines. It w
as more like an actual single-stall bathroom. Big enough that I was able to sink onto the cool tile floor, not even caring what kinds of germs I was sitting in. I pressed my face against my knees. I thought I’d cried myself out, but apparently I was wrong.
After a few minutes, a soft tapping came at the door.
I ignored it.
Another knock, and then I heard my mom say, “Laura, please open up.”
“Or what, you’ll phase through it like Tonio?” Bitterly I stood up and unlocked the door. Mom stood on the other side, looking oddly small.
“No. That’s not my power,” she said sheepishly.
She came into the bathroom, and I shut the door behind her. “What is your power, anyway? Besides your standard Filipina-mom-guilt powers?” I glared at her, but she didn’t rise to the bait. She closed the lid to the toilet and sat down on it, crossing her ankles.
“You know,” she said simply.
I looked down at my feet, not responding.
She sighed. “Laura, I understand how you must be feeling.”
“Really, Mom?” I shook my head. “I’m super sure you do.”
She made a noise of frustration and crossed her arms. “You’re not giving me enough credit. Do you think that my life’s been any easier than yours? How do you think I felt when my father was killed by I.G.A. agents? How do you think I felt when they tried to force your father to assassinate me?”
Guilt gnawed at my chest, but I ignored it. “So the I.G.A.’s fucked up. You won’t get any argument from me there. But you don’t think that what the Anesidorans are doing is fucked up, too?”
“Of course it is,” Mom said, splaying her hands. “No one is in the right here. But all that’s going to happen if we get involved is that it will tear our family apart, put us in the crosshairs. The I.G.A. has been after me for years, and crossing the Anesidorans would put your father in danger. There’s no side we can take that doesn’t risk one of us. The only way to protect you and the rest of our family is to stay neutral.”
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