“He created them,” I repeat, trying to make sense of what he’s telling me.
“Maybe,” Atkinson says, now scraping at his bandages. “Maybe he was covering up another one of his secrets.”
“What secret?” I demand. I’m tired of all the secrets, all the lies. “That he rigged the vote? That Aster was way ahead of schedule? What else could he possibly have to hide?”
“That’s what—what I wanted to know,” says Atkinson, almost a whine. “So I began digging around, listening in on conversations. And I learned things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, that… that some cadets have disappeared. That they were given the Memory Bank, like you, and as a result, they went brain dead. As if their minds were light bulbs, or fuses, blown by too great a charge. They’re kept in cryonics. I saw them myself.”
My mouth has gone suddenly dry.
“Why were they given the Memory Bank?”
“I don’t know. M-maybe to… to succeed Dosset?”
He’s growing more and more agitated; one bandage has come loose again, displaying his horrible wounds. My impulse is to stop him, but his words have given me pause.
Why would Dosset be seeking a replacement? And more importantly, if Atkinson knew that Dosset was looking for a successor and that the search had already resulted in a number of casualties, why would he risk giving the Memory Bank to me? Because whether he recalls why he did it or not, that’s exactly what he did.
An oily nausea crawls through me.
“So you decided to gamble with my life, since Dosset had already stooped so low.”
“No!” he cries in alarm. “Lizzy, I never… I must have had better reason than that. I must have somehow known that you’d be resilient. Perhaps…” His face brightens. “Perhaps this was my plan all along. Not for you to help with my plan, but for you to make one of your own. A… a plan that I could help you with.” He licks his lips. “That’s what Dosset kept saying, isn’t it? That I must have had a p-plan? Why else would I have taken such a risk? Only my plan wasn’t really a plan at all. It was you!”
I glower at him, uncertain what to think. Knowing that my friends won’t remember me is its own kind of torment. But the idea that Dosset might destroy their minds just to find someone as resilient as I am?
The thought is enough to make me sick.
Around me, the terrarium is abruptly bathed in gray light. I tilt my head and see that the clouds have parted like a curtain, revealing an ocean of cosmic jewels. Stars so tightly woven that they could be part of the same seashell, the same geode, one dazzling formation that laughs and blinks and whispers.
The sight is so peaceful and apart from everything I’m feeling, for a second I can do nothing but stare.
And that’s when I see it—a pale blue planet like a sapphire, a twinkling ember almost snuffed, fighting for enough air to keep burning.
Earth.
I’m transfixed, momentarily forgetting everything else. And suddenly I feel a chill as I realize my parents are no longer on that planet. Not on any planet. Everyone and everything I knew from Earth is dead and gone.
The overwhelming reality of this is followed by the eerie sense that I’ve known. All along I’ve known. Ever since Atkinson first told me. I just didn’t want to believe it. I’ve simply been running from the truth. Repressing it all at the back of my head, sealed away in the shadows, bound in a knot that I loop tighter every day. Like my history with Noah.
Even now, in the turmoil of the last several hours, certain memories are trying to edge into the light. But I shove them away.
“So that’s it,” I say around the tightness in my throat. “I’m the one who didn’t go brain dead, so I’m the one who has to stop him. Is that right?”
He looks at me uncertainly. Because that’s exactly what he thinks. And I know it.
“Don’t you want to stop him?” he asks.
I want to scream at him, to tell him of course I do but it’s not that simple. I’m tired of being the one caught in the middle. Between Chloe and Noah, between Terra and the others, between Dosset and everyone else.
But it’s obvious now that if Dosset thinks of me as a subject to be studied or a plant to be tended or even a replacement to be groomed, I’m something equally reduced in Atkinson’s eyes. Certainly not a person with thoughts and feelings and desires of my own. To him, I’m simply an asset to be used. A tool to inflict damage on the one who damaged him.
And that, too, reminds me of my parents.
“We’re going to stop him. But you can’t… you can’t just use people like that,” I say, and my voice catches. My breath is coming shorter every second.
He just blinks at me, still not getting it.
“Lizzy, we need to act swiftly. You’re the reason Dosset hasn’t sent anyone after me. Now that you’re no longer there to distract him, he’ll have every doctor in the colony coming after us. If we linger, he’ll—”
“We’ll stay as long as I feel like it,” I snarl. My words drip with malice, but I know they aren’t meant for him. Still, it feels good to vent my bitterness, so I do. “Either give me some time to think or go figure it out yourself.”
And I storm back through the terrarium, not even bothering to deflect the branches.
I return to the kitchen and order up a feast. Two pizzas and an entire bowl of broccoli-cheddar soup. Then I slam the plates down on the counter and begin to eat.
Some part of me is aware that he’s right to be cautious. That at any moment, Sarlow and McCallum could burst into the dome and drag us away. It’d be easy, considering my current state. But at the moment I’m so tired and angry, I don’t even care.
Let them come. Let them fall into a smoking pit along the way or get buried in hail or fried by a blast of silent lightning. Two fewer obstacles for me to worry about.
I’m halfway through the first pizza when I hear Atkinson return from the terrarium. He slinks up the stairs to whatever is inside the upper chamber. Obviously, he knows how angry I am with him. Though I’ll bet he doesn’t have the first clue as to why. He’s just as bad as Dosset and Shiffrin and Bauer and the rest of them.
Worse, maybe, for risking my life on an impulse.
But if I’m honest with myself, I know it’s not that simple. This is just like what happened with Terra in the rainforest habitat.
Yes, I’m mad at Atkinson. But the truth is, the entire situation feels far too familiar. Two selfish people making selfish decisions, never considering the people who’ll get hurt. Not thinking about me at all while I stand in the center, slowly pulled apart from the inside.
Suddenly I feel cold all over, the food turning to ash in my mouth. I get up and stumble away from the counter, back out into the hallway, to the stairs and past them, around the glass of the terrarium.
I don’t know where I’m headed until I find the room of supplies. I close the door, and since there’s no lock, I wedge a trowel through the handle to bar it shut. Turn on the light and slide the dimmer until it feels like dusk. I’m shuffling toward a pile of folded burlap bags, ready to fling myself down and block out the world entirely, when I catch movement from the corner of my eye.
Freezing, I turn. Shovels hang blade-up in a row against the wall—one of them unused. Its shiny surface mirrors my reflection.
But the girl I see is a stranger. The right side of my face is a mask of dried blood from a cut near my eyebrow I hadn’t noticed. When I blink, my eyelid moves slowly, still sticky from the clotting. I reach up and gently tug at a clump of matted hair then run a fingernail along flakes of salt on my cheeks, left by evaporated sweat. Lines cut through the grimy crust, probably left by tears that ran from my eyes as I nearly suffocated.
Who is this person?
Not me. Not the girl I was.
Slowly I unzip my jumpsuit. The cold rushes in, whispering down my neck. I examine the once-white fabric now stained red by my blood. At one end of the room, I notice the basin of a water reclaimer. I pi
ck up a sack, wet the fibers, and scrape away the stipple on my cheek and temple. Repeat the process on my neck, using a fresh portion of the burlap.
When I reach the wound on my shoulder, I prod the inflamed skin, finding it tight and angry, and only thinly clotted. On the wall is a med cabinet. Surely I need stitches, but I’ll have to make do with a temporary sealant for now. I pull a tube of Kog from its slot.
The glutinous purple liquid is cold, but as I smear it along the cut it begins to bond, numbing the skin and appending it in a glossy line. It’s not intended for a gash like this, but it’s certainly better than nothing.
Following the trail of gore, I scrub my body clean. When I’m finished, I ball up the coarse material and toss it into a corner.
There I stand in my undergarments, shivering as I examine my reflection. Just like the blood and grime, my old life has been wiped away. There’s nothing left. Not of my old self. Not of my home. Not of my family.
It feels as if I’ve lost so many pieces of my identity. All of the stories, the quirks, the little things that only my parents knew about me. Every inside joke with my father, gone. Every conversation with my mother, gone. They’ve been swept away like footprints in the dust.
Now all I have left are the memories.
And this is where they find me. All this time, all of my running and neglect, all of my attempts to bury what happened, have led me to this place. Now that I’m alone with nowhere left to run, the memories come to me at last.
My throat tightens again, and a painful ache squeezes my chest, this time not from lack of oxygen but from deep, inexpressible sadness. The room swims as the tears form, turning white shapes into chalky swirls. For no reason at all, I still try to keep the memories at bay. But it’s just like before, with Noah. They won’t stay out.
So they come.
I’m back in Michigan, where it all began. Or at least, where I once thought it began. After we moved, everything got so much worse.
But now I think I understand that when we left our life in Oregon, we simply removed the distractions. The habits, the supports. And when you strip away all that noise, you’re forced to face what’s right in front of you.
Even though you might want to pretend it isn’t.
The memories start with my fifteenth birthday. Dad insisted on making it special since I hadn’t really made any friends yet. He suggested camping, something we’d often done with my cousins, aunts, and uncles. But mother didn’t want to go. She said she’d never liked camping—not before, when they were dating, or later, when “his family” went every year. Anyway, she had a big presentation with an investor coming up, and she needed good sleep.
“This isn’t about you, Kris,” Dad said quietly, the way he did. He’d face away, not meeting her eyes because he knew his words would mean a fight. “It’s about Lizzy.”
“No, it’s not,” I’d quickly said. “I don’t even want to go, really.” Just hoping it would drop. But I could tell by my mother’s face that it was already too late.
“See?” she said sharply. “She hates it too. If you’d stop and think just for a second, you’d realize you’re doing it again.”
“What am I doing, Kristen?” he demanded. And now he was facing her. “What exactly am I doing other than thinking about our daughter?”
“Oh, I get it. Because I’m not?”
I went to my room to let them fight it out. They didn’t even seem to notice.
That night I heard them shouting again. Like they did so frequently since we moved. It went on for hours while I blocked it out, blasting music against my eardrums. Then came the slamming doors. Pounding footsteps. Dad’s car pulling out of the driveway so he could cool off. I thought about how I hated it here, how I wished we’d never moved.
Two months later they told me. About their plans to separate. That word—divorce. It didn’t mean anything at first. But quickly it became the world I lived in. Mother got an apartment. Dad kept the house. Said it would provide “stability” for me.
“Sure,” I told him. Shoving down what I really felt, I told him it was fine. I was fine.
I started living out of a backpack. Carrying anything I might need, everything I cared about. Because one night I’d be at the apartment. The next, back at the house.
Over time I began to realize they didn’t really know me. Not anymore. Not what I was becoming, deep down. It wasn’t mean or malicious. It was neglect. And as the distance grew, I gradually came to understand that I didn’t know them either. Really, I wasn’t sure I knew myself.
No one knew what I was going through. Sure, a lot of my friends at school had divorced parents, and I guess they’d gone through similar turmoil. But somehow it didn’t feel the same. They talked about it like it was normal. Or they made it sound as if they’d always had terrible parents. As if they hated them. And I didn’t hate mine at all.
I missed them.
Who they’d been. What they’d represented. The warmth, the feeling that I was safe. I missed it so bad, I physically ached. As if my heart had been surgically removed and replaced with an icy tumor.
It was the strangest thing, to miss people who were still in my life. It sounded too dramatic, too predictable. And I refused to be the girl with emotional baggage.
So I focused on my grades and shoved it down deep.
But they brought it right back up.
“Go for a walk, Dizzy?” my dad would ask. That was his signal. That whatever he wanted to rant about, whatever Mother had done, had pushed him over the edge.
I guess sometimes you’re too mad to whisper. Too hurt to keep it down. So I’d put on my coat and trudge out into Michigan winter, so cold your eyes throb and your breath stabs and the wind is as fierce as your anger.
We’d tromp through the woods behind the house—a swamp in summer, reduced to barren sticks in January. He’d growl about how unfair it was. Spit cutting things about her worst qualities. He hated the way things were. Blamed mother for not working things out. Exactly the way my mother did about him.
Sometimes she’d take me out to dinner. Or we’d rent a movie. Whatever it was, the conversation would find a way to work around to my dad. And then she, too, would put me in the middle.
I began to see the ways they were using me to get back at each other. Poisoning my opinion of what had really happened—or at least trying to—and telling me what I should say to the other parent.
Not that I ever did. But I knew what they were trying to do.
The worst part? They kept me on the outside. Even though they put me right in the center of it all, they still didn’t trust me.
Yes, they talked to me. But they never told me what was really going on. It was the petty stuff. My mother’s comments. His stubbornness. Symptoms of the bigger problems. I never got to the roots. Not after it was over or back when I might’ve been able to help them work it out.
I guess they thought I couldn’t handle it. As if a divorce with no explanation was in some way better than letting your child hear the truth. And the deep, mysterious reason that I finally put together on my own?
My parents were only thinking about themselves.
They were too buried in their own hurt—or pride. They each refused to see the other point of view. Decided it was better to focus on their personal wants rather than on the needs of others—even those of their own child. They tore apart my world. And they didn’t even notice.
Over time I adjusted to the new normal. It wasn’t all miserable. Dad still made me laugh sometimes, though it wasn’t like before. And Mother was smart. Cold, but smart. We had that in common. Only, underneath my layer of ice was a fire waiting to burn. Beneath hers were bones as unyielding as iron.
My only escape was running. I’d leave my problems on the line or in the woods, where I could rely on my own strength of will. Out there, no one could let me down but myself. Which I guess was my thinking when dad decided to move back to Oregon. By then, things had gotten so bad between them, I could hardly sta
nd it. So rather than pick which parent to side with, I jumped at the chance to leave it all behind.
Mars Colony One.
As far as escape goes, there’s not much farther you can go than to another planet. Six months. That’s all I had to wait. Six months until I went to the Academy to begin preparations for leaving. And I’d never be coming back.
I don’t know what I expected from them. Maybe I thought they’d try to stop me. That if I could make them realize what they’d done and how hurt I was—if I could make them see that they were driving me away—maybe they’d finally wake up. But when I sat them down and told them my plans, told them I’d been accepted, they didn’t care.
We support you, they said. It’s your decision.
In some abstract way, I could tell that the idea of my leaving made them sad. But it wasn’t because they saw that they were responsible. It was just that they saw their daughter growing up. It was still about them and their feelings.
And that was it. A month with my dad, and then he moved. Since I still had school, I was forced to stay with my mother until the end.
I fixated on running. Others liked me for what I could do on the track but not for who I was on the inside. They didn’t know me, because I didn’t let them. On the inside I was frozen, the fire almost entirely gone out.
Dad came back to say goodbye and see me off at the airport. But even then the drive was either silent or interrupted by brittle conversation. Each of them still too bitter to be civil to the other, even in the midst of our goodbye.
I never told them that I blamed them for everything. That I hated who they were. That I was leaving because I didn’t want them in my life anymore. And when they said they loved me at the gate, I said it too. Even though I knew we were lying.
Because it doesn’t count. You can’t ignore me and mistreat me and use me, and then turn around and call it love. I don’t care if I’m biologically your daughter. Not then, and not now. It doesn’t atone for years of mistreatment. It isn’t an excuse to abuse me and neglect me, and then tell me it’s an unbreakable bond.
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