Remake

by Ilima Todd

  I jump in immediately. I don’t care if there’s a monster under the surface, I will not abandon him. I’ll go down with him. I’ll not leave him the way I left Theron. Wrapping my arm around his neck, I pull him to the boat. He is stiff and grasping his leg in pain.

  “What is it?” I ask, one arm holding him in the water, one arm on the lip of the canoe.

  “My leg,” he says through clenched teeth. “Muscle cramp.”

  I somehow manage to get myself into the boat without letting go of him. I am surprised how easily I’m able to get him on board. It might be from becoming stronger these weeks on the canoe, but more likely it’s from the rush of adrenaline that surges through me. I stretch out his leg onto my lap and massage where he says the pain is. His rigid form begins to relax, and he drapes a wet arm over his eyes.

  “You aren’t drinking enough water,” I say.

  “If we run out of water, cramping muscles will be the least of our problems.”

  “If I lose you, it doesn’t matter how much water is left.”

  Kai sits up and grabs my chin. “If you lose me, you can’t give up.”

  I shake my head. I don’t want to talk about this right now.

  “Listen to me, Nine. If you lose me—whether I die out here on the water or am captured by Freedom or whatever—you can’t stop fighting. You can’t stop trying. Keep living, and stand up for what’s right. Fight for what’s worth fighting for.”

  I swipe his hand away from my face. “No.” I can’t believe he mentioned me losing him. It’s not the most comforting thing to say when I just dragged his body out of the water. “Life is not worth living if I don’t have you.”

  Kai’s eyes go wide, and I know he’s mad, but I don’t care.

  My words tumble out of me. “I don’t care if it’s in Mahawai, in a rebel camp, or in cracked Freedom itself. As long as you’re with me, it doesn’t matter where I live. I just . . . I can’t lose you, Kai.”

  “It does matter,” he says. His eyes narrow at me, angry and confused. “It matters.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I say. I turn away and hunt for a knife to clean the fish.

  * * *

  Kai’s fingers can’t keep still, and I feel them on my side. One hand takes a position on my upper arm where they form what feel like guitar chords, while the other mindlessly strums at my waist. He hums a tune that echoes off the surface of the ocean in the still night. Water laps against the side of the canoe in a steady beat, as though the sea wants to perform along. The flapping of the sails as they catch wind gusts completes the symphony, and I smile, promising myself to always remember this moment.

  I’m not afraid of the ocean anymore. It’s still filled with monsters and a vast unknown, but here, with Kai—whom I wouldn’t argue with if he claimed to be born from the sea himself—it’s different. Now I welcome the taste of salt on my tongue and wake early to see the shades of the water under the light of every sunset. Sometimes the sea seems to hold its breath, creating a glass finish on the surface so perfect that I think I could walk on it, and I can’t help but hold my breath too.

  “Have you always loved the water?” I ask.

  “Always.”

  “You’ve never been afraid of it? Ever?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about the Virus?” I ask, thinking about what we learned as children back in Freedom.

  “What about the Virus?” he asks, confusion in his voice.

  “It killed most of the population of Earth. And it came from the sea.”

  “It didn’t come from the sea. That’s just something they tell you in Freedom to make you afraid of the ocean.”

  I frown. “Why would they make us afraid?”

  “To keep you in Freedom. To give you second thoughts about trying to escape.”

  I’ve never met anyone who’d wanted to escape, not before Miriama, but I’d heard rumors of people doing such things. I think of how Theron wished he could sail the ocean like the explorers of old. I wonder how many more people there have been with dreams of escape. Of being free and exploring the unknown.

  I think about the main cause of the Virus, not just its fabled origin. “Do you want to have lots of babies, Kai?”

  His nervous laugh shakes my body against his. “Yes, I want to have lots of babies.”

  Be fruitful and multiply . . .

  “And you aren’t afraid of overpopulation?”

  “The Virus spread fast and easily because there were a lot of people back then, yes. But that wasn’t the cause of it. It was no one’s fault—the disease. Overpopulation of the earth wasn’t to blame.” Kai continues to strum his fingers against my side. “Without a cure, our ancestors could only sit and wait it out. Luckily, a few survived. Maybe how we live on the island started as a way to avoid Freedom’s Techies, but connecting with the land and sea the way we do—”

  I look up and see the waves reflected in his eyes.

  “I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he says. “Having children is a gift. A blessing. Our family is a part of the rhythm of the planet.”

  I smile, thinking of the symphony I hear on the water. Kai’s words create a harmony with the music that makes me feel like a part of that connection. “I want to have lots of babies, too,” I say. It seems so trivial a thing to speak of, out here on the water with no one around. Yet with every buzz in my head it’s as though we are crowded out by those who would tear us apart.

  “Good to know,” Kai says with a smile on his face.

  I punch him in the arm, and he laughs out loud. I bring his face to mine. “I love you,” I say, kissing his salty, chapped lips.

  “Mmm,” he moans.

  A large splash of ocean water sprays over us.

  “What the—?”

  We both turn and gasp at the same time. The eye of a giant animal stares back at us, rolling backward into the water. I open my mouth to scream, but Kai pulls me close.

  “It’s okay,” he says, anticipating my terror. “It’s just a blue whale. It won’t hurt us.”

  I nod, holding his arm tight. The whale breaches the surface again, this time knocking the side of our canoe. The sheer grandness of it is hard to fathom. I know what we see is just a portion of its massive body, and I can’t comprehend how it can move through the water at all. And so stealthily, it seems, by the way it surprised us.

  A spray of water bursts from a spout on the top of its head, falling on us like a misty rain. I laugh nervously as its giant eye blinks at us.

  “It’s checking us out,” Kai whispers. He extends his arm, pulling my hand along with his to touch the whale.

  I hold my breath, and my heart feels like it’s beating in the tips of my fingers. I bite my lip as the hard but slippery surface of its body moves beneath my touch. “Wow.”

  “I know.” Kai’s face is illuminated under the light of the moon. “I’ve never seen one this close before.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Suddenly I feel so tiny. Insignificant. Like a breeze that is here one moment and gone before you have a chance to ask where it came from or where it’s going next. Before you’re able to really feel it.

  I think of all those places I’ve only seen in pictures. Jungles and deserts. Forests and mountains. It’s suddenly all so magnificent compared to how small I feel. But instead of making me feel unimportant, I feel grander. Blessed. Honored to be a part of the giant puzzle of our planet. A puzzle that connects me and Kai, here, together on the water. It’s a humbling feeling. A happy feeling.

  * * *

  “Tell me about Theron.” Kai passes me a coconut, and I take a giant gulp from the hole he drilled into it. It’s still dark out, but dawn approaches on the horizon.

  “Theron?”

  “Yes,” he says, chewing on a piece of coconut flesh. “He was your only family, and I want to know about him.”

  It’s a good distraction from the buzz in my ears, thinking about Theron, and for that alone I’m glad Kai brought him
up. “Theron liked to fight,” I say. I picture him in our training room, with gloves strapped to his fists, hitting and kicking the practice bag over and over. “I got a lot of comments from other Batchers about my freckles. Since we were all bald and wore the same clothes, I guess that’s the only thing they had to pick on. Sometimes I think Theron became my friend just so he’d have an excuse to beat others up every once in a while.”

  “I like this guy already,” Kai says, smiling.

  “Despite his love of pain,” I say with a grin, “he wanted to become a Healer.”

  “Even though he’d have to use needles?” Kai asks with feigned shock.

  “Yes.” I laugh. “Apparently it doesn’t leave him in tears when he is in the same room as one.”

  I tell Kai of how Theron and I would steal chocolate from the eatery kitchen at night, and how we planned to live together after we were Remade, in our own apartment. Kai cringes when I mention us showering and sleeping together, but I explain that was just how things were in Freedom—no sense of modesty or restraint like that among the rebel families of his island. I didn’t know any other way.

  I speak of our excursion into central Freedom, of Theron getting knocked out trying to keep me from cage fighting. Kai laughs at that, sending a warm tingling through my body at the sound. It’s a strange feeling, placing Kai and Theron together in my thoughts. It’s almost like I’ve lived two separate lives. Life with Theron versus life with Kai. I realize as we approach Freedom, those worlds will blend, blurring the lines between life before the crash and after. I’m not sure if I’m ready for that.

  “He was so nervous he put the wrong shoes on my feet,” I say as I tell Kai about the shuttle crash. I don’t know why I remember that small detail. It seemed important at the time, somehow. Flustered Theron was not the norm, and it scared me. I tell Kai other details of that night: the beeping in the plane, the impact with the water, holding onto Theron as we jumped out. And the sound—the awful, awful sound—of dying metal.

  “There were bodies in the water,” I say. I look up and realize Kai is at my side, holding me. I don’t remember him coming to sit beside me. “Cree. Cree was dead. Debris floated everywhere. And Bristol.” I rock back and forth as I tell of how Theron killed him to save us. “It was terrible, Kai. All of it. Somehow I knew—I knew we would die. Theron was certain we’d be rescued because of our trackers, but they don’t work outside of Freedom.”

  “But your tracker is working. Whether it’s so they can find you or . . .” His words trail away. “Right now it’s buzzing.”

  I’m frustrated Kai brought it up. I’d forgotten all about it while talking about Theron. “I don’t know why,” I say, bringing my hand to my ear.

  “You didn’t see Theron die, did you? That day I stitched you up . . .” Kai touches the long scar on the inside of my arm. “You said he told you to swim away.”

  I don’t answer. I didn’t see Theron die, but what I did see was just as bad. He couldn’t swim and was terribly injured yet I left him there with that beast. He was as good as dead when I abandoned him.

  “Were there other survivors?” Kai asks.

  I nod, remembering the voices of others in our Batch, frantic and hopeless in the water. I wonder how long it took for them to die. Hours? Days?

  “And then you found me,” I say.

  Kai pulls me close to him.

  “I miss him, Kai. I miss him so much.”

  “I know,” he says, running his hands through my hair. “I’m so sorry, Nine.”

  It will be strange to be in Freedom, or close to it, at least, without Theron there. Change is hard, terribly hard. I hold onto Kai and inhale his sweet, earthy scent. Change can be a good thing too.

  The sun has fully cleared the horizon now, and I see something in the distance. “Is there a storm coming?” I ask, pointing far to the northwest. It looks like a mass of low-lying gray clouds hovering over the ocean.

  Kai squints and looks where I point. He purses his lips together and inhales sharply. “Those aren’t clouds,” he says, standing up to adjust the sails of the canoe. “It’s smoke.”

  It’s a long day of waiting in the water. Kai thought we should wait until dark before approaching the smoke. Less chance of being spotted.

  As soon as the stars are visible in the sky, we move in.

  “We’re too far south for Freedom,” he says, glancing at the sky. “But it’s definitely Australia.” If it’s not Freedom One, then it must be a rebel camp.

  After an hour of sailing, we reach land. We tie up the canoe on a rocky shore and disembark, keeping close to the trees in the dark to stay out of sight. Before long, we come to the outskirts of a village, but tents dot the landscape, not permanent homes. As though the people are only here temporarily. As we follow the smoke, the tents come more frequently, some bigger than others, and only then do I notice they are empty.

  We carefully step into one of the larger tents. The space smells like a small animal crawled in here to die and no one bothered to remove it. I cover my nose and mouth then spin around to take it all in. Tall and deep shelves line the walls with ragged fabrics piled haphazardly on them. They almost look like . . . beds. As though people were stacked in here to sleep, taking up as little space as possible. I imagine it to be the kind of place prisoners live, not rebel families.

  “I don’t like this.” Kai pulls my hand away from my face and leads me out of the tent.

  We travel farther within a copse of trees, following the direction of a road thirty yards to our left. It’s not long before I hear something. Kai brings his fingers to his lips and motions for me to get down. The red of fire looms in the distance, but I’m not sure what’s burning. The smell of smoke and ash is overwhelming. I squint my eyes and see a crowd of people huddled against a brick building closer to us. Uniformed guards patrol around them, wearing black jumpsuits with large firearms strapped over their shoulders.

  “Seekers,” I whisper. If I squint hard enough, I can see the symbols on their shoulders. A red star in a white circle. The symbol of Freedom.

  Kai turns to me and raises an eyebrow.

  “The ones in black,” I say, pointing to the guards. “They hunt for the lost by their trackers.”

  Kai’s eyes go wide in an instant. “This was a bad idea,” he says, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go back.”

  “Wait,” I say. I look back at the mass of people. Fear is evident on each face—men, women, and children. And from what I’ve learned about life outside of Freedom, I know they are fathers, mothers, families. “They need our help, Kai.”

  He drops my arm and groans because he knows I’m right. He puts his hand to my ear.

  “Nothing’s changed,” I say. “The vibrations are the same. They don’t know I’m here. Or they just aren’t looking for me here.”

  Kai nods and leads us through the trees until we’re close enough to hear voices. We lie on the forest floor and strain to hear what they say.

  “ . . . gave you a chance to live here under generous conditions. We let you stay together as long as you followed a few simple rules. But you weren’t grateful for that freedom.” It’s a female Seeker who speaks, turned away from us. Her words are harsh. I think of the Seeker who spoke so kindly to me when he tested my tracker the day I boarded the shuttle. He was nothing like this woman. “You disobeyed,” she continues. “You squandered that freedom. So now you will be punished.”

  Other Seekers grab the children from the crowd and pull them to the open space in front of the Seeker in charge. Men and women scream and scramble for their children, but there are too many guards, and when they don’t stay against the building on their own, the adults are beaten into obedience.

  I don’t understand. These people aren’t free-breakers. I can’t imagine they’ve done anything to infringe on the free will of Freedom citizens. Not hundreds of miles away.

  “You were told not to breed,” the Seeker shouts. She holds one of the children in front of her by his neck,
a boy of about eight. His hair is dark and curly, and I think of Hemi, crying for me back home on the beach. “These children are evidence you have disobeyed a direct order from the Prime Maker. They no longer belong to you.” She turns to the other uniformed Seekers and says, “Take them away.”

  As the children are dragged away, an eruption of cries follow from the adults still huddled against the building. One man breaks free of his restrainers and runs for the children. He hasn’t gone ten feet before a loud shot rings through the clearing.

  I open my mouth to scream, but Kai’s hand is there before any sound comes out. The man’s body drops to the ground with a loud thump. I am shaking when the other Seekers aim their guns at the rest of the adults, ready to fire should anyone else attempt to go after the children. I grit my teeth and push Kai’s hand away. I’m not going to make a sound. The vibration in my head is a warning siren now. We have no weapons, no way to fight back. I don’t know what to do. I lie there, too shocked to move.

  “Grab the adult females,” the woman Seeker orders the others. “Eridian wants more surrogates. Take the rest to the commuter for transport.”

  “Eri,” I whisper. Is the Prime Maker behind these attacks? I don’t know what a surrogate is, but it can’t be anything good. What will they do to the rest of the adults? To the children?

  I turn to Kai. “The empty village on the west island—” I don’t have to finish because he knows what I’m thinking—he was right. The people from the rebel village he found were taken, not killed, and likely brought here to be stored and sorted like animals.

  “Let’s go,” Kai says.

  I let him drag me through the forest and back the way we came. His grip on my arm is so painful, I want to hit his hand away, but I’m too weak to move anything but my stumbling feet.

  “Did you see the baby?” I ask, the sound barely escaping my throat. “They took the baby too.”

  “I know.” His hand tightens on my arm, and I wince.

  I’ve never felt so helpless. How can we do nothing? How can we let these people be treated this way? It’s not right—but what can we do? I dig my heels into the forest floor and pull my arm back. “We have to do something.”