by Ilima Todd
Kai tugs on the collar of my shirt and pulls me to him. His face is practically in mine when he says, “I’m getting you out of here, Nine. Back to the boat.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. I just . . . I have to think.” He shakes his head. “Something’s wrong here.”
“Of course something’s wrong,” I say a little too loud. “They’re tearing these families apart. Kidnapping them.”
“Exactly.” He rests his forehead on mine and whispers, “Didn’t you hear that woman? They let these people continue to live here in this . . . prison camp. Why would they do that? Where are they taking them? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Are you really complaining that the Seekers didn’t kill them instead?”
“No, I just . . .” He pulls back and bites his lip. “Maybe we can sail to the rebel camp in Freedom, like my mom said. Organize an army to come back here—”
“They could all be gone by then.”
Kai shakes me by my fisted shirt. “I’m getting you away from—”
The sound of nearby laughter makes us turn. Quickly, Kai pulls me with him behind a tree, and we peek around the corner to see who made the sound.
Three male Seekers drag a woman to a spot not ten yards away hidden among the trees. They throw her to the ground, and I can tell from where we are that she is very pregnant, her stomach evidence that she’s close to full term.
“You like making babies?” One of the men spits at her. “Yes? You like making them?”
The other two Seekers hold the woman down. Her screams of panic are too much to bear. I don’t know what they plan to do, but I can’t stand aside and let her be hurt by these monsters.
I try to run to them but Kai holds me back. “Let go,” I say, but he’s too strong for me.
“Nine, please.”
If he won’t let me go, I’ll have to get their attention another way. “Stop!” I scream at them. “Stop!” My voice echoes through the forest, and I’ve no doubt they heard me. I don’t care if I die. I can’t stand aside anymore and let these innocent people be hurt, let them be killed.
The spitting Seeker aims his firearm at Kai and me. “Who are you?” he snarls.
I glance at Kai, my tongue frozen in my mouth. I hadn’t thought about him when I jumped out from behind the tree. I was ready to give my life to save this girl, not Kai’s life. Suddenly I’m in a panic, trying to think of a way to salvage my idiotic outburst.
“Speak now, girlie, before I blow your friend’s head off.” He aims the gun at Kai, and I jump in front of him.
“I’m from Freedom,” I say. “My shuttle crashed on the way to my Remake, and I was lost in the ocean.”
The Seeker’s eyes narrow, and a grin starts to form at the corner of his mouth. “A Batchling with red hair? I don’t think so.”
“Look,” I say, turning my head and pointing to my tracker. “See, I am from Freedom. I’m just trying to get home.” I don’t dare look behind me at Kai. I hope he’s sane enough to go along with my story. I can’t see any other option right now.
The Seeker pulls me by the ear to him. He touches the metal nub, and I cringe at the pain in my head. My body knocks against his gun. “Hey, Cael,” he calls behind him. “You got a tracker gun on ya?”
Cael brings a familiar plastic firearm to the Seeker. The third man stays with the woman, pushing her arms down to keep her still. My heart beats so hard the sound of it almost drowns the vibrations in my head.
The Seeker brings the plastic barrel to my head, and I gasp as it connects to the tracker with a snap. He pulls the trigger. “Hmm. It’s defective. Probably corroded from ocean water.” He presses the red button on the barrel and yanks the tracker out of my skull. Out of my head.
The vibration is replaced with screams. My own screams. I fall to my knees, and my hand flies to my ear, the pain almost more than I can handle.
“Bron, you idiot,” Cael says. “We don’t have any bandages. She’s gonna bleed out all over the place.”
Bron points his gun at Kai. “You, take your shirt off.”
Kai does as he says and kneels next to me, pressing the fabric against my head.
“Get away from her.” Bron kicks Kai’s arms away, and I dare to turn to him. His face is pale, and his hands ball up in fists. His chest rises and falls in labored breathing.
Don’t do anything cracked, Kai. I am screaming in short outbursts now. My arm is covered in blood that flows down from my head.
“Don’t worry,” Cael tells me. “We’ll get a new tracker installed soon enough. It’s a good thing you found us. We never would have been able to find you with that defective tracker.”
A sharp pain grows within my stomach. The buzzing wasn’t a countdown, wasn’t Freedom searching for me. It was just my tracker breaking down. They wouldn’t have found me. I wouldn’t have been hurt. We left the island for nothing. We left Miri and Ara. Pua and Hemi and Tama. We left our true freedom.
Bron kicks Kai to the ground and grinds his boot into his head. “Doesn’t look like your friend has a tracker, though.” He bends down and spits in Kai’s face. “You’re not from Freedom, are you?” Bron’s voice is a snarl, and he pushes the barrel of his gun into the side of Kai’s head.
“Remember what I said, Nine,” Kai says in a rush. “It matters. You can’t stop. It matters.”
No. I won’t let this happen. “He’s with me,” I say, pushing the gun away from Kai’s head. I stand and look Bron right in the face. “I am under special assignment by the Prime Maker herself. If you kill him, you’ll be compromising that assignment.”
Bron hesitates, and I can see Kai’s eyes go wide for a brief moment, confused. Doubting. The air between us becomes so tight I can almost hear it. Like the tiniest vibration would make it snap. Don’t let go of me yet, Kai. Please, trust me.
Bron flips his gun around and brings it down on Kai’s head, knocking him out. “You better be right about that, girlie, or you’ll regret not letting your friend die peacefully.”
I nod like one with authority. “I demand to see the Prime Maker as soon as possible.”
“I think that can be arranged.” Bron smirks. “Get rid of her.”
I think he is talking about me and brace myself to be dragged away from the forest. But instead the third Seeker releases the woman on the ground. She scrambles up and runs. I slump my shoulders in relief. At least I was able to save her.
And then Cael brings up his firearm and shoots at her as she runs away.
I drop the fabric from my ear, screaming—and the blunt end of Bron’s gun flies into my face.
When I open my eyes, a shining light blinds me. My head is pounding, my right ear is on fire, and I can feel a large bump forming on the left side of my head. As I try to turn away from the light, my head and neck resist. Sticky, wet blood has run down from where my tracker used to be. I try to touch it, but realize my hands are tied behind me, pinning me to the chair I sit in.
“Hello?” I call out. I can’t tell if I’m indoors or out, alone or not, with this cracked light shining right in my eyes. The echo of my own voice is the only answer. I’m indoors but alone.
I can’t get away from the light so I close my eyes and pull at the rope around my hands. “Kai,” I whisper. “Please be okay.”
“What is this?” A commanding voice comes from behind me, followed by the loud click-click-click of shoes with heels.
I feel the light in my face turn away, and I open my eyes, blinking to adjust to the dimness of the rest of the room. Cold hands behind me untie the ropes.
“This will not do at all,” the voice says, moving in front of me. I would recognize the red hair pulled back into a tight bun anywhere.
“Eri,” I say in a breath.
“I’m so sorry about how you’ve been treated here, Nine,” she says with a tsk. “I’m going to have a long talk with Bron. And after all you’ve been through, you poor, poor dear.” I can tell she attempts to make her words wa
rm, like she did the first day we met. But this time I see right through them. She can’t mask the cold of her voice with a variation in pitch or careful word selection anymore.
“Where is he?” I ask. “The boy . . . the one that was with me. What have you done with him?”
“Kai?” she asks, her saying his name giving me a chill right to my bones. “Kai is fine. He is recovering from a blow to his head in the next room.”
“I want to see him,” I say. “Please.”
“Kai can’t be disturbed right now. I think we should talk first, anyhow.” Eri reaches for the bump on my head. “The crash was most unfortunate, but we were under the impression you didn’t survive. We searched for you for days, and nothing.”
“My tracker was defective,” I say, repeating what Cael had said. “I washed ashore on some island, and Kai found me there.”
“Do you know where this island is?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think Kai does either. We were the only ones there.”
“No one else on the entire island?”
“It was very small.”
“And how did Kai get there?”
“He can’t remember,” I say. I need to stop her questions before she catches me in my lies. “I told him about Freedom and how we could both be Remade, if he helped me return. He’s been eager to go ever since.”
“Hmm.” Eridian purses her lips. “The Remake is reserved for those Made in Freedom. But this is a special circumstance, I think.” She taps her red lips, deciding something. “It’s an interesting turn in our little experiment.”
I wonder if she’s glad I was found, so that she can continue testing me—that I wasn’t a complete waste of years of observation.
“We’ll need to take you two back to Freedom first, get you cleaned up and healed. And we’ll need to install a new tracker in the both of you.”
I nod in agreement. “Can I see him now?”
Eri ignores my question. “Let’s talk about what you’ve seen here with the rebels today.”
“Here?” I didn’t know we were still in the prison camp. I wonder what the Prime Maker is doing here, so far outside of Freedom.
“Yes, here. Among these . . . savage people.” She spits the words out like a bad taste in her mouth. “You need to understand why we must gather and control them. They’ve taken it upon themselves to populate without regulation.”
“I know how infants are Made—outside of Freedom, that is.” I watch her face carefully, trying to read what she thinks of that. I dare to say one more thing: “And I have a feeling they are Made the same way in Freedom.”
Her eyes flash with surprise for the briefest of seconds.
“That’s why I couldn’t become a Maker, isn’t it? Because I don’t have fair, clear skin or dark brown hair. I don’t have the right genetic makeup. You couldn’t risk passing on my traits to another Batch member.” For the first time in my life, I wonder what my real parents looked like. What traits did I inherit from them? My father’s hair? My mother’s freckles? What parts of my personality were passed down from those before me, and which were learned? Which are just . . . me?
Her mouth opens to say something, but I speak before she has a chance to respond.
“It’s genius,” I say. “Really. The population needs to be controlled, and the best way to do that is by producing a set number of humans each year, maintaining order.” I gulp and freeze my eyes to hide what really burns within me. I do my best to push aside the image of all those children being taken from their families. “What these . . . rebels . . . are doing—it’s wrong and irresponsible. Kai and I both think so.”
“Yes,” she says, her eyes brightening. “Overpopulation brings death and disease. Freedom’s Batches are the best solution.” She shakes her head as though to clear it. “The only solution. We cannot risk another Virus outbreak, so the population must remain small and controlled. It’s the only way to establish peace.” She pauses, and her mouth twists in disgust. “These rebels put all of us in danger. It is selfish and wrong.”
Eridian is crazy enough, blinded enough, to believe that Kai and I agree with her sick logic.
I nod, thinking about Sub-level Two. I’m sure now, if I had opened that door, I would’ve seen that woman in the pain of labor, giving birth to what would become a Batch member in the next generation of Freedom’s finest citizens. If I walked farther in the room, looked in those stark white tents, I might have seen the other females with bellies as large as Miriama’s or the woman killed in the forest.
“I don’t understand why they choose to live this way,” Eri says. “They try to elude our Techies by not using any kind of electric energy, but it doesn’t keep us at bay forever. We’ll find them all eventually.” She pulls a chair from the shadows and slides it next to mine, sitting with her legs crossed. “They live together, one male and one female, having these children. It is so confining, having to do everything for the helpless creatures.”
I think about the countless people who worked together to raise us as children in Freedom, and I can’t picture one face. Because there was no specific person, there were numerous people, all doing their Trade work. Even Fosterers, whose job it was to care for small children, alternated daily. They didn’t love us or care about us; they just worked to earn points. We didn’t have an Arapeta to protect us, to feed us, to teach us. We didn’t have a Miriama to take us in her arms and fill our souls with strength with a hug and a whisper of encouragement in our ear. “Mothers,” I whisper. “Fathers.”
“Terms of imprisonment,” she says with a hiss. “Those people do nothing but bind and label these ridiculous ideals of family. There’s no freedom in it, only grief and unhappiness that drags you down. They are savages with no sense of independence or liberty.”
I frown at her. She knows nothing of families. They are love and belonging and sacrifice. If that does not bring happiness and freedom, I don’t know what can. Being stripped of the opportunity to choose such a life—that’s not happiness. It is despair and oppression. I wonder if Eridian has someone to love. Someone to care about other than herself.
“Can I see Kai now?” I whisper, not really believing she’ll agree to it.
“When we get back to Freedom,” Eri says, “you’ll need to choose your name and Trade in the computer system. Kai will do the same, and after a few days’ recovery, we’ll send you both to the Remake facility on a special shuttle.” She flashes her bright smile at me. “I think you’ve waited long enough to be Remade, don’t you, Nine?”
I smile the best I can. “Eri?” I ask.
“Yes?”
“Who Made me?” Now that there’s no secret between us regarding what the Makers actually do, I want to know. “I couldn’t have been Made by the Makers in the Core building.”
“You were an experiment, Nine.”
I know that. And it doesn’t answer my question. I bite my lip, not wanting to press her, considering how far I’ve gotten her to trust me and my intentions.
Eri sighs. “I Made you,” she says. “I’m one of your Makers.”
“What?”
“You weren’t an accident, Nine.”
I got my red hair from Eridian? The Prime Maker of Freedom One herself? It’s impossible. I can’t picture her ever subjecting herself to the burden of a pregnancy, the pains of labor. “You’re my . . . mother?”
“No. Definitely not.” She shakes her head in disgust. “I just made a contribution of my own to the woman who birthed you.”
That doesn’t make any sense.
“You see, Nine.” Eri crosses her legs the other way. “I’m not from Freedom. I escaped from my rebel camp when I was about your age to find it. The ideal life. The ability to choose anything I wanted. To be equal. I was taken in and allowed to be Remade, much like we are doing for your Kai. I sacrificed a lot of things—things that were very dear to me—to obtain that freedom.”
It explains why a child she Made would inherit her red hair. And maybe befo
re she was Remade, Eri had freckles too. But I’m still confused about what she meant by her contribution toward Making me.
“I’m sure you know by now,” she says, “that we remove your ability to have offspring during your Remake.”
“Why would you do that?” I press my lips together at my outburst. I can’t believe I said that out loud. But my heart aches at the thought.
Eri taps her foot, impatient. “There are no unauthorized children born in Freedom, Nine, because we don’t want the Virus to return. It’s that simple. People who breed without our approval risk our very survival. We’re saving people this way.”
I nod, my hands sweating. I want this conversation to end. It’s disconcerting, wondering what else I may have inherited from this disturbed person in front of me.
“After a person’s Remake, we keep the sperm or eggs—store them, just in case.” She pauses, then says gently, “I wasn’t always female, Nine.”
My jaw drops open. Eridian. She was male.
“I used some of my own sperm, since it was the only specimen I knew to have unusual properties. I knew it would produce a nonstandard Batch member. It was easy enough to fertilize a Maker egg and inject it into a rebel surrogate. And it worked perfectly.” Eri sits tall and waves her hand in front of me, proud of her little science experiment.
She is my father.
My stomach churns, and I think I’m going to be sick. “Surrogate?”
“Yes, of course.” She talks slowly as though I were a small child. “We would never put our own citizens through the torture of pregnancy and labor. Not anymore . . .” Her voice trails away before she clears her throat. “We use surrogates—women taken from rebel camps. With eggs and sperm from our Makers, we implant them in surrogate females who serve as incubation vessels. Everything is timed appropriately to produce ten males and ten females every month, like clockwork.”
No wonder that woman in the Core building was guarded so well. She really was a prisoner, contributing to the welfare of Freedom in the Prime Maker’s twisted and perverse way.