by Ilima Todd
“We give these people a purpose,” Eri says. “A way to contribute to the cause of Freedom.” She lifts her chin as though she should be rewarded for her kindness. “It’s better than burning in the mass fires, don’t you think?”
I feel like an invisible hand has wrapped around my throat, making every breath I inhale a struggle. The smoke, the fires, we saw—those were people burning.
I try not to think about how many people were killed here today. Maybe they refused to follow the Seekers’ commands. Or perhaps they were just . . . extras—not needed by the Prime Maker. Either way, this whole thing makes my stomach feel worse.
“I’m glad we had this talk, Nine. It proves the experiment was a success.”
I lift my head at that, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Making all Batch members the same, making them equal, only made them want to become different when they were finally Remade. To stand out. To be their own person.” She folds her arms with an arrogant smile. “I thought if we Made someone different, someone other, someone . . . like me, she’d do whatever she could to become like everyone else. She’d want to belong, want to blend. And considering the amount of trouble we’ve had from the rebels lately, it’s more important than ever to make sure our citizens in Freedom feel like they belong. We don’t want them to question things or long for another life—another way.”
Eri would have never agreed to give our citizens the choice to live as families. She wants us to feel alone, to want to belong to something. To want to belong to Freedom. Isn’t that what I’d always wanted—to belong? To be like everyone else? To be like . . . Theron. My mouth goes dry thinking about how I really was like Eri, willing to do whatever I could to be equal. But then the crash happened. And after all those months on the island, with a family, with Kai, I’m not sure I want to belong anymore. Not to Freedom anyway. I want to belong to Kai. He’s all that matters to me.
“And here you are, my Nine.” Eri searches her pockets for something. “You’re here because you were determined to belong. I knew it from the moment you chose to be male. You questioned who you were and decided to do something about it. Not everyone is that brave.”
So if I choose to be me—is that brave too?
She withdraws a small glass bottle and shakes it in her hand. “Not everyone believed I could make it happen, but in the end I was right. The experiment worked.”
I think of the man in the gray suit glaring at me during my last academic module. I’m sure he was one of several cabinet members betting against me. I wish I could’ve proven them right from the start. More than anything, I don’t want to be like Eridian. I don’t care if we share the same genes. It doesn’t mean I inherited anything from her beyond my looks. Does it?
“And because of you,” she continues with a thrill in her voice, “I’ll be able to convince the other Prime Makers to produce test subjects throughout all the Freedom provinces in the world. With access to rebel sperm and eggs, we’ll easily have the diversity we need for the experiments.”
I realize what Eri has done is insane. There is no freedom in Freedom. I wonder if there ever was.
“I want to see Kai,” I say.
“Not yet, my dear,” she says, pouring a clear liquid onto a cloth from her pocket. “It’s time to sleep. But you’ll see him soon enough.”
She brings the cloth to my face and covers my mouth and nose. I breathe in the fumes, and everything turns black.
I know that smell. It’s the smell of a Healer building. I open my eyes to a white room. I’m lying in a bed, and I’m cold. After reaching for blankets that aren’t there, I sit up to find I’m wearing a pair of gray sweats and a white tank. I sigh, slipping my legs over the edge of the bed and walking to a mirror on the far wall. My face is darker than I remember, the result of weeks on the canoe. The bump on the side of my face is gone, and there’s no pain in my head. I reach behind my ear and feel the familiar metal nub of a tracker.
My door opens, and my heart starts to beat faster. “Kai?”
“No.”
My face drops as a Healer walks in with a portable touch screen. “How are you feeling today?”
Today? “Fine. How long have I been here?”
“Two days,” he says. “Any pain?”
I sit on my bed and sigh. “No pain, no dizziness, no numbing, no nothing.”
The Healer narrows his eyes at me. “You are free to leave,” he says, “but I’ve been instructed to tell you that in two days at eighteen hundred hours, you are to report to the Core building to choose your Remake and will subsequently be accompanied to your shuttle.”
“Thanks.” At least I won’t be locked away for those two days. Though with a new tracker installed behind my ear, it’s almost the same thing.
The Healer walks toward the door.
“Wait,” I say, rushing toward him. “Do you know what happened to the boy brought in with me? Kai?”
“He was released this morning and given the same instructions I just gave you.”
“Oh.”
He rolls his eyes and shuts the door as he leaves.
Sitting back on my bed, I wonder where Kai could be. I’m surprised he isn’t here, waiting for me to wake up. I reach for the pair of socks and shoes next to my bed, wondering where I should start looking for him. I slip on the socks, but when I try to get my foot into the left shoe, something inside resists. Confused, I pull out a piece of paper and begin to unfold it when there’s a knock on the door.
I spin around, the paper falling to the floor. “Kai?”
The door opens. It’s not Kai.
This boy—this man—is taller. His skin is fair and he has finger-length dark brown hair. It’s straight, not curly. And his eyes. I know those eyes. They are blue under dark lashes.
“Theron?”
“Nine . . .” His voice is a whisper, deep yet familiar.
“Theron!” I run to him and jump into his arms.
He stumbles backward with a laugh, trying to stand straight under my weight.
I wrap my legs around his waist and hold him tight. He isn’t real. He can’t be. How can he be here, in front of me? I pull back to get a good look at him.
“Theron,” I say again with a laugh. I touch his face, his eyes, nose, and lips. I trace the line of facial hair that skims along the length of his jaw. Our hands find each other’s hair at the same time, and we laugh together, running our fingers through their lengths.
“Nine.” Theron sighs, pulls my face to his and gives me a giant kiss on the lips.
I wrap my arms around his neck. “You’re so . . . tall.”
“And you’re so . . .” He sets me back on my feet and looks down at me, blushing. “ . . . female.”
We are laughing and touching and smelling and holding. I don’t want to let go, afraid if I do he will disappear. We stay silent for a long time, just looking at each other. My cheeks hurt from smiling so much, and my eyes leak happiness.
“I can’t believe you’re alive,” he says.
“Me? How is it you’re alive, Theron? After the shark—”
He leads me to the bed where we sit down. “I didn’t see the shark after you left,” he says. “I was so afraid it went after you instead.” He runs his hands down my arms and legs, as though making sure I’m still whole. “Nine, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I blush, even though he’s told me the same thing a thousand times before. I’m sure he’s just glad, as I am, that the other survived what we both thought was not survivable.
“I found a broken piece of the shuttle to hold on to,” he says. “We were rescued—six survivors in all. They tracked us—” He runs his thumb behind his right ear. “They came a few hours after . . . after I told you to leave.”
So it’s true. Trackers do work outside of Freedom. Mine just stopped working that night in the ocean and continued to corrode during my time on the island. I’m relieved I didn’t unwittingly lead Seekers there.
&nbs
p; He drops his head and wipes at his face. “I did the wrong thing, Nine, telling you to go. I was so scared, I wasn’t thinking, sending you away from the crash site when I knew that’s where they’d find us.”
“It’s okay,” I say, lifting his chin. “I’m here. I’m okay.”
He looks at me with a crooked smile that makes my heart speed up.
I bite my lip. “I felt terrible about leaving you to that monster. I’ve thought all this time that if you didn’t drown, it would have torn you apart—killed you.”
Theron lifts his right pant leg. Just below his knee is the barely noticeable line of a scar. “It bit my foot off,” he says.
I gasp and run my finger along the scar.
“I guess I didn’t taste very good, since it didn’t bother me again,” he says with a nervous laugh. “They had to amputate up to my knee during my Remake. My calf, my ankle, my foot—it’s all new.”
“Can you feel my fingers?” I ask, running them down his leg to his foot.
“Yes, but it’s different. I still walk with a limp. I’m not quite used to it, not sure if I’ll ever be.”
“Theron, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? You have no reason to be sorry. I’m the one who let you down.”
I shake my head. “No, you saved me. Every minute of my life, you saved me.”
He cups my face in his right hand. “What happened to you, Nine?”
I take a deep breath. I’m not sure how much I want to tell him about the island. About Kai. Not yet, anyway. “I washed ashore on an island, and the people who lived there found me. They took me in, fed me, made me a part of their fam . . . a part of them.” How can I explain to Theron something that means so much to me? I can’t even form it into words for myself. “They taught me their way of life, and then they helped me return to Freedom.” Technically, it was all the truth.
“I’m never going to let you go again, Nine,” he says, pulling me into him. I inhale his familiar scent. It is the smell of comfort. The smell of safety.
“I’m getting Remade in two days,” I say. “I’m supposed to report to the Core building then.” Of course, I’m not planning on going through with it, am I? I need to find Kai.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “There’s no way I’m going to let you go that quickly now that I’ve found you again. Maybe we can postpone it, or I can barter my way onto your shuttle and be there while you’re being Remade. I’ll literally glue myself to you if I have to,” he says with a smirk. “I’d run away with you first before letting you leave without me.”
His words make me glance at the folded paper on the floor. I slip off the bed to pick it up. Unfolding it, I realize it’s the map and set of instructions from Miriama. In different colored ink and with a familiar slanted penmanship scrawled across the bottom of the page are the words:
I can’t be with you anymore. Kai.
My knees buckle, and I drop the paper to the floor again. I feel as though I’ve been stabbed through the heart with a spear. Is he mad because I revealed us in the forest at the prison camp? Because I brought him here, to Freedom? Does he think I did it on purpose?
I don’t know how many more extreme emotions I can withstand. After a lifetime of being teased, a plane crash, losing Theron, months on a foreign island, falling in love, escaping the threat of Freedom, witnessing the horrors with the rebel prisoners, the complete joy of finding Theron again—now this? I pick up the paper and crumple it in my hands, stuffing it into my pocket. How dare he.
After all we’ve been through together, after all our confessions of love and promises of family, he’s gone. How could he abandon me like this?
I feel Theron’s hands on my shoulders and turn to him, collapsing into his chest.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks.
I shake my head against him. “Nothing. I’m fine.” I roll back my shoulders and lift my head. “I’m going to be fine.”
Theron presses his thumb against my chin. “Do you have anywhere to go right now?”
My chest hitches. I don’t even know where I’d go to find Kai, even if he wanted to be found. He could be long gone by now. Out of Freedom, on his way back to Mahawai. All that matters is he’s gone, and he doesn’t want me. I don’t understand.
“No,” I say, a painful tightness in my throat. “I don’t.”
“Good. Stay here, I’m going to check out of work, and we’ll spend the rest of the day together, all right?”
Not knowing what other choice I have, I nod and finish putting on my shoes. I give him a smile, determined to enjoy every moment I have with Theron. I’m eager to make up for months of lost time with him.
“On second thought,” he says, slipping his hand into mine. “You’re coming with me to check out. I’m not gonna let you out of my sight for a long, long time.”
* * *
Theron takes me to a café on Main Street for a cup of something hot and chocolaty. I’m not used to the sounds of so many people about, and I just sit and watch as they walk by. They laugh and smile and engage in lively conversation, but something’s not right. Something I’ve never noticed before. Their eyes are empty, vacant. They aren’t truly happy, no matter how much they pretend to be. Not really. It’s like something’s missing and they don’t know what it is.
They have no thoughts for the bread that needs to be made, the diaper that needs changing, the dishes that need to be washed by hand because they have no dish machine. I can’t imagine their minds filled with anything other than how to get their next fix of temporary pleasure. The unnatural colors of the people and their clothing make my eyes tired.
I find myself searching for Kai among the crowd. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he’s out looking for me right now. Maybe—
“Do you want to go to the cinema?” Theron asks.
I shake my head. “I just want to be with you.”
We walk down the street, Theron with a distinct limp in his step. He looks so different now that his shoulders are wider and his chest and back have mounds of muscle. He’s a taller, wider, stronger version of Theron, but he is still my Theron. We stop at a clothing store, and I let him dress me in whatever he wants, finally settling on a green dress with a low neckline and a silver buckle on the upper part of my arm.
“I like this color,” I say, glad to be rid of the sweats and tank top.
Theron gazes at me. “You look amazing.” He pulls me into him for an embrace. “I’m not sure I want to share you with anyone else today.”
I freeze at the familiar words. Kai’s words. Before I have a chance to react any further, Theron goes to the sales desk and swipes his point card, purchasing two bags full of clothes for me. “Have these delivered to my apartment,” he tells the salesman, then turns and takes my hand in his.
We stop at a simulation center and, after paying for half an hour’s worth, climb into the same simulation unit. Theron lets me flip through the list of choices on the touch screen in front of us. Violence. Sex. Food. Thrills. I select the term ENVIRONMENT which brings up another list of choices: tundra, grassland, desert. I smile and choose TROPICAL.
The screen goes black, and the entire unit seems to disappear, leaving us in the dark. Slowly, images appear in front, above, and to the sides of us. A sandy beach. Coconut trees swaying in the breeze. We veer over the landscape like a bird flying through the sky. Green forests, lazy rivers, vibrant flowers. The mountains are dotted with waterfalls, and we zoom in on one, the white churning water at the base of a cliff encompassing the entire screen.
This isn’t right. The images are beautiful, but it’s a shadow of the real thing. There should be a humidity that hangs on you, forcing you to be lazy and long for a spot in the breezy shade. The waterfall should be sending a misty spray into our faces, the churning water making a noise so loud you feel like the most insignificant creature beside it. The fragrance of plants and flowers should fill your entire being, tingling in your toes and fingers, tickling all of your senses.
&n
bsp; And most importantly, where are the people? Miri bouncing a baby on her hip, singing him a lullaby. Ara mending the nets for the next day’s catch. Pua and Hemi laughing and swinging in a hammock. And Kai. Where would Kai be? Diving in the reef? Husking coconuts? Kissing the girl he loves under the eaves of the house?
This was a bad idea.
In the scene, we fly to the ocean and into the water, beneath the surface. Fish of every size and color swim around us. I spot a turtle, an octopus, and even an eel peeking out from coral. We move beyond the reef to deeper blue water and see the large shape of a shark flash its teeth at us.
This was a really bad idea.
Theron stiffens at my side, and I fumble for the exit handle on the wall beside me. “I can’t find it,” I say in desperation. I press the emergency stop button repeatedly, but nothing happens. Of all the units we end up in a busted one that won’t shut off.
Theron grips me with a trembling hand.
“Close your eyes, Theron.” He must’ve obeyed because I feel him relax slightly.
The lights finally come on, and I find the handle, leading us out of the simulation unit.
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling his limping form behind me. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “You didn’t know that would happen.” He slides his hand in mine. “I think I’m ready for a buzz now, though.”
We enter a nightspot, and I immediately grab a buzz drink for Theron and myself. Theron downs his in a few swallows. After a few sips I feel nauseated, so I give it up. Theron pulls me to the dance floor, but instead of jumping to the heavy beat, I wrap my arms around his waist and choose to listen instead to the beat of his heart. I’m alive, the rhythm of his heart says. I’m alive and strong. I’m here.
Theron lets me stand there, still, trying to absorb all of him. I close my eyes, chasing away the flashing lights in the building. I begin to lead us in a steady sway to the song of his heartbeat, as though we are the only ones there. His heart begins to speed up, and I smile, imagining my hands in his, him tossing me away and back again in a thrilling twist of movements that make me laugh and shout at the same time. In this dream, I’m afraid I will fall away but I always return, my hands solid in his.