The Exo Project

by Andrew DeYoung

  “You know what I thought.”

  Kiva’s jaw stiffened. She held her neck straight, her head angled up toward him, and her chin pointed out into the air between them. “I want to hear you say it.”

  “I thought you were beautiful.”

  “And now? What do you think now?”

  Matthew forced his mouth into a smirk. “Now you’re cheating.”

  “I don’t care. Answer me anyway. What do you think of me now?”

  Matthew tried to swallow. His mouth and throat felt dry.

  “I still think you’re beautiful,” he croaked.

  “That’s all?”

  Matthew shook his head. “No. That’s not all.”

  “What, then?”

  “Just give me a second,” Matthew snapped, his voice suddenly hoarse.

  Kiva’s mouth closed with a click. She waited.

  Matthew looked off to the side as he searched his mind for the right words to describe how he felt about Kiva. He realized that his hands were trembling and tried to still them by wringing them together, massaging the palm of one hand between the fingers and thumb of the other. After a long silence, he spoke.

  “It’s just … strange, you know? I mean, you’re different from anyone I’ve ever met. You’ve lived your whole life on a completely different planet. The things I don’t know about you could stretch from here to the other end of the galaxy. But when I look at you …” Matthew’s voice caught in his chest, but he forced himself to go on. “When I look at you, and talk to you, it doesn’t feel foreign. It doesn’t feel alien.”

  “What does it feel like?” Kiva asked, her voice barely a whisper on the still air.

  Matthew pressed his lips together and raised his shoulders in a helpless shrug. “It feels like home.”

  As he spoke, Matthew couldn’t bring himself to look directly at Kiva’s face. He was afraid of what he’d see there. Once, back home, he’d told a girl at school that he had feelings for her and a look of disappointment or pity had flashed across her face. He didn’t think he could bear to see that look from Kiva.

  But finally, after a long, awkward silence, he dragged his eyes up to look at her. She returned his gaze without blinking or looking away, and Matthew knew at once that she felt the same way he did. A wave of joy and relief tingled over the entire surface of his skin. But it didn’t last long. Because even though Matthew could tell by the way Kiva looked at him that she returned his feelings, he also saw a deep sadness written plainly across her face—and he knew immediately what that look meant.

  It meant that for them, things would never be that simple. Even love—if that’s what it was—wouldn’t be enough. Not by a long shot.

  “Kiva, I—,” he began, taking a step toward her, but she stopped him from saying more by putting a hand on his cheek.

  “Don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Not yet.”

  “But it’s all so complicated—the Vagri, the Ancestors, my mission. I don’t know what—”

  “Stop,” she said. “Let’s enjoy this moment, okay? Let’s make it last. The rest can wait.”

  Matthew was silent. He swallowed loudly. Then he nodded. He felt empty and helpless, both better and worse than he did before—as if by speaking he’d poured every bit of himself out onto the ground, like water from a glass.

  “Ask me another question,” Kiva said. “It’s your turn.”

  Matthew licked his lips. His mind moved quickly. His heart was beating wildly in his chest.

  “Okay,” he said. “Here’s my question. Have you ever been kissed?”

  “What?” Kiva said, turning her head to the side and trying to hide the deep gray blush that rose to her cheeks with a hand that darted up to tuck her hair behind her ears.

  “You learned that you were going to be Vagra when you were thirteen, right? And I imagine you didn’t have much time for boys after that, surrounded by all those women in the center of the village.”

  “It’s a silly question,” she said. “I’m not going to answer.”

  Matthew put on a shocked look, his mouth opening in feigned outrage. “But you said we had to be honest! That we had to tell each other the whole truth, without leaving anything out. That’s what you said.”

  Kiva narrowed her eyes at him. “I know what I said. But that’s not what you’re really asking.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No. You don’t want to know if I’ve ever been kissed before. You want to know if you can kiss me now.”

  Matthew’s stomach fluttered, but he forced himself to smile. “Well?”

  Kiva shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Matthew closed the distance between them in one stride and, in a single movement, slid an arm around Kiva’s waist while he lifted his other hand to the nape of her neck, lacing his fingers in her hair and setting his thumb lightly against the line of her jaw. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips against hers.

  They kissed tentatively at first. Kiva’s mouth was shut tight, but Matthew opened his slightly, inviting her to do the same. When he felt her lips begin to part, felt her begin to press her body against his, a thrill rippled through his body like an electric current, and for a moment he thought of what Dunne had told him about the Ancestors—about photon energy transfer, about neural pathways, about synapses firing.

  Then Kiva opened her lips wider and darted her tongue between his teeth, and every last thought of the Ancestors fled his mind until all he could think about was Kiva, Kiva, Kiva—about the taste of her mouth, about the weight of her body pressed against his, and about the way her warm flesh felt under his hands.

  60

  kyne

  Kiva.

  What does she think she’s doing?

  She left. I saw her. We all saw her.

  Sneaking away like a thief. Sneaking away to—what? To see that boy?

  Kiva and the Stranger.

  I can’t allow myself to think these things. She’s the Vagra.

  But I just don’t trust her.

  Kyne. We should have listened to Kyne. Maybe it’s not too late.

  I wish we’d … Kyne all along … she knew …

  The voices began to break up in Kyne’s mind. She clamped her eyes shut and concentrated, reached for the thoughts of the Sisters, willed them to be whole in her head once more.

  … Kyne knew … isn’t ready … that Stranger boy … threat …

  Kyne sighed and let her eyes come open. It was no use. The voices were gone.

  The maiora was wearing off.

  She glanced at the small square table next to her bed, where a leather pouch sat. She reached inside and pulled out a small ball of maiora. She rolled the cottony substance back and forth between her thumb and first two fingers. Her tongue was wedged between her lips, anticipating the bitter taste of the stuff—but she didn’t put it in her mouth. Instead, she put the ball back in the leather pouch with the rest of the maiora, then put her hands on her thighs and stood up.

  She’d been using maiora for only a few days—but already, Kyne feared that she was unable to stop. She’d gotten some when she visited the Forsaken camp with Po. After she left Xendr Chathe’s hut she’d snuck to the den at the edge of camp and stole a couple fistfuls of the stuff, unnoticed by the maiora-eaters lying senseless on the floor.

  Kyne had turned up her nose then at the Forsaken men who couldn’t stop taking maiora, so obsessed with the stuff that they’d obviously gone days without washing—but now, as she strode through her hut and made her way toward the door, she realized that she’d become just like them. When she first took the maiora, she told herself that she’d only use it occasionally, to hear the thoughts of the Sisters and see what visions the substance might give her. All she wanted was to gather enough information to know if there was any chance for her to restart her rebellion, if there was still any discontent with Kiva among the Vagri and the Sisters. Once she knew that, she told herself, she’d be done with maiora.

  Now, Kyne
knew that it wasn’t quite so simple. The feeling of being on maiora was similar to the feeling of communing with the Ancestors, of receiving a vision or hearing another person’s thoughts—except more intense. The problem was that when the maiora was humming through her veins, Kyne could sense only fragments: disconnected words and phrases from the minds of the Sisters, bits and pieces of visions. As the visions subsided, it was hard to shake the feeling that she’d been so close, the feeling that if she took just a little bit more, then the thing that seemed to be trying to break through at the edges of her perception would finally become clear.

  Kyne stood at the doorway and pulled aside the cloth. As she cast her eyes over the Sisters’ camp, all she saw were more huts. The camp seemed almost devoid of life. Kyne wasn’t the only one who’d scarcely left her hut since the Strangers had come. Most of the Sisters were inside, hunkering down in their isolated dwellings as if preparing for a storm.

  The village was quiet. But it wasn’t peaceful.

  Something was building.

  Kyne opened her eyes again. She’d heard enough of the Sisters’ thoughts while on the maiora to know: her rebellion wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. There was discontent in the village. It could be exploited.

  But it wasn’t enough. She needed more. She needed something on Kiva—something she could use to turn the village against her once and for all.

  Kyne returned to her bed. She reached her hand inside the leather pouch and pulled out the small, feathery ball of maiora once more. She held it between her fingers for a moment, thinking. Then she reached inside again and grabbed more—a small fistful, more than three times the amount she’d ever taken at a single time.

  She took a fast, quivering breath through her mouth. Licked her lips. Then put the whole fistful of maiora into her mouth. It melted at once on her tongue.

  Kyne’s vision blurred. Her skin went numb. The world surrounding her seemed to shrink to a single point of light, like the flame of a lamp burning in a dark room. Then even that single light collapsed in on itself and became a kind of black hole, a portal that sucked Kyne in with a force she couldn’t resist—and as Kyne’s consciousness hurtled through the portal faster than the speed of thought, images flashed before her eyes.

  A barren, dust-swept planet, suspended in blackness.

  Creatures who looked just like the Strangers—except there were thousands of them. Thousands upon thousands—millions, billions.

  Lined up under a merciless sky, the creatures waited to enter the belly of a massive stone bird.

  The vision pulled back to reveal a hundred more birds just like it, with Strangers streaming into every one.

  So many—how could there be so many? And all of them coming to Gle’ah.

  Then the vision shifted again, and Kyne saw waving grasses.

  Gle’ah.

  Po, her twin brother, loosed an arrow from its bow, and it struck Matthew in the chest.

  Kiva, kneeling over Matthew’s body, smearing her blood over the wound.

  Kiva and Matthew, alone, walking together across the plain. Their lips moved, but Kyne couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  And then.

  Matthew slipped a hand around Kiva’s waist, cradled her neck with the other. Leaned in.

  And kissed her.

  Kiva standing limp in his arms at first, then reaching her own arms around Matthew, pulling him deeper into the kiss.

  Kyne came out of the vision with a gasp. She snapped her head back and forth, half-expecting to see apparitions from the vision standing in the room with her—but no. She was alone.

  Kyne stood, her whole body trembling. The remnants of the maiora still thundered in her veins, and she paced in circles around the room, unable to let her body be still. She ran a hand through her hair: it was greasy to the touch. She stopped and looked down at herself, seeing the toll that a day and a half eating one clump of maiora after another had wrought: her dress was streaked with grime, and her skin glistened with sweat. She lifted an arm and sniffed cautiously at her armpit.

  Oof.

  She had to get cleaned up before she went to the Sisters. She had to look completely collected, completely put together—when she spoke to the Sisters, there could be no doubt that the accusations she was making against Kiva were true.

  Her eyes drifted once more to the table next to her bed, to the leather pouch that still held enough maiora to last her for the rest of the day and into the dead of night.

  But no. Kyne had had enough. The vision she’d had while under the influence of maiora was gone, but it didn’t matter—she could remember every image.

  The Strangers, greater in number than the blades of grass on the prairie, escaping their planet to come to Gle’ah.

  Kiva, healing Matthew when she could have let him die.

  Matthew kissing Kiva. And Kiva kissing him back.

  That was enough for Kyne to work with. That was more than enough.

  61

  kiva

  The wind had picked up, and as Kiva walked back to the village, the long grass licked at her ankles and her dress whipped off to the side, pulling so hard at her body that it seemed as though the fabric might lift her off the ground and carry her away.

  Kiva was dizzy. Her head felt as though it was floating above her neck, disconnected from the motions of her arms and legs. Her body seemed some foreign thing. She hardly knew herself. Her own actions were confusing to her, her thoughts a jumbled cacophony.

  Why had she allowed Matthew to kiss her? And why had she kissed him back?

  Even now, she didn’t know. Romance was forbidden to the Vagra—she was the mother of all her people, and couldn’t allow her allegiances to the Vagri to be clouded by love for any single person. For Kiva to kiss anyone would be viewed as a betrayal by the Sisters.

  And the fact that she’d fallen for a Stranger, well—that could only make things worse.

  Kiva clenched her fists at her side. It wasn’t fair! For everyone else but her, things were so simple—if Thruss or Rehal wanted to be with a boy, and that boy wanted them back, then they could be together. But for Kiva, the Vagra, nothing could ever be that easy. Everywhere she went, she heard the voices echoing in her head: the voices of the Ancestors, the voices of the Sisters, the voices of all the Vagri. She’d heard them for so long that by now, she could no longer recognize the sound of her own voice, her own thoughts.

  Kiva’s mind wandered to the possibility that she’d kissed Matthew not because she wanted to, but out of some ulterior motive. After they’d broken off their kiss and disentangled from one another, Kiva had told Matthew that he would face a choice, that soon he’d be forced to side either with the Vagri or with his own people. So, had she kissed him to control him? To bring him over to her side? To give him something to think about as he made his decision?

  Was it possible that even when she broke the taboos of her people by kissing Matthew, the Ancestors were controlling that, too? That even her sins weren’t her own?

  Kiva shook her head. As soon as she allowed herself to think it, that she’d kissed Matthew to manipulate him, or because she was controlled by the Ancestors, she knew it wasn’t true.

  No. She’d kissed Matthew because she wanted to. Because finally, after so many seasons of thinking about everyone but herself, she’d found something that she wanted. A desire that was hers and hers alone.

  For so long, she’d felt lost—her own voice drowned beneath the cacophony that echoed in her head. But in Matthew, somehow, she’d found herself again.

  The Sisters could be damned if they didn’t understand that. The Ancestors too. The last Vagra had been torn apart by the struggle to please everyone but herself. Kiva didn’t want to make that same mistake.

  As she grew closer to the village, though, a sense of unease grew within Kiva’s chest. On the plain, between the village and Matthew’s ship, things were so much simpler. There, the two of them could be free of the crushing expectations of both their people and just
be themselves—Kiva and Matthew instead of the Vagra and the Stranger. But when she returned to the village and he went back to his ship, things would start getting complicated again.

  She came close to the edge of the village and saw her old favorite spot, the small clefted swell where she’d first seen her vision of the Strangers, the place where she’d first met Matthew in a dream—even if he couldn’t remember it. Her steps slowed. She looked down at the spot, then up at the looming rise. The village lay beyond.

  Whatever waited for her there among the crowded huts, among the crush of people, each with their own desires, resentments, and schemes—she wasn’t ready to face it.

  She knelt in the grass and nestled into the cleft. She looked up for a moment at the slowly fading light of early evening. In her mind she could hear the background chatter of the Vagri and the Sisters. She pushed them away.

  Then, Kiva closed her eyes and thought of Matthew—of the warm strength of his hands gripping her by the waist and the nape of her neck, and the soft press of his lips against hers.

  62

  matthew

  Matthew walked back to the Corvus in a better mood than he’d been in for months—or decades, depending on how he looked at it.

  For so long now, hope was something he’d lived without. His mother’s cancer, being chosen for the Exo Project, the likelihood that he’d die on a planet light-years away from his own, and the certainty that even if he lived, he’d never see his family or his friends again.

  But now, this.

  Matthew lifted his fingers lightly to his lips. They felt swollen, bruised a bright red from the way Kiva had pressed hers against them. Matthew smiled. Of all the things he’d imagined he might find on planet H-240, the most he’d hoped for was water, breathable air, and a temperate climate that wouldn’t kill him the moment he took off his helmet. He never expected to find life on the surface. He never expected the Vagri.

  And he certainly never expected Kiva.

  Matthew’s smile gradually pulled straight and turned into a frown as his mind moved again to what Kiva had told him before they’d parted. The kiss they’d shared on the plain was wonderful, but it didn’t mark the end of their troubles. Not by a long shot.