by K. Makansi
His hand clenches around the pendant, and he jerks the chain. A mild sting at the nape of my neck, and the pendant comes free, swinging loosely in his hands.
I take a deep breath. It’s okay, I remind myself. You don’t need the pendant for this to work.
“There’s an Outsider out there,” I jerk my head to indicate where the march is happening, ignoring his question, “with plans to put a knife in your heart.” I pause, cock my head to the side, as if thinking. “Soren Skaarsgard is with her. Personally, I’m betting you won’t make it through this day alive.”
He narrows his eyes.
“Soren Skaarsgard is going to die today,” he rasps, his hot breath on my face. “Along with his Outsider friend. As for you, I have no doubt your parents will find some way to exonerate you, to spare you once again. But rest assured, Valerian, the moment you and I are alone, when this whole thing is over, I’ll slit your throat, and your pathetic story will finally come to an end.”
He drops the pendant in the pocket of his military jacket and, finally, takes a step back. Soo-Sun, I notice, is watching this whole encounter, though her expression is still as stoic as a statue’s. Aulion’s eyes never leave mine.
“Anything else?” he barks.
“Nothing detected, sir,” the soldier with the scanner replies.
Aulion nods. He turns to the door to the Security Center behind us, and holds his hand out to the DNA scanner. As the needle descends to prick his skin and confirm his DNA, I watch out of the corner of my eye as Soo-Sun turns away from us and walks down the hall, back to the elevator that leads to the rest of the building.
She knows Aulion has the pendant.
Before we walk in, the guards pull my hands behind me and slap the cuffs back on. The outer door opens, and I am flanked by four soldiers as I follow Aulion into the Security Center. Inside is a second identity check, and here Aulion presses his eye to a retinal scanner that emerges from the wall. A few seconds later the inner door slides open, and I walk in to see the enormous curved vidscreen lit up by dozens of separate video feeds, some small and tucked into the corners, cycling through different angles and images, others blown up into larger-than-life size and spread front and center across the screen.
“Laika, show us what’s going on in the city’s east quadrant.” I recognize both my father’s voice and the name of his C-Link, and sure enough, the videos quickly change, bringing up feeds from the team of marchers coming in over the Bridge of Remembrance. Have they identified any of my teammates? Demeter hasn’t updated me, so I assume for now, everyone is safe and no one has been targeted.
As I walk into the room behind Aulion, my wrists bound behind my back, shoeless and shirtless, clearly a prisoner, the first thing I notice is Moriana.
She’s standing at my mother’s side with a shiny, new holographic plasma in her hands and her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. She is not handcuffed. She is wearing shoes. She hardly looks like she was dragged from her bed by two large soldiers and searched with a body scanner before being allowed into the Security Center. She glances up at me as I stare at her, the muscles in my jaw tensing, my worst fears confirmed. She doesn’t even acknowledge me, glancing back down at the plasma as if I am no more to her than a speck on the wall.
I never should have believed you.
“The cameras in here are linked to the firewalled C-Link database,” Demeter says. “I can’t access them. I’ll be relying on aural input only.”
“Vale,” my mother’s voice rings out, sharp and commanding. “Good. You’re here.” I force myself to turn away from Moriana. I glance around the room to see who was called when the security briefings came in and the full extent of the protest became clear. There are several members of the Board of Directors, every member of the OAC Corporate Assembly’s Security Committee, and two of my father’s advisors. Everyone in the room is wearing light military clothing, designed for movement, not for glamour. No one is here this morning to look pretty. Everyone is prepared for action.
Corine has a saucer in her hands, and she takes a sip of the liquid in her teacup as she surveys me from across the room. I stare at the teacup, hoping against hope Soo-Sun did her job. Corine takes another sip and then sets the saucer down on a nearby table. She marches over to me, and heads turn as the whole room waits to see what will happen.
“Tell us everything you know about the march.”
“I don’t know—”
“I am tired of being lied to!” she shouts. “I am tired of trying to save you, to redeem you, to bring you back to the security of the world we built for you. You fought for the Resistance. You shot Sector soldiers—our soldiers—for them. You have worked against everything we once fought for together. You have lost your way, and I am tired of picking you up and putting you back on the right path. Now, I only want the truth. Tell me what they’re planning, Vale, and maybe one day, when all of this is over, our paths will reunite again.”
I gape at her. It’s the most forthright she’s been in front of me—in front of anyone, I’d wager—in years. When I was a child, she would have storms of rage where she would shout, throw things across the room, punch the walls with a violent energy I didn’t recognize and didn’t know how to contain. Only on very rare occasions—maybe three times before I was fifteen—did she do this in front of me. Most of the time she was wise enough to cordon herself off in a different part of our house, or walk outside to a secluded spot in a park. But I could still hear her, sometimes, through the walls or windows. Later, I realized that as twisted as it was, I actually enjoyed seeing her in those moments—she was normally so polished, so presentable, that her fits of anger seemed like the only times I ever got to see who she really was.
She hasn’t shouted at me, or anyone, like this in years. At least to my knowledge. I’d thought she’d gotten past them, but this reminds me of those old moments, when I could see the raw and honest Corine, the one who finally took off her mask and revealed the monster below.
Aulion, standing slightly in front of me so I can see his face in profile, smiles. He recognizes a kindred spirit, I think bitterly.
I start talking. If Soo-Sun did her job, and Corine’s tea is more than just leaves, all I have to do is buy time.
“It’s a peaceful march,” I say. “Mostly Farm and factory workers. Some from the city, Resistance members, and even a few Outsiders. All they want to do is be heard. All they want is to be healthy, to be given the right to choose their futures, to be—”
“Don’t philosophize, Vale,” Moriana interjects, rolling her eyes. “We’ve heard it all before.”
Philip, for his part, looks no more certain now than he did last night. If anything, he looks deeply unsettled. His cheeks are pale and his eyes bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. He’s not paying much attention to the drama unfolding between me and Corine. His eyes flit to us occasionally, but for the most part he is watching the action on the vidscreens with all the attention of a worried parent at the bedside of a sick child.
“What do the marchers hope to accomplish?” Corine asks.
“Nothing,” I respond, “except to voice their pleas for freedom, for the right to choose their own paths.”
Corine turns to the people watching us, the board members and political advisors, people in the highest positions of power in the Sector. They wear boots of the softest leather, sip from engraved teacups, and dip silver spoons into tiny pots of clear, golden honey, even here in this top-secret room in the bowels of Assembly Hall. I remember the drawing Remy did for the vigil: fruit and vegetable plants sprouting out of human skulls planted in the earth. It occurs to me that to these people, giving the Farm workers freedom is the same as destroying their way of life. If I learned anything from my obsession with history at the Academy, it was that great wealth and political oppression always go hand in hand.
“As you know, the genetic modifications we have been preparing for weeks are ready for implementation. Every individual with an entry in the P
ersonhood database has a tailored profile of epigenetic changes ready to be delivered through the cure to the parasitic pathogen.” Moriana meets my eyes as Corine speaks, addressing the whole room. “Those assembled here are our most trusted advisors and councilors. In light of today’s march, should we begin implementation?”
“I’m on it, Vale,” Demeter says into my ear. “I’m going to see if there’s anything I can do, any way I can stop it.”
But I know already that the odds are slim to none she can stop the whole machine of the OAC as it shifts smoothly into high gear, prepared to forever alter the lives of the millions of citizens of the Okarian Sector.
Several people glance around at each other before raising their hands, or—in one or two cases—shaking their heads in a confused no. One of the women I recognize is the President of the College of the People, Olivia Renteria, one of my father’s advisors. Philip swivels slowly, looking at Corine as if he’s just now hearing her, just now becoming aware of what’s happening in the room around us.
“I count a majority,” Corine says. She nods at Moriana. “Miss Nair, I am dispatching you to OAC headquarters to organize dissemination of the modifications. I want every single citizen of the Sector inoculated against the parasite and injected with their personalized nanobots by this time next week.”
Moriana nods curtly, turns on her heel, and marches out. As she walks away, she pauses at my shoulder.
“You forced our hand, Vale,” she says quietly. “If you hadn’t brought five thousand Farm workers down on our heads, Corine might actually have listened to you.” She pauses. “But now it’s too late.”
She sweeps by me and is gone.
25 - REMY
Summer 5, Sector Annum 106, 7h34
Gregorian Calendar: June 25
“We’re almost there.”
I pull Bear through the thick crowds of people toward the Sunflower. The marchers are mostly contained on Rue Jubilation, with Watchers and SDF troops keeping the crowds from dispersing. It appears they are under orders to contain the march, but so far there’s been no directive for a full-fledged attack. Airships have sprayed tear gas and a few Watchmen have used Bolts set to disperse or stun to keep everyone in the street, but I haven’t yet seen any escalation beyond that. Evander’s dragons idle above, but so far they’ve been an empty threat.
Rue Jubilation starts at the Bridge of Remembrance and ends in a large pedestrian roundabout that circles the Sunflower. The wide steps leading up to the great doors of Assembly Hall unfold directly into the “stem” of the monument, a long brick pathway lined on both sides with neat rows of maple trees. You can’t see the intricacies of the Sunflower design unless you see it from above. That’s why the designers built hills on either side of the monument, with stairs leading to the top where benches and tables are situated. Looking down, you see that it is made of interconnecting pathways lined with trellises, all laid out in the shape of a sunflower’s petals. In the middle, a row of bushes encircles a large plaza with a tall fountain. Here, the brickwork is laid out in the Fibonacci pattern seen in the actual flower’s center. A sunflower is a perfect example of clockwise and counter-clockwise spiral patterns found in nature, I recall from one of my lectures, and the Sector Sunflower was designed to honor both
Fibonacci’s genius as well as the endless beauty and order found in nature’s designs. The designer recreated this marvel of nature with eighty-nine spirals of brick going one way and one hundred forty-four the other way. At the very center, from where the spirals begin, the fountain acts as the source of the irrigation system, continually flowing through an underground network of filters and
refreshing itself from rain barrels and water catchment systems. Around the fountain, a series of benches give visitors a chance to enjoy the cool, fragrant shade.
When I see Rose, Reika, and Zeke reach the steps of Assembly Hall, I know it’s now or never. Bear and I duck behind several Farm workers and slip into the Sunflower. It’s almost a relief, escaping the crowds for a bit of space. The chanting, shouting, and pounding of footsteps still fills the air, but the marchers are hidden from view by the tall walls making up the sunflower petals.
The Sunflower was built just twenty years ago, the young architect astounded that her plans won the premiere design award that year. Once inside, it’s a maze of polished wood structures, a mixture of sustainably harvested elm, pine, bamboo, and cedar. Visitors explore the trellised walkways, all of which are adorned with a variety of flowering vines and hanging plants. When it is in full bloom, they are awash in bursts of yellow, but the keepers maintain it so that some flowers are blooming year round. Tulips, daylilies, mustard blossoms, daffodils, and chrysanthemum are just some of the plants I remember. The best time to walk through is right now, in early summer.
I touch my finger to some of the delicate petals, inhaling the scent of the friendship roses planted along this particular trellis. When I was little, the Sunflower monument was my favorite place to walk around besides my granddad’s garden. And now we’re going to destroy it.
“All good?” Bear asks. We run through the petals to the center, noting with satisfaction that the necessary preparations had been made the night before. Snake, risking arrest by lurking on government property after curfew, wired up a series of small explosives throughout the monument to form an invisible outline of the sunflower shape. In the very center, Snake planted the detonator. Once ignited, the trellises will burn and those in the airships above and on the top floors of Assembly Hall will see the symbol of the Okarian Sector go up in flames.
“Everything’s in place,” I say. “You ready?” I ask more for my sake than his. Bear never lived in Okaria, and though he likes gardens as much as the next guy, he has very little sentimental value attached to the Sunflower. I think of all the walks I took with my family here as a kid, holding hands, letting the scents wash over us. Tai refused to move on until Mom told her everything she knew about each plant. Sometimes that took so long, my dad and I would slip away and giggle to ourselves about how silly Tai and Mom were.
I flip my Bolt to the highest setting and point it at the detonator.
“Remy, watch out!” Bear points at an incoming drone, flying high above us, pivoting in our direction. It flashes green, recognizing my face and establishing me as a criminal. I swivel my Bolt up and around, and with no time to flip the switch to disperse, I hope my aim is true. I fire and the drone spirals through the air and drifts sideways.
I redirect my weapon at the detonator and pull the trigger. The Bolt blast connects and a flash of blue floods my vision. I look up. The base of the trellised framework of the Sunflower around the fountain area is alight. Low flames catch on the dry wood of the trellises and climb, lapping almost lovingly at the wood.
“Whoa,” Bear gasps.
The flames climb, growing with intensity, and I realize we’ve placed ourselves at the center of the growing inferno.
“Let’s get out of here,” Bear says, heading west through the maze of petals and toward the stairwell across Rue Jubilation. We can climb the hill and get a good look at what Corine and Philip are seeing from the drone view.
We emerge from the monument to shouts of “Seize them!” An officer takes off running after us, and Bear and I take the stairs two at a time. He’s soon ahead of me and I trip, slicing my pant leg open and bashing my shin on the edge of the steps. Already down, I roll over the side of the stair wall and drop into the lightly forested area on the side of the hill. My feet slip on the grass and I grab the tree trunks and low branches, using them for leverage to pull myself up.
I notice a drone heading toward Bear. From the partial cover of the leaves, I set my Bolt to disperse and aim. The drone sizzles and sparks and runs into a branch, then tilts backward and falls. The marchers start up a new chant as the flames grow below us. I shoulder my Bolt and follow Bear up the hill.
“The flames of freedom burn for us!” I notice a swell of sound as the front doors to Assembly Hall o
pen. A figure strides out, two black ops in tow, with all the arrogance of a man without fear. From this distance, I can’t make out who it is.
Bear climbs higher and points.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“The Dragon.”
Evander’s come out to play.
Evander carries a long tube and has some sort of pack strapped to his back. It’s definitely not a Bolt, but the black ops hold high-capacitor, fast-reloading Bolts, a new model I recognize by the size of the weapons. I try to make out what Evander’s holding, and it comes to me in a moment of dreadful recognition: a flamethrower used in forest management operations where controlled burns are necessary.
He walks down the steps, purposeful and slow, but steady. The black ops at his side fire a constant stream of shots into the crowd, carving a swath out of those gathered nearest the stairs.
“Bear, we have to stop them. Evander’s got a flamethrower.”
Bear’s jaw twitches and his face grows white. He nods wordlessly and turns to head back down the hill toward Assembly Hall. With drones and soldiers still pursuing us, we abandon our plan to watch the Sunflower burn and return to the thick of the crowd.
“Move!” Bear yells, and the Farm workers on the hillside open a pathway for us. Evander walks down the brick pathway making up the Sunflower stem as the crowd shrinks back like oil from water. Though the SDF had the people blockaded from approaching the lawns of Assembly Hall, many were able to push through and run up to the building itself. With the Sunflower on fire, both marchers and soldiers press to the edges of the roundabout, giving the heat of the flames a wide berth.
Evander, I presume, has had enough of his former subjects singing and crying out against him. I hear the hiss of the flamethrower. The crackle of Bolt fire is constant and Bear and I break into a sprint. Screams and more shouting fill my ears. Several Watchmen turn in obvious surprise toward the source of the chaos. The crowd shifts as people run as fast as they can, tripping over each other in their haste to reach safety.