by Ramona Finn
He stopped and glanced around nervously. But I knew what he’d been about to say. They were still people. The violent and the murderous were still people. People whose lives we were yanking the cord out from.
En masse, it was less real. Individually, it was very, very real.
“That makes sense,” I reassured him. His eyes flicked to mine and I saw confusion there. I realized, too late, that what he was confessing to me wasn’t supposed to make sense. He’d been hoping that I, as a premier ambassador for Haven, would have some kind of clinical explanation for his feelings. Because we, as Datapoints, were not trained to see the citizens we culled as people. No. There were the good, innocent citizens, who we didn’t cull, and there were the cullable. Violent, murderous, dangerous. All through our training, the cullable had never been referred to as ‘people’ or even ‘citizens.’ Anything to dehumanize them, I now realized.
“It does?”
I shrugged, an attempt at nonchalance. “It makes sense that a completely new protocol would feel different than a protocol you’re used to. And it makes sense that culling individual brainwaves would be more detail-oriented than culling en masse.”
He eyed me for another second and nodded. “What if we can’t do it?”
“What?”
“Well, we were all brought here for one specific kind of training. Now, most of the way through our time learning how to be Datapoints, we’re suddenly told to learn how to do this completely new thing. What if I—we—can’t do it? Will we still be Datapoints? Will they kick us out of the Station? Will we lose our tech? Have to go home?”
The thought had never occurred to me before, that my stupid Datapoint skills were basically putting a whole lot of people out of work. I wondered now, what would happen to the Datapoints who couldn’t do what Haven was asking them to do? Returning to their homes would be horrible. They’d be sitting ducks. The citizens respected Datapoints only because they feared them. But Datapoints whose tech had been turned off, or who no longer had the backing of the Authority? There was no telling what would happen to them.
“I don’t think the Authority would give up their investment so easily,” I said with a lump in my throat. “A lot of time and money has gone into training us. They’re not gonna kick you out because you can’t do one thing. They’ll probably just reassign you to a different kind of duty.”
“To be a tech or something? A mechanic?” There was a hint of hope in Cast’s voice that worried me. If he started broadcasting that he was hoping to be a mechanic or pilot rather than a Datapoint, then he might get himself into serious trouble.
I pivoted tactics. “Cast, it doesn’t matter what you could be if you fail.” I’d emphasized the word on purpose, and embarrassment had him straightening his spine, defiance flashing across his formerly deadened eyes. All Datapoints were competitive. Cast was no exception. “What matters is that you’re a Datapoint. Datapoints cull. And you’ve been asked to cull in a new way. Figure it out.”
I rose up, my eyes automatically scanning the room for my mother. I didn’t see her. Shoving the rest of my food onto Cast’s plate, I looked down at him. “I’ll keep your insights in mind when we’re figuring out how to implement the training.”
He nodded, knowing he was being dismissed, and the deadened look returned. “Bye, Glade.”
It hit me then, looking down at him, that the second I found my mother, I was out of here. Lost to the Authority forever. A traitor. An outlaw. A rebel.
This was goodbye with Cast. But I didn’t want to leave him on the Station.
I walked away without saying anything.
I didn’t find my mother.
By 6 p.m., I was seriously considering asking one of the other techs if they knew who she was or where I could find her.
But I wasn’t an idiot, so I didn’t do it.
I knew that Sullia was still watching me and, if she knew what/who I was looking for, there was all the chance in the world that she would find my mother before I could. I wouldn’t risk Mama falling into the hands of that psycho for anything. So, instead, I just kept searching, hoping I’d get a chance to grab her up and get us the hell out of there.
At 9 p.m., I started to get frantic. I’d been to every corner of the Station, seen hundreds of techs in their gray uniforms pass me by, and still, I hadn’t found my mother.
The information on the tablet in my pocket was burning a hole right through the fabric hiding it. There’d been no indication on the blueprints whether or not the bomb had actually been installed in the Ferryman ship or not yet, but still, I felt like any second news would come through that Charon had been blown off the map.
My nerves were shot now, and every ten seconds, I found my hand gripping the tech on my arm, and the secret hidden comm there, as well. I was tempted, so tempted, to send Kupier a message about what I’d seen. But we’d established that the comm link wasn’t safe.
Yeah, but it was definitely Kupier’s people who’d hacked into it, I argued with myself. Whoever had hacked it had sent that message for my mother. So that meant they were definitely on our side, right? Charon’s side?
I cursed myself for not having asked her that when I’d had her ear.
Or… wait.
I looked down at the hidden comm on my tech. Had Kupier been lying about that, too? Had there even been a hack at all? Was our comm actually a private line? Could other Ferrymen read my messages? Maybe he had been the one to send my mother’s message after all. Maybe he’d been one of the Ferrymen to take her body away. Maybe the entire story about getting trapped in Io’s orbit had been a lie.
I had no idea what to believe. Finding out he’d lied about knowing my mother was a Ferryman was like a drop of blood in a glass of water. It was just one little drop, but it spoiled the whole glass. I couldn’t trust anything he said.
The magnitude of his betrayal washed over me again, even worse this time now that I needed his help and he was so far from being someone I could ask. The only person I could trust with this information was my mother, and she was absolutely nowhere to be found.
I turned another corner of the Station, into a part where I never usually went, and I realized that I needed to just head back to my room. It was late, I wasn’t finding her, and my thoughts were in a thousand places. I needed to sit down, pull my curtain, and think. Seriously think.
It was wildly urgent that I notify someone that Charon was in danger. But I had no idea who. Except my mother.
The hallway was darker than others and I realized that I was in a residential section of the Station. I’d never been over here before, actually. There would have been no reason for me to explore a part of the Station I had no claim to.
Nerves suddenly danced up my spine and, a second later, my tech warned me that I wasn’t alone. I knew who it was instantly.
Half of me was rolling my eyes in exasperation and the other half of me was spoiling for a fight. Anything to work off these nerves.
“Might as well come out and fight me face to face, Sullia. You know you want to.”
There was a bright flash, and suddenly I was on my hands and knees. Had the Station jolted? Collided with something? When the bright flash came again, I wasn’t spared the pain that came along with it. And I knew this pain. This was interrogation pain. When I’d first returned from the Ferrymen, this had been the pain that I’d been subjected to.
I rolled, attempting to get out of the way of the stun ray, but the pain hit me again. I was belly-up and helpless when a flash of emerald green hair bent over the tech on my arm.
And then everything was black.
I tore my eyes open and immediately scanned my surroundings. I was in medical, and my arm and face were screaming in pain. I winced and then held still. My tech. It was like it was crying out in pain. I blinked fast to try and wake myself up even more, not wanting to really move my body against the pain. I recognized the dregs of painkillers in my system.
I didn’t need to wonder why I was here. I remem
bered exactly. A bright flash, deadly pain, emerald hair.
Mother effing Sullia.
The growl tore from my dry throat unbidden. God, she was the worst. And now I was completely laid up when I should have been tearing the Station apart for my mother. I needed to get up. I couldn’t lay here like an invalid when…
Oh God. Pain tore through my head as I tried to sit up. I immediately fell back to the bed. Yeah, there was no standing up right now. I was just going to have to figure something else out.
“Don’t move.”
That was Dahn’s voice. I cracked an eye and he came into my line of sight. He scowled at me like I was a misbehaving child.
I scowled right back.
“Not gonna be a problem,” I croaked through my cracked throat. “Water?”
He looked around him for one of the medical techs and, when he realized we were alone, he scowled even further. Dahn filled a cup of water at the sink and then searched around until he found a straw. He held the cup steady while I took a few drinks. The water was both life giving and excruciating as I swallowed it. My throat was killing me, and my stomach was nauseous.
I set my head back on the pillow and tried to speak, but the edges of my vision were blurry and darkening, and so was my brain.
I let sleep take me.
When I woke again, I immediately looked for Dahn. And, sure enough, he was there. Along with a few medical techs who were messing with machines and changing the bag on my IV.
I said nothing and didn’t move as I woke up, but his eyes were instantly on me, seeking mine. Those silver lasers. No, those light green lasers.
Our kiss seemed a million miles away, hidden under a hundred years of gauze and life. Yet, somehow, it still sat like a rock between us.
Dahn waited until the medical techs bustled out before he rose and came to stand by the edge of my bed.
“You can sit,” I said in a husky voice that barely sounded like mine.
“I’d rather not.”
Okay. So. He was mad at me. Because I was hurt? Because I’d kissed him? Because, because, because... There were a hundred reasons he could be angry. It was a pointless exercise to guess.
“Why are you mad?”
He ignored my question. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Sullia attacked me.”
Something tightened and set fire behind his eyes. “Are you sure?” But his tone of voice told me that he completely believed me.
“Of course.”
“They’re saying that she has an alibi. She was obviously the first person we hauled in when we heard that you’d been hurt. But apparently she was on the other side of the Station when you got attacked.”
“What was she doing?”
“Ah… mingling. With one of the graduated Datapoints.”
I started to roll my eyes, but immediately stopped when the pain in my head quadrupled with the motion. I thought of gorgeous, wily Sullia. And her usual way of getting whatever she wanted. “You know that she wouldn’t have any trouble coaxing a man to lie for her.”
“I know that.” He paused then, and it was weighted. I knew there was more. “The thing is, your attack looked a lot like the one on Datapoint Sin Europa; remember that? About six years ago? And when it happened, there were all sorts of alarms and warnings tripped on the landing pad, and—”
“They think it was a Ferryman attack?” Sure, I remembered the attack on Sin Europa. Every Datapoint did. They’d bombarded us with the details of it over and over again when we’d first come to train to be Datapoints. Some Ferrymen had accosted the young Datapoint when he was making repairs to a satellite that orbited Mars. They’d knocked him out and destroyed his tech, even stealing pieces of it.
Of course, I now knew that they’d done that because they needed to understand Datapoints better. They’d needed to know how to defend themselves.
“Yes. All signs point to it being a Ferryman attack. The entire Station has been on red alert for a week—”
“A week?” My head spun. “I’ve been unconscious for a week? What the hell did she do to me?”
“So, you’re positive it was Sullia?”
I glared at him. “I saw her attack me, Dahn. She used one of the stun guns that the interrogation techs use. I didn’t stand a chance. And I saw her bending over my tech right before I passed out, too. Emerald green isn’t the stealthiest choice for a hair color.”
He frowned, watching me carefully, and I knew he was running through all the options. Who to believe, and why.
A thought occurred to me then and it made my adrenaline spike, sending icy slashes through my system. Had she just destroyed my tech? Or had she stolen some of it?
My comm had been on there.
I pushed myself up, praying to God I was about to see repaired tech, Ferrymen comm and all, good as new, on my arm.
“Glade…” Dahn reached out and stilled my movements over top of the blanket. “There’s something that I should tell you.”
“Ah! She’s awake. Thank the heavens. You gave us quite the fright, darling girl.”
That reedy voice sent shivers down my spine. Haven stepped into the room, all silver and white and speaking to me like he was a beloved grandfather. I hated him.
“Sir Haven, I was just about to tell her.” Dahn’s voice was strangely robotic.
“Well, then I’m glad I chose to stop by now. First things first, though, Glade, how are you feeling?”
“Like a million bucks,” I croaked. Yeah, if those million bucks had been doused in gasoline and thrown into a trash fire.
He chuckled. “Not even a Ferryman attack can stop you. I have to confess, it really was perfect timing for that attack.”
I glanced at Dahn and saw that his expression, for one second, was icy and horrified, disgusted with Haven’s words. But he wiped his face clean.
“Perfect timing?” I asked hollowly.
“Yes. I simply mean that I think the belief that you had any supposed allegiance with the Ferrymen, ever, will have been firmly put to bed now that we see they’ve attacked you. No one will doubt you now.”
I wondered vaguely who these people were. The other members of the Authority? Haven, himself?
I couldn’t think about this crap right now. Especially not about the fact that Haven was relieved I’d been attacked because it apparently bettered his political agenda. All I had to do was find my mother, and then we could get the hell off the Station. I had an escape plan, I reminded myself. I wasn’t trapped here.
“You said you had something to tell me?” I asked Dahn, not having any idea how to respond to Haven, and really, really wanting that conversation to be over anyways.
“Right.” Dahn glanced at Haven and then back to me. It was obvious that he hadn’t wanted to tell me in front of Haven. But now he had no choice. “Your original tech was damaged beyond repair.”
I blinked at him and then started to move out from under the covers. I needed to see it with my own eyes. Again, he stilled me.
“You have new tech, Glade. And it’s different from your original tech.”
“What?” I’m sure my face went as white as the hospital sheet tucked over my shoulders. Dahn was still trying to keep me from moving too much, but he must have been worried about hurting me because his grip wasn’t nearly tight enough to keep me still.
I wiggled out from his grip and pulled my arm out from under the sheets. Then, I stared and stared, my brain totally unwilling to believe what I was seeing.
There was, in fact, new tech on my arm. It was comprised of crystals that were iridescent like Dahn’s, like my last tech. But the crystal motherboards were shinier—they caught the light and threw rainbows around the room. My last tech had been squat and a bit chunky. This tech was long and sleek, and somehow extremely vicious looking. Like knives of ice forming in a lake. I instantly, instinctually, feared it.
My hand found my cheek and, sure enough, that tech was different, as well.
“Why?”
My mind flashed back to the simulation Haven had made me endure all those months ago. He’d wanted me to prove I could cull the solar system all at once. It had nearly killed me. Was he saying that I could cull with this new tech and it wouldn’t drain me like that?
Haven was waiting for me to respond, and when I didn’t, something like annoyance flashed in his eyes.
“Well,” he said. “We’ll give you a few more days to recover and then we’ll take your new tech for a spin. I’ll be anxious to see the results.”
I let my eyes flutter down, starting to fake fatigue, and I heard Haven and Dahn speaking in low tones above me.
When I opened my eyes again, Haven was gone. Dahn was there. His face was impassive, but his arms were crossed over his chest, as if he knew what was coming.
“He did surgery on me while I was unconscious. Took my old tech and provided me with a new one?” There was anger in every letter of every word. I was shaking with it.
“Datapoints are property of the Authority, Glade. You know that the ultimate decisions about what happens to our bodies are in the hands of our superiors.” It was the perfect answer, from the perfect Datapoint, but I could see the flicker in his expression that told me he thought this was as horrible a violation as I did.
Dahn sighed, and paced from one end of the room to the other. “It’s a gift, Glade. An incredible gift. It’ll make culling easier for you.”