The Remnant

by Laura Liddell Nolen

  “I really wish I could see the look on your face right now,” said Isaiah.

  “I’ve been on an elevator before, you know.” I loosened my grip on his arm with considerable effort. “I just didn’t realize there was a floor beneath ours.”

  “Not the elevator,” he said as the reason for the extra bracing became apparent. The platform jerked to an unsteady stop just below the bottom floor, throwing my knees forward and my center off-balance. Isaiah’s grip solidified around me at the same time, and I didn’t fall. “This.”

  I inhaled involuntarily. We stood at the edge of an enormous room. It was brightly lit, and pale blue, except for a series of shiny white stripes down each wall. The stripes led to heavy black ports, each equipped with a tangle of code-based locks.

  The floor was a series of black catwalks suspended over the outer hull of the ship. The main drag branched off at certain intervals, giving access to each port in the room, and of course the entrance. The platform had landed between levels, so that I was nearly at eye level with the floor. I made to climb up onto the walk, but Isaiah placed a warm hand on my shoulder, stopping me.

  “Not that we’re going in that way,” whispered Isaiah. “But I hear it’s quite a view.”

  “Oh no?” I asked.

  “The platform stopped halfway for a reason,” he answered, pulling me down until we were nearly lying flat. A complicated series of shafts and wires spread before me, in sharp contrast to the bright, open room on the floor above.

  They lay against the platform, barely able to squeeze into the space beneath the floor. I followed, my tongue thickening in my mouth, and stumbled again, harder this time.

  “Careful,” Isaiah warned. “Tons of gravity down here, and we gotta crawl. Try to keep your neck relaxed, or you’ll tweak it. We need you in fighting shape.”

  We went a few steps before I could manage anything resembling a normal crawl. Isaiah continued to talk, leading us toward a particular port on the wall. “Shoulda seen me, my first time down here. It’s terrifying.”

  I had to agree, albeit silently. There was something about the crawl space beneath the floor that was even more off-putting than it should have been.

  “Just over here,” he called back. “Few more yards. I think you’ll appreciate where we’re going.”

  “Is that—” I bit my lip, nearly afraid to ask. “Is that an airlock?”

  “Why, yes it is! She can be taught. It’s the side of one, anyway. But that’s not the important part.”

  “The airlock isn’t important?”

  “We’re in a hangar, little bird.” He slid delicate fingers across the panel before us, then jerked it suddenly. It came off in his hands, and he placed it quietly to the side. It was bigger than me. “Or underneath one, anyway.”

  I swallowed, with difficulty. “And?”

  “And maybe it’s time you flew.”

  Seven

  I stared into the space the panel had revealed. It was dark, but I could make out some wires, and beyond that, a control panel of some kind. “You got them to give you an Arkhopper?”

  Isaiah gave me a withering glance through the shadows.

  I blinked at the airlock, which I figured had to be part of a hatch. “You stole one?”

  He looked at me patiently. “Not exactly. But you’re getting warmer.”

  “You’re about to steal one?”

  “Warmer.”

  I looked from Isaiah to the hatch, avoiding Marcela’s openly amused expression. “I’m about to steal one.”

  “Bingo.”

  I sighed.

  He pulled the white panel back into place and settled himself down in the narrow space so that he and Marcela were both facing me, their outstretched legs bordering mine on either side. “It’s strange to think about, isn’t it? This is the outer rim of the ship. We’re right next to space. Makes me feel fragile.” He curled his knees into his chest. “And heavy. That’s the gravity, though.”

  I stared at him.

  Marcela cleared her throat. “We’ve intercepted a series of communications between Central Command—the Commander himself, actually—and the Asian Ark. Apparently, he’s not so jazzed about continuing our little ceasefire.”

  “So threaten to cut his air supply or something,” I said. “Wasn’t that the whole point of stealing the Noah Board?”

  Isaiah wiggled his shoulders and settled a little further down, giving his neck more room to straighten out. From where we sat, barely underneath a walkway, we could see into most of the hangar above us. The flooring was only solid on the footpaths, giving the hangar the illusion of being suspended in space. “Yes and no. They update it; Adam rehacks it and overwrites their progress. Rinse and repeat. We can handle it.”

  “Then why exactly do you need me to hijack an Arkhopper?”

  “It turns out we have a weakness.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Like other than the fact that they have all the good weapons? And all the supplies? And all the trained soldiers?”

  They ignored that. “We—the Remnant—are on the outer rim of the ship and confined to Sector Seven. All our efforts to penetrate the rest of the ship have failed,” said Isaiah.

  “We don’t need to take the rest of the ship,” I said. “We just need the rest of the ship to leave us alone.”

  “Command alone, we could handle,” said Marcela. “We have a strong enough grip on their tech that we can probably survive until we get to Eirenea. The problem is that we’re right up against the hull of the ship.”

  I bit my lip, hesitant to be persuaded. Eirenea was the planet the Arks were trying to reach. The plan was to build some kind of electromagnetic field, then terraform and colonize it. Like a newer, smaller Earth. Even if everything went perfectly, we were still years away from reaching it.

  She paused, watching me. “It would appear that the Commander has embarked upon a more… comprehensive strategy for our defeat. Thanks to Adam, we have reason to believe he’s going to ally with Asia. Convince them that we need to be wiped out.”

  I considered that. “You’re saying they’re going to blow a hole in the ship.”

  “The engineers took the possibility of projectiles pretty seriously,” she said. “There are ways of saving the rest of the ship if the hull is breached. But they didn’t take the Remnant into account.”

  I nodded, understanding. “No one was supposed to live on the outer edge of the Ark.”

  “We weren’t supposed to live at all,” she said. “And if they hit us, we won’t survive the blast. Especially not if the Commander disables the defense systems first.”

  “One shot, we’re out,” said Isaiah.

  “They’d never do that,” I breathed. “Asia would never intentionally…” I stopped. Fear was a powerful salve for the conscience. If the Commander had convinced Asia that we were some kind of threat to them, I wasn’t sure what they’d be capable of. And in my experience, the Commander could be very convincing.

  “Oh, now,” he said. “Don’t look so upset about it. We do have a plan.”

  “Ah. As long as there’s a plan.”

  “And here he comes now,” said Marcela.

  I looked around, but apart from the three of us, the crawl space was empty. “He?”

  Marcela pointed through the floor above us. I squinted over the walkway and across the length of the hangar. A hooded figure swept into the room, accompanied by a change in the air, perceptible even from as far away as we were. As I watched, the guard on duty rushed toward him, but he held out a hand, and I saw that he was young: his hand was smaller and less muscular than Eren’s, or even Isaiah’s. The hand touched the guard, and the guard fell to the ground, writhing, and then was still.

  The hooded figure barely noticed. He swept toward the panel on the wall, and the door closed. His face was shrouded, but if my creeping suspicion as to his identity was right, that door wouldn’t open again, no matter who was on the other side.

  He turned toward us, and my gue
ss solidified into ice: Adam.

  Adam was a genius, a prodigy. Those were the only words appropriate to describe his fluency with the burgeoning technology of the Ark’s various systems, some of which he’d created himself, and nearly all of which he’d modified to suit his own strengths. I didn’t know much about his brief life on Earth, but, up here, the only family I’d seen of his was Amiel, his sister.

  He worked for Isaiah. We’d done exactly one job together: the Noah Board.

  At first, I’d liked him fine, in spite of the fact that he reminded me of myself, minus the tech proficiency. But during the heist, he’d killed without thought, and his methods were ruthless. It made him unpredictable. If you asked me, which apparently no one had, it was dangerous to work with a person like that. And not just to our enemies. To us. Surely Isaiah could see the need for limitations, for distance, with someone like that.

  I shivered, allowing the weight of the ship to pull me down into myself. “Isaiah. No,” I whispered. “He can’t be controlled.”

  “I don’t need to control him. I just need him to do his job. Sound familiar?”

  “Yes, you do,” I said.

  He approached at a leisurely pace, his hood anchored around his face for the length of the catwalk, and I felt my nerves set themselves on edge as he passed panel after panel on his path through the hangar.

  Of course he was coming for us.

  When he reached the panel above our hiding spot, he produced a long, thin black rod and swiped it over the controls. They zwipped and fizzled before going dark and rebooting. When the subsystem came back online, he pressed a hand against the biometric scanner, and we watched, breathless, as it keyed to his vitals. A moment passed, and the panel was his.

  Only then did he turn to us.

  He stooped to work an opening in the pipes around the catwalk, then assisted Isaiah through the floor and onto the platform in front of the hatch.

  Marcela went next, giving me an appraising look as she accepted Isaiah’s outstretched hand. I popped myself up through the hole before anyone could reach for me.

  Now that he’d taken control of the security systems in the hangar, Adam let his hood fall back to his shoulders. His face was as young and bright as I remembered. He flicked lightning-quick fingers over the panel, and the hatch popped open.

  The airlock was exposed. It lay open at our feet, awaiting us, barely longer or wider than a body. We couldn’t access the Arkhopper without it, but the mere thought of crawling into it made my fingers go cold. I decided not to look at it. I couldn’t afford to take my attention away from Adam, anyway.

  “Hi, Char,” he said, his voice softer than I remembered.

  I gritted my teeth. What was the play here? “Adam.”

  He smiled robotically. “Sorry about last time.”

  Last time, he’d shot me, rather than let the mission fail. His intent to kill had been as plain as the nose on his unlined face.

  “So,” he continued after my silence, “you and me. Together again.” There was an eagerness in his voice that belied his youth, but he showed far more restraint than I’d have otherwise credited him with.

  “No.” I directed my response at Isaiah. “We’re not.”

  Mars and Adam blinked. Isaiah’s face was outwardly passive. I continued. “I don’t want anything to do with him. Least of all now that the other Arks are involved.”

  “Not all of them,” said Adam.

  Isaiah spoke as though he hadn’t heard us. “This is a standard two-seat hopper. It can be piloted remotely, or with the manual controls. Pretty self-explanatory, from what I’ve heard. I’ll be in constant contact while you’re in transit.”

  “Two seats? I’m not going. Not with him.”

  A brief tension pressed Adam’s jaw forward, then he was calm again. Unreadable.

  I swallowed. “He’s dangerous, Ise.”

  Isaiah regarded me mildly. “He’s learning. And I thought you believed in second chances.”

  “This is my chance to learn from our mistake: send him away.”

  “Get in the airlock, little bird.”

  My lips went numb. “No.” My voice was pathetically quiet.

  Adam looked from me to Isaiah, eyes wide, but said nothing.

  “Don’t make me threaten you,” said Isaiah. “It’s bad for our friendship.”

  I wet my lips, unsure of myself, of everything. Except this. “Take my hand, Isaiah. I need you to understand me. I’m not doing this mission if Adam’s a part of it. And if you know me at all, you know this: you can’t make me.”

  “I’ll go,” said Marcela.

  We looked at her. My hand was still tightly wound around Isaiah’s.

  She spoke again. “You need two people. I’ll do it.”

  I took a breath and tried to think, but the airlock lay beside me like a grave. If we were trying to stop the Asian Commander, or whoever it was, from blowing a hole in the Remnant, Adam was nothing but a liability. To everyone. Whether or not I was there. I had to stop him from getting on the hopper.

  “It should be me,” I said softly.

  “I agree,” said Isaiah.

  “Well,” said Marcela. “That’s settled, then.”

  “But I… I have demands.”

  Isaiah raised his eyebrows. “Demands. You. That’s cute.”

  “I mean, yeah. You can’t just expect me to—”

  “No, no. It’s fine.” He straightened up and nodded his head, like we were playing some kind of game together. “I’m actually curious about this. Let’s hear these demands.”

  I took a breath. “Okay. All right. First, no Adam.”

  “Noted.”

  “And I want citizenship.”

  “In the Remnant? You got it. Matter of fact, none of this is gonna work out otherwise.” He slung an arm over the top of the hatch.

  “No. I mean, yes. The Remnant. But for my whole family. Not just me. I know you have my brother.”

  Isaiah froze, his hand still on the door of the hatch, his chin slightly out.

  “West Turner,” I said. “I know you know that’s my brother, Ise.”

  He exhaled. “I thought this might come up.”

  I made my voice firm. “Permanent, irrevocable citizenship for me, my dad, and my brother.”

  “Actions have consequences.” He gave me a frustrated look. “For most people, anyway. I’m trying to build something here.”

  “And a full pardon for all of us.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “No stealing.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “No stealing unless you agree to it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay. Good luck with that. Also, no lying to me.”

  “No deal,” he said flatly.

  I looked up at him, surprised. “Fine. Then that one goes both ways.”

  “Whatever you gotta do,” he said calmly. “That about cover it?”

  I steeled myself. “No Adam. That one’s non-negotiable.”

  He looked at me in stony silence.

  “It can’t be done without Adam,” said Marcela. She sounded like she was suppressing some kind of incredulous laugh.

  Let her laugh, I thought. She’s not the one I need to convince. I thought of the dead guards from my last mission, but I could no longer find their faces in my memory. All I could see was Adam, and the look in his eyes as he stepped over their bodies.

  When I spoke again, there was iron in my voice. “You have to choose, Ise. Him or me.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Adam. “I’m a part of this. You can’t—”

  “You,” Isaiah said simply.

  They looked at him in shock.

  “You’re dismissed, Adam,” said Isaiah, without turning his head. “Thank you for your service.”

  There was a tense moment, then a dark look came over Adam’s face. But instead of putting up a fight, he turned soundlessly and left the room. We watched him go.

  “Okay. I think that’s everything.”
r />   I made a move toward the hatch, but Isaiah blocked my way.

  “Hey now, Charlotte. I have a few demands of my own.”

  The hairs on my neck stood up slowly. “Like?”

  “This mission. You do as I say—exactly as I say—we complete the objective, and we get back here in one piece.”

  “I barely know anything about the mission.”

  “I’ll explain it on the way. Don’t give me that look,” he said, correctly guessing my expression. “I’m not the one who can’t go a day on the outside without committing a felony.”

  “You still worried about that judge?” I shrugged. “She sentenced me to death. I barely scratched her.”

  “Uh huh,” he said, like he was waiting for me to finish a thought.

  I was still for a moment, then narrowed my eyes in disbelief. “Wait a minute. Did you organize this whole thing on purpose?”

  “Let’s just say I knew you weren’t going down without a fight. There’s a reason I chose to hold the trial so close to the dark space, in a room you were familiar with.”

  I blinked at him. “You sentenced me?!”

  “No, little bird. That part was real. You got there all on your own. I got you out. I had to get you away from the crowd, out of the system, in order to make this work. You were still mad at me. I know you well enough to realize there was only one way to do that.”

  “Your entire plan hinged on me kidnapping a judge? What the heck kind of a mission is this, anyway?”

  “You didn’t have to take it that far. Can’t say I really saw the whole thing coming.” He gave me a serious look, but spoke mildly. “But I figured you could handle yourself. The mission is critical. That’s all I’ll say for now. You’re not the type to be put off by a little danger.”

  “No, I’m not. But if anything happens to me, if I don’t make it back… my family—”

  Isaiah frowned. “I’d take care of them, Charlotte. I thought you would know that.”

  “I’m just… trying to cover my bases.”

  He shook his head. “They covered now?”

  I paused, then gave a single nod.

  “So let’s go.”

  He leaned back, still standing in front of the airlock, until I reached out, afraid he was falling. At the last possible second, he bent at the waist and fell backwards through the hatch, leaving me gaping after him.