The Remnant

by Laura Liddell Nolen

  He hadn’t answered, so I tried again. “What’s in this?” I asked between mouthfuls. “It’s good.”

  He watched me eat with mild interest. “You really want to know? Took me months to try it again, once I found out. Great protein, highly sustainable source. I’ll just say that we’ll probably be eating a lot of it once we arrive on Eirenea and leave it at that.”

  I was suddenly pretty sure I had seen a set of tiny legs in the bowl before me. Like, a set of six tiny legs. Dad observed my reaction with amusement while continuing to eat, using the same high manners he’d insisted on every day of my childhood. I gave the stew one last glance before putting as much distance between it and me as I could manage politely, then pushed it a few more inches away for good measure.

  “You know, you’re quite a maverick,” I said. “I have to wonder what you’re really up to in here.”

  “It’s hardly nefarious, Charlotte. And I’m not the only one who broke a few rules. Did you know that there’s an entire sector of the European Ark that’s just full of incubators?”

  “Like, for babies? Yeah, I heard something about that.”

  Marcela piped up again. “I heard a rumor there’s a whole floor of the Asian Ark with a bunch of the survivors’ grandparents.”

  “Someone should send them to the incubators with rocking chairs,” I said. “Sounds like they need each other.”

  My father looked at me. “That’s a very good idea, Charlotte.”

  “Who takes care of them? The babies,” said Marcela.

  “There’s a videoscreen,” I said. “They picked a woman to be the ‘face’ of their mother, and she’s up on the screen all day, singing nursery rhymes. The Queen spared all the workers she could, when she found out. And the Biosphere makes extra oxygen, so they really can afford to keep them. For now, anyway.”

  “What a strange family they’ve all been forced into,” Dad said, to no one in particular. “It should be sad, shouldn’t it. But instead, it’s a good thing, because they survived.”

  “I thought the European Ark was required to contribute its extra oxygen to the other Arks? As part of the Treaty?” said Mars.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She gave me an annoyed look. “You haven’t read the Treaty yet? I thought they put a copy in your cell.”

  I gave a noncommittal shrug.

  Dad had a hard look. “Every Ark has its secrets. It’s just that ours are a bit more… pressing at the moment.”

  The table fell to contemplative silence. At length, my father finished eating and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. It was a familiar pose—one he adopted after nearly every family meal we’d shared. “Nice bracelet,” he said. “Do you know what it is?”

  I glanced at my wrist. “K-band. Lie detector, basically. The Imperial insisted.”

  “I’ll bet he did. It’s more than that, Charlotte.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a transmitter as well. Probably does some other stuff, depending on the model.”

  “A transmitter?” I looked down in horror. “Like, with a microphone? We have to get it off.” I held my wrist out to him.

  Dad hopped up from the table and made his way to the lockers on the far wall. “Can’t do that,” he said over his shoulder. “Not without causing some serious damage. It’s in your skin. We’d need their cooperation. Didn’t they tell you about it when you put it on?”

  Marcela leaned in with a sardonic expression. “You let them put it in your skin, Char? Did I hear that right?”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” I muttered.

  “What was that? I didn’t quite catch—”

  Dad returned to the table with a roll of aluminum foil and slid into West’s seat. “All is not lost,” he said in a goofy voice, an obvious attempt to put me at ease. He patted the table in front of me, indicating that I should set my arm on it.

  “How do you know so much about them?” I asked. The aluminum extended in a shiny arc, and Dad began wrapping it around my band in noisy sheets. “Senate hearings, or something?”

  “No, they never made it that far in North America. Not that we didn’t use them. We just never had to explain it.”

  I set my water down and looked him square in the eye. “Who’s we? What’s going on with all this?”

  “I’ll tell you when it’s time, Charlotte. We’re not there yet. Suffice to say, there are a lot of people who don’t find the balance of power among the Arks quite to their liking, and there has to be someone who makes sure those people stay quiet until we get to Eirenea.”

  “Well. You’re doing a fantastic job so far.”

  “We didn’t count on the Remnant. There. That should block the signal.”

  I studied the flattened mass of metal on my lower arm. “Thanks, Dad.”

  He gave me a serious look. “All things considered, it could be a lot worse.” His eye fell to the silver blob. “The war, not the band. The band looks ridiculous. I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”

  “Nah. Reminds me of that time I was Wonder Woman for Halloween, and Mom made my costume out of tinfoil, a tablecloth, and a swimsuit.”

  “A classic look for any discerning young hero,” said Dad.

  I laughed, but when I met my father’s eye, the pain of the grief we shared cut the sound short. I continued to stare, studying his face, desperate to know him again, but in many ways, we were like strangers now. The things that once bound us together had, in the end, driven us apart.

  But he was still my father. My mother’s ghost was bright, and unsatisfied, and visible only to us.

  “Dad,” I said, leaning in. “Asia’s going to fire on us if we can’t get the fighting to stop. They’re monitoring the blast energy, or something. We have until morning.”

  “I have some contacts on that Ark. They ran me through the details of the proposed treaty.”

  “Contacts?” said Mars. “How do you communicate with them?”

  My father looked at her. “I have my ways.”

  “Your ways,” I repeated flatly, but Mars looked thoughtful.

  “Yes, I—” Dad began.

  “The Tribune,” said Mars.

  Dad weighed her up for a long moment, his face tight. Mars, on the other hand, was as calm as ever, and she returned his gaze frankly. “No one else has the infrastructure to pull this off. You needed blueprints, some pretty advanced comm technology,” she said. “Just for starters. And if the Commander knew you existed, he’d spare no effort to destroy you. Unless you were part of the plan all along.”

  “I thought the Tribune were just supposed to decide Treaty disputes,” I said.

  “I heard they started that way,” said Mars.

  I stared at my father. “What does she mean?”

  “There had to be a single, unifying power. We couldn’t afford to lose a single Ark, let alone fall into warfare. This was the only way,” said Dad. “We organized. Gathered the leadership. And this is what we came up with. But not everyone wanted to go along.”

  “So you’re… what, exactly? A Tribune member?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. We’re not as centralized as we’d like to be, but our goal hasn’t changed. We just want everyone to survive. We want to reach Eirenea intact. It’s trickier than it sounds.”

  “If you didn’t want fighting, why do you have an army?”

  “I don’t. It’s more like a network than anything else. We survive by keeping in contact with each other. We trade in information. We started out trying to resolve disputes, but we had access to every inner circle, and we kept hearing things that conflicted. And then Five went dark, and we realized we’d failed to see what mattered.” There was something so strange about his voice, like he was dead set on making our relationship work, no matter what the cost to himself. He handed his plate to a man over his shoulder and spoke again in the same tone of forced politeness. “So we changed our strategy,” he finished.

  “You’re spie
s,” said Mars.

  “Something like that.”

  They locked eyes and, after a long moment, Mars nodded.

  My father turned back to me. “So,” he said awkwardly, “you’re getting married.”

  I took a deep breath. “It’ll have to happen soon. There’s a guy in the Remnant. Adam. He took over headquarters, and I don’t know what happened to Isaiah after that. He’s the one who made the killer—”

  “Lightning clouds, yeah. We’ve had our eye on him.”

  “Don’t blink now.” I shivered, thinking of the dead-eyed bodies of the guards Adam killed. “He’s dangerous, Dad. More than you know.”

  Dad nodded, thinking, and I savored the brand-new feeling of being taken seriously by him. The rest of our troubles were at the front of my mind, but it still felt like a solid victory, life-wise. If my biggest goal was reuniting my family, I was so close I could taste it.

  And then it hit me: that was my moment. Right then. I’d never have another like it. So I jumped.

  “Dad, I gotta know. What happened with you and West?”

  Twenty-eight

  “It’s weird, Charlotte. Life, I mean.” He drummed his fingers on the tinny table, then stopped drumming, then looked back, forward, at the door, and at the ceiling.

  At everything but me.

  “Weird, how?”

  “It’s just—it’s not what I expected. Not because of the meteor. Here’s the thing: there’s nothing I can point at and say I’m truly proud of it, with two exceptions. You and West. I did okay by you both, in spite of myself, but I can’t seem to keep either one of you. Maybe I should be grateful things are working out the way they are. But I can’t help but wonder.”

  He hazarded a tiny glance at me, looking away before our eyes met, and I frowned. “Wonder what?”

  All around us, the conversations were varied. People were serious, or quiet, or debating. Some tables were even laughing. The effect was a cacophony of shared survivorship, and any other time, I might have relished it.

  He didn’t answer me, but stood expectantly. “Let’s find your brother.”

  I glanced back at Marcela, but she waved me on with an understanding expression. “You go. I’ll stay here with Amiel. We might even get seconds.”

  “You’re welcome to mine,” I said and followed my father out of the room. When I looked back, I realized that Marcela had given Amiel her jacket at some point during the meal.

  And West was in love with her, and Isaiah trusted her with his life. I had to smile.

  I really was a terrible judge of character.

  My father’s room was painted yellow. Yellow. It seemed so unlike him, until I remembered that it was mom’s favorite color.

  It had two narrow beds made from shipping pallets covered in the same standard-issue foam mattresses found all over the Ark. One bed had been hastily made, and my brother was slouched on the other.

  I spared a moment of appreciation for West. He’d always been more mature than I, even though he was years younger. If I’d been the one acting out, they’d never have found me.

  He rubbed his face and looked up at us. Then he spoke aloud the words that pounded through the room, making us safe, reverberating through all our minds at once:

  “Here we are. Together.”

  The three of us shared the following thought as well, but its presence took up so much of the space between us that no one thought to lend it breath:

  I miss her.

  Dad cleared his throat. “For years, I’ve dreamed of saying this, and when I finally had a chance, I blew it. But we’ve spoken our mind about the past already, and I can finally say it now: Welcome home, Charlotte.”

  I laughed. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You too, son.”

  West looked up, then shook his head, a dark expression on his face. “This isn’t home.”

  I plopped down, cross-legged, in the middle of Dad’s bed, effectively barring him from sitting there, hoping that he’d sit next to West. But West stretched his legs out, blocking the rest of his bed. Dad paced the room once before leaning against a wall, arms folded.

  “You guys,” I said. “What is going on between you? I know it’s none of my business, but come on. It’s like you said. Here we are. Together. Can we please make up and be a family now?” They shifted around, and I rolled my eyes. “Whatever it is, I’ve done worse. I mean, unless someone’s committed several felonies since I saw you last.”

  No response. My face felt warm, and I told myself that getting upset wasn’t going to help anything. I rarely made good decisions while crying.

  “Ha, ha,” I said, forcing brightness into my tone. “But, seriously, you forgave me!”

  Another moment passed, and my throat grew tight. Its pressure burned up into the skin on my face. A hot tear splashed onto my hands, and I froze completely, unwilling to expose myself any further to the two people I loved most in the world.

  “West,” I said, my voice wooden. “This isn’t what she’d want.”

  At that, my dad uncrossed his arms. “I made a mistake.”

  I frowned. That was definitely not what I’d expected to hear.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Dad took a breath. “In the early days, starting right after the launch, West was sick all the time. He’d ball up, not speak to anyone for hours. We didn’t know what to think about it.”

  “The Lightness,” I guessed.

  Dad nodded. “At the time, we didn’t know much. I thought it might be a heart condition, something that would eventually disqualify him from work, marriage.” He scratched his head angrily. “If he lived that long. What kind of life would that be? But then we got it looked at, and it turns out it was all in his head. Debilitating, yes. And terrifying. For both of us. But not that uncommon. Reports were coming in from all over. It was happening on every single Ark. Europe was working on this treatment; Asia had another. Not a lot of progress on this Ark. We didn’t even have a name for it.”

  West gave Dad a dark look, but remained silent.

  “And it happened almost every night. And your mother was gone, and you were…” Dad looked at the wall.

  “Yeah, I was gone, too,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I’m just telling you what was going on. He was all I had left, and he just… refused…” He broke off again. “He took one round of pills. Went a whole week without an attack. We were hopeful. Then he never touched them again. Wouldn’t see a doctor. The attacks came back, worse than ever. I’d wake up at night, wondering if his heart had stopped beating. If this was the night I’d lose my son, too.”

  I looked at West. His face was red, and his cheeks were wet. He was as still as a statue.

  “I stopped sleeping. I couldn’t…” Dad broke off. He didn’t look sad so much as genuinely baffled. “It’s an illness of the mind, Charlotte. He didn’t know what he was doing. And I’m his father. I had to help him.”

  West put his face down, resting his forehead against his arms. I couldn’t believe how broad his shoulders had become.

  “I got several more rounds, enough for an entire year, and started grinding them into his food a little at a time. We spent so much time together, those days. He never suspected it. I was going to tell him; I just wanted him well first, so that I could talk to him about it. I wanted my son back.”

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  Dad was staring at the wall. “Yes. It worked.”

  We both looked at West, but he hadn’t moved. His head was still down, his breathing slow and even, if a little forced. Not labored enough to indicate an attack. Just crying, then. Or avoiding crying.

  “And the day I told him, he left. I looked everywhere. Found out he’d joined the Remnant, of all things. I couldn’t get to him, but he sent a message out. He wasn’t coming back; he’d never forgive me as long as he lived. It’s funny.” He paused, looking at me. “Couple years ago, it could have been written by you.”

  I shook my head, thinking. �
��That seems… I mean, no one wants to be drugged, but I can see where—”

  “No.” West’s head jerked up. “You can’t. You can’t understand at all.”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  He put his head back down. “It’s… you wouldn’t understand, Char.”

  “I’m here, and I’m listening. We used to tell each other everything. You two are all the family I have left.”

  “What if I leave the room?” Dad said suddenly.

  “What?” I said.

  He opened the door and stood with his hand on the keypad, looking at us, his children. “Talk to your sister, West. Even if you can’t forgive me, she’s right. You can’t just give us both up. But for what it’s worth, son, I believe in the Lightness. I never thought you were crazy, if that’s what this is about. The idea that our bodies were meant to live on a planet with changing temperatures and varying light and all that—it’s real. Just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean it wasn’t killing you. And me, too.

  “But it’s also true what they say, that we are a race of explorers. That we were built to survive.” He leaned in closer. “And we will, West. You and me and Charlotte. Our family. The Remnant. The other Arks. The kids in the incubators. Everyone. We are going to survive. But I’m not going to do it without you. I’m not going to sit by while you waste away.” He waited, but West offered no absolution. “Well. I can’t apologize for trying to save you, son.”

  West started talking, his face was full of emotion, but he looked only at the bedspread. Navy blue, same as Eren’s. Probably exactly the same, now that I thought about it.

  “When I first heard about the Arks, I knew I was going to get on one. I did. I just knew it. We were all going to make it. Mom, Dad. Even you, Char. I knew you’d be here.” He choked a little, took a slow breath. We waited for him to continue. “But life is strange. And the things I took for granted don’t exist anymore.

  “Gravity, Charlotte. They took away gravity. And it doesn’t even matter, because nothing is what I expected it to be. We were separated, and I tried to hang on. I wanted to be brave.” He was crying now, but he didn’t seem to notice. “But she never came. And neither did you.”