The Remnant

by Laura Liddell Nolen

  The room was smaller than I expected. It featured a huge panel of controls on one wall, and a single metal chair. The fluorescent light was dimmer here than in the hallway, and the hum of the panel made me wonder whether it ran on its own generator. It would definitely be harder to detect that way.

  Oh, yeah. And the Commander was standing in front of the controls. Pointing a gun at my chest.

  “You again.” He sighed, which struck me as odd. I’d expected more… cockiness. Gloating. Something. Instead, he just sounded tired.

  “What is this place?”

  “You know what it is. I’ve just had an unpleasant conversation with the Imperial.” He looked at me frankly. “From the look on your face, so have you. It seems you’ve been one step behind me for some time now. It’s impressive, actually.”

  “Commander, you can’t fire on that Ark. Think of all the people who’ll die.”

  The seconds were ticking by. He continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “Even more impressive is the fact that you’ve taken my son along for the ride. I’m afraid things will never be the same between us, thanks to you.” He uncurled a thumb from the handle of the gun to rub his forehead, pointing the gun toward the ceiling. I took a step forward, and the barrel instantly regained its former position. “No, no. None of that. Stay where you are.”

  I lifted my hands. “Don’t do this. There will be consequences. The other Arks—”

  “Will turn against us. Yes, I know. Do you think I hadn’t thought of that?”

  “So why are you preparing to fire on Asia?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m a smart girl.”

  “So I’ve noticed. That’s why I can’t let you leave this room. Of course, you’ve already worked that out for yourself by now.”

  “You don’t have to kill me. You never did.”

  “Eh, I go back and forth. Keeps me up at night. Believe me, it hasn’t been easy. I’ll have to think of something to tell my son.”

  “It’s too late for that. He knows the truth about you.”

  “I suppose you’re expecting some kind of medal? What you’ve done, my dear… What you’ve done is ruin everything. Without Eren, there will be no one qualified to lead once the Treaty is abolished and the government is consolidated.”

  That surprised me. I had always assumed he’d planned on leading himself. It must have shown on my face, because he gave a short laugh.

  “No, it couldn’t be me. The world needs someone… more idealistic. Younger. I can fight the wars, but Eren can keep them from starting up again. There won’t be room for men like me in the new world. But Eren. He was always…” He trailed off, but I knew what he was getting at.

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded. “Anyway. He’ll never see reason, now that you’ve turned him against me. And the wars will never end, unless I finish this. You think the five governments were ever going to remain at peace? The only reason we had an armistice was because a meteor threatened to kill us all. Out here, there is no meteor. It’s only a matter of time before the wars start up again.”

  “That’s why the Treaty outlawed weapons. Especially nuclear warheads.”

  “Ah, yes. The Treaty. Look at where that’s gotten us. You think those other Arks aren’t armed? I’ll tell you something. I didn’t fire on Ark Five. That was someone else. And unless we end this, now and forever, it’s never going to stop. More carnage. More destruction. Here’s another secret, Miss Turner. Ambassador Turner. We didn’t need a meteor to wipe us out. We were doing just fine on our own.”

  My head was spinning. If the Commander didn’t attack Five, who did? It made no sense. But I had to focus. He was definitely about to attack Three. “Just disarm. Please. You can’t possibly think that you’ll solve everything by killing innocent—”

  “People? My dear, they may be innocent now, but their loyalties will forever be adverse to our own. It could happen now, a year from now, or after the colonies are established on the new planet, but it is only a matter of time before they attack. The only solution is to centralize the government and increase its power. Only then will our loyalties be undivided. Only then do we have a chance at surviving. An understands this. You are a fool to believe otherwise.”

  “Just disarm for now. Buy us some time.”

  He ignored my plea. “I’ll have to imprison my own son, yet again, because of your meddling. He will never forgive me for what I’m about to do. Now, give me back my wife’s ring.”

  “No.”

  A flash of muscle across his jaw. “Turn around.”

  “No.”

  He sounded more tired than ever. And so old. “It’s not going to stop me.”

  The hammer snapped back, and my breath caught in my throat, but I held his gaze, determined not to shut my eyes. “You’re right, you know.”

  He paused, presumably to hear what he was right about.

  “Eren will never forgive you.”

  “And whose fault is that? Now turn around.”

  “Seriously, no.” My hands clenched into fists at my side. This was it.

  “Suit your—”

  And then the universe exploded.

  The lights went black, and the shot from the gun was echoed by the loudest rumbling I had ever heard. It was like hearing the meteor hit Earth, except more immediate. It was like a meteor hit me. My body was pulled backward in the darkness, and I slammed into the wall behind me.

  Dying was nothing like I expected.

  Thirty-six

  Every ounce of me pressed hard into the wall I’d hit, and the sensation increased steadily. An eternity passed, but I stayed pinned to the wall, as though the weight of my own body held me there. The Commander seemed to be sucked forward as well, toward me and the wall, but I thought it was a trick my mind was playing on me, sort of like the last of the neurons firing away without regard for making sense. So this was what it felt like when your body stops living.

  Except, I was still breathing.

  At least, I thought I was. If I concentrated really hard, I could feel my lungs expanding and the muscles in my chest struggling to make room for them, despite the enormous pull toward the back wall.

  Okay. I think that means I’m not dead, right? Breathing means not dead.

  I had to think, but nothing made sense. I felt no pain, which pointed toward death. But then, I was definitely breathing. And hearing. For example, right then, in addition to the general, Armageddon-type rumbling, I heard someone moaning.

  Was I moaning?

  Nope, I was just hanging out. Breathing, mostly.

  So who was moaning?

  Before I could figure out the answer to that, the moaning stopped, and another mystery presented itself.

  Where was I?

  There was a lit panel ahead of me, but no lights anywhere else in the room. And a humming noise I’d heard recently, kind of like a generator.

  I struggled against the fog in my brain. I am in weapons control. I need to stop the weapons. But the Commander had stopped me. With a gun.

  The Commander.

  He was the one who had moaned. And though he was silent now, I knew he was still in the room. And the gun would be, too.

  The pull lessened, and I peeled myself from the wall, but my feet didn’t touch the ground. I shook my head. I was floating.

  Was I a ghost?

  No. I most certainly was not a ghost. You’re breathing, remember? Focus, Char. Gun. Commander. Missile. You can do this.

  I looked around in the dim light. The chair knocked against the ceiling, then lazily headed toward the wall with the door. A moment later, there was another sound, a lighter clank. It was the gun, which had hit the control panel and was now flying toward the ceiling in slow motion. I could barely see its outline against the pale green light the buttons gave off, but it was enough.

  I pushed off the wall and launched myself in the direction of the gun. I misjudged its trajectory, though, and ended up slamming painfully into the ceilin
g. Now I was headed for the control panel. I grabbed its lip and tried to regroup. I had to find the gun.

  That’s about when my arm started hurting.

  And by hurting, I mean a searing, white-hot pain shot through my entire right bicep, as though I’d been lit on fire. I pressed a hand into it, then moved my hand away to inspect. My palm and fingers were dark brown in the green light of the panel.

  I was bleeding. A lot. And I no longer had use of my right arm.

  On the other hand, I hadn’t been shot in the chest or head. Silver lining.

  At least, not yet. There were still a gun and a homicidal Commander somewhere in the room with me, and I needed to make sure the twain never met.

  Another thunk, courtesy of the chair, followed by the clank of the gun. This time, the sound came from the wall, near the spot where I’d been pinned seconds earlier. But it was too dark to see the gun, so I waited. While I was waiting, I heard a third sound, a soft thud against the floor. That’d be the Commander. And I knew he wasn’t knocked out, because I’d just heard him moaning. This was trouble.

  If he got near enough to grab me, I’d never make it out of here. My only hope was to get to the gun before he did. Another thud, and I knew that the Commander was launching himself around the room, too, since he was traveling faster than the other objects. I took a deep breath, as silently as possible, and pulled myself under the panel, so I’d be hidden from the meager light.

  I could do this. It was no different than trying to break into a house in the middle of the night without a flashlight, other than the whole lack-of-gravity thing, and I knew a few tricks for doing that successfully. For example, I knew better than to stare directly at whatever I was trying to see. Instead, I let my eyes sweep back and forth across the room until my peripheral vision registered three moving shadows.

  The smallest shadow was the gun, of course, and the largest would be the Commander. He must have also seen the gun, though, because he was pushing gently away from the door panel and toward the far corner of the room, heading for precisely the same spot as the gun, right before my eyes.

  Not good.

  I shoved away from the controls and kicked off toward the same corner as hard as I could. It was probably overkill. I went hurtling through space at roughly five hundred miles per hour and slammed straight into the corner an instant later. My arms flailed, trying to find something to keep me from flying backward, away from the wall, when I felt something small knock into my back.

  The gun.

  Hey, at least I had aimed correctly this time.

  Now the gun was headed away from me, and the Commander was on his way over. I kicked out, trying to push harder off the wall than I’d otherwise have done.

  It worked. I was now about two feet away from the gun, facing away from it, and gaining on it pretty steadily. When the gun clanked into its next mark, I was ready.

  With my good arm, I reached behind my back, and when the gun ricocheted into my shoulder blade, its flight ended abruptly. My fingers closed around the handle, and I brought it to bear on the suspended form of the Commander, which was no easy feat, considering I was still floating uncontrollably around the room.

  “Game over, Commander.”

  He sounded as weary as ever. “It certainly is, Miss Turner.”

  “Hey, that’s Mrs. Everest to you. Dad.”

  I heard the door panel slide open, and light from the hallway illuminated the room. Using his arms, the Commander yanked himself through its frame and out of my sight.

  And out of my range.

  As much as I wanted him dead, I would just as soon not kill Eren’s father myself. Ideally, he’d get arrested and go to trial for attempted crimes against humanity, or whatever they called it when you tried to blow up a quarter of the species with forbidden weaponry.

  Except that no one would believe me. Around these parts, I was still little more than a fugitive and a traitor, and he was still High Commander. I put the thought out of my mind and tried to think of the next step.

  I rubbed the band on my arm. “An? You there?”

  “I am.”

  I took a breath, wincing at the pain. “So, are we all about to die?”

  “I am sorry to report that preliminary readouts indicate that your Ark has sustained critical damage. It wasn’t a nuclear weapon. More of a warning shot. Secondary life support should boot at any minute.”

  “Damage? Which sectors?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I’m in the weapons room. The control panel—” I gasped silently, willing my mind to ignore the pain in my arm, and continued. “The panel looks fairly complicated.”

  “Do not attempt to fire. You will not survive.”

  “Fire? An, I’m not going to fire on you. Tell me how to fix this. Let’s just have peace. Please.”

  Another voice came on the line. “Press the following buttons in the sequence given.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Alpha, comma, direction left. Now type the word ‘disarm.’ That’s Delta, India, Sierra—”

  “Yes. Got it.”

  “Continuing. Alpha, comma, direction left. Now type ‘command chute.’”

  “Hang on.” I pressed each letter carefully, using only my good hand. My forehead felt cold and wet at once. I could not afford to black out. “Okay. Got it.”

  “Continuing. Type ‘evacuate chute.’ That’s Echo, Victor, Alpha—”

  I hesitated before pressing the final command. It was one thing to stand down. It was another thing altogether to jettison our weapons into space. But An had checkmate. The game was over, and at this point, I was only playing for more time. Still, my hand shook as I pressed the button, permanently disarming the Ark.

  Now, we were sitting ducks. No wonder humanity had a hard time laying down their weapons. This was terrifying. No wonder there had been no widespread panic, and virtually no protests, when the blatant violations of the Treaty of Phoenix had come to light. The memory of war was too vivid. It made us believe that it was inevitable, that it would always be a part of us, of who we are. It had made us afraid. So instead, when we found that the Arks were armed, we felt only relief. Not us. We will not be the helpless ones.

  “What have I done?” I murmured to myself.

  There was a pause on the line, and An answered. “You’ve saved your ship. I told you the truth, Charlotte. I am prepared to kill in order to preserve the long-term future of the human race.” She lowered her voice, matching my tone, and spoke directly into the comm. “I have often wondered whether I am the only one who understands what’s at stake.” Another beat, and she resumed her usual volume. “If your ship has half your tenacity, you may yet survive.”

  “So we’re square? No more bombs?”

  “I have two final directives, Ambassador. This Commander. He is a problem for us. And your Adam, who deposed the King of the Remnant.” The softness was gone from her voice. “You must kill them both.”

  I felt my face get hot. “You just fired on a hundred thousand people, most of them civilians, and forced me to jettison our warheads into space. I’m not really interested in taking orders from you at the moment.”

  “They are a threat to—”

  “Yeah, yeah. A threat to the peace. Tell me something I don’t know.” I forced my voice back to neutral, but inside, I was fuming. All along, I’d wanted to work with An to achieve peace. All along, she’d done nothing but manipulate me—and our entire Ark—to further her own ends. As much as I respected her, I could hardly let her use me any further.

  I had to face a truth of my own: we were not on the same side, no matter how much we wanted to be.

  “I’ll deal with them in my own time,” I said finally. “You can rest assured about that. But at this point, the only Ark that’s ever attacked another Ark is you, An. Justified or not, you’re a pretty big part of this.”

  “I warn you not to test me, Ambassador.”

  “You just blew a hole in my ship! I’m done tak
ing orders from you.”

  Infuriatingly, I couldn’t hang up on her. The band remained locked around my wrist, in my wrist, taunting me. But I wouldn’t let it control me.

  I shook my head to clear my mind. First things first: I needed to deal with the gaping bullet wound on my arm. The blood coming off it was probably not as much as I’d assumed when I first saw it, but in my defense, getting shot is a bit traumatic. Kinda like losing gravity all of a sudden. It’s disorienting.

  I tore off a strip of my shirt and, holding one end between my teeth, wrapped it tightly around the hole in my arm, hoping the movies I’d seen hadn’t lied to me. I couldn’t figure anything else to do at the moment, so I tied it off, wiped my good hand on my pants, and forced myself to figure out my next move.

  Eren. I should get to Eren. He was the only person I could think of who might know how to deal with the gaping hole in the ship’s hull.

  By now, I’d hit the wall across from the panel once again and had scraped my feet and my good arm against it in an attempt to aim myself at the open door. It was far from graceful, but I managed to hook an ankle around the edge of the frame.

  I bent my knee sharply, which jolted me into the opposite side of the doorframe. Good enough. From there, I bounced myself into the hallway in the direction I’d come from. When I hit the floor, I squatted and pushed myself forward as hard as I could. My back scraped against the ceiling a moment later, but I was definitely making progress. I neared the floor again and repeated the squatting, pushing thing. I must have looked like a deranged frog.

  In my defense, I had one good arm, plus a loaded gun to hang onto, and I was moving toward the end of the hallway in spite of the lack of gravity. So I wasn’t too hard on myself.

  If I hadn’t had so much else to worry about, it might have been kind of fun.

  Since the Commander had copped to locking him up again, I figured Eren was in the same mini-detention center I’d been in originally, which was on the Guardian Level, one floor down.

  The staircase was at the end of the angled hallway, but it took forever to get to it. Once there, the railing made my trip down kind of awesome. I stuffed the gun into my shirt, making sure the safety was on, grabbed the rail with my good hand, and propelled myself straight down the center of the stairwell.