Contribute (Holo, #2)

by Kristy Acevedo

  “The Earth is fine. There was no apocalypse.”

  Murmurs in the background. Benji crosses his arms over his chest and says nothing. Katherine nods for me to keep going.

  I pick at my clean nails while my hands shake. “The comet was a hologram. It was all a hoax.”

  Doctor A. reasons. “Our own scientists saw it coming. Tried to stop it. If you made it through a vertex in time, you didn’t see the comet crash. “

  I shake my head. “I didn’t make it through at first. I was too far away. And there was a comet, and it crashed, but it turned into tiny orbs of light and just disintegrated. People cheered at first. They thought it missed. But then—” I see the horror and chaos unfold before my eyes again. “Everyone freaked and started running away in terror. I jumped through as the vertex closed. I couldn’t let all of you think you’d been saved. Let you contribute. I’m telling you, the comet was a hologram.”

  Doctor A. reaches for a nearby holochair, clearly distraught. Kendra covers her hands over her mouth.

  “Why would the vances make up an apocalypse?” Kendra asks.

  “I don’t know. But we can’t let people contribute to this world. We have to tell them and go home.”

  “Easier said than done,” Katherine says. “If Earth still exists, it fundamentally changes our mission.”

  A man steps closer with enough hair on his arms and neck I could braid it. His deep voice bellows through the dim light. “Why should we trust her? She even lied about her name.”

  “I lied about my name because I didn’t want to give the vances any information about me. I don’t trust them. They already took enough from us.” I pause and tuck a few stray curls behind my ears.

  Katherine joins my side. “Think about it. Where are the vances? Why are they playing with us in these integration stages? Asking us to contribute? Why can’t we travel? We knew something was up. We just never thought it was this big.”

  “I don’t know,” the hairy man says. “That’s some weighty shit.”

  “So Earth is still there?” Kendra whispers.

  I nod. “Yes, but who knows what happened after I left. Could be chaos. They’re probably mourning us the way we’re mourning them. Or turning on each other.”

  I left my parents in the middle of nowhere during winter with no food, shelter, or transportation. Dad in a wheelchair, Mom alone to fend for them against a fleeing, desperate mob. Visceral images of my parents being devoured by a hungry crowd, body parts being hacked and chewed. Bone marrow sucked, eyes split and shared. Brains slurped and hearts bitten.

  What if just thinking these thoughts makes them true?

  Don’t get tricked by a thought. Don’t get tricked by a thought.

  “Mississippi,” Katherine nudges me with her shoulder. “You with us?”

  “Yeah.” I wipe my eyes.

  Katherine addresses the hairy man. “Beruk, you have to consider the possibilities.”

  “We can’t refocus our energy toward returning to Earth on mere hearsay.”

  “But it’s true!” my voice cracks, my hands trembling in front of me.

  Doctor A. stands and waves me over to his holochair. I plop down from emotional lethargy as my legs give up.

  The room quiets.

  Benji finally speaks. “Beruk, I can vouch for her. If Alex says it happened, it happened.”

  I never thought Benji would be the one to believe me. He usually treats me like a psychotic wimp.

  Before Beruk has a chance to respond, an older man with a leathery face chimes in. “I agree with Benji. Let’s move forward on this.”

  Beruk approaches him. “Jackson, with all due respect—”

  Jackson stands taller, chest out. “Are you questioning my authority?”

  “No sir,” Beruk says, maintaining eye contact with Jackson.

  Jackson turns to address the room in a commanding tone. “We need to switch gears immediately. Continue to gather evidence and information. Contact all Umbra as soon as possible. Professor Marciani, we need to move on developing holographic weaponry.”

  “The DQD prototype is almost ready,” another man answers from the back corner of the room. He twists his hair into knobs on his head. It reminds me of when I chip my nail polish. Something to do with all that nervous energy. “Jackson, if I may add, if Earth is safe as this young lady says it is, I suggest researching vertex technology to help us get home.”

  “Agreed,” Jackson says.

  Beruk concedes. “We’ll need more recruits.”

  “Do it. Keep this information confidential. If the vances find out we know, they might attack before we are ready. As I stated once before but it begs repeating, I highly recommend that no one contributes to Solbiluna-8 until we have more information.”

  Katherine nudges me in the chair and whispers, “You did it.”

  Game on. They believe me, thanks to Benji.

  As everyone moves into talking plans, possible motives, and actions, Benji pulls me aside.

  “Are Mom and Dad in your LU?” he asks. “How’s Dad?”

  I thought he understood. “They didn’t make it.”

  “What? Why? Did Mom decide to stay with him? Did Dad . . . ”

  I pull at a hangnail, making it bleed. “No, they were both alive when I left. Dad was conscious and in a wheelchair. Like I said, we ran into traffic and then a crowd at the vertex and couldn’t get through.”

  “I told you that would happen. Damn it.” He runs his hand quickly through his cropped hair. “But you still made it. I didn’t think you had it in you.” He almost looks disappointed.

  Anger merges with the guilt in my chest. “You mean to ditch them like you did?”

  “Alex, it wasn’t like that. You all should’ve left sooner with me and Marcus.”

  “And abandon Dad. And then what? Have Mom be a victim of the vances, too? And no one ever know it?”

  Silence. Benji and I are right back where we always are, even three hundred years in a parallel future. Location doesn’t change the truth.

  Someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s Marcus, my new brother-in-law and last math teacher before schools closed. “Alex, we’ve been so worried.”

  I give him a half hug since it’s weird hugging a teacher. He smiles his gentle smile. Why can’t he be my brother?

  “You joined the Umbra, too?” I ask.

  “I’m helping with the math involved, although sometimes it’s over my head.”

  “I haven’t seen either of you eating in the Hub.”

  “We’ve been managing the Umbra meetings from different LU rooms,” Benji says. “It takes a lot to secure an LU site and then move locations. Worth it, though, to stay off the radar. We tend to get food super late and bring it with us. I can’t believe you’re here. I had given up hope.”

  He purses his lips and his face hardens. They haven’t just been worried; they’ve been assuming I was dead. It’s nice to see him upset over me.

  “So you believe me?” I ask. “About the comet?”

  “I need to verify your facts. Beruk was right. We can’t start a rebellion based on one witness. I know you, though. You wouldn’t have left Mom and Dad to die in a comet crash. Something had to happen. Something to piss you off. It’s the only explanation. When you get angry, you turn into a barbarian. I can see you running toward a vertex in anger. That’s not a normal person’s response.”

  And there he is. My brother, back in my life again.

  “Thanks, I think.” I suck on my bleeding hangnail. “So you’ll fight to get us home?”

  “I’ll investigate. Whether or not I alter the Umbra’s mission is another story.”

  Oh, God, did someone put my jerky brother in charge? “Are you one of the leaders of the Umbra?”

  Benji laughs at me like I’m a child. “Not the leader. The Umbra is a big group, we’re separated for now. Military carries weight, though, and there aren’t many of us in this LU community.” He smiles with a confidence I don’t think I’ve ev
er felt in my lifetime. Even with his arrogance, I’m desperate for familiar faces to remind me of home.

  Marcus says, “He’s being modest. He’s third in command here after Jackson and Beruk.”

  Beruk broods in a corner with a handful of Umbra. Jackson, Katherine, and the professor talk on the other side of the darkened LU. The obvious tension among the troops doesn’t bode well.

  LATE INTO THAT same night, I lie in my bed made of holographic light and allow myself to think about Dominick and Rita. Seeing Benji and Marcus today gives me hope that I’ll see my friends again soon. Hope is more painful than people admit. There’s a void in my universe without Dominick and Rita. Like a ghostly imprint of where my friends should be. I told Dominick I loved him, but I never told him how much being with him means to me. I know I’m not easy to love, and he stays consistent, always ready to let me back in. And Rita, like a sister, always there to make me laugh, to talk to about anything, and even when I’m going off course, helping to steer me back without pressure.

  I imagine my parents back on Earth, helping to rebuild society. I see Dad strong, back in good health, managing a new grocery store for the community. I see Mom in the elementary school office, waving to me like I’m a famous movie star. My parents. That’s how I want to remember them.

  But the truth is, the Umbra might not be capable of fighting for our rights in an advanced world, and I may never see my friends, parents, or Earth again. They might be lost in time, dead for centuries. If that’s the truth, there’s a part of me that wants to die with them.

  CHAPTER 9

  DAY 6: 635 HOURS TO DECIDE

  AFTER THE SECOND meal ration, I scribble into my journal to deal with the jitteriness growing inside of me. I sketch a picture of the dinochicken to pass the time. When someone taps me on the shoulder, I jump and slam my journal closed.

  “Sorry,” Kendra says. “Katherine told me to come get you.”

  She doesn’t have to ask me twice. I crave information.

  We ride in a maglift to the latest Umbra location. I clutch my journal as the maglift rises.

  “I hope this doesn’t sound rude,” I whisper, “but how did you get recruited?”

  She smiles and whispers back. “Jackson’s my grandfather. My legal guardian. Likes to keep a close eye on me. It’s nice if not a bit claustrophobic.”

  “Sounds like my dad. He’s military like Benji.”

  “Yikes, so you have it double.”

  Had it double. Funny what you miss when it’s gone.

  As soon as we enter the LU, I’m overwhelmed by the difference from yesterday’s meeting. The number of members has tripled to over a hundred. To one side, a tactical area with handwritten charts. Jackson, Beruk, and Benji argue while two others record information. Across the room, well-lit laboratory where clusters of people experiment on various bits of technology scattered across a glass surface. Katherine waves from that area and meets us halfway.

  “Mississippi, Benji requested that I tinker with your bandwidth to scramble your biosignature name.”

  “Don’t I need my biosignature to function?”

  “You’ll still have a biosignature. All I’m doing is making your name randomly fluctuate every time it’s used so the system can never track the real you.”

  “So it’s like a constantly new alibi?”

  “Exactly.” She grabs my wrist and starts flying through functions I’ve never seen on a holoscreen above my bandwidth.

  “She did mine, too.” Kendra says. “Jackson’s orders.” She rolls her eyes.

  The door opens, and I worry that the vances have discovered our hideout. Doctor A. enters the LU.

  “I’ll be back,” Kendra says, and soon she and Doctor A. are in a deep conversation across the room.

  Katherine refers to a holoscreen above her own wrist, copies a bunch of holographic code, and tosses it from her screen to mine. “Almost done.”

  “This LU is huge,” I say.

  “We needed more space to fit new recruits and projects after your handiwork. LU walls are modifiable, so it’s easy to link together a network of rooms and expand based on size. I assume that’s how LUs adapt to families. We’re meeting around the clock now. Lots of changes since yesterday.”

  “Looks like disagreements in some areas,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, change does that.” She lets go of me. “All set. You’re one of the elite Umbra now. Untraceable. I’ve only done that to top clearance members. And their families.”

  “I feel safer already,” I lie. If only it was that easy.

  Katherine shows me around the Umbra, introducing me to people who weren’t present at yesterday’s meeting as the Earth witness. As she does, people nod at me in approval and shake my hand. I avoid eye contact.

  “Jackson outranks everyone here.” She points across to the tactical room at Kendra’s grandfather. I remember him from the first meeting talking to the professor. “Doesn’t say too much. People request permission, he says yes or no. Likes to be left alone. Beruk and Benji do most of the legwork. He steps in when there’s dissension.”

  As she shows me around, I notice that some Umbra smile at Katherine, but scowl when they pass by the tactical area, and at Benji in particular.

  “Some members seem a little angry at my brother.”

  “Nah, it’s an ex-con thing. They don’t trust authority. Nice thing about ex-cons, most of us are really good at hands-on learning, and are not afraid of taking risks or pulling things apart to learn how they work. We tend to be bored, we thrive on information, and we aren’t afraid to break rules to get what we want. You gave us something real to fight for. Sometimes that helps society. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  More ironic that I’d be the person to join you.

  “How did this group form again? It’s amazing to see so many different people working together.”

  “The UN planned it ahead of time with special forces. They had the foresight that we would need to establish power here by collecting as much information as possible and branching out in stealth. That’s how Benji was recruited back on Earth.”

  He was under special orders? Is that why he was so adamant about coming, even if it meant leaving us behind?

  Katherine continues. “Remember George Rogers, the astronaut? He’s one of us. At a different location, though, since he was one of the first to leave. Oh, let me introduce you to one of my closest associates.”

  She points to the professor with the knobby hair. Up close he smells terrible, like body odor and parmesan cheese.

  “Professor Marciani is one of MIT’s leading experts on holography…well, expert based on three hundred year old information. We go way back, right Professor?”

  “To California days.” The professor tips an imaginary hat toward me and continues tinkering with a holographic screen.

  “He’s the one who got me into the Umbra. Brilliant guy. And there’s Beruk.”

  She points to the man with the incredible arm hair who gave me a hard time yesterday, who’s in an argument with Jackson and Benji. I’d take the professor’s smell over Beruk’s personality any day. It’s like he’s doing it for the anarchy. I notice that even when he argues, his lip curls with a slight, sadistic edge. I trust him even less than the prisoners. At least with them I know what I’m getting.

  “Your brother is great,” Katherine adds. “He calls it like it is. Marcus, I don’t know very well. I wouldn’t trust Beruk as far as I can throw him, which isn’t far.”

  I pick up a disabled nanoholocom unit from a table of them. Like a tiny pill capable of a billion calculations. Wonder what would happen if I swallowed it.

  Dominick would love working with the Umbra. Maybe when he arrived he joined the group at a different location. I remember watching him step through a vertex, his red Converse sneaker the last image my heart memorized of him. It can’t be the final one.

  “What can I do to help?”

  “You already did it. You brought us the truth.”

/>   “But there has to be something else I can do.”

  “Let me think about it. Your brother asked me to give you a low profile.”

  “Why?”

  “Said you get stressed out easily.”

  Where is Benji so I can hit him? I can’t sit useless while everyone else around me dismantles nanoholocoms. With time on my hands, all I’ll do is think in circles and feel inept.

  Then I think about Nolan, the teen who got zapped, who’s mourning his mother because I didn’t tell him the truth. And the mother with the missing baby, who thinks she’s a widow. Because I didn’t tell her the truth.

  “Do you have time to help me with a quick project?” I say to Katherine.

  “Depends on what it is.”

  “Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”

  I find Doctor A. and Kendra and pull them aside. There’s something I need to make right.

  “Doctor A., how’s Nolan doing, the one who was punished by the BME?”

  “Kendra and I were just talking about him. He’s better. Not emotionally the same, though.”

  “But stable. Not flipping out on people.”

  “No, quite the opposite.”

  “Okay, then. I’d like to do something, but I need your help.”

  DOCTOR A. BRINGS me, Katherine, and Kendra to Nolan’s LU. His grandmother answers the door. Doctor A. speaks with her while Katherine messes with the LU controls. Kendra and I walk toward Nolan, who stares at us without changing expression from a small holobed.

  I liked him better angry. At least there was spunk in him.

  “Hey, Nolan,” Kendra says. “How’re you feeling?”

  He shrugs.

  “Do you remember me?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. His eyes flick away, then he shrugs.

  “I remember you. You lost your mom.”

  He stares at me from across a desert of empty emotions. I know that look. It’s my dad’s look.

  “All set,” Katherine announces. “BME disabled.”

  “How do you do that so fast?” Doctor A. asks.

  “Even though it’s a complex surveillance system, it still basically works the same way. Monitoring all areas using nanoholocoms and biosignature readings for signs of behavioral issues. I don’t technically disable it, it’s too big. I set up a false reading for this LU. It thinks we’re sleeping.”