Dove Exiled

by Karen Bao

  The space is mostly empty. No one wants to miss the festivities outside, and out of a hundred or so chairs, only four are filled. Black-and-white stars and lines decorate the polyhedral room. I hear a low thrumming from carbon dioxide and oxygen filters somewhere behind the walls, like the growling of an undersea monster in Odan folklore.

  Again, Base I is decades older than Base IV, so the imperfect insulation and soundproofing shouldn’t come as a surprise. Still, it sends a jolt down my already tingling spine. Scanning our surroundings, I see the security pod, about half the size of my fist, just as Cygnus promised. Although I could lunge desperately in its direction, I shuffle slowly toward it instead. At the last second, Umbriel grabs my shoulder.

  Despite our efforts to hide, the man at the front desk has noticed us. He beckons with a forefinger. Sulzer.

  “Check-in is here,” he calls.

  He’s about a head shorter than me and seems absentminded, but Yinha warned us otherwise. The bottom half of his face pooches out like an Odan hunting hound’s. His robes are the rust color of Nu, his frame so small that the fabric’s slipping off his shoulders. The badge of Law, a gold scale, gleams on his chest.

  Umbriel and I walk faster. I deepen my breathing to quell my nerves. He’s only a secretary, I tell myself; he doesn’t know who we are, and he can’t see my face.

  “You must check in now.”

  Umbriel taps the back of my hand and pushes ahead of me, toward the front desk. I guess he’ll try to swipe a Law badge while we’re here.

  At each end of the desk sits a good-sized Lunar flag. Sulzer straightens the one on the right, his thick lips twitching. When he turns to me, his face is a mask of boredom, but his fingernails drum a frantic rhythm on the table.

  “Thumbprints.”

  Umbriel withdraws his hand from his pocket. Though it’s invisible to Sulzer, his thumb is sheathed in a mold of someone else’s fingerprint, made by a Dovetail-affiliated Medic. The execution is excellent; the line where his skin ends and the bioplastic begins is barely visible.

  “My cousin and I are here for a walk-in appointment. She just finished alveoli replacement therapy for her lungs. The Medics are worried she’ll inhale debris and mess up all their work, so that’s why she’s wearing the mask. The first available Law counselor would be great.” In his days of thieving, Umbriel developed excellent lying technique. The secretary nods and presses his thumb to a circular scanning plate.

  I offer Sulzer my own thumb, also encased in a soft mold. I’m not one for speaking, let alone lying. As Sulzer scans me in, my uncovered and quivering index finger brushes against the plate—but so quickly that I’m sure it won’t register.

  Be brave, I tell myself. Showing fear could cost us the mission.

  “Adria and Adry Lambda.”

  “Have a seat.” Sulzer leaves his desk, gesturing to the waiting area with his other hand. As he passes, he grabs my arm, sending a zap of anxiety up my spine. “Standard procedure: I need to see the rest of your face.”

  Before Sulzer’s other hand can reach up to take off my medical mask, Umbriel lays both hands on the secretary’s chest and pushes him away from me. “Sorry—don’t want to get in trouble with Medical, sir.”

  Sulzer looks up at Umbriel, who towers half a meter above him. His lips tremble, and then he backs away, eyeing us with suspicion. A small family waves him over, and as he answers the mother’s rapid-fire questions, Umbriel and I sneak off.

  By the time we near the first of Cygnus’s security pods, Sulzer’s shouting at the woman. Umbriel opens one of his clenched fists. Shining against his palm is the gold badge of Law.

  The security pod flies over to greet us.

  “Did Cygnus say what to do when we found the first pod?” Umbriel whispers.

  I shake my head. My brother assumed I’d know. But then again, was he capable of lucid thought? Even when he was well, my brother often forgot that not everyone thinks on the same frequency as him. He would always skip steps when explaining things.

  Thinking back to my first meeting with Lazarus, I recall another piece of information. It wasn’t part of Cygnus’s message, so we didn’t use it—we hardly talked about it.

  Your brother froze an image from your mother’s trial on his handscreen in the seconds before his capture, Lazarus said. He zoomed in on your left eye until it covered his entire screen.

  Umbriel sees my face change and looks at me with frantic anticipation.

  “Retinal scan, left eye.” I sound more confident than I am. If I get this wrong, we’ll both end up in a torture cell like my brother’s.

  Umbriel snatches the security pod out of the air and holds it to my left eye. A light flashes, and the pod comes alive. It spins in a circle, and then jets toward the lobby’s leftmost exit.

  Before we follow, I look back. Sulzer’s still occupied with the inquisitive mother, whose small children are tugging at her robes, begging her to leave.

  We follow the pod through a set of doors, staying a few meters behind so that we won’t attract attention. The doors have no fingerprint scanner, another Base I quirk, but open instead when they sense the golden badge in Umbriel’s hand. He pins it to his robes after we pass through.

  “Your brother,” Umbriel whispers, “is my hacker hero.”

  In spite of the danger, I give him a thumbs-up and a grin full of pride for Cygnus.

  We walk past seven pods, some of which fly toward us curiously, but the pod we’re following disregards them. When we reach an eighth—funny, eight was Mom’s lucky number—the first slows down and the second scans my retina.

  In this manner, we follow a string of pods along twisting and turning hallways, through intersections, and down three different sets of stairs. Cygnus told us not to try to find him by ourselves, and now I see why. We’ve burrowed deep underground. Without the pods to lead us, we’d lose our way or become prisoners ourselves before reaching Penitentiary’s entrance.

  Several Law workers look up at us from their desks, or from the eyes of the people they’re questioning, but they disregard us when they see Umbriel’s stolen badge. With each encounter, my nerves stretch tighter. How much longer will this tranquility last? It won’t be long before Sulzer tries to get through a door and realizes his golden badge is missing.

  Soon the air becomes cold, and so dry it burns my nostrils. The patriotic decorations grew scarce long ago. My blood hums in my ears.

  Finally, we follow yet another security pod—at this point, I’ve lost count—through the entrance to Penitentiary. The walls are gray and peeling, crouched and cramped from the weight of the floors above. As I remember from the video of Micah River, the cells have no numbers.

  We turn the first corner, only to see a figure in a black suit about ten meters away. To hide that we’ve been running, we pat the sweat off our faces with our sleeves and deny our lungs the air they crave.

  “Stop right there!” A helmeted private holds up his Electro- stun. “Only Militia in Penitentiary.”

  Umbriel grabs my hand and squeezes hard.

  Please think of a good lie, I beg silently.

  “Very sorry, sir!” he shouts, saluting the private. In Defense, nobody salutes privates. “We’re . . . we’re new here, and my boss sent us in to see what happens to people who break rules. It’s a new method of training assistants, you see.”

  The private shifts his grip on the Electrostun. “Really? Who’s your boss?”

  “Leo Xi,” I say. Leo’s the most popular male name in the older generation. I’ve met at least five on Base IV.

  But we’re bluffing, and the private knows it. “Turn around now, and I’ll march you out of the Pen. That’s an order. If you disobey me—”

  I whip out my tranquilizing gun and fire a Downer into his neck. The private collapses. Exchanging a worried glance, Umbriel and I dash after the security pod as it roun
ds another bend.

  Five seconds later, the alarm blares.

  36

  “GET BEHIND ME, PHAET!” UMBRIEL HOLLERS. “I don’t want you fighting everyone we see!”

  But we don’t have any other options. We’ve as good as locked ourselves up. Even though we have no LPS trackers, the private I just tranquilized does, and his comrades will flock to the site where he fell. They won’t miss two frantic teenagers in olive-green robes.

  I breathe in hard; my medical mask sticks to my mouth. Nevertheless, I run faster, moving to take the lead. Umbriel’s never been in a real fight, and his hands are better suited for pilfering than punching. Glancing behind me, I see that he’s pulled out his Electrostun. Does he know how to adjust the settings, let alone aim it?

  If Wes were running beside us, we’d . . .

  No.

  “Hands up!” A female private and her male comrade approach us head-on. “Weapons down!”

  I hear a zapping noise beside me. Electricity clusters uselessly at the muzzle of Umbriel’s Electrostun. It’s in short-range mode, only good for incapacitating victims with whom one can achieve physical contact.

  “We have to open fire!” the male private shouts. “There’s no other way!”

  “Slide the white switch!” I yell to Umbriel, aiming and firing at our adversaries. Their ballistic shields block my darts.

  Umbriel presses his back to the tunnel wall to make himself a smaller target. Apparently, experience in theft isn’t 100 percent useless in a fight. I jump as an Electrostun pellet—their weapons are in long-range mode—sizzles over my bare head. Another hits my chest and crackles, but my armor’s insulation protects me. I send a dart into the female private’s outstretched, thinly gloved hand. Seconds later, she collapses.

  “This switch?” Umbriel points to something on his Electro-stun, but I’m moving too fast to see details.

  “Actually, don’t!” I scoop up the fallen soldier’s ballistic shield and throw it over myself. The male soldier’s closing in. I press my back to the wall. Electrostun pellets splat against the shield. When he’s close, I thump his head with it, fit my tranquilizing gun between his legs, and pull upward. He emits a squeal and collapses.

  Jamming the soldiers’ helmets onto our heads, Umbriel and I run onward.

  “You’re . . . you’re really good,” he says. It sounds more like an admission than a compliment. This is the first time he’s seen me fight, seen that the girl he protected from jibes and jeers in Primary grew talons in Militia. Talons Wes helped sharpen.

  Stop it. Move! Although my lungs are burning, I run harder. If I survive this, I can see him again.

  “Those two should have been easy pickings for a former captain,” I say to Umbriel. “They were privates.” I hear more footsteps. “Behind us!”

  Five soldiers approach. Their Electrostun pellets hit the backs of our robes but splat uselessly against our armor.

  “Forget the pellets!” shouts a male soldier. “Lazies out!”

  We have to keep going—even faster. But side stitches sear my abdomen, and I curse those days I spent creeping around the base, getting little exercise and less food. Umbriel’s breathing is growing labored too.

  “Go!” I holler. His freedom and his life depend on me. In this moment, Umbriel’s not only my best friend; he’s a soldier under my command.

  The Militia troops stay on our tail as we race after the pod, skidding down two more flights of stairs. Where is my brother? It makes sense that the authorities would lock him up far away from the entrance. I can’t do this anymore. My calves sear, but thinking of Wes, and of Cygnus, I push through the pain.

  On and on we run, until the pod slows and stops by a black set of doors. It fits itself into the lock and twists. The doors slide open.

  Umbriel and I tumble into the tiny cell.

  It smells like Shelter, but with a metallic edge. I struggle to breathe while my eyes adjust to the light—or the lack thereof. Dark bloodstains spot the gray stone floor, and torture instruments line the walls: a faucet near the floor for waterboarding, shelves and shelves of needles, a chair with straps and electrodes—the same one I saw in the videos, the one I see in my waking nightmares. The machines look like perverted Medical equipment. But the worst thing about the cell?

  Cygnus isn’t here.

  His metal collar lies abandoned on the chair, its clasp half open, like a pair of jaws.

  This is his cell, though. He wouldn’t have rigged the security pods or sent a secret document to lead us to the wrong room. All his effort, gone to waste. Too much effort for someone holding on to the last slivers of life.

  Umbriel puts his arm around my shoulders. “Phaet . . .”

  “Where’s my brother?” I demand, pushing him away. Is Cygnus still breathing? I fall to my knees in front of the electric chair and cradle the tungsten collar against my chest.

  The doors to the cell slide open again. Boots stamp; guns click. There’s no hope of fight or flight. Behind my visor, I begin to cry.

  What will the Committee do to my brother now that they have me?

  * * *

  “Handcuffs,” says a tall female sergeant.

  Two privates click magnetic sets of jaws around our wrists.

  “Gags.”

  My lips pull back painfully to accommodate the sour-tasting rag they stretch across my mouth.

  “Upward.” The sergeant seems to enjoy talking as little as I do.

  The jail cell moves, taking me, Umbriel, and our captors with it. It’s a decoy, a podlike elevator with glass walls. The Committee’s rigged Base I more thoroughly than anyone in Dovetail anticipated.

  Our surroundings go dark as we rise through the depths of Penitentiary. Where are we headed? And toward what? I feel my heartbeats as a fluttering in my throat and realize that I may not have many left.

  Unlike me, Umbriel hasn’t been rendered useless by terror. I hear his handcuffs clinking softly as he executes various maneuvers to try and remove them.

  Today wasn’t a rescue mission. It was a death trap. Some sadist loyal to the Committee used everything, from Cygnus’s torture video to the programmed security pods, to lead us into the center of a maze and watch us run. He’s laughing at us, and I can do nothing but cry and rage and tremble in response. There’s no way that turmoil isn’t showing on my face.

  The sergeant points at two more of her underlings. “Magnets.”

  An older male special private gives a low chuckle and presses a series of buttons on a handheld remote. My handcuffs pull me into a nosedive; I hit the floor, grunting in pain. Umbriel follows a second later. Then the cuffs yank me two and a half meters upward, the electromagnet between my wrists gluing me to the ceiling. Like Earthbound fish out of water, Umbriel and I flop around the cell, our bodies smacking against the walls. Trying to focus on anything but the pain, I recite in my head the names of the bones that are sustaining damage: cranium, patella, fibula, scapula, other scapula . . .

  Every Beater except the sergeant laughs maniacally.

  “Some Girl Sage,” one of the women sneers. “Time to snap some of those twigs!”

  Or that’s what I think she says. The universe flips over itself every second; I can feel new bruises blooming across my body. My teeth have cut my tongue in several places.

  Not soon enough, everything goes still. Umbriel and I lie on the floor of the cell, panting.

  Rough hands draw us to our feet. They strip off my helmet and pull the ties out of my hair. It falls over my shoulders in a sheet of silver and black. Lunar colors.

  “When we show you to the Committee,” says the sergeant, “we want them to recognize you.”

  The Committee. My breath rattles in my lungs. I knew the tyrants would be our final destination, but I didn’t allow myself to think about it. What’s the point? I’ve already lost. Again and again,
I’ve lost. Why keep struggling? Why not lay down my hopes? They’re nothing but a burden now. Cygnus will remain in captivity. Wes will have to find another girl. Someone else must honor my mother’s memory.

  The glass doors to our cell open, letting in a blast of cool air. Our tormentors step out into a large hexagonal room, leaving us alone. I hear the rhythmic whir of a cranked-up air-cooling unit above us before the doors close again. We’re on the top floor, so the sun’s directly overhead. I imagine shutting off the cooling unit, letting the sun heat this place up to a couple thousand Kelvin, and watching the Committee members try to deal with being inside an oven.

  Militia soldiers line the hexagon’s perimeter—including Nash and Eri, who look scared stiff, and Yinha, who tilts up her chin and wears an inscrutable expression. Beside her, I see Callisto, who tries her hardest to look unruffled.

  Interspersed among the soldiers are Journalists, who poke at their handscreens to direct the video cameras hovering in the room’s center. Lazarus lounges against the wall behind Cassini, the Base II representative with the long, crawling fingers.

  What’s a Psychology worker doing here during an election? I stare, bewildered, until I realize that he’s staring back, exposing one canine in that asymmetrical smile of his. And why is he smiling?

  They’re all staring back. Even the six Committee members seated at the conference table, which is raised high off the floor. And after sixteen years of seeing only their shadowy silhouettes, I can just discern the outlines of their features.

  They’re six normal, everyday faces, stained sallow by indoor living. It’s a letdown and a relief; I’d half expected them to have razor-edged teeth or slits for pupils. There, a round, dimpled face; here, a sagging old one. A long one shaped like a sunflower seed, and a perfectly sculpted one. One with prickly eyebrows and hair. And Andromeda’s. The five men look smug; Andromeda wears an expression of barely concealed alarm.

  Although the room’s center is dark, the perimeter is brightly lit. The lighting creates the threatening silhouettes that the populace sees during Committee addresses, and I realize that heavy editing must obscure their faces even more on-screen.