by Karen Bao
Above us, the ceiling is divided into six enormous equilateral triangles, one for each base; each of these is further divided into sixteen smaller triangles, showing a total of ninety-six video feeds of people listening to the election results. Base citizens are watching wall screens, HeRPs, or handscreens in the bases’ public spaces, in their living rooms, in their offices, in the corridors. I can hear the muted hum of their conversations. Presumably, each base’s InfoTech Department sends the Committee the most relevant security pod footage in real time. The six of them watch us through the watchers, I think, my skin puckering with goose bumps. And they never, ever stop.
Another screen, this one a massive rectangle, makes up the hexagonal room’s rear wall. Currently, it’s covered by six pie charts and sports the heading, LUNAR BASES’ VOTE PERCENTAGES. Each chart has a large black wedge representing the incumbent’s portion of the vote. Presumably, the same image is showing up on people’s handscreens on all six bases. Across Base I, heads bob up and down. On Bases II, III, IV, V, and VI, though, scattered individuals look restless. Frowns pull at their mouths; I can hear the buzz of conversation.
The person reading the results out loud to them is looking at me too. Sitting by Andromeda’s side, a stream of meaningless words issuing from his mouth, is my little brother.
37
I SHOUT INTO THE RAG GAGGING me, but only gargled mumbling comes out.
“. . . Base II’s Cassini Omicron, 68.3 percent of the vote.” Cygnus continues to stare at me. His skin looks flawless, his infected eye has healed, and he wears Theta robes of unblemished white. But when I look closer, I can see swathes of makeup caked over his face. It doesn’t match his skin tone. The Committee’s trying to show people that they’ve treated him well; that he belongs to them and supports their mockery of an election. “Janus Lambda of Base III, 63.2 percent. Base IV’s Andromeda Chi, 73.9 percent. Nebulus Nu of Base V, 75.5 percent. Finally, Wolf Omega, Base VI, 53.7 percent. . . .”
Watching Cygnus among my enemies hurts me almost as much as witnessing his torture. His feet periodically jerk—he’s clearly uncomfortable—but magnetic rings around his wrists and ankles bolt him to his chair. This is torture too.
A sweet, slimy male voice that I know all too well picks up where my brother left off, passes through the speakers in our glass cell, and raises goose pimples on my bruised skin. “Yes, yes. Incumbent supermajorities for every base. We are honored that you have once again entrusted us with leading the Moon.” Hydrus. The tyrant who rules Base I. “There are your election results, fellow Lunars, which even Cygnus Theta, a former rebel, cannot deny. The Committee candidates have won, and that is the whole truth.”
No, I silently correct him. You eliminated the write-in candidates’ chances. How many uncounted votes did Asterion get?
He sees me and Umbriel, smiles maliciously, and nods to his colleagues. They all sit up straighter in their high chairs.
“Where are the real results?” shouts a man on Base IV. A crowd has gathered; the people murmur and mill around the Atrium, watching the Committee’s election broadcast on the wall screens.
“These results are real.” Nebulus Nu’s perfectly chiseled jaw twitches as he speaks. “If we had not apprehended the so-called Girl Sage in time, she and her cohorts might have succeeded in falsifying them. She was caught lurking in InfoTech on Base I, near the polling databases.”
I lunge forward, handcuffs chafing my wrists, indignant at his lies. The bases flare up in discussion, and Nebulus gestures for one of the Journalists to lower the volume on the feeds. Cygnus blinks obliviously at the scene, the makeup on his face obscuring his actual emotional state.
The voices of the people get quieter, but their faces are still before us, hopeful, expectant. I think of Yinha’s suggestion that I astonish them. That’s all a fantasy now. The best I can do today is surrender my pride—and my life—with dignity.
“Some of you puzzle me, my fellow citizens,” Nebulus says. “This little upstart abandoned you in your time of greatest need, fleeing to planet Earth. Welcoming her back is illogical, when she has been nothing but selfish.”
His words only enrage the Dovetail supporters more.
Janus Lambda, the ancient, hunchbacked Base III representative, addresses me directly. “Phaet Theta. Adding electoral fraud to your list of crimes, and so soon? Have you no shame?”
I fight back an angry hiss. By twisting the facts with that aged, rustling voice, he could probably persuade the Moon itself that I’m guilty.
“We would have the man who brought you here teach you a lesson in serving the public—if it were not already too late to reform you,” Cassini Omicron says. His long, arching fingers tap out a spiderlike dance on the conference table. “Tarazed Pi. A Lunar citizen of the highest order.” Lazarus.
“You honor me, Representative. But I was motivated by personal considerations as well. For some time, I’ve longed to see this brat get the thrashing she deserves.” Lazarus slithers into the light. Wolf Omega begins applauding. Nobody, aside from the Com- mittee members, joins in. Their lonely claps echo off the high ceiling.
Stupid, stupid, stupid . . . It’s the last thing I want to be, but no adjective describes me better. His smooth words and handsome face prevented me from seeing the truth about him—the truth Wes and Murray already know too well.
Striding up to our cell, Lazarus whispers through clenched teeth. “Little Sage, you have decimated my career and inserted your pug nose in places it never belonged. Due to your actions, I have been shunned by the Odan people and evicted from my Sanctuarist post. If you had decided to help me recover my reputation, I might have spared you. However, you have failed to show me the respect and admiration I deserve. No matter the outcome of these elections, I will sleep soundly knowing that you have been eliminated. And that your extermination will torment Wesley Carlyle unceasingly until he meets his own end.”
The snake. Unable to stop myself, I smash my fists, handcuffs and all, against the shatterproof glass of the cell. But the chamber contains every centimeter of me.
Each step along the way to what I thought was Cygnus’s rescue, Lazarus was there: worming his way into Yinha’s confidence, luring me into his tent, forging Cygnus’s letter—no wonder it didn’t sound like my brother wrote it. And all that energy I spent figuring out Cygnus’s babbling? Squandered. The code was probably scripted. I think back to Lazarus’s long, lingering keystrokes before the document opened; any password would have worked if his fingerprints authorized it. Lazarus may even have baited Micah River, sending his supposed friend to his death because it solidified the Sanctuarists’ need for his aid and magnified the stakes of Cygnus’s rescue.
From the moment Wes told his father about the broken engagement, I was doomed. Questioning Lazarus in Shelter, hesitating to fix his shattered reputation, rejecting his “advances”—all that only made him more determined to see me gone. He couldn’t let me endanger the perfect life he wanted to build here on the Moon—a life that must include many, many Lunar women, just as Murray claimed.
“I have shed my past self, the self that Saint Oda refuses to accept.” Lazarus’s eyes never leave mine. “You will not besmirch the name of Tarazed Pi, little Sage, because the dead give no testimony—and you will join their ranks shortly. I am the victor. The truth belongs to me: I am a new man.”
How can you call yourself a man at all? I try to scream through my gag.
“Thank you, Tarazed.” Wolf rubs his hands together as if liquefying an insect between his palms. “Now, we must proceed with Miss Phaet’s penance.”
Andromeda’s hand clenches on the table. “But . . . Wolf, we haven’t voted on the matter. I was not made aware of this . . . this operation to entrap and murder Phaet.”
“Murder, you say? It is but keeping the peace.” Hydrus smiles sadly. His dimples look like puncture wounds. “Because of her, thousands have been displaced t
o the Shelter Department, including some of our best researchers. With chaos on the bases, progress has screeched to a halt. It is a national emergency, Andromeda, which was why we simply could not tell you ahead of time. You would have decreased our efficiency with questions and objections, as you did when we prevented Phaet’s parents from harming the bases any further.”
My heart lurches. Parents. Both of them?
“You are all too cruel,” Andromeda whispers, looking from me to my brother. Cygnus shakes as he draws short, shallow breaths.
Cassini ignores Andromeda. “Phaet must comprehend the sacrifices we make for the public good, painful as they are.”
“I agree,” Hydrus says. “Journalists, it’s time for a break.”
The Journalists click off their recording devices, shutting off the live stream to air senseless segments about Committee-backed improvements to base life—advertisements, really. I catch looks of bewilderment on the citizens’ faces before the ceiling screens black out.
“Phaet. We’re here.” As soon as I turn to face Hydrus’s voice, he winks at me, as if he’ll share some juicy secret. I shudder, knowing that whatever gladdens him will only hurt me—all the more so if he can’t share it with the bases. “Phaet Theta, you never knew your father as we did. He was as disruptive as your mother, if not more so.”
I shake my head. Dad was a Geologist, a cheerful man who loved his children too much to jeopardize our safety.
“But we never punish anybody unjustly.”
What did you do to him? I demand them to tell me by knocking my shoulder into the cell. But I can guess at the answer.
“For your family’s sake, we told you he died in an accident, in a leaky vehicle out on the Far Side. But with the Geology Department’s resources, we would have given him a newer model if we wanted him to come back,” Hydrus says.
A scream lodges in my chest. I won’t let out unintelligible cries of anger, not in front of these murderers.
“We saved you from a turbulent upbringing,” Nebulus says, shrugging. “Your father was a radical, and would have inundated your young mind with lies. He needed to be isolated.”
“No,” Wolf says. “He needed to be eliminated.”
* * *
Dad. They took him from my siblings and me, leaving us half-orphaned at ages six, four, and two and a half. As much as I thought I was numbed to the Committee’s evil, I’m unwilling to believe them. But if this is true, so many things make sense. The Committee told me, after they killed Mom, “You’re as delusional as your parents.” I wondered then why they mentioned both of them.
They sent Dad on that Geology mission in a faulty vehicle, knowing a moonquake was coming. Did Mom suspect? Did she know? And is that why, when we were grown, she started a revolution to protect her children from the Committee forever?
Umbriel pats my shoulder, tries to mumble something into my ear. I shrug him off, numb but for the simmering fury in my chest, and manage to catch Cygnus’s eye. He’s silently crying; the tears have washed some of the makeup off his cheeks, revealing maroon bruises and burst blood vessels.
For ten years, we thought Dad’s death was an accident. We even wondered if it happened because he wasn’t being careful enough out in the vacuum of space.
The Committee grants Cygnus and me precious moments of peace, though not intentionally. They’ve all turned on Andromeda.
Cassini sneers at her. “We know about how you tried to finagle your way into stopping Atlas Theta’s removal—his wife’s, too. You are obviously trying the same thing now—do you think us fools? But we do admire your guile. Even if you’ve had your Dovetail sympathies from the beginning, your treachery hasn’t prevented us from removing your . . . shall we call them friends?”
My last hopes vanish into the recycled air of the jail cell. Not even Andromeda can help Umbriel and me now. But she doesn’t seem to have given up; she nods to the Journalists, indicating that they should start recording again. Only a few send their recording pods back into flight, with much hesitation. Nebulus flicks his pointer finger upward, backing Andromeda. The Committee can’t cut off contact with the population for too long without arousing suspicion.
Footage of the anxious Lunar citizens lights up the ceiling, comforting me somewhat. They give us every speck of their attention, as if needing to know what they missed.
Andromeda’s trying to appear calm, but I can hear the quiver in her breath. “It seems you five are expelling me from the Standing Committee. But that doesn’t matter, not in light of the fact that Base IV voters expelled me earlier today, replacing me with Asterion Epsilon of the Reform and Equity Coalition.”
Swathes of Base IV residents nod in agreement. Several cheer. But the Base I crowd erupts in indignant shouts, unwilling to believe that an incumbent could have lost.
“Silence!” roars Wolf. The other Committee members fidget; they probably didn’t anticipate a reaction from the viewers—or an outburst from Wolf, who seems to have lost control of himself. But they can’t turn off the feed again, or residents of the less secure bases will demand to know what they’re trying to hide. “Base IV dissidents, you are nothing,” Wolf says. “You are bacteria on an agar plate, flies in a cage—”
“Wolf, allow me.” Nebulus claps a hand over Wolf’s mouth. “Do not follow Phaet Theta’s path of lawlessness and discord. Let her . . . her removal serve as an example to you all.” He turns to a Beetle standing by our glass cell. “Fill it with water. Slowly.”
The Beetle pulls a lever. A stream as wide as my pointer finger trickles down from the ceiling, hitting the floor of our cell with a steady patter.
As if sleepwalking, I extend my hands to touch it. Cool, clear liquid runs through my fingers, inviting enough to drink. In a matter of minutes, it will fill the tank. And my lungs. The prospect is so disturbing that it feels fake, like an empty threat. But I know it’s not.
Maybe it’s good that I can’t swim or float. I won’t suffer as long.
Andromeda rests her head on the table. She appears to have given up, but . . . has she? Her right forefinger is moving across the back of her left hand.
“Wait. Her friend could prove useful to us,” Lazarus says. Does he want to take even Umbriel away from me before I die?
“Perhaps,” says Hydrus. “Let us ask. Ungag them. Let the bases hear their words of repentance—if they have any.”
A metal arm next to the electric chair in our cell extends until the end reaches Umbriel’s face. The knife at its tip cuts through his gag, drawing blood from his cheek in the process. He winces but tries his best to ignore the pain.
Hydrus says to Umbriel, “If you agree to cooperate, you may live to see tomorrow.”
Umbriel rests his cuffed hands on my left shoulder. “If you think I’d rather live without Phaet than die with her, you don’t understand anything about friendship.”
With a lump in my throat, I reach my hands up and squeeze his. He knows it means thank you.
Lazarus looks taken aback, but only for a second.
The knife comes toward my face. I hold still. Whoever’s operating the thing slashes the tip of my nose before cutting off my gag—for fun, perhaps. I feel blood trickle from the wound, but it doesn’t hurt. Much.
“Friendship,” Cassini says with a small laugh. “It cannot erase your crimes or destroy your enemies. And it cannot free you from that tank.”
38
THE WATER HAS REACHED KNEE HEIGHT. The chill in my lower legs brings me odd clarity of mind; I begin to assess the situation. The liquid’s dripping from what must be the cooling unit’s condenser; because hot air can hold more water than cold, the drop in temperature forms puddles of water pulled out of the air. It’s purer than regular water—it left behind most of the dissolved ions when it evaporated. Not too different from the distilled water we used in lab.
I have a dagger and a diamond-bit
drill in my boot, but neither can cut through the reinforced glass of the cell before the soldiers shoot us. There’s Cygnus’s metal torture chair bolted to the floor on one end of the room, and a number of metal rings attached to the walls—probably to chain up prisoners. The top of the tank looks like steel.
“Phaet Theta!” Wolf’s voice booms. “Look at your so-called supporters. Look at their faces. They are afraid—they see what your crimes have cost you, and they are your friends no longer.”
I close my eyes, trying to convince myself that his taunts mean nothing. When I open them, the bases’ citizens stare back at me from the wall screens, some with malice, others with dwindling hope.
Flashes of movement draw my eyes to the screens on the large conference room’s ceiling. The murmuring on the bases has escalated into shouting and stamping.
Is it because the Committee’s killing us, or because—
The pie charts looming on the rectangular wall screen, which formerly showed large wedges of black, are now a rainbow of other colors. Half of Base IV’s gleams gold, the color representing Asterion’s Reform and Equity Coalition. The screen is labeled, RESULTS INCLUDING DOCTORED BALLOTS—CONFIDENTIAL. FOR INVESTIGATIVE PURPOSES ONLY. These must be the election results that take into account the makeshift write-in votes for Asterion and the other suppressed candidates. Did one of Sol’s Journalist friends sneak them onto the screens while everyone else was distracted by the execution?
Hydrus follows my gaze, yet somehow the arrogance on his face remains. “Ah. Andromeda, I see you’ve asked your cronies to change the decorations.”
“The Lunar people deserve the truth.” There’s a fever in Andromeda’s eyes, burning away the exhaustion I noticed earlier. I’ve seen the same expression on Mom’s face, on Sol Eta’s—even on my own, as I stared down the camera that taped Mom’s trial. “They deserve to know that the real tallies—including all the candidates—look very, very different.”