“Act normal,” I say, “but this time don’t eat the food.”
My sister opens her mouth like she’s going to protest, but instead she marches to the other side of the hangar. She’s not happy about being left out. Again.
Please, Addy, don’t cause trouble. Not tonight.
Steve and his Alk pals have a hard time rounding up the cadets to return to the Alkalinian Seat. We don’t help. We just sit on some crates and eat fruit balls. It’s actually mildly entertaining, and would be extremely entertaining if we weren’t preoccupied with what might be happening to Gedney and all the Earth Force officers.
By the time we make it back to our quarters, I’m exhausted. After all, I barely slept last night. And now I’m signed up for another round of spying. The day we arrived, we thought we’d hit the jackpot—all-you-can-eat buffets of our favorite foods, endless levels of Evolution, and private bedrooms. Little did we know that our food was laced with venom and we were test subjects while we slept.
As soon as the door to our quarters closes behind us, Cole waves us over to the couch and activates the SIMPLE. He wants to get to work on the voice box. I bring him one of my bounding gloves and a sensor strap from my blast pack. He assures me that using the glove to operate the sensor strap for this purpose won’t trigger the Alks’ scrambler. While he takes apart the box to rig the interface, I head over to the piano, where Mira is playing.
I sit down next to her on the bench.
Mira smiles. Play together?
I left my clarinet at the space station.
Play together? she repeats. An image of the piano passes from her mind to mine.
I shake my head. I don’t know how.
Mira shares a memory with me: the bridge in Gulagaven when we escaped from Regis, Randall, and Hakim. She helped me fly my blast pack by showing me mental pictures of where to place my fingers on the manual straps.
You want me to play piano that way?
She smiles again.
Um . . . I’ll try.
She helps me place my hands in the correct positions on the keys. Then she reaches up and gently brushes my eyelids closed. Her fingers are cold, but soft as butterfly wings. She’s so close. I feel her breath against my cheek. She smells like rose shampoo.
I take a deep breath, which comes out in a stutter. My heart slaps against my ribs.
My heart. All I can think about is the heart Mira drew yesterday. I try to force the image away because I know the odds are pretty high that Mira’s reading my mind right now. A jumbled mess of sparkles and nerves jumps from Mira’s mind to mine, confirming my hunch. I almost open my eyes to break our connection, but then a picture follows. My third finger tapping three times on a key.
I mimic the movements. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Good.
She speeds up the sequence: 3-3-3, 3-2-1-2-3-4.
I tap the pattern. Shockingly, it sounds like a song I’ve heard before.
Mira keeps feeding me notes, and I keep banging them out. The song isn’t too complicated, so after a bit I get the hang of it.
Keep going on your own, she says.
I keep tapping out the pattern. Next to me, Mira places her hands on the keys. When I reach the beginning of the pattern, she joins the song. Soon we’re playing a jazzy duet.
I open my eyes. Mira is watching me and smiling. Her body rocks back and forth to the rhythm.
“I think I’ve heard this song before,” I say.
“Heart and Soul.”
Wait . . . what? What does that mean? What is she saying? Is she thinking about the heart, too?
More sparkling laughter. The song is called “Heart and Soul,” silly.
Oh. I laugh, too, because even though I feel like a complete dork, it’s funny. And I’m spending time with Mira, which is awesome.
I don’t know how long we play, but eventually the food emerges from the wall, and Mira’s hands fall silent on the keys.
You need to eat, I tell her. Because in an hour she needs to be asleep, and I need to be watching.
One more round? she asks.
I play the pattern through a final time, and Mira crosses her hands in front of me, working her fingers up the keyboard in a grand finale. I place my hand on her left shoulder, so when she straightens, my arm’s around her. She tips her head to mine. Blond wisps of hair tickle my cheek. If only time could move a little slower, we could sit together, just like this, for a while longer.
Lucy and I huddle on the couch again. All of our pod mates are in bed. Mira was the only one who ate much. She didn’t have a choice. We can’t risk that the Alks don’t perform the testing because her venom levels are too low or they suspect something’s amiss because she didn’t eat. This is our one shot for information. If the Alks get suspicious about the rest of us (and Addy next door) for our sudden loss of appetite, we’ll have to figure out how to handle that later.
What used to be awesome felt like torture. Tonight’s buffet featured spaghetti and chocolate chip cookies again. Why did they have to serve my favorite meal on a night I couldn’t eat? I nibbled on the Earth Force protein bars I swiped today at break time. They tasted like old cardboard compared with the Alk spread across the room. All I could do was smell the sweet aroma of melting chocolate and swallow down the saliva that kept pooling in my mouth.
“Still got the connection?” Lucy asks now.
“You’ve asked me that at least a dozen times,” I tell her. “Yes, Mira and I are still connected.”
“Good,” Lucy says. She’s quiet for a moment (not common for Lucy), then she says softly, “I wish Waters were here. I bet we’d never be in this mess if he were.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” I’ve been thinking about Waters. I don’t like to admit it, but I really wish he were here, too.
“Do you think he’s right about the Youli? That they’re not as bad as Earth Force wants us to believe?”
I shrug. I’d like to believe that Waters is at least partially right, that the Youli aren’t all bad, that peace is a possibility, but then I remember the glare of their spaceship as it cut beneath the space elevator and snapped the shaft in two like a twig. “I’m not sure. All I know is that Waters made his choice, and it didn’t include watching out for us.”
“I guess so,” Lucy says, “but don’t you think he’s still watching out for us, maybe just in a different way?”
“If so, he has a strange way of showing it—as in, not showing it at all.”
A knock at the door makes Lucy and me jump. Our eyes go wide. Who would be at our door at this hour?
“Still got the connection?” she asks.
The knocking gets louder.
I nod. “Who do you think that is?”
“Maybe it’s Steve. What should I say?”
“Tell him I’m not feeling well and that you’re taking care of me.”
Lucy nods and rushes to the door as the knocking continues.
She pulls back the door. “You can’t just—”
Addy bursts into our room and races to the couch. “What’s happening?”
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Are you kidding? I wasn’t going to just stay in my quarters and pretend nothing was going on. Are you okay? Has the testing started?”
Lucy stands in front of us, fuming. “Out! Now! This doesn’t involve you!”
“Of course it involves me! It involves all the Bounders! When are you going to get that through your pretty ribboned skull?”
Lucy doesn’t answer. Instead she looks at me. As in, this is my problem, and I need to solve it.
I shake my head. “I’m barely hanging on to this brain connection with Mira. Figure it out.”
“Fine.” Lucy turns to Addy. “You want to be involved? He’s all yours.” She storms to her room and slams the door.
Addy curls her feet beneath her on the couch. “That was entertaining.”
“Not really.” I close my eyes and check the connection. “How’d you even get out of you
r quarters?”
“Marco told me how you’ve been rigging the doorjamb at night so your lock doesn’t engage.”
Of course he did. “Look, Addy, I don’t have the energy to say this nicely, so I’m just going to say it plainly: you’re causing problems with my pod.”
“Are you sure? Because as far as I can tell, the only person who has a problem with me is Lucy. The other issues in your pod have nothing to do with me.”
“What on earth are you talking about? What other issues?”
“Obviously, you don’t all share the same opinions about Earth Force.”
“Oh, that’s just Cole. He’s obsessed with rules, but he always comes around.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is? Because there’s going to come a day when it matters.”
“Yes, I’m sure. Stop acting like you’re talking to your Bounders’ rights group.” Before she can respond, I put up my hand. “Not now, Addy. I need to focus on the connection. It looks like Lucy isn’t coming back, so I’m going to need your help.”
I explain to her about the brain link with Mira and the special interface Cole rigged. I tell her how she has to keep me focused as I report back what I’m seeing through Mira’s eyes and as the Alkalinians’ comments are run through the translator.
Addy asks questions and inspects the interface. It feels good to be working together, and especially not to be arguing. Once she understands what to expect, we settle back on the couch and wait.
“You know, I’m kind of jealous, too,” Addy says. “You and I are so close, Jasper, so connected. It’s strange to see you like that with someone else.”
I had no idea she was jealous of Mira. “We’ll always be connected, Ads.”
“I know, it’s just a lot of change happening at once.” She snuggles under a blanket on the couch. “Can you believe it was only a couple of weeks ago that we sat together in that dingy basement?”
I smile, remembering the creepy dolls and dusty headphones. That’s where I spilled all my Earth Force secrets. “Is the Academy what you expected?”
“Yes . . . no . . . sort of. I’m more angry than ever at all the Earth Force lies. That hasn’t changed. But you know what I love, Jasper? The freedom. I finally feel like I can make a difference in my future and the futures of so many others in the process.”
Freedom? Really? I don’t feel a bit free under the strict Earth Force regime. It’s weird we can share something but have such different experiences. Still, I know I need to open my mind and try to relate to Addy’s perspective. In a funny way, she kind of reminds me of Barrick back on Gulaga. Even though he was an outcast, he seemed more comfortable, more free, than almost anyone I’ve met.
“I know I’ve been a pest,” Addy says, “but I’m happy to be here with you, Jasper.”
“Me, too, Ads.”
There’s a flicker in my brain, and then bright lights shine behind my eyes. I signal to my sister.
“Mira?” she asks.
I nod.
Addy places the translator on my lap. I wrap my single gloved hand around the sensor grip. Cole threaded my other glove through the voice box and connected it to the end of the strap to act as an interface. We practiced once before he went to bed, and it seemed to work (and didn’t activate the scrambler, thank goodness). Now we’ll know for sure.
“What are you seeing?” Addy whispers.
“Nothing yet.”
Mira’s eyes are open, but I’m pretty sure she’s unconscious. Like yesterday, our connection lets me see with Mira’s eyes. All of the VR in her room has been deactivated. She’s on her bed, which now looks like a plain metal cot. The walls and ceiling are orange. Bright lights beam down from above.
I hear voices in the background.
“Someone’s coming,” I tell Addy.
An Alk appears next to Mira. In his cyborg arm he holds a syringe filled with venom. He lowers his flying throne so it’s level with Mira’s neck and injects the yellow liquid. Even though I can’t see the injection, since it’s outside of Mira’s range of vision, I can feel it. It’s like I’m the one getting a shot. I tip forward. My limbs feel like lead.
Addy grabs my shoulders and holds me back against the couch. “You’ve got this, Jasper,” she whispers. “Hold the connection.”
The Alk situates a small dome around Mira’s head, then activates the screen beside her bed. Just like yesterday, a scan of her brain appears on the screen. The Alk adjusts the dome and repositions the scanner projection. Now Mira’s spine and brain stem are featured. The Youli brain patch is plainly visible in the center of the image. The Alk manipulates the projection and zooms in on the patch.
Next the Alk wheels a metal cart alongside Mira’s bed. An assortment of tools is spread out on top. He selects a small metal poker with a head as thin and as sharp as a needle. Then he disappears from my sight.
A sharp pain pierces my neck and races down my spine. I scream and grab for Addy with my free hand.
Addy squeezes my palm. “Are you okay?”
The pain comes again, longer this time.
I tense and hold my breath.
“What’s happening?” she says.
I slowly exhale and brace for more pain. I have to focus. I have to maintain the connection.
I force myself to look at the brain scan. The next time the pain comes, I see the poker appear on the scanner. He’s piercing her skin and jabbing at the Youli patch. Because of our connection, each jab feels like it’s jutting into my brain, too.
Sweat pours down my forehead as the jabbing continues. Addy has her arms around me. I bend over, fighting against the pain. Addy rubs my back. I focus on the rhythmic motion of her hand and my intimate connection with Mira. Those are the only things getting me through this.
The Alk opts for a different tool. This one has a tiny looped wire at the end. He tests it against his scaly skin. A spark jumps from the wire. He angles it toward Mira’s neck. The current blasts through my body. I rear back and scream.
“That’s enough!” Addy says. “You have to disconnect.”
I gulp for breath and almost sever the connection, but then I hear something.
“I think someone’s coming.” My words come out in a gasp for air.
The Alk sets down the loop tool and steers his throne back from the cot. Finally I have a reprieve from the pain, but the aftershock reverberates all the way to my fingers and toes. This is one time a bit of venom wouldn’t be so bad. At least it would numb this pain.
The hissing and clicking of other Alkalinians grows louder. As soon as they’re in range, the voice box should be able to translate.
Seelok flies into my view, flanked by two of his main advisers. He studies the brain scan, zooming the image in and out. Then he turns to the Alk at his side and hisses.
This is the moment of truth. I squeeze the hand grip as tight as I can. Please let this work!
The voice box translates: “Is everything ready?”
It works! I pump my free fist in the air. Addy bounces on the couch.
His adviser replies: “Yes. As soon as they confirmed, we implemented the protocol. They will bound to the perimeter, and our shuttles will tow them into the hangar.”
Addy stops bouncing. I focus on Seelok. Who is going to bound to the perimeter?
“And your guards are in place?” Seelok asks.
“They will be. Once all is confirmed, we should be able to dispose of the Earthlings quickly, as the venom will still be in their systems. We made sure of that this afternoon.”
I sneak a peek at Addy. She presses her hands to her mouth.
“You’re sure you’ve identified which ones need to be preserved?” This question Seelok directs to the Alk who was jabbing at Mira’s brain.
“This is definitely one of them.” He picks up the poker and moves in front of the scanner. “As you can see, there are Youli cells implanted in her brain stem.”
The Alk jabs Mira’s skin, and the pain runs through my body. I push pa
st it. I can’t lose the connection.
“Are there others?” Seelok asks.
“Yes, a boy,” the Alk says. “We were unable to perform final verification, but all early testing showed an affirmative result.”
“He’s talking about you!” Addy whispers.
“Why wasn’t verification possible?” Seelok asks.
Another Alk zooms into view. It’s Steve. “We suspect he fell asleep in the common room playing a game many of the subjects mentioned during the intake survey. It was an unforeseen consequence.”
He thinks I stayed up late playing Evolution!
“Where is he now?” Seelok asks.
“Both children are in their quarters,” Steve says. “As soon as we’re given the go-ahead, we’ll secure the two of them for transfer.”
“Excellent,” Seelok says. “The Youli should arrive within the hour.”
25
SEELOK AND HIS ADVISERS EXIT the room, with Steve close behind them. The Alk conducting the testing checks his notes, turns off the scanner, and then wheels his medical cart out of view. Moments later the VR activates in the room. Mira sleeps peacefully on a soft bed with a teal comforter and clean white sheets.
For a second I do nothing. What if they come back? What if there’s more to hear?
“Are they gone?” Addy whispers.
Her words jar me. I cast aside the voice box and spring to my feet. “We’ve got to do something!”
“Do you think they were serious? Are the Youli really coming here?”
“Did they sound like they were kidding?” I ask, rubbing the back of my neck.
“No, but what did they mean they’d dispose of us?”
“I’m not sure. All I know is the Youli are coming for me and Mira.” I press my hands against my head. “We need a plan to stop them!” I shout.
Lucy’s door swings open. “What’s going on?”
“The Youli are coming, that’s what!”
Addy quickly fills her in on what happened, while I pace back and forth in front of the couch.
“Cole was right!” Lucy cries. “We should have told the admiral when we had the chance. If we hadn’t waited, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
The Forgotten Shrine Page 23