14
“I’m sure you’re wondering why you’ve been dragged out of bed, flown to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and dropped off on a deserted island. You’re probably tired and confused.”
My mother speaks with a calm assurance. Her smile says that everything is okay. Her tone is so cool and relaxed and poised that anyone already freaking out would be placated by her cooing. She’s so good at it that I wonder if she’s had practice.
Did she have other kids?
Was she someone else’s mother?
“I would be, too,” she says. “In fact, I was. Like you, I once found myself in a remote location with just my fellow Unity crews.”
“Pause it,” I say, and Daniel does. I pull the photo out of my pocket and stare at the man and woman. They’re wrapped up in each other. Happy. And both of their right hands are covered. There was no way I could have known. But did they know about me? Have they been watching me? I shake my head. The idea that the parents who gave me up have been watching me struggle from a distance is hard to accept. It would make them monsters, and me the daughter of monsters.
But it can’t be a coincidence that I’m here now, after just three weeks of testing, listening to a message from my mother. Or could it? Maybe this message has been played for hundreds of Unity crews? She could be an actress, the whole thing staged, and she’s really down and out, taking on talking-head jobs for a living, giving the weather on some local channel. That would be better than this being real.
“Go ahead,” I say, and the video resumes.
“The experience forged bonds that remain unbroken to this day. Life and death are the glue that bind Base, Support and Point. Together we’re strong.”
“Divided we fall,” Gwen says at the same time as my mother. It must be an unofficial Unity motto I haven’t heard yet.
“Since you’re watching this message,” my mother continues, “you already know the island has sources of food and water. How and if you retrieve them is up to you, but all the resources you need are standing around you in the bodies and minds of your confederates. Work together. Survive. We will return for you—for all of you—in one month.”
Daniel pauses the video again. “A month. We’re going to be here for a month.”
“At least,” Gwen says.
Daniel’s frown deepens. “Right. The wave.”
“She’s your mother?” Mandi asks. She’s standing behind us, arms crossed, but she’s as interested in the video as the rest of us.
“Do you know her?” I ask, sounding something close to pitiful. I shouldn’t want to know this woman who gave me up. Who didn’t care enough to keep me. Who named me and let me go like some wild animal born in captivity, sent out into the jungle—in this case, literally. I shouldn’t care about her. But I do.
“I’ve seen her,” Mandi says. “On the carrier.”
“When?” I ask.
“With the Admiral.”
“The who?” I’ve never heard of this person, but the way she says ‘The Admiral’ indicates a capital T and capital A, like the man doesn’t need a first name.
“No kidding?” Gizmo says.
Judging by the looks of surprise on everyone’s faces but mine, I’m once again out of the loop.
“He founded Unity,” Daniel explains. “He was bonkers rich. Put his whole fortune into creating the Unity program, which is worldwide and not dependent on any government. Judging by the age of your mother, she must have gotten in on the ground floor.”
“What does the Admiral look like?” I ask.
Daniel understands the real question. “It’s not him.” Him being my father. “The Admiral must be seventy by now.”
“And the name?” I ask.
“He was an actual admiral once,” Gwen says. “That’s what they say. His real name is a secret. Pretty much everything we know about him is rumor, including his wealth.”
“Only someone with endless funding could create something like Unity,” Daniel says.
“Let’s just finish the video,” Mandi says, and for once, we’re on the same page. Compared to my mother and our current situation, The Admiral is about as interesting as a crack in the ceiling.
“Do it,” I say, and Daniel once again complies.
My mother leans forward, shifting her hands. Her finger taps the desktop. She’s either nervous or impatient. Either way, her comfortable visage is fading a little. “Some of you have been with the program for a while. Some of you just a short time.”
I hold my breath.
Is she speaking about me?
To me?
“Some of you have been partially integrated into the Unity program, understanding our organization and methodology, while others are still just getting their feet wet. I assure you, this was not a mistake. You are here for a reason. You’re here because we believe you are ready. Even if you do not.”
Pause.
Daniel taps the screen. “Look!”
We all lean forward, looking at my mother’s hand. She’s had her left hand covering her right the whole time, but between shifting around and tapping the desktop, she’s revealed a small part of the back of her hand and the brand it holds. The black bottom and orange side are impossible to mistake.
“She’s a Support,” Gwen says, a trace of admiration in her voice.
“She’s not a good person,” I snap. “Not someone you should look up to. Or trust. All of you. No matter how good she looks or sounds.”
A hush falls over the group. I think they’re all holding their breaths.
“She gave me away,” I say. “And now she’s sent me, and all of you, here.”
“They didn’t mean for us to crash,” Gizmo says, sounding hopeful.
“Crash or not, they sent some of us here to die.” I meet Gwen’s eyes. She opens her mouth to argue, but I cut her short. “They might not have known about the bodies, but they knew those people died. They knew they never made it off this island. And they sent us here anyway. This is a trial by fire.”
“Bodies?” Gizmo says.
Hell. I reach over Daniel’s shoulder, dodging the question and hitting play.
My mother gives the desk a few more nervous taps and finishes with, “One month. Just one month and this will make sense. Everything will make sense.”
The video goes black. The plain background returns. Daniel starts tapping the screen again and this time it responds. He accesses the settings panel, but finds it mostly empty. “This is a bare-bones model. No apps. No connectivity. Cell, Wi-Fi, satellite, nothing. I mean, the parts might be in here, but none of it is enabled, and there’s no way to turn them on.”
“Because they didn’t want us to,” Gwen says.
Daniel nods. “Would appear so, and the message suggests the same. The only thing on here is the video of—” He looks at me.
“You can say it.”
“Of Effie’s mother.”
“There’s more,” Mandi says.
“What?” Daniel scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Trust me, there is nothing on here besides the stripped-down operating system, and that’s just there to enable the video playback.”
“In the video, you plebeian.” Mandi snags the Featherlight, and after a few taps, starts the video again. She places it back on the palm leaves.
My mother’s soothing voice grates on me. She runs through her uplifting spiel and then gets nervous, her fingers tapping.
“Be safe,” Mandi says, staring at the video.
We’re looking at the same screen, but she’s seeing or hearing something I’m not.
“Be strong.”
“It’s Morse code,” Daniel whispers. “She’s tapping it on the desk.”
I try to follow the taps, but can’t make sense of them. I understand the mechanics of Morse code, but I’ve never bothered to learn it.
“Speak well,” Mandi says, just before my mother signs off.
The words pummel me.
I stagger back. The back of my legs catch on a l
ow hanging hammock. I fall.
My butt lands in the hammock’s basin and I start to roll backward, unwilling and unable to stop myself from falling. I’m already plummeting, descending into a pit of confusion so deep I’m not sure I will even climb back out.
The hammock is caught, its spin stopped short, my bruised body spared another jarring impact.
“Hey,” Gwen says, her voice distant, masked by a rumbling. “Hey!”
My cheek stings, the poignant sharpness of it returning my senses. Gwen is winding up to slap me again.
“Are you back?” she asks. “Or are you checking out?”
“Please, let me.”
She lowers her hand and uses it to help steady the hammock. “Not a chance.”
The others gather behind her, their faces glowing orange in the light of our second sunset in this beautiful hell.
“‘Be safe,’” Gwen says. “‘Be strong. Speak well.’ You know what it means, don’t you?”
I nod. “My name. Euphemia. The Greek translation is ‘to speak well.’”
My four companions, these people my mother tells me are confederates, people with whom I am in league or am allied with against something or someone else, lean in, the mystery hanging between us like a darkness waiting to be illuminated.
“It means she was speaking to me.”
I push up off the hammock and stand.
“It means she never did forget about me.”
Gwen moves aside as I step toward her, allowing me to pass. I pause for a moment, looking back over my shoulder. “It means she is a monster, after all.”
15
Growing up primarily on the not-so-nice streets of smaller cities, where all the stereotypes about drugs, violence and thievery aren’t stereotypes, I rarely went outside at night. The one house I lived in that did have a postcard-sized backyard, which smelled like the neighbor’s ash tray, provided a view of the nighttime sky with very few stars. The light reaching Earth from billions of light years away just couldn’t compete with the ambient glow from the surrounding homes, street lights and the city beyond. Civilization had cut me off from the lights that inspired, guided and fueled the imaginations of nearly every generation of homo sapiens from their meager beginnings. I had heard that there were places still on Earth where the night sky could still be seen without light pollution, but I couldn’t picture it.
Lying in a hammock, staring up at what I’d previously experienced as a black sky with a few dozen pinpoints of light, I now see more light than darkness. The vastness of it makes my head spin, like looking to the horizon from the cliff. The number of stars overhead is like a fog, so thick and alive that I think I should be able to taste it. I read once that outer space smells like seared steak.
My stomach growls as I picture a constellation-sized hunk of beef.
I had my protein bar ration, but it barely touched my gnawing hunger. Tomorrow, I think, picturing fish from the river sizzling over an open flame.
Stop thinking about food!
I push visions of cooking meat from my mind and remember why I had started thinking about the stars in the first place: to forget about her.
My mother, still nameless, is alive. And well. And she sent me a message via Morse code, which leads me to believe that making contact wasn’t sanctioned for some reason. Unity doesn’t know I’m her daughter, I decide. But she knows. And I don’t think she just figured it out.
And that creates a cascade of overlapping questions to which I will likely never have answers. If she was on the Unity carrier, she might be dead. And even if she’s not, there’s a good chance none of us will make it off this island alive. Because it’s not just an island with limited food and water that a bunch of kids can survive on if they work together. It’s a killing ground.
A month would have been bad enough, but unless we can make contact with the outside world, there’s a good chance we’ll be out here a lot longer than that.
I roll my head to the side. The campsite is mostly dark. We could have started a fire—one outdoorsy thing I am good at, though not for any genuine outdoorsy reason. But that would be asking for trouble. A fire atop the cliff would be easy to see. Nothing like inviting the island’s cannibal residents over for a meal.
They’re not cannibals, I tell myself. Just murderers. The bodies were shot and left for dead, not disassembled, slaughtered or cooked. I might be the most street smart of our group, but even my imagination is getting out of control. Probably because the best case scenario is that all those people were killed by a lone crazy person. And while one person feels better than a tribe, it doesn’t change the fact that whoever else is on this island, one or a dozen, they managed to kill eight Unity members, who probably weren’t that different from us.
I focus on the lone source of light coming from the far side of the camp. It’s inside the hut that Gwen and I repaired to the best of our abilities, while the others watched the sun slide into the horizon. Gizmo’s go-pack was mostly filled with small sets of tools, the kind you’d use on…well, gizmos, and a box of spare parts that were protected from the EMP. After a quick glance at the parts, Gizmo declared they were for building an old fashioned radio. Suggested that if he built it, we might get a second message from Unity, which could contain information about the island, resources or even challenges to complete. But since our goal is communication with—and rescue from—the outside world, Gizmo is using the parts, along with the pillaged Unity Featherlight, to repair Daniel’s EMP-fried Featherlight, instead.
The delicate operation is taking place under the dull blue glow of a single LED light, held by Mandi. Daniel offers verbal support and occasional ideas. Somehow, despite being surrounded by jungle and an endless ocean, they’re suddenly in their element. And if they’re successful, we’ll have satellite communication with the outside world via the Internet. Help will be a chat window away.
A shuffle of feet announces a visitor. I see the silhouette slip through the star fog and realize I have no idea who it is. With my hand on the holstered gun, and my heart pounding, I ask, “Gwen?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Who else did you think—never mind. That was dumb.”
I hear a creak of stretching hammock strands as she lies down a few feet beside me. We lie there in silence, listening to the three high-pitched voices trying to whisper in the hut. A cool breeze rolls down from the volcanic mountain high above us, sweeping through the camp and spilling over the cliff. An invisible river of air and jungle smells.
“I could get used to this,” Gwen says.
“Used to this?” I lean up and look at Gwen, but see only darkness.
“It’s peaceful.”
I look back up at the stars and take a deep breath. She’s right about that. “If not for the dead people, killer waves and being stranded.”
“A toilet would be nice, too,” she says. “And a steak.”
“I know, right?”
In a moment of clarity, I realize I’m smiling. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but Gwen has become a friend. Daniel, too. I still don’t know Gizmo very well, but his adorability is unquestionable. Mandi is another matter. We’re not friends, but I do have a kind of respect for her. For her toughness. We’re like a lion and a hyena on the African savannah, when such things still existed. We’re at odds, but respectful of each other.
Gwen and I fall silent again, and I close my eyes, listening to the scrape of windblown palm leaves.
I jump when Gwen speaks again, this time in a gentle, almost inaudible, voice. “What is that?” She’s talking to herself, but a question like that, on this island, can’t be ignored.
With my head still turned in her direction, I open my eyes. “What?”
I see the shadow of her arm rise up through the stars on the horizon. “Up there.”
The night sky looks like it did several minutes ago, except shifted a few degrees to the west. “What did you—”
And then I see it, too. Flecks of orange light, flaring to life an
d then fading away. A moment later, streaks of light trace lines across the sky, objects burning up in the atmosphere. Whatever they are, they’re not as big as the object that crash landed, but there’s still some kind of chaos taking place in orbit.
More flashes of orange.
More streaks of light.
The show is stunning, but disturbing. It doesn’t take a vivid imagination to see the broad strokes of this mystery. The flares of light are explosions, big enough to see from the ground. The streaks of light are debris from the explosions, burning up in the atmosphere. None of it is big enough to crash into the ocean and bury us beneath a killer wave, but it’s still disturbing.
“It’s like a war,” Gwen says.
“Between what?”
“Satellites,” she says, sounding confident. “They’re a strategic target. The enemy can’t organize if they can’t communicate.”
“But there are just as many land-based modes of communication. Cell towers. Cables. The Internet. Not to mention things no one can stop, like HAM radio.”
“Maybe there are satellites with weapons?” she asks.
“Maybe,” I say, thinking Daniel would know.
A series of orange orbs sparkle across the sky.
“Geez,” Gwen says.
A quilt of orange lines follows, as the Earth spins its way through the ruins of whatever was just destroyed.
Three voices rise up from the hut, squealing. I move to stand up too fast, fearing the worst. The hammock spins me around like a luchador wrestler and slams me onto the ground. I cough and wince, but waste no time feeling embarrassed. Gwen couldn’t see me anyway, and I hear her feet behind me.
My tension slides away as I make out words among the squeals, which now sound happy.
“We did it,” Daniel says. “We’re connected.”
The three kids flinch when Gwen and I suddenly appear in the doorway, but their surprise is quickly replaced by excitement. A dissected Featherlight, the one containing my mother’s message, lies on the hut floor. Beside it is a newly assembled device, made from parts of both. A Franken-Featherlight.
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