“I think they knew. I think some of them—maybe just a small sect—knowingly sacrificed your world to win the war. You said the only ones who survived were off-world at the time? And that included who, exactly?”
He looked bewildered; it took a long time for him to respond. “Some small scientific and research colonists, like my family.”
“The government? The military?”
“I—I don’t know. Yes? They might have gone off-world once the war turned against us, for protection. . . .”
Cassie, God-Mother has sensed the weapon on Earth. She believes it is a smaller version of the one deployed against her people.
“That’s one consolation,” I said bitterly. At Luka’s questioning glance, I relayed that information to him.
“Perhaps my father did not know the truth. Or perhaps he thought it was worth the risk,” he said quietly.
“Or his hatred of the vrag mattered more than anything else.” Drenched with residual emotions from God-Mother, I staggered upright, breathing heavy and trying to push back the tide of emotion that threatened to drown me.
Luka had not gotten that far yet. He was still on his knees, bent double, forehead nearly touching the ground but for his hands. His fingers clutched at his hair.
“Luka? Did you see everything I saw?”
He groaned and punched the floor. “Yes.”
“We have to stop this,” I said. “No matter what happened in the past, it needs to end now.”
God-Mother couldn’t hear me, but she could read my intentions.
I am dying, she said, plainly and without emotion. She was tired of being alone and carrying the pain of her people. She wanted to stop running and stop killing. And the only way she could see to do that was to make peace with the megobari.
She showed me her idea: they would kill her if she came close, if she attempted to contact them. She had never been able to connect her neural network to one of theirs—either they were incompatible or they had never shown exposed skin to her. She was sure that if she could just connect with one of them, share with one of them what she shared with me, they could stop their terrible war.
I wasn’t so optimistic.
She asked for my help. With the echoes of her children’s cries still in my head, I agreed before I had even formed the intent.
God-Mother’s memory was long. She did not forget. But soon she would be gone, and her race would be finished.
It wasn’t right.
And now I realized that humanity was not threatened by the vrag. God-Mother did not wish to invade; her species couldn’t survive in our gravity.
No, she knew that the megobari were coming. Earth was too enticing to them to leave alone. God-Mother’s promise to the governments of Earth to help protect them against the coming invasion of megobari had been genuine. And as the last surviving witness to what the megobari had done to her, she knew what no one else could show us: the truth.
I thought of the weapon, and what scared people might do if they thought they had no other choice.
No, the real threat was within.
We needed to get back to Earth.
Thirty-Two
GOD-MOTHER SAW AND understood every electrical impulse that traveled down my neurons before they even formed a conscious thought in my head. She knew what I needed.
For a creature without depth perception, much less an understanding of numbers or letters, she had a surprisingly good grasp on physics. I supposed it helped that she was plugged into a giant computer connected to a ship filled with sophisticated sensors, all of which were receiving feedback from humanity’s network of GPS satellites.
The sum total of human knowledge of space travel couldn’t have filled a thimble compared to what God-Mother could do. A free-living, self-aware neuron. The things she could accomplish. Had already accomplished with the gifts she’d given Earth. I wished we might’ve had more time, but we had to get that weapon off Earth and hidden before it was discovered.
She offered to send us back in a pod of her own, so as to avoid detection and suspicion. Not wanting to test my luck again with suspicious farmhands, I agreed.
She opened a door in her chamber and directed us down a darkened corridor that narrowed considerably as we went. I wanted to ask Luka what he was thinking, how he was dealing, or even what he thought of this nonsensical layout of a ship. But we might as well have been two planets in synchronous orbit. Distant, moving in the same direction, and never able to meet.
God-Mother showed us to a small spherical craft, something a step up from an escape pod. Luka and I strapped into seats twice our size, back to back, as the ship revved itself to life.
Luka was sullen and silent as God-Mother cast us out of her ship with the precise timing and trajectory for us to fall back to Earth exactly where we needed to be. I could place my hand on the soft interior of the sphere and make minute corrections to its trajectory if necessary.
We landed in a moonlit field a few miles from the safe house, sky dark enough to glimpse the stars we’d left behind in the gauzy curtain of atmosphere.
Head still spinning from the dizzying fall, I stumbled out of the pod and yanked Luka out by the arm when he proved too slow. As soon as he’d exited, the pod began to dissolve into a steaming black mass of oozing liquid, like bubbling lava cooling quickly into a swath of pavement.
I was desperate to reach my friends. We’d survived what I’d expected to be certain death, a suicide mission, and everything we thought we’d known was wrong. I needed to fix it.
But this had grown beyond me. Beyond me and Luka. The two of us had gotten into this mess that maybe we weren’t qualified to fix. At the very least, we could undo our mistakes and let the truth come out.
A different truth than the one we’d uploaded yesterday. A fuller truth.
The half-buried house was dark, all shadows and soft moonlight coming in from the window. It was deathly quiet.
I flipped on the lights and scrambled backward into Luka, a scream dying in my throat.
There was a man standing in the living room.
Thirty-Three
LUKA SNAPPED OUT of his fugue. His arm came up to shield me, putting himself between me and the strange man.
With all we’d faced, he’d never tried to physically protect me until now.
My hands clenched into fists, and I scanned the room for something I could grab for a weapon. Only two candidates nearby: a hardback book on the coffee table and a lamp that might be made of glass.
“What are you doing here?” Luka’s words were clipped. Low. Dangerous.
Not Who are you? Not How did you get in here?
The man didn’t move. The corners of his mouth tugged sideways, more of a grimace than a smile. He was maybe late twenties. Clean-cut brown hair. His face was vaguely familiar.
His eyes were bright with fanatical energy, trained on Luka with single-minded intent. “Hello, Lukas. You’ve made quite a mess of things, haven’t you?” He pronounced Luka with a strange lilt on the second syllable, an almost imperceptible s at the end.
He was broad-shouldered, thick. Hands like a gorilla. He could probably take a swing and break Luka’s face without exerting any effort.
When Luka didn’t answer, he circled his muscled arm wide and pivoted his upper body as if to show off the room. “I thought that this place was to be a refuge for our people in times of need. No matter the time. No matter the need.”
I don’t know what I expected. But the man’s voice was not as thick as his body was; it was thin and young and strong. He was even mocking. Mocking Luka’s speech patterns.
“What could you possibly need?” Luka’s voice was so spiteful and dangerous I took a half step back, as though he might start snarling at me next.
The man took a handful of steps toward Luka. “The weapon.”
“What weapon?” The man cocked an eyebrow at him and Luka bristled. “It’s not here.”
“You don’t know how right you are.” The man st
alked across the room, pacing before us.
“Where are my friends?” I demanded.
“I locked them in their rooms. Do you know what you’ve done? Of course not.” He leaned against the back of the couch. The man turned his oil-slick eyes to me for the first time, his chin jerking up. “Who is this?”
Luka seemed more angry than afraid, and I had no intention of appearing fragile. I gently pushed Luka’s arm aside and moved closer. I kept my fingers encircling his wrist, as much a reassurance as a restraint. His pulse trilled like a hummingbird’s heart under my fingers. “I’m Cassie.”
“My name is Tamaz. As these strange human mouthpieces cannot form the sounds of my true name, it’ll have to do.”
An electric tickle ran down the back of my neck.
His eyes slid to Luka, whose arm still tensed like he meant to shield me. “Where is your father?” Tamaz’s voice was hard, but not mocking now. Did he really not know?
It was two heartbeats before Luka replied. “Dead. All of them are dead.”
Tamaz tucked his chin into his chest, anger flaring his nostrils. “The vrag?” he asked quietly, with an undercurrent of rage.
Luka gave a slow nod. “They were there, as you feared. Always a step ahead.” Then, cautiously: “You and I are the only two left on this planet.”
There was a muted flash of surprise over Tamaz’s features—he drew his head back as if the news had physically hit him. But then it was gone, and he spoke again as if nothing had been said. “Not anymore.”
“Would someone like to clue me in?” I asked.
“This doesn’t concern you—”
“Spit any more of your vile words at her and I will stop your human mouth from forming any sounds at all.” Luka was holding steady in his staring contest with Tamaz. “You’re a liar and a traitor.” To me, in an aside: “Until he renounced our family and left us, Tamaz was my father’s brother. My uncle. He . . . disagreed with the course of action my father had decided to take.” A pause, where Luka’s eyes and voice went hard. “And I believe he was the one who tried to suffocate us inside SLH.”
“I didn’t plan to kill you, Lukas. I was simply trying to scrub the mission. Your father left me little choice.”
And it hit me, all at once, why his face was so familiar. Tamaz had been one of the blue-jumpsuited men who had worked as our Mission Control during our SLH simulation. He had gone by the name Tom. I remembered his name badge, how he’d had a beard and glasses then. I’d heard his voice over the radio night after night, giving instruction.
I hadn’t heard him on the night we had been locked in the simulation and starved of oxygen.
“You knew he was there all along?” I asked Luka accusingly.
“He was meant to be there. At the time. To be another set of eyes and ears. Before he abandoned his family. That was when I first suspected you, Tamaz.” Luka’s lip curled in disgust. “I didn’t want to believe it was you. That you could put me—put all of them, innocent humans—in such danger.”
“I only wanted your father to give up his reckless idea.”
“You almost killed us,” I growled. Luka was now holding on to my wrist, but I didn’t need to be held back.
Tamaz didn’t even look at me. He just shrugged. “But you survived. And it didn’t work, did it? It only spurred them on. The humans really can be as foolhardy and power-hungry as my brother had once been.”
“Do not speak of him.” Luka’s voice was shaking with hatred. Under my hands, his muscles had gone to steel as his fingernails dug into his palm. “In fact, do not speak at all unless it is to tell us why you are here.”
“Your father is gone, Luka. And you being the dutiful son, you succeeded in carrying out his mission to bring back the weapon, didn’t you? Did he ever tell you its true purpose?” He paused for confirmation, but Luka didn’t give him one. “I suppose not. You have no idea what you have done, do you?”
“Yes, we do,” I said, stepping forward.
“You have no idea, little girl,” the man repeated, eyes barely grazing me before addressing Luka again. “Lukas, I knew what your father was planning, and I tried to stop it. And now, soon, there will not be anyone left to remember that any of us existed at all.”
“The weapon is hidden,” Luka said through gritted teeth. “Safe.”
“Is it? Have you seen it? Because a few hours ago, one of your new friends just delivered it to Clayton Crane.”
“What?” Luka and I demanded at once.
“Your friend, the blond one, who worked for Crane? She never stopped working for him. She called him earlier this evening. Didn’t you notice that your vehicle was missing?”
No, I hadn’t noticed.
“He’s a liar, Cassie,” Luka murmured, though he sounded unsure. “I wouldn’t believe him.”
The hall to the bedrooms was on the other side of the room. I’d have to leave Luka’s side and walk past Tamaz to see if Hanna was still there.
He watched me consider the option, a look of grave amusement on his face. “Believe me or don’t,” Tamaz said offhandedly. “You’ll see soon enough. All bets are off now that the vrag have made threats. Your government doesn’t like feeling powerless. As soon as Crane figures out how to operate it, this planet’s time is up.”
Luka and I shared a second’s worth of a glance. “We can stop this,” I said. “We’re going to fix it.”
But Tamaz was right. Luka and I had brought Skyfall back in ignorance, maybe—with good intentions. But I knew it was dangerous, and I’d been careless, too trusting. Too willing to believe that Hanna was my friend first. But she only ever looked out for herself.
Hanna must’ve overheard me telling Mitsuko and Emilio about the weapon’s coordinates. That would’ve been a grand way to get back in Crane’s good graces—if she had been telling me the truth at all. Maybe she had worked for him all along. Had it been Crane’s idea to send Hanna to me, knowing I’d trust her, my former roommate, over him?
Or had it been Hanna, whispering in his ear? Let me go get her. She’ll trust me.
My one saving grace was the fact that they wouldn’t be able to use the megobari technology. It required direct touch, control . . .
But—oh God.
Pinnacle.
Hanna had Pinnacle inside her head. As soon as Crane put two and two together—or Hanna put it together for him—all it would take would be one little provocation before the government pressured Crane to use the only weapon they had.
If they even waited for provocation at all.
“This is why I came, Lukas,” Tamaz began again, his voice gentling somewhat as he watched us put the pieces together. “We’re all that’s left. And the humans—the greedy, self-destructive, shortsighted people who have been ruining this planet since long before we arrived—have a weapon that will end it once and for all. We have only one chance.”
Luka’s voice wavered, throat bobbing as he swallowed. “What is it?”
“Escape. A forward team of megobari commandos has arrived ahead of the fleet to investigate your report of vrag presence. They have a small, fast ship, quiet enough to slip through the atmosphere before anyone’s the wiser. They can take us back with them. We can return to searching for a new home with the fleet.”
Luka shook his head in disbelief. “The fleet? No, this is my home. We may still have a chance to make this a home for our people. What is the investigative squad going to do? Have you had contact with them?”
“Only cursory, over the radio, like a caveman. Standard protocol to let me know they were en route. But commandos don’t exactly share their plans with the likes of me. After all, I’m more or less human to them now.”
Luka turned his profile toward me, speaking low. “This . . . does not bode well.”
“They won’t help us? I thought your people wanted to save Earth. To colonize it.”
He winced. “My family, yes. My people? I have no idea. We are not all of the same mind. They have . . . conflicting prior
ities.”
“More important than finding a new home?”
“They were willing to destroy their own to eliminate the vrag. They will not hesitate to sacrifice yours.” This came not from Luka but from Tamaz.
“How do you know this?” Luka asked.
Tamaz shook his head slowly, as if mourning Luka’s ignorance. “Why do you think I parted ways with the family?”
Luka’s brow furrowed, and his lips parted, but he could not speak.
“If you want, we might be able to convince the powers that be to allow your friend to come, too. But we’re getting off this rock sooner rather than later—and believe me, when they turn that thing on, all that’s left will be rock.”
“I thought you cared about this place,” Luka protested. “You obviously have found some enjoyment in life on Earth.”
“One does what one must,” Tamaz muttered. “It’s not that Earth is a cesspool. It has its perks. But it’s no Eden, Lukas. These people don’t even know what they have in this planet. They don’t value it. They throw garbage into the very water they drink and dig the ground out from under them for a fuel source that pollutes the air they breathe. They let their own neighbors die of sickness and starvation, and your father thought they would take us in?” He barked a humorless laugh. “They don’t even want to deal with refugees of their own kind. This place is an overcrowded slum. A tinderbox. In another hundred years, Earth wouldn’t have been habitable anyway, even with your father’s virus. We will find an unpolluted world to make our own.”
“Wait—virus?” I cut in.
Luka looked as blank as I felt. He shook his head, confused.
“Oh, you didn’t know that, did you? Of course not. Why would he tell you?” Tamar grimaced, the bearer of unpleasant tidings. “Your father—patron saint of uplifting primitive species, the planet-saving do-gooder—he infected the human race with a genetic virus. Just a small segment of DNA replaced by one your father invented, and passed from generation to generation. He released it almost as soon as we found this planet. Long before you were born, Lukas, before he’d even designed the virus that could disguise us as the native fauna. He ran the numbers—the projections of human population over the next couple of centuries—and extrapolated the data. Assuming the birth rate continued on an upward slide, and human life expectancy continued to rise, exceeding the carrying capacity of Earth was nearly assured, even within our long lifetime. So he introduced a virus into the population that would . . . curtail that rate. Just a little, just enough to make sure there was room for us in humanity’s future. It was genius, I thought. It might actually help them, he reasoned—there was already so much fighting over their resources, and so much strain on the planet to keep you all alive. The slower the population grew, the less competition, the better for us all. It might’ve been his best work. All he had to do was drop it in a few major population areas and it infected over one-third of the Earth’s population within decades. The more babies they had, the more the virus spread, and the fewer babies those babies would grow up to conceive.”
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