by Pintip Dunn
Carr laughs, and the sound shatters my already fragile bones. “You think he wants to die? You think he wants to leave Brooklyn and Camden to fend for themselves? Don’t fool yourself, Vela. Nobody actually wants to be the Fittest. Maybe it’s the best choice we have. That doesn’t make it right.”
My veins fill with concrete. Because in all the times we’ve discussed his candidacy, he’s never once spoken out against the Trials. He’s never once criticized the system my father and the other council members implemented in order to extend the King’s life. I’ve never questioned it, either.
Until now.
“What did the silver disc show?” Carr asks again.
“It was inconclusive,” I croak. “The disc was too water damaged to retrieve any data.”
“So according to CORA, I’m still the official Fittest?”
I don’t want to say yes. I know this single word will seal Carr’s decision. But my silence is answer enough.
He picks up his fork and takes a bite of pie. His expression changes when the food hits his taste buds, but he doesn’t look joyous. With this action, he’s telling me, as resolutely as any words, that he intends to go through with the transplant.
“Vela,” he says, his voice lower, rougher than normal. “I would move mountains to have a natural lifetime with you. I’d skip nutritioning for a week if I could have another night like the one we had in the caves. But I can’t let Zelo take my place.
“You know it, too. That’s why you’re asking me to step down, instead of making the decision yourself. You could invalidate CORA’s decision, but you won’t. You know in your heart Zelo doesn’t deserve to die. No more than I do. Difference is, he has a daughter. And I don’t.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. He’s right. I couldn’t make the decision, so I wanted him to do it for me. When the truth is, there’s no good decision. Not a single one.
“If the system’s wrong,” I burst out, “why do you have to be the one to fix it?”
“Who else, Vela?”
He looks straight into my eyes, and his pain breaks me. Roots out and destroys every bit of strength I have left.
I have no response.
Chapter
Forty-Five
For the next two hours, I wander around the shuttle in a daze. One foot falls in front of the other. My hand brings the fork to my mouth, but I’m not sure where I go. I don’t know what I eat. I have no idea who I see.
I walk and I walk, and when my handheld vibrates in my pocket, alerting me to the time, my feet automatically take me to a glass-walled room, the one designated for step one of the transplant process.
A group of people stands around the one-way window—council members, the medical personnel, the Fittest families. Only Blanca is missing. Even with Denver’s confession, I guess they haven’t had time to release her from the red cells.
Everyone stares as I approach, and the crowd parts, clearing a path for me to the door. A serpent is etched in the metal, baring his fangs at me.
Of course he is. I can never escape the serpent, no matter where I go. It seems fitting that he accompany me here, too.
I grasp the door handle, my palm slick with sweat, and go inside the room. My father and Carr are already strapped into their respective transfer machines. Blankets are draped over their bodies, and all I can see are their heads. My father wears a crown of thorns, while Carr’s head is bare.
My pulse throbs, in places I didn’t even know had a pulse, and breathing hurts. Every mouthful of air has spikes that rip up my lungs, but I have to breathe. I have to stand here. I have to make this decision.
A technician turns from the control panel, where he was keying in the parameters of the transfer, and gestures to a red button. “Whenever you’re ready, Princess. This button will start the process.”
I nod, and he exits the room, leaving me with the two men I love best. The deep knowledge squirms inside me. I don’t get to keep them both.
I go to Carr first. The last of my stupor clears like fog in the sun. I sense everything in sharp hyperfocus. The way a muscle twitches at his jaw, the perspiration that dots his brow. The tsch-tsch-tsch of the machine warming up. The crisp, clean scent of sanitizer warring with Carr’s unique scent of soil and apples and goodness and life.
I want to press my face against his neck and breathe him in. I want to watch his forehead crinkle as he puzzles out a solution. I want him to laugh, joyously, with his mouth and eyes and stomach. I want one more night by the colored water, one more taste of his tears, one more kiss, anywhere and everywhere.
I want, I want, I want. I could turn myself inside out from the wanting.
Instead, I touch his warm, bristly cheek. An emotion flickers in his eyes, one I’ve never seen on his face before. Fear.
“Don’t be afraid.” My voice comes out too thin and missing consonants, as if it too were a victim to the spiky air. “This is just the first step. The machine will transfer nutrition from one body to the other. If we get through this okay, we’ll move to the surgical room, where the actual transplant will be performed. Nothing will happen yet.”
“I’m not scared to die.” He sounds like his regular self—confident, strong. Instead of reassuring me, the words knock down the scant barrier I built, so that my heart breaks, and then breaks again, until it is little more than dust motes floating in the air. “But I don’t want to leave you. What I’m doing here has nothing to do with how I feel about you. You understand that, right? You know how much I love you.”
The tears gather in my chest like condensation before the rain. “I understand. I understand perfectly.”
He reaches out his hand, and I grasp it. In his grip, there is only resignation and love. No more flickers of fear, not a trace of our last conversation in front of a strawberry pie.
But I haven’t forgotten the conversation. And now, as his hand settles into mine, as his fingers interlock with my fingers like two halves of a zipper, his words pound in my head again.
Who else, Vela? Who else can fix the broken system? Who else? Who else? Who else?
The tears begin to boil and creep up my throat. I drop his hand like it scalds me. And back away from this boy I love. For perhaps the final time.
I cross to the man who has been by my side my entire life. I took my first wobbly steps into his arms. When I cried out in sleep that the bad guys were chasing me, he gathered me close and raced up and down the corridor. He picked me up when I fell off my bike, taught me sums by turning the pill bank into a pretend store. He even pulled up a hologram to explain the menstrual cycle after my mom passed.
The King of a colony, but first and foremost, my father.
I reach his side, and my knees go weak. For the first time, he looks his age. Frail and thin, like his bones might poke through his skin any second. His eyes are set in wrinkles the way a jewel sits on crushed velvet, and like diamonds overdue for cleaning, they are clouded and tired. He smiles, and that, too, is weary, as though he’s lived too many days, made too many decisions, known too many heartaches.
I feel the truth of Captain Perth’s words. If my father is to live, he needs the transplant today.
He brings his free hand to my face, and I cover it with my own. As always, his presence steadies me. As always, his touch gives me courage. He believes in me—has always believed in me—and that belief makes me stronger than I’ve ever dreamed.
“You taught me to value life.” Once again, I am a student, and he is my teacher. I repeat to him the lessons I’ve learned, to make sure I understood. To make sure he approves. “From the time I was a little girl, you showed me all life was valuable. From the dragonflies that flit by our ponds to the leaders of our colony, you taught me we must treasure and respect them equally.”
I take a breath, but it’s more of a gasp. The tears surge up again, burning a path from my eyes to my throat, and I don’t know if I can keep them inside. I don’t know if I can do what needs to be done.
Water rolls inside me
, and it’s a strange mix of salty tears, colored streams, and savage storms, battering at my throat, clawing at my strength. If I let down my guard, for one fraction of a second, I’ll wash away on a sea of misery and grief.
I can’t let go. Not now. Not when I’m the only one who can do this.
“You taught me the leader of a colony must make tough decisions. Sometimes, for the greater good of a colony, a few people must sacrifice. We have to accept that.” My voice cracks, and the water seeps out. The tears, the colored streams, the storms. The pain, the confusion, the age-old loneliness. Whether or not he approves, this is my decision. I’ll shoulder the blame, I’ll suffer the consequences. I’ll have to live with my action for the rest of my life.
“Other times, there’s a moral imperative that trumps even the most clear-cut quantitative analysis. The task of a ruler is to balance the two, to choose when the moral imperative outweighs the greater good.”
“You’ve learned your lessons well, my eye-apple.” My father smiles again, but this time, there is more than weariness. This time, there is pride.
I lick my lips, but I can’t wet them. I try to swallow, but there’s no moisture. In spite of the waves crashing inside me, my mouth dries like our arid moons.
And for a moment, I waver. What is right? What is wrong? My mind sees the truth, as clearly as the water cascading down Bubble Falls, but my heart, my heart, my heart. My heart is a comet shooting through the deepest, darkest space, burning so hot it will scorch itself out of existence.
I can’t do this—I can’t—but my father’s hand is against my cheek. And I think of Astana and Zelo and Cairo Mead and Miss Sydney’s son, and I know that I must.
“Do I have your permission to trust my instincts?” I whisper.
“You’ve never needed my permission, my eye-apple. But I’ll give you my blessing.”
Something crosses his face, and in that instant, I know he understands exactly what I’m asking. He knows exactly what I have to do. My father has always known me better than anyone else. In this case, I think he knew even before I did what decision I would reach.
I take a shaky breath and then another. The tears pound at my throat, but I’m not letting them out. Not when there’s still work to be done.
“I love you, Dad.” I choke on the words. “More than colored streams, more than the moons. More than Dion itself. I love you. I will always love you.”
The corners of his eyes crease, as soft as petals, as crinkly as leaves. With the crown on his head, he looks every inch the King. The man an entire colony reveres. “I have never been prouder of you than I am at this moment. I’m ready, my daughter. It’s time.”
I swipe at my eyes, and quickly, before I can change my mind, I walk to the control board. I flip a switch to reverse the transfer, and then I push the red button. The machines hum to life, and both my father and Carr lift off the recliners.
Instead of the other way around, every last nutrient is sucked out of the King and pours into Carr.
Within a minute, the machines quiet. The suction stops. Both bodies lower to the reclining chairs.
It is over. The end of an era. The King of Dion, the best, most heroic man I’ve ever known, my father, Adam Kunchai, is dead.
Chapter
Forty-Six
The instant my father’s heart stops, an alarm sounds. Loud, insistent beeps that must echo through the entire shuttle. Now, they’ll know. If the people watching at the window weren’t sure what I was doing, now they’ll know I killed my father.
Any second now, the royal guards will rush into the room. Arrest me for being a traitor of the very worst kind. Throw me in the red cells, this time for good. The council will have to find another Successor.
Doesn’t matter. None of that factored into my decision. Because this was the right thing to do.
I fall to the floor. My knees smack the concrete, but I don’t feel the pain. I don’t feel my legs at all. Nor my arms, nor my face, nor my tongue. My entire body is as numb as the cryogenically frozen embryos in our storage rooms.
My eyes dart around the room. To the blinking lights on the control panel. To the plastic shield retracting over Carr. To my father. No, not my father. His body. His corpse.
His eyes are closed, his mouth relaxed and peaceful. For one wild moment, I think he’s only asleep. I didn’t actually kill him. This is just an awful nightmare.
But then, Carr sits up. His skin is full, his face alive. He looks as healthy as I’ve ever seen him. And I know the truth in my bones. He received my father’s nutrients. In a healthy person, a transfer of this magnitude would’ve only weakened the body. In my father’s already compromised state, the transfer killed him.
I did it. My father is dead, and I am responsible.
Inside my head, I rage. I rip the control panel apart circuit by circuit. I take a sledgehammer and I slam it against the transfer machine, again and again, until it breaks into useless component parts, and then I take these parts and I hurl them against the generator towers, until I knock them over, until I destroy our energy shields, until our entire colony comes crumbling down around me.
Oh Dion, I can’t breathe. My chest seizes up, and I miss him so much, it’s like the universe has sucked all the oxygen out of my lungs.
I miss the way he would nod off during his midnight snack when he was really tired. I miss how he would never go easy on me during our chess matches, so that I never beat him in a game until I was fifteen. I miss his stern yet affectionate lectures, the ones teaching me the proper way to act, but laced with so much warmth I never doubted his affection for me. Not once in my life did I ever question whether he loved me or if he loved me enough.
He was proud of me. This is what he wanted. All along, this was the decision he wanted me to make.
The knowledge relaxes my chest enough that oxygen begins to flow again. It banks the rage inside me, turning the grief into glowing embers instead of turbulent flames.
He gave me his blessing. I’ll gladly be red-celled for the rest of my life, I’ll live with the sin of killing my father, so long as I know he approved.
I lift my eyes and find Carr’s. We look at each other for one searing second, and then the door bangs open.
Within a minute, the room is packed. With every council member, every royal guard, every medical personnel—with the exception of Blanca.
They form a circle around me, gawking. If this is the Circle of Shunning, we’re a little beyond that.
I stand and stick my hands into the air, my wrists held close together to make it easier for the cuffs. “Go ahead. Arrest me.”
Nobody moves. I feel the weight of their eyes, pushing me down, heavier than a month’s worth of food.
“I won’t make excuses. I’m of sound mind and body.” If I’m going down for this crime, they need to know exactly why, so it won’t happen again with a future ruler. Ten years from now, when the next sovereign nears the end of her reign, I hope they will reevaluate the decision to prolong her life and come out on the other side. My side.
“I did what I thought was right.” My voice is quiet now, and I try to pretend I’m talking to my father. Strolling with him in the woods behind the shuttle, having one of our many discussions about right and wrong. “The King has long surpassed his natural lifespan. As pivotal a figure as he is in this colony, we cannot sacrifice an innocent life in order to extend his. We cannot trade one life for another. This is what the King wanted. This is what he wished.”
Still, the guards do not come forward. Still, they do not snap handcuffs over my wrists and lead me to the red cells, where I’ll spend the rest of my days.
“I loved him.” I shake and shake and shake. “I loved him as much as any of you. More, probably, because I was not only his subject but also his daughter. This wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about saving the boy I love. I could’ve replaced him with another candidate, but I didn’t.” I lace my fingers together, the irony of it all tap-dancing on my quivering shoulders
. “I did what the council asked. I looked beyond my own feelings to see the bigger picture. I just happened to reach a result none of you expected.”
“That’s not quite true.” Master Somjing shuffles forward. He bows as low as he can before the King’s body. And then, he straightens and gently removes the crown from my father’s head. “Which is why I’m giving you this.”
He places the crown of thorns on my head.
The world tilts one way and then the other. My head thuds with too many thoughts, too many images, too many dreams. And not a single one makes sense. “Wha-at?”
“On behalf of the council, and as a stand-in for the King, I hereby bequeath you this crown.”
Every square inch of my skin tingles. If Master Somjing touched me right now, I’d probably electrocute him.
I hear his words, but I don’t. Dream. Yes, that’s what this is. Or maybe I’ve gone into shock, and I’m hallucinating. Yes. That must be the explanation.
But then, I reach for my temples and grab the thorns instead. They prick my skin, and a drop of blood wells on my fingertip. I stare at the blood. My finger hurts. This isn’t a dream. “I don’t understand.”
“Your father was dying, Vela. He never intended to go through with the transplant.” Master Somjing speaks to me, but his eyes keep drifting to the King’s body, as if he can’t believe his old friend is truly and irrevocably gone.
A lance of sorrow pierces through my confusion. I can’t believe it, either.
“The Fittest tradition began when our colony was young, chaotic, and unstable.” His words are slow and measured, as if he’s practiced this speech a hundred times. “Back then, we needed a consistent leader, especially someone who was as loved and revered as your father.
“But things have changed. Our colony is older now, more established and settled. And the King began to feel we made a mistake all those years ago. He was ready to pass the throne, but he wanted to make sure it went to someone who not only had the same moral convictions as he did, but who also had the strength to follow them through.”