The Survivor

by BRIDGET TYLER

  Jay doesn’t respond. Or even move. He just keeps staring at Nor with an awful closed-up look on his face. Nor returns his gaze steadily. I almost feel like I’m intruding.

  Jay shudders all over, like he’s suddenly cold despite the moist, warm air. Then he sighs and the tension in his face and body fall away all at once.

  “Nothing is ever simple, is it?” he says.

  Nor raises her hands, palms out, in a Sorrow yes of agreement. Then she drops them back to her sides.

  “Soup’s on!” Chris calls, breaking the moment as he and Beth emerge from Dr. Brown’s tent with their arms full of supplies. He tosses me a couple of ration bars. I pass one to Jay and rip mine open as Chris tosses another to Nor. “They’re gross, but it’s calories.”

  “How . . . simple. Simple enough,” Nor says, her choral voice simmering with something that feels like sunlight. I feel Jay’s rib cage buzz with a quiet chuckle at the comment, and something unknots itself in my gut. I don’t know if that conversation actually solved anything, but laughter is . . . well, it’s better than whatever was going on inside his head before.

  “While Jay’s observation on the complexity of life here does border on cliché,” Beth says, “it is certainly apropos. Which makes one wonder how our grandfather has managed to forget such an obvious truism.”

  “I don’t know,” Leela growls, catching the ration bar Chris tosses up to her. “Convincing himself that multiple genocides was a reasonable plan of action must have been pretty damn complicated.”

  “No,” Chris says around a bite of bar. “Beth is right. It’s a lot simpler to decide you can do whatever you think is necessary to survive than worry about right and wrong with the future of your species on the line.”

  “Simple, perhaps,” Beth says, handing thin silver emergency blankets to me and Jay. “But not particularly effective.”

  “If Dr. Brown dies, he’s going to be able to kill everyone who disagrees with him with the push of a button, Beth,” I say. “That’s pretty effective.”

  “Not if his goal is survival of Homo sapiens,” Beth says. “If he wipes us out, he’ll have killed every human who knows anything significant about this planet. Then he and his followers will still have to contend with two powerful enemies they don’t understand, whom his actions have united for the first time in their history. All without making meaningful progress on our goal of waking ten thousand survivors before the Prairie’s power drain begins to destabilize the ship.”

  “When you put it that way, it does sound like a pretty stupid plan,” Leela says.

  “Yeah,” Chris says. “And here I thought it was just really, really mean.”

  “It’s both,” Beth says, “which is inexplicable. Our grandfather is a veteran of multiple ethically complex conflicts. He helped orchestrate the peace accords that ended the Storm Wars and united humanity for the first time in our history. He may be self-centered and egotistical, but he’s neither stupid nor mean. So why is he resorting to such ineffective brutality now?”

  “Some emotions are so bright, they blind us,” Nor says quietly.

  “What do you mean?” Chris asks.

  “It is literal for my people,” Nor says, folding her hood back to reveal the grass-green light of her blood pumping under her transparent skin. “Strong emotions make us brighter, and in the dark, very bright light can be blinding. Love. Anger. Guilt. Fear. My mother’s fear of humanity was so great that it led her to challenge a Followed.”

  Abruptly, I realize why Nor looked familiar the first time I saw her face. It wasn’t just the glimpse of her biolight I caught during the attack.

  She looks like her mother.

  “You’re Pel’s daughter?’ I say, my mind already layering the scarred Sorrow warrior’s face over Nor’s. It isn’t hard. Pel’s face is burned into my brain. She almost killed me a couple of times. And the delicate, almost lacy pattern of veins that flared over her forehead and across her cheeks was identical to Nor’s.

  Nor covers her face with her palms facing out. Yes.

  “My father begged her to wait. He had a fresh litter. So small that he was still unable to work or feed them on his own. I tried to help him after the challenge, but we were shunned. They all died.

  “He became a Giver soon after. I have not seen him since. He may be dead.”

  Her voice maintains a neutral harmony as she speaks, but pulses of brightness wash through her veins with the words. Strong emotions. And no wonder. She’s talking about the destruction of her family.

  I never once stopped to wonder if Pel had a family.

  Nor jerks her hood up again, like she just realized we know how emotions affect her light now. Something about the nervous gesture makes me like her a little more.

  The thought of Pel being afraid of humans is startling, but it’s even more startling to realize that she was right to fear us. Less than a year after Pel’s failed coup, Shelby and her people tried to burn the solace grove.

  Our people. I remind myself. Fear has blinded us all.

  But I’m not convinced that fear is what’s driving Grandpa. I know he likes to be in control, but what could possibly frighten him so much that he’d rather kill his own family than turn over command?

  Something he said the night of the Sorrow attack on the Landing creeps into my head:

  Everything I did could have been for nothing.

  The remembered words sound different, as I think back on them now. He wasn’t afraid. Or despairing, like Mom. He was angry.

  He was guilty.

  Everything I did could have been for nothing.

  What was he talking about? At the time, I assumed he meant the struggle to get the survivors onto the Prairie and get the colony ship here in one piece. But now I don’t think so. He would have no reason to feel guilty about that. And he hadn’t yet ordered Shelby to massacre the phytoraptors or attack Sorrow’s Solace. Whatever it was, it had to have happened on Earth. Not here.

  So what did my grandfather do that he’s willing to kill everyone he loves to justify?

  Before I can even begin to get my head around that question, the flyer doors slide open and Dr. Brown stumbles out.

  “No! I don’t want to hear any more,” she sobs, tripping over Nor and falling off the ramp onto the soggy ground.

  “Dr. Brown,” I say, scrambling to reach for her, but she curls in on herself, moaning.

  “No! No! It isn’t true. It can’t be . . . a whole planet? Earth. Oh my god. Earth.”

  Shock punches through me. Dr. Brown is freaking out because Tarn just told her about Earth. But he’s known for weeks. How could he keep something like this from her?

  “Stand aside, Joanna,” Tarn says, emerging from the flyer and striding down the ramp toward Dr. Brown and me.

  I don’t move. His hood is up and his blindfold is on against the soupy sunlight. The amplifying properties of his robe just make it easier to see that his biolight is visibly pulsing. His heart must be pounding.

  “She didn’t know?” I ask, glaring into his blindfolded face.

  Tarn doesn’t say anything, but his light flares, blinding bright.

  “If she’d known . . .” My words stumble over each other as I try to process all the possibilities. “She’s a colonel. She could have challenged Grandpa. Or at least kept him in check. Tarn . . .”

  Dr. Brown gasps a sob, drowning out my argument.

  “Stand aside, Joanna,” Tarn repeats, the harmony of his voice sinking into urgent bass tones. “She needs me.”

  My heart is still hammering with confusion and anger and might-have-beens, but I step aside. He hurries down the ramp and crouches in front of Dr. Brown.

  “I’m sorry, Lucille,” Tarn hums in a gently minor harmony. “But we don’t have time for you to hide from this loss. Your species needs you.”

  He pulls off his blindfold and takes her by the shoulders, lifting her face to his. He presses his broad forehead against hers and wraps one trijointed hand around her throat
, his fingers pressing vividly into her larynx.

  She gags on another sob. Behind me, I hear the wheeze of Jay’s braces as he shoves to his feet.

  “Let her—”

  “Do not interrupt,” Nor says, stepping into Jay’s path as Tarn begins sing.

  “He’s hurting her!” Jay snaps, ducking around Nor.

  “No,” I say, grabbing his arm, my eyes still glued to Tarn and Dr. Brown. “I don’t think he is.”

  I recognize this. The strange, uncomfortable song. The iron grip on her throat. Whatever Tarn is doing, he did it to me the night of the memorial for Earth.

  “He is grieving with her,” Nor hisses, her pale green light flaring bright with anxiety and irritation. “And you are distracting them!”

  Tarn’s song swells, not louder, but thicker. Stronger. Then the tactile melody settles into a profoundly unsettling hum. A thick, wet sound that seems to pluck at every nerve in my body.

  I remember now why I thought this was an attack. It wasn’t painful, just . . . awful. “Nor—” I start to say, but she twists to place her long fingers against my lips.

  “This song is meant to help the body release its light,” she thrums quietly, “and the painful emotions that come with it.”

  The sound becomes even thicker and more oppressive as it moves beyond the range of human hearing. Tears run down my cheeks as the silent crescendo racks my body. I hear sobbing behind me. I tear my eyes away from Tarn and Dr. Brown and look back to my friends. Beth is weeping unabashedly. Jay is trying hard not to. Chris’s face is buried in his hands. His shoulders are shaking. I look up and see Leela scrubbing at her eyes as well.

  It’s impossible not to cry, in the boiling wake of that song. The sound feels like it’s digging through my emotions and tossing them all to the surface. Fury. Terror. Sadness. Guilt.

  So much guilt.

  I should have known Tarn wasn’t trying to kill me. Then again, he should have explained the grieving ritual before he started. He should have realized I had no way of knowing what he was doing. We both should have known better. We were both blinded by our emotions.

  Nothing is ever simple, is it?

  My relationship with Tarn certainly isn’t. We both knew we weren’t simply allies. Or even simply friends. But there was never any reason to assume the arrival of the survivors would make him just an enemy. At least, not until Shelby’s fear made him seem that way. And my fear, too, I remind myself. She wasn’t the only one who jumped to the conclusion that Tarn was trying to hurt me. I did too. Beings died because of those assumptions—human, Sorrow, and phytoraptor. And the trees. Those beautiful, ancient trees. How many of them did Shelby destroy before we stopped her?

  I can’t take it anymore. It’s too much. I think I might scream. I don’t know if I can help it.

  Then it’s over.

  A profoundly empty silence follows the song. The oppressive tactile sensation is gone, and so is the overwhelming soup of emotions it dragged out of me. I feel hollow. I feel . . . better.

  I swipe at my streaming eyes and look around the camp at my friends. Each one of them looks devastated in their own way, but I can see the lightness unfolding in my chest reflected in their eyes. Wonder and awe, blossoming in the empty space left behind by their purged emotions.

  “Thank you, old friend,” Dr. Brown says, looking up at Tarn in something close to adoration. “That you would come so far to . . .”

  She trails off then, her eyes going wide as she looks past Tarn and sees me. “Joanna Watson? What are you doing here?” She twists, taking in my friends. “All of you. You’re all here. Why? Why were those marines trying to kill me? What happened?”

  To my surprise, my voice stays calm as I tell her that my grandfather ordered our marines to destroy the Solace and massacre the phytoraptors and that he’s planning to massacre us all with the Vulcan’s planet scrubbers. I sound dry and clinical, just like Mom in disaster mode. You’d never know that every word is making me want to panic vomit.

  Grandpa wasn’t kidding about how much a poker face costs.

  “I should never have let them convince me to use that old fool’s ridiculous nanobots,” Dr. Brown snarls when I’m through. “I told them the system was too powerful. Too easily weaponized. If I’d known Alice let him take command . . .”

  My eyes jump to Tarn. He raises his hands with the palms turned out in a Sorrow yes.

  “Keeping the truth from you was a mistake, Lucille,” he murmurs. “An error made in anger. And fear.”

  “Yes,” she says, twisting to look into his unbound eyes again, “it was. But I’ve made plenty of those.”

  “We all have,” I say, meeting Tarn’s wide black eyes across the camp.

  “And I think we can all agree it’s time to shake the habit,” Dr. Brown says in a too-brisk-to-be-believable tone as she pushes herself to her feet. “We have better things to do.” She looks down at her stained, shredded robes. “Starting with finding me some pants. If you’ll excuse me.”

  She walks quickly to her tent and ducks inside. Jay and I are the only ones close enough to hear her gasp a jagged, hiccupping sob the second she’s out of sight.

  “She’s still a mess,” he says, quietly.

  “She just found out Earth is gone and that all life on this planet is resting on our ability to stop my grandfather from murdering her,” I whisper back. “That’s freak-out-worthy.”

  “You think she can pull it together?”

  “I think I’m gonna stop thinking about what happens next for a while,” I say.

  I start gathering up the medical supplies that are still scattered around us. Who knows what we’ll need later. Jay puts a hand on my shoulder. I stop and look up at him.

  “What?”

  Instead of answering the question, Jay pulls me into his arms. Neither of us says anything, but I can feel all the things he’s trying to tell me anyway.

  “Given the circumstances, I will grant you the public display of affection,” Beth says from behind me. “But keep it brief, please.”

  “In other words, get a room,” Leela snips from her perch on the flyer wing.

  “But maybe after we avert the apocalypse,” Chris tosses in.

  “You guys!” My protest comes out as a squeak, which they all find very amusing.

  “There is, however, something to be said for comic relief in stressful circumstances,” Beth says.

  “You’re welcome,” I mutter, burying my face in Jay’s shoulder again to hide my blush.

  Jay chuckles, pulling me tighter for just a second and pressing his lips against my hair. “After.”

  A whole other sort of heat flares over my body as he crouches to gather up the rest of the medical supplies. He looks up and shoots me a wicked grin. “Come on, Hotshot. Apocalypse isn’t over yet.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Grandpa and I are standing on the crystal arch in a blinding sunlit vacuum. I can’t see the mesa. I can’t see the desert floor. I can’t see the flyer where my friends are waiting. Grandpa and the rocks are all that’s left of the universe.

  He’s staring straight forward, but he’s not seeing me. His eyes are wide-open windows to the raging storm inside his head.

  “She’s everywhere.”

  I can hear Grandpa’s voice clearly, but his mouth isn’t moving.

  “I carry her with me, always,” the disembodied memory continues. “That’s how I found the strength to do what had to be done.”

  “What are you talking about?” I plead. “Just tell me!”

  The world skips a frame and suddenly Grandpa is in motion. He backs away from me to the very edge of the arch. “I’m just not brave enough, Little Moth,” he says. “I thought I was. But I’m not.”

  Then he jumps. Instead of falling, he dissolves into the blinding light around us, his body breaking apart into billions of individual molecules.

  “Joanna.”

  Beth’s quiet voice snaps me out of the nightmare.

  It takes
me a moment to convince myself I’m in Dr. Brown’s camp on the southern continent with my friends, not on that arch, watching Grandpa fall apart.

  Beth is sitting next to me with a flex on her lap and one earbud in.

  “Thanks,” I whisper to her.

  “You’re welcome,” she whispers back. Then she slides her other earbud back into place and hunches over her flex again.

  I sit up and look around.

  The sun is hanging low over the trees. Shadows are congealing around us. Chris and Leela are still asleep. Jay has taken her place on the flyer’s wing, keeping watch. Tarn and Nor are crouched back to back by the ramp, leaning against each other with their heads bowed under their hoods. I assume they’re sleeping, too.

  It feels strange to be taking a nap with the threat of the scrubbers hanging over us, but even with 3212, we can’t evacuate the Landing. The tactical shuttle is way too small. And as long as Dr. Brown is alive, it’s pointless to rush into orbit and confront Grandpa. There’s no way he’ll just let us board the Vulcan, and forcing your way onto an orbiting spacecraft is almost impossible. Right now, the best way to protect our friends and families is to protect Dr. Brown, and there’s no better place for us to do that. The camp shields will keep us safe from the swamp, and the swamp will keep us safe from anyone else Grandpa sends.

  I should try to get some more sleep while I can. But I don’t want to.

  I can feel the nightmares waiting.

  I put a hand on Beth’s knee to get her attention.

  She pulls her earbud out again.

  “What, Joanna?”

  “What are you listening to?” I ask, hoping it’s something soothing.

  Instead of answering, she hands me the earbud.

  I slide it into my ear.

  “Please,” my recorded voice sobs. “Please, Grandpa, you can’t deploy the scrubbers. That will—”