“It all makes sense now.” Snot runs down to my chin, and I wipe it on the sleeve of my jacket. The bike wobbles as I let go of the handlebar. “Why my family always felt like it was falling apart. My father couldn’t bear what my mother had done to all of us. That’s why he withdrew into his study. That’s what he hasn’t spoken to anyone or done anything. He was traumatized by my mother’s actions.”
Vega grumbles behind me. “If he was so traumatized, why didn’t he do anything to stop it?”
“Apparently, he tried,” I say. “He reported my mother to IA for child abuse, but it’s IA, you know? They didn’t care about the kids. They wanted to protect their own asses first, so they told my dad he was crazy. He gave up after that.”
“I always thought your dad was a hardass,” Vega says. “I never guessed how much he was suffering.”
“Neither did I.”
We bounce into the Academy’s parking lot and skid to a stop. Vega dismounts, takes off her helmet, and dusts off her sleeves. She glances up at the Intelligence building that we’re parked outside.
“Are you going to tell Claudia and Laertes?” she asks. “That’s what we’re here for, right?”
“They deserve to know,” I say. “Especially Laertes. Mom’s been lying to him for years.” I balance the helmet on the seat of the bike. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
We catch Laertes right as he’s packing up his things in his classroom. The last class of the day has just let out, and the students are still milling about. We wait in the hallway for the last of them to file out. Laertes, carrying his briefcase, attempts to exit, but we block his path.
“Two visits in one day from my favorite little sister?” Laertes grins then blanches. “Don’t tell Claudia I said that. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I need to talk to you,” I say, guiding him back into the classroom. Vega shuts the door behind us. “You might want to take a seat.”
Laertes sits in his desk chair as I spell out the situation for him. The more I talk, the more his face turns into an expression of stone. His frown deepens, and a pattern of lines I’ve never seen before appears on his forehead. The resemblance between him and my mother is more prominent in this moment than ever before.
“That can’t be,” he says. “IA would never do such a thing.”
“Laertes, you’re living proof that they would,” I insist. “Mom injected all of us with that serum, and now she wants to administer it to the rest of the galaxy. We don’t know what side effects this alien bacteria will unleash. It could kill the recipients or worse, turn them into some human-alien hybrid.”
“Ophelia,” Laertes says. “You aren’t thinking this through—”
“I’ve thought everything through,” I reply. “I understand that we wronged the Revellae when we invaded Pavo, but we can’t compromise our own DNA to let them rise again. There’s no peace treaty here. Once the Revellae get what they want, what does it mean for the citizens of Pavo? In a few decades, there won’t be any humans left. We’ll have mutated to accommodate the Revellae’s DNA.”
“Enough, Ophelia!”
I jump back at the sound of Laertes’s raised voice. I’ve never heard him speak above a normal level before, not even when we argued as kids.
“Enough,” he says again, in a softer tone. “This is the exact thing I was afraid of happening when you started asking questions about Veritas. You can’t buy into these rumors, O. There’s no foundation for them.”
“Our own father says there is,” I remind him.
“Our father is mentally ill,” Laertes insists. “He hasn’t spoken to anyone in seven years. Just because you’re back doesn’t mean he’s automatically cured.”
“This is different,” I say. “He’s serious about this. Don’t you think it’s at least worth investigating? If Mom goes through with this—”
Laertes slams his fist down, rattling the entire desk. A stack of classroom tablets tumbles off the edge and onto the floor. “I said enough! Ophelia, if you keep talking this way, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to report you. This is bordering on treasonous speech, and no matter how much I love you, I refuse to support you if you continue with your old ways.”
I draw away from his desk. Laertes’s chest heaves, and he wheezes with every breath, but he holds my stare with a steady, seething rage.
“I thought you were different,” I tell him. “I thought I could trust you.”
“You are, first and foremost, a criminal within this galaxy,” Laertes says. “Then, you are my sister.”
“I can’t believe him.”
As we cross the lawn from Intelligence to Defense, the sky overhead begins to blacken. A rare storm makes its way toward the Academy, bringing roiling clouds and flashes of lightning that look like warning signs in the sky. I set a quick pace, but it’s already begun to drizzle. The wind picks up, tearing leaves from trees and tracking them across campus in miniature whirlwinds. In a few minutes, the entire school is going to feel the brunt of the storm.
“I can’t believe him!” I say again, fuming. Vega matches my furious pace with long, balanced strides. Even now, she’s calm and rational, and for some reason, that angers me more. “Well? Aren’t you upset?”
“I’m concerned,” she replies. She taps a patch on the shoulder of her IA vest, and a protective, waterproof layer suddenly coats her torso. The rain bounces right off the glossy coating. “If Laertes doesn’t believe your father, maybe we shouldn’t either.”
“No, come on.” I walk backward so I can face her without slowing our progress. “We’ve come this far, Vega. Your heard your mother and Orion. There’s too much evidence not to follow this up, and we’re not out of resources yet.”
“You think Claudia’s going to take this any better?” Vega asks. “Are you forgetting how deeply embedded she is in this institution? She’s trained these kids to be super soldiers, Fee. Honestly, I can’t believe you still want to tell her about this. She’ll probably report you before you get the entire story out.”
“I guess we’ll see.”
Claudia isn’t in her office, so we proceed to the training gym. When I peek through the window in the door, I see my sister running laps around the floor. Every thirty seconds or so, she hits the ground and does twenty push-ups. Then she’s off running again. She’s dripping with sweat, and the longer she works, the more her muscles tire. When she’s shaking too much to complete another set of push-ups, she flips over and does leg lifts instead.
“Defense robot,” Vega mutters. “Are you sure you want to go in there?”
“What choice do I have?”
I push the door open. Claudia whizzes past us, sparing us naught but a glance. At the corner of the floor, she drops and does another twenty leg lifts.
“What do you want, Ophelia?” she asks. Her breathing is steady. No sign of fatigue in her voice at all. “Class is over, and you’re interrupting my training session.”
“Mom injected all of us with alien bacteria, killed our youngest brother, and wants to sell out the galaxy to an alien species called the Revellae,” I blurt out all at once. “IA’s planning to refine the serum and administer it to all of Pavo.”
Claudia doesn’t even pause in her training. She pops up from her set of leg lifts and completes her circuit around the training floor. When she reaches us, she throws her bag of training gear over her shoulder, wipes her face with a towel, and takes a long swig from her water bottle. Then she claps me on the shoulder.
“Let’s get a drink.”
After Claudia showers, we end up at a bar in the little town near the port. We pass a few other IA agents on the way there. All of them are dressed in their casual IA finery, with some hint of color on their polo shirts to indicate their department and status. Claudia, in comparison, wears jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black bomber jacket. She doesn’t look like she belongs to IA at all, but every Defense agent we pass in the streets nods and salutes her. She ignores them.
Cl
audia takes a seat at the crowded bar and flags the man behind it. The bartender is a handsome older guy. A jagged scar splits his scalp, parting his graying hair at a wonky angle. He grins when he sees Claudia, and the pair exchanges a complicated personalized handshake.
“My girl,” he says. “Your usual?”
“You know it,” Claudia says. “How’s business, Saros?”
“Wrong kind of customers keep showing up.” Saros nods to a table near the front of the bar, where a group of Intelligence officers guffaws over several pints of beer. “It’s like watching the same chess match over and over and over, and chess is boring to begin with.”
“It’s an intellectual sport,” Vega defends.
“That’s rich.” Saros eyes Vega’s vest. Today, she wears the bright teal of a cross-trained operator. “Ah, that explains it. You’re a half-breed.”
“Keep it light, Saros,” Claudia says. “This is my associate, Vega Major, and my sister, Ophelia. They’re cleared.”
“Well, in that case” —he gestures to the shelf of booze on the wall behind him— “what are you having?”
“I don’t drink,” Vega says.
“You should start,” Claudia replies. “She’ll have the same as me. You like gin, Vega? This is top shelf. Tastes like Christmas in a bar glass. Ophelia, if I remember correctly, you stole a lot of whiskey.”
“Whiskey’s fine.” I take the seat to Claudia’s left, and Vega takes the empty one on her right so we sandwich my sister between us. “But why are we at this poor excuse for a bar?”
Saros sets a glass in front of me with a little too much force. “Respect the establishment, Miss Holmes.”
“It’s safe here,” Claudia says. She jerks her thumb at the Intelligence operators’ table. “Mostly.”
“I don’t understand,” I reply. “Safe from who?”
“From IA,” she says. “Welcome to Harmonia’s underground Veritas hotspot. I knew I could count on you, little sis.”
I slump over the bar in utter disbelief. On Claudia’s other side, Vega’s mouth drops open. Saros sets Vega’s drink in front of her and pats her hand.
“Drink up, sweet cheeks,” he says. “You’re going to need it.”
“You’re with Veritas?” I ask Claudia. “But you’ve treated me like shit ever since I got back! You’re IA’s best Defense trainer.”
“Yeah, and I’ve recruited a handful of my students to work for Veritas,” she replies. “We’re scoping IA from within their own institution. It’s the perfect way to dismantle them from the inside out, but we’re running out of time.”
“You could say that again,” Saros says as he sets Claudia’s drink in front of her.
Claudia plucks the rosemary sprig garnish from her gin and chews it between her teeth. “I found out about Mom’s little experiments five years ago. Laertes was giving me shit about something—don’t remember what—so I went snooping around on his computer to see if I could find something to blackmail him with. I found our little brother’s death certificate, as well as Mom’s notes from the ordeal.”
“She took notes on her own dying baby?” Vega asks, not bothering to mask her disgust. “What kind of human—?”
“One who cares more about her career than her children,” Claudia finishes. “I’m sure the only reason she had four children was to test her creation on them. Goody for us” —she nudges my shoulder— “that the original serum didn’t stick to female DNA. Laertes, obviously, didn’t get so lucky.”
“Have you seen how thin his face is?” I say. “It looks like he’s dying.”
“That’s because he is,” Claudia replies. “Mom and the rest of her team are close to perfecting another trial run of the serum. We know she plans on administering it soon, but we didn’t have an exact date until recently. That’s why I sent you to the hospital wing, Ophelia.”
“When you knocked me out?”
“I bugged you before I concussed you,” Claudia says. “While you were lying unconscious in the medical wing, we were listening to Mom’s conversation with Doctor Parks.”
“I remember,” I say. “They were talking about releasing a vaccine at the end of the month. That means we’ve got a few more weeks, right?”
“Unfortunately not,” she answers. “Yesterday, we received word that Doctor Parks has altered the formula to fit our dearest mommy’s needs. They plan on administering it to children and young adults the day after tomorrow. By the end of the week, the galaxy’s youngsters will be half-alien.”
“Unless we do something about it,” Saros interjects. “You left that part out.”
“I was waiting for my clever sister to catch up with the program.” Claudia lifts her drink and examines the other bar patrons through the clear glass. Then she turns to me, cup still raised in a toast. “Veritas needs you, Ophelia, because Mother loved you best.”
9
“What are you talking about?” I ask Claudia. “Mom treated me like her personal trophy, parading me around at every IA function like a trained monkey.”
“Exactly,” Claudia says. “You were one of the best students that ever went through the Academy, even better than me, but there was something else that set you apart from me and Laertes.”
I toss back another sip of my drink, feeling like I’m going to need it. “And what would that be?”
“When Mom injected me with the serum, it simply didn’t stick,” Claudia says. “The alien DNA had no effect on me, and my body flushed it out. You, on the other hand, mounted a personal defense.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you were injected, you produced antibodies to rid yourself of the alien DNA,” Claudia explains. “Your body didn’t just expel the serum. It killed it off. Mom knew you were special, so she devoted her experiment to you. She used your DNA to perfect the serum she plans on using in a few days as well as an antidote in case of emergencies. You do know why she plucked you off The Impossible, right?”
I touch my chest where my necklace used to hang. “The data disk she gave me when I was little. What was on it?”
“Everything she needed to replicate her formula,” Claudia says. “Your genetic sequence.”
“So all of this is my fault?”
“Indirectly,” Claudia answers. “Consolation prize?”
“What do we do?” Vega interrupts. “Does Veritas have a plan?”
“We do indeed,” Claudia says. “And it starts with you two.”
“I don’t think I can do this.”
Vega paces on the dark beach, the wind tossing salt into her curls. I sit on the big rock and hug my knees into my chest. The storm hasn’t dumped its load yet. Black clouds gather above us, waiting for the best moment to unleash hell.
“You can,” I encourage Vega. “We have to.”
“This means war, Fee,” she says. “What Claudia wants to do—”
“Infiltrate the Academy, steal the data disk, destroy the vaccine, and get away with it.” I tick Claudia’s objectives off my fingers. “Easy as pie.”
“We won’t make it out alive.”
“Not with that attitude.”
Vega pins me with an exasperated expression. “Even if we manage to do all of that, how are we going to escape Harmonia?”
“We went over this,” I remind her. “It’s not just you and me, Vega. All of Veritas is going to be participating in this mission. It’s not meant to be quiet. It’s meant to let IA know we mean business, and we’re not going to stand for the mistreatment of the galaxy’s citizens anymore.”
“We?” she says. “You’re officially lumping yourself in with Veritas?”
“Well, yeah.” I take Orion’s gloves out again. Experimentally, I pull them onto my hands. They fit better than I expected them to, like they’ve shrunk to accommodate my thin fingers. “What else is there to do? I’ve always known it might come to this.”
“We would be traitors,” Vega says. “Wanted criminals from now until the end of IA’s reign.”
&
nbsp; “I’m already a traitor,” I say. “What if we could end IA’s reign? What if we could make the galaxy a better, safer place for everyone in it?”
“What if Veritas is overestimating their abilities?” Vega shoots back. “What if they haven’t built enough of an army and IA culls them a second time? You heard Orion. History repeats itself.”
“History can bite me,” I tell her. “Vega, answer me this. Would you rather attempt to save thousands of innocent children from becoming alien breeding experiments, or do nothing and allow IA to open this galaxy to the Revellae? Before you answer, think about what might become of the world if humans are crossbred with aliens.”
“It’s an irresponsible experiment,” Vega agrees. “But I can’t believe your mother hasn’t considered every single negative ramification of her choice. She’s too smart for this, Fee.”
“My mother’s obsessed with her own genius,” I reply. “She killed her own son, remember? Do you think she cares about the negative ramifications?”
“Ophelia, I—”
“I need you on my side, Vega,” I say firmly. “The galaxy will be split in two by tomorrow evening whether you like it or not. You have to decide where your place is. Are you with the International Armament or are you with Veritas?”
Vega stops pacing. She studies every part of me, from the hardened determination in my eyes to the rebel gloves on my fingers. Finally, she answers my question.
“I’m with you.”
Claudia’s plan isn’t crafted to perfection. It was hastily cobbled together when Veritas realized the serum release date had been moved up.
“Don’t worry,” she’d told us at the bar. “You’ll have backup. If everything goes terribly wrong, meet our pilots at the extraction point, and we’ll get you to safety.”
According to plan, Vega and I arrived on time at the Academy for Laertes’s scheduled tour of the upper-level Intelligence building. The building is generally off-limits to students, but since some of them might work there in the future, the tour is a regularly-scheduled event each semester. Before the tour begins, Laertes pulls me aside.
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