by RS McCoy
“Okay. I’ll go to Boston.”
He couldn’t feel bad about it. Boston was a good chance for Hadley to have the life she was always meant to. It was the best opportunity she would ever get. “I’ll let her know you’re safe. Anything you want me to tell her?”
Hadley shook her head and slid a wrinkled slip of paper across the table. “She already knows.”
Silas pulled the paper closer, noting its torn edge, worn surface, and the image drawn on it: a lop-sided heart. “I don’t get it.”
“That’s because it’s not for you.”
Silas nodded to Knox, who arrived at her side and escorted her out the door. He watched them leave, then sat in the permeating silence of the galley, hoping he’d made the right choice.
DASIA
CPI-RQ2-04, NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 4, 2232
Dasia had just slipped her leg into her pants on the edge of her bed when Mable’s knock sounded at her door. “Just a sec,” she shouted, buttoning her pants on her way to the door. Opening it, Mable looked worse than ever.
“You okay?” Dasia was astounded to see her red-rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks. If she didn’t know better, she would think Mable had been crying.
“Yeah. Ready?”
“Yeah, I just need my shoes. And I can’t find a clean shirt.” Dasia returned to the dim recess of her early-morning room to find her shoes. Mable emerged with a bright-blue tank top, though Dasia hadn’t even realized she’d left.
They walked to the wide open space at the front of the complex, the grassy one edged in low shrubs they always used as their practice area. It was a shade darker than usual as the automated sun climbed into the illusion of sky.
Mable produced the strips of black fabric they used for their matches and wordlessly secured Dasia’s hands before splaying her own fingers to be wrapped.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Dasia asked as she tied off the last one.
“No. Are you going to hit me today?” Mable wouldn’t even look at her, like she too had been scooped clean out.
“You bet.” It was brave talk. She’d only hit Mable a handful of times, but she was getting better, and Mable hit her less often. They were close to an even match these days.
Today, Mable was distracted. Dasia could see her eyes not quite focused, her stance not quite as strong.
It was her chance to really own the match, but Dasia wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t use Mable’s weakness against her. She made up her mind to go through the motions today. It would be good for both of them after missing a few days.
Dasia soon changed her mind. Mable’s jaw was set tight as her fist sailed straight into Dasia’s unprotected shoulder. The impact was so quick and hard, it made her gasp for air. Still, she put up her forearm to block the next strike.
Mable had a hit. Dasia had none. That wasn’t going to do.
Dasia redoubled her efforts. She kept her feet moving as she blocked and punched, always failing by that much. Mable hit harder, her punches faster. For the first time, Dasia realized Mable had been holding back on her.
A punch as fast as a train landed on Dasia’s sternum, launching her onto her back in the grass several feet away. Mable stood over her like a victor, waiting for Dasia to draw air back into her lungs.
“On your feet,” Mable snapped.
“You’ve been playing me,” Dasia snapped back, too angry and pain-riddled to care.
Mable didn’t even flinch.
Dasia struggled for breath. She propped herself up on her elbows. “You’re way better at this than you let on. You could always beat me. You let me hit you.” Her own words stung in their truth. She was proud of those hits, proud of the few times she’d managed to put all her practice to use.
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” Dasia pushed to standing and put her hand to her chest where pain radiated out.
At last, the stone veneer of Mable broke. Her hands fell from their fighting block and relaxed at her sides. Her eyes narrowed and her head cocked to the side just slightly, as if she was confused or hurt. “What?”
“You bring me out here every day and act like you’re helping me, teaching me. But you just want a punching bag. I’m done.”
What was she doing? Mable was her only friend, and she was screaming at her.
“What happened while I was gone?”
Dasia shook her head. “What happened to you? Where’d you go?” If Mable could keep secrets, then so could she. This was no longer a one-sided equation. Mable was going to start talking, or they were done. Dasia couldn’t be the only friend in this friendship.
Mable only stared for a long while; long enough Dasia knew she wouldn’t say anything. When Dasia turned to go back inside, Mable said, “I went home.”
“What?” Dasia spun. That wasn’t possible. There were rules. No one got to go back. “That’s not fair.”
Mable nodded her agreement. “I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
Dasia knew that was probably wise. Now that she knew, she was pissed. More than pissed. Her blood boiled. She was livid.
She had no right to be, she knew. She would never go back to Monarch. There was nothing there for her. But it was unfair that Mable got to have both—to have CPI and a home.
It had been a long time since Dasia had been envious of someone.
“Why’d you go back?”
“It’s complicated.” Mable stared at her shoes.
“I’m sure I can handle it.”
Mable sucked in a ragged breath. “Someone didn’t like that I left. They took it out on my friends.”
It hit Dasia like a knife to the chest. “They’re okay?” She held her breath as she waited for the answer, already knowing what it would be.
Mable shook her head no.
Dasia lurched forward and embraced her friend. The two locked together, neither saying a word. They each understood.
For Dasia, it was strange to be on this side of it, to be the one comforting rather than crying. It made her realize how far she’d come. She’d made progress after Cole’s death, if only a tiny bit.
It made her squeeze Mable all the harder. They would be okay in the end.
Mable’s breath calmed as the two released each other. “Okay, something did happen,” Dasia admitted.
“What?”
“Uh, there was this thing with Osip. And we were sitting in his room and—” Why was this so awkward to talk about? Maybe because she’d spent the last three days pretending it didn’t happen. Or maybe because it felt like some sort of betrayal to Mable.
“You kissed him?!” Mable said with more girly squeal than Dasia would have thought possible.
Dasia laughed. “Well, it was more like he kissed me, and then he was mad and—”
“Mad? Oh hell no, I’ll kill him. Come on.” Mable turned to go back inside, pulling Dasia along by her hand.
Dasia laughed again and struggled to pull her hand free. “It’s okay, he’s not mad mad, he’s just—”
“Hurt mad?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “And I told him about Cole. And I cried. A lot.” They walked into the dimness of the pod garage and started up the incline to the lobby doors.
“Hey, that’s great!”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the opposite of great.”
“No, it’s good. Look, you’re already getting better.”
“What?”
“You pretty much just told me to fuck off. There’s no way you’d have done that the first day you were here.” Mable smiled like a proud mama. “I think you’re getting back to your old self.”
Dasia didn’t know about that. Was she? Did she even want to?
Dasia loved her old life, her relationship with Cole, her farm, her anth. Dasia loved being in love and being with animals.
But that Dasia was gone now. “I don’t think I want to be my old self.”
“Then make a new self.” Mable opened the door and walked into the lobby, sounding like re
inventing herself was something she did all the time.
“How?”
“We’ll start at cleaning. Meet me there tonight?”
Dasia shrugged and smiled. “Okay.”
THEO
CPI-RQ2-05, NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 5, 2232
After a night of useless turning, Theo acknowledged his defeat and crawled from bed. Knowing Hadley wouldn’t join them weighed on him more heavily than it should have. Maybe it was the way it was handled—that she was deceived until she had no choice but to leave.
Either way, Theo didn’t like it.
And, gauging by the look on Mable’s face when he dropped her off in her room last night, she didn’t approve either. But she’d asked to be alone, and he had to respect that.
Knocking on her door, he wasn’t all that surprised when she didn’t answer. After a rough few days with no sleep, she was probably due for a morning of sleeping in. Theo would let her have it. He walked down to the galley and joined Osip and Knox at the usual table.
“Where is everyone?” he asked as he sat.
“Uh, I think Dasia and Mable are doing their whole ninja thing. Georgie was looking over some files in his room when I walked past. I guess Jane’s still asleep.”
Theo scooped eggs onto his plate and marveled at their existence. “Hey Knox, how do you always have food like this?”
Knox shrugged his massive shoulders. “Camels don’t whack the home can. Like the roof green.”
Theo couldn’t decide if that was an answer or not. “I mean, how do you get these foods? Back home, we had this nutritional provision, like this grey—”
Osip threw his head back with raucous laughter. “No way! You ate that horse shit? Gross!”
Theo blinked in shock. “Well, yeah. That’s all there was. It has all requisite nutrients without an organic food source. It was manufactured from replenishable resources,” Theo recited the words he’d heard hundreds of times during his years in Lancaster.
Osip smacked his hand on the table and continued hooting and hollering. Even Knox took up a laugh that shook his chest.
“What?”
Osip leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table, resting on his elbows. “Okay, sure. There are limited resources because of the war. The haze wipes out most croplands. The oceans are too toxic for any marine organisms to survive. We’re left with a few aquaculture farms in isolated lakes and rivers. There are a few regions where the haze is thin enough to grow a few crops, like Dasia’s family did. But that doesn’t mean there’s no food. It doesn’t mean you have to eat that.”
Theo shoved in a bite of fluffy eggs. “They just made it sound like there was nothing left, like we had to eat the provisions because that’s all there was. It was better than starving.”
Knox’s smile eased into an uneasy frown.
Theo felt embarrassed, like he’d done something wrong, but he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know how he could have changed the way he grew up.
More quietly, Osip asked, “Did they tell you how they make that stuff?”
“Yeah, it was processed in a facility, given an ‘oatmeal’ texture, flavored with chemicals that imitate vanilla, strawberry, cinnamon. There are dozens of artificial flavors.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“Fine, you tell me, how do they make it?” Theo was irritated and hoped it was a result of his failed efforts at sleeping.
Knox shook his head. “Bury that coconut.”
“No, tell me,” he insisted.
Osip sighed and answered, “It’s made from animal proteins.”
Theo smiled, realizing they were teasing him. “You just said there’s limited animal resources.”
Osip nodded, failing to return the smile. “All but one, the most plentiful animal on the planet.”
Theo’s stomach plummeted. A foul flavor filled his mouth until he had to spit out the eggs. “There’s no way.” He needed to believe it wasn’t true.
“When we had a body, we’d take it to the surface. The city would buy them off us to make the provisions. Don’t you wonder where the bodies go? They haven’t buried anyone in a century. It’s not like they’re going to waste dome space on a graveyard.”
Theo pushed out of his chair and left the galley. He couldn’t hear any more about it, and he certainly wasn’t hungry anymore. He went straight to his room, took a shower, and brushed his teeth, but nothing helped. The feeling of disgust remained.
“Hey have you seen Osip?” someone asked as he stepped out his door. When he looked up, he saw Dasia.
Theo swallowed the rising lump in his throat. “Uh, in the galley, last I saw. You seen Mable?”
Dasia shook her head. “She said she was going to do some work, but I went to her room to give back her shirt just now, and she wasn’t there.” She held up the limp blue top in her hands as proof.
Theo knocked on the door and pushed it open. Papers lay strewn across the floor, and through the half-open bathroom door, he could see shards of mirror on the counter top. A storm of debris, but no Mable.
“You need something?” Dasia asked when he stood in the doorway too long.
“No, thanks anyway,” Theo said with a wave as he moved toward the elevator.
Sure enough, he found her leaned over the light table in the bug lab. Jars littered the table top, and as he neared, he noticed each type of bug represented in four or five jars.
“There you are.”
“Hey.” She didn’t move.
“What are you doing up here?”
“Just thinking.” Mable’s eyes faced the Echo in a large jar in front of her, but her gaze was distant. She was light-years away.
“About what?” Theo could take a few good guesses. Hadley. Rowen. The Root.
“When you weighed the Slight for the metal analysis, what was the percent difference between the masses?”
Theo stared in awe. “Uh, it was pretty small. Somewhere around 0.008 if I remember.” He pulled out his tablet to look up his data.
“Does that seem normal? Would twelve individuals of a single species have the same exact mass?”
“Well, we could only test eleven,” he reminded her. “But yeah, it’s abnormally small. It was good for our tests with the metal analysis, though.”
Mable continued to stare absently at the jars, like he wasn’t there at all. Then, as if a switch had been tripped, she jumped from her chair. “Follow me,” she said as she marched for the door.
ABBY
LRF-AQ
SEPTEMBER 5, 2232
Abby crossed her ankles at her desk and tried to ignore the painful stabbing of the bodice within her tight dress. As light as fresh cream, she knew Michael loved the color on her skin, loved the shape of her body so revealed. Beauty is pain, she reminded herself. And for Michael, she would endure almost anything.
Today, she turned her tablet so Michael couldn’t see. She would die if he found out the truth.
Feigning as much nonchalance as she could manage, Abby searched through her ecomms for the latest update from PC. She’d waited two days for the report. Dozens of ecomms had come in since then, but she couldn’t be bothered with those now. She needed to see for herself.
She tapped the vid file from the security feed at Ares Colony. The miner in green walked down the hall flanked by a dark-haired woman and a tall, blond man. She clicked the woman and instructed her tablet to run the facial-recognition software. From her round chin, pointed nose, and dark eyes, she was attractive enough. The software identified her easily.
CHARLENE MONTGOMERY, CRAFTSMAN, PRIMARY CHILD EDUCATION
ARES COLONY, AF-1
PERMANENT RELOCATION STATUS
Abby expected no less. All standard. Then she clicked on the man, the one she really wanted to see. His hair was shorter, his skin lighter, but as soon as the image appeared, she knew him.
ABRAHAM ARRENSTEIN, CRAFTSMAN, AGRICULTURE
ARES COLONY, AM-3
PERMANENT REL
OCATION STATUS.
And there it was, as she suspected. It wasn’t in her mind. He wasn’t just a man she thought she recognized. It was really him.
Her eyes filled with tears. He was alive. Alex was alive.
And Silas had put him on the Martian colony, under his own name, no less. It was smart. It made sense. She only wished she’d known. Abby had long grieved a friend who was still alive, at least for now.
As Michael’s assistant, Abby had access to more information than most. She would be the first to learn of any termination attempt. Michael was good enough to resist, but without long-term justification, he couldn’t keep them from terminating the colony at some point.
Abby wiped her eyes as discreetly as possible, resigned to keep an eye on Alex and do whatever she could to let him have his quiet life on Mars.
MABLE
CPI-PQ1-RL, NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 5, 2232
Mable knocked on the ancient wooden door and waited, pleasantly surprised by Theo’s lack of protest. She didn’t feel like explaining.
“Come in, sweet child.”
Mable pushed into the room with Theo on her heels. “Good morning, Ramona.”
“Good morning, Maggie. And who’s this you’ve brought with you?” Ramona sat in her high-backed green chair with her striped afghan pulled over her lap. Her hair was braided down one shoulder, though wisps of grey escaped like smoke.
Mable motioned to Theo and felt stupid for it. “This is my handler, Theo. We think we found something.”
Ramona turned her hands in her lap and smiled, her useless eyes searching them out in dark. “Well, let’s hear it child.”
“Theo collected the masses of the bugs for metal analysis. They have a high percentage of iron.” Mable sat on the floor at Ramona’s feet and crossed her legs under her. Theo sat to her right, though a little farther back.
“Iron, you say?” Ramona sat back in her chair.
