“It’s not happening,” I snap at her. “You’ve betrayed the entire human race, and I won’t be a part of it.”
“Girls, please,” my father cuts in. “Hear your mother out. She has her reasons, and if you just listen—”
Claudia cuts him off when she aims her blaster at his face. “I can’t believe you,” she says. Her voice trembles. “All those years, you watched us suffer because of what Mom had done to this family. You led me to Veritas. You wanted me to join them. Now you’re telling me it was all for nothing? Did that alien blood melt your brain?”
“My dear daughter.” Dad tries to reach past Claudia’s gun to comfort her, but she knocks his arm away. “If you knew the whole story, you would understand.”
“I know the story,” Claudia says. “We both do.”
“You’re coming with us to Adrestia,” I announce to my parents. “You want your family reunion? You got it, but you’ll both be behind bars.”
Gertrude adjusts her robes to better protect her knees from the chilly air. “I’m afraid I can’t comply with these terms.”
“You don’t have to.” I close in on my mother, keeping the blaster level even though it shakes in my grip. “You’re coming whether you like it or not, and you’re going to create an antidote to the serum. Get up.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Ophelia,” my mother says, her lips turning upward in a sly smile. “We do have protection here, even from you.”
“Get up!”
I lower the blaster to yank my mother from her chair, but as soon as I touch her, a thunderous roar echoes from the floor above, announcing my mutant brother’s presence. Laertes launches himself from the top of the stairs and lands crouched in the middle of the foyer. His alien mutations have worsened in the time since I last saw him. With half-formed wings, scaly green skin, and reptilian eyes, he no longer resembles much of a human.
“Oh, dear,” my mother says. “You’ve angered your brother.”
Laertes roars again and lunges toward me. I duck under his outstretched hand—narrowly avoiding his massive claws—at the last second. The hasty escape sends my weapon flying from my hand. Claudia fires her blaster, but the small pistol isn’t strong enough to inflict much damage on the scales that protect Laertes’s back. She changes her strategy and fires at my mother. Gertrude isn’t expecting it, and she howls with pain as an opalite bullet grazes her arm. Laertes screams, reacting to our mother’s pain, and turns on Claudia.
I grab my blaster and slide across the floor to my mother’s chair. “Stand up,” I order, resting the gun against her scalp. “Put your hands behind your back.”
“That’s no way to speak to your mother,” she drawls. She’s dawdling on purpose to give Laertes time to overpower Claudia. I hear my sister scrambling to escape Laertes’s huge claws. “Bad girls need to be punished.”
From the pocket of her robe, my mother extracts a syringe. Before I can dodge her, she stabs the needle into my arm and depresses the plunger. The bright-green serum burns as it enters my veins. I feel it rush through my bloodstream with every heartbeat.
“No!” my father cries. A blast hits my mother’s chair, singeing her scalp, and I turn to see my father holding an older version of an opalite grenade launcher over his shoulder. “Gertrude,” he thunders. “You shall not harm our children further!”
He turns the grenade launcher on Laertes, who has finally captured Claudia in his grasp. As Claudia wrestles to free herself, Polonius fires. The grenade embeds itself in Laertes’s midsection. He drops Claudia, who crawls toward me. I help her up, and the two of us restrain our mother together. Laertes turns on our father. The antique grenade launcher takes time to reload—too much time. Laertes swipes at my father’s restored body. His claws gouge deep marks in Polonius’s abdomen, ripping the skin and muscle apart.
“Dad!” I try to fight my way toward him, but Claudia holds me back.
My father falls to the ground, but his grip on the grenade launcher remains steady. As Laertes advances, going in for the kill, Dad looks across at me and Claudia.
“Take her to Veritas,” he instructs, blood pouring from his mouth and abdomen. “Save the galaxy. I love you, girls.”
Then he fires the grenade launcher at Laertes’s head.
8
“Do you think he’s dead?”
“Dad? It’s pretty likely. Laertes practically filleted him.”
The flight back to Adrestia is quiet. Our mother lies tranquilized in the farthest seat from the pilot’s. The opalite wound in her arm is leaking crystallized blood, but after the events at the safehouse, I don’t have any intention of giving Gertrude care she doesn’t deserve.
“So approximately half the Holmes family is down for the count,” Claudia says, studying the map to get us back to Veritas without getting lost in the disorientation shield.
A heavy stone settles in the pit of my stomach when Adrestia appears, shrouded in fog, in front of us. In a matter of minutes, we’ll be on the ground again, where my name and my actions don’t mean anything but trouble for the Veritas council. I hadn’t realized how much I missed outer space, and now that I was out here, I didn’t want to return to the ground.
“One more lap around the galaxy?” I joke, half-hoping Claudia might agree.
“Har, har.”
With a wistful sigh, I guide the Starshriek toward the cloud-covered planet. We sink through the disorientation shield and emerge on the other side. The sun coats the Veritas camp in pink and orange. It’s still early, and the planet is quiet save for the chirp of awakening birds.
“We should have a memorial,” I suggest. “For Dad. I’m sure Veritas would want to celebrate him. He was a hero in their eyes.”
Claudia squeezes my shoulder. “I know Dad meant a lot to you—he did to me too—but we don’t have time for services. This war is coming to a head soon.”
“How do you know?”
She glances at our mother, who drools from the corner of her mouth onto her chest. “We stole their most valuable weapon, and they’ll want it back—oh, shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Look down.”
I peer through the cockpit as the speeder descends, and I see what Claudia’s reacting to. On the ground at the airfield, half of the council—including Quell and Halley—are gathered in a huddled mass, right in the space where I’m meant to park the Starshriek.
“Do they look mad?” I ask Claudia.
“They look pissed.”
“Well, they’re gonna have to move unless they want me to land on them.”
Claudia waves the council members out of the way, and they shuffle off to make room for me to land the speeder. As soon as I touch down, they swarm us.
“Let me shut off the engines, you idiots!” I call. “Does no one understand basic safety protocols here?”
“They can’t hear you, O.” Claudia groans and sinks in her seat, looking defeated. “They’re gonna kill me. Just follow my lead, okay? We gotta lie our way out of this one, or the council will never let me hear the end of it.”
I jab the button to open the cockpit. “You got it.”
The glass slides back, and the council’s voices rise to berate us.
“What were you thinking?” Quell demands. “Taking an unauthorized jaunt around the galaxy. You could’ve been killed!”
“I swear, Holmes,” Halley says, but I don’t know if she’s talking to me or Claudia. “I told you not to go looking for trouble.”
Orion pushes his way to the front of the group. “Let them speak,” he scolds the council. “Ladies, were you successful in your mission?”
I hold up my mother’s limp hand for the council to see. “I present one Gertrude Holmes to the Veritas council.”
“Lock them up,” Quell snarls.
“Them?” I repeated incredulously. “What did we do wrong?”
“You left on a trip unsanctioned by the council,” Halley says. “You defied a direct order from us. On
this planet, we consider that near treason.”
One of Halley’s soldiers climbs up to the cockpit and tries to drag me to the ground. I punch him in the nose.
“I can get down by myself, thanks,” I spit.
“Calm down, O,” Claudia says. She turns to address the council. “I sanctioned the trip to Proioxis. I am a higher-level officer, and I have the authority to assign Ophelia to whatever mission I deem necessary. This is not treason. If it were, you all know what would have happened.”
She’s talking about the gloves, and I see Quell’s eyes flicker to my hands to make sure I’m wearing mine. Not only are my leather gloves in place, they’re also intact. We haven’t done anything to trigger the self-destruction response.
“You were in the meeting, Holmes,” Quell says. “You knew we didn’t want to take the risk of flying to Proioxis. You abused your privilege, and I, for one, am ready to demote you. We cannot have our leaders making rash decisions without considering their consequences.”
“You didn’t want to take the risk because you were too scared,” Claudia shoots back. “Guess what, Quell? This is war. Sometimes, you have to do the frightening thing to get ahead, even if it means you might take a loss.”
“We brought you our own mother,” I add to Claudia’s defense. “She’s invaluable to both sides, and she’s here for you to utilize. Though you might want to lock her up soon because I think the tranquilizer is wearing off.”
Halley’s soldier tries again, taking me by surprise as he leaps into the cockpit on my blind side and yanks my hands behind my back. Lasers encircle my wrists. If I try to move, they’ll burn my skin. The soldier handcuffs Gertrude next. My mother stirs in her seat but doesn’t wake, so the soldier tosses her over his shoulder like a rag doll and exits the speeder.
“How come you don’t get cuffed?” I mutter to Claudia as she helps me navigate the edge of the cockpit and get down to the ground.
“They know I’ll kill anyone who tries,” she replies in an undertone. “Hang in there. I’ll get you out as soon as I can.”
“Get me out of where?”
As soon as my boots hit the ground, Halley kicks the back of my knee, and I go down hard in the sand. She yanks me to my feet.
“You’re coming with me, Holmes,” she says. “Don’t worry though. We won’t separate you from Mommy Dearest.”
“Halley, I can’t for the life of me figure out if you like me or not.”
It turns out Veritas does have a holding facility that doesn’t resemble an overnight spa. It’s set on a rocky bluff near the beach, far away from the rest of the camp. The stone cells smell like saltwater and mold. Halley and her team dump me and my mother in adjacent cells. Old-style padlocks protect the steel bar doors. Halley locks mine with relish.
“This is what happens when you defy orders, Holmes,” she says, dangling the key to mock me with it. “Enjoy your family time.”
“Hey!” I bang against the bars as Halley and her soldiers leave. “You’re going to have to let me out of here eventually. I didn’t do anything wrong!”
The door slams shut, and darkness takes over most of the cells. A thin line of sunlight streams in from the window set at the top of my makeshift bunk. I climb on the metal cot to peer out. Beyond the jail, the bluff drops off to the sea. Waves crash against the rocks below, and the breeze carries the salty spray up to mist my face. Experimentally, I jiggle the bars on the window. They don’t budge.
“Great,” I mutter. “This is exactly what I was going for.”
“Not what you expected?”
In the next cell over, my mother has finally come to. There are only bars between us, rather than another stone wall, so I have a clear view of her as she takes the pins from her hair to let it flow across her shoulders. She pulls the cot around to face the window, then lies down in the square of sunlight. It’s as if she were tanning in her own backyard.
“You never learn, Ophelia,” she says. “The only person you can ever truly count on is yourself. Even your family members are likely to betray you.”
“You betrayed us long before this,” I remind her. “Or did your forget you injected your own children with alien DNA?” I shake my arm at her, which has swollen to twice its normal size. “Twice. What the hell is this going to do to me, huh?”
“I’m not sure,” she says. “Your DNA is so unique. That’s why I wanted to inject you again. I’m curious as to how your body will react to the serum.”
I slam my fists against the bars separating us. “I am not your damn experiment!”
“Calm down, sweetheart,” Gertrude replies lazily. “I advise keeping your heart rate at a normal level while the serum settles.”
Within the hour, the skin on my arm has turned to a pale green, and I’m sweating like Quell in a foot race. The moisture soaks through the sheets on the cot and turns cold. Huddled in a ball, I shiver violently as the once-pleasant breeze chills me to the bone. My mother watches me every minute, no doubt recording every detail of my reaction in her head, so I keep my back to her and ignore her as much as possible. She pesters me with questions.
“What would you estimate your temperature to be?” she asks. “On a scale of one to ten, what’s your pain level? Are you experiencing any nausea?”
My pain level is at an eight and a half and my stomach is turning more than the waves out at sea, but I refuse to report anything to my mother. I can feel the serum circulating through my body. With every beat of my heart comes another gush of pain. It’s like someone has lit me on fire. When an automatic bot delivers meals to our cells, the smell of it finally sends me over the edge. I kneel over the in-cell toilet and empty my stomach.
“I’ll count that as a yes for nausea,” Gertrude says.
I wipe my mouth and roll over on my back, lying flat on the cold stone floor. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“On the contrary, my dear, I’m trying to make you stronger.”
At some point, I’m too exhausted to keep up with the whims of the serum as it passes through my body, and I pass out on the floor of my cell. When I awake, the sun is no longer high enough in the sky to come in through the window. Though my clothes are still damp, I’m no longer sweating, my stomach has settled, and I feel relatively normal. All that remains of the serum-induced illness is the lingering fatigue.
The meal bot rolls to the slot in the bars, depositing a bowl of soup and a canteen of water in my cell. The smell is inviting this time, rather than repulsive. I sip my dinner slowly, letting my stomach adjust to receiving food again. As I finish, I notice my mother is observing me from the shadowy corner of her cell.
“What?” I snap. “Are you upset I can eat?”
“I’m intrigued,” she answers simply.
“What will I become?” I demand. “How long until the serum alters me like it did the others? Am I going to turn into a monster like Laertes?”
“No.” My mother moves into the light, and I’m surprised to see a look of satisfaction on her face. “You won’t change at all, as your body has rejected the serum once again.”
I check the injection site on my arm. Sure enough, there’s no sign of swelling or the green liquid beneath my skin. Overall, I feel like my normal self.
“You’re upset,” I say, understanding my mother’s expression. “You’re mad that it didn’t take, aren’t you? Let me guess. You devised that serum especially for me, and it still didn’t work. How does it feel to fail in your most precious experiment so many times?”
“Your DNA is a travesty,” Gertrude counters. “You should be no different than the others.”
“Is it killing you?” I taunt her. “Not to know what your own daughter is made of? Are you sure I’m yours at all?”
She throws her meal tray against the bars, and soup splatters everywhere. I duck to avoid the onslaught of mushy vegetables. The door to the prison opens, and Claudia rushes in. Vega, less enthused, follows behind her.
“What’s this mess?” Claudia asks ou
r mother. “Playing with your food?”
“Ah, my eldest daughter,” Gertrude says, simpering. “How I regret raising you.”
Claudia fits the key to Gertrude’s cell into the lock. “You’re going to have a lot more regrets in a few minutes. Stand back.”
“What’s going on?” I ask as Vega kneels by my cell to get a better look at me. “Where are you taking her?”
Claudia cuffs Gertrude and leads her out of the cell. “You had to know this was going to happen, Ophelia.”
“Had to know what was going to happen?” I holler as they leave. I clasp Vega’s arm through the cell bars. “Vega, what’s going on?”
“The council wants answers, and they’re willing to do whatever they need in order to get them.” She squeezes my hand before noticing the sweat stains on my clothes and sheets. “You look terrible. What the hell happened to you?”
“My mother injected me with the serum.”
Vega yanks her hand away and takes a step back.
“Relax,” I say. “My body rejected it. I’m not going to turn into a mutant, and it’s not contagious either, so you can stop acting like any contact is going to make you an alien. What are they going to do to my mother?”
Vega hands me a fresh canteen of water. “They’re going to ask her to engineer an antidote to the serum. If she complies, no harm will come to her. If she refuses—”
“They’ll torture her.”
Claudia doesn’t return our mother to the jail until the moon has passed the highest point in the sky and is on its way back down again. When she finally enters, supporting Gertrude over her shoulder, it’s with a look of dismay upon her face. As they pass, I get a good look at my mother. She borders on the edge of unconscious, her gaze glassy and unfocused. Salt stains her cheeks, and there are scabs all up and down her arms.
“What did you do to her?” I whisper to Claudia. “No one should be treated this way. Not even her.”
Claudia lowers Gertrude onto the cot, gently placing our mother’s feet under the blankets. Several tears run off Claudia’s cheeks and plop onto the sheets. “I didn’t do anything. I tried to make them stop.”
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