“You’re forgetting that the martians pushed the Almiri off onto Earth in the first place. They didn’t have a problem making their problems our problems. So it’s not just you who’s getting boned here.” I struggle against his grip, but he’s too strong.
“They did so in an effort to change us for the better. They were motivated by something greater than mere self-preservation. They had a plan. You can’t do something as reckless as this without thinking it through! You don’t have a plan.”
I stop struggling and look Byron dead in the eye.
“I’m Elvie Nara. I always have a plan.” I turn to Merv, who is watching our struggle with detached curiosity. “Merv, send the info packet.”
“Don’t do it!” Byron shouts.
“I am sorry,” Merv says, “but she has overwritten my programming.”
Merv’s eyes spin in his head.
“The packet has been delivered.”
Suddenly an enormous blast shakes the entire room, and the door crumbles away in shards of red ore. An entire squadron of decked-out Devastators bursts through, weapons at the ready. They train their weapons on us and bark indecipherable commands at us in their own language. They seem slightly confused by the pile of Brittas lying, unconscious, on the ground, not to mention the pile of Marsden.
“We surrender!” Ducky cries, hands in the air.
I simply grasp my father’s hand and squeeze. “We were so close,” I say.
“I love you, dearheart,” Dad replies.
I feel someone take my other hand. I look down. It’s Chloe. She smiles at me and shrugs, and I can’t help but laugh. It seems to confuse the lead Devastator. He charges toward me and picks me straight up off the ground with one monster claw, despite the protests from my friends. The Devastator barks something at me, its long dagger right in my face.
“Excuse me?” Merv says. The Devastator turns and glares at him. “I have an incoming message from the alien fleet.”
Suddenly Merv’s image disappears, and in its place stands a tall, imposing Devastator wearing some sort of cape. The death squad immediately stands at attention. The image barks at them for a few seconds, and the lead Devastator responds, his tone confused-sounding (well, as confused-sounding as mangled spoons in the garbage disposal can get). The answer he receives sounds incredibly angry, even by Devastator standards. Then the image blurs once more and Merv reappears.
“The transmission has ended.”
The Devastator with the kung fu grip on my throat looks at me and narrows his yellow eyes. His jointed teeth ripple in a cascade from one side of his mouth to the other, a sort of disdainful Jin’Kai sneer, I suppose. I feel his putrid breath on my face and prepare myself for the worst. Then, without warning, the gnarly creep drops me roughly to the ground. He barks a command to the others, and to my great shock, they all turn and head out of the room.
“What are they doing?” Dad asks. “Is that it?”
“The package was received and acknowledged. The intruders have received orders to fall back immediately.”
“Then it’s done,” Byron says glumly.
“That’s it? The invasion is over?” Ducky asks. “We won?”
“No . . . you . . . can’t . . . leave me,” Marsden gurgles from the floor. “It’s a trick. . . . Don’t . . . a trick . . .”
Most of the Devastators head out of the room without acknowledging Marsden in any way, but as their leader pulls up the rear, he turns and spits a nasty alien loogie right on the expiring villain. With that, the last of the baddies disappear through the hole in the door. All that’s left of our would-be executioners is the sound of their footsteps plodding toward the surface.
Merv’s eyes spin in his head. “It appears that the encroaching fleet has broken off their attack on Earth and is falling back. The ‘Devastators,’ as you call them, are preparing for immediate departure to the coordinates contained within the data packet.”
“I don’t even know what to say,” Ducky says, shaking his head. “But didn’t that feel . . . extremely too easy?”
“The hard part will be living with what we did here,” Byron says, staring grimly at the star maps. “You realize we have blood on our hands now,” he tells me. “You’ve doomed an entire planet to a fate of enslavement.”
“Have I?” I say. “Or did I just send the Jin’Kai coordinates to a dead moon that could take them hundreds of years to get within sensor range of?”
“What?” Cole asks.
“Accessing . . . Hmm, yes. Very clever. Very clever indeed. You have a deft hand for programming. The alteration to my data is seamless. I have only been able to detect it by comparing it to the file redundancy.”
“The code couldn’t have fingerprints on it,” I say. “It had to look like the original data entered years ago.”
Dad is the first to catch on, the lightbulb slowly illuminating over his head. “So they think they’re headed to an inhabited planet,” he says. And if he doesn’t sound proud of his only daughter, then I’ll be a clone’s mother. “When in fact they’re off on a wild goose chase.”
“The best way to lie to someone is to give them ninety-nine percent of the truth,” I reply.
From the corner Marsden laughs weakly. We all turn to look at him.
“Oh right,” I say. “I forgot that you aren’t all the way dead yet.”
“You’re too clever by half, Elvie Nara,” Marsden says. “You may have fooled them for a time. But what do you think will happen when they realize you tricked them? They might easily discover another viable planet on their own, or simply realize they were duped. In either case, what’s to stop them then from coming back and finishing what they started?”
“When that day comes, we’ll be ready for them,” I say. “A few hundred years is a good head start on anybody.”
“I would be happy to provide your peoples with any information in the depository that may be of use to them.”
“See that?” I say. “We even have Merv on board.”
“You will fail,” Marsden spits. Blood speckles his lips. “You cannot deter my brethren with smoke and mirrors. We will come for you. We are strong.”
I kneel down next to Marsden and look him in the eye.
“You are a dinosaur,” I say. “I’m the chicken.” And I get right in his evil bastard face then, before I let out a triumphant, “Ba-cawk!”
The hate rises in Marsden’s eyes as he looks at me. He can’t move, but his body trembles with rage. He starts to cough, and blood sprays from his mouth, flecking my face. The hate in his eyes clouds over, and his gaze goes blank as his death rattle escapes from his lungs. And then . . . that’s it. I stand up and move to Chloe, slip an arm around her waist, and rest my head on her shoulder. To my surprise Chloe offers me a small hug in return.
It’s over. Dr. Marsden is finally over.
Murmurs from across the room inform us that the gas Marsden used to dope Marnie and the Britta Brigade is wearing off. Slowly the girls rise from the ground, rubbing their eyes and whining about bed hair. After a few seconds the first of them spots Marsden, which sets off a chain reaction of shrill shrieking and gagging.
“Wha’s all this, then?” Marnie says, rising off the floor.
“You missed it!” Ducky says, rushing to her.
“Missed what?”
“Elvie totally saving the entire world. Of course, she couldn’t have done it without me. You should’ve seen me with Marsden.” Marnie gives Ducky a enormous squeeze of a hug, and he flinches away in pain. “Careful with the ribs,” he says. “Most likely they’re broken.”
“Well, then I guess I best be kissin’ ye instead,” she replies, and that said, she plants a fat, wet kiss on Ducky, smack on the mouth.
And Ducky, bless him, he doesn’t flinch or turn red or anything. He kisses that girl right back.
I look
at everyone standing around me. My adoring, adorable father. My pretentious, centuries-old grandfather. My best friend in the whole world. His way too worldly and awesome girlfriend. A young woman who is as much a part of me as if I’d given birth to her myself. And my Cole.
Well, not my Cole. But Cole. He offers me that trademark lopsided grin, and it releases any pressure that might still have been lingering in my shoulders. Now that I’m relaxed, I can allow myself to admit that I’m tired. And I need to rest. But not just yet.
There’s one more thing I need to do.
Chapter Fourteen
In Which our Heroine Confronts Her Past and Recovers Her Future
“So, this is the place, huh?” Cole asks, looking around. “I expected something a little more, I dunno, secret-y.”
“This is the place,” I tell him. The smell of the sea is a refreshingly salty alternative to the stale, canned O2 I’ve been breathing lately, first on New Moon and then on Mars. The sun is just starting to poke up over the horizon, sending a cascade of shimmering orange and purple lights across the ocean’s surface. The early spring breeze is still bitingly cold, but it feels revitalizing more than anything else. We walk along the sandy beach—me, Cole, and Chloe—our spaceship parked in stealth mode farther down the beach next to the boardwalk, which is completely deserted so early in the season.
“You’re sure they’re here?” Chloe asks.
“Trust me,” I say, glancing at the tracker in my hand. “They’re here.”
Ahead of us lies a large groyne, rocks held together by concrete, forming a jetty that juts away from the beach and into the water. I can just make out the silhouette of someone at the edge of the groyne, but I don’t really need to get up close to know who it is.
Leave it to my mother to escape from outer space and hightail it directly to New Jersey.
We climb up onto the rocks and start the long walk to the edge. Zee sits cross-legged with her back to us, looking out at the waves, rocking back and forth. Sitting next to her is a small radio, and I catch snatches of a low, garbled news report as we approach. I can’t quite make it out, but I can guess what they’re talking about. Since the Jin’Kai ran off and the Almiri came out publicly to the world, that’s pretty much been dominating the news cycle. World news. Local politics. Postulations about how this will impact the tenuous real estate market in “high alien” population areas. The only reason the news anchors ever take a break to talk about March Madness is because Villanova’s starting backcourt can trace their ancestry to the other side of the galaxy.
As we get closer, I catch the tail end of the report.
“. . . the only known survivor of the doomed space station, single-handedly slowing the alien invaders as they made their way toward Earth. So stay tuned for our exclusive interview with Huxtable, the hero of New Moon.”
Seriously, who is that guy?
“Elvan,” Zee says without turning around. “I knew it would be only a matter of time before you caught up with us.”
It’s hard to know exactly how to greet the woman who gave birth to you, faked her own death, let you grow up motherless, then snuck back into your life only to steal your daughter from you. “Hi, Mom!” just sounds like you’re repressing things that will boil over at Thanksgiving ten years later. “Hey, you deceitful, double-crossing bitch”—while perhaps appropriate—seems a little too vulgar. So I decide to go with a classic.
“Put your hands up where I can see them.”
“May I stand?” Zee asks, rising without waiting for an answer.
“I said hands up. These Almiri ray guns don’t have a hammer to cock or anything, so just imagine a dramatically slow ‘click’ and use it as motivation to do exactly as I say.”
She raises only one hand. “I’m not trying to be difficult,” she says, turning slowly. “It’s just that my hands are presently occupied.”
“Olivia!” I screech. I immediately forget that I’m supposed to be pulling a calm, cool, collected badass-cowboy impersonation and run, elbows flailing, toward my baby girl, who is curled up in the crook of Zee’s arm.
“Is she okay, Elvs?” Cole asks. His gun is still firmly trained at my mother’s head. “Please tell me she’s okay.”
“I’d hate to have come all this way just to shoot my pseudo-grandmother in the face,” Chloe adds. “I mean, it’d be a nice topper, but . . .”
Zee doesn’t even fight me as I scoop Olivia from her.
Oh God, she’s so warm. So beautiful. She’s grown since I’ve seen her. Not grown enough to be an ex-Jin’Kai youth cadet or anything, but the appropriate amount of development for the time we’ve been apart. I begin laughing and crying, both at once, snot shooting out of my nose in disgusting bubbles. I don’t care. Who cares? She’s back. She’s here. After all this time, missing her, thinking I’d found her, then realizing I hadn’t and missing her triple, I’ve finally, finally got my baby girl back.
“She looks good,” I tell Cole. “Come see. Doesn’t she look good?” I check her all over. Ten fingers, ten toes, two ears. Nose fine.
And then I get to the stomach.
“What?” Cole asks in a near panic when he sees the fire hydrant’s worth of tears that come pouring out of me. “What is it?”
“Oh, I wasn’t—” I begin, trying to explain the tears. But I am becoming quickly hysterical. I hold up our daughter so he can see for himself.
I ♥ Momy!
It’s still there, the smeared remnants of the message Cole scrawled on our baby’s stomach in indelible marker, all the way back in Antarctica, a few dozen lifetimes ago.
“I told you that marker was permanent,” I say, laughing. More snot shoots out of my nose. Olivia lets out a tiny giggle and reaches a fat arm out for me, clenching my hand in hers.
“Aren’t there two ms in ‘mommy’?” Chloe asks.
“Oh God, I’m just so glad you’re okay.” I squeeze Olivia as tight as I can without damaging her precious internal organs. I may just keep squeezing until she leaves for college.
“I wanted to show her this spot,” Zee tells me softly. “While I still had her. It’s very special. Your father proposed to me right here. Did you know that? Right here on the rocks.”
“You kidnapped her,” I snap.
“Stop being dramatic,” Zee says, waving a dismissive hand. “You should be thanking me for rescuing her from Marsden and his thugs.”
“Are you really that delusional?” I ask in disbelief. “You’re the one who turned her over to Dr. Marsden in the first place!”
“You want me to shoot her now?” Chloe says. “Or is there something we’re waiting for?”
“No one’s shooting anyone, Chloe,” I reply.
Suddenly a look of horrified realization spreads across Zee’s face. “What is she doing here?” she demands, eyeing Chloe up and down like she’s some sort of infectious disease. “What’s going on?”
“Chill out. Chloe’s not with Marsden anymore,” I tell her. “No one’s with Marsden anymore. He’s perma-dead.”
“She’s not even real, Elvan. She’s a, a . . . a thing.” Zee can hardly get the words out. She’s gone from calm and collected to unjustifiably morally outraged in the span of ten seconds.
“She’s been there for me a lot more than you ever were,” I say.
“They grew her in a test tube. They pulled the DNA from your daughter, corrupted it with their own filthy genes, and created an abomination. You can’t trust something like that. She’s not a real person.”
“Hey, watch it,” Cole says. “That’s my daughter’s clone you’re talking about.”
Chloe takes Zee in, a wicked smile spreading across her face. “You’re starting to sound a lot like my old boss,” she says. “And by the end he and I really didn’t see eye to eye.”
“I’m just trying not to laugh at the idea of you thinking someon
e else is untrustworthy,” I tell my mother, rocking Olivia gently in my arms as she coos.
“I did what I thought was best for our people. My mistake was believing that the Jin’Kai would be any different from their Almiri cousins. I won’t make that same mistake again.” She takes a few steps toward me, and instinctively I back away. Cole is immediately beside me, a hand on my shoulder, and Chloe flanks me on the other side, her gun trained directly on Zee.
“Elvan, there’s still time. Come with me.”
“Come with you?” I ask. “Come with you where?”
“There’s an Enosi enclave not far from here. People will be gathering, making preparations. It will be safe there.”
“Safe? Haven’t you been listening to that radio of yours? The war’s over. It’s the dawn of a brand-new day.”
“You’re being foolish. The real war has just begun.”
“Do you, like, ever have a cheery thought?” I ask. “You should be overjoyed. The mere existence of hybrids has saved the entire planet from annihilation. Dad and Byron are even cowriting a poem about it. They’re calling it ‘The Defeat of Devastation.’”
In my arms Olivia wiggles around. She wants a better view of her daddy. When she sees him, she breaks into a broad grin. She smiles now, I realize. I missed her first smile.
But at least I get to see the rest of them.
“Oh, everyone’s happy now,” Zee says. “The humans are more than willing to accept the presence of a people that have been exploiting them for millennia, and the Almiri are more than happy to receive that acceptance. But how long do you think it will last? How long before they both start seeing the existence of the hybrids as a threat to their respective species?”
“Wow,” I say. “I feel really sorry for you. I know you’ve been out of the loop for a little bit, what with hiding under a rock—I’m guessing somewhere in the Rust Belt?—so let me fill you in. We discovered life on Mars. Well, a computer on Mars, at least, with records of life there. And those records told us a lot of things. Like how we—you, me, and now Olivia—aren’t some accidental mutation but a planned evolution of not one but two species. We’re the future now.”
The World Forgot Page 22
