by Ramona Finn
I tried again.
Tell me what is going on. What happened.
I waited, staring down at the blank screen before I slapped it back onto my tech in frustration. The door swung open behind me then, and there was Dahn. I thanked God that he hadn’t seen me half a second earlier, while I’d desperately been attempting to communicate with the leader of the Ferrymen. He’d protected me before, but I knew that only went so far.
“Let’s go,” he said.
We collected my mother’s ashes from the morgue. The city worker, in her city uniform, handed me a small metal box, lighter than I was expecting. And then she handed me a piece of paper to sign… and that was it. I walked back to my childhood home carrying what was left of my mother in my arms.
Ostensibly.
But honestly? This was probably a box filled with ash from the volcano. I knew my mother’s body wasn’t in the box. She’d been taken away.
Right after she’d been shot on the street.
“Dahn?” I asked as we walked. I had to ask this question very carefully. “Why do you think they only killed my mother?”
“You mean, why didn’t they pillage Io?”
Ferrymen had the unfounded reputation of being colony destroyers.
I nodded.
He frowned and paused as he mulled over his words, and in that second I knew. I knew that this didn’t make sense to him, either. That, even in his eyes, if this had been a coordinated Ferryman attack, they would have done so much more than kill one woman. This hadn’t been an attack; it had been an assassination. Arranged by someone who’d wanted to precisely target one woman. Someone who’d wanted to kill my mother, in particular. And that sure as hell hadn’t been the Ferrymen.
“I don’t make a practice out of explaining the habits of psycho murderers, Glade.”
I glanced sideways at him as we made our way back to my childhood home. I thought of my blank comm. The Ferrymen who’d apparently taken my mother’s body. Funny, I thought, because after all that time I’d spent with the Ferrymen, all that time I’d spent with Kupier, apparently, I couldn’t predict their behavior any better than Dahn could.
“I just don’t understand why we can’t come with you,” Treb said for what had to be the thirtieth time in two days.
I swallowed down frustration as I jammed things into my bag. “Because I’m going back to the Station, and you can’t come because you’re not Datapoints.”
“But we could be.”
“Trust me. You don’t want to be a Datapoint.” There were about a hundred reasons for that, but I latched on to the one I suspected had legs. “You don’t even like being in the same room as Dahn. That’s what all Datapoints are like, you know. The Station is crawling with them. It’s not like it’s some giant party.”
Treb threw herself down next to my suitcase and ducked her head so that I had to make eye contact with her. “You don’t know what I want and what I don’t want, Glade. You’ve never been good at that.”
She had a point, but whatever. “Trust me, Treb. You don’t want to live on the Station. And you don’t want to be trained to be a Datapoint. You’ll end up all snakey. Like me and Dahn.”
“I do!” she insisted, though she looked considerably less sure now. “Glade, I do not want to be left here on Io to be taken care of by crazy Cyril!”
There it was, the real truth. She didn’t want to come be a Datapoint. She just didn’t want to stay on Io. Without Mama.
“Don’t call her that!” I snapped. “You sound ungrateful. She doesn’t have to take you in, you know. And Sabi has her own family to take care of. She can’t take care of you two, as well.”
“But no one would have to take care of us if we just came with you to the Station and started our training! We’ve already been through some of the testing, you know.”
“Yes,” I gritted my teeth and jammed the last of my things into my bag. “I know.”
Haven had threatened me with their test scores; it had been so many months ago, but the fear I felt was fresh. It had been his particular brand of persuasion. He’d wanted nothing more than for me to rise to my full potential. He’d claimed that, if I did, there would be no reason for my sisters to be recruited for the Datapoint program. And I really, really, didn’t want them to get recruited. I knew what it was to be a Datapoint. The way they tortured you and called it training. I knew what it was to have a computer implanted inside you that melted into your thoughts, syncing with your very brain. And I knew what it was like to see the faces of the citizens who you were ordered to cull.
No. Hell no. That was not the life my sisters were going to lead. I’d do anything at all before I let them lead that life.
“Treb,” I tried, finally turning to her. “I don’t care how well you think Datapoints are respected. Or that you’re curious about the Station or that you think it would be glamorous to leave Io. I don’t care about any of that. The only thing I care about, in the entire universe, is keeping the two of you safe. And right now, Cyril’s house is the safest place you can be.”
Actually, the safest place she could be would be on some Ferryman ship, halfway across the solar system and far the hell away from the reach of the Authority. But Kupier was incommunicado, so apparently that wasn’t an option anymore.
“Glade,” Dahn said from the doorway of my mother’s room. “We have to go. They just commed me. They want to leave in thirty minutes.”
We’d buried my mother’s ‘ashes’ the day before, and I’d made arrangements with Cyril to start looking after the girls. There was nothing left for me to do on Io now, and somehow, I was going to have to get on an Authority skip and leave my sisters behind to go back to the Station.
God. What the hell was I doing? This was insanity. What I needed to do seemed far clearer. I needed to hijack a ship, kidnap my sisters, and… go where? I would have said Charon, but everything was screwed up with the Ferrymen right now, and I’d be tracked the entire way anyways if I tried.
That left one choice. I had to leave them behind. Anything else would surely be considered me going rogue, and then there was no question that Haven would hunt them down. I couldn’t risk some haphazard plan of mine going wrong.
I rose, throwing my bag over my back and turning to my scowling sister. Dahn looked back and forth between us, and I was so very conscious of him listening, I had to be careful with what I said. “Treb, you haven’t even been officially tested for Datapoint training yet. Those preliminary tests don’t always mean that you’ll be accepted into the program. I couldn’t take you back with me even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. You need to stay here on Io and stay the heck out of trouble.”
Her scowl deepened. I wanted to explain to her that no person in their right mind would want to be a Datapoint. That I’d never want that for her, that no matter what happened, I didn’t want that for her. But Dahn was standing right there, and to him, being a Datapoint was one of the great honors of his life. If I said all that to my sister in front of him, I’d have a lot of questions to answer—and I couldn’t risk that.
I settled for pulling Treb into a stiff hug that she didn’t return. “Trust me,” I whispered into her hair. I didn’t hear anything back, so I could only hope she sensed how much I truly wanted her to take those words seriously.
Daw was next, and she didn’t make a single request. She just cried and hugged me close. And then Dahn and I were gone, down the street, past the place where my mother had fallen. I blinked and we were at the landing pad, strapping in, and our skip was taking off.
I wondered if I’d ever be back to my home planet.
Our skip pulled away from Io and a feeling started creeping over me, zipping me into a cocoon as it went. Every torturous inch, until I was completely trapped inside. It was loneliness.
I’d never been more alone in my life. My allies were dark, and my only friend on the Station was determined to love the Authority until the day he died. My mother was gone. And my best option was to leave my sisters in p
lain sight, exactly where Haven wanted them.
The skip trembled as it left Io’s atmosphere, and my arm with the tech twitched as I watched the red moon underneath us slip away like water on a beach. I looked down at my arm. Something was different. Something was pressing at me, urging me to…
My secret comm.
There must be a message on my comm.
My stomach jolted as I looked back out the window and saw that Io wasn’t even filling up a quarter of it. It was shrinking into nothing.
The second the skip stopped trembling and the pilots were readying the artificial black holes to speed up our space travel, I disappeared into the back of the skip, where my cot was set up.
Slamming the door behind me, I eyed my cabin. My tech wasn’t detecting any cameras, but God only knew, so I slammed myself down on the bed and pulled the flimsy, gray blanket over top of myself. I used my thumbnail to pull the hidden slice of glass off my crystal tech, and then I flipped it over.
Sure enough, words traced across the face of it. I stared at them.
Hide, Gladey. Do whatever you have to do to hide.
I’d been expecting a message from Kupier. I would have taken anything, too—just something to show me that he was still alive, that the Authority hadn’t killed him when he’d been attempting to make his way onto Io to rescue my family. But this message wasn’t from Kupier.
There was only one person who called me Gladey. And she’d been telling me to hide from the Authority for my entire life.
My mother had sent this message.
Chapter Three
“How was it?” Cast Europa asked me just before looking completely horrified at his own question. “Yikes. Dumb question. Sorry.”
His light hair tumbled into his face and he shoved it behind his ears. It was too long, and I wondered for a second if he was growing it out so that he could tie it back the way Dahn wore his.
Cast was a younger Datapoint, and a little wide-eyed. He’d always been underestimated by our instructors on the Station, but he was proving himself now. Ever since I’d been dubbed the chosen one, the whole place had gotten turned upside down. No one knew what all the other Datapoints should be training for or if they even still needed to be training. After all, I was supposedly the one who was going to be doing all the dirty work from now on.
Cue the triumphant music.
Or get the barf bag.
Depending on your point of view.
Most of the other Datapoints who were training on the Station, around a hundred or so, were either giving me death stares because I’d stolen their jobs and their glory, or they were looking at me with a sort of pitied relief. Because, let’s be honest, being a Datapoint, though honorable, was kind of a horrible job.
Cast, though? He’d really been rolling with the punches. He was still willing to train for the Culling, but while picking up all sorts of other skills, as well. I’d always had the suspicion that he was more interested in being a pilot anyways, and he’d been spending a lot of time on the landing pad, apprenticing with one of the mechanics who worked down there.
I turned to him with a wry expression on my face as he sat next to me in the cafeteria on the Station. The big room, everything chrome and brown upholstery, echoed with the voices of the other Datapoints at mealtime.
“That was a dumb question,” I conceded. “Considering I was burying my mother.” Who might not be dead? Who was maybe a Ferryman? Who was probably attacked by the Authority? And, oh yeah, I’m still wondering where the hell is Kupier????? “But also considering that you’re the only person in the solar system who talks to me anymore, well… I’m gonna go ahead and let that slide.”
Cast studied my tray. “You got here early enough to snag some grain cereal, huh?”
I rolled my eyes good-naturedly and scooped some of my food into his bowl.
He crunched into it, his brow furrowing. “That’s not true, by the way. Dahn talks to you all the time. And Sullia threatens you. Although, I guess I’m not sure that counts.”
I chuffed what was maybe a laugh. It was hard to tell. All my emotions felt like they’d been left out in the rain to rust.
I’d been selected, through testing, to be a Datapoint because of my apparent lack of emotion. Empathy, in particular. It was what was required of every Datapoint who was admitted to the Station. But I was beginning to realize that I didn’t lack emotions at all. They’d always just operated without me really acknowledging them. They were quiet and smooth and whirring away under the hood. They’d rarely ever gotten in my way or even notified me they were there, but ever since I’d been abducted by the Ferrymen all those months ago, and especially since this whole mess with my mother had been going on, I’d felt as if everything inside me—that had before operated quietly and efficiently—was suddenly rusted and clanking. There wasn’t a single part of my mysterious inner workings that wasn’t grinding against the other parts, howling and flaking and breaking their spokes on every word I tried to speak with nonchalance.
“Dahn disappeared the second we touched back into the Station last night. And I wouldn’t define Sullia as a person. I think she’s more like a walking pathology.”
A laugh burst out of Cast as he bobbed his head from one side to the other. “Good point.”
He didn’t like Sullia Enceladus any better than I did. She was probably the scariest Datapoint on the Station. Even our instructors were wary of her. She’d tested at sociopathic levels, proving that she had no empathy to speak of. Like, zero. She’d been kidnapped by the Ferrymen along with me, and had made my life a hell ever since we’d gotten back. Either she just wanted my place as the chosen one so badly that she’d do anything to get it, or she just plain wanted me dead. We’d fought almost to the death just a few months back, in fact. She’d paid dearly for that. The Authority didn’t look kindly on an attack on me. They’d spent a few days figuring out if she was a traitor to the Authority or just a plain old psycho, and apparently come to the latter conclusion.
She’d come out of the interrogations even more crazy-eyed than when she’d gone in. But she’d been allowed to stay on the Station. I think the Authority wanted to keep her close because they had no idea what to do with her. Casting out someone like Sullia could potentially mean creating a bitter enemy. Instead, they’d opted to keep her close and try to find some way to wrangle her.
Honestly, I didn’t care. As long as she stayed on her end of the Station.
“I’m sure Dahn was called in to see Sir Haven to go over the new Datapoint training protocol. You know he’s his right-hand man.”
My spoon froze halfway to my mouth. “What new training protocol?”
“Oh. Right. You were still on Io when Haven announced it. I think he was gone for a few days, but he got back a couple days before you did. And he sent out this message to everybody that soon Datapoints are going to be learning this new procedure, and that every Datapoint, even the fully trained and certified ones, are going to have to learn it from the ground up.”
He looked as curious as he did chagrined. Learning a new training from the ground up was bound to be a lot of work, and a lot of time. Time that I knew he’d rather spend in the cockpit of a skip. But my mind was whirring too quickly to think of much more than this new protocol.
“What do you think the training will be for?” I asked, quasi-casual.
Cast shrugged. “Who knows? Everything’s turned on its head since you turned into Superman. Supergirl. Ah… SuperGlade.” His cheeks got redder as my scowl grew.
“Glade Io.”
I looked up and saw a woman, maybe in her late twenties, in the gray jumpsuit that most of the Station staff wore. She wasn’t a Datapoint. “Yes?”
“Sir Haven needs to see you.”
I nodded, schooling my expression into a neutral one. No one needed to know my feelings on Jan Ernst Haven. Especially Jan Ernst Haven. I needed to keep myself calm and aloof and… Hide. Hide in plain sight. If they can’t find you, they can’t take you
.
My mother’s voice was echoing in my head, but I couldn’t avoid Haven.
I pushed aside the rusty clanking of confused pain in my chest. I couldn’t concentrate on my questions about my mother right now. I needed to go see Haven and keep my shit together. But one thing about my mother that I knew for sure was that she’d always been right. I needed to hide. Even in the spotlight, as the chosen one, I needed to hide who I really was. How I really felt about all this. If I didn’t…. well, it was going to be my literal head on the literal chopping block.
“Alright. I’ll come right away.”
The woman nodded and disappeared into a crowd of Datapoints grabbing their food.
“You gonna finish the rest of your cereal?” Cast asked, a hopeful expression in his eyes.
I passed over my tray, clapped him on the shoulder, and headed toward Haven’s office.
Oh, joy.
I’d never liked being summoned to see Jan Ernst Haven. Used to be, in the good old days, I’d come to his office and he’d tell me exactly how disappointed he was in me. How I wasn’t living up to his expectations or my own potential. Man, oh, man. My precious potential.
If I’d only known just how destructive I had the potential to be, I might not have tried so hard. Apparently, a whole new breed of Datapoint lived and breathed in little old me.
And now there was more? A new training protocol for all the other Datapoints? What more could there be?
I was exhausted already, even as I trudged through the dim brown hallways of the Station. My brain was in ten different equally important places all at once. There wasn’t even a word for the soup that my thoughts were turning into. Maybe, as the chosen one, I could demand a vacation. They could jet me to some uncharted moon closer to the sun. I could sleep for a week under the stars, get woozy off of ozone, and never think about any of this again. For a week or so, anyway.
I knocked on Haven’s door and attempted to wipe the crazy off my face. I seriously felt like I was cracking, but I was well aware that my competency, my ability to do my job, was the only thing keeping my head attached to my shoulders—and, more importantly, keeping my sisters safe.
