“It doesn’t matter. This is our chance, Dol. We may never get another one. We have to do something. I’d get off this rock right now, except what I need might actually be here.”
His eyes are flinty, hard as steel. Not a brown-gold fleck in sight. He’s finally started to listen to the sound of his own angry voice. He’s forgotten about his heart.
The Grassboy who loves the Grassgirl goes out with the tides. The Grass Revolutionary comes in with them.
Perhaps there is something more frightening than love, after all.
RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY
To: Ambassador Amare
Subject: Lords/Icon Origins
Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout
Handwritten notes transcribed as follows:
DECRYPTED/DECODED SIGNAL FROM INCOMING ASTEROID (UNKNOWN OBJECT 2042 IC4):
…
TARGET SCAN COMPLETE…
ADVANCED CIVILIZATION DETECTED
TECHNOLOGY STATUS…15.3X-B
INITIATE PURIFICATION PROTOCOL 1.334AXS39
TARGETS SELECTED…13
PURIFICATION COMPLETE IN 66 TPU
CONTACT ATTEMPTS INITIATED
…
CONTACT IS POSSIBLE…
WHAT IS “PURIFICATION”??
… WHAT DO THEY WANT?
25
TIMA
At dinner that night, the four of us can barely face each other.
Tima isn’t speaking to Lucas or me. Ro isn’t speaking to Lucas. Lucas isn’t speaking to me. I’m not speaking to him. To make matters worse, Colonel Catallus is walking toward us. As if that wouldn’t immediately kill all of our appetites.
Lovely.
“Do you want to tell them what we found today?” Ro looks at Tima as he shoves most of an apple into his mouth. “After they ran off and left us?”
“Ro,” I say. “Quiet.”
There is nothing Ro can say in front of Colonel Catallus. We aren’t free to talk here. He knows that.
Lucas glares at Ro.
“Not really.” Tima puts down her fork. Her plate is untouched.
Colonel Catallus gives the four of us a withering look, positioning himself at our table, next to Lucas.
“I hear you left the compound today, Lucas.” He picks up a sharp knife and stabs into a slice of meat drowning in pale gravy. “You too, Doloria. Though I have to say, I was surprised to see you take the same liberties as Mr. Amare. Not having the same—should we say, protections—in place that he does.”
A threat. Of course.
When he eats, I hear his lips smacking and his teeth clicking. I want to tell him to eat with his hands. It would be more civilized.
“Speaking of which, have you discussed your little adventure this afternoon with the Ambassador, Lucas?”
“Should I?”
“Immediately. Did you not see any of my messages?”
Lucas holds up his leather-bound wrist, wearily. “As if I’d dare take off my handcuffs. You’d send the whole Sympa Guard after me.”
Colonel Catallus doesn’t smile. His mouth is pressed into a thin, watery line. “She’s been trying to speak with you all evening.”
“Funny. You found me easy enough.”
“Lucas, please.”
“I’m not pleased. But I am here if she wants me.” He’s as cranky as Ro today.
“She’s terribly worried, not that I blame her. I can’t imagine any mother being happy to hear her only son ran away to the Embassy City, only to be fired on by Grass Rebels.”
I almost choke on my bread. Is it true? Is that who was shooting at us?
Colonel Catallus shakes his head in my direction. He’s not interested in me, not now. Not in the same way he is in Lucas.
I look again to the medals and ribbons on his jacket. The shiny gold wings on his lapel catch the light.
Ro sets down his mug. “They weren’t Grass.” He looks at Colonel Catallus, who glares at him.
“I’m glad you have us to be worried about your safety, Furo. That’s why I’m having you escorted to your rooms, as soon as you’ve eaten. Nobody leaves their quarters until we get to the bottom of today’s little incident.” He smiles at all of us, cold as winter. “Is that clear? Because I’ve also got a few rooms set aside for you in the Pen, if you’d feel more secure there.”
Prison. Another threat.
With that, Colonel Catallus leaves us to sulk in peace.
Tima folds her napkin and lays it on the table in front of her. “Ro, do you want to go up to my room after dinner? I’m sure no one would mind, seeing as we’re not the ones in trouble here.”
Ro stops midway through shoving half a baked potato into his mouth. “Me? With you? What did I do now?”
“Nothing. I thought we could hang out, get to know each other better. Since we had so much fun alone together, today.” Tima attempts to flutter her eyelids, but it only looks like she’s gotten a cinder in her eye. “And I say that to imply touching, in case it wasn’t perfectly clear.”
She twists her legs, and I see that she’s stitched a seam up the back of each calf. It looks like she is wearing stockings. The stitches are precise, each one like a small staple. Red and white and yellow and green. The new tattoo makes me wonder.
Tima’s losing her mind.
Ro tries not to laugh at the awkwardness of the question.
“Okay.” He’d never touch her, not like that—and not for those reasons. But Lucas doesn’t know that, and I guess Ro doesn’t mind letting him think it.
“Tima—” Lucas starts. She cuts him off.
“Great. Let’s go. We can talk. And I say that to imply, you know. Not talking.” She stands up to go.
“Sit down.” Lucas tries again. She won’t.
Ro looks from me to Tima. “Sure. We can talk. I’d like that.” He grins and stands too, wadding up his napkin and letting it drop onto his plate.
I shake my head. Lucas looks disgusted. “Come on, T. I said I was sorry.”
She ignores him. They disappear out of the room.
“Well?” I look at Lucas.
“Well what?” He shrugs.
“We have to go after them.”
“Already thought of that. Doc?”
“Yes, Lucas?”
“Lock Tima’s personal quarters, will you? I’m afraid I’ve left something toxic inside, and I need to warn her.” Lucas sighs and I try not to smile.
“Commencing room-scan for toxins.”
“No, no. It’s nothing that will show up on a scan, Doc. It’s—a different kind of poison. Something new. Insidious.” His mouth twists and I begin to think he is enjoying himself.
“I understand. Does this poison have a name, Lucas? I should file it in the Catalogue and Compendium of Toxins, in the Embassy Wik.”
“Yes. It’s called… Amici Nex.” Lucas looks at me, arching one eyebrow. “And it’s a real pain in the ass.”
Doc’s voice returns. “I see. The Death of the Friend. It is a strange name, is it not? Not at all like the others. Oleandrin. Nerine. Nitriles. Isocyanides. Methanidiol.”
“I know. It’s really not like anything else. It gets you when you least expect it, and it’s positively lethal.”
Silence. Then, the grating rattles as Doc’s voice returns.
“The plexi-door is sealed. I have placed a Classified level ten clearance on the entry. Would you like me to alert Timora?”
“No, let me. Thanks, Doc. You’re a real lifesaver.”
“Given Timora’s natural sensitivity to risk, I understand this will be quite upsetting. Please proceed with caution, Lucas.”
“I always do.” He stands up, motioning to me. “You coming?”
I look at the row of Sympa soldiers standing by the door. “Sure. Me and your mother’s army.”
Lucas and I—and at least five soldiers—detour toward Tima’s room on the way to our own.
We can hear the screaming from the stairwell, two floors away. When we reach the hallway, I see through a window in the door that Tima and Ro are standing outside Tima’s room, while she stares up at the ceiling in exasperation.
Lucas doesn’t move from the stairwell. Instead, he turns to face the guards. “Leave us.” He speaks slowly and clearly, with a low, steady voice. “Five minutes. That’s exactly how long we’ll be out here. Then you can tell anyone who asks that we’re in our rooms. All four of us.”
I can’t bear to watch Lucas as he focuses his eyes on the Sympas. His pupils begin to dilate, and I have to look away when I feel the familiar warm pull.
Now that I know what it costs him, it’s hard to watch.
“You can swear you’ve locked us up and thrown away the key. Because you will have. You know it’s true.” I catch one last glimpse of his dazzling Lucas-smile. “Have I made myself clear? Any questions?”
Nobody has any. Nobody ever does.
We catch up to Tima and Ro as soon as the Sympas are gone. I’m not sure either one of them saw Lucas dispose of the guards, and I don’t tell them. Having to do it bothers him enough. Having to talk about it, that’s nearly as bad.
“Amici Nex? There is no such thing, Orwell.” Tima slams against her own door.
“It is not a common toxin, Timora. It is new. You may not have heard of it yet.”
“It’s a joke. A bad joke about a fight between friends. Between Lucas and me, Orwell.” Tima is shrieking. Doc says nothing. She shouts louder. “How can you be so stupid?”
“Strictly speaking, I would have to note that my intelligence is artificial but unlimited.”
I hear barking from the other side of the door.
“Just let me into my room.”
“I am afraid you do not have the security clearance to make such a demand, Timora.”
“Orwell! I’m going to kill you!”
“That is not possible.”
“It is. I will find a way to do it, if it means I have to erase every drive in the Embassy Wik. You know I will. So let me into my room, now!”
Ro is trying not to laugh, leaning against the side of the door. When Tima sees us, she turns and pounds on her door again.
“Doc. I can take care of things from here.” Lucas smiles.
“Would you like a hazmat team to meet you at the room, Lucas?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
There is a long pause before the round grating in the wall rattles again. “Was this in fact a joke, then?”
“Something like that.” Lucas winks at Tima. She punches the door, one last time.
“Was I sufficiently funny?”
I smile up at the grating. “Very. You were the funniest of all, Doc.”
The door slides open, and Tima lunges toward it. I see a glimpse of her room—of action figures and old comic book covers and games. Miniature tanks and tiny toy soldiers.
Brutus, her dog, comes bounding out into the hall and into Tima’s arms, licking her face.
“If you liked that joke, I have an even better one.” And with that, the door slides shut and locks itself again. “Now try your own doors. All of you.” Doc sounds pleased.
“We’re screwed.” Lucas shakes his head.
“Screwed but alone,” Tima points out, though she never takes her eyes off her dog. “Probably for the last time in a while, after the stunt you and—you two—pulled today.” She won’t say my name.
I sigh.
“Did anything really happen today, when we were gone?” Lucas asks her directly now, because in all the chaos, she has forgotten to ignore us.
“No,” says Ro.
“Yes, actually.” Tima looks at Ro. “That’s what I was going to tell you, when you came up to my room.”
“Really, because I thought you said we’d be doing something else. Other than talking.” Ro is teasing her, but she shuts him down with a look. That kind of look, she’s good at.
“Since I got here, I’ve spent a lot of time in the library. I’ve read literally thousands of digi-texts on computers, and how they work. It’s sort of amazing—did you know there is actually a language designed just to communicate with computers, to tell them what to do? Imagine if it were that easy to communicate with people.”
“It is. It’s called words.” Ro rolls his eyes. She pinches him in the arm until he yelps.
“Tima?” Lucas is impatient, shoving his hands through his hair. His nervous habit.
“Sorry. My point is, I’ve figured out how the Embassy computers work, how they’re connected, and where things are stored. Classified things.”
“As in?” I nudge her.
She looks at Lucas, embarrassed. “I should have told you, but I didn’t want the Ambassador to find out. It’s how I get around the guard patrols. I found a way into the security logs.”
Lucas raises an eyebrow. Tima keeps talking.
“It’s this thing, where people used to break into private computers and look at encrypted information. They called it ‘hacking.’ Anyway, I used hacking to access things I’m not supposed to see. We’re not supposed to see.”
Ro snaps back to attention. “So what did you see?”
“Not as much as I’d like. I used Catallus’s terminal to look around in his encrypted files, but I only had a few minutes and didn’t get too far.”
Lucas explodes. “You used Catallus’s private digi? Are you insane? Do you know what he would have done to you if he’d found out?”
“Yes. And I don’t want to think about it. But I found something. Well, to be more accurate, I read something. About us. And the Lords.”
“What thing?” Lucas asks.
I look at her. “Tima?” The energy is rising around us. My face is growing flushed—but so is hers.
“Not so fast.” She takes a breath. “I also went back to the Hall of Records.”
“How?” I think of the Sympas in the stairwell.
“Orwell and I did. When I asked, he said it was time, and he took me. Opened every door.”
“Where was I during your little recon mission?” Ro looks insulted.
“You went to your room to mope.” Now she finally glares at me. “Ro’s horrible, you know. When you aren’t around. I don’t know how he exists in the world.”
Ro turns red. “That’s not tr—”
She cuts him off. “Anyway, I think I figured it out.”
“What,” Lucas asks.
“It. Everything.” Tima looks smug.
I can’t stand it. “Go on.”
She tries to play it cool but I can tell she’s excited. “I could tell you, but I might as well show you. You’re not going to believe this.” She looks at Lucas. “But everything is in my room. Can you tell Doc to let us back in?”
Lucas sighs, and thinks for a moment. “Doc?”
“Yes, Lucas?”
“I need to get into Tima’s room now. There’s a book of jokes I wanted you to have. I left it inside.”
Nothing happens. Doc is wising up, I think.
“A hundred and one jokes,” Lucas adds.
Still nothing. Lucas sighs.
“A thousand and one.”
The door slides open, almost begrudgingly.
Tima runs back into her room, and all anyone can do now is follow.
Brutus the dog, last of all.
EMBASSY TELEGRAM
MESSAGE MARKED CRITICAL CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY
From: General Ambassador to the Planet Miyazawa
To: Ambassador Amare, Los Angeles Icon
Leta,
I received your messages regarding the purported Icon Children. Understand you have identified four possible candidates.
It is imperative that you maintain close supervision without raising alarm.
Test. Verify. Then reverify.
Most important: tell nobody. This must remain between us. If the opposition finds out, we will have a full-scale uprising.
If the Lords
find out who and what they are, and what they can do—God help us all.
—M
26
LUCAS
The door slides shut, and I look around Tima’s room. I notice the familiar circular gratings, but they are pulled out, wires dangling.
Tima follows my look with a shrug. “I don’t like people, or machines, listening in on me.”
“Agreed.” Ro nods, approving.
“Anyway, we can talk here.”
“So talk,” Lucas says, evenly. He doesn’t want to hear another word, but he can’t admit that. Not to us.
She shoots him a hurt look. “I am. I mean, I will. Listen to this—our birthdays are the same day because we were all cooked up in the same lab, on the same day.” Tima grabs a Wik drive, quivering with a heady mix of fear and excitement.
Brutus licks her hand, and she scratches his ears.
“And based on this new bit of research I’ve so cleverly uncovered—not by moping, I might add, or by showing off for some girl”—she pauses to glare at all of us—“I’ve made a few educated guesses about why we’re all here. Why we’re all different. I think we share a lot more than a birthday.”
We sit on the floor, and a silver digi is laid open between us. Four more sit in a stack, nearby.
“Wait, back up. Did you say cooked? You mean, from the flesh market?” Ro is the one who speaks.
“I can’t believe we didn’t think of it before. It explains everything, at least about our birthday. We’re from the same cycle in the lab.”
“Not me,” says Ro. “I don’t have your birthday.”
“At least, not so you know. But there’s a Costas on the receipt, I’ll show you.”
She jams a drive into a vid-screen. Immediately, text flashes, and she begins to scroll rapidly as she speaks. The words are flying by.
“I don’t know why the full lab report is missing. The Wik doesn’t give a reason.”
“Of course it’s missing,” says Lucas, dully. He looks exhausted, like he already knows he doesn’t want to hear anything Tima is about to say.
“But I did find a form ordering payment to our parents. Wandi and Ruther Costas.” She looks at Ro. “Maria Margarita and Felipe de la Cruz.” She looks at me. “Peter and Lia Li—those are my parents,” she says, glancing up. “And one Leta Amare. I think we all know who that is.”
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