Yalena explained what she could about the signal, but she grew uneasy, seeing the commander’s tense expression and the way he stood in front of her completely still, leaning forward as if he was drinking in all the information. When she reached the point in her story where they met the Fians, Yalena shuddered, wishing she could skip over it. The words came out slowly, and she had to look away from the commander’s eyes. When she finished, O’Donnell stood up in one smooth and slow motion.
“I don’t understand why,” he said.
“Gene editing was already a practice during the Migration,” Dana said. “If there was something threatening them in the new world, gene hacking to coexist with it must have been their only option to survive.”
“That’s fair,” O’Donnell said. “But I don’t understand why they were so set on hiding the mutation.”
“Come on, Marcus,” Cooper said. “History isn’t a great example of accepting the different.”
“Then why reveal themselves now?”
“It was done on purpose,” Yalena said, recalling Sibel’s confession.
“I don’t know.” The commander rubbed his chin. “How long until Artemis gets back?”
“Anytime now. And one more thing, commander,” Alec jumped in to cover a point Yalena had only glossed over. “They did something to her. One minute, she was fine, and the next, she couldn’t stand, and she got sick, and...”
His voice trailed off at the drastic change of mood in the room. O’Donnell’s posture stiffened, and his jaw twitched, while Cooper slapped a palm across his face and swore loudly. Even Dana’s eyes narrowed, and she nodded to the commander before she spoke in her Berry.
“This is Dr. Dana Lannely. The Apollo freshmen have been exposed to an alien environment with possible air-borne virus contamination. Seal off all corridors they have used and quarantine everyone who has been in contact with them. The first Academy floor is under quarantine. No one is allowed in or out without protective wear.”
Yalena covered her mouth with her palms in horror. It had been stupid of them not to consider a virus scenario, but it only took her a minute to realize why they hadn’t.
“Commander, no. It wasn’t a virus,” she said. “It only affected me. Alec was fine.”
“Viruses affect people differently, Yalena. You couldn’t know,” Dana said, already approaching her with a flashlight. “Let me see your eyes.”
Yalena obeyed with a quiet fear in her heart. The last thing she needed was to turn into a virus-crazed lab rat.
“I don’t think it was a virus, sir,” Alec said to the commander. “She got better as soon as we got away from the Fians, and she’s been fine ever since.”
O’Donnell was quiet for a moment, deliberating, and then his gaze fell on Alec’s hurt hand.
“Did you throw the first punch?”
“No,” Alec said. “They wanted something from her. We only escaped because there was infighting between them. Then they went searching for students through the forest on some sort of small air motorbikes.”
Alec’s explanation went on to describe the chase through the forest, but the commander stopped him. He buried his face in his palms, then paced around, seemingly trying to digest all the information. When he looked at Yalena, she almost felt the blame coming off him like a heat wave.
“What were you thinking? That you could take on a planet of mutated humans on your own?”
Shoulders slumping, Yalena knew there was little she could say in the way of excuses.
“You and Eric! I’ve been watching you all year. So brave, so stubborn, and such dreamers. Don’t you realize how dangerous this is?” The commander’s question stung her painfully, but not nearly as much as the next one. “What did Eric do out there?”
Yalena’s voice trembled, when she tried to answer: “Nico went to warn Artemis about the mutation. Last we heard from him, Eric and Jen were still on Nova Fia, exploring.”
She feared these words would trigger the commander even more. Instead, he just kept pacing back and forth, looking through the group of students, searching.
Yalena couldn’t defend herself, not after everything Natalia had screamed at her back on the Eagle. Her face felt burning hot, and she had to lower her gaze while Sebastian rehashed the rest of the details. She had to admire the matter-of-fact way he mentioned Natalia’s outburst and explained why she’d been carried in on a stretcher. Dana instructed her co-workers on how to take care of her and asked someone to examine Alec’s hand. But before the rest of the paramedics could attend to him, there was a commotion at the door, and Yalena breathed out a sigh of relief at the sight of Jen and Eric.
They walked in slowly, followed by the rest of the Artemis crew and Nico, whom Yalena ran to without hesitation.
“I am so sorry. I am so sorry!” she cried when she hugged him.
He nodded, but he didn’t answer. Nico’s uniform was smeared in mud and green and orange grass stains, but he seemed fine. Yalena’s jaw trembled, but before she could ask any of the others if they were all right, she finally saw the object that had drawn everyone’s attention.
With a wavering hand, Jen passed a big, translucent sample box to Eric, who placed it on the well-lit auditorium round table. Amid piles of ice in the box, there was a purple hand, severed at the wrist. Yalena wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, but she knew the image would remain burnt on her retinas.
“What did you do?” O’Donnell’s question was quiet, filled with dread. Sudden coldness spread through the air, and Yalena’s heart skipped a beat.
Chapter 28. The Undeniable Proof
“WE GOT PROOF,” WAS Eric’s short answer. He sounded rebellious and proud in a strange way—not like a naughty kid, but like he was challenging an equal.
“You’re mad,” Dana said with a trembling voice, but she didn’t mean Eric. It took Yalena a second to follow her gaze and see how her eyes stared at Jen with bewilderment.
“I...” Jen stuttered, nervously trying to wipe her clammy hands on her uniform, “I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“Couldn’t think of anything else?” the commander asked in shock. “Nothing apart from attacking the humanoid locals on an alien planet? Do you want to start a war?”
“Dad, we needed proof, or else no one was going to believe us. Don’t you see? They’ve been hiding for generations.” Eric tried to make his case, but from the look on the commander’s face, he was failing.
“The only way to expose their mutation is to gain insight into the genetics of it, and we can’t get the DNA unless we have access to the proteins created by it...” Jen stammered, as if hearing the scientific argument for this would somehow excuse their actions.
“So, you chopped off someone’s hand?” Dana almost screamed at her.
“Not possible,” Alec said.
He was calm, considering the circumstances, and he had that investigative look again, like he could smell the truth before anyone else had even attempted to sniff the air.
“I threw a simple punch at one of them, and look at my hand!” Alec pointed at his swollen fist. “There’s no way you,” he nodded at the trembling Jen, “and chicken-muscle O’Donnell managed to defeat one of them and cut off a hand.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve.” Eric stepped decisively toward Alec, and Cooper had to jump in between them.
“Stop it,” he ordered, pushing Eric back.
“I’ve had it up to here with you, Rado.” Eric’s eyes were bulging and red. “Nico told me what happened with Yalena there. When did it finally occur to you to get her out, huh?”
Yalena was sure Alec would jump up, ready to fight at that invitation, but he looked puzzled and guilty. The seconds dragged out without a reaction from his side.
“Stop bickering, and tell me what happened,” O’Donnell said, his voice quiet, but powerful enough to draw everyone’s full attention. “Jennevier?”
Jen’s jaw clenched as she seemed to struggle to find the words to describe it all.
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“We didn’t hurt anyone,” she said, but her explanation didn’t fit with the cut-off hand in the box.
“Try explaining that to the reporters we have on our backs,” Cooper said.
“I swear, we didn’t,” Eric insisted.
“Then tell me what happened,” O’Donnell demanded again. It seemed like he was the only one who could get over the sight of the purple hand in the container long enough to try to understand why or even how it was here.
“We went to the morgue,” Jen said, and Yalena felt sick again. “It was a medical science center, so I figured they must have one.”
The explanation was enough to cause a breathless pause in the room.
“Nico came over and told us about the mutation and that something was happening with Yalena,” Eric filled in, seeing as no one else was going to say anything. He seemed to be trying to reason with his father, rather than simply retelling the story. From the commander’s tense posture, he could probably tell, as well as Yalena, that it was not to his liking.
“We couldn’t let them get away with all of this, Dad.” Eric skipped over any formalities. “We needed proof, and now we have it.”
“DNA modifications change the proteins constructing an organism. If we have the proteins, meaning the tissue and bone marrow of a Fian, we can construct their DNA model,” Dana said, searching for a reaction from Jen, who nodded without saying a word.
The mood in the room had changed drastically in a matter of seconds. Panic and shock were pushed out by something else: the understanding that they had something solid. They finally had a piece of the truth.
“Dad, I know this seems mad, but we thought if we didn’t get this proof now, when we were so close to them, then how would we be able to tell whole world? We’d have to stall and plan more missions before we could confirm it. This has been going on for over a hundred years. They’ve been out there, lurking, hiding, standing by as the Quakes shook our world, and never sending any news back. It has to end. We made it end.”
“Eric’s right.” Yalena found the strength to speak again. “They shot at all of our cameras and took Alec’s personal recorder. They saw me destroy my Berry. If it were up to their leader, Felix, they would keep hiding.”
“You said there was infighting?” O’Donnell turned to Yalena.
“Sibel and a few others wanted us to know the mutation exists,” she said. “I don’t know why, but it must be important.” She shivered a little, noticing the hard lines on the commander’s forehead. If he asked her to sit on this and keep it quiet, she couldn’t obey.
The commander paced around the room without a word, making Yalena realize he was pondering the exact same question she had in her mind. What should they say to the world waiting outside the walls of this room? None of the freshmen dared to speak for a while. Yalena couldn’t escape the feeling that whatever was going on with the Fians, it was just the beginning.
“We can’t afford to instill panic,” O’Donnell said at last.
Yalena’s eyes flickered back to the purple hand in the translucent ice box, as if unable to confirm its existence. “That will be hard. This mutation makes the Fians feel a lot closer to aliens than long-lost human survivors.”
“We have no choice,” the commander said. “I’ll need a special task force for managing the relationship with them going forward. We can’t do all of it in secret. And you two,” he pointed at Eric and Yalena, “should do your best to wrap that notion around your heads.”
“We can’t tell them everything, though,” Cooper said, and his conspiratorial tone made Yalena uneasy.
All eyes closed in on the commander, expecting a reaction, but none came straight away. He didn’t even twitch, and Yalena knew he finally understood. He had put all the pieces together at last, and looking at the final picture, he didn’t seem to like it one bit.
“We’ll start with the existence and specifications of the wormhole,” O’Donnell said. “Then, after contact has been established with Nova Fia and their leader, after I’ve negotiated with him, we’ll reveal them to the world.”
“They’ll find out that we have their genetic material soon enough. They’ll have no way of denying the mutation,” Dana said.
“Let’s hope that if we show them we mean no harm, they’ll finally have no reason to hide.”
Yalena frowned, remembering the Interplanetary Act for Human Rights she’d so diligently memorized. Deciding to go against it and perform an examination of genetic material without the explicit consent of the owner was a move opening them up to a world of criticism.
“Take it to the lab and analyze it,” the commander ordered Dana. “We’re holding a press conference in the next forty-eight hours to publicly announce this. Cooper, arrange it.”
Yalena felt a strange surge of adrenaline as she watched Dana and Cooper nod. It hadn’t all been in vain. Putting everyone at risk, barely surviving meeting the Fians—it hadn’t been for nothing. The world was going to know their secret. After more than a hundred years of lies, the truth was finally going to surface, and to a large extent, it was because of her.
Finally having a course of action to follow seemed to have relaxed the commander, and he went over to Eric. Despite the professional distance between them, Yalena was sure that he wanted to pull him into a hug. He only placed an arm on his shoulder instead. “Are you all right?”
“Dad...” Eric looked up, and to Yalena’s surprise, his expression was tortured. She rushed over to his side, scanning his hands and body for any injury. “There’s something else, too.”
The commander’s eyebrows drew closer together.
“When we were looking for the morgue, we ran into two Fians.” Eric’s eyes found Yalena, and she got the odd feeling that he meant to apologize for what was coming. “We managed to hide in time, so they didn’t see us, but we heard them.” Eric paused, turning to Jen, who seemed just as sheepish as him at that moment. “They were talking about Yalena.”
Air drained out of her lungs, and it took a second before it flowed back in. So, it hadn’t just been her. Whatever Eric had heard was proof that she had been right. There was something the Fians knew about her, and something they wanted with her as well.
“They said they had to warn somebody about her,” Eric continued, “and that you would have to protect her, now that things have been set in motion.” His voice was barely audible at the end, but it made all the things Felix had said to Yalena swim up to the surface all the same.
“And,” Jen added cautiously in the dead silence, “they were calling you something...” She hesitated.
“A Troian,” Yalena guessed for her. The stiff grimace on Jen’s face confirmed it.
“What the heck is a Troian?” Cooper’s voice broke the tension.
“I think it’s a name. I think they know something...” she swallowed, realizing she was going to sound crazy, “about me...about my origin.”
Her whisper died off, and Yalena had to stare down at the floor, too scared to see everyone’s reaction to that statement. Still, she couldn’t shake off the memory of the paralyzing feeling she had felt among the Fians. She was almost sure Felix knew something more about her. Something he hadn’t said during the short encounter.
“Yalena,” the commander said, but she kept her gaze down. “Whatever they told you, they couldn’t know anything about you.”
“They did, Sibel and Felix both,” Yalena said, unable to escape the memory, which was now burned into her brain like a tattoo. “You weren’t there. Felix sensed me somehow. He couldn’t understand what was happening at first, either, but then he said someone had succeeded a long time ago...”
“Succeeded in what?” Eric asked, and she could see he was on her side.
“I don’t know, but there was something they wanted from me.” Yalena hesitated at those last words. Somehow, it felt she should have said “with me” instead.
“Stop, stop, both of you!” the commander interrupted Eric before he said anythin
g else. His face was turning red, and for the first time since the moment they arrived back to the Academy, O’Donnell seemed incapable of containing the coming outburst. “I understand you got a kick out of decoding the signal, finding the wormhole, and confirming your theory about Farsight, but not every crazy hunch you have will lead somewhere. We have way too much to deal with right now. This is not the time to dive into new hypotheses. This is the time to put up a strong front and keep our society together at the frontier of the most groundbreaking news in centuries. Can’t you see our entire world is at stake?”
“But commander, if they know something about my origin, I have to...” Yalena countered more fiercely than she had intended to.
“You won’t find anything out.” The commander’s face had changed, and he let out a deep sigh. There was certainty in his words, such unbreakable certainty that Yalena’s mouth fell open for a long moment.
“Do you know something?” she asked him, her mouth so dry, she couldn’t swallow. She had tried to put her origin mystery out of her mind. She had always said she didn’t need to know, but she did. A facade was easy to keep up back on Earth, but here and now, at the center of untangling the messiest knot in space history, how could she ignore her past, especially when it had so much to do with her present?
O’Donnell looked at her with a mixture of harshness and pity, like he would no longer keep things quiet to protect her feelings, but like he understood how much it would hurt to know the truth at the same time.
“Dad, don’t!” Eric urged, seeing this mixed expression, or afraid that his father wasn’t going to change his mind.
“It’s high time she knew,” the commander said, and Yalena’s heart fluttered so fast, she was about to faint. “I am sorry for not picking a better moment to tell you this, Yalena. I always wanted to wait until you asked me yourself, until you were ready to hear it.”
The Unsound Theory (STAR Academy Book 1) Page 25
