Romy's Legacy: Book II of the 2250 Saga

by Nirina Stone

  I’m pulled in and look up, to see bright blue amused eyes looking into mine.

  “Ugh,” I say. “The last thing I need to see in my dreams is you.”

  Commander Blair laughs out. “You’re very welcome,” he says.

  The copta rises up into the sky, and we fly away as I shut my eyes in frustration.

  When I open my eyes again, I see sunlight glinting off my ceiling, and soft noises of people moving around in our neighbourhood. My bed is warm, soft, comforting, and yet I don’t feel rested. I’m still annoyed with the dream—why exactly did I need to live through that entire experience again?

  I decide to make my way to the military building where they hold Rojhay. There’s something about that shine in his eyes that has me intrigued—there’s something so familiar about him, and I can’t quite put my finger to it. I know I need to speak with him again.

  Mother doesn’t so much as flinch when she ushers me into the room where he sits. She doesn’t seem surprised I’m back so soon.

  Rojhay sits and stares ahead, frozen again like he was yesterday. He wears the same black clothes and is in very much the same position—I don’t know if he’s even moved from the couch.

  His eyes dart to me the moment I sit down. They shine bright, like they have a layer of water that’s about to fall on his cheeks. I wonder if whatever they use to freeze him has the capacity to freeze tears as well. I wonder if it hurts him to stay frozen in this state.

  “Hello, Rojhay,” I greet. I’m still not sure why I came to see him again, but at least he’s no longer glaring at me.

  He mutters a “Hello,” in return and continues to stare at me.

  “I wanted to ask you more about your people,” I say. What exactly, I don’t know, but he sits and waits. I hear Mother’s soft breaths beside me. “Why haven’t you lived on the surface?” I ask. “With all the space, the clean air, everything. Why did you all decide to stay underground?”

  I get that for centuries their people were down there, but once the surface was cleared to be livable, why did they stay underground?

  Even Citizens were quick to move to the surface the moment we knew we could. These people have more advanced technology than ours. They could have done so much. Then I remember that last time we spoke, he mentioned the “land monsters,” but surely there’s more to it than that?

  “The earth,” Rojhay says. “The earth doesn’t like us to live on the surface. People are not meant to live up top.”

  What in Odin is he talking about? I look over at Mother, my frown deep. She shrugs her shoulders and doesn’t take her eyes off Rojhay.

  “And why not?” I ask. “What exactly does the earth do?”

  His glare is back. “She sends her monsters. She sends her demons. She claims back what we take from her.”

  Sounds like more childhood stories. I can’t quite understand these people—how can they have such modern technologies and believe in “monsters” and “demons”? And, if such things do exist, how are they not able to protect themselves? I’m too surprised to continue.

  “They’re scared, Romy,” Mother says. “Their history archives teach them that man destroyed the earth hundreds of years ago. It’s rebuilt itself despite humans.

  “They consider the planet a sort of goddess. To them, she is sacred. To them, she is their mother. So they stay in her belly. Where she’ll always keep them safe.”

  A goddess, pregnant with a small people that “recycle” their dead, and run from imaginary “monsters”. Okay. Before I can process how bizarre the Northies are, Rojhay speaks again.

  “How is she?”

  Mother stiffens beside me and looks at my face. Rojhay’s eyes are on me. Is he talking to me? “How is who?” I ask, though I know exactly who he’s referring to—the girl with his eyes. Is she his daughter? How could he know about my dream?

  “Did she survive?” he insists. “Is she alive?”

  I frown, trying to sort through my memories. That mattress under my hand felt very real. So did the glass. How could he know?

  “What is he talking about?” Mother asks, her eyes still trained on me. “Did who survive?”

  I turn to face her and know that the deep frown on her face matches mine exactly.

  “I—I don’t—” I can’t finish, because now my memories are muddled. The dream wasn’t exactly like what happened in real life, but it was close enough. “She was absorbed into the ground,” I say to Rojhay. “She was recycled,” I finish, using his word from yesterday.

  His big round eyes narrow slightly and a tear runs down his cheek. I guess the nanofreeze doesn’t have an effect on tears after all.

  He struggles against something—I can’t tell what—and it looks like it pains him to speak.

  Still, he pushes through and says, “You need to help her. You need to save her. You need to help her—” he continues to say the words, louder and louder until he’s yelling.

  Mother calls in two Soren guards run in, and they grab him under the arms, dragging him through the door as he continues to yell at me. “You need to save her—Help h—”

  I sit back into the couch, still stunned, when Mother walks back into the room. “Who is he talking about?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “I think she’s his daughter, she has the same eyes.”

  “Was she one of your interrogators?”

  “No,” I say. “Well, not really. She was there, but only towards the end. She—” I pause, remembering the burns on her side. I’ve never heard of anyone surviving burns like that, no matter how strong or fast their nanites. “She died.”

  “Well then, why is he saying you need to save her?”

  I look up, surprised at Mother’s accusing tone. Like there’s something I know that I haven’t divulged.

  There is the dream, but that was just a dream.

  “I don’t know, Mother,” I say. It was a dream. Wasn’t it? If it wasn’t, what does it mean? “I don’t understand Rojhay or his people, at all.” Who knows why he would say something like that?

  “He—” she starts and hesitates as she peers into my eyes. “He seems to know a lot more than he is sharing with us and—”

  “And what, Mother? It’s not like you can force him to tell you everything he knows.”

  “Technically we can,” she says. “We’ve been using a psychoactive chem with him. It makes it physically impossible for him to lie to us. Or, well it should make it impossible, but he’s found some way to resist it. We have him on the greatest possible dosage, without losing him to hours of garbled speech.”

  Truthser, I think. I have heard of it—I’m not surprised they use it on Rojhay—they also freeze him, so why not?

  How does he fight it, I wonder? I nearly ask if they’d identified whether he has the same brain chemistry as we do. I have a feeling they have and I’d rather not know how, because what if it’s a horrible method?

  The Sorens are my people now. I need to embrace that and stop trying to find reasons why I shouldn’t.

  I look up and realize Mother still has her eyes on me. “I think you know more than you’re telling me as well,” she says. Her brow is furrowed. “Why is that, Romy?”

  I don’t know the answer to that, but I frown back at her. “There’s nothing more that I know, Mother,” I reply honestly. “I don’t know why Rojhay said those things to me.”

  She stares into my eyes like she will find some answer in there that I haven’t offered verbally.

  “Alright,” she finally says. “Maybe when they had you sleep all those times they gassed you, they messed with your memory somehow.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s plausible. I spent a lot of time passed out in that cell. I had no way of knowing how much time, but who knows what they could have done to me while I was out. I shake the thought away, and nod.

  “If you do remember anything,” she says, “make sure to tell me. Okay?”

  She says the last word like she doubts I will.
What could I have done to make Mother mistrust me? Something’s changed between us again. I’m not sure what. I just gained some headway with her, for Odin’s sake.

  I should have known it would be temporary. After I nod a second time, she dismisses me.

  Later, at night, I stay awake for far too long, staring up at the ceiling. I expect the static and Father’s voice from the back of my head again, but there’s nothing. Silence. Fighting sleep does no good as my eyes are heavy and shut often.

  Finally, I give in, hoping that I dream about something different tonight.

  That’s as likely as Rojhay giving Mother and her people all the information they need from him. As I shut my eyes to sleep, his words echo in my head. “You need to save her,” he yells.

  My eyes flutter open again, and I’m no longer in my room. I’m back in the cell, and the Northie speaks into her glass comm. I reach down to pick mine up as words float to the surface.

  Welcome back.

  I pick up the glass comm beside me and say, “How? How are you doing this? How are you showing up in my dreams like this? And why?”

  She gives me a slight smile and a nod as if she is pleased with my questions.

  We need to communicate with Rojhay.

  We found a way through you.

  “Why?” I ask again. “Why me?”

  Because we have you.

  “How are you doing this? What have you done to me?” I ask. “How are you making me have the same dream over and over like this?”

  You are not dreaming.

  But I have to be, I think. Because if I’m not dreaming, then I’m physically in this cell every night, and that can’t be. Can it?

  “How are you doing this? How am I here?” I repeat, pushing two fingernails into the palm of my hand to feel the pain. I know I’ve never experienced pain in dreams.

  We have you.

  You are here because we have you.

  My head starts to hurt. She must mean I’m still physically in the cell, then. Unless their technology is so superior, they’re doing something else entirely.

  They could have me traveling back and forth between this cell and Haven. Or they could have done something to my brain, and nothing that I think is happening is, in reality, happening. But which one is it? What in the world is real and what am I dreaming? And which is my reality right now? I can’t decide, but I remember Rojhay’s words in Haven. “You need to save her.”

  “Where’s the other girl?” I ask the Northie. “The girl I chased? Where is she?”

  She reacts to my sudden change in line of questioning. Her shoulders raise and her eyebrows raise.

  I realize I won’t know the truth of what’s going on with me right now, but it doesn’t matter. Who knows if this is a dream or if this is real and Haven’s a dream, or if both are real? Who knows if I’ll have the opportunity again? I must save the girl. I don’t even know why, but I’m compelled.

  She’s coming. Why do you need her?

  “I need to—” I’m not really sure what to say. But then, the Northie thinks she’s communicating with Rojhay through me somehow. So I say, “Rojhay told me to save her. Something—something bad is about to happen.”

  The Northie jumps to her feet and approaches the thick glass quickly.

  What is about to happen?

  I’m not entirely sure, I think, but whether this is a dream or real, this feels familiar, and I know I need to try to do something to save the girl.

  “You’ll be under attack soon,” I say. “They’re coming for me.”

  Her face is frozen in panic. She quickly reaches for the button I now know is beside the glass. I say,

  “Wait!” but it’s too late, and I pass out.

  When I come to, there she is—the girl. She watches me through the glass. Before I change my mind, I’m already on my feet and standing at the glass, my palms on its cold surface.

  “You can’t go out there,” I say to the glass. I doubt she can hear me. She watches me with her eyebrows raised. “You’ll die if you go out there. You can’t go,” I say. I realize that she probably won’t raise the glass if I’m on it. So I back away, with my hands at my chest, wanting her to know I mean no harm. I back away completely and try to keep my face calm.

  She watches me for another minute and finally moves to press the button. The moment the glass starts to rise, I say, “A bomb is about to hit. Don’t go out there.”

  “What?” she says. “What are you talking about?”

  “Rojhay told me that I have to save you,” I blurt. “I don’t have to save you if you don’t run out there.”

  She frowns at me, deciding something. Finally, she says, “What are they doing to Rojhay, Romymason?”

  Ugh. Did she hear anything I said? “Nothing,” I say quickly. “I mean, they’re questioning him, but he’s—he’s okay. He’s not being hurt.”

  I can’t be sure of that, of course, but I need her to focus on what I’m saying. “Please don’t go out there. If you go out there, you’ll be hurt.”

  When the bomb hits, she looks at me in surprise and reaches for the button, but I’m already running. I reach the edge of the glass and jump clear over it. She spins to run away from me, but I’m too fast. I grab her around the midriff and pull her back from the door.

  “Please,” I say. “If you go out there, you’ll get hurt. Please don’t—”

  She twists in my arms and throws her head back as she does. The impact on my chin is sudden and my entire head feels like it’s being crushed.

  I stumble back and land on my bottom. The impact jars my spine, and everything spins. When I look up, she’s already out the door. Why didn’t she listen to me? Why did she still run out there?

  I shake my head as though that will take away the pain, but all it does is make me dizzy again. I lean up on my knees and hold my head for a moment. I don’t have much time, but try to focus my eyes on the door. I wait for the stars to disappear from my eyes and breathe.

  The pain is still intense, but I stand and walk through the door, and jog to the right. I try to ignore the dizziness, but jogging does nothing for the pain in my head. I slow to a walk and lean against the metal wall as I move forward. I already know what’s coming next.

  Still, I stop in my tracks when I see her ahead, the burn on her side as fresh as the first time I saw it. Her eyes gleam at me, a tear falls down her cheek, and she slumps to the ground.

  I run up to her, catching her in my arms. “Why didn’t you listen?” I whisper. “Why did you run out there? Why didn’t you listen?”

  But she doesn’t reply. She stays still as I watch her breaths still. When they come for me, I don’t struggle. I don’t ask questions. My eyes shift away from the spot on the floor where I know she will disappear. I walk with them into the veda, and then through the sandstorm to the copta. I look up into bright blue eyes and don’t react when Blair smiles at me. I never noticed before, but he has a smug look on his face, like he’s so proud of himself.

  I glare at him until he relents with a chuckle.

  “You’re welcome,” he says, as he turns to the front of the copta and chats with the pilot.

  This becomes my reality for a span of I don’t know how long. No matter what I say in the dream, the girl doesn’t listen to me. No matter what I try, the girl runs and gets away from me. No matter how early I start to run or how I try to stop her, she shows up in that hallway burnt.

  She falls to the ground, and she is recycled.

  “You must save her,” Rojhay continues to tell me.

  “I try,” I reply. “But I can’t. I can’t.”

  Eventually, he stops speaking to me at all. I don’t blame him. If she is his daughter, I’m not the one he can count on to save her life. I’m as useless to him as I am to the Sorens.

  Every night, the moment I go to sleep, I fall back into the dream.

  Every morning, I wake up and life continues on in Haven. People are living in the community like they’ve been there for years
.

  I decide to visit the doctor, who has finally made his way off the Iliad. I tell him about my dreams and ask if there is anything I can do to stop them.

  He listens with interest, and wonders out loud if the dreams have anything to do with that illness I had, weeks before. He gives me a full body exam and tells me to come back the next day. I hope he can get rid of the dreams—if anything, they’re exhausting me.

  At home, I sit and chat with Strohm over the Mirrorcomm. It’s been a few weeks again, and he looks worse than the last time we spoke. More serious. More humourless.

  “The general tells me you’ve been chatting on the regular with the Northie,” he says.

  I nod, recalling Rojhay’s words. “You must save her.”

  When Eric doesn’t speak again, I realize that I haven’t responded to him yet. “I have,” I finally say. “I find his people—fascinating.”

  “But—” Eric starts. “But what is the purpose of the chats with him?”

  I notice light grey pockets under Strohm’s eyes, shadows that don’t belong on his otherwise boyish face.

  “I’m—I’m curious about them,” I say. “Are you okay, Eric?” I know he’s not about to tell me anything, but I’m suddenly worried about him.

  “What are you so curious about?” he says, confirming my suspicions that something is wrong, and that he’s not about to divulge anything. “I mean, aren’t you too busy, to be sitting and interviewing a Northie?”

  “They call themselves Metrills,” I say. Rojhay told me as much on one of our many chats before he stopped speaking to me. Before he realized I couldn’t figure out how to save the girl.

  Eric glares at me, his frown deepening. “Does it matter what they call themselves, Mason?” His voice is low, tense. He’s never called me by my last name before. “Why are you so fascinated by them, anyway?”

  I wonder about his new tone. Is he upset? I can’t imagine why, but I don’t respond. Truth is—I have absolutely no idea why I’m intrigued with the Metrills, except that they’re taking over my entire life, my days and my nights at the moment. Until I figure out why, I will continue to visit Rojhay.