by Nirina Stone
Right. I can imagine Eric going into the role, bright eyed that the fight was over, that everything he did to get to that point was for the good of Apex, for the good of the people.
“And now people are hungry, working harder than they ever had to before P-City was brought down. It’s simply not what they think we’d promised them, when in actuality, all we promised was the truth.”
Exactly how difficult is it for them? I wonder. It’s not like most Citizens were living the high life before P-City was brought down. We’re accustomed to working the land, for the most part.
“What exactly is going on there?” I ask. “I mean, what are the challenges?”
“When P-City was brought down, so were most of the factories. The Sorens didn’t discriminate between which were real factories and which were a show. We went after everything, Romy.”
And it finally clicks. Food production must have been hit hard, as well as most of the bots around P-City that were taken for granted by all the Prospo and many of the Citizens. They went from an automated lifestyle to a fully hands-on lifestyle. The work is much harder without machines to do much of the job for you.
“Oh,” I finally say, understanding.
“Yeah.” He runs his hand through his hair again. “I honestly thought we were doing the right thing until all this started surfacing at Haven. Then I realized what a massive mistake we made, going in, guns ablaze, not planning for the repercussions when we had so many people relying on us.
“Relying on our help to pull them out of that mess. We had put more faith in their ability to overcome, to adapt, than we ever had any right to. We were hopeful. Hope can only take you so far.”
What a disaster. Here I was thinking all was well in Apex, as we built our homes here in the north where we also thought all was well.
“What now, Blair?” I ask. Nothing is working out quite as well as we’d like. Our happy ending didn’t quite happen the way we thought. We are far from having a happy ending the way things stand right now.
“Well,” he says, “we stay here with the Metrills for as long as they let us, I suppose. You learn everything you need to learn about Rosemary and the Legacies and everything. Then—”
“Then—?”
“I’m not sure,” he says as he leans back with his eyes closed. This is the first time I’ve ever seen Blair unsure about something. It’s the first time he’s ever looked as lost as I feel. For once, the white hairs on his crown age him.
“I should go back to Apex,” he says finally. To the war zone? When I ask why, he says, “It’s where I belong because I helped cause this. I’m responsible to help bring it back together to some semblance of whatever it is we planned.”
And of course I’m wondering what will happen to me, where I’ll go, what I’ll do. I can’t imagine going back to Apex. Knowing that it’s a disaster makes me want to stay away. On the other hand—
“Where do you think the Iliad’s gone?” I ask.
“Not a clue,” Blair says. “They don’t exactly keep me updated on their location anymore. I guess since I went ‘rogue’ I’m on my own until I prove otherwise.”
This is insane. Why did I willingly follow him that night? Why didn’t I tell him to go away? Why didn’t I fight him? Oh right, because I didn’t have a set plan of my own on where to go after I escaped. Also, because he was ready to break my limbs to make me follow.
There’s no point mulling over it, anyway. Everything was going south in Apex, long before the night we fled Haven. I was being kept in the dark yet again. By Mother, by Eric. For whatever reason, they like to keep me uninformed. They’ve set up this ‘relationship’ because of some misguided wish to keep the Legacies intact and I simply had no say in the matter. If I ever see either one of them again—
“I need to see Mother,” I decide. “In person. I’m coming with you to Apex.”
“Are you nuts?” he says. “I thought it was bad enough you wanted to go back to Haven, but luckily, they weren’t there so it turned out alright. Now you want to face them in Apex? Don’t you—don’t you remember that they would have had you executed the day after you escaped?”
Yes of course. There is no doubt that I would have been found guilty of starting the fires in Haven. Truthser is one hundred percent accurate. There’s still something in me that believes—that wants to believe—Mother knows I’m innocent. That she’d listen to me. She wouldn’t go through with having me executed.
When I don’t respond, Blair stares at me until he’s so frustrated, he turns around in his glidingbot. “I don’t get you sometimes,” he says. “You’re so smart. Except when it comes to your own parents.”
“What about my parents?” I ask.
“It’s like you have them on some high moral pedestal. Like you can’t see that they’re as fallible as the next person. That they’re not perfect. You have the awe of a five year old for your parents. Even now, even despite knowing what you know. What is that, anyway?”
I have no answer for him, but what does he know about my parents? Nothing.
“Is that a Citizen thing?” he says, which makes my back prickle. I haven’t been a Citizen in well over a year. He grins at me and I hold back the instinct to punch him in the face. Why this man brings out my violent side, I don’t know. Holding my fist close to my side, I tell myself that now’s not the time to try to beat him up—not while he’s still handicapped.
“You know nothing about me,” I finally say, “or my parents. Or Citizens.”
“Is that right?” Blair says. “Then tell me what makes you all act like your parents are so perfect.”
“My parents are not perfect. Still, I don’t believe that Mother’s everything you’ve said. I can’t believe it. Father died trying to protect me from—something.”
I realize that what I’m saying doesn’t refute his theory but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. His opinion about me and about them—about everything that I know does not matter. So I tell myself.
“Why wouldn’t you let me talk to Eric?” I suddenly ask.
His eyebrows peak—the question surprises him as much as it does me.
“If you want to talk to your fiance,” he finally says, “no one is stopping you.”
I make my way out of the room, not looking back at him.
When Eric’s face pops back up on the holoimage, he glares at me before readjusting his expression. He was expecting Blair, I’m guessing. “Where is he?” he says.
“In another room,” I reply. “I wanted to talk to you. I want to know what you know.”
“What has Blair told you?” he asks.
“Only that nothing in Apex is the way I thought. People aren’t happy with their new freedoms.”
He sighs and leans into me. “That’s a severe understatement. Does it really surprise you?”
“Well—” I really didn’t think about it. It’s selfish of me, but I thought all was well. How was I to know there were a lot more people like Isaac in Apex than I thought? “What exactly is going on over there?”
“Do you actually care, Mason?”
The formality takes me by surprise and I lose track of what it was I was about to ask him. I do care, don’t I? Apex was as much my home as it was his—even more so, since he lived on ships most of his life.
“Of course I care.”
“You’re gallivanting around up north, doing who knows what with Blair. You’re calmly on vacation with the Northies. You haven’t asked me once what’s going on out here. So can you blame me for being skeptical?”
His voice rises in anger as he continues to glare at me. I don’t know how to respond to him other than glare back. I don’t know where to start with his accusations and want to yell back, but I know there’s no point. We’ll end up in a yelling match like him and Blair.
“I haven’t asked you because any time I ask questions, you shut me out, Strohm.” It’s true, though it’s not the entire reason I haven’t asked for news about home. Maybe there’s a par
t of me that knew things weren’t as ideal there as I thought. Maybe I’d rather not know.
All I know is, I’m too scared to learn the truth, but I’m tired of being left in the dark. The question is—which will win out? Maybe Blair’s right and I need to accept whatever truth I can.
“Okay,” Strohm says, “what if I promise not to shut you out anymore? What will you do then? What will you do once you know everything there is to know about what’s going on out here?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “But could you give me the benefit of the doubt here? I’m not some useless little Citizen anymore, remember?” I wonder if he does remember. I wonder what he really thinks of me. I wonder if he believes I did start the fires in Haven.
He’s contemplative for a moment. “We’re at war, Romy,” he says. “Or at least, we will be soon if things keep going the way they do. We’re losing control of what’s going on in the fringes. There’s not much we can do—except—”
“Except what?”
“Except have you speak to them again. Have you address everyone in Apex. That’s the only thing we haven’t tried.”
Why would anything I say have an impact on what’s going on in Apex? “Are you kidding?” I ask. Does he not know that I was about to be executed for my role in the Haven fires, not a couple of weeks ago?
“I’m not at all kidding, Romy,” he says. He frowns at me to hammer home the point.
“What makes you think that would do anything?”
“Romy,” he sighs. “You’re the face and the voice that they trust. Don’t you get it? Do you think that looping video you did was the end of your responsibility here?”
My face. My voice, running on a continuous loop throughout Apex and the colonies on the moon and Mars as we destroyed everything they knew and believed in Apex.
“They know you. They trust you. They will look to you for guidance.” Then he mumbles something under his breath that sounds like, “We hope.”
It’s my turn to look skeptical but I wait and think it through. What would it hurt, really?
“And your mother—” he says. “Well, she can be convinced.”
“She thought I betrayed the Sorens,” I reply. There’s a part of me that hopes she doesn’t, but—
“I’ll talk to her. Let me talk to her. It’s our only choice right now, Romy. People are busy killing each other out here. Soon, we won’t know who’s getting killed by whom anymore. You’d be the one symbol of hope that could remind them of why we did all this in the first place.”
So it’s much worse than I imagined.
I nod. There’s no harm in me addressing the nation again. What’s the worst that could happen, really?
15
Decisions
Blair yells at me as he glides up and down the room, his hand running through his hair. “It’s a trap, don’t you get it?”
It’s not the first time he says that, but I keep quiet this time, wondering why he’s so upset. Wondering why he’s reacting at all to the news.
“I don’t think so,” I reply, though my voice doesn’t sound as confident as I feel. “I mean, what if Eric’s right? What if my addressing Apex will help keep the peace a little bit longer? It won’t be right if I don’t try something.”
“Okay,” he says. His glidingbot abruptly stops beside me. “Okay, say you’re right. Why can’t you address them from here?”
“Because he thinks it’s best if I’m there in person,” I say. “If we’re together in public, to show a united front. It’s hardly compelling if I’m logging in from a different country.” As I speak the words, I’m a little less convinced. Still, what option do I have? Staying here isn’t doing me any favours.
“What’s the big deal?” I say. “Soon as you’re able to walk again, you plan on heading back to Apex. What’s wrong with me going there too?”
“What about the trial?” he says. “What about your mother?”
“Eric will talk to her and the officers. She’ll have to see that this option is far better than having me killed. It’s for the good of the nation.”
Blair mutters something under his breath, but I catch it anyway. “—So important.”
“I don’t think I’m that important,” I say. “But I need to do something to help. You said it yourself. We helped start this. We helped put this in motion.” We’re the reason Apex is not the utopia we thought we left behind. “We need to fix this. We need to try something.”
“Okay,” he says, his voice resigned. “Okay—but promise me something.”
“What?”
“Trust no one. Don’t trust Strohm or your mother. Don’t even trust yourself.”
What a thing to promise, I think, but I comply anyway. It’s the least I can do. I head to my quarters, meaning to have a chat with Father’s holopersona while I pack the little I have. This will be one of the last times I speak to him—to it—before I head back to Apex. This is my chance to get some answers. Whether he’ll willingly give me any answers is another matter entirely, but I have nothing to lose.
When he pops up, I ask the first thing that’s been bothering me all this time.
“Blair told me to ask you about Stockholm Syndrome,” I say. “What is it?”
“I can show you if you’d like,” he says. Then he reaches his hand up to my head. I shrink back for a moment, but remember that this is the way he shares details he knows.
The stream of information flows through my mind so fast, by the time he retracts his ghostly hand, I’m much more informed. Huh—I think. That’s new.
“Capture-bonding,” I muse, looking up at the holopersona. “So it’s a natural, human thing, is it? Feeling empathy for one’s captors?” And how many times have I been a captive now, even counting my time as a Citizen? Well, all my life really, if I’m being honest with myself.
“We-ell—” he says, looking and sounding more like Father than he has any right to be. “It doesn’t happen to all humans, but most are susceptible, yes.”
I remember thinking that Eric was kind to me, that he could have been meaner, or abusive, that he gave me chocolate—and how much I’d wanted to kiss him, especially after every moment of kindness.
“Ugh,” I mutter. “I feel like a complete fool.”
“You shouldn’t,” the holo says. “How were you to know you were being manipulated? It’s one of the very basic jobs of an Interviewer. Get into your mind and make you empathize. They’d gather information and were responsible for recruitment. There’s no better method.”
Good point. Well, I think, I’ll know better next time. Maybe? I see Eric—or rather, Strohm—in a very different light now. What has he thought he’s felt for me all this time? Or is this still part of some Soren assignment that never ends? Odin knows Mother seems to still be on an assignment. Mother, I think. Since we’re dealing with uncomfortable truths—
“Tell me more,” I say, “about Mother and you, I mean. About everything.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want to hear right now?” he says.
Well, yes, I think. Isn’t it? I tilt my head and give him a slight smile. “You’re the only one who can give me all the details,” I say. Mother’s not around. The holo has Father’s memories, and much as he’ll keep most of the details to himself anyway as Father did, I have nothing to lose by asking him.
“I loved your mother,” he says, “with everything I had.”
It’s not something I’ve ever doubted but for the first time in my life, I wonder—
“Was the feeling mutual?” I ask. “Did she love you back?”
“I thought so,” he said, “well, up until I realized she was about to have me killed, I believed it completely.”
“Why Father?” I ask. “Why did she have you killed?”
“Your mother’s loyalty,” he says, “was to the Sorens foremost. When we fell in love, when we had you, we created our own crest. We were no longer a Prospo and a Soren living in crime. We were new Citizens and we adopted
Citizenship to the fullest. At least, that’s what we agreed to do.” He rubs his chin slightly and I wonder how this holo could know to have an action like that, like Father.
“The entire time, she must have remained loyal to the Sorens, anyway, and she had an assignment.” His eyes dart up to mine. “Or two.”
Everything that I remember about Mother is now highlighted in my mind. Was there anything I noticed as a child that would have looked normal but would hint to her duality on reflection? Anything?
Nothing comes to mind, of course. As far as I remember, Mother was an ideal mom—there wasn’t ever a raised voice or a mean word from her. Everything she taught me, everything I knew about her indicated gentleness, love, compassion. She never even disappeared for days on end—except once, but that was so that she could acquire some much needed supplies for our home, from—
“What was her assignment?” I ask. “I mean, other than spy on the Prospos on behalf of the Sorens.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” he says. “When you find out from her, will you let me know? I’m curious as well. I’m being summoned elsewhere now, if you will excuse me.”
I nod and he’s gone. Then it occurs to me that I neglected to get a timeline from Blair on when he expects us to travel to Apex, so I head back to his quarters.
His door is open and I’m about to turn the corner when I hear him say, “Well can you somehow convince them otherwise?”
“I’ll try to,” says Father’s voice. “I have tried on several occasions. I’m afraid they believe it to be their sole duty—their only reason for being. It’s entrenched.”
“And what of Romy. Will they be convinced if she does it?”
“Hmm—I’m not sure. With time, I’m certain they would be convinced. For now, she’s still a novice, not near ready. She kept failing the task.”
“Well there’s no trying to make her stay here. She’s going to Apex. Can you think of any other way?” Blair’s adamant now.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Well what are our options then?” Blair says as he fights to keep his voice down.
