Exo

by Fonda Lee

  “Why?” The word came out short and strained.

  She raised her eyes to him. They were dry now, slightly puffy. “He volunteered you to be Hardened. I told him it was evil, I would never agree to it. There was such a great wedge between us already; this snapped us apart. Neither of us would give in. I made plans to escape, to take you away from there, but I didn’t act fast enough. It’s something I’ll regret until the day I die. Things could have turned out so, so differently …”

  She let out an unsteady breath. “One morning I took you to school and was on my way to work when two SecPac officers and one of your father’s staffers stopped me. They brought me into a room in SecPac Central Command. Your father was there. He had had me under surveillance for months. They showed me all the evidence they’d gathered: the articles I’d written, the money I’d given, the meetings I’d gone to … it was enough to send me to prison for life, if not to the atomizer, and to implicate many of my friends in the cause. I panicked, Donovan. He gave me an out: If I was gone in an hour and never came back, he would seal the file and pretend it had never existed. I did it. I left you behind. It was the worst decision I ever made. He forced me into it, and I will never forgive him. Just as I’ll never forgive myself.”

  She rose and came toward him. Donovan fought conflicting urges to step closer to her and to shrink away. “You never sent any messages,” he said. “You never tried to come back.”

  “I did send messages. You never replied, so I knew he never gave them to you, or had taught you to hate me. He told me that if I ever tried to take you back or contact you again, he would reopen my file. He would elevate me to a Priority One Target and use his power as Prime Liaison against everyone I knew. He promised to hunt me down. He would do it too, I knew he would. He’s a ruthless man, more ruthless than you can imagine.

  “After that, Sapience sent me abroad, to where no one knew me. I trained with cells in Mexico and ran missions in the East. For more than a year, I didn’t even know if you’d survived the Hardening. It took several risky connections for me to finally find out. I knew I’d lost you … but it was enough for me to know you were alive.” She reached for his hand, tentatively, and when he let her take it, she folded it into both of hers. He could feel her hands shaking slightly, and his own, as still and clammy as meat. His mother’s voice grew small. “I stopped trusting in God a long time ago,” she said. “But in the last few days, I’ve come to believe this must be a sign. When I found out years ago that you’d been given Soldier’s markings, I fell into a dark place for a long time. This—the fact that we’re standing here, talking to each other … it’s a miracle, Donovan. God is on our side, and He gave you back to me, to the cause, so we could finally be together again.”

  Max’s words were like a vortex spinning in Donovan’s head. He felt them disrupting everything in his ordered view of the world, flinging things around pell-mell, sucking at him, dragging him along as he tried to keep up with them. He was finding it hard to get past a few simple facts. His mother hadn’t wanted to leave. His father had found out she was part of a terrorist network and forced her out of his life, then kept the truth from him for all these years. And now … now what? She thought they could be reunited for good, mother and son again. Part of Sapience.

  He pulled his hand away, not too quickly, but firmly. “I’m an exo,” he said. “A soldier-in-erze. As long as you’re in Sapience, we’ll be on opposing sides. You can’t just undo twelve years.”

  “I know.” Her shoulders sagged. “Saul told me not to bother trying to reach out to you. He said I was better off thinking of you as dead already. But I can’t—I won’t accept that. I pleaded with him, to let you out of that cell, to give us a chance.” She rocked back slightly, holding her own elbows. “He told me you swore to be neutral here. You agreed not to pose any threat to us. You said you’d stop thinking of yourself as one of them.”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” he said. “But yeah, I did.”

  “That’s a start,” she said. “Something we can build on so we can begin to get to know each other again. That’s all I want—the only thing I want now. We had so many years stolen from us, Donovan, I want to take back at least a little of what we lost. Do you?” She searched his face, imploring. Donovan wondered what she saw: the little boy she’d left behind, an enemy soldier, a copy of the man she hated, or just a very confused teenager.

  He realized he was nodding slowly, because he didn’t know what else to do. He had to admit he did wish he’d had a mom around while growing up. He’d always wished that, deep down. As awful as this whole situation was, he couldn’t regret meeting her now. He supposed … he did want to talk to her more, to understand her a little, even. Maybe.

  “What about the others?” he said. “I’m an enemy hostage. A bargaining chip. Saul said so himself.”

  Max shook her head. “He—your father—has refused to bargain for you. The Prime Liaison won’t negotiate, not even to save his own child.” Her mouth twisted in an ugly way, as if she’d swallowed an insect. Despite everything he now knew, it surprised Donovan to see her face so full of righteous fury. “He kept you from me all these years, but now he won’t compromise to get you back. It’s not you he cares about but his own pride, his grip on power.”

  Donovan stared at the ground, his thoughts burning. How could that be true?

  She had come into the room so anxious, but now Max seemed to be straightening, growing taller in her conviction as she spoke. “All the better for us that he’s shown his true colors. You don’t have to go back to him, not anymore.”

  It was Donovan’s turn to shake his head. “The people in this place want me dead. If it were up to that psycho Kevin …”

  “It’s not,” she said at once. “Kevin may be volatile, but he won’t go against Saul. And Saul and I go way back, trust me on that. I won’t let anyone hurt you or take you away from me again.”

  A weird shiver went through Donovan’s stomach. He wasn’t sure if he felt touched or insulted by Max’s newfound protectiveness. Did she really think she could play at being a real mom now, when he was practically an adult, an exo, a soldier? But he keep his thoughts to himself. He was in enemy territory, after all. She had engineered his freedom from that cell. He needed her on his side.

  Max moved to put her arms around him. She didn’t hug him tight, the way Donovan vaguely remembered being hugged when he was a boy. She placed her arms around him just enough so it didn’t feel right to tense or draw away, or to squeeze her back either. Slowly, he put an arm around her and she stood, welcoming his loose embrace for a long minute, until he dropped his arm and stepped back to open a small space between them.

  She nodded, as if to say again: It’s a start.

  “Everything will be okay,” she promised.

  That sounded like the sort of thing adults said to kids to reassure them. Something his father would never say. But he wanted in that moment to give her another hug, a better one, and to believe her. “Okay,” he said.

  Days passed. Donovan couldn’t be sure how many. He spent most of the time sleeping. He was still in terrible pain, still coughing up blood, but by the third or fourth day, both the pain and the blood lessened. If he’d been in the Round, being treated by a Nurse in the Towers, he would have healed quickly. That wasn’t the case, but at least now he had a real bed with blankets, and the room was warm, and Anya or his mother came by three times a day with his meals.

  “Do you need a doctor?” Anya asked when she saw him wincing as he rolled his shoulder experimentally.

  Donovan shook his head. What could a squishy Sapience medic do for him? What he needed was to get his exocel back up to full strength, so it would properly stabilize anything broken and speed recovery. He’d asked for iron supplements as well as hydrocarbons, and Anya had brought him a bottle of ferrous sulfate pills. He tapped half a dozen into the palm of his hand and swallowed them with water.

  Anya watched him. She watched him a lot. Sometimes
he woke up to discover she’d come in with his food and left it there while he was sleeping, but twice now he’d woken to find her sitting just as she was now—perched on the dresser, legs dangling, staring at him. She stared in the unselfconsciousness way a toddler might stare—not looking away even when caught. It was very disconcerting. He was pretty sure she’d never known an exo, maybe she’d never even seen one except from a hateful distance. Her long-lashed eyes were large relative to the rest of her face, and that made her expression seem even more childlike when she stared.

  He didn’t call her out on it. He didn’t want to risk her ire, to drive her away like he almost had before. He needed what little information she could give him, and if he was honest with himself, he needed her company, because the alternative was crushing loneliness, and he was more comfortable with this strange girl than with his own mother.

  “What’s going on out there?” he asked her.

  She swung her heels against the dresser. The bridge of her nose furrowed. “SecPac is shaking down the Ring Belt. Door-to-door searches in the sympathizer neighborhoods, hundreds of unmarked people brought in for questioning. That’s what I heard from Kevin. He says we’re sure to get a wave of people coming over to us soon after this.”

  “Maybe I’ll get some neighbors down here, then,” Donovan said wryly. Kevin was probably secretly pleased by SecPac crackdowns. It was the same old story: The terrorists provoked the government to react with harsh measures, which inspired more bitter people to join their cause. Convenient.

  “It’s serious.” Anya crossed her thin arms and glared at him accusingly. “People’s homes are being invaded. Armored stripes are taking them away from their families in the middle of the night.”

  He set the cup of water down with a hard bang. “I know that. I’ve done it before and it’s not fun. And it wouldn’t be happening if you sapes hadn’t kidnapped me. So whose fault is that?” They matched scowls across a short distance that felt like an impassable gulf.

  Anya dropped her eyes first. A little uncertainly this time, she asked, “You think they’re still looking for you?”

  Donovan hesitated. Every passing day made him less sure of the answer to that question. “Let’s just say that if it was one of my friends that was taken? I’d smash down every door in the Ring Belt if I had to.”

  “Even if you had to hurt a hundred people for one of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re saying your lives are worth more than ours.” She didn’t raise her voice this time, but the bitterness was plain. “That’s how your kind always think.”

  “It’s not a calculation like that.” Donovan felt his own temper rising. Did she like to goad him? “My kind, as you call us—soldiers-in-erze—we’re family, and you’d do anything for family. Wouldn’t you?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “I know you would. You stood up for me, just because you thought it was the right thing to do, and I’m an enemy soldier who doesn’t mean anything to you. So you’d do a lot more for someone you cared about. If you’d been born in the Round, you’d have made a good stripe. You’d have been screened for those kinds of traits and marked, just like me. So don’t paint me as an evil villain and act like we’re so different.”

  Anya picked at her fingernails. She wasn’t looking at him now. “I’m not … saying you’re an evil villain.” She seemed as if she had something else to add, but then she simply bit her lower lip and said nothing else.

  Anya was a maddening puzzle. Donovan sighed and said in a softer voice, “Have there been any other statements? Has my father said anything?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I’ve heard of.”

  Anya wasn’t really the right person to ask; she was just a new recruit. He ought to be asking Max, but discussing the conflict between SecPac and Sapience with his stranger of a mother was uncomfortable territory. He wasn’t sure he would get the straight truth from her in any case. She seemed intent only on making him feel safe and comfortable.

  Every day she came to spend time with him. Mostly to talk. She asked whether he was feeling better, and if he needed anything else. She wanted to know about his life, his friends, what he liked to do. She told him about living in Mexico and East America, and some of the places she’d seen and the people she’d met. They skirted around anything that highlighted the fact that she was a terrorist lieutenant and he was an exo soldier-in-erze. After a few days, the conversations had started to feel less horribly awkward, but she still did most of the talking.

  Two or three times now, she’d mentioned how she’d missed him all these years, how she regretted not being there for his childhood, and how grateful she was now. “I hope you’ll feel able to ask me anything,” she said. “If not now, then someday soon.” Donovan listened and nodded. She wanted to be friendly. Fine. He had questions for her, all right, but he hadn’t worked himself up to asking, “What turned you into an extremist?” and “Do you really believe exos aren’t human?” and “Have you killed anyone?”

  After a while, when she stood to go, she looked at him with a patient but tense smile, as if he were a locked chest she was resolutely trying to open with different keys.

  “I’m going stir-crazy in here,” he told Anya, after he started to feel recovered enough to be bored. Although the room was far better than the cell, it was still small, dull, and underground. How did these insurgent fighters live like this, like mole rats, with so little in the way of modern amenities, and without fresh air and sunlight? At least they had the run of the Warren and were able to come and go. When Donovan paced out of the room, whichever two guards were on duty at the time casually hefted their submachine guns and shifted to block off the end of the hall. They eyed him suspiciously but didn’t look too worried. If he tried anything, they would see him coming, and even his promise to Saul and Max notwithstanding, there was no way he’d plow through a burst of automatic gunfire.

  The next day Anya said, “Max says I can take you to the library. If we’re escorted.”

  Donovan was willing to go anywhere, so long as it was out of the room. Now that he wasn’t in constant pain, he’d been thinking: He was oath-bound not to do any damage, or escape, or contact anyone outside the Warren … but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to learn about this place. Gather intelligence that might be later useful. He followed Anya down the hall. Brett happened to be one of the guards today, along with the man Donovan remembered from earlier, the one with the tattooed knuckles who’d threatened to turn him into a panotin vest.

  “Hey,” said Brett. “Where’re you taking him?”

  “Library,” said Anya. “Max said I could.”

  The second guard ran his eyes over Anya. “You’re getting a little friendly with that thing, aren’t you?” His droopy lower lip curled inward. “Just ’cause Kevin brought you in, don’t think people won’t talk. You want to last around here? Wouldn’t be good for you to start being called a pet lover.”

  Anya’s shoulders went rigid. “Scorch off.”

  “Cool it, both of you,” said Brett. “Anya’s one of us. She’s no pet lover; she nearly put a bullet through this one’s eye, cold as a dead man’s balls.” He turned a strong look on the other man. Donovan was surprised. Brett was Kevin’s accessory—he didn’t seem like the type of person to stand up for anyone, or anything, but now he said, “Anyway, I wouldn’t be throwing stones if I were you, Tom. I hear your brother’s restaurant business is real popular with the Hardened crowd.”

  Tom’s demeanor changed. His hands clenched; LIVE FREE lined up on his knuckles. “Don’t you talk about that, you hear? Maybe he’s a coward, but he’s got a family to feed, man. I don’t want anyone labeling him a cooperationist, going after his business or his kids. Got it?” He shoved his face closer to Brett’s. “Got it, new guy?”

  “Sure thing, Tom.” Brett nodded quickly, looking earnest, if not as sycophantic as he was with Kevin. “No reason to go accusing people of being cooperationists just for making ends meet.”


  “Right,” Tom said, clearly uncertain as to whether Brett was being sincere or goading him.

  “So, the library?” Brett motioned Anya ahead. Donovan followed, catching a glimpse of Brett eying him as he and a chastised Tom fell into step close behind.

  The library turned out to be more like a storage space. It was slightly larger than the room Donovan was staying in. Metal shelving units with rusty hinges were crammed up against each other along the walls. They held dozens of musty-smelling cardboard boxes, some turned onto their sides so that the spines of the old books inside were visible. There were two matching metal-frame chairs in the corner, but not enough light to read comfortably by. A piece of paper in a plastic sleeve, labeled Sign-Out Sheet, was stuck to the inside of the door.

  “So this is the library,” Donovan muttered. The library in the Prime Liaison’s house was an expansive room with cherrywood floors and huge windows below a high vaulted ceiling. His father paced its length when deep in thought, worked at his desk late into the night, and used the room to meet with his staff, fellow members of Cabinet, and other important officials. Long glass shelves held historic copies of books from throughout human history, as well as memory discs containing translated versions of the seminal works of literature from the Mur Erzen Commonwealth. There was a cluster of comfortable armchairs in a patch of afternoon sun that Donovan had grown accustomed to falling asleep in.

  A jolt of homesickness speared him.

  Brett and Tom waited outside, even less impressed than Donovan was. Donovan ran his finger along the spines of a row of books in a sideways cardboard box. There were classics from the War Era, bleak works like Cliff of Stars and The Last Salute, mixed in with even older works like The Great Gatsby and The Hobbit. It was strange to see paper copies unceremoniously packed together in a Sapience storeroom; he would have thought such historic documents would all be in government or private collections, or museums. It made sense, though. The people who built the Warren, and the insurgents who now occupied it, would want to hang on to their own copies of classic human literature for safekeeping, until the day they prevailed in taking control of the planet.