Exo

by Fonda Lee

  Donovan sank down onto the pillow and closed his eyes. When the mattress shifted, rousing him, he lifted his head, confused about whether he’d actually fallen asleep or not. It must have been for only for a few minutes. Anya was kneeling next to him on the bed, holding out a wrapped sandwich. “It’s what I could find,” she said. “I was trying to help clear the rubble from one of the entrances, and by the time I looked for food, this was all that was left. It’s ham and cheese.”

  Donovan sat up and took the sandwich. It looked a little squashed, but he didn’t care about that; he was glad to see Anya. “Have you eaten?” When she shook her head, he unwrapped the sandwich and handed half of it back to her. She kicked her shoes off and pulled her legs up onto the bed. They ate together in silence.

  When he was done, Donovan crumpled the wrapping and said, “They’re moving me tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. Kevin told me.”

  “They want to pass me from cell to cell until I’m out of the country.”

  She nodded.

  Donovan leaned in, trying to read her expression. “Remember what I was saying in the library? This could be your chance too. You could leave with us. With Max and me. Leave this place. Go to a new city, make a new life for yourself.”

  She shook her head as she finished chewing. “You’re sure stubborn, aren’t you? Like I told you already, this is my new life. Besides, Kevin wouldn’t let me go.”

  A red coal of anger flared in the pit of Donovan’s belly. “Kevin doesn’t control you. You don’t have to put up with …” With the way he looks at you. Touches you. Orders you around, manipulates you. “With him.”

  Anya stiffened. “You don’t understand. Kevin and I …” She sighed, exasperated. “I owe him for a lot of things. He’s not really a bad person.”

  For a second, Donovan was speechless. Then he exploded. “Not a bad person!” He wanted to fling himself against the wall in disbelief. “He’s a murderer. A torturer. A terrorist. The way he treats you, it’s obvious exactly what he wants from you. And he’s … what? Twenty-eight? Thirty?” His lips twisted. Anya folded her arms across her chest, her face reddening. Nasty ideas crowded into Donovan’s mind. He was stunned to hear them escaping his mouth in a tone of revulsion. “Just what is he getting from you, for bringing you into Sapience?”

  Anya’s mouth opened in a small oval of shock. Then she slapped Donovan across the face. He couldn’t help armoring in reflex, and even though he turned his head with the blow, she yelped in pain. Her palm smarted red as if she’d smacked it into a brick wall. Tears sprang to her eyes as she clutched her wrist. “Who do you think you are?” she sputtered. “That is none of your business, and what makes you think you can judge me or tell me what to do with my life? Just ’cause of those marks on your hands? They make you think you’re so much better than the rest of us?”

  “That’s not what I think.” Remorse ripped into him immediately. “You’re right, I was way out of line. Way out. Look, I’m sorry. I just … blurted it without thinking. I didn’t mean …” He reached out to check her hand. She pulled it away from him, turning it into a fist. Swiping at her eyes, she grabbed her shoes from the floor and shoved them on.

  Donovan leaned back and thudded his head against the wall. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. He’d wanted to sway Anya into making a different decision but horribly offended her instead. He was usually careful with his words, able to talk people down—it was part of his job, after all. But when he thought about Anya and Kevin together, his hands all over her … he lost it. All he could taste was the venom in his mouth.

  She stood up to leave. “Scorching hell, Anya,” Donovan said. “Please, just hear me out. I know I’ve got no right to judge you. I barely even know you. But I know for damn sure you deserve someone better than Kevin. He’s everything I’ve sworn to fight against, and you—you’re the one decent thing that’s happened to me during this whole nightmare. Not my mom—” He gave a dry laugh and ran a shaky hand through his hair. “No, she’s definitely part of the nightmare—but you …”

  “You think I’m a slut,” Anya said ferociously.

  “No.” Donovan sprang to his feet. “I think you got dealt a raw deal, one you felt like you had no choice but to take. If only SecPac could stop people like Kevin from getting to people like you, we’d put an end to Sapience. You’re a good person on the wrong side, and even if I can’t do anything to change your mind, I’m still glad to have met you, and I … I care about what happens to you, is all.”

  Anya’s lips jammed together. Her shoulders were turned away, as if she was still going to storm out, but then slowly, she sank back down onto the bed. She didn’t look at him, staring fixedly instead at her hands and picking at the dry cuticles, her anger still smoldering but rapidly cooling into frail resentment.

  Donovan sat back down next to her, leaving a space between them. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “There were sixty of us,” Anya said, still not looking at him. “Fifteen families that wouldn’t take the relocation payout. My dad said we would stay no matter what, because it was our land, it had been in our family since before the War Era, and he didn’t give a damn what the shrooms wanted to build on top of it. But no one cared what he said. The shrooms don’t need ranchers. No one in my family had ever been in erze.”

  “You were … How old were you?”

  She pulled her sleeves down over her hands and tucked them under her bony knees. “I was eleven.”

  “The algae farm standoff,” Donovan muttered, half to himself. “You were part of that.” Five years ago, the expansion of the Round had necessitated the construction of a huge new algae farm. Donovan’s father had worked day and night for weeks, scrambling to qualify enough new builders-in-erze. Located roughly a hundred miles southeast of the Ring Belt, near Lake McConaugh, on the North Platte River, the vast hydroponic complex was amazing. Donovan had seen it before; there was always a rotating SecPac detail guarding the facilities. It employed five hundred humans. It supplied 60 percent of the food for the zhree population in Round Three, and four of its satellite bases, greatly reducing dependence on supply vessels from other planets.

  “The shrooms sent SecPac officers to evict us,” Anya said. “If your dad fires on a stripe and gets thrown in jail, you know what your chances of erze status are after that? Zero. Not that I cared, but my sister might’ve gone to college. They moved us into the Ring Belt, to the Transitional Habitation grids. What were we supposed to do in a city?

  “Do you know who helped us when my dad was in jail, when we had nothing?” Anya raised her chin and pinned him with a fierce look that defied him to answer. “Kevin did. He found us a place to stay. He got us an old car and medicines for my mom. When she passed away, he helped us with everything. Sapience kept us fed, found us work, took care of us. He can be a jerk sometimes, and I know he goes over the top. But Kevin cares about the people that no one else does, people the shrooms and the government throw away.”

  “It doesn’t mean you owe him. Not like this,” Donovan said.

  “The rotten parts of a person are as much a part of them as the noble ones. People are never just what you expect.” She glanced back up at him and her voice took an uncertain turn. “You’re not what I expected, that’s for sure. The stripes that came to kick us out of our house … they were like monsters. They had guns and masks and this second layer of skin that moved like it was alive. They were shouting at us, and my dad had the shotgun and he was yelling at them and my sister and my mom were crying.”

  Donovan didn’t know what to say. He thought he ought to apologize, but he hadn’t been there, and those stripes were his erze mates too; they’d only been doing their jobs. He placed a hand on Anya’s back, between her shoulder blades. Anya shook her head as if bewildered; strands of crinkled auburn stuck to her chin. “I thought you’d be scary like them. Alien. People say exos aren’t really human anymore, but under that armor you still seem pretty human to me.”

&nbs
p; “Glad someone here thinks so,” he muttered. Was that what she was doing when she stared at him? Waiting for him to turn into one of the “monsters” from her childhood? Trying to puzzle out if he was human?

  “She told me to try and make friends with you, you know.” Anya turned her head to look at him abruptly. “Max. She thought if you had a friend here, you wouldn’t feel like a prisoner. That you might even want to stay.”

  Donovan went still. Now it made sense.

  “Kevin didn’t like it, but Saul said there was no harm, might as well, since I’d be keeping a close eye on you and no one else would want the job.”

  “Right,” Donovan said. He let his hand drop away from where it had been resting on Anya’s back. Anya’s time with him had been a Sapience assignment. Even more humiliating was the fact that he’d been so easily emotionally manipulated. It had worked. He had felt less like a prisoner, had begun to think of Anya as a real friend. “I get it,” he said woodenly. “I know I’ve been a chore to you.”

  Anya frowned. “That’s not what I was about to say …”

  “Was kissing me part of the job too?”

  “You stupid stripe, will you just shut up and let me finish!” Anya burst out. She closed her eyes tight in exasperation and opened them again. “When they asked me to try to be friends with you, they said it all apologetic-like, as if they were sending me to Siberia. Everyone here’s got some reason to hate your kind; who wants to spend any time with one, pretending to be friendly? But it wasn’t like that at all. Not at all. In the library …” Anya’s gaze flickered away in uncharacteristic embarrassment; her tongue moved across her lower lip, as if still feeling that moment. Donovan’s fingers twitched; he nearly brought them to his own lips, so strongly did the ghost of that touch tingle on his skin.

  “They did not tell me to kiss you, I’ll have you know,” Anya said. “I just felt like doing it. I never thought I’d want …” She faltered, as if the words weren’t coming together in the right way. “You’re just different, okay? You’re the one who’s a good person on the wrong side. I wanted to think for a second that the sides don’t matter, and … anyway, I’m … really glad I didn’t shoot you.”

  Donovan moved next to her, their legs touching. He put a hand under her chin and tilted her face up to his, a droll smile creeping onto his face. “Me too,” he said. “I wish the sides didn’t matter. And I’m also really glad you didn’t shoot me.” Anya rolled her eyes and began to reply, but Donovan brought his mouth down over hers, cutting off whatever she’d been about to say.

  The kiss was molten alloy spilling out of a furnace; it was jealousy and frustration, it was recklessness and fierce want. Anya’s lips were moist and soft and a little cold. He kissed her harder, more determinedly than she’d kissed him; he put his hands on either side of her face, moving his tongue in her mouth. She gave; her body loosened and pressed against his. When they came apart for air, she followed his mouth with her own, reclaiming it, and they were kissing again, with even more frantic, desperate neediness, as if they would be forced apart at any second, as if there were mere minutes left until the end of the world.

  “Donovan.” Anya whispered his name. She’d never said his name before. The way she said it now, it sounded as if she believed she could only use it once, like a nonrefundable ticket, and had been waiting, holding it in her mouth until the right moment. Donovan made a low noise in his throat. Anya’s hand reached up and touched his stubbled jaw. It cupped the back of his head; it ran down his neck, fingertips caressing the line of exocel nodes. A mingled jolt of alarm and tingling pleasure shot down Donovan’s spine. He gasped and pulled back slightly, his brain pulsing with a vague if eager unease.

  Anya said, with worry, “Doesn’t that feel good?”

  “No, it … it really does … It’s just that …” She’s a sape. You’re a soldier. This isn’t good for either of you. What are you doing, kissing her, leading her on? She’s with Kevin, of all people. His body railed against all his protests. Wild desire blotted out nearly everything, obscured even the previous days of trauma and confusion. Anya’s eyes were the color of a clear prairie sky and just as endless and unknowable. He could get lost in them, like a bird on the chinook wind. Reluctantly, he forced his gaze aside, trying to collect himself. “You know that after tomorrow, we’ll probably never see each other again,” he said.

  She was silent for a moment, then her eyes turned sad and she laid her cheek against his shoulder, her breath warming the crook of his neck. “We’re both soldiers. Who knows how long we have to live anyhow?”

  “I don’t want you to think of yourself that way.” He wrapped his arms around her and she shifted so that they were curled together on the bed. “And I’m not going to stop hoping you’ll listen to me and choose differently.”

  “See, this is just what I mean. Trying to change people proves you really are hopelessly human.” They stayed cocooned together in a moment of uncertain silence until Anya said, “You do eat machine oil, though, which is plain gross.”

  Donovan blinked, then snorted incredulously into Anya’s hair. “I don’t eat it when I have a choice. You’d eat bugs for protein if you had to.”

  “No,” said Anya firmly. “I’d never eat bugs.”

  “You would.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “You’d squish them and lick them off your fingers.” He pretended to flatten insects off the wall, then sucked the tips of his fingers with apparent relish. “Or worms. You’d eat worms.”

  “I’d sooner starve,” she said, but he could see the side of her face and tell she was fighting a smile. It made Donovan keenly happy to think he’d made her smile. Her body was so soft and pliant; he felt as if his hands were digging through layers of bulky, shapeless clothing, jealously questing just to touch the smooth skin of her flat stomach. He spread his hands wide, his armor completely down, getting as much skin on skin as he could.

  A heavy but strangely comfortable silence wrapped itself around and between them. After a while, Anya said, softly and a little sleepily, “I know I shouldn’t wish for this, because it’s going against the cause. But whether it’s leaving with Max, or your own people finding you … I hope you get free.”

  He hoped so too, but at this instant he was content to be nowhere else. He kissed her again, very gently this time, and allowed himself to touch her a little more, and even though he didn’t think he could possibly fall asleep with Anya so near, with the curve of her body fitted into his, remarkably, he did.

  When Donovan awoke the next morning, the bed was warm where Anya had fallen asleep next to him, but he was alone. He guessed he’d slept well into the daytime, though it was impossible to tell inside the Warren. A tray with a meal of toast, canned baked beans, and coffee had been left outside the canvas flap door of his room.

  Late that afternoon, Max came to collect him. She was dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and her hair was pulled back in a stern clasp. She had a canvas pack over her shoulders and was wearing a fitted vest that Donovan did not want to examine closely in case it was lined with dead panotin.

  “It’s time to go,” she said.

  Donovan followed his mother, retracing the path he’d taken on the first day here, navigating narrow passageways and passing through the vast cavern with its metal catwalks and rock crystal–encrusted walls. He had no idea what lay ahead, but he was not going to miss this claustrophobic bunker, that was for sure. Kevin, Brett, and Anya were waiting for them at the steel double-doored entrance. Donovan caught Anya’s eye for a hesitant second and his chest clenched, before both of them shifted their gazes away.

  Kevin jerked his chin at Donovan. “It’s not handcuffed.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Max said.

  “I’m not about to have my throat ripped out.”

  “We need you to get us out of here,” said Donovan. “I’m not going to kill you.” Yet. Even though you’d deserve it and I’d die happy.

  The man curle
d his lip. “Unlike some people, I’m not cracked in the head enough to trust a stripe.”

  “I won’t have him treated like an enemy prisoner,” Max insisted.

  “That’s what he is.”

  “Mom, it’s okay.” Donovan stepped forward and extended his hands. “Fine. Do it.”

  Kevin nodded at Brett, who came forward with a pair of handcuffs and clapped them around Donovan’s wrists.

  “It’s ‘Mom’ now, is it?” Kevin snorted. “You are walking one hell of a tightrope, Max—with me, with Widget, with everyone. If he tries anything at all, Brett and I aren’t going to blink twice. Just so we’re clear.”

  “We’re clear.”

  Kevin nodded to the sentries, who killed the entryway lights and opened the doors.

  Donovan lifted his face to the remaining light fading over the hilltops and took a deep breath of crisp forest air. He swayed in relief; after so many days underground, staring at blank rock walls and dim lighting, stepping outside was like plunging from a desert cliff into a cool lake. The breeze on his skin, the sharp scent of pine, and the sight of the open wilderness lit his senses. He lifted his eyes, searching for scanner planes. There were none, only pinprick stars winking into existence in the east as darkness unfurled across the sky.

  They walked the narrow, hidden path down to the gravel road where a nondescript black van with off-road tires was parked under the cover of trees. It was amazing how many cheap petroleum-burners Kevin seemed able to get his hands on. The man banged once on the hood and swung himself into the driver’s seat. He cranked the engine and the creaky old contraption rumbled to life. The windshield wipers squicked back and forth, twice, smearing dead insects.

  Donovan felt his mom’s hand fall gently on his back. “Let’s go.”

  He climbed in and scooted to the end of the middle seat. Brett got in the back, and Max followed. She pulled the door closed and sat next to Donovan. Anya jumped into the front passenger seat. Kevin jerked the van into gear, and the tires began to shudder forward over uneven dirt and gravel.