Exo

by Fonda Lee

  “We’re still collecting bodies and searching the forest,” Thad said. “We might find him yet.”

  Commander Tate got up and paced to the back of the small room. Donovan hadn’t realized it at first, but now he suspected this room must have been Saul’s. Hanging on the wall was a frayed blanket embroidered with an eagle inside a star-shaped design. Donovan studied the red-and-black design for a minute, trying to figure out why it seemed familiar, before he remembered that he’d seen it as a bumper sticker on Reed and Dixon’s truck.

  “The eagle is a symbol of freedom,” Tate said. She cast a critical eye around the small room as if it might give her some clue as to the whereabouts of its former occupant. Besides the blanket, the space was spartan, a fugitive’s hole revealing little of the man. Tate crossed her arms as she turned back to the wall. She snorted softly. “The insurgents are fooling themselves. No zhree has ever enslaved or oppressed humans the way humans have enslaved and oppressed one another. Can you imagine a world with Sapience in charge? It would be a return to tyranny, not an overthrow of it.”

  Thaddeus offered Donovan a half-full canteen of water, which he took gratefully.

  “This Dr. Nakada,” Tate said without turning around. “You said his goal is to develop a weapon for Sapience?”

  Donovan brought his focus back again. “He didn’t seem confident it would happen as soon as Kevin wanted, but yeah, that’s what he’s after.” He described the lab, the monkeys, the spray bottle Nakada had thrust in his face. “The stuff he used on me only worked for a few seconds, but it dropped my exocel. There wasn’t any warning. My armor just …” He trailed off. No one pushed him to continue; the other three exos understood. They were wincing in sympathy, as if he’d just admitted to pissing himself under torture.

  “A weapon that can disable exocels,” Tate mused. “In the hands of terrorists.”

  The room fell uncomfortably silent as everyone pondered the grim idea. Jet said, “There were whole governments trying to create something like that back in the War Era, and they didn’t succeed. These are just guys in caves.”

  “Yeah, but there weren’t exos back then,” Thad said. “Maybe War Era people couldn’t figure out zhree physiology, but if Sapience has scientists who can figure out a way to destroy exocels in humans, that would be—”

  “Disastrous,” Tate said with finality. “It wouldn’t merely be a danger to the exo population but to all of humanity. It wouldn’t matter if it worked on the zhree or not—the very possibility of hostile humans possessing the ability to disable exocels would be seen as a threat to the Commonwealth.” In the pensive silence that followed, the worst-case scenario played out in everyone’s mind, and Donovan realized why Tate hadn’t wanted any Soldiers to hear their conversation. If such a threat was real, and the zhree knew about it, they might take things back into their own hands, descending en masse to eliminate it by whatever means necessary. A new War Era. She turned around. “We have to find Nakada.”

  “If only we could find Warde, we’d find Nakada,” said Thad.

  “What about the girl they’re traveling with?” asked Tate. “This Anya—any leads on her?”

  “We’re not sure who she is. Probably a runaway. The name isn’t matching anything in the system.” He called up another file on his screen. “Donovan, these are all the unmarked teenage girls in the Ring Belt who were flagged in SecPac’s database as having some possible connection to Sapience. Do you see her here?”

  Donovan wiped his palms surreptitiously on his thighs and took the screen again. He studied each photograph for a few seconds before moving on to the next one. Anya was the sixth girl. She was staring into the camera with a sullen expression, her mouth slightly open in a disdainful pout, as if she were impatient from waiting to be photographed. She looked to be fourteen or fifteen in the photo. Her cheeks and shoulders didn’t look quite as sharp as they did now, and her hair, he was startled to see, was dyed black instead of auburn. But it was her.

  He flipped to the next photo without a word. There were five more girls. Donovan handed the screen back to Thad and shook his head. “Well, it was worth a shot,” Thad said.

  Donovan’s heart started to pound. He felt an almost unbearable compulsion to take the screen back, to undo what he’d just done. Let me take a look at that again, maybe I missed something. He couldn’t do that; how was he going to explain why he’d lied on the first pass? Because that’s what he’d just done: lied to his superior officers, to fellow exos of his own erze. People who were in erze did not do that. For a moment, he felt immobilized by an inner war so fierce he was shocked it didn’t spill onto his face. But Tate was checking the time, and Thad was reviewing his notes. By the time they turned back, Donovan had forced his expression into one of humble fatigue. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do better. It’s hard to remember everything.”

  “That’s understandable. You were under a lot of stress.” Tate stood up; they did as well. “Take it easy today. Go see your father. And for the love of all erze, keep a low profile and don’t talk to the media.” She stowed her glasses, then fixed Donovan with a long, steady gaze. “I need every stripe I have right now, but you have a troubling personal connection to this operation, Reyes. Will it compromise your ability to do your duty?”

  Donovan stiffened. A rational part of him realized the question was justified—more than Tate even knew. I let a dangerous scientist and a terrorist psychopath escape arrest. I attacked my partner. I just lied to protect a sape I kissed last night, and I want to know: How am I going to save my mom? But the Commander’s question felt like a slap. He was the son of the Prime Liaison and one of the highest-rated soldiers-in-erze from his graduating class; never had his fitness for duty ever been questioned.

  He could feel Jet’s eyes fixed on the side of his face like a laser beam. Donovan straightened to attention. “You can count on me, Commander.”

  Tate’s face slackened very slightly in relief. “I’m glad to hear it. Go in erze, then.”

  Donovan followed Thad and Jet out of the room. “You wouldn’t guess it, but after what we pulled off tonight? That’s Tate in the best mood I’ve seen in a while,” said Thad. He gestured around the cavern. The bagged bodies were gone, and though they could hear a lot of activity outside, the tunnels were now largely quiet and empty. “After we’re done in here, we’re going to collapse it all; the sapes won’t be able to use it again.”

  They emerged from the Warren into hazy morning light. Donovan kept his eyes ahead, not returning any of the odd glances Jet kept sliding in his direction. Thad turned to Jet. “You know Vic likes you, right?”

  Jet nearly tripped over a pile of rocks.

  “The goofy flirting is cute, but you’ve got to make a real move.”

  “Is she … I mean, did she … what did she say?” Jet drew Thad aside urgently.

  Donovan used their distraction to stop and lean against the nearest standing tree. He let out a shaky breath. What had he done? He’d told Commander Tate she could count on him to do his duty. If that were true, he ought to turn around and go back now, tell her everything that might help SecPac find Anya. Find Anya, and they’d find Kevin. Kill or capture Kevin, and take one of Sapience’s most bloodthirsty terrorists off the streets. Save innocent lives.

  He dropped his forehead to the tree trunk. He couldn’t do that. Seeing Anya on the screen had only made him want to keep her safe, to prevent her from becoming another face in the other two sets of photos he’d seen. He didn’t want to see the despairing mug shot of her in a prison uniform, and he certainly did not want to see her doll-like face bone-pale and splattered with gore. SecPac had killed and arrested so many Sapience members from the Warren, surely the escape of one girl—someone who wasn’t an evil person, just a teenager with a sad history, a bad relationship, and a hankering to belong to something—wasn’t a big deal. It wouldn’t make a difference.

  Donovan hurried to catch up with his erze mates.

  Donovan was the first soldie
r-in-erze cleared to return to the Round after the injured exos had been evacuated and all the prisoners, captured evidence, and body bags were cleared out and transported from the Warren by stealthcopter. Even so, it was late afternoon by the time the T15 landed back at the airfield in Central Command, and early evening by the time he and Jet settled the skimmercar in front of Donovan’s house. They’d both been without sleep for over thirty hours.

  Donovan stared at the house, almost afraid to go in. Driving into his neighborhood, it seemed impossible to believe he’d ever been away, that everything that had happened to him had been real. The familiarity of the Round assaulted him: clean, curving boulevards, fluid metal architecture, zhree and humans passing one another casually on the streets. The sky was cloudless and the breeze mild today, as if even the weather were better here. His world—a world apart from the crowded, old human cities, and as different from the reality of Sapience as day was from night.

  Now, though, staring out the skimmercar window, he felt as if he were looking at a house he didn’t recognize. The Prime Liaison’s state residence flew both the flag of West America and the icons of the Mur Erzen Commonwealth over a column-fronted entrance. It was a dignified, impressive building, but now it exuded a miserable aura that had been invisible to Donovan before. The hatred between his parents had grown out of this place. Like one of the cratered national military parks or preserved ghost cities that ensured the War Era was never forgotten, it seemed too awful and sad a place to enter.

  There was no vehicle in the port. His father was not home.

  Jet got out of the car and Donovan had no choice but to follow. He cleared them through the security system, led the way mechanically through the foyer into the living room, and collapsed onto the nearest sofa.

  Jet went into the kitchen. He came back out with a bag of tortilla chips, a jar of salsa, and two bottles of “armor juice”—the ubiquitous orange-flavored, fizzy supplement drink that every Hardened person in the world ordered by the caseload. He set his findings on the coffee table. “There’s never any food in your house.”

  “That’s because no one actually lives here.” His father was always working, eating his meals elsewhere, and Donovan hadn’t been home much even before he’d been captured by terrorists. Donovan mustered himself off the sofa to raid his father’s liquor cabinet. He poured two Hard-Ons—rum and armor juice on ice—and handed one to his friend.

  “Cheers,” Jet said. They clinked glasses. “Welcome home.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, passing the salsa jar back and forth, dipping chips straight into it, too exhausted from sleep deprivation and adrenaline fallout to turn thoughts into conversation. Finally, Donovan made himself speak. “About last night … I didn’t mean to jump you. I just—”

  “Forget it,” said Jet. He drained the rest of his drink and sucked down two of the ice cubes, crunching them between his teeth. “I didn’t know she was your mom.” He shook his head. “That is really messed up.”

  Donovan nodded. “I’m not squishy-brained. I know I acted that way, but I’m not. I’m sorry.”

  “I said forget it. If I found out my mom had run off to become a terrorist, I’d probably go a little squishy-brained myself.” Jet was no doubt trying to offer sympathy, but the comparison didn’t really work. His mom was an exo like him, a high-ranking administrator-in-erze who oversaw low-orbit transport logistics and coached youth basketball in her spare time. She was about as likely to turn into a violent insurgent as Jet was.

  Donovan was silent for a minute. “It blew my mind. I always hated my mom for leaving, you know? But secretly, I thought, maybe she had good reasons. My dad never told me what they were. He always knew, but he never told me.”

  Jet turned his glass in his hands. “You can’t really blame him.”

  Donovan frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure I’d want to know. I mean, I would, but I wouldn’t. If someone so close to me was doing such awful things …” He looked at Donovan, then slumped back against the sofa and rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. “You were just a kid. I’m not saying what your dad did was right, I’m just saying you can see why he did it.”

  No, I can’t. Donovan felt the muscles of his face tightening. It was the one thing that infuriated him about Jet sometimes—how his friend took his father’s side. Best friends were supposed to agree with you that your parents were intolerable, but the Prime Liaison’s halo of importance seemed to blind Jet to this one, obvious obligation. Maybe it was because Jet’s own father was such an unassuming scholar-in-erze—a professor who taught Commonwealth history and ate the same type of breakfast cereal every day—that Jet sometimes said things like, “Your old man’s got one of the hardest jobs in the world.” Then, with a shrug, “He’s probably doing his best.”

  Donovan didn’t want to fight with Jet about this. Instead, he said quietly, “She’s still my mom.” When Jet didn’t reply, he added, “I know what she is, I know she hates exos, but still.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “You know what’s really screwy? She told me she’d meant to take me with her. I could’ve been an unmarked squishy. A hardcore sape, hiding out in those hills.” He grimaced and opened his eyes, turning his head. “We could’ve been enemies.”

  “That is really screwy.” Jet gave him a strange look. “Good thing it didn’t happen.”

  The front door opened. Benjamin, one of the Prime Liaison’s exo bodyguards, came in and took up a position to the side. Donovan’s father walked in. His heavy steps rang off the polished hardwood floors as he crossed the foyer.

  Jet got to his feet and stood to attention. Donovan shoved the bottle of rum behind a sofa cushion and followed suit. The Prime Liaison glanced at the two of them as he shrugged out of his heavy jacket and hung it up. “Vercingetorix,” he said, “you will have to look more alert than that during the welcome ceremonies tomorrow. You ought to go home and get some rest.”

  Donovan blinked. He’d forgotten that the High Speaker of the Mur Erzen Commonwealth was scheduled to arrive tomorrow on his first visit to Earth.

  “Yes, sir,” Jet said, and headed for the door.

  Donovan’s father stopped Jet and clasped his hand in a long, firm grip. “Thank you for bringing him home.”

  “I always will, sir.”

  There were times, occasionally, when Donovan wondered if he and Jet had been switched at birth. Jet would have made an excellent Prime Liaison’s son.

  Damascus, his father’s other bodyguard, showed Jet out, then he and Benjamin departed gracefully to check the grounds. Donovan’s father came over to him, pulled the hidden rum bottle from behind the sofa cushions, and poured a splash for himself over Donovan’s remaining ice cubes. He was still in the same suit he’d been in the night before, and two days’ worth of stubble accentuated the grave hollows under his eyes. He said softly, “I told you to be careful.”

  A snort of disbelief escaped Donovan. He wanted to hug his father tight; he wanted to scream curses at him. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

  His father’s hand stilled in the act of raising the glass. The sudden arrested motion was like a held breath. Physically, there was nothing unusual about Dominick Reyes—he was of average height, average build, his face was careworn, and his voice was, if anything, softer than others. But he was the most intimidating man Donovan knew. A force of nature. As far as Donovan could tell, he rarely ever failed to get his way. He regarded his son with the expression of a lion about to turn on its cub. “Say what you mean, Soldier.”

  “You sent Mom away. You never told me why, you never told me she was a Sapience operative. You let me believe she abandoned us.”

  “She did abandon us. She chose to embrace extremism and violence.” His father took a generous swallow from the glass, then set it down on the table with a bang. “I gave her several chances, before and after she left, to change her ways. I offered her immunity and the chance to be with you again if she renounced her tie
s to Sapience and co-operated with SecPac to apprehend terrorists. She refused. She chose the Sapience cause over us, again and again.”

  His father’s words pushed against fresh splinters. Donovan quailed from them, then shook his head; the point wasn’t that his mother had chosen the cause over him—he already knew that. “From the day I was marked, you knew I might meet her as an enemy.”

  “You wanted to be a soldier-in-erze. I had hoped you would go into the civil service, but you wished for something different.” Every erze offered marks to the cohort of twelve-year-old exos at the same time, with one exception: the Soldier erze always had first pick. A chosen exo had to decide whether to be a stripe before any other erze could offer. Donovan’s father said, “You were proud of your aptitude ratings and Soldier Werth’s notice. You wanted to be in the same erze as your friend. I never influenced your decision.”

  “You didn’t tell me I’d be fighting against my own mom!” Donovan’s hands clenched the air. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “Would you have given up a future in SecPac?” When Donovan failed to answer, his father said, “I thought it was better for you to believe your mother to be merely irresponsible rather than evil.”

  Donovan ground a fist helplessly into the back of the sofa. “She doesn’t believe in cooperation, but she’s not evil …”

  “She plans bombings, assassinations, and sabotage. She publishes propaganda encouraging people to kill anyone who is marked. Her goal is war, against a powerful and benevolent race, a war that would likely result in the loss of countless lives and possibly the extinction of our species. Is that not evil?”

  Donovan couldn’t answer. He didn’t know how.

  “You’ve studied history in school,” his father continued. “The War Era cost humanity over a billion lives. For what? Was life on Earth any better before the Landing than it is now? What right do a few extremists have to tear down everything humans have gained from a hundred years of peaceful coexistence?” He gestured expansively. “Your home, your markings, your erze mates, your exocel—everything you value is thanks to the Accord—which your mother and her fellow terrorists wish to destroy!”