The Second Rebel, page 14
* * *
MY CHAMBERS IN the Temple are smaller than those I was allowed on the Juno. I wonder if this is just another way the Agora is slighting me.
If they expect me to throw a tantrum, they’re sorely mistaken. I brought little with me to necessitate a large room, and I have lived in such small, cramped spaces that this is still exorbitant to me. Plus, I have a view over the courtyard that houses the space elevator. Even if it is noisy, I love to watch the comings and goings of Sisters and soldiers alike.
And it works as an excellent distraction…
A knock on the door startles me from my thoughts. Eden and Lily enter a second later.
“You did amazingly!” Lily exclaims halfway to me. When she reaches the chaise lounge I perch on, she sits down next to me as if I invited her. Though I suppose there is no other furniture in the room…
“I still need Aunt Margaret to put my name forth for the position of Mother,” I say, shaking my head. “I hate these political maneuvers.”
Eden sits down on the other side of me, squishing me between her and Lily. “That’s the life you’ve signed up for, Astrid. You’ll just have to deal with it. But I think you did really well, for what it’s worth.”
“Did you overhear everything?” I ask.
“What we didn’t hear, we asked Aunt Margaret about afterward,” Eden says.
“And the good news,” Lily chirps, her face lit up with excitement, “is that the Agora are all talking about you.”
I sigh. “Yes, I am sure Aunt Marshae and Aunt Genette are cursing my name even now…”
Lily taps a finger against her chin. “Aunt Marshae does hate you.”
“You have no idea,” Eden mutters.
“And Aunt Genette tends to follow Aunt Marshae’s whims,” Lily admits. “But that’s only two of the seven. Not so bad.”
“Why?” I muse aloud. “What sway does Aunt Marshae hold over Aunt Genette?”
Lily’s doe eyes seem to darken at the words. Does she know the answer? But before she says anything, Eden chimes in, “It doesn’t matter, if you can prove your worth to the Agora. Create some outreach programs here on Mars like you did on Ceres. Sway the faithful and show the Agora how people naturally love you.”
It’s good advice, but it would take months. I fear what allowing Aunt Marshae that much time will achieve. I think of the crooked-limbed girls, their dirty faces filled with hope. I’ve seen the disorganization in the Agora. How they snipe at each other without thinking of the people they’re meant to serve. How many will continue to suffer until a new Mother begins to change things?
“Lily.”
She straightens at her name.
“Bring me everything you can find on Aunt Genette and Aunt Marshae.” If I am to begin, let me begin with my most obvious opponents.
“Astrid—” Eden starts.
I hold up a hand. “The information will help me choose a place to start my work.” I do not call it blackmail, not like Lily. It is simply information, and I would be a fool to go into this fight ill-prepared. When Eden bites her tongue, I look between the girls on either side of me. “Together, we’ll root out the corruption within the Sisterhood.”
CHAPTER 11 HIRO
I’m concerned that you’re not concerned about the concern of the Synthetics, ya know? Say we catch their agent. What next? Interrogate her? Torture her for answers? Kill her? Not sure I like the idea of pissing off the Synthetics when you’re squatting in their backyard.
Message from Hiro to Dire, read but not answered
At first there is nothing but the darkness, neither the sound of my breathing nor the beating of my heart. But against the expanse that stretches infinite before me, there is no emotion either—no fear or anxiety; the world simply is. Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, little pinpricks of light appear and grow, stars blooming into being and giving life to the sky above. One star larger than the others flares golden and warm, emerging from behind a pale blue planet, and its light hits the rocky, pitted ground beneath me and makes the world I stand on shine white from horizon to horizon.
I instinctively know where I am: Earth’s moon, whole and ancient, the birthplace of the first sentient machines. I bend down, gather a handful of dust, and let it slip between my fingers. It falls slower than snow in the low gravity.
A light to my left burns a halo in the atmosphere. In the corona is a white fox, its tail trailing into the cosmos, joining the heated drifts of galaxies in its wake. It moves with the grace of a fish through water, its tail rippling as a single banner one moment, spreading into nine the next.
It does not turn its head in my direction, but it opens its eye, dark as a black hole.
Eyes it opens, one after another, on its cheek and forehead and neck. More blink into existence, down shoulder and spine, over haunches and limbs, and my blood runs cold.
I see you, it says, black hole eyes swallowing, and even the stars turn their gazes toward me, each a giant eye in the sky.
We see you.
* * *
I VIOLENTLY JOLT awake, swinging my arms and kicking my legs. My fists meet nothing but air, and as soon as I have my feet beneath me, I spin in a circle, looking for Noa and Nadyn, for other Icarii duelists who have infiltrated Autarkeia.
I see you, the dream—nightmare?—whispers in my brain. We see you.
But there is no army, not even a threatening soldier with a hand on their mercurial blade. There is just a figure so unassuming she blends in with her surroundings.
Half her head is the shiny metal of a prosthetic, the other half sporting long black hair that she shyly uses to hide her face. Her clothes are black and baggy, fit for someone twice her size. She is sun-starved pale, but in a strange, waxy way, and she is so small and wispy that my initial instinct is to drop my guard. I suppose that’s the point—she doesn’t look like a threat, even though I know she is.
“You’re the Synthetic.” My words echo around us in the cold, high-ceilinged room. We’re on a strange metal catwalk that hangs above a great donut-shaped metallic object, and the walls are covered in branching ramps, as elegant and yet as chaotic as unchecked vines in nature. There are no sharp angles, only rounded edges, leaving the entire place feeling alien and unwelcoming, designed by capricious gods who care nothing for human necessities. Everything metal is rusted a reddish-brown from disuse. Could I be inside one of the dead Synthetic factories?
Sudden movement from her startles me, but she just lifts a hand, fingers splayed, and wiggles it back and forth. It takes me a moment to realize… she’s waving. “Hello,” she says in a singsong.
“I… What am I doing here?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, scratching her cheek. “I didn’t mean to scare you, but I didn’t want the others to find you.” As she speaks, I begin to understand that singsong fluidity is just her accent. I’ve never heard one like hers before, but then… she’s allied with the Synthetics. I’d never considered it before, but why would they speak like we do?
“You can go back to sleep if you’re hurting,” she says.
“Huh?”
She points a slender finger at me, at the place I rub my shoulder, where flesh meets prosthetic. A habit I have, one I don’t even notice anymore.
“You were sleeping, so I put you in my bed, but maybe I shouldn’t have?”
I check my com-lenses for the time and do a quick calculation… Shit! I was out for seven hours? Despite our disastrous call, Dire’s got to be looking for me by now. But at the same time, contacting her is my mission, and I doubt I’ll get a second chance if I don’t establish some rapport with her now.
I clear my throat and look behind me at her “bed,” but it is that in name only. The mattress sits directly on the floor, covered in so many pillows and stray blankets I can’t see the sheets. None of the bedding matches, though it’s clean; it looks like a scavenger stole each piece from a different Cytherean hotel.
“Maybe you’re hungry or thirsty?”
What are you, my mom? I bite my tongue against the comment. I mean, she got me away from Noa and Nadyn, even if she had to drug me and drag me to her weird lair to do so.
Though shouldn’t I be thankful that she appeared to me? Following her data ghost was getting me nowhere. Did my awful painting of the rat work? Is this her version of accepting my offer of friendship?
She crosses the room, her chunky boots that give her a few extra centimeters of height clomping against the metal grating. I’m not sure why, but I expected a Synthetic to be either stiffer than a human or more graceful, but she’s neither of those things. When she reaches the bed, she plops in the middle and, at the same time, pops the cap on a carbonated beverage. When I make no comment, she crosses her legs and slurps her drink.
“Want one?” she asks, pulling it from her lips. It’s a sugary energy drink, a disgusting Gean thing that asserts blue is a flavor, not a color.
“I thought you were a… I thought… Are you human?” I ask, but she just smiles and pats the bed beside her.
I sit down and feel her weight shift on the mattress as she makes room for me. I run through my evidence: she’s drinking, and she has weight. She has to be here, though the urge to reach out and touch her is difficult to fight. But that answers one of my questions; if she’s here physically, she can be forced off Autarkeia.
“You’re not a data ghost right now, are you?” I ask. “Because I gotta say, that would really fuck with my mind.”
“No, I’m here. Right in front of you.”
I’m not sure if I should feel relieved or not.
“I know several people on Autarkeia have seen you on their com-lenses. They’ve asked me to look for you.”
“I know.”
She says it so innocently, no wariness at all. She sucks down the rest of the energy drink, then sets the empty can in her lap and taps a black-painted nail against it. She even fidgets like a human.
“A couple of duelists, Nadyn val Lancer and Noa sol Romero, were looking for you too. So why did you choose to reveal yourself to me instead of them?”
“I didn’t want those Icarii to find me yet, but you… I don’t know…” She hesitates like a human. “If the other Icarii saw you, they’d focus on you instead of finding me, and I think they shouldn’t know about you yet. I think you’re here to do something that you need to be hidden for.”
“I’m here to find you.”
She cocks her head, studying me with the same intensity with which I watch her. It’s hard to remember that we are bridging the gap between human and Synthetic when she is like any other girl I’ve met.
“Maybe you can help me with them,” she says, jumping up from the bed.
“Help you how?” I ask at the same time that she snatches up a greasy bag of tools from the floor.
“Do you want help with your prosthetics?”
“What?” Talk about changing the subject. I’ve got whiplash. “What about my prosthetics?”
“Your arm and leg.” She says it as if I could possibly forget. “I can tell they hurt you, and I can recalibrate them so they don’t. Do you want help?”
I reach for my shoulder again. My hip aches from the way I’m sitting, but I’ve gotten good at ignoring it. Not that I can ignore the phantom pains when they start. “I…”
“I know you’re afraid that you can’t trust me, but… well, if I help you, then you’ll know you can trust me.”
“No one else has been able to do anything about it, and I’ve seen a lot of engineers and doctors.” How is anyone supposed to help with the agony I feel in a hand or knee that no longer exists?
“I can,” she insists.
I still hesitate.
She shrugs. “If I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it while you were sleeping.”
Well, shit. She’s got me there.
“Okay,” I say at last.
She sets her bag of tools beside the bed. “Lie down flat on your back,” she says, and I do as instructed.
What the hell am I doing? I wonder as she leans over me, her face eclipsing the light above us and her hair brushing against my cheek.
“Please don’t turn me into a machine,” I say.
She giggles, covering her mouth. “You’re already as much of a machine as I am.” She taps my forehead with her first finger, and the world around me goes fuzzy again. Yet I don’t feel even the slightest bit of fear. How the hell is she doing that?
As I sink deeper into the bed, the tension in my muscles leaking out of me, I replay her words.
You’re already as much of a machine as I am.
Does that mean she’s part human? Or does that mean that I…
That’s the last thought I have as I fade away.
* * *
“COME OUT FROM there,” Shinya says, looking down at Asuka and me. “Father says the kotatsu is for eating, not for sleeping.” But neither of us moves a muscle where we’re cuddled together beneath the low table, the lull of its heater too much to resist.
“I’m sleepy, Oniisan,” I say, rolling over and readjusting the kotatsu’s blanket.
Shinya quirks a brow. “What is Hiro wearing?” This he directs at Asuka.
“Whatever Hiro wants,” Asuka grumbles, grumpy that Shinya has woken her from her nap. “Who cares? It’s not like we have school today.”
“If Father sees that Hiro has gotten into Mother’s closet…”
“Father isn’t even home. Either nap with us or go away.” She sticks her tongue out at Shinya for emphasis.
I push my head closer to Asuka’s shoulder, my eyes so heavy I can’t keep them open.
I hear Shinya sigh above me, then the sound of him setting down one of his boring poetry books. The cold air seeps in from outside the kotatsu as he lifts the blanket and slides under.
He scoots closer to me, enveloping me in his warmth. I am content between my big brother and big sister.
“Just don’t tell Father,” he whispers.
The world around me freezes. I turn from Asuka to Shinya, their faces peaceful in sleep but their chests no longer rising and falling. Some of my surroundings are blurry, as insubstantial as a rained-on watercolor: The books on the bookcase have no names, just vague shapes. The furniture is wobbly. Some of the art on the wall is clear, while other pieces are mere suggestions, and while I try to focus on them, I find I can’t quite remember how they looked that day so long ago.
“Memories,” the Synthetic says, and I look up to find her standing where she does not belong, a sharp outline in a place soft with thought. “Human memories are fickle.”
The scene darkens—
And with a flash, I find myself on a bustling Cytherean street, Lito beside me. Those long legs of his would be able to outpace me any day of the week if he didn’t shuffle like he’s brooding. I slow as we approach a bullet train station and turn to him. Even in civilian clothing, he chooses to wear black, whereas I am a riot of clashing colors and prints.
Tell him, a part of me whispers, but my throat is instantly too dry. I know I’m running out of time. I know this might be the last chance before we ship out.
We’re set to return to Ceres in two days, and while I can’t give him the specifics, I know that Hemlock, from the basement of Mithridatism, has something dangerous planned. If I tell Lito what I know, we could avoid going back to Ceres altogether… couldn’t we?
Lito stands so close to me, our arms brush. I feel his warmth, and it is a comfort like home. I can tell he senses my unease; he looks at me and quirks a brow. I feel him probing on the other side of the implant, curious and worried.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I answer his silent question. But something is wrong. I have to tell him. The words are just on the tip of my tongue—Hey, listen, there’s something about to go down on Ceres… But I let them slip away. Clear my throat, and let those words become wind.
“You go on to Luce’s,” I say instead. “I need to run by Father’s first.” And I need to clear my head. I can’t think straight with Lito around.
“Sure,” he says, accepting the lie. He knows I’m troubled, but he believes it’s because I have to visit my father, and that is only the smallest part of why I’m upset. “See you later.”
I watch his wide shoulders and the slouch of his back as he slips his hands into his pockets and heads into the bullet train station. I watch him until he disappears, as if it’s the last time I’ll ever see him.
Tonight… I have to tell him tonight…
The scene freezes. The blurred faces of Cytherean passersby become more noticeable, nefarious in their lack of detail. This time I expect to hear her voice.
“You never told him,” the Synthetic says. I can’t answer her, but if she’s in my mind, riffling through my memories like the chapters of a novel, then she knows the answer to that. I wanted to tell Lito but couldn’t risk it when Luce had no one but him to care for her. Or maybe that was just the excuse I made so I didn’t have to explain everything to him, so I would never know whether he’d choose me over the Icarii.
The black descends. I expect a sharp change, but I’m not prepared for where I find myself. Back in my childhood home. Standing in my father’s office, the glass wall overlooking the city at night, his collection of wooden Noh masks staring down at me with accusing eyes. No, no, no—nothing good has ever happened in this room.
“I never should have allowed that sol Lucius boy to become your partner,” my father says. “I should have interfered before it ever came to this.”
I am thirteen, chewing on words I know he doesn’t want to hear. “Lito understands me in a way you never could,” I snap.
“Had he been left where he belonged,” he says as if he didn’t hear me, speaking of the lowest level of Cytherea, where Lito lived until he earned a scholarship to the Academy, “his tendency for violence would have driven him to crime. He is not suited to be a duelist, and he is not suited to be your partner.”
“Yeah?” I tip up my chin like I’m not terrified of him. “Well, it’s too late for you to do anything now.”
