The Second Rebel, page 17
When he returns, walking on the balls of his bare feet, my eyes go from his clean, dressed form to his armful of supplies. The med kit lies on top of a pile of folded black cloth, and as he sets everything out on the counter, I realize he’s brought me clean clothes in the form of a set of military blacks he must have found in the hab quarters. Or that he took off one of the dead duelists…
“You were meant to use that on yourself,” he says, gesturing to the synblood plugged into the side port of Ofiera’s medbag.
“She needed it.”
“You need it,” Sorrel says, unclasping the med kit. His long fingers brush over the contents and stop on the pelospray. “Besides, the electrofluid in the medbag will increase the reproduction of her lost blood.”
I don’t ask how he knows that, how he knows anything that he says with such surety. Like Ofiera, he’s seen worlds rise and fall. What must it be like, after waiting two hundred years, to be reunited with the woman who now lies locked away and dying?
He guides my hand—and the red-soaked bandage—away from my neck. “Whoo, boy, I got you good.” I’d be tempted to laugh if my head weren’t spinning like a ship in free fall. He coats the wound in pelospray, and I close my eyes as first a sting and then a cooling numbness travel down my shoulder and up into my clenched teeth. He hits the cut on my hand after that, but it’s hardly a concern in the middle of everything else.
I know it’s working when, for the first time in an hour, I can relax my jaw. I barely even notice the slight prick as he slips a needle into the vein of my inner arm and hangs the synblood above me. Sorrel says something, but I don’t catch it. Everything, including the loud beeping of Ofiera’s medbag, sounds muffled and faraway.
I think I black out. Or maybe I just finally allow myself to rest. When I open my eyes, Sorrel is sitting and drinking a brown liquid from a glass and the synblood above me is completely empty.
“How long has it been?” I ask. I sound better, stronger.
“Good morning. Or afternoon, I guess I should say.” Sorrel casts a quick glance to a clock on the wall set to Coordinated Universal Time. “You’ve been asleep about six hours.”
Now that I feel stable enough, I want to know everything. “How’s Ofiera? Are we en route to Ceres? Is anyone following us?”
“One thing at a time,” he says as he shifts the glass in his hand, ice clinking against the side. “Ofiera’s stable, and you’re back to normal, it seems.”
I reach for the wound on my neck. It’s closed, but there’s a ropy scar there that aches when I put pressure on it. “More or less.”
“Yeah, you’ve got a new one.” He turns his head to the side so I can see the slash from his jawline to his temple. Against the soft blue of his skin, the scar is livid and red. “You’re not the only one.”
Whether it’s the years or the fact that I’m looking at him with my eyes instead of Ofiera’s memory, Sorrel is changed. His hair is a soft, buzzed white that he runs his hand over nervously. There’s a tightness to the edges of his mouth, the rut of an often-formed frown. And while he has no white to his eyes, like all other Asters, he doesn’t wear the trademark goggles, perhaps because of something done to him in the labs. Like in that memory of his I glimpsed when Ofiera tethered us together…
He pours a second glass of the brown liquid, drops in a single cube of ice, and hands it to me. The smell of strong liquor smacks me. “What the hell is this?”
“Whiskey,” he says. “I found it while I was scouring the ship for supplies.”
“I almost bled to death, and you think me drinking this is a good idea?”
He raises a pale eyebrow. “I think you might want it with what I’m about to tell you.”
My hand tightens on the glass. “What is it?”
“The Icarii are on our trail.”
“Fuck.” I take a sip of the whiskey. It burns like fire as it goes down.
“I have no idea how long it’ll take them to catch up. Being a spy ship, the Nyx is harder to pick up on radar than other ships. But with Ofiera in the medbag, we can’t burn at maximum speed, so it’s more a question of when, not if, they find us.” He holds up his own glass. “Thus the drink.”
“Any other bad news?”
“Yeah, we’re not going to Ceres.”
“What?”
“We need to go to Vesta. It’s closer, and…” Sorrel looks at Ofiera, and it all falls into place: his request, the pain in his tone, the need to convince me. “We can be there in six days, as opposed to the eight it would take to get to Ceres.”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. It doesn’t matter that Vesta is where the Aster Elders live, where humans can stop to trade but aren’t welcome. Doesn’t matter if I end up arrested and forgotten in a cell for trespassing. Ofiera’s been with me through a lot—always patient and understanding as I came to see the Icarii like she did—and if there’s any chance she has at living, I have to seize it. “To Vesta, then. I just need to update Hemlock, my contact—”
“Already done,” Sorrel says. I lose track of my words at his admission. How could he possibly know Hemlock, locked up as he was in Val Akira Labs? Rubbing his stubbled head, he offers a sheepish explanation. “When Ofiera tied us together… well, I saw some of your memories.”
Just like I saw some of his…
The firing squad, the torture, being reunited with Ofiera only to be ripped away again—those things are now engraved in my mind. And thanks to Ofiera, I can feel him through my neural implant like I would her or Hiro. It makes me feel as if I know him far better than I actually do. Makes me care for him when I otherwise wouldn’t.
“Hemlock gave us an updated course that’ll help us reach Vesta while avoiding patrols. Since we really don’t need to run into any additional Icarii with one already on our tail, we’re going to stick to the asteroid belt as much as we can for travel, dipping into the unclaimed territory between the belt and the rotation of Jupiter—do you still call it gray space?—when necessary.” He holds his glass up to the light and looks at the golden-brown liquid with disinterest. “Now all we have to do is wait… and wait some more.”
I take another sip of my drink. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Gods, please.” Sorrel leans toward me. “I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s awkward we know each other so well without ever having spoken a word.”
I snort. He’s right about that. “Why do they call you the Harbinger?”
His eyes widen, but his pupils narrow into slits sharp enough to cut me. His face takes on a haunted look, as if he’s seeing the labs around him instead of the Nyx’s med bay. Seeing a scientist instead of me. He sets his glass aside and stands, and I wonder if I should’ve started with an easier question.
“You don’t have to—”
He surprises me by cutting me off. “In the Black Hive Rebellion two hundred years ago, they started calling me the Harbinger because wherever I went, I would inspire Asters into action against the Icarii.” He pulls up the hem of his shirt—baggy on his slender frame—over a flat stomach. On the right side between a sharp hip bone and the bottom of his rib cage is a massive scar, like a giant mouth took a bite out of him. “You can see how that turned out.” He drops his shirt and takes up his drink again.
“Surprised I didn’t notice that when you were running around naked,” I say with a smirk.
“Ha!” He barks a single, forceful laugh. “To be fair, I was trying to kill you.” I salute him with my drink. “I guess you’re not going to forget that anytime soon.”
I motion to my neck. “Not with this memento you’ve given me.”
“Are you one of those smooth-skinned Icarii who get rid of their scars after every mission?”
In answer, I pull the Val Akira Labs uniform—crusted with dried blood—away from my neck. On my shoulder rests a remnant of the Fall of Ceres, a puckered scar like a supernova. “HEL gun. By an Aster, believe it or not.”
“Ouch.” Sorrel’s eyes narrow. “The hell did you do to the Aster?”
“Fall of Ceres was a rough time,” I say, though I’m not sure how much he knows about current events. “Do you—”
He holds up a hand. “I had a lot of time to do some reading while you and Ofiera were resting.” He turns his head, showing off the mass of scar tissue that is the back of his neck; he’s obviously not done with our strange show-and-tell. “This is all that remains of the different versions of the neural implant I’ve had over the years.”
I realize the only reason Ofiera’s neck is smooth is because she’s expected to work, and no spy could get away with scars that noticeable. “She told me about that… how you two were in the trials to develop the first neural implants.”
“Obviously we did a good job, since the implants work so well now.” He gestures to my head and at the same time leans on my implant with his. It feels like a tug on the sleeve would, not invasive at all, just something to get my attention. “You’re welcome,” he says with a wink.
I laugh and pull my glass to my lips only to find it empty, but he’s pouring me more before I even have time to request it. “Another relic from the Fall of Ceres…” I pull the pant leg up to my knee. The scar on my calf is like a lightning storm, pale white branches over the olive of my skin. “Ironskin whip.”
“Ouch.” He takes several gulps of his whiskey, draining the glass before setting it down and holding out his hand to me. On the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger is a half-moon scar that looks a lot like…
“Are those teeth marks?”
“A little present from the first time I ever spent extended time with Ofiera.” He smiles at the scar like it’s a fond memory.
“How the hell did the two of you end up married if that was your first date?”
He laughs hard as he drops back into his chair. “I’m guessing you don’t know much about courtship.” He winks again.
While he’s right that I’ve never felt the need to seek out romantic or sexual partners—to me, it’s a waste of time when life has so much else to offer—I know enough to guess that his and Ofiera’s relationship was abnormal at best. Even now, people would be uncomfortable with the idea of an Aster with an Icarii.
“So how did the two of you even end up together?”
“Ofiera’s parents were diplomats on Ceres. I was just a loudmouthed anarchist writing pamphlets against them and their poisoned contracts. She kept poking around our anti-colonial events as if interested in what I had to say, but I thought our movement didn’t need a little rebel girl who was only there to piss off Mommy and Daddy, so I’d kick her out.” His glassy eyes float toward Ofiera’s medbag. “She’s always been a stubborn, unstoppable force. Once she sets her mind to something, there’s no changing it. No matter how many times we refused her, she’d show up with more information, piles and piles of documents copied from her parents’ office. Eventually I caved, wanted to talk to her one-on-one, but she thought I’d come to kidnap her. Started screaming for help, and I tried to stop her.” He holds up his hand and wiggles it. “You can see how that turned out.”
“She does have a way of making her point.”
“The thing is, once I accepted her help, everything changed. She wasn’t doing it to anger her parents. When she was old enough, she joined the military and fed us information she gathered on the job. She really did just want to stop what the Icarii were doing. She wanted to change things.” His hand—the very one with Ofiera’s bite-mark scar—comes to rest on her medbag. Inside the cloudy liquid, she floats with eyes closed. “If it weren’t for her, the Black Hive Rebellion would never have been born.”
And though he speaks of Ofiera’s sacrifice, my buzzed mind calls up the memory of someone else’s. If not for Hiro leaving their entire life behind, embracing a suicide mission but sending me one last farewell in the form of their messages, I never would’ve seen the truth of the Icarii…
Sorrel’s eyes settle on the wall, but the look it gives him makes him appear to be staring into the past. “We gave everything we had, but in the end, Ofiera and I were just children playing at war. Back then, approval from the Elders didn’t mean anything. The Elders’ Shield, the Aster in charge of defense, labeled us outsiders—thus the name ‘Black Hive.’ We controlled water in the belt but little else. We had no rights and no way of communicating with each other like we do now through Hemlock’s private network. We fought for control of Ceres, but when the Icarii seized Ofiera and me, it was all over. Our fighters surrendered. Some were killed by firing squad, others were sent to work camps on Mercury. The unluckiest, like us, were thrown into the labs. Many died wishing they’d gone by the bullet.”
My stomach turns, and not because of the alcohol. “Thousand gods, Sorrel…”
Sorrel speaks as if possessed, as if he has to say these things whether I’m listening or not. “Every time they woke me from cryo, I thought it would be to kill me. But even when Ofiera messed up on a mission and she was to be punished, they would only stick me in some bizarre experiment, test me with something that could kill me—and the not knowing would force Ofiera back in line.” He lets out a long, ragged sigh. “Of course they’d never actually kill me, just carve off pieces of me little by little. If I didn’t exist, they couldn’t control Ofiera, and if they couldn’t control Ofiera, they couldn’t have her break their other rebellious little soldiers.”
I remember Ofiera telling me in the Under of Ceres that her neural implant, thanks to intensive surgeries and arduous experiments, could influence any other, regardless of programming. I felt the proof of it when she controlled my body, preventing me from breathing with a mere thought. Though I also know she doesn’t like exerting that kind of control because it leads to neural degradation.
“They used her to keep others in line,” I say. “Paired her up with duelists they doubted and had her test their loyalty, like they did with me.”
Sorrel looks at me with pity. “And they either fell in line, like good brainwashed puppets, or she took care of them.”
“All of that… you went through all of that and are still ready to fight.”
Sorrel’s eyes finally fall back on me. “I am.”
“You and Ofiera have been working toward Aster equality for—what?—almost two hundred years?”
“Give or take.”
“So how do you know now’s the right time?” I ask, that old question bothering me still. Ofiera had told me in the Under of Ceres that she had seen countless attempts at rebellions form and fade, that it was only once she’d spoken with Hemlock that she realized the Asters had a shot at success this time.
Sorrel leans his head back in the chair and looks up at the ceiling with a smile. “Ah, Lito… that’s one of the questions we’ve asked ourselves for ages—how to know when to try again. But Ofiera thinks it’s the right time—otherwise she would have left me in the lab—and I trust her judgment.”
I speak without thinking. “Do you know what it was that convinced her?”
Sorrel turns his smile on me. “What was it that convinced you?”
I shrug. “The unfair treatment of ‘less than’ people in Icarii society. The corrupt experiments that have left Asters hurt and dying in the Under on Ceres. Hemlock’s successful shift of Ceres from Icarii to Gean hands, proving his network is vast and well hidden.”
And Hiro believes it’s time. Though I’d never say that out loud.
“You probably know little about Aster society,” Sorrel continues. “But know this: if Hemlock has amassed the amount of power that he has, at least one of the Elders believes we’re ready for rebellion.”
“The Elders we’re going to see on Vesta?”
“That’s correct.”
“So open rebellion is a possibility?”
“More than that.” Sorrel’s eyes gleam with a strangely frantic energy. “We’re on the precipice, Lito. It will only take one tiny push to thrust us into war.”
I shudder at the way he says that word—war—with such a loving caress in his tone… But then his face is calmly neutral, his voice steady, and I think I might’ve imagined the whole thing thanks to the drink.
“The end goal is equality between the Icarii and Asters. Peace between our peoples,” Sorrel says, pushing himself up from his chair, “but I’m afraid that peace isn’t going to be what you expect it to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“When someone’s been a soldier their whole life, it’s impossible to put those warring instincts aside.” Sorrel’s long shadow falls over me as he unhooks the needle from my arm. The synblood pack is finished. “Trust me.”
I don’t answer. I can’t. I’m arrested by Sorrel’s blue-green eyes, like the sea at rest.
“Just know that if you’re fighting with us,” he says, “you have to be willing to die for us too.”
I stare up at the man out of time, my thumb tracing the scar he left on my neck. He opens his mouth to speak, but I don’t give him the chance. I cut him off, unable to keep these words to myself.
“I’ve been inches from death many times,” I tell him, knowing he’s seen only a few of the scars that litter my body. “At least this time, I know that what I’m fighting for is worth it.”
CHAPTER 14 ASTRID
May no Aunt mistake her role in the Sisterhood; it is the same purpose the Agora has served since its creation. We are not only to be Speakers on behalf of the silent Sisters. We must be, at our core, Guardians of the Goddess’s will.
From A Treatise on Stewardship by Aunt Edith, former head of the Order of Cassiopeia
After Lily brings me a compad with information on all the Aunts of the Agora, not just what I requested, I spend the afternoon reading. The files are extensive, to the point that I wonder if Lily has a contact in the secret police, though some Aunts have little to nothing on them. Aunt Tamar, head of the Order of Orion, for instance. On the surface, the Order of Orion is dedicated to the preservation of history and spends much of its funding on public libraries. But truthfully, its primary task is to use its vast records to assess and approve any new technology before it enters everyday Gean life. The files note that many contractors find Aunt Tamar difficult to work with, but I can find no evidence that she has done anything damning. Aunt Margaret is much the same, and because we have already come to an accord, I do not worry that her file is sparse.
