Marko took my hand, raised it high, and we turned to face the head-cams as they broadcast this out to everybody on Earth. I was the feel-good story of the year. My fellow inmates started clapping and hooting and yelling, some through tears of joy. Like I’d earned something. Accomplished something.
Like I wasn’t a person anymore, just some empty space where they saw themselves, someday.
Marko had brought me a uniform. I guessed I shouldn’t have been too surprised about that; after all, the Honors Committee found me, arranged for all the media coverage. They’d know my size too.
It fit almost too well. The trousers were tailored perfectly in nu-silk, light and warm at once. The dark blue jacket buttoned over a nu-silk white shell, and my name was embossed in gold on the plate just above my left breast. Oh, they’d included new underwear too. Comfortable boots. Nice.
Part of me had to wonder if Deluca was behind this, somehow. To the best of my knowledge, the Honors program was inviolable, but that bastard had a long reach. Maybe Kostlitz had pushed me toward this because of him.
Probably not, though? She wanted the free PR for Camp Kuna. Plus, I had to be tougher to get to, now that all the cameras were aimed at me.
Still, I didn’t relax. As I came out of the changing room, I got another spontaneous round of applause, this time from the guards and Camp Kuna administration, who’d gathered to shake my hand on the way out. The same people who’d stared at me with a cool, assessing air, who’d marked my files and assigned me to menial work, now looked at me with stars in their eyes.
Kostlitz posed for a holo with me. I shook hands because it was the only way to get through them, and beyond the wall of Camp Kuna uniforms, I glimpsed Marko’s blue and white. It felt like a relief when I made it to his side. He shook hands with as many as he could and signed personal H2s on the way out.
The media ate it up.
Since Clarice was on record as my friend, I hugged her. “Stay out of trouble.”
“Here? Not a challenge. Shit, you just made me special.”
I had to laugh as I turned away. I whispered to Marko, “Is it okay if I say good-bye to Dr. Yu?”
After some juggling, we found my head doctor in the crowd. “Already wishing you well, Zara. Take care of yourself.” His sincerity touched me, but I couldn’t show it.
That’s it. I’m out of here. We walked out into the large, grassy exercise yard and headed for the gates. They cranked open. The guards actually clapped.
Once we were outside, Marko turned and held up his hands as the camera drones pressed in closer. “Okay, okay, enough,” he said. “Let Zara have a little time, all right? You know how much of a shock it can be. You remember me when I was picked?”
He gave them a slack-jawed expression of surprise, and some of the media types behind us laughed. The drones hissed away, nearly silent in the open air. I was sure at least one or two were still tagging us from a distance, and the people with head-cams were probably taking long-range vid, but it felt like I had some privacy again.
Marko tapped the door of a long, sleek e-car parked nearby, and it opened for us. “Get in,” he told me.
“Where are we going?”
“The terminal,” he said. “We have a rail car standing by to New York. You’re the last one on the list. The official announcement is tomorrow. I thought the train would be best. You can rest, and it’s . . . private, don’t worry.”
Like he understood how exposed I felt, how turned inside out. Maybe he really did. I sank into the luxury of the e-car; the seats adjusted to my body, and the safety straps clicked in as a rush of warmth came over me. Commercial relaxers—not enough to get me high, enough to take the edge off. The car must have read my blood pressure and heart rate.
Biotech from the stars. Gift from the Leviathan—they’d changed the world, a hundred years ago, way before my time. I lived in the pretty, sterile bubble of the After, but every chance I got, I ran to the old-school struggle of the Lower Eight. Flaw in my code; that was what I always thought. Only Yu now had me thinking it was something different, the way my old man made me instead of faulty DNA. Not that it changed anything, but it did lighten the load a little.
Marko got in the other side and approved the route, and the car set out smoothly on the drive. I paid attention, because being in an e-car this nice was a whole new experience. Self-drivers were common, but this was top-model stuff. Conde would drool all over himself for the parts, I thought, but then I remembered that Conde was a brittle tangle of bones in a smoking hole.
“You all right?” Marko asked me again. I nodded slowly. “It is hard to take in, I know. I felt wrong for days, after.”
The laugh that got away from me had buzz-saw edges. “Look, Marko, we don’t have anything in common.”
“Don’t we?”
“I saw your special. You’re not like me.”
“No. And I don’t know why the Leviathan asked for you. I’ve read your file. You have brains, but no control. Thief, vandal, troublemaker—”
“Is this how you chat up girls? Because I’ve heard better.” He could’ve added killer to the list. But that wasn’t in the file.
I could almost see him considering saying something rude, but he just shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that you are . . . so unexpected, for an Honor.” I was used to being checked out, but Marko wasn’t doing that. He appraised me with curious, unemotional eyes.
I was the first Honors pick straight out of rehab. Maybe I’ll be the first to disappear too. Until we left Earth, I’d be seeing Deluca in every shadow.
“Why do you think they chose me?”
Marko shrugged. “They are Leviathan. A hundred years after the arrival, we still don’t understand them entirely. Don’t doubt that there is a reason, though.”
“If you say so.” I wriggled in my seat to get my spine relaxed. My pulse was slow and lazy now, and I felt ever so light in my skin. Good stuff, what these e-cars pushed. I must have needed it.
“You’re the youngest Honor ever chosen. The media will make much of that.”
“Let ’em,” I said. “Don’t care.”
“You don’t care about much, I can see that,” he said.
He wasn’t wrong.
Marko faced forward as the e-car took a left turn and accelerated into a lane, along with a smoothly flowing river of vehicles. The city rose up around us, vast and resurrected and full of wonders. Beyond the edges I glimpsed the darker, jagged line of the Lower Eight, with the outline of the dump, a harsh feature in the middle. Not so many lights out there. And not many wonders.
“I don’t have anybody,” I blurted. I didn’t mean to say it, but there it was, out in the open, before I could think better. Damn relaxers. “I mean, for the ceremony.”
Watching the lead-up coverage, I’d seen last year’s ceremony, and Marko standing with the happy, proud circle of his family. All the Honors had family, seemed like. Derry couldn’t afford a ticket, Mom and Kiz were on Mars, and I’d rather not see my old man.
“You do, actually. Your mother and sister will be landing tomorrow. They were both so excited when I spoke to them.”
The smile cracked my face wide open before I could stop it. “Really?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t love my mom, even though I’d cut formal ties when I’d had her sign me into adulthood. No, that was exactly why I did it. I didn’t want her weighed down with me anymore. If she’d known I felt that way, she would’ve fought even harder for me. But she’d suffered enough for me, and I wanted her to live in peace while I handled my own business. She had to get Kiz raised right. Away from him. And me.
Marko seemed to take my silence for concern. “Don’t worry, the full trip is covered by the Honors program. They won’t have to pay exorbitant shuttle fees to go home.”
“Good.” Hell, maybe I’d made Mom happy and proud, for once.
Then Marko dumped a bucket of ice on my joy. “Your father will be there too.”
“
What?” I curled my hand into a fist.
“He will meet us in New York tomorrow, before the ceremony. I’m sorry there won’t be more time for you to spend with him.”
I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t know what I was going to say to that asshole, who’d taken a belt to me because I couldn’t stop screaming with the headaches, right up until the Paradise operation that had finally fixed it. Way too late.
“Well,” I said, and turned to look out the window at the city gliding past. “There are probably financial perks for having an Honors daughter, right? Makes sense he’d show up.”
Marko elaborated, thinking that was an actual question, not rhetorical, but I tuned him out. I made noncommittal noises until we reached the terminal. I slid out of the e-car and saw that more media coverage awaited; I had no interest in giving interviews. Marko clued in to my mood and bypassed the circus with an oh-so-photogenic smile and wave. That didn’t mean they gave up, so I resigned myself to having my face splashed all over the holo. If looks could have exploded drones and head-cams, I’d have been charged with a capital offense.
Inside, the terminal shone with chrome and polish, people in suits hurrying to catch their trains, families huddled together around their luggage. An enormous antique clock was all that remained from the historic station the terminal had replaced twenty years back. I stared up at it for a few seconds as my new reality gradually sank in.
“We’re this way,” Marko said, and pointed to a part of the terminal cordoned off with barriers and police. More press.
And an actual red carpet.
“No,” I said, and laughed, because that just couldn’t be right.
“Ready?” Marko asked.
Obviously not. “Can I use the bathroom first?”
He hesitated. “You won’t disappear?”
“I swear. You can let me pee in peace.”
“I’ll keep watch on the hall. For your protection, the press can be a little aggressive,” he said, and there was a little bit of color flushing his cheeks now. He was probably cursing the luck that had landed him with the worst Honors recruit in history.
But he didn’t argue. He escorted me to the facilities and waited just beyond the hallway. I suspected he was standing guard more to keep me from bolting than to keep reporters and drone cams at bay. I did go, and washed my hands after, but I needed the quiet pause more than anything. The relaxing chems from the e-car had started to fade, so my nerves jolted hard as questions boiled over in my brain. What am I doing? Can I really do this? Should I?
I stared at myself, seeing a thin, brown-skinned girl with dark, scared eyes and a heart-shaped face, crowned with a pile of curls that still needed work. I didn’t look polished or prepared. Reading the advertisements scrolling at the bottom of the mirror, I tried to tell myself I was doing the right thing.
But I wanted to run. I’d never wanted to run so much in my whole life.
CHAPTER FIVE
Breaking Orbit
AS SOON AS Marko spotted me coming out of the restroom, he wasted no time dragging me off to board.
The rail car shivered as it powered up, and music blared from terminal speakers outside. We glided out of the private area into the main terminal, and through the darkened windows I saw that people had congregated in huge numbers to watch our departure. Some carried handmade signs, hastily fashioned, with my name on them, and with a shock, I even recognized the old woman who sold my favorite steamed pork buns in the Zone; she was holding a painstakingly lettered placard that read, GO, ZARA! LOWER EIGHT REPRESENT!
At that moment, it hit me how major this was.
“You ready for this?” Marko asked me, and I nodded. He hit a control, and the window cleared, so they could see us.
I raised my hand to wave, and the crowd went nuts. I could feel the emotion rushing out of them, into me, like sunlight. I stood by the window until the crowd rolled by, until the city disappeared into a tangle of wires overhead and weeds that grew under the elevated tracks. With nothing left to see, I adjusted the tint on the window so it showed me only my bemused reflection.
I flinched when a handheld hit the wood table beside me. “Required. There’s a lot to get through. We have four hours on the direct route—try to read and absorb as much of it as you can. Believe me, there will be a lot more once we get to New York.”
I shoved it back toward him. “I’m not into homework.” He gave me a look I recognized from every disappointed teacher. “Look, I said I’d accept. I didn’t say I’d study on it, did I?”
“You’d better try,” he told me. “If you fail orientation, you’ll be eliminated, and an alternate selected.”
“So I go on my way. Big deal.”
“No,” he said, and it sounded like real regret. “You go back where we found you.”
Back to Camp Kuna, where the CEO was ready to checkmark me right into the hands of Torian Deluca . . . or max prison. Either way, my life would be over.
I said nothing. If he’d threatened me, I probably would have smashed the H2 to make a point, but that apologetic tone disarmed me, a little.
Hell, I thought. It’s just some reading.
I sat down and picked up the H2. Data skimming at light speed through the legal disclaimers and warnings, I scrawled my signature with a fingertip. When the legal stuff was out of the way, a new file opened.
It showed footage of a Leviathan in space, lazily unfurling its dorsal sails to catch the sun, and I guess I was supposed to be impressed, but that was pretty difficult when I’d already been subjected to a numbing array of Honors season vids.
But after that was real intel. Not the glistening, polished docudramas, but uncensored details about First Contact—recordings of the astronauts a hundred years back aboard the International Space Station. Of the alarms going off as one of the sections blew. Of the controlled urgency of their communications back and forth with Earth. Listening to those long-dead people recording their last messages to families, I couldn’t help it. Hearing them was different from actors saying the same words. It was raw and real and—even now, even with the low-quality vid—I couldn’t look away.
And then, the Leviathan. Two of them, appearing out of the shadow of the moon, swimming toward the ISS like space was ocean. Circling it.
The message appeared simultaneously on every computer screen aboard the human station: WE HELP.
“I know,” Marko said, and I jerked out of my trance. “I try to imagine how those men and women must have felt, in that moment. On the one hand, this . . . entirely alien creature, with unknown motives. And on the other hand . . . a chance to live. It required extraordinary trust, I think, to choose to believe them.”
Or just desperation, I thought.
I dove into the reading, which included technical specs about the interior areas of the Leviathan, descriptions of crew quarters and amenities provided, and an overview of what would happen in my week-long training and PR sessions. It was a lot. Way too much, in fact.
“We’re nearly there,” he said eventually, which came as a surprise.
I’d almost forgotten I wasn’t alone, but when I looked up, Marko had cleared the window, and beyond it . . . beyond it lay New York City.
The newest of the towers reached above the clouds, and they moved, constantly, slowly shifting like clock parts, so that residents had a panoramic view of the city. I couldn’t look away as we sped closer, closer, swallowed up by the tiered streets before we dipped down into a tunnel beneath them. The train emerged from the rushing darkness and glided into the station, to a smooth and perfectly controlled stop. A pretty tone sounded, and the latch on the door went green. Gazing at what awaited us, Marko looked tired too. And resigned. I recognized his press face.
“Does this ever stop?” I asked.
“The crowds? Eventually. You get used to it,” he replied with a half smile. “It’s like the Mars lottery—everyone dreams of being chosen. So they’ll be obsessed at first, but then someone else hits the jackpot, and you’re old
news.”
That was a lie. He’d been holoed and followed every second since he’d been picked, and now, so would I. But there was currently no better choice.
A girl around fourteen shrieked when the door opened and begged him to sign her H2. With a smile and wave, he shook his head, escorting me through the throng gathered on either side of the cordoned-off red carpet to the street, where another e-car idled.
But I stopped cold because somebody I hadn’t seen in years was waiting in front of us. Time hadn’t been kind to him. His brown hair was mostly gray, and his pasty skin had both wrinkles and rosacea. The din faded and I felt like a spotlight might as well be shining on the two of us.
Dad.
He came toward me with a huge smile and hugged me like he’d never said I was worthless, like he’d never been a monster bellowing at me to stop complaining. “Zara, I’m proud of you.”
Proud. Of. You.
I couldn’t believe those words had just come out of his mouth. When I remembered the coldness in his eyes when he’d “disciplined” me, determined to drive the devil out, I swallowed a scream. Over the years, he’d made it clear that I disappointed him in every possible way and that his love had to be earned.
Now it seemed like getting picked as an Honor made me worthy, at least for the cameras.
I clenched my teeth and held it in. I didn’t return his hug, but I didn’t shove him away either. My father stepped back after a long, awkward moment and looked at me with what I realized was . . . uncertainty. “Zara? How have you been?”
How have I been? I thought about the Zone, going hungry, all the nights I’d huddled in the cold with Derry. I couldn’t speak or I would have shouted in his face. I might’ve chosen life in the Zone over dealing with him, but if he’d been different—patient with me and good to Mom—then maybe . . . Well, no point wasting my energy on what-ifs.