“Ms. Coromina!” It was Alicia. She rushed past with two bottles of Amanan brandy. “What are you doing here? The first guests have arrived and I’m sure Mr. Coromina needs you greeting them.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“Go on!” She pointed at the gardens and then slipped back into the crowd before I could thank her. Not that I was thankful. This whole party was a sham, like so much of the work we did at the Coromina Group. I didn’t want to talk to Coromina Group employees. I didn’t want to act gracious when I was congratulated on becoming a Ninety-Nine. I just wanted to introduce the R-Troops and maybe see my mother. I wanted the war to be over so I could go back to making this company what it should be. Although I didn’t know what that was anymore. I couldn’t stop thinking about the idea that I needed to protect the people of the Four Sisters from the aliens, not put them in danger so that the Coromina Group could more easily win its wars. But the realities of how I would do such a thing—I felt like there was only one choice. Like my mother dropping me at Star’s End as a baby. If I wanted to protect my citizen-employees from danger, then I had to get rid of the danger. I had to prevent the danger from coming into our worlds.
I had to get rid of the Divested.
Except that was too much like what my father had done, two hundred years ago, and it disgusted me that I was skirting so close to him. I only knew that I wanted to be the one to decide, that maybe I could find a different way. Maybe not destroy them, only lock them up in that place where they seemed to live, that place that both was and wasn’t my world.
And so, I walked around the side of the house, because I knew doing my job at this party was the only way I could do what needed to be done.
It was like a sunset, the way light and sound faded from the clamor of the courtyard to the gentle whisper of the party. The band hadn’t started playing yet, and I could spot a few non-military guests weaving their way through the soldiers. Voices drifted across the garden. I stopped on the periphery and scanned. I still didn’t see Harriet. Dad was standing up on the patio along with Adrienne; it seemed Daphne and Isabel had disappeared somewhere.
The woods. My heart went cold. No. They didn’t go into the woods. They didn’t go to the monsters.
My skin prickled. When I looked up, Dad was glaring at me from across the pineapples. Adrienne was busy entertaining the Koziaras, listening attentively as Mr. Koziara spoke and gestured. I gathered the hem of my skirt away from the ground and picked my way across the grass.
“Esme!” Mrs. Cho Koziara cried. “I was wondering where you’d run off to. I heard”—and here she dipped her voice down to a conspiratorial whisper—“I heard you had a promotion a few months ago.”
“I’m not allowed to talk about it,” I said with mock gravity, and everyone laughed at the joke. Even Dad. I smiled at them like this made me happy.
“Well, it is wartime.” Mrs. Cho Koziara fanned at herself. “I wouldn’t want to say anything that could ruin the effort.”
Dad laughed again. “That’s simply not possible, Hye-jin.”
More laughter. It grated on me. At last, the Koziaras drifted off to join the party proper. Dad put his hand on my shoulder.
“Glad you didn’t disappear on me,” he said in a low whisper.
“You know I wouldn’t.”
A chime twinkled—more guests were threading through the house.
“Of course not,” Dad said. Silhouettes approached the doorway, and Adrienne was eavesdropping while trying to seem interested only in the bangles around her wrist. “This is your job. This is what you’ll be doing when I’m gone.”
No, it won’t, I thought. I’ll be better than you.
The new guests stepped out onto the patio. Mrs. Okadigbo and her wife. There was an eruption of excitement as Dad pretended he cared about them. I held out my hand; I asked how their son was doing.
This went on for the next half hour.
I’d always found this sort of thing dull, even if I understood the necessity of it. Adrienne, though, was beside herself with delight—she was always complaining at dinner how we had these lovely gardens and never made use of them. But I was too distracted by everything that had happened to really put in the effort. I smiled, pleasantly but not brightly enough to invite a more in-depth conversation. I welcomed our guests to Star’s End. I invited them to try the dessert wine. I accepted their congratulations for my promotion. After a while, every face bled into the next. All just filler, to get the newsfeeds focused on us. As much decorations as the lights floating among the trees.
At some point, the band started to play, and shimmering music twinkled through the nighttime. A few brave couples took to dancing, Quillian style. All quite conventional. The arriving guests became more sporadic and I stood beside Adrienne and watched the dancers gliding across the lawn like bits of dandelion. In the floating lights, everything was ephemeral.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Adrienne said.
“It’s a party.” The last party Dad had thrown had been when he announced his engagement to the first Isabel, years before. I looked at him as he spoke with Mr. Dolega from PM. He didn’t look like he intended to get married tonight. I wondered what it meant, that he never married anyone after the first Isabel. I refused to believe it meant he had a heart.
A tall, lean Andromeda Corps soldier, younger and far more handsome than most mercenaries, came up to Adrienne. She stiffened as he approached, her eyes wide and delighted, and I could almost hear her heart fluttering inside her chest with adolescent anticipation.
“Ms. Coromina,” he said holding out his hand in the formal style. “Would you care to dance?”
She glanced over at me, as if asking permission. I shrugged.
“Of course!” she said, and she took his hand and fell into place beside him in one liquid movement. “Tell me more about yourself.”
She’d been practicing for this moment her entire life, I imagined. Waiting for the estate to open so she could fall into her birthright as a princess.
Someone tapped on my shoulder.
“The ceremony will be starting soon.” It was Dad, looking genial and determined. “I want to get it over with early on so that the guests will have a chance to speak with the R-Troops before they’re too drunk.”
“The guests or the R-Troops?”
Dad rolled his eyes. “The guests. The R-Troops don’t get intoxicated.” He jerked his head back toward the house. “Go inside and let Mr. Whittaker know we’ll be starting in about five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” I pointed out at the dancers. It was impossible to pick out Adrienne. “Adrienne’ll be disappointed; she’s out there acting like a character on one of her dramas.”
“Five minutes,” Dad said. “Go. I need to be out here in case any more guests arrive.”
I was grateful to have something to do other than entertain, and so I did as he asked, moving away from the glamour of the party and into the chaos of the house. Staff rushed back and forth, shouting at each other, flinging around trays and towels and empty glasses. I crept along the side wall, my skirt bunched up around my hips so I wouldn’t trip over the hem. The staff ignored me. They were only required to tend to us outside, in the soft light of the floating lanterns.
I slid through the crowd until I found Mr. Whittaker in the foyer beside the stairwell, berating some poor contract girl. By the time I walked up, the exact nature of her crime had been explored; Mr. Whittaker was just slamming her with generic invective, trying to make her cry. She wasn’t, though, and she stood up straight with her shoulders square and looked him right in the eye.
“Mr. Whittaker,” I said sharply, and with that, the hierarchy shifted. Mr. Whittaker turned to me and his features softened.
“Ms. Coromina,” he said.
The contract girl stared at me with wide eyes. Her earlier confidence had turned to trembling. She was scared of me, more scared of me than she was of Mr. Whittaker.
I shifted my weight uneasily.
“Go back to your duties,” I told her, and she nodded and scurried away.
“She broke one of the glass cruets—” Mr. Whittaker began.
“Something’s bound to get broken at a party like this.” It was a weird exercise of power, to not care about the cruet when Mr. Whittaker did. “My father sent me to let you know that we’ll be starting the ceremony soon.”
“Yes, of course, everything’s ready.” Mr. Whittaker gave me one of his oily smiles. “Come, I’ll take you over to the dais. We have it set up in the western garden. The band will let the guests know to begin moving that way any moment now.”
We walked side by side down the hallway. It was nearly empty, most of the staff out in the front rooms. Music drifted up from the gardens, lovely and modern. I didn’t say anything, and so neither did Mr. Whittaker. I knew he wanted to. But my mere presence was enough to keep him silent.
Finally, we stepped out into the western garden. Staff stood stationed at regular intervals around the lawn, waiting with empty trays. The dais rose out of the grass. It was bathed in white light stained pinkish-gray from Coromina I. And it was empty. None of the R-Troops anywhere. They were probably waiting off in the woods—a thought that made me queasy. The Formal Two ceremony required some formal marching, though, and Dad would want the troops to make an entrance.
Off in the distant, the music stopped. The staff shifted their weight, glanced at one another, straightened their spines. Applause rippled through the dewy night air.
“You’ll want to take your position,” Mr. Whittaker said.
I felt alone in that moment, despite the staff in the garden and the sound of the party around the bend of the house. There were more people at Star’s End than I could ever remember, and yet I was alone, walking up the steps to an empty dais, where I turned and looked out over an empty garden.
“Do you know what you’re to do?” Mr. Whittaker said.
“Yes! I memorized all these speeches years ago.” He was staring at me coldly. He’d had enough of my insolence in the manor house, I supposed. I sighed. “Dad’s going to bring the party around, where they’ll find me waiting on stage. I’ll say, ‘Welcome to Star’s End!’ and give that stupid speech about the glory of victory. Then the R-Troops will come in.” I paused. “You know they’re called that, don’t you? The big surprise Dad has planned?”
Mr. Whittaker bobbed his head.
“That’s Ninety-Nine information,” I said.
“Not for long,” Mr. Whittaker said.
I watched him walk away, shuffle over the grass and disappear into the gloomy darkness. And then Dad’s voice boomed into the night.
“Thank you all for attending tonight.” His words echoed around the woods. I felt dizzy, hearing them. I wondered if the Radiance could hear them too. If they understood them. Perhaps Isabel had taught them Coromina Standard.
The wind picked up and a chill ran over me. I wrapped my arms around my chest and squeezed.
“—incredible victory in Sector 894 three nights ago, one of a string of victories the Coromina Group has had in this war. However, we haven’t been entirely honest with you—”
Laughter rippled up on the wind. I sighed and smoothed my hands down the side of my dress. All that pretty fabric felt too heavy, like it was trying to drag me down through the dais. My makeup was sticky against my skin. The wind rustled through the trees and I looked out in the darkness, waiting for a flash of teeth or shining eyes.
Nothing.
“—secret weapon. Yes, we had a secret weapon! Would you expect anything less from us? And it’s my great honor to formally unveil for you the latest project from the Coromina Group—”
I stiffened. The wind blew cold against my skin. Dad’s words transformed into buzzing inside my head, and then that buzzing transformed to thundering applause, and for a moment, I was afraid I had forgotten the steps of the Formal Two ceremony—there was a wide, empty expanse where the memory should go. And then the first few guests came into the garden, the women’s dresses sparkling beneath the lights, and it flooded back to me, every step and motion and word. It was part of my DNA. I was the daughter of Philip Coromina. The Coromina Group was part of me.
The crowd surged into the garden. Coromina Group employees drifted toward the front; the soldiers hung back. Everyone stared up at me, but their faces blurred together in the planetlight. I waited until the garden was full and the fluttering camera drones had activated, recording the ceremony for the newsfeeds. No signs from Dad or Mr. Whittaker about when to begin. I was on my own. I was a Ninety-Nine.
“Welcome to Star’s End,” I said, and my voice rang out, magnified by the microphones embedded in the dais. Feedback rattled inside my head. “We come together tonight to celebrate a victory of no small significance, a glorious moment up among the stars.” I didn’t think about the words as I spoke them; they were meaningless, written fifty years before by some hired scriptwriter. Who knew which battle they thought of as they came up with the speech? One of Dad’s, from the old days, from when all he did was sell weapons?
I droned out the rest of the speech. The crowded shifted and stirred, picking up drinks from the staff, leaning into each other. Adrienne was near the front of the crowd, standing with her arm looped in the soldier’s, gazing up at the stage, enthralled. In the blur of faces I thought for a moment I spotted my mother.
“It’s my pleasure to unveil to you to the source of our victory.” A staff member rolled out the big Coromina Group gong, dull burnished bronze glowing in the floating lights. She handed me the mallet and then darted offstage. I held the mallet overhead. “May we win this war.”
It was such a weird speech, ancient-sounding without being ancient at all, and far too formal for a party. But the crowd applauded and cheered and I struck the gong, feeling like an idiot. The sound rumbled through the gardens. I’m sure it reached all the way into the woods. I struck the gong again. My ears hurt. I struck it again, one last time. I thought I could feel its reverberations in my bones.
I was trapped inside my head, my hearing muffled by the gong’s thick and sonorous voice, but I still saw movement out in the crowd, people turning toward the woods. For a moment, I thought of the Radiance, and my heart shuddered.
Sharp teeth, sharp claws.
But no, it wasn’t the Radiance. It was the R-Troops, marching two by two out of the woods. Lights floated near them, illuminating their way, along with buzzing camera drones that flashed and hummed and took in everything. I dropped the mallet next to my side and watched, as breathless as our party guests. The R-Troops wore their uniforms, dark liquidy blue with the Coromina Group logo emblazoned on their right shoulders. They turned sharply in the garden and made their way up to the stage before fanning out in front of me on the stage, blocking the lights. I remembered the rest of the ceremony—it wasn’t just speeches and gongs. I dropped the mallet on the stage and shuffled around to the front. The crowd gaped up at the R-Troops, and a murmur rose up from the garden, thrumming with excitement and confusion.
As I’d first memorized ten years ago, I let the last of the R-Troops arrange themselves into place before speaking.
“We welcome this—product—into the Coromina Group family.” I stumbled over product, feeling like I should change it, not knowing what to change it to. That’s what this ceremony was, the unveiling of a new product. A new weapon. “It will bring us much success.”
God, everything was so stilted. But I paused and the crowd picked up on the pause and applauded, just like they were expected to do.
“And now, here’s—” I was supposed to say designer or engineer, but I was about to introduce my father, and I doubted he’d want either of those titles attached to his name. “The CEO of the Coromina Group, Philip Coromina.”
More applause. I stepped off the stage, my job done, and Dad took my place, grinning and waving. I didn’t leave the garden. Part of me wanted to; part of me didn’t want to listen to Dad’s speech about the R-Troops and all their strengt
hs and specifications. I snatched a glass of wine off its tray when one of the staff drifted by.
“We’re calling them the R-Troops,” Dad said, gesturing across the stage. “They may look like typical bioengineered soldiers, but they are far from typical.”
In one stomping motion, every single soldier stepped backward except for one.
“Allow me to introduce Private Will Woods.”
Private Woods lifted one hand in formal greeting.
“He possess the same features and benefits as all the R-Troops. Using the latest simulation technology, we were able to create effects never before seen in any bioengineered soldier.” Dad winked at one of the camera drones. “I know you’re intercepting this, OCI. You’ve already seen what we’re capable of. Now I want you to know how we got there. Maybe we can work up a treaty instead; what do you say?”
The crowd laughed, but I knew it wasn’t a joke. A treaty—really, a takeover of OCI’s assets—would be more profitable in the long run than the war could ever be. And that’s what all this was about in the end. Profit.
Dad ran through all the peculiarities of the R-Troops—their psychic link, their superior strength and senses, a brief overview of their connection to the orgoships they fought in. All around me, the crowd was expressing its approval and its interest. I kept my gaze on the soldiers, who stood perfectly still, as they’d been trained to do. Designed to do.
I drained my wine and listened to the wind so I wouldn’t have to listen to Dad. That soldier looked away from me. But I found I couldn’t look away from him.
• • •
I escaped the crush of the party and stumbled over to the plumeria maze, a glass of wine in one hand. People were still knotted around the stage, talking to the R-Troops, but the initial frenzy had died down. I just wanted to be alone, to get my thoughts in order.
After Dad had finished his speech, the crowd erupted, surging forward, guests shouting questions up at the stage while Dad gazed over them with an expression of calm, chilling benevolence.
He owned all of them. He owned every single thing, living or otherwise, in this system. And in that moment, I could see just how thoroughly he understood his power.