“So before all this,” Mi Sun said, “we had an advantage that we’ve now lost?”
“Yes. They must have had their suspicions, which is why they tried to isolate Tamret’s nanites.” He glanced at her.
She shrugged. “They put something in my food to make me fall asleep, and when I woke up, I was in that lab, unable to move. I guessed what they were after, and I just sort of figured out a way to keep them from being able to get hold of any working nanites.”
Dr. Roop nodded. “On Confederation Central, you experimented with hacking your own skill tree long before altering anyone else’s. They must have assumed that you, of all their prisoners, would most likely have a hacked version of the Former tech tree. Maybe they knew your blood yielded nothing, maybe not. But then Zeke and the others demonstrated their abilities at their school, and they decided to try to get information from the other humans.”
“So I handed them exactly what they needed?” I asked.
“You could not have known,” Dr. Roop said, his voice kind.
“I should have known,” I said. “Ardov lured me into a fight, and I walked right into his trap. I should have gotten Alice back to the ship right away. Now we’ve given an advantage to the enemy, Alice might die, and I’m—I’m broken. My upgrades don’t work. I can’t even access my HUD.”
Dr. Roop looked at me and blinked sympathetically, which did not make me feel good about my prospects. “We have already realized that this is the case. Your falling from the sky alerted us to the error, and we ran some medical scans on you immediately.”
“Then you’ve been looking into it?” I asked.
Tamret nodded.
I looked at her. “Can you fix this?”
She let out a breath, and her ears flattened. “I don’t know. Right now we have no idea what went wrong with you. We don’t understand why your abilities have gone dark or if it can happen to the rest of us. I’ve downloaded all your data, and I’m comparing it to the rest of us, but it may be a while before I learn anything. You can still understand our languages, which means your nanites are still there and partially working, but beyond that, you don’t seem to be gaining any benefits from either the original or the Former upgrades.”
“I would not read anything into the translation abilities continuing to function,” Dr. Roop said. “They have always been separate systems. That was why, when you were first exiled from Confederation Central, it was easy for me to keep your translation nanites working while temporarily neutralizing everything else.”
It was bad news, but it could have been worse—not being able to understand any of the aliens on this ship would have been a disaster. The fact that I’d been in a similar situation before, and clawed my way back, gave me some hope. I made a decision not to get upset. We were going to fix this, not accept it. “Okay. So what’s the plan?”
“The plan remains unchanged,” Dr. Roop said. “The original approach is still the only option we have, both for removing Junup from power and for saving Alice’s life. We are on our way to rendezvous with Captain Qwlessl. She has been using her time to search for Former artifacts. Perhaps her efforts have revealed new technology that will help defeat the Phands. Regardless, we need her ship and her expertise. Once we are on board, we will go to the planet where they are holding Director Ghli Wixxix and the others.”
I nodded. “Do we have a plan for what we do once we get to the prison?”
“I’m afraid there is no ‘we,’ ” said Dr. Roop. “Not for you. You cannot participate in any operations. You and Villainic, with no Former abilities, are too vulnerable.”
I stood there, unable to speak. After everything we’d been through together, it had never occurred to me that I might be sidelined for the most important operation my friends had ever attempted. I understood their reasoning, of course. I would be virtually helpless, a liability to the rest of the supergroup. I knew I had nothing to offer, but even so, it stung.
“Isn’t that just perfect,” said Ardov, who was now awake. He leaned against a bulkhead, his arms bound behind him, his legs spread out with his feet manacled. “Poor little Zeke getting kicked out of the club. But now, at least, we know what you’re up to. Director Junup asked me to find out, and now I have.”
“Is he transmitting?” I asked the group. I felt so powerless. I hadn’t been using those Former skills very long, but they’d become almost second nature in a short amount of time. Now I felt like I was missing a sense—maybe all my senses.
“Not a chance,” Steve said. “There is no data coming in or out of the ship. We’re in tunnel, which means communications are a no-go, but even if we were in normal space, it wouldn’t matter. We’re on full communications blackout.”
“We’ll have to keep it that way,” Mi Sun said. “We need about five layers of redundancy on his restraints if we want to keep him from breaking free, and this means we can’t maroon him anywhere until we’ve completed the operation.”
Dr. Roop walked over to him. “Perhaps you can tell us how your weapon is harming our companion?”
He managed to shrug. “They gave it to me and told me to shoot her. That’s what I did. Other than that, I have no idea. But I’m glad it’s messing her up.”
“If he cannot help us,” Charles said, “then I think he should be rendered unconscious for the remainder of the voyage.”
“I agree,” Dr. Roop said. “Are you willing to cooperate? All we want is to help our friend.”
“One more of you running around wouldn’t make a difference to me,” he said. “I’d tell you how to help her if I could. Let’s find some other reason to keep me awake. Ask me something else.”
“Not interested,” Tamret said, getting up and walking over to him.
“Now hold on, Snowflake,” Ardov said. He looked at her and she stared right back, almost as though she’d been slapped. There were a lot of things about Rarel culture I did not understand, but I had seen Tamret, usually fearless and defiant, bend and almost break under the weight of her society’s codes and traditions. I started to walk over to get between them, when Tamret touched Ardov’s arm, injecting him with something to render him unconscious. Almost immediately, his head slumped forward.
“That may have been premature,” Dr. Roop said. “There’s a chance he could have helped us.”
“He made it pretty clear he wanted to be conscious,” Tamret said, “and he still said he couldn’t help Alice, so I think he was telling the truth. And while he’s awake, he’s dangerous.”
Dr. Roop nodded thoughtfully. He probably agreed with her, but I guessed he didn’t like her acting so impulsively.
I watched as Tamret walked back to where she had been sitting, but her expression was darker now, distracted, and she wouldn’t meet my eye.
No one would, and I knew they were thinking that I could have avoided this whole mess. Alice would still be hurt, maybe, but if I’d played things differently, Ardov would be back on Earth, he wouldn’t know our plans, and the group would have one more superhero with which to carry out the operation. The only good news to come out of all of this was that the Phands hadn’t guessed what we were up to yet, and that meant they wouldn’t be waiting for us at the prison. It might well be that security would be tight everywhere, but we knew we wouldn’t be walking into a trap—or at least they knew they wouldn’t be walking into a trap. I’d be sitting on a ship, watching Ardov for signs of wakefulness and listening to Villainic complain.
“Oh, no.”
It was Mi Sun’s voice, hardly more than a whisper, but it cut through my thoughts. She was sitting by a console, scrolling through some images, and I could tell from how she sounded that she’d found something very bad.
I started to walk over to her. “What is it?”
She almost leaped from her chair and turned to me. “What is it? It’s you, Zeke. This is your doing.” She was pointing to an image on the screen. It showed a man and a woman, along with two teenagers, being led into a police van by uniformed off
icers. Watching over them were two Phands.
“That’s my family,” she said. “I captured a bunch of news feeds before we went into tunnel, just to see if the Phands were going to lash out at our families for what we did.” She switched to another image. A haggard-looking man I recognized as Alice’s father was also being arrested. There were pictures from India—Nayana’s family being taken away. From Uganda, where the head of the boarding school Charles had attended was being led away in handcuffs by grim-faced men in uniforms. And then my own mother and father, being put in the back of a police car. Off to the side, two Phands looked on, and standing with them was Nora Price herself. She was looking at the camera, smirking, like she knew we were going to see this.
“This is your fault,” Mi Sun said. “You said they would be okay. You said that we didn’t have to worry about them, but your stunts back there forced their hand.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I felt like my throat was closing up. After all my parents had been through, they were finally safe and together. Now they were in the hands of beings who would hurt them just for the pleasure of causing me misery. And the rest of them. I never wanted anyone’s family to get hurt, but I didn’t know how to say any of it.
Tamret watched this exchange. I expected her to snap at Mi Sun, to tell her to be quiet, but she said nothing.
It was Charles who came to my defense. “You cannot say this is Zeke’s doing.”
“Then whose is it?” Mi Sun demanded.
“I asked that you not contact your families,” Dr. Roop said.
Mi Sun turned to face him, hands on her hips. “And like a good little boy, Zeke did what you said. And he bullied me into doing it. I knew it was wrong. I knew I should have told them to hide, but I listened, and look what’s happened.”
“Mi Sun,” I began.
“Save it,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “What do you have to tell me that will make a difference? That we’ll save the galaxy? That we’ll go on some stupid rescue mission and that will help our families hundreds of light years away? Let’s just hope they’re still alive by the time you get what you want.”
She turned away from me, and I knew there was no point in trying to talk to her. Not now.
“Phands are far more likely to hold prisoners until they are useful than to execute them needlessly,” Dr. Roop said, his voice soft.
“And what is Nora Price likely to do?” Mi Sun demanded.
Dr. Roop had no answer to that, and we found ourselves in an uncomfortable silence.
I coughed awkwardly. The Phandic ship was small, and there weren’t private rooms or even bunks—apparently Phands considered sleeping an inexcusable weakness—but the aft section included an escape pod that could provide a little privacy, and I told the others that I needed a little time alone.
I went into the escape pod and shut the door. It was small, with just enough room for five or six Phands to sit with a tight squeeze. There were two emergency medical bays along the walls as well, but they were closed, I guessed to prevent the spread of possible contagions. There weren’t even viewing windows, but it had probably never occurred to the designers that sick people might want to look out or their friends might want to look in. The pod gave every appearance of being minimally comfortable. On the other hand, it did seem to be maximally functional, and I noticed several boxes along the walls, including a portable medical kit, food rations, and a weapons locker.
These supplies, designed to aid survival under desperate conditions, only made me feel more isolated. They were like a sign that I was on my own. Maybe most of the others weren’t angry with me, but they felt sorry for me, and that was almost as bad. No one had blamed me for Alice getting hurt, but as I recalled what had happened during the attack, I felt sure that I ought to have done something to keep her safe. Now it was too late, and I had no way of making things right.
Mi Sun had accused me of being a bully, of having a hero complex. Could she be right? I made a case when I believed I knew what we had to do, but so did everyone else. No one called Steve a bully when he insisted on steering the ship through some insane escape route. No one accused Alice of having a hero complex when she wanted to take a crazy risk to keep the rest of us safe.
I felt sure I had a lot to contribute to the cause, that the team was better with me than without me. Now I was going to be sitting out the most important operation we’d ever attempted. Maybe it was selfish, thinking of things this way. What did it matter who saved the galaxy as long as the galaxy got saved? I believed that, but I also felt that I could make a difference, and somehow, without meaning to, I had ruined my chance to help my friends. If one of them were to be hurt or killed, if the operation were to fail, then I would spend the rest of my life blaming myself.
The door to the escape pod hissed open and Tamret stepped in. She looked uncomfortable, like she wasn’t sure she should be talking to me or if I would want to be talking to her. She brushed her hair out of her face, and I was struck once again by how pretty she was. She still frightened the poo out of me, and she probably always would, but I wasn’t sure I would have it any other way. No matter what kinds of powers and ancient alien knowledge we brought to the table, I was still sure she was the most dangerous weapon we possessed. I thought back to all the times our enemies had underestimated her and paid the price.
She was going to go into battle one last time—I hoped—and more than anything I wanted to be by her side. Instead I’d be hanging back where it was safe, and that made me worry that maybe she would be disappointed in me. In the past I’d earned Tamret’s respect by facing problems, not hiding from them. I’d stood up to enemies stronger and more dangerous than I was. How would she feel about me now that my job was to stay out of everyone’s way?
Tamret came and sat down across from me. “Are you okay?” Her voice was strangely neutral, like an overworked nurse checking on a patient.
I shook my head. “I’m worried about my parents—about everyone’s families.”
“I know,” she said. “But Mi Sun is wrong. It’s not your fault. We’re doing what we can to help them.”
“But I feel like I messed up,” I said. “You guys are about to attempt the most insane thing ever, and I can’t be there.”
“We’ll somehow manage without you,” she said, and there was no mistaking the hard edge in her voice.
“Are you angry with me?”
She looked away. “I just wish you hadn’t messed around with Ardov. You had to go play hero, so now we’ve got a weaker team when we go into that prison.”
Nothing could have stung me more. I hated that Mi Sun was angry with me, but hearing this, from Tamret, was almost more than I could take. “I thought you, of all people—”
“I’m not a person,” she said. “You use that word when you’re talking about your own species. I’m a being. A Rarel. I’m not like you.”
Where was this coming from? When had Tamret ever cared that we were from different worlds? There was a lot we didn’t understand about each other’s cultures, but that had never mattered before. Her coldness now, the obvious accusation in her voice, shocked me.
“So what?” I demanded. “Why should that suddenly make a difference?”
“It made a difference on Earth,” she said, “when we were locked up for being aliens. It mattered when that woman was pumping me full of chemicals so she could try to unlock my secrets. And that was just the beginning, Zeke. She had plans for me. She was going to dissect me. She told me that with a smile on her face, and I was powerless to stop her.”
Nora Price could be cruel—I knew that—but had she really planned to dissect Tamret? I didn’t even want to think about it. The important thing was that we’d gotten Tamret out of there before she had the chance. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I told her, trying to keep my voice calm. I didn’t want to sound defensive. “You knew we would come for you.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know you would come
in time. I had no idea your species was so nasty to other species. It wasn’t just Nora Price, you know. All the humans seemed to find being cruel to aliens pretty hilarious.”
“There’s good and bad everywhere,” I told her. “I’ve seen some members of your species who aren’t so nice.”
“And some who are,” she said, “even though you treat them like dirt.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, feeling like I’d just been transported into an entirely different argument. “Are we talking about Villainic now?”
She nodded. “I’ve decided that when this is all over, I’m going back with him. After all we’ve been through, there are ways that I can get caste protection from his family without being engaged to him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I belong with my own kind.”
Her own kind had tried to talk me into leaving her behind when she hadn’t been housed with the others in the police station. It felt like cheating to bring that up, but Tamret had to know she was safer with me than she would be with him, no matter how powerful his family.
She must have seen the disbelief on my face, because she crossed her arms and planted her feet as though I might try to shove her off her opinion. “I’m better off going home.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought we had worked all of this out back on Confederation Central, and now she was telling me she was going to return to Rarel, not because she was obligated to—which had been the situation before—but because she wanted to. It made no sense. “Tamret, have you forgotten how they treated you on Rarel? You’re not safe there.”
“After we save the Confederation, I’m sure they’ll give Rarel another chance to join, and then things will be different. They’ll have to be. All I know is I can’t live somewhere I don’t belong.”
In the last hour I’d lost my powers, learned my family had been arrested, and been tossed aside by Tamret. When my powers cut out and I’d been plummeting toward the ground, I hadn’t felt half this scared or helpless.
“I need to get back to working on the code,” she said. “I haven’t given up on getting you up and running. I know you want to be part of the team.”