Akaela (15 page)

“Why,
condemn her to Niwang, of course! Not only did she breach the sacred doors of
our auditorium, but she also did the unthinkable: she awakened her brother from
Wela, letting him escape a rightful punishment.”

More
steps.
One, two, three.

“Have you
found her brother, Uli?”

Uli shakes
his head. “No, sir. But I swear, if I lay hands on that little thief, I’ll make
sure both of them get the punishment they deserve.”

“Ah.”
Tahari comes down three more steps. More sounds from above follow, more people
coming to watch.

The whole Kiva has come to condemn me
.

“Well, I
have,”
Tahari
says.

Uli
blinks. “Have what?”

“I have
found him. The thief.”

Uli
shifts. I wiggle out of his grasp and pull myself up. Tahari looms one flight
up and points his finger to the upper level landing, where Athel—eyes
narrowed and jaw clenched—leans from the railing and looks down on us.

Athel! No
!

Uli
scrambles back to his feet and stares at my brother. “You’ve disappointed me,
Athel.”

“So have
you,” my brother replies. “You killed my father.”

His words
flatten me. I gasp, unable to breathe.

No. It’s not—it can’t be true
.

I crawl against
the wall, blood trickling down the corner of my mouth, and brace myself. Uli’s
jaw twitches. He looks at Athel then at Tahari and attempts a deceitful smile.
Tahari doesn’t reciprocate, his eyes as hard as stone.

“You’re
not believing the word of a thief, Tahari, are you?”

Tahari
raises a fist and opens it. On his palm rests a small, cube-shaped piece of
electronic. I can’t tell what it is from the distance.

“He
brought me proof, Uli,” Tahari says.

Uli steps
back, his hands searching for the fire door. He pushes it open and then runs. I
spring to my feet but a wave of dizziness makes me stumble against the wall. My
eyes stray to Tahari, as I wordlessly plead him to do something, to catch the
traitor, the man that for so long I thought a friend.

Tahari
closes his hand over the mysterious object and stares vacantly at the fire
door.

I want to
say something, yet words fall short. I want to run after Uli, yet my legs fail
me. Seconds go by. Tahari stands and says nothing. He doesn’t look at me or at
Athel. He doesn’t condemn us. Just stares at the fire door while more steps
echo from farther up the stairwell, people coming to stand on the upper
landings from various floors.

And then
the fire door next to me swings open again and Uli’s face reappears, this time
swollen, his nose cracked open. Akari, Lukas’s uncle, holds Uli by his arms and
shoves him to the floor at Tahari’s feet.

“Caught
this one fleeing through the boiler room. I hear he’s a filthy traitor.”

“He killed
your brother, too,” Athel says from the top of the stairs. “He killed them
all,” he adds, choking on those last words.

“Put him
out!” somebody from the upper floors yells.

“Out!”

More
voices join in.

“Filthy
traitor!”

“Assassin!”

Uli
attempts a last plea for his life. “Lies,” he shouts. “They’re all lies!”

Tahari
raises a hand in the air, silencing all voices. He looks at Lukas’s uncle and
then says, “Put him out.”

“What?”
Uli hollers. “No! You can’t do this, it’s a mistake!” He tries to run again,
but two more men come down the stairs and pin him face down to the floor. Akari
bends over him and cups a hand at the nape of Uli’s neck.

Uli cranes
his head up and flashes a spiteful glare at me. “No! You won’t put me out. You
can’t! She—she didn’t deactivate. The switches are faulty. You won’t—”

His last
cry echoes up the stairwell and then dies.

There’s a
moment of silence in which a million thoughts assault me, leaving me
breathless. I slide down to the ground, my back pressed against the wall.

Dad. Uli killed Dad
.

Hot tears
roll down my cheeks. Hot tears and no words whatsoever. Chaos follows. Several
men and women storm down the stairs to pick up Uli’s limp body and take him
out. They shout their shock and outrage. I sit there and think
nothing,
the wound in my heart so overwhelming it drowns
everything else.

A hand
drapes my shoulder and, as I look up, I see my pain reflected in my mother’s
eyes. She pulls me into her arms and I bury my face in her chest and cry.

Chapter Twenty-One

Athel

Day Number: 1,536

Event: Tahari’s announcement.

Number of Mayakes left: 428.

Goal for today: Fight back.

I peek down the hallway. The place
is packed with people: all Mayakes have come to Tahari’s special announcement.
The auditorium wasn’t going to fit us all, so they set up the podium in the lobby
on the first floor for him to speak. All Kiva Members are gathered around him. They
nervously exchange last minute words, as Tahari’s speech will have to represent
their unanimous consent.
 

“It’s
packed,” I tell Lukas, pushing him back toward the side corridor we’ve come
from. “Let’s wait here until Mom and Akaela show up.”

Lukas
doesn’t even look at me. He sits by the wall, crosses his legs, and returns his
attention to the video game on his data feeder. I sigh. He too, just like me,
is going through a lot. He’ll come out of it, but it’ll take time. I stand by
the wall and keep an eye on the waves of people who have come to hear Tahari’s
speech.

Murmurs,
hushed conversations, and nervous steps fill the vast hallway. People cram
close together and exchange glances. Some go so far as to guess exactly what
Tahari will be announcing. Our future is at stake. Tahari won’t be able to give
us another “Let’s wait and see” speech. The three men who’d volunteered to pave
the way to a new peace treaty with the Gaijins got slaughtered, and not by the
Gaijins themselves, our historic enemies. No. By our very own, their bones
scattered in a shallow grave not too far away from the landfill.

That’s
where Kael had retrieved the piece of metal with Dad’s serial number on it. I
let the falcon fly back there yesterday. Tahari, two other Kiva Members, and I
followed him into the forest and made the gruesome discovery, the definitive
proof that Uli had ambushed and murdered the three ambassadors shortly after
they’d left for their mission.
 

I seethe
at the thought, the betrayal so fresh and so deep I can’t come to terms with
it. When Lukas told me Uli had to be the traitor, I drew on the anger to push
through the night and make it back to the Tower in time to save Wes and Akaela.
Lukas recognized the serial number on the electronic piece I’d stolen from
Uli’s shop. I could only think of one thing: revenge. Never in my life have I
wanted something more strongly.

The piece
had belonged to Alejan, Lukas’s father. It was his piezoelectric energy harvester,
and it carried Lukas’s dad’s unique integrated circuit identifier. No wireless
messaging is possible without it. Yet Tahari had been receiving regular updates
from the ambassadors, updates that had to be sent from the piece we were now
holding in our hands.

Uli had
been sending the fake messages.

“This is
my father’s integrated circuit,” Lukas told me in the gorge, pointing to the
chip on top of the energy harvester.

“What are
you talking about? I told you already. I got it from the closet at the back of
Uli’s shop.”

“It has my
father’s serial number. I know it by heart.”

“Well,
maybe your dad got a replacement. Uli saves everything so he can recycle parts
and make new ones from the old.”

Lukas
shook his head. “No. This particular piece is implanted under the skin of the
neck. Right here, see?” He brushed a finger along his own scar to show me.

We all
have that scar, about two inches long, on the right side of our necks. It’s a
Mayake mark. I never knew it nested the integrated circuit and energy harvester.

“You see,”
Lukas told me. “It’s quite visible when you replace it. You get stitches and
all. And Dad never needed a new one since I can remember.”

We stood
there,
night approaching fast, our clothes drenched, and a very
sick kid sprawled on the ground between us.

The
realization was overwhelming. Our fathers had never made it to the Gaijin
factory. In fact, our fathers probably never even left our own
land,
caught in an ambush from the one they trusted the
most.

Lukas wept,
one long tear rolling down his cheek.

That’s
when I shook it off.
My pain, my anger, my loathing.
Wes was dying. We’d done everything wrong, deceived by our own stupid hope that
we could still save our parents. We’d lost everything, and if we didn’t act
soon, we were going to lose Wes, too.

I hauled
the three of us—including Wes’s limp body—on Taeh’s back and pushed
that heroic horse of ours through the muddied terrain of the gorge.

Behind me,
Lukas held Wes and didn’t speak a word. I know he was crying. I would’ve cried
too if I had tears because it wasn’t just Wes that was losing his life. Akaela
was also in danger. By now she’d landed straight into the devil’s hole.

We got
lucky. We made it on time. Tahari probably would’ve never even listened to us
if it weren’t for Wes’s torn leg. He saw Wes first
,
then the energy harvester and circuit identifier Lukas showed him. That’s when
he believed us and shared our pain.

We’re all
related, us Mayakes. It’s the way it is when you’re stuck in isolation for so
many generations. Alejan was Tahari’s cousin.

As soon as
they took Uli away, Lukas and I dashed to check on Wes. The surgeons worked on
his femur for several hours. The techs fixed the torn implant and managed to
reattach it to his bone.

He’ll need
a few weeks to recover and regain his strength—he lost a lot of blood and
it’ll take a while for his wound to heal. But he’ll make it. They woke him up
around noon and even though he was still groggy and weak, the first thing he
asked for was sticky rice candy. The head surgeon said it was a good sign.

Wes’s mom
hasn’t told him about his dad yet—the third man murdered by Uli. They
found all the implants and nanoelectric technology Uli had harvested from each
one of our fathers hidden in the basement room where he’d locked Akaela.
 

I haven’t
been in that room yet. I can’t get myself to see it. My father died in there,
his blood spattered all over the floor as one greedy man cut him open and dissected
him just so he could have his implants and technology.

My sister
squeezes through the pressing crowd, our kitten Ash cuddled in her arms, and
taps on my shoulder. Mom arrives with her. She kisses my cheek and then moves
over to greet the other families standing nearby, her new prosthetic
hand—the droid hand Akaela and I stole a week ago—shining from her
left arm. After all the events of the past few days, we’d completely forgotten
about the droid hand until it resurfaced in Uli’s workshop. Mom didn’t want it
at first. We told her she had to. We told her Dad would’ve wanted her to have
it.

I stare in
my sister’s eyes and see Dad. They’re the same color and shape.

“I miss
him so much,” I say.

Akaela
nods and hugs me while Ash squirms against my chest. I take him from her arms
so I can look away and not show the pain in my face. My bionic eyes don’t cry.
Maybe it would hurt less if I could shed tears.

Akaela
sends a nervous look to the crowded hall and then stiffens and averts her eyes.

“Is it
them
up there?” she whispers.

I know
exactly whom she’s talking about: Yuri and Cal, the evil brothers. They stand
with their parents—both Kiva Members—next to the podium, away from
the rest of the people. I can’t stand looking at their faces. Neither can
Akaela.

“You’ve
got to come out and tell the truth about what those two pieces of scum did to
you,” I tell her. “If nobody makes them pay for it, they’ll come back for
revenge.”

Mom sewed
Akaela’s sail. The gliding frame is still at the shop, under repairs, but Akari,
Lukas’s uncle, is optimistic they’ll be able to reinstall it. But my sister’s
biggest wound is
inside,
I can see it in her eyes. She
wouldn’t even talk about it if I didn’t prod it out of her mouth.

“Look,”
she hisses, her voice low so our words get lost in the general murmur filling
the hall. “Tahari pardoned your Wela on the basis that what you did wasn’t
stealing but retrieving evidence that Uli was a traitor and a murderer. He hasn’t
officially spoken about how you came out of Wela.”

“He’s
pardoned us for that too,” I reply. “He doesn’t need to say it, but it’s pretty
clear.”

“Have you
not listened to what people are saying? Everyone’s talking about this. They
have a hard enough time believing somebody like Uli could be capable of
murdering so many people. If it comes out that three kids breached the sanctity
of the Kiva, all hell will break lose.”

“It doesn’t
have to come out. Tahari’s not like Uli. He won’t betray us.” Funny how I just
said that, and yet I’m not one hundred percent sure myself. Once that trust is
breached, you can never look at the people around you the same way.

Akaela
shakes her head. “I just don’t want to push it. Yuri and Cal’s parents are both
Kiva Members. If I start making accusations, people will dig further into the
story. Right now they all believe we confronted Uli and that’s how Wes ended up
badly injured and I almost got chopped up on Uli’s autopsy table. They think
Tahari awakened you from Wela.”

“Lukas and
I went straight to him as soon as we got back to the Tower,” I say. “Nobody
else saw us. Our secret is safe with Tahari.” If I can convince my sister, I
can convince myself too.

“If I talk
about what Yuri and Cal did to me that night, I’ll have to explain what the
heck I was doing out flying in the middle of the night. They’ll probably come
back with more accusations of stealing.”

I let Ash
climb up my shoulder and squeeze my sister’s arm. “I can’t believe you’d rather
do nothing about this. For somebody who knows no fear—”

“I’m not
scared of them.” She narrows her eyes. “Believe me, I
will
get back at them and this time they’ll get what they deserve.
But I do fear for you, Athel. The Mayakes aren’t good at forgetting.”

The
murmurs from the crowd quiet down.

“I think
Tahari’s about to start,” Akaela says.

The
excitement is palpable.

I nod. “It’s
going to be an epic speech.”

I know it
will. The Mayake people have learned a painful lesson today. Survival doesn’t
just happen. You have to conquer it, fight for it.

I turn to Lukas,
still seated on the floor with his eyes glued to his data feeder, and prod him,
hoping he’ll forget his video game and pay attention to Tahari instead. “What
do you think, Lukas? Isn’t it going to be epic?”

Lukas has
been very withdrawn for the past forty-eight hours, devoting his attention
almost exclusively to video games. I can’t blame him. At least Akaela and I
still have our mother. He’s got nobody left but his uncle.

Mom
squeezes past Akaela and me and squats down next to Lukas. She wraps her brand
new hand around his shoulder and prods him to stand up and come closer so he
can listen to Tahari’s speech. I think she’s officially adopted him.

Tahari
steps to the podium and clears his throat. “Brothers and sisters,” he says, and
then looks around the audience with dark, hard eyes. “Are we really brothers
and sisters?”

The words
are harsh. They hit home. People look at one another, their heads bowed, their
shoulders slouched.

“Never
before had we doubted our identity,” Tahari says. “We
are
brothers and sisters, have been for many generations. Yet today
we face our worse enemy: ourselves. When betrayal comes from our own, who are
we going to fight?”

Nods of
approval weave through the crowd.

Tahari
clasps the edge of the podium. “Uli was one of us, one of our very best. He was
in charge of many of our implants and looked over their correct functioning.
Believe me when I say he used to be a good man.”

A general uproar
welcomes his last words. He raises a hand and presses on with his point. “Uli
was indeed a good man when I started working with him, many years ago. Greed
took over him.
Greed and the quest for immortality.
Despite our technology, we’re still very much human. We’re mortal, and our
defects go beyond our genes or limbs or malformed bodies.” Tahari punches his
chest and lower his voice. “For as long as we feel envy and hatred and greed we
are defective, and those are things no implant will ever fix.”

A voice
rises from the crowd. “But Tahari, we’re dying.” Lukas’s uncle is speaking.
“Our technology is aging, our implants are no longer adequate.”

“Yes,”
Tahari replies, raising his voice over the murmur of approval. “You’re right.
If we don’t do something about it, we will die. In fact, we shall die at our
own hand. If we don’t act now, we will see brothers kill their own brothers in
the name of survival. It’s happened in the past and we’ve just witnessed it now.
The
city of Astraca, the home our fathers built over a
century ago, was destroyed by the Gaijins
. But we, the Mayake people,
will rise over such despicable deeds. Instead of turning against one another,
we will stick
with
one another and
fight together.”