Dove Arising (33 page)

But there’s nowhere else to go; there’s nowhere I can hide from the six shadows looming large and still on the walls; if they’ve so much as blinked at my entrance, the projections don’t show it. Atlas gasps; Phobos ignores me. Mom smiles with relief; she must have been wishing I’d find her.

“Well spoken, Mira,” says Hydrus. “But our little talk must end he—”

“Wait!”

Hydrus pouts, impatient to deliver the knockout blow, but allows Mom to speak. Her consciousness still occupies that shatterproof space within her. She looks at me, through me, begging me to forgive her for years of secrets.

“My children are innocent—even Phaet! They had no part in this.”

What about Cygnus? She put him on the front line. Does she think lying now will help?

Mom clasps her hands and rests her forehead on the knot of fingers. “For the sake of human dignity, spare them! I ask no more.”

Silence. Then Wolf says, “Your crimes are punishable by immediate execution.”

Mom’s hands fall to her sides; the determination drains from her face. There’s nothing more she can do. Atlas lunges toward her, but Janus roars, “Stay back!”

Mom’s eyes stare into my face until the moment she closes them. I make no move in her direction. I don’t forgive her, but I won’t begrudge her a few seconds of serenity, not now.

As an automated laser weapon descends from the ceiling, twin metal strips emerge from the defendant’s chair and wind around Mom’s neck until they meet in the middle, holding her head in place. The steely clasp is the last embrace she’ll ever know. When the weapon clicks into place, aimed at her forehead, I wish I were holding her instead.

I clench my eyes shut, but I still see the violet light and feel worlds slip from under me.

36

HER HEAD IS TUCKED INTO HER CHEST, lolling back and forth as if she’s asleep. I could almost believe that the laser missed something vital—that I can take her to Medical and they can revive her. She can’t be dead, not the only parent I have left.

Broken logic gives way to an unrelated memory: a time in training when I fell off the climbing wall, felt the floor slap against my spine, and lay there trying to remember how to breathe, how to lift my head. I recovered from that blow and within twenty minutes had forgotten the incident, but there is no erasing this. This is worse than anything: I can’t recall Mom’s last words, the scent of her embrace, what her face looked like before the laser hit. I should have done something more, pushed her out of the chair before the bars slid around her neck, shown my love one last time. . . .

Stop! No more regret. I didn’t send that beam her way—these tyrants did. As I remember anger and how to hate, raw energy washes away everything else. Mom never needed to die; Cygnus and Anka never needed to watch.

Before I can move, before I can touch my mother’s body or modify the curve of Phobos’s haughty nose with my fist, Atlas pins me to his side.

“No—Mom! I hate them! I hate them all!”

Even with a hand covering my mouth, I’ve never made this much noise.

“I failed,” Atlas whispers.

“Let us deal with her.” Nebulus gestures for Atlas to step away from me. Reluctantly, he does. I face the six shadows alone.

“You should not be here,” begins Janus. “You should be halfway to Earth by now. There is no excuse for your insubordination,
Captain
.”

I wasn’t here to give one, or to fall like a withered leaf before them. The Committee has done more wrong in five minutes than I have in my life.

“Aside from that,” Nebulus says, “You have violated Code 284.75. This is a confidential trial.”

“We had high expectations for you, Phaet.” Janus tries harder to break me. “Your marks in Primary, your placement in Militia—such potential, all unusable now, like radioactive waste.”

Every word slides off my consciousness—acid rain from a waxy leaf, running harmlessly over sealed-shut stomata. Wolf takes over, his cloud of hair seeming to bristle with electricity. “We should have remembered the radical deviants to whom you were born! You’re as delusional as your parents, aren’t you? They thought they could run a
country
—ha!”

Cassini’s hand makes a dismissive sweep, as if brushing me away with his spider fingers. “My fellow Committee members, observe the flat expression, the haughty silence. She’s looking at us like some girl-sage who thinks she knows better.”

I dumbly latch on to a word, one whose plural form hasn’t been used in reference to me in nine years.
Parents
. But Dad died too long ago to be involved in Mom’s activities, unless there’s more I don’t know. . . .

Say something
. I can speak to all the residents of Base IV. I want to tell the Committee how wrong they are, how little they understand about our audience. No handscreen-hiders, fruit stealers, or Shelter residents loom above me. The Committee keeps order, but if they comprehended our everyday lives, maybe they wouldn’t need to try so hard.

My mouth is dry but my voice is bright. “I don’t know better, but I may know more.”

Not a movement from anyone on the screen or in the room. I’ve said enough to petrify them and can now escape.

I stumble to the door, jam my thumb onto the sensor, barge through. The guards gape at their handscreens; they make no attempt to stop me. My feet carry me through the hallway, down the steps, into the lobby. I don’t know where they’ll take me, only that I need to be alone.

A small crowd has gathered in the Atrium. Although mucus plugs my nasal cavities, I smell sweat and smoke; while tears smear my vision, there’s no mistaking the mottled brown robes. Again, the impossible has occurred, and it’s another jolt to my state of mind.

The strongest of the Shelter residents have broken out. They form a cluster of about eighty, shouting hoarsely, faces pointing at the ceiling, the bumpy contours of their craning necks exposed. Other citizens, their brighter robes a stark contrast, gather at the mouths of the four hallways that feed into the Atrium, watching the scene with fear and wonder.

As my destination lies on the other side of the base, I run through the center of the Atrium, along the perimeter of the Shelter group. On the ceiling is a photograph of Mom, little and proud in life, surrendering to gravity in death. A shot from Cygnus’s camera plays in a loop on the six surrounding video screens. Again and again I watch myself run into Chamber 144; the camera trains on the back of my head, showing a straight-backed, silver-haired individual whose features have lost their color but not their youthful vigor. As the Committee lectures her, the camera pans to capture her unlined face, pale and adamantly calm. “I don’t know better, but I may know more,” she says, her wispy voice rendered thunderous through amplification.

As I run onward and duck into a hallway, a hand grabs my shoulder. I put on an extra spurt of speed.

The hand latches on.

“It’s Sol Eta, your mom’s colleague.” Her voice is so full that it’s audible even through the din. “I need to talk to you privately.”

I kick backward at her shin, but it’s a lethargic movement that’s disconnected from my brain. With a swift pivot, she evades the attack and grabs my wrist. How amateurish of me.

Sol pulls me to a quieter spot by a wall and stows her left hand in her pocket. Unwilling to incriminate myself by accident, I do the same.

“I’m so sorry, and appalled, frankly, by—by what you’ve just experienced.”

I search Sol’s pointy features for any hint that she feels the misery I do, and see only the quivering of her sharp jaw. She defended Mom despite dismal prospects of success, but I still don’t want her company. Maybe Sol is quivering—with anger—because Mom led her to believe certain things that weren’t true—as she did to me.

“Please forgive me if what I’m about to say sounds callous.” Sol clutches my cheeks, her blue eyes flitting across my unanimated face. “You’ve seen how weak Dovetail is—Mira’s trial wasn’t in our hands at all. But you . . .” She points at the video clip of me, then sweeps a hand across the vociferous Shelter crowd. “Dovetail needs you.
They
need you.”

Working my jaw, unable to comprehend what she’s saying or what it means, I back away. Either Sol is deranged or I’m ignorant. It must be the latter—the Committee’s comments about Dad, Mom’s peculiar words, her manifesto. . . . What else don’t I know? In my mind, dozens of questions ram against one another, vying to be the first out of my mouth. “Who’s Dovetail?”

“The organization your mom started three years ago. I thought you knew.”

Is Sol insinuating—no,
stating
—that between my mother’s Journalism job and her duties to our family, she founded a group without Committee approval? If it’s true, then the past few months of my life have been useless. No wrenching action I performed—joining Militia, disobeying orders, coming home to her—could have stopped what was already in motion or saved someone who planned to die. All of Mom’s advice to me, her acceptance of the horrors she experienced, were because she intended this organization to outlive her.

I could throw something. She favored this cohort, these insane ideas, over people who shared her blood.

Sol advances again, as if she’s worried I’ll flee at any moment. “Dovetailing—an ancient Earthbound woodworking technique. Two pieces of wood are joined by cutting pieces from each. Your mom named us. Without her, we need you more than ever. Please.”

Dovetail
. Aside from the meaning Sol’s given me, did Mom choose the name because of me, Phaet, her “dove”? I’ll never be sure, but the Journalist I knew wouldn’t have missed that obvious coincidence of letters and words, and neither would the mother who tried to reform a government to better the lives of her children. New tears ooze from my eyes—the last thing I need is a reminder of how much she loved me.

Sol pushes onward. “We seek to compromise with the Committee, not begin a violent revolution. Infiltration works wonders for us. After what’s happened, you can’t continue being a Militia captain. But come with me to Shelter, where we’re going to hide; tell me everything you know. You’ll live under Dovetail’s protection. And when we need to rile up the populace, we’ll send you out to . . .”

I try again to wrench my arm from her grip. “Why didn’t
you
write the ‘Grievances’? Why don’t you gamble your life?”

Sol’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline. “I’ve endangered myself as much as anyone else. I only operate through Journalism because I’m better suited to handle public relations. Dovetail has nimbler people like Yinha undercover in Defense. She watches over our members’ kids: people like
you
.”

Yinha, a captain and a rebel? She watched over me, lived next to me, and never even hinted. Now I’m second-guessing the reasons for her kindness. Was it my skills, my character . . . or my parentage?

“Do you think I wanted this? All Dovetail’s preparations, exposed by your hacker brother long before we were ready? And your mother . . .” The muscles in Sol’s throat contract as she tries to keep her voice from wobbling. “I never expected to take over Mira’s duties as a leader, to beg you to join us. But your family’s decisions have forced my hand. Saving this organization, pushing onward, is all I know.”

To my astonishment, Sol releases my arms and kneels before me, hands clasped. “See? I’m on my knees. Come with me to Shelter. It’s the only safe place for you.”

I open my mouth to refuse, but think again before I speak. Sol heads the only organization that can protect my family from the Committee. When they find out that Cygnus hijacked the news, their retribution will be swift. I have to consider Sol’s offer, but not here or now, with such a polluted head and the clamor of the Shelter residents’ protests ringing in my ears. I block the red tint from the edges of my vision.

“It’s not a good time,” I say, my voice expressionless. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Wait!” Sol shrieks, but I’m already running down the hallway so fast that my legs turn inward again. I don’t care, as long as they carry me away from every last thing that breathes.

I rush through halls and doorways of white, float into an empty Greenhouse 22, and inhale the perfumes of plants whose outlines I can barely see. It’s dark, lunar night, and everything might as well be made of shadow.