It's a Love Thing (23 page)

No one in the Transition Center
would’ve seen the beauty in this face that Sera did. Hollowness
filled his entire expression. She traced a finger lightly over the
cheekbones of Dex Porter. She tried not to look at the text to the
right of his so-changed face, but new additions to his medical bio
jumped out at her. She frowned and sighed.

“
Sera, you have at least
three transitions arriving shortly.” A soft, kind voice broke
Sera’s gaze fromon Dex’s face. Sera’s overseer placed a hand on
Sera’s shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do about his choices,
Sera. I’m sorry. I know you can’t forget about him, but try to
leave his file alone.”

“
I know, Emily. I know.
Can’t . . . can’t
someone
help him?” Sera flicked at the screen, looking
away when Dex’s face disappeared.

Emily gathered up some papers next to
Sera and shook her head. “Dex isn’t living a life that allows for
much help.” She handed the papers to Sera then pushed back a strand
of deep brown hair. Sera always admired the way Emily’s straight
hair laid smoothly down her back.

Sera leaned her head in one hand and
flicked her screen again, watching the parade of faces again. “It’s
not really his fault.”

“
Yes, it is, Sera. He’s
making the decisions. They are his fault.”

Sera didn’t answer. She knew
that.

“
Can’t we bring
him—”

“
It’s forbidden. He hasn’t
been infected.”

Sera swallowed. “If he does get
infected, they’ll bring him, right?”

Emily frowned. “No. He’s destroying
his body. The Guides won’t allow it.”

Sera nodded. She watched the face of a
girl with drab blond hair and wilted looking blue eyes fade away.
She touched the screen, bringing back the face.

I know
her
.

Sera’s glanced over the file at the
right of the girl’s face. “Elspeth Ronan, arriving tomorrow,” she
whispered. Sera closed her eyes, searching her memory for
details.

“
What is it, Sera?” Emily’s
voice came from across the room.

“
Nothing . . .” Sera said,
hoping Emily didn’t hear the catch in her tone. Sera flicked the
screen again, bringing up the three files that needed assigned an
overseer before they arrived: the blond girl and two other faces
that seemed to blend into a crowd.

Jenner met her outside the Transition
Center. “Ready for dinner?” he asked.

Sera avoided looking up at
him. Dark-haired Jenner reminded her of Dex. Today she didn’t want
to be reminded. “Of course.” Instructions from her own transition
protocol flicked through her brain.
It is
understood that those arriving from Earth will seek out meaningful
relationships. The goals of Haven Base directly coincide with these
inclinations. Companions for all those arriving at Haven Base are
essential to the ultimate goal of extraction and
repopulation
. When she didn’t find a
companion on her own, The Guides arranged a “group date” with
others that weren’t attached yet. She chose Jenner because of his
looks.

“
Something happen today?”
Jenner asked.

Sera shrugged. “Not really.” She
turned, looking up at him apologetically.

“
Just thinking about Dex
again,” he guessed.

Sera nodded. “Yeah. I’m
sorry.”

Jenner shrugged back. “It’s okay,
Sera.”

“
Some companion I make,
right?”

He patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t
worry about it.” He reached down and took her hand. “We have years
to make this work.”

She nodded. Something seemed to stick
in her throat. It was easy for Jenner to be sure. He left Earth at
twelve, one of the first victims; he’d lived at Haven base for
almost ten years now. There wasn’t a girl he waited for, knowing
she’d never be able to come.

*****

She lives next door to
Dex.
The memory jumped at Sera the second
she accessed Elspeth Ronan’s file the next morning. She glanced up.
Emily leaned over and looked at Sera’s computer. She seemed
relieved to see Elspeth’s face and not Dex’s.

“
She’s arriving in the next
hour. Have you assigned a transitions overseer?”

“
Not yet,” Sera said. Her
voice shook ever so slightly. A thought, a plan so against the
rules rattled obscenely in Sera’s brain.

Emily leaned over, studying Sera with
calm but intense brown eyes. “Is something wrong?”

Sera shook her head slowly.
“Nothing.”

Emily’s eyes roved over the text. Sera
knew she’d make the connection. Emily would know why Sera didn’t
just assign a transitions overseer.

But Sera couldn’t stop the words that
started running through her head. The improvements made to her
brain at the Haven Base allowed too much room, too much storage.
Lines from her transition protocol flashed across her
vision.

In extreme and rare cases,
supervising Transition Overseers may enter the body of a Scheduled
Arrival to prevent irreparable damage
. .
.

She was only a clerk, nowhere near a
supervising Transition Overseer, and definitely didn’t have the
authority to do what she was considering. Nothing about Elspeth’s
impending arrival warranted intervention by anyone. She’d
contracted the virus, lay in a hospital bed right now in the final
stages before Polio-Variant IV started destroying her organs and
nervous system. Nothing about her situation would cause harm to her
body, leave it blemished and unfixable by the Elysians at the Haven
Base.

No. The only reason Sera considered
doing something so forbidden was Dex.

In a flash of fingers she jabbed in
the code to authorize changes to Elspeth’s file. She placed her
hand on the screen.

“
Sera!” Emily gasped and
snatched at Sera’s wrist, which already tingled.

“
I’m sorry, Emily!” Sera
cried. She pushed Emily aside with her other hand. “I have to save
him. Don’t you understand? I have to save him.”

“
Sera!”

Emily’s voice already sounded far
away. Like someone had dumped a glass of ice water over her hand,
coldness spread down the tips of Sera’s fingers, over her wrist, up
her arm. Once it reached her shoulder, the sensation moved quickly,
drenching her entire body.

Sera seemed to hover over her body.
She looked down, seeing it slumped in the chair. Emily grabbed at
Sera’s hand, pushing it against the screen, typing frantically on
the keyboard. Sera couldn’t hear what Emily said, though her lips
moved rapidly.

I have to save
him.

Then everything went black.

*****

Heat. It seemed to swarm
over Sera’s body. It burned her throat when she took a breath. It
stuck to her skin, making her uncomfortable. Memories swirled
around her.
So hot. So hot.

And
what are you doing here?
That wasn’t
Sera’s thought. Who did it belong to?

She pushed her eyes open. Stark white
met her gaze, then a mass of brown hair obstructed her vision, pale
blue irises that looked like Elspeth’s stared down at
her.

“
Ellie? Elspeth?” The
woman’s voice sounded almost relieved, which clashed with the
desperation lining her expression.

Mom . . .

No, not my mom,
Sera thought, confused. Her mind seemed so full,
inundated with words, images, sentences that weren’t her own. She
stared blankly at the woman.
My
mom!
A voice in her brain sounded
annoyed.

After several moments it
dawned on Sera why the woman called her Elspeth. Sera remembered
choosing to take over Elspeth’s body to get to Dex. It was
Elspeth’s voice battling with Sera’s.
I’m
sorry, Elspeth. I need your body to save Dex.

Whatever.

“
Ellie?” Elspeth’s mom
sounded more frantic.

“
Yeah?” Sera
croaked.

The woman collapsed into a chair next
to Sera and dropped her head into her hands; her shoulders shook
with soundless sobs.

“
What’s . . . what’s
wrong?” The words seemed so hard to form. They burned her throat
coming out, like she hadn’t used her voice for a long
time.

The woman looked up, tears wetting
every surface of her face. She wiped at them with her sleeve. The
intermingled joy and relief surprised Sera, as though she—actually
Elspeth—had come back from the dead.

“
They said once you lost
consciousness that was it. You were gone. I—I can’t believe you’re
awake, Ellie.” The woman reached up and stroked Sera’s hair.
“You’re still alive . . .”

Unfortunately,
Elspeth’s voice snapped at Sera.

A stab of guilt shot through Sera. How
cruel of her to get this woman’s hopes up. How cruel to draw out
Elspeth’s pain. The Guides would certainly find a way to take
Elspeth before the virus decimated her beyond repair.

Another snippet from the
training program ran through Sera’s mind.
The virus, which spreads quickly through the population of
Earth, leaves The Guides no choice but to extract rather than
chance the time it may take to study and produce a cure for
Polio-Variant IV.

“
You’re still alive,” the
woman repeated, awed.

“
For now,” Sera forced
herself to say.

The woman swallowed and nodded. “For
now.” She straightened up. “I should call the nurse. They may need
to . . . do something.” She didn’t move though. She stared
longingly.

If only she knew,
Sera thought.
But would
it be better?
The woman was clearly over
the age limit for extraction to the Haven Base. Past her
child-bearing years; useless in repopulation efforts.

The woman leaned over and kissed
Sera’s forehead before standing. As she turned toward the phone,
the door opened. The woman turned to greet the doctor. Sera bit
back a gasp at the recognizable figure of her overseer, clad in a
white coat and even a stethoscope around her neck.

“
I was just about to get a
nurse. Elspeth’s awake.”

Sera didn’t need to see Elspeth’s
mother’s face to know a smile dominated her expression.

Emily frowned at Sera instead of
looking at the woman. Sera dropped her gaze to the thin blanket. “I
see,” Emily said. “I need to examine her. Will you wait outside
please?”

“
Is that necessary . . . ?”
But the woman moved before she even finished the sentence. Emily’s
demeanor discouraged argument.

“
Thank you,” Emily said as
the woman passed. She moved to Sera’s bedside before the woman even
left. The woman cast one last look at Elspeth. Sera smiled for her
benefit. The woman left.

“
What are you thinking?
You’ll get banished for this, Sera, no argument. No returning to
Haven Base. Sentenced to Earth where
your
body will die within days.”
Emily didn’t pretend to examine Elspeth.

Maybe this isn’t such a
bad idea, you taking me over. Will I get banished too?
Elspeth asked.

Sera ignored Elspeth’s voice, now
confused about her host’s attitude toward the Elysian’s attempts to
save earth. Sera sat up. “The Guides can’t be that unfeeling. Dex
thinks I’m dead. Please just let me help him. Give me that
chance.”

Emily shook her head. “The
Guides are
not
unfeeling, Sera. There is simply not time for useless
undertakings such as this. There is nothing to be
gained.”

She’s right—

Sera silenced Elspeth’s
voice, surprised that her control over Elspeth and her body was
strengthening. “There is
everything
to be gained!” Sera cried, throwing the blanket
off her legs. “We’re talking about a human soul.”

Emily sighed. “Forgive me, Sera, but
that has no bearing on the importance of the task at hand. Dex
cannot be taken to Haven. Your ‘death’ struck him hard. I
understand that. But others have not destroyed their lives because
of it. Thousands are dying, Sera. Many of them will not have the
chance you have to save Earth. You are jeopardizing your own future
and that of Elspeth Ronan.”

Sera didn’t blame Emily for not
understanding. She came from a place so different from Earth. The
concerns of a single person didn’t register with her—she’d spent a
lifetime saving other planets, where the welfare of the beings as a
whole was more important than the individual. Emily thought on the
grand scale that all Elysian’s did.

Sera brought her chin up. “You can’t
force me to leave Elspeth without ruining both of us. With so few
subjects for extraction, will The Guides risk that?”

Emily’s lips slid into a thin line.
“Your only chance at forgiveness will be to willingly come back
with me.”

“
I won’t.”

“
Don’t be ridiculous,
Sera.”