Nova (25 page)

My thoughts flash back to the resistance, and I shake my head. For every one thing I know, it feels like there are two pieces of information I
don’t
know. Am I merely a last-ditch effort to save a race that’s already doomed? Or some small part in a much bigger plan, too small to see beyond the boundaries of my own insignificant place in it? If only I knew. If only there was another way.

Michael’s voice still echoes in my head:
All those innocent people.

Well, at least if I go Nova I won’t have to live with my guilty conscience afterward.

After admitting my failure, I’d waited for the blame. For the others to round on me in anger for ever setting foot on this station and screwing up their lives. But it never came. Instead, Michael started speaking with Teal in a low voice about where they might obtain passage off the station, and what to tell Taylor, and whether they could warn anyone else. He asked Shar for her link number, explaining at her confused expression that it was so he could link her with the details for their passage.

I smile slightly as I remember the look of surprised wonder on Shar’s face. Had she really expected us to just leave her, a refugee with no creds and no connections, alone to find some way off the station in just thirty-some hours? Yes, I realized looking at her face. That was Shar. She looked after herself and didn’t ask anyone for help. But that’s the thing about Michael. With him, you never need to ask.

My smile falters as I imagine his expression when he learns I’m not coming with them. Even as he’d spoken of passage I knew I should tell him, but I just didn’t have the heart to do it. How could I explain that I’m not some junior secret agent with mad demolition skills, but a bomb? And not just a genetically engineered bomb forced into this mission by my very birth, but a volunteer as well?

“That’s very generous,” Jao says, taking my release form and wadding it up in a ball, “but I can’t let you volunteer for this assignment.” He tosses the form in the garbage can next to his desk.

“Why not?” I demand, pulling it out and un-wadding it. “Because I’m still a kid?”

“Well, yes,” Jao says frankly, “and because this whole plan was a mistake from the get-go. The Nova technology is untested; we don’t even know if it’ll work. We’ll find another way. Besides, your parents would die if I let you do this.”

“They’re dying anyway!”

A pause. “I’m sorry. It was poor choice of words. I didn’t mean—”

“No, it was the perfect choice of words. Don’t you see? That’s why I have to go. I can’t just sit here and watch them die.”

“I know it’s hard—”

“No, you don’t!” I cry. From across the room, faces turn our way. I lower my voice. “You
don’t
know.”

“We’re going to figure out a way to save them, I promise. The daily inoculations Doc’s giving your parents to keep their Spectres from multiplying seem to be working. Cavendish tells me none of the usual signs are there.”

“What does it matter? You still can’t cure them.”

“No, but it’s only a matter of time before we figure it out.”

“We don’t have time! You know it as well as I do. We have to move soon, and
I
am our best hope of succeeding.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, precisely because of my age. They’re on the lookout for Tellurian resistance fighters. Tellurian
adult
resistance fighters. I’m a kid and a prisoner. I’m the last person they’d suspect.”

“It would depend on where we inserted you,” Jao objects, but I can tell he’s weakening. For all his doubts, I am our best option, and he knows it.

Jao hesitates, not unaffected by my words. I drive the final stake home.

“You infected my dad. You
owe
me.”

The memories have been coming back more rapidly now. Sometimes in bits and pieces, other times in whole chunks. I now know my favorite color (blue), my favorite food (lasagna), and my favorite sport (track), not that the last one was too hard to guess. All these things that I would have given anything to know just one week ago now seem so utterly pointless. I still don’t know the one thing I desperately want to know though. Who I am.

Maybe I was originally engineered to be a weapon, but clearly I became more than that in my couple short years. I had parents who loved me, friends in the resistance, and even more than that, I had free will. I became an individual who could and did make her own choices. Surely I must have had a name, an identity of my own. Something they called me before turning me into Lia. I suppose it really doesn’t matter anymore. Still, it would have been nice to know my name—and my adoptive parents’ names—before I died.

Pacing back and forth, I stop and lean against the tunnel wall, listening to the rush of the SlipStream as it makes its way back and forth. It’s early evening; I should go to the cafeteria and get dinner. I’ve hardly eaten anything all day. None of us really had any sort of appetite after the link. Even now I’m not really hungry. Still, it would be something to do, something besides pacing and thinking. I could even eat my favorite food now that I remember it. Not that I could taste it.

I don’t go, though. I just can’t seem to comprehend eating when my whole world is about to end. Literally.

“Michael said you might be here.”

I turn at the familiar voice. It’s Teal. “What are you doing here?” I ask, faintly surprised to see her here. Except for her question about the transport, she was strangely silent during my entire explanation a couple hours ago. I wonder what she thinks of everything. Even now, her expression gives nothing away, her eyes guarded and dark.

“I came for the truth.”

“You were in my mind; you saw it.”

Teal shakes her head. “Not what you told us. What you
didn’t
tell us.”

I freeze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re a good liar, Lia—or whoever you are—but not good enough. There’s something you’re not telling us, and I want to know what it is.”

Damn! I should have known that while she was sitting there silently, Teal was examining my every gesture, every word, every explanation, looking for the chink in my story. Well, she found it, though she doesn’t know what it is. Clever Teal! I hesitate, unsure how to answer.

“I’m not leaving until you tell me, so unless you want Michael on the station when the bomb goes off . . .” Teal trails off, not having to finish the sentence. She knows I know there’s no way Michael would leave without her. At last, I sigh. Maybe it will be better this way.

“I can’t come with you all,” I finally admit. “I can’t leave the station.”

Teal blinks. Whatever secret she was expecting, it wasn’t that. “Why not?”

I hesitate. “Because there is no bomb—”

“What?”

“I
am
the bomb.”

Teal’s mouth drops open. For a long time she just stares at me, utterly speechless. Then something sparks in her eyes, some piece of emotion formerly missing from her guarded expression, and I know she believes me.
“How?”

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I volunteered for this mission, and I’m going to finish it.”

“That’s why you were going to leave before,” Teal says slowly, her brain kicking in now that the initial shock is past. “That’s what you meant when you said you weren’t leaving Michael, but
for
Michael.”

I nod. “My countdown clock malfunctioned. I’ve been living on borrowed time since I got here. I knew it was only a matter of time before I went Nova—blew up—and took everyone on the station with me. I couldn’t let that happen to Michael. I didn’t remember why I was here or what I was supposed to do then. It was only when I finally remembered . . .” I shrug helplessly. “I’m sorry. I’m
so
sorry! I’m
so, so sorry!
”

I’m not even sure what I’m apologizing for exactly—abandoning Michael? Lying about it? Even volunteering for this terrible mission in the first place? All I know is that I’ve never felt so much regret in my life. It pours out of my heart and fills up my veins until all I can do is apologize, over and over, as though only words can temper the outrush of grief.

I collapse on the floor, hands over my face, and at last the apologies peter out. Shoes scrape over metal, and I feel Teal drop to the floor next to me.

“I’m sorry, too,” she says softly.

I glance over, confused, and she waves a hand roughly by the area of her cheek. It occurs to me that she’s apologizing for the sound slap she delivered me in the cargo bay. I flap my jaw a couple times, bowled over by the utter absurdity of her apologizing for something so small and stupid in the face of much more terrible regrets. So bowled over that I start laughing. Teal’s giggles join mine a second later as she gets it, and for a long time we just sit there and laugh our heads off. It’s only when tears threaten that we force ourselves to stop. We sit together against the wall, trying to catch our breath.

After a while Teal whispers, “Michael will be so devastated.”

“You can’t tell Michael!” I say, alarm shooting through me at the idea.

Teal sits bolt upright. “Are you kidding me?
Of course
I can’t tell Michael! He would
completely
vac out if he knew, do something totally deficient trying to save you and then ruin everything. We can’t let that happen,” she adds softly.

She raises her serious face to me, her eyes infinitely older than thirteen at this moment, and I suddenly realize that more than Michael, more than Shar even, she understands
exactly
what’s at stake. For a brief moment, I don’t feel quite so alone anymore.

We sit together awhile longer, shoulders brushing and hands touching, neither wanting to leave this moment. Not with the future we have before us. Out of the blue, she suddenly speaks.

“If only there was some way to separate ourselves from them. Get all of them in one place and all of us in another.”

I blink, momentarily thrown by the change of subject. Opening my mouth, I start to tell her it’s impossible, then stop. Most of the Spectres have been staying in the hub, the infected prisoners confined there by station rule and the unattached Spectres seeming to prefer congregating there with their kin.

“Well, most of them are in the hub,” I say slowly.

“Most?”

“I have smelled them in the rings. Not nearly so many though, and only off and on.”

Teal looks at me sharply. “Are they in there today?”

I think back and nod. “Yes, I’m certain I smelled them outside the SlipStream station.” I stare at the tunnel wall, eyes unfocused as I think back to all the times I smelled them. Why did I smell them some days and not others? Was it simply dumb luck or was there a reason for their presence, or lack thereof? Something Jao said to me comes back.

There’s a scientist on Aganir who’s supposedly had more success using the fence to keep the Spectres out. No one else has had any luck replicating his success, though. Maybe we should have settled the resistance on Aganir instead of Tiersten. Not that I’d want to live there—nasty place, it’s like breathing underwater in a garbage dump.

Breathing underwater in a garbage dump.

A light suddenly goes on in my mind. What if they had it wrong? What if it wasn’t the fence at all?

“Teal, are the misters working today?”

She frowns. “I’m not sure. Gran would know. Why?” At my exhortation, she links Taylor. Excitement builds in me as I hear the answer.

“Unfortunately, they shut off again yesterday morning,” Taylor tells us. “The repair team only got them working again an hour ago. They tell us it’s a valve problem—apparently the main valve hasn’t been opening and closing properly, resulting in too little mist sometimes and too much at others. Why? Is this more research for your project, Teal?”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks, Gran.” Teal links off, bringing her sharp gaze to bear on me.

“It’s the misters!” I exclaim before she has a chance to ask. “There’s something in the nutrient mist they don’t like. Maybe it’s not enough to kill them, but it certainly seems to put them off.”

“I thought they didn’t breathe.”

“They don’t, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still sensitive to the air around them, the way we’re sensitive to air temperature or smells. Maybe the nutrient mist just smells bad to them. Or feels bad to them, whatever their equivalent of smell is.”

I tell Teal about Aganir, and she nods. “Then if we could get the nutrient mist going full blast again . . .”

“We might be able to force them out of the rings!” I finish. We grin at each other, ecstatic at the possibilities. Then reality sets back in and my smile drops from my face.

“It won’t work. Even if we could get them out of the rings, it wouldn’t matter. The bomb is too powerful. I’ll take out the entire station when I go regardless of where I am. I’m sorry.”

“Maybe not.” Teal thinks for a second. “In fact, maybe you don’t need to go Nova at all.”

Not
go Nova? My mouth drops open at the thought. Could it be that after steeling myself up to accept my fate there’s a way to avoid it after all? “Tell me.”

Teal leans in, and in quick, terse words, explains her plan.

30
SKULKING JUST OUTSIDE THE ENVIRO
Center, I check the time on my chit for about the hundredth time and try not to look suspicious.

That’s not the easiest of assignments. Located at the edge of the Upper Habitat Ring on the topmost tier of farms, the area around the Enviro Center is not exactly a usual haunt for most of the station’s teens, especially now. It’s almost twenty hundred hours, and Teal has been inside the center for forty-five minutes already. I check the time again and frown. The center will be closing soon; where
is
Teal? Surely she should be done by now.

Of course, maybe it’s just taking longer than we supposed. After all, it’s not like either of us has much experience sabotaging the station ventilation system.

Pacing the small square of decking between the beds of crops on either side of the center, I look out over the ring. It’s a unique perspective—the long tiers of farms in the foreground curving down to the city below, its buildings tiny and square in the distance. Up here, at least, there’s no smell of Spectres in the air, though I did catch scents of them in the lower section of the ring on my way here. Not nearly as prevalent as in the hub, but still enough to make me shudder now that I know what the odor means. I just hope Teal and I aren’t wrong in our theory.

We managed to wangle the mister logs from Taylor under the guise of needing the information for Teal’s school project. The logs showed the output from the misters for the past three months. It wasn’t easy to recall all the times I did or didn’t smell Spectres in the rings, but I could remember a few for sure, if only because I had the smell linked to a specific event in my head. When compared to the mister logs, my memories did seem to corroborate our theory. While Spectres were present during normal mist flow or complete shut-offs, they seemed to clear out whenever the misters ran full blast. With our theory confirmed inasmuch as we were able, we set about putting Teal’s plan into motion. Now if only she would hurry up and finish.

I’m making my twentieth pass across the tier when my chit vibrates. I answer the link, grateful for the distraction. “Hey, Michael.”

“Good news, Lia. I’ve tested it, and we’re a go.”

“Then it worked?”

“Yup, the screen turned on the moment I scanned it.”

“You actually
scanned
it?” I ask, alarmed that he might have accidentally given away our plan.

“Well, how else could I determine if it would work? Don’t worry—you have to punch in the code before it will go off. I doubt anyone noticed the scan.”

I nod and sign off. Assuming Teal’s work goes as planned, we’re nearly set for tomorrow. I just wish my own mission had gone as well. It’s something I’d remembered earlier, but then forgot in the stir of realizing I’d missed blowing the transport:
“You’ll have roughly one hour to get to a console and transmit the contents of the data chip—you know where it will be hidden—to the station before you go Nova.”

A data chip, with all of the information we’d managed to glean about the Spectres. I can remember it now. Everything except where it’s hidden, that is. I’d gone through my stuff earlier looking for it. Locker, blanket, clothes—everything I’d had on the transport. I even ripped apart the seams of my jumpsuits looking for it, but to no avail. Either I lost the data chip on the transport, or it’s really well hidden.

“Can you locate the information if we link minds again?” I asked Shar after my fruitless search. “Dig in my mind until you find what happened to the data chip?”

Shar gave me a dark look and flopped back down on her cot. “Not unless you want to risk dying again. Remember what happened the last time I tried to force memories from you?”

Seizing, heart stopping . . . yeah, it’s pretty hard to forget that. Plus, what if the poking around harmed my biochip or clock? They were already damaged from my electric shock on the transport, and they’d been running much longer than planned. What if Shar’s digging caused them to malfunction again? Or worse—go off?

“You’re right,” I told Shar with a nod of my head. “We’ll just have to hope it turns up before tomorrow. So you’re in, right?”

Shar hesitated. “Yeah, whatever.”

The answer wasn’t as rousing as I’d hoped for. “We need you, Shar. You know we can’t pull this off without you,” I added, a note of warning in my voice.

“Look, I said I was in, okay?” Shar said in a cranky voice. Sitting up, she swung her legs off the cot and stood. “I’m going to the cafeteria. You want anything?”

Mutely shaking my head, I watched her go. While her answers weren’t exactly encouraging, she had been in my head and seen what I’d seen. She knew how important the plan was; she wouldn’t let us down.

I stop my pacing and glance over at the door to the Enviro Center. Still closed, still no sign of Teal. As I deliberate whether I should go inside after her, a group of workers from one of the farms passes by. I duck my head, but they don’t pay me much attention.
That’s right
, I exhort them in my head,
just walk right on by. Nothing going on here. You know, except station sabotage, an alien invasion, and potentially the end of the human race.

I smile to myself, wondering how I can be so upbeat at a time like this. Maybe it’s because after those horrible months hiding out on Tiersten, with my parents dying and the resistance failing, I can finally feel some hope. Maybe I’ve lost my parents, but I have other family now—Michael’s family. I have a plan that will allow me
not
to go Nova and a chance at a new life, just like Michael talked about.

For a moment, I briefly wonder if Niven and Jao and the rest of the resistance would approve. After all, they gave their lives to take down the Tiersten spaceport. Would they be angry if I don’t do the same? I don’t think so, I decide after a minute. They gave their lives because they had to; they’d be happy to know I don’t need to.

I’m just getting ready to go into the Enviro Center after Teal when I see a figure coming up the steps from below. From the uniform, I can tell it’s an officer, and I immediately take a couple nervous steps back before reminding myself I’m not
technically
doing anything wrong.

No, that would be Teal.

The figure reaches my tier and stops a few feet away from me. “PsyLt. Rowan,” I blurt out, surprised to see him, of all people, on the agricultural level. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to speak with one of the farming managers about his report.” Rowan’s lips twist wryly. “What, you think I spend all my days on Level Eleven brain-draining people?”

Well, actually . . .

Rowan must see the answer on my face, for he laughs. “It may surprise you, but most of my duties on the station don’t have much to do with being a psychic at all. So what are you doing here, Lia?”

I start to babble out the story Teal and I concocted to get her into the center—that she’d lost an earring earlier this week while visiting with Taylor to work on her school project and had come back to look for it—when Rowan interrupts me to clarify. “I mean on the station. Didn’t your freighter shove off this morning?
Comet’s Kiss
, wasn’t it?”

Oh. The freighter. I’d forgotten about that. “I decided not to go, after all. The friend I told you about? Michael? He said it would be okay for me to stay with them. In fact, it’s his sister I’m waiting for.”

I feel a little guilty lying to Rowan after all the kindness he’s shown me, but I tell myself it’s not really a lie. Michael
did
once say his gran would let me stay with them, and I
am
waiting for Teal. For the first time, I wonder what I’ll do after this whole plan is over. Having originally assumed I would go Nova, housing had been the least of my concerns. Well, I’ll figure that out later.

“. . . if you could have Michael’s guardian come to the PsyCorp office sometime tomorrow,” Rowan is saying. “There’s some paperwork she’ll need to fill out to make everything official.”

“Of course. I’ll tell her tonight.”

Rowan just stares at me for a long moment, an unreadable look in his eyes. “I’m really glad this all worked out for you, Lia. Ever since I first saw you in the cargo bay—”

“What?” I ask when he stops abruptly.

“It’s nothing. You just look a lot like someone I know.”

“Who?”

He laughs. “My little sister, if you can believe it. You’re a dead ringer for her at that age. I know you’re not her, but I can’t help thinking of her every time I see you.”

His sister! I remember Rowan’s gentleness at our first meeting, the way he tried to warn me about the Aurorans’ fate, how he confided in me about Dayav and Mechanra. Now I understand why.

“Do you see her often?” I ask curiously.

“I’m afraid not. I come from a military family. My parents, my maternal grandparents, me, my sister. She’s on a posting far away. I haven’t seen her in three years.”

“Oh. Well, maybe you can visit her the next time you have leave.”

Rowan gets a strange look in his eyes, as though he would object to my suggestion and then suddenly realizes he doesn’t have to. He gives me a firm nod. “Maybe I will.”

The doors to the Enviro Center open and out comes Teal, followed by a few enviro workers who pause to lock the doors. She doesn’t even bat an eye when she sees Rowan, coming straight up to us as though there’s nothing more natural than finding me in conversation with an officer—and a PsyCorp officer, no less. I introduce her to Rowan, and the two make small talk for a minute while I marvel at her calm. Rowan mentions my staying with her family, and I tense.

“Oh yeah, I knew Lia back on Aurora. We’re like sisters. It’ll be much better than sharing a room with
Michael
,” she says, wrinkling her nose at the unfairness of a world where she has to share a room with her brother.

Rowan laughs, and a minute later we all part company. Teal and I take the steps leading down through the tiers. Feeling awkward about my lie, I try to explain.

“About what Rowan said, about living with you guys—”

“Well, where else would you stay?” Teal interrupts. “Unless you don’t want to live in that tin can we call an apartment. Tiny, cramped place. I can’t wait until I’m old enough to move away from this station and get my own place.”

Where else would I stay, indeed? Grinning, I savor the warm glow spreading through my chest at the idea of having a place to call my own. Soon enough, though, I refocus on the mission. According to Teal, everything went off without a hitch.

“They completely bought my story about the earring, and having seen me with Gran a couple times, they waved me right through. They didn’t even have anyone shadowing me while I looked. I guess they don’t consider the filtration system especially high security. Either that, or they couldn’t see past my innocent face to the evil genius inside.”

“Then what took you so long?”

She shrugs. “It took me awhile to get an unoccupied control station; I had to wait until someone went on a maintenance check. Don’t worry—it’s done. I set the system to lock open all valves in both the lower and upper rings at exactly 2230.”

“
All
of them?”

“Sure, no sense playing it safe, right? With the center closed for the night, it’ll be morning at the earliest before anyone realizes what happened. I changed the valve system password while I was at it, so it should take them awhile to get it shut off.”

I nod. “I just hope it’s enough time.”

Teal gives me a sidelong glance. “You and me both.”

I wake with butterflies in my belly the next morning. Today is the day. The convoy will be arriving late tonight so they can refuel and be ready to take on passengers tomorrow. If we’re going to make our move, it has to be sometime within the next several hours. My stomach clenches at the thought, though whether it is from fear or excitement, I’m not entirely sure. Probably both.

As soon as I finish my morning routine, I link Michael and ask him to meet me at the SlipStream station on the ring side. Time to see if my theory and Teal’s sabotage have panned out. The first thing I do when I step out of the station is take a deep breath.

“Well?” Michael asks me impatiently.

I grin. “So far so good.”

“What now?”

“Time to walk around and see if the rest of the place smells this good.”

We spend the morning together, just Michael and me, sometimes walking, sometimes biking to cover more ground. Technically, I don’t need him to come with me, since only I can smell them, but I want his company. After all that’s passed, I finally have the chance to tell him everything I never could before. About the resistance and my time on Tiersten. About Cavendish and Jao and Niven, and how they must have died taking out the spaceport. Even about how my parents were infected on our flight from the main camp. The words pour out, one after another, and through it all, Michael just listens, occasionally asking questions when my story doesn’t quite fit together.

“So if you were just another prisoner at the colony, how did you end up in the resistance?”

I hesitate, unsure how to answer without revealing that I wasn’t imprisoned on Tiersten, but created there. “Well, the resistance chose Tiersten to base their operations for a couple reasons. First, because it was about as far from New Earth as they could get.”