CHAPTER 32 AFTER KORI
CHAPTER
KORI
“And then,” Dawn proclaims, waving her glitter-studded magic wand with a flourish, “the fairy godmommy turned the robot … into a princess!”
Aspect plants one hand squarely on their hip, the many, many ruffles of their sparkly blue dress shifting with the motion. “A princess?” they ask, their ruby-red optical processors slowly blinking, on and off, on and off.
Dawn claps and enthusiastically agrees, “A princess!”
“A PRINCESS!” Aspect shrieks at a keening pitch that makes me cover my ears.
They spin in the fastest circles they can muster.
Now that their peg leg has been replaced with a properly matching knee joint, they’re alarmingly fast—royal costume poofing, sparkles sparkling, and arms akimbo, knocking a vase of flowers down from a nearby shelf in their wake.
The flowers were artificial, and the vase as plastic as Dawn’s wand, so the actual destruction is minimal. Jelza can afford to replace a child’s vase, and the second-grader’s raucous laughter is more than enough to justify what led to the damage.
In these easy moments, it’s all too easy to forget the pressure that yet looms, even with Chloe’s plan thwarted.
Sub-settlements A through Z are presently selecting their representatives for the tribunals.
The voice of the people will determine what’s to become of Chloe, the Evolution Project, and the remaining Evolved altogether.
When Chloe made announcements as monarch, she disseminated them digitally—it wasn’t as if anyone else had a say in her proclamations, after all.
But this will be different. This will take everyone.
For justice to be properly dealt, the entire community harmed must come to a shared conclusion.
Right now, the traitorous Evolved are being held in nightfolk prisons.
Those who stood up for freedom face an uncertain future, still undeniably set apart from the rest of the human race.
Nearly a hundred of us remain alive after Chloe’s defeat.
Some fell in a hail of nightfolk freezeshot.
Others, who stood with Chloe to the end, fell by the hands of their selfsame kind.
Despite their heroism in the final hour, now even the bravest Evolved have huddled in their homes, cut themselves off, until the verdict falls.
As the closest thing the Daylands have left to a leader, I can’t afford to hide. I have to organize the tribunals. And while that falls into place, I’m determined to undo what little damage I can—as is, to my own surprise, Ednit.
I didn’t have to threaten, coerce, or even suggest a course of action for Ednit to offer Jelza a return to her original body, which remained untouched in cold storage.
His science may have veered into perversion, but beyond the shadow of a doubt, his sincere goal all along was collective progress, not slaughter.
The kind, gentle doctor who could put younger me at ease with a simple smile or a wry joke wasn’t merely an illusion.
Despite his sins, despite how Chloe sought to use his discoveries to advance a tyrannical dynasty, the Ednit I knew is still in there.
I can only hope the tribunals will see that, too. I can only hope that my words—and
Jelza’s, for that matter—will nudge the populace toward redemption, not vengeance. The future of every Evolved, including myself, hangs in the balance.
Jelza. Where is she? How long can the procedure possibly take?
A lingering fear worms its way into my gut, that perhaps even with Chloe stopped and the Evolution Project put to a halt, transferring anyone back to their original body will prove an impossible task, after all.
Then I hear a sharp beep from the home’s entry door, and my terror blessedly dissipates, as surely as if by royal magic.
“Dawn,” I say, taking the child by her hand, “come with me.”
Aspect toddles after us, their heeled shoes clacking with every step.
The Jelza standing by the kitchen table looks, at first glance, no different from the Jelza who helped me stop the apocalypse.
The same deep-brown skin and perceptive brown eyes, the same carefully braided black hair frizzing at the edges, the same soft but serious face.
But when this Jelza enters, the air in the room immediately lightens.
My shoulders lift. It feels as if I’ve only ever seen this woman behind a pane of glass, like when I tried to communicate with her through the window, but now she stands before me truly present, truly here.
“Dawn?” Jelza says, kneeling to reach her child’s eye level.
The little girl looks from Jelza to me, then back to Jelza. She squeezes my hand tighter.
“Dawn, baby,” Jelza says, her voice trembling. “I’m home.”
In an instant, I see what’s truly happened process behind Dawn’s wide, suddenly watering eyes.
She drops my hand and runs—no, sprints forward, weeping, collapsing headlong into her mother’s arms, face buried in her shirt, little fists clinging to the fabric.
Her unbound cries nearly cut off her voice. “Mommy, you came back!”
With her own hands—born of flesh, not forged of Pagonian plate—Jelza rubs her daughter’s back in gentle circles. “I’m here, baby,” she breathes, her own voice hitching on a sob. Her gaze lifts to hold mine, brimming with joy that transcends any language. She presses a kiss to
Dawn’s forehead, brow tensed against open weeping of her own. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Behind me, a mechanical voice says, “Aspect—has no eye water—to let Aspect’s—feelings out. But Aspect’s feelings …” They throw their arms wide, heedless of the nearby kitchen counter, a silverware stand nearly falling victim to this round of poorly planned body language. “ARE VERY BIG!”
Jelza clings to her daughter, her daughter clinging back, the artificial barrier between them finally rent asunder. My eyes sting, my own tears threatening to overtake me.
I screamed at Ednit until my throat burned raw.
I pored over the Lexicon until I fell asleep leaning on a records shelf.
But he was telling the truth. My body—my real one, the one my mother carried in her own—was destroyed once my Evolution was deemed a success.
Deep in the magma pits beneath Pagomènos’s surface, my DNA was incinerated, irretrievable.
My comms tablet buzzes in my belt pocket, as if Adria could sense my pain from halfway across the planet. Stars above, I miss her so fiercely that it aches, but there’s nothing she could say right now to alleviate my anguish.
This grief is a solitary thing, a conversation I need to have face-to-face with only myself until all words are utterly exhausted. No one else can understand this burden; no one else can carry it for me. Not Aspect, not Jelza, and certainly not Adria.
My body is gone. Forever.
I will never age, only mechanically wear and tear.
I will never kiss Adria with my own lips.
I will never carry biological children of my own.
I don’t even know that I would’ve wanted to be pregnant, but the decision being made by someone else, permanent ink blotting out so many possibilities, makes the room clamp down on me as surely as my mother’s hands around my throat once did.
“Not just you, Aspect,” I say, salt water tracing down my cheeks. “My feelings are big, too.”
The upper half of the hourglass is full when the tribunals begin, but I have no doubt it will run utterly empty by their conclusion.
The settlement’s dining hall is quite possibly the only room large enough to accommodate all dayfolk citizens: a domed, centralized chamber with multiple levels of concentric floors, all connected by stairways.
Aspect organized the other mechs to clear the hall—pushing tables and benches to the sides, mopping the food-stained floors, and finally, assembling a makeshift wooden stage in the center of the room, with a simple ramp allowing access.
All around the elevated circle’s rim, twenty-six chairs for twenty-six sub-settlement representatives sit at attention. Massive screens surround the stage, ensuring that the speakers’ words can be seen and heard from anywhere in the room—and will be recorded for posterity.
And in the center, a simple box, a lectern, and a mic. My last chance to present my case to the dayfolk. That I am not my mother’s daughter. That the Evolved are not fundamentally evil. That there’s still a way forward, for all of us. Maybe even for Ednit.
Nevertheless, the settlement’s inhabitants are squished together like ration packs, barely fitting into the hall. But it’s better than requiring everyone to don full-body armor and meet amidst the desert winds. Everyone who isn’t Evolved, that is.
My stomach threatens to empty its contents directly onto the stage.
I would give anything for Adria’s reassurance at my side right now, but nightfolk can never tread inside the settlement without infecting the controlled atmosphere with radiation.
I have to do this alone, I messaged Adria via comms. But I don’t know if I can.
You can, she sent back, no hesitation. You risked the Shadowlands to awaken Aspect. You loved me at my lowest, even when I pushed you away. You stood up to your own mother’s apocalypse, then still found the courage to spare her life.
I shook my head, staring numbly at the comms tablet, typing, deleting, and typing again, before finally landing on a response: Will any of the dayfolk see it that way?
A painful stretch of silence, then the buzz of another reply. One meeting will not be the thing to fell you, love. When the dust settles, you’ll still be standing.
And then you’ll come back to me.
It’s the promise of safety beneath Adria’s wings that puts strength back into my legs, bravery back into my blood, and carries me up the ramp and to the lectern.
Heart in my throat, I step forward, cross my arms over my chest, and speak into the hastily wired mic: “The tribunals are called to order.”