Chapter 24 #2
“I know we’ve taken you by surprise—”
“You tricked me,” I snap. My hand is at my hip, gripping empty air where there should be a gun. I need a weapon. I need to breathe. “You didn’t want an interview. You just wanted an excuse to get me alone.”
“Don’t blame Rudy,” Nina says. “It was my idea. I’m the one who wants to speak with you.”
“And you thought trapping me here was the best way to do it?”
“I had reason to believe you wouldn’t come willingly.”
“The reason being you’re a shit excuse for a human and I want nothing to do with you.”
She flinches but holds her ground. “You’re upset. That’s understandable. But you must believe me when I say I’ve only ever done what I thought was best for you. The circumstances have been … difficult. I know that. But I’m here now, and there are things you need to hear.”
“Fuck you.”
“Keller.” That’s Rivon again, massaging his jaw. “I know this is unexpected. And I’m sorry for lying to you. But your mother really has come a long way, and what she wants to say is important.”
“Yeah? And she couldn’t have said it any time in the last ten years?”
“The situation has changed,” Nina says. “I want to explain.”
“If you’re here to tell me you’re sorry or you’ve always loved me or any other bullshit, I’ll scream.”
Nina looks momentarily at a loss. Like she was going to say those things. “If that’s what you want.”
“What I want.” I give a broken laugh. I don’t even know what to do with all this anger.
All this pain. “What I want is to know why you abandoned—” I cut myself off.
It’s too late for this. A decade too late.
I don’t want to have this conversation, don’t want to hear anything she has to say.
I take a breath. “I’m going to ask you one more time.
Unlock this door, or I’ll break it down. ”
“You want to know why I left you,” Nina prompts.
Her eyes are imploring, her words hooking into my skin, dragging me back, leaving bloody marks.
“How could a mother walk away from her only son? I’ve asked myself the same thing every day.
Every single day, Keller. I didn’t want to do it.
Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. ”
“So then”—and I hate myself a little, hate how weak my voice sounds, that she threw the bait and I’m fucking biting—“why did you?”
“Your fate was written.”
“I—oh. Oh fucking hell.”
“I know this must be—”
“You’re a Determinist.” My hands are shaking. My lifestone is a cold lump against my skin. “The both of you. You’re Ran Doc Min fanatics.”
“I don’t think fanatics is quite—”
“I don’t give a fuck what you think.”
Nina’s lips go tight. And it’s worse, somehow, that she doesn’t look evil or heartless. She looks hurt.
She has no right.
I try the door again, rattling it with all my strength.
“I know how sudden this must be,” Nina says over the desperate sound of the door handle, “but everything that’s happened these last ten years have all been part of the plan.
Ran Doc Min aims to save lives. Once he gains enough support, he plans to use his simulation to craft the galaxy in his image.
To make Romothrida better for all. With the use of FPS, he can predict the most devastating planetary events of our era and work to circumvent them.
You’ve seen the power of FPS. You and your friends detected the voroxide leaking out of Mount Kilmon firsthand. ”
“Yeah, but there are—wait.” I turn to stare at her. “How do you know we found the voroxide?”
“Ran Doc Min knows many things.”
“I’m starting to get sick of that line.”
“It’s the truth.”
My brain is scrambled eggs. Once again, Doc Min has unearthed information about me, specific details that no simulation should be able to predict. I feel like I’m standing over two halves of a chasm, one foot on either side: half of me looking for a way out, half trying to put the puzzle together.
Then it clicks.
“Or,” I breathe, “Ran Doc Min has been talking to Trey Morton.”
It would make sense. Morton is on the Board of Directors.
We already know he’s been meddling in Legion meetings, blocking a deeper investigation into Bast’s death and the voroxide, while nudging the Legion to support Doc Min.
Why wouldn’t he act as an informant for the Determinist movement?
And yet, if that’s true, it digs up a dozen new questions.
What information, exactly, has Morton been feeding his leader?
How many other Determinists have infiltrated the Legion?
What’s the goal here? What the hell are we really up against?
“Keller.” Nina briefly closes her eyes. “You need time to process this. I know that. And there is still so much I haven’t explained.
But I hope you can come to understand that what happened to you was for a purpose.
Leaving you at that children’s home, severing all contact—these were necessary steps on a premeditated path.
I know they seem harsh, but look at where it’s brought you.
You’ve become a gunner. One of the best in the galaxy.
And you’ve secured a spot in the most prestigious fleet in the Legion. ”
“No.” I slash a hand through the air. “You don’t get to take pride in me. Everything I’ve accomplished is mine. You had nothing to do with it.”
“Well…” She trails off, glancing at my hip where my ray gun is usually holstered. “Not nothing.”
I don’t like where this is going. “What?”
“This is what it means to have your future written, Keller. Your path was predetermined by Ran Doc Min’s simulation. We’ve known since the day you were born that you would become a gunner for the Legion.”
My heart is beating in my ears. “That’s not true.”
Her eyes are soft. How can her eyes be so soft? “Your ray gun. Those Academy recruiting pamphlets. All the things that inspired you to leave Venthros and join the Academy. Where do you think they came from?”
“I don’t know,” I croak. “The Academy sends those pamphlets to everyone. And the gun was an accident. Someone misplaced it in my room.”
“No, Keller. I put it there.”
I feel, suddenly, very strange. There’s a blank space in my head rippling outward. My ray gun. The one I’ve cherished since the very beginning. That gun was the start of everything—without it, I would never have learned to shoot.
I think about my admission into the Academy.
How I was denied entry at first but pushed for my chance and was accepted without a sponsor.
The first cadet ever to do so. I stare at my mother, and it’s like shingles being torn off a roof in a storm, one by one until there’s nothing left.
Just an empty hole, and rain pouring through.
Was I accepted into the Academy because I was good enough, or because the Determinists decided to meddle?
I graduated top of my class. I was recruited into the Sixth.
Unusual, people said. Rarely happens to a rookie.
Was any of that my own doing? How much has Nina Hartman been interfering with my life?
Who even am I?
I’m hot all over. There’s a pain in my chest that’s growing into something relentless, burrowing deeper than I thought it possible for pain to burrow. I put my fingers there over my heart and find my lifestone. Which was a gift from her.
“Ran Doc Min understands the importance of placing loyal Determinists within the Legion,” Nina says.
Beside her, Rivon is still holding his jaw, nodding.
“The Legion represents the rule of galactic law, and Ran needs officers who support his predictions. Yet it has proved difficult to appoint Determinists into Legion positions. The Legion resists admitting members with preexisting loyalties to movements like ours, so Ran came up with a different plan—start younger. We place Determinist children in the galaxy’s best training schools.
We ensure they do well, graduate with honors, gain the attention of Legion recruiters.
At the same time, we make sure the Legion has no way to connect these young recruits with our movement.
I have always been a strong Determinist supporter, but my ties to the group would have hurt your chances as a Legion prospect, so I severed them and let you fulfill your potential while watching from a distance. But I’ve never been far, Keller.”
“I don’t—” My throat is made of razors. “But how—?”
“There’s a reason I wanted to speak with you today,” Nina tells me, clasping her hands together. “You’re old enough now to know the truth. Join us. Take your place among our movement. Ran Doc Min wants to meet you, and to offer his official welcome—”
I make for the door again. Kick the handle.
“Keller.”
I kick it again. Again.
“Wait,” Rivon says. “Keller, you’re going to—”
A final kick, and the lock breaks. The door bursts open, banging the wall behind it. My mother gasps. Rivon tries to grab me. The museum blurs in my vision as I escape.