Chapter 25
Noise rushes around me. The bustle of a busy path, tram wheels on metal tracks, babbling strangers.
I stumble through The Hub, though I barely know where I’m going.
It’s impossible to tell the time—light on the space station never changes.
I smell fried sausages and vapor lighters.
Someone hollers something in a language I don’t speak.
I take a left at random, head down another crowded walkway.
I imagine, among the faces, I see my mother.
Again and again she appears, in that woman’s smile, that one’s hair, the turn of that lady’s wrist. The shadow of Nina, hidden in the shadow of these people.
Like how you see animals in clouds: the projection of something that isn’t real.
I’ve never been far, Keller.
This was always the plan.
Everything is a blur of movement and color, and it’s garish and overbright, and I think I might vomit.
“Keller.”
Lament is there, suddenly and impossibly, catching me to him.
I can’t tell where we are. The tram station?
An intersection? Lament presses his body to mine.
A shelter. He smells familiar, clean and subtly earthy.
“You’re okay.” His voice is soft and firm at once.
I make fists of his shirt, press my face desperately into his neck.
What’s happening? How is he here? “Just hold on,” he says. “Caspen is on her way.”
There are rules against flying aircraft inside Skyhub Space Station, which Caspen seems happy to break.
She appears noisily in a midsize hovercraft, touching down right there in the center of the crowded plaza.
I’m aware of a door opening, and Caspen’s urgent, “Mondoggers approaching,” but it’s hard to focus on any one thought.
All I see is Nina Hartman’s round face, her amber eyes that look like my eyes.
Join us. Take your place among our movement.
Lament gets me seated in the hovercraft, Caspen offers a thumbs-up, and we jet up through Spoke III over the tram tracks toward the space station’s outermost ring.
Caspen doesn’t take us to the Sixth’s flight deck but parks right there outside Detachment 94’s industrial front doors and says, “Protect the lamb, Pirate King.”
Lament ushers me inside. There’s a blast of cool air, and the lights get brighter, bluer. Vera appears, and it seems like she might start asking questions, but Lament cuts her off. “He’s in shock. Help me get him down the hall.”
I’m fine, I want to protest. I don’t need help.
But that’s rubbish, isn’t it? I’m so lost in my own thoughts I can barely figure out what’s happening, beyond the nausea that’s still climbing up my throat and the vicious onslaught of memory.
Nina taking my hand as we walk through a city park.
Nina in our kitchen, touching the tip of my nose with a floured finger.
Nina bundling me up and saying, Just a day’s flight to see the zoo animals, won’t that be fun?
The hallway is the color of gauze, and the memories won’t stop.
But I can feel Lament’s arm around my waist. A halo of light to ward off the dark.
“Hartman,” Lament says. “You need to breathe, okay? Whatever happened can’t hurt you now.”
My hands are tingling. I stumble a step.
“Here,” Lament urges as we move into yet another room. “Sit.”
I do as he says, which is the moment I realize where we are.
We’ve made it to Lament’s bedroom, which looks like my bedroom, expect there are more personal belongings (books on the shelves organized by color, pictures of his family smiling for the camera, shoes arranged evenly on a rack), and it’s cleaner.
Vera shoots Lament a worried look. I blink up at them both. “My mother.”
Lament comes to kneel before me. He doesn’t say anything. Just waits.
“It was a setup,” I continue thickly. “A trick. The interview—it was only a ploy to get me alone. That reporter—Rudy Rivon—is working with Nina. They’re Determinists.”
Lament glances at Vera. “Close the door.” She does, and he turns back to me. His expression is calm again, covered over, but I can sense the disbelief—and the anger—seething underneath. “You’re upset. We don’t have to talk about this yet.”
“I—no.” I bury my head in my hands, set my elbows on my knees.
“I can’t—” My laugh is splintered enough to startle me.
I take a breath and try again. “My mom joined the Determinists. I think she’s been with them all along.
She told me this was part of their plan.
Not just the fake interview. I mean … all of it.
Leaving me at Master Ira’s school, planting a ray gun in my bedroom, nudging me to apply to the Academy.
” I have always been a strong Determinist supporter.
My ties to the movement would have hurt your chances as a Legion recruit, so I severed them and let you fulfill your potential while watching from a distance. “Holy shit.”
The bed dips with Lament’s weight as he moves to sit beside me. He threads his hand under my arm, presses his shoulder into mine, grips my thigh. “Slow down, okay? I need you to breathe.”
“I can’t.” My voice cracks, my whole body coiling with sickness.
“All my accomplishments, all the parts of my identity I thought were mine…” The world has a strange tint, like everything’s been covered in a sheer veil.
Yet I can still see the shape of what’s hidden underneath.
My mother’s face is there again, hovering before my eyes, yet this time, it’s overlapping with Lament’s face.
The neat stack of mechanism volumes on his bedside table.
His fingers squeezing my thigh. He’s trying to give me strength, but it’s like trying to pour water into a broken cup.
It’s all just leaking through. “What is even real?”
“You’re real,” Lament says fiercely. “So what if some Determinists tried to nudge you into the Legion? I’ve seen you shoot. I’ve seen you under pressure. Keller—” His voice catches. “There’s no one like you.”
I want to laugh, but I’m afraid to hear that splintered sound again. “And you think I’m the bad liar.”
“He’s not lying,” Vera argues, scooting up on my other side. “We chose you, Keller. Of everyone, we wanted you to join our fleet.”
My eyes slide to Lament, because we both know he didn’t want that. He just shakes his head like he can read my thoughts and says, “I was wrong.”
“The thing—” I start, and the room is spinning a little less now, so it only takes one more try to get this out.
“The thing that’s so fucked-up is this is what I’ve always wanted.
I used to dream about my mom reappearing to tell me she missed me, that she loves me and only wants what’s best for me.
And Nina literally just did that, verbatim, and it’s all such bullshit.
As if a few I miss yous can make up for the way she left. ”
“Did she explain why?” Vera asks.
Somehow, through the haze, I’m able to relay the story.
How Ran Doc Min’s goal is to infiltrate the Legion from the inside, how Determinist families are offering their kids up for the scheme.
How I was one of them. As I speak, I wonder what my mother saw in me to think I was the kind of child who’d do better without her love and support.
Did she sense a flaw within me? Hairline cracks in the glass?
Not all orphans yearn for family. Some turn their backs on the concept altogether.
But I did yearn for it, yearned so much that I left my old life behind to join the Academy in hopes of making it into the Legion—of finding what I’d lost. I aced every test, broke every fitness record, poured everything into being a top fleet recruit, because I thought it was what I wanted.
But it’s what she wanted, it was only ever what she wanted, and that realization is threatening to undo me.
“Nina wants me to join them,” I finish miserably. “The Determinists. She says I’m ready now. Ran Doc Min has asked to meet me, apparently, so he can welcome me personally into his movement.”
“The hell he will,” Lament growls.
“Lament,” Vera warns.
Exhaustion pours over me. “I can’t believe this is happening.” My words come out slurred. “This can’t be real.”
“I know,” Vera says, with a gentleness that makes me want to cry. “Keller, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” is what I manage.
“You’re pale,” she continues. “And … you’re shaking.” She looks at Lament. “Should I get Illiviamona?”
“No,” I interrupt. “I don’t want … please. I’ll be fine. I just need…”
“Rest,” Vera finishes. “You need rest, okay? Maybe even try to sleep if you can. Your body is drained from shock, and you could probably use it.”
She’s right. Sleep is crawling up my spine, burrowing in my limbs. My eyes grow heavy.
“I’ll be back,” Vera tells Lament. “Take care of him.”
Lament’s voice is low. “Always.”
I hear the door close as Vera exits. Lament says, “Come here,” and pulls me down on the bed beside him.
Gets me tucked against him. I should be stunned by this development.
My mind should be whirling with what it means.
But I’m too weak to do anything but grip needily to this lifeline, close my eyes, let myself be held.
I count Lament’s heartbeats as he shushes me and says soft things like It’ll be okay and I’m here and I won’t leave you like she did, Keller. Do you hear me? Never. Not ever.
It’s some indeterminate number of hours later that I stir again, wakefulness creeping over me like fog over a river.
I balance there for a moment, half-dreaming, half-conscious.
There’s a warmth fitted along my side. Familiar, the shape of it, the piney scent touching my senses.
Comfortable. Comforting. On instinct, I make fists of fabric (someone’s shirt?) and bury my face deeper into that softness (someone’s skin?).
There’s a quiet huff—not mine—and I open my eyes.