Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Streamed live to tens of millions of people, now surely watched by a billion or more as the newsreels run it on loop. My mother and her board breaking from managing the last details of the launch to deal with this new crisis. Their careful rollout of the truth hijacked. The people on this launch satellite catching up about the presence of this traitor—or hero, if I’m damn lucky—among them.

Sharma’s words ring in my head. Do I really imagine this will have an effect on a day like today? Does it need to, for me to have had reason to speak the truth? I don’t know.

As I run, I realize there’s probably a hundred people searching for me right now. They’ll be searching for Devon Mujaba, too. He must have fled during my recording. Hopefully he’s already off this satellite.

Cusk will want to get me back under their control as soon as they can. Within minutes, the order will be processed to apprehend me, and the surveillance systems will be coded to find my face. Already, using my own onyx card would lead to my immediate arrest, I’m sure. Luckily, I can still use Minerva’s. Hopefully. Her last act to me has bought me some extra minutes.

My steps automatically bring me toward the elevator that leads back down to a planet at the brink of war. There’s no way I could pull off getting the clearances to travel to another satellite without getting nabbed. The only place where I have a chance to get truly lost is Earth—and the elevator down operates in a long train that can’t be stopped for individual cars. As long as one of my onyxes gets me on, I can probably travel down without being stopped.

Of course, my mother wanted me to stay up here for my own well-being. If the war below goes nuclear, then orbit is a safer place to be—the anti-missile shields in low orbit will attack and disarm warheads on their relatively long journey up this far. On Earth, there are no such guarantees.

But I will have autonomy down there. Up here, who knows how long I’ll be under arrest until the trial begins. Trust my fate to people who would do this to my clones, to me? No.

I weave through narrow familiar Cusk hallways, using my Minerva card to get me into the privileged-access passageways that might help me lose the guards. Finally, I hurtle through a set of double doors and burst into the public areas of the satellite terminal.

About a half dozen people going about their business stop to take in the Roman-garbed Cusk scion who’s sprung into their midst. I bring myself to an absolute stop, arms pinwheeling, then switch to a fast walk, avoiding meeting the curious gazes.

I zig into the shopping area of the launch station and dart through the racks of a children’s clothing store, emerging into the mall on the far side.

No one is shopping. Even since this morning, there’s a new frantic energy to the satellite. People are rushing here and there, and no one blinks as I, too, break into a jog.

I’m anonymous for now, but this ludicrous outfit isn’t helping. I rip the stupid circlet from my head and let it ring out on the floor. No one looks. Some people are recently arrived, those connected enough to have secured elevator passage off Earth. Others are satellite residents, fighting to get their loved ones up to join them. Emboldened, I bunch my wrap in my fist and break out into a run, my sandals clapping the glossy floor. I expect to hear alarms, or guards shouting after me, but there’s just the sound of my breath and the sight of frightened Cusk employees parting, watching me dash past before they continue on their own frantic way. Some of them have watched my stream, I’m sure. I can only imagine what they’re thinking about me.

Or maybe—the thought comes as a relief—they’re not thinking of me at all.

Even if I make it through this satellite with my current clothes, that won’t work to keep me anonymous if and when I make it to Earth’s surface. I stop at a drab clothing provisioner, grab the nearest jumpsuit I can, go to pay for it at the exit with my bracelet. The terminal dings and flashes red. Not good. This feed will be flagged for viewing by satellite security. I back up, jumpsuit in my hands, and prepare to break out into a sprint.

“I’ll pay for it,” says a calm voice. One I recognize.

Devon Mujaba is at the doorway, tapping it with his bracelet to pay for the jumpsuit. He looks at me, winks. “My treat.”

“It’s you,” I say intelligently.

The exit doorway flashes red again. Now the system is catching up to my first invalid transaction. The whole ceiling above us lights up red. “Oh shit,” Devon Mujaba says. “Not my treat after all. Go!”

“Stop!” comes a voice from one side, and I see the camouflage of a Fédération landkeeper.

“Run!” Devon says.

We shove our way through the throngs. Booted landkeeper footfalls behind us, more shouts around and ahead. I reach a hand out and find Devon’s, sweaty with adrenaline. I grip it tight.

There it is: the onyx elevator, doors open, ready to bring us to the surface. No one is boarding the cars heading down. We just have to make it through the satellite’s crowded arboretum, the milling crowds of people watching for arriving loved ones. There are bright green trees around us, blackness and starlight above.

Imagining hands on my back, an arc thrower zapping me, bullets through my neck, I hunch down and sprint the last stretch, switching to a desperate crawl after I trip over someone’s ankle.

“Ambrose,” Devon gasps beside me. “I can’t go!”

I whirl and face him, aghast. “What?”

He taps his onyx card against the reader, and it angrily bleats back. “I’m deactivated. You must be, too.”

The landkeepers push their way through the crowds, toward us. Only seconds remain.

I tap Minerva’s onyx card against the reader. The security gate opens. Only one person can go through at a time, or the whole system errors. I’ve seen it happen multiple times, mostly by privileged jerks trying to piggyback on their friends’ status.

“Devon, maybe you can try to enter with me—” I start to say. But I can’t finish the sentence, because the air has been forced out of my lungs by Devon Mujaba’s fists.

He’s shoved me. Into the elevator. I tumble through the security gate, fall to my knees as the gate begins to close.

“Read your body!” he shouts.

Read my body? What the hell does that mean? But I don’t have time to ask before I’m sealed into the soundproofed elevator car.

I press myself against the glass wall of the elevator, watching the receding arboretum. I remember my other counterfeit onyx, but it’s too late. Devon Mujaba turns to face the approaching landkeepers, hands up in surrender. I can see why: they have a warbot with them. Probably called up from the surface. They order Devon to the ground, and he gets to his knees and then lies flat. Arrested.

The arboretum and the satellite pass out of view.

I’m descending toward Earth.

The car speeds up after it joins the train of elevator cars heading down. From what I can see, every single earthward one is empty. Heading up, however: masses of people are jammed into each, the desperate expressions of people fleeing a planet at war.

I have a momentary fear that the landkeepers will tell their superiors about my location, will stop the elevators and return me to the satellite. But that would mean shutting down this whole apparatus, blocking the flood of refugees. Even though I’m a high-profile target, I can’t imagine they’d stop this exodus on my account.

I might be arrested on arrival, of course. But hopefully I can count on the war turmoil to have scrambled the authorities on the ground. Or perhaps my mother will have mercy—she already wanted me away from the dangerous surface, so it’s hard to imagine she’d have me imprisoned there. Though what do I actually know of my mother?

What’s going to happen to Devon Mujaba? Will they start a neuroscan of him? If so, it will be a matter of time before they get all the information his brain holds. They’ll know just what we discussed, what he knows about the Dimokratía spacefarer.

Read your body.

I flip on the headlines to have as much situational awareness as possible on my arrival seventeen minutes from now. I listen to the news while I prepare to change clothes.

The silky material of my cream-colored wrap falls soundlessly to the elevator floor. I sit my naked ass on the velvet bench of the onyx car, whisking the jumpsuit from its folded square, unbuttoning the front so I can slip into the smooth technical material. It will be good for traveling in. Wish I’d stolen some underwear, too, though.

Read your body.

I look down at my naked body, backgrounded by the blue and green of the approaching Earth.

My feet, calves, thighs. Wait.

At first I think I have some kind of parasite, but then I realize I’m seeing a string of black text, neatly scripted along my inner thigh.

Someone has written on me. The only person who had access to do so without my knowing is Devon Mujaba, while I was passed out during our naked bender.

The writing is scripted by hand, not printed. I imagine him leaning over my leg, diligently marking me while I slept.

I’m seeing a sequence of numbers, followed by two unfamiliar words.

I read my own leg, squinting as the numbers end near the crease where thigh meets hip. 56.808095, –5.085725.

Those are the numbers. They’re coordinates.

Below them is a name.

Kodiak Celius.