Nova (26 page)

“And second?”

“Because with the only people coming in being war prisoners from the Celestial Expanse, they knew the population would be uninfected, and thus a good place to recruit from. Not like the rest of the alliance. They chose my parents because my dad is—was—a psychic.”

I tell him how I first learned about the Spectres, much the way he had, by linking with a Tellurian psychic and seeing all she knew.

Michael whistled. “They had to recruit
everyone
into the resistance individually, using only psychic links?”

“They had no other way—still don’t. The Spectres can’t be seen, heard, touched. We have no hard evidence of their existence to show anyone. Even my smell technology is a prototype. Only the psychics can sense them once they’ve bonded with a human, and only if they know what they’re looking for. It’s what made it so hard to fight them, and so difficult to organize a resistance.”

“I’ll bet. I mean, you couldn’t even com someone safely with the information, not without any way to verify they’re not infected.”

“Or if their superior or their coworker is infected. We think it’s why our previous attempts to warn the Celestians always failed. Even when we sent people in person, they had a way of disappearing.”

“Well, I’ll tell them,” Michael says. “When this whole thing is over, I’ll help you tell the entire galaxy.”

My heart lurches as the declaration.
Oh, Michael!
I struggle to keep a huge grin from bursting across my face. “Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Stick a needle in your eye!
I think wryly.

By early evening, we’ve finished our tour of the rings and have ended up on Michael’s roof. Though the rings are too big to go over every nook and cranny in a day, we’ve covered enough for me to know that Teal’s sabotage was a success. The Spectres have cleared out of the rings, at least as far as I can tell. I did have a false alarm down in the lower ring when I caught the scent of an infected officer. Luckily, he got on a SlipStream bound for the hub shortly after we started discreetly following him. I can only hope there aren’t other infected people I may have missed.

“Lia?” Michael asks as we lean on the roof ledge and watch the people below. The nutrient spray is drifting around us, thick enough to feel after more than twelve hours at maximum capacity. Teal did her work well.

“Hmm?”

“I just wanted you to know that what I said before is still true. In the park, when I said it didn’t matter what your name was? I still mean that. I know you’re not Lia—
my
Lia from Aurora, at least—but you’re still Lia from New Sol. I just wanted you to know that.”

I look up in surprise, my heart fluttering at the words, otherwise implied but never spoken until now. This time, I’m the one who kisses him. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I pull his face down to mine and let every thought fly out of my head, lost to everything but the tingles running down my spine and the shivers caressing my skin everywhere we touch. When we finally pull away, Michael closes one hand around my wrist. I glance down at it, then raise a questioning gaze to his.

He shrugs sheepishly. “Just in case you get the urge for some exercise.”

I laugh and kiss him again, enfolded within the cool of the mist and the warmth of his arms, and realize I’ve never felt more alive in my entire life.

31
WE MEET TEAL IN THE CARGO BAY
by my cot. She spent the day lying low, tucking herself in out-of-the-way places in case anyone suspected her involvement in the mister sabotage. Now all we have to do is wait for Shar. Teal saw her in one of the docking rings just a couple hours ago, so we know she’s around. I check the time and roll my eyes. No doubt Shar’s purposely delaying just to prove she doesn’t take orders from me.

A wisp of fear flutters over me for a brief second as I contemplate the possibility that someone figured out what we were up to, and she got hauled in by station security. Or PsyCorp, or even worse—someone infected and acting under the influence of a Spectre. After a second, I shake my head. How could anyone possibly know what we’re planning? No, I’m just being paranoid.

Since we have to wait for Shar anyway, I use the time to go through my things again. Sleeping roll, headrest, jumpsuit number one, jumpsuit number two . . . Tossing the second suit down on the cot, I huff in disgust.

“Still no data chip?” Teal asks, correctly guessing what I’m doing.

I shake my head. “I must have lost it on the transport. It’s the only answer. I knew there was something I was forgetting when I got off. It must have been the chip.”

“It’s okay, Lia. We’ll manage without it.”

“No, it’s not!” I tell Teal. “Everything we know is on that data chip. Without it, the Celestians will have to start at square one.”

“Hey, easy there, Starshine,” Michael says. “Everything’s going to be sat.”

Starshine.

My heart drops into my stomach at the word. “What did you call me?”

“Oh, um nothing. It was just something Lia’s dad used to call her. I’m sorry, it just slipped out. I know you’re not Lia.”

My name is Lia Johansen . . .

A wave of memories shoots through my brain, a thousand bits from a thousand different moments, flashing by in a dizzying array.

Michael frowns. “You don’t still get motion sick, do you?”

“I don’t know how you do it. Even when we were kids you were doing all the advanced math lessons.”

Michael may have been good at sports, but he was never much of a runner. No, that was always me. Me.

I am not Lia and never was her, though I borrowed her mind for a short time. And yet for a minute, it was as though this dead girl took possession of my mind. Infused me with her thoughts and personality and made me act as she would act, speak as she would speak, move as she would move.

“Yes, I look at you and see Lia from Aurora all the time. Your smile, your laugh, the snarky comments you make and that annoying way you can always beat me in a footrace.”

I pull up one of the digitals Michael uploaded for me from when we were kids. The two girls look exactly alike.

Exactly alike.

I’m Lia’s clone. I have her DNA, her natural talents, her personality. I’m not such a fraud, after all!

“They’re on the lookout for Tellurian resistance fighters. Tellurian
adult
resistance fighters. I’m a kid and a prisoner.”

A
prisoner
.

Not
a Tellurian.

Niven gently turns my arms over and runs a finger over each forearm. “They’ve healed well. No one should be able to tell what’s underneath the skin.”

They’ve healed well.

They’ve healed well.

They’ve
healed
well.

My eyes widen as the implications of the memories hit home. I scramble to my feet and stumble toward the hygiene units, awkwardly brushing off Michael’s concerned questions. Reaching the first unit, I throw myself inside and slam the door tight behind me. Pushing up my sleeves, I run my hand over the skin of my forearm. Completely smooth and unmarred.

Can it really be? Has the truth been staring me in the face this whole time, and I just never realized it?

Someone knocks on the door, and I hear Teal’s voice call through the metal. “Lia? What’s going on? Are you sat?”

I ignore her and instead reach for the knife from my tool belt. Taking a deep breath, I press the blade into my upper left forearm and make a shallow slice. It is surprisingly painless. I stare at the cut.

There’s no blood.

Outside, I hear Teal banging on the door, but I don’t answer. Instead, I lengthen the cut, drawing the knife down the length of my forearm. Still nothing. No blood, no pain. Dropping the knife, I slip my fingers under the edge of the cut and give a hard tug. The fragile skin tears, and just like that an entire sheet of skin rips off my forearm. I gasp as I see what lies underneath.

Grabbing the knife again, I turn to my right forearm. This time there’s no hesitation as I run the blade down my arm and tear off the false skin, throwing it to the floor without even a glance.

I look at the digital of Lia in the sundress again. There, on the inside of her forearm, is a distinctive birthmark a couple shades darker than her skin.

I look at my arm and my heart lets out a long-awaited sigh. There, up near my elbow, is that birthmark. A single tear—born of joy, or maybe just relief—blooms in my eye. It rolls down my cheek, and I catch it on one finger, grayish and metallic.

Gray.

Gray like that fluid, viscous and silvery, filling my eyes after I malfunctioned in the hygiene unit.

Gray, like the stains that fluid left on my jumpsuit, so potent they never came out even after multiple washings.

Gray, like my eyes. Eyes I was so sure were green until a close look in Teal’s mirror told me otherwise.

I suddenly know without a doubt that they
were
green. At least, they were until the night I malfunctioned in the hygiene unit and awoke to find my eyes filled with thick, gray chemicals.

Thud!
The door bursts open and footsteps hurry in. They stop just behind me. “Lia?” Teal’s voice says uncertainly. I turn around, a strange smile on my face.

“Well, what do you know?” I tell her, my arms extended to show the long, silver scar running down each forearm from wrist to elbow. “I really am Lia after all.”

My name really
is
Lia Johansen, and I was a prisoner of war. Taken when Aurora Colony fell, I lived in an internment camp for two years, where my family was recruited into a resistance group fighting a terrible enemy. When my parents fell to this enemy, I volunteered for the most important mission of the war. Even though it meant my death.

It’s back now. My long-lost identity, the very thing I’ve been searching for all this time, finally returned. It seems so obvious now that I know. How could I have ever thought I was a genetically engineered bomb, with no more life than a clone bred in a laboratory? How could I ever have forgotten I was Lia?

Screaming, I sit bolt upright as the nightmare rips me from sleep. Footsteps pound through the hall, and then the door flies open. The light flips on, and Niven stands illuminated in the door. He rushes in and sits down on the side of my bed.

“It was just a dream, Lia. Just a dream. You’re safe, I promise.” He grabs a blanket from my cot and slips it around my shaking shoulders.

I’ve been sleeping in the med center ever since my surgery so Niven could be on hand in case of any unforeseen side effects. Somehow, when he spoke of side effects, I don’t think he meant the constant nightmares that have plagued me ever since I found out where I would be deployed. It’s ironic—before the surgery, I could sleep anytime, anywhere. Not anymore.

“Tell me again,” I whisper through shaky lips. “Tell me how it will happen.”

Niven considers me for a moment, and nods. “It will start with a slow, stretchy feeling in your head, like your mind is being thinned and tautened. Then the sparks will come, in silver and gold, dancing in your vision. Your heart will speed up and the sacs in your arms will release into your bloodstream, until finally everything goes white. Then . . . Nova.” He pauses, and adds softly, on cue, “It will be glorious. More glorious than you could possibly imagine.”

“Glorious.” I echo, letting the word linger on my tongue. “I like that.”

For a moment, I think Niven might cry, though we’ve exchanged these words a million times, but he doesn’t, his eyes clearing as they cast over me with a searching look. “What’s wrong, Lia?”

I close my eyes and finally admit what I’ve been afraid to tell anyone for the past week. “I’m not sure I can go through with it.”

I hear a sharp intake of breath from Niven. He’s appalled by my announcement, and I don’t blame him. There isn’t the time or equipment to start with someone new. It’s me or no one.

“I’m sorry!” I burst out when he doesn’t answer. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I wanted to do it. I was sure I could do it, but then you performed the surgery turning me into a bomb and the nightmares started. Nightmares filled with the ghosts of my soon-to-be victims. They blame me, in my dreams. They scream at me until they’re hoarse with rage.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Niven says, his hand gently rubbing my back through the blanket. “Any of us would be terrified to be in your shoes. You’ve endured far more than you ever should have in the two years since you were brought to Tiersten with the other Auroran prisoners. Jao was wrong to let you do this.”

“No! Jao respected me. He knew that of the three people compatible with the Nova biotech, I was our best chance for success. In letting me volunteer, he treated me as one adult to another. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Niven chuckles. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? Well, if it’s any consolation, I think you’ll know few, if any, of the prisoners on the transport. I don’t think the enemy would risk sending in members of the resistance in the first wave.” When a minute passes and I don’t answer, he adds tentatively, “I may be able to make it easier, if you want.”

“How?”

“Instead of letting your full memory come back when the clock activates, I could block it out. Leave Lia Johansen locked deep inside and replace her with another template. Instead of yourself, you’ll just be a bomb. A genetically engineered bomb created just for this mission, with no name, no memories other than those of some girl named Lia whom you’ve never met. No family, no friends, no one to grieve for.”

“You can do that?”

“I believe so. If you want it.”

Do I want it? I think of all the things I’ll lose—not just my identity, but my parents, my friends, the resistance—every reason for doing what I’m doing. Can I really give that up? But the nightmare still lingers—not just in my mind, but in my heart—and the seed of doubt inside me grows just a little bit bigger.

I think of everyone who is counting on me. Not just the resistance, but an entire expanse of people out there.

I lift my eyes to Niven. “Do it.”

I gasp as the truth hits me in a hard rush. I’d assumed the memory implant Shar saw in my head when we linked was Lia’s collection of memories, implanted to get me past PsyCorp. But it wasn’t the memories of being Lia that were false, but the memories of being a genetically engineered bomb! No wonder I never saw the truth! How could I, when I literally had false memories in my head telling me I was
not
Lia, but a bomb created in a laboratory with no real family or identity of my own? With all the contradictions between my various memories—real, false, and blocked—my poor brain must have been working overtime to try and make sense of everything, in any way it could. It’s no surprise I got my identity wrong. I’m just lucky I didn’t lose my sanity.

Oh God, this whole mission has been a nightmare, and it’s all my fault! If I hadn’t been such a coward, hadn’t forced Niven to tamper even more with my memory, I might not have malfunctioned. If nothing else, I would have remembered who I was instead of hanging around the station for weeks and putting everyone in more danger with each passing day. Shame washes over me at the realization.

“What’s your fault?” Teal asks me, and I realize I’m still standing in the hygiene unit, my false arm skin on the floor at my feet and Teal at my side.

I shake my head and stiffen my back. “It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that we stick to the plan. Come on, Shar must be back by now.”

I scoop up the skin from the floor and shove it in my pocket. Niven grafted it over my arms to prevent the long scars from raising any unwanted attention. Luckily, my forearms look completely normal otherwise. The scars I can explain away if need be, but sacs of explosive liquids would be beyond even Teal’s ability to fast talk.

Quickly, Teal and I leave the unit and return to the bay. Michael looks up in concern. “Are you okay? You rushed out of here pretty quick.”

“I’m sat, Michael, but there’s something I need to tell you.” He raises his eyebrows, waiting, and I take a breath. “Michael, I really am—”

At that moment, my chit vibrates. Shar. Finally!

“Never mind, Michael. I’ll tell you later when we have more time. You should head off to your place; Shar’s coming.”