Shades of Earth (33 page)

69:
AMY

I don't think I really understood
why Elder cut the communication link until I see the dots on the electronic map start to fly toward each other. The escape rocket and
Godspeed
, on a crash course toward the space station.

And then I realize: he didn't want me to hear him die.

I shut my eyes and cover my ears, trying to hold in the scream that is rising from within me.

I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I'm going to be sick.

“Look,” Chris says, pointing as the map flickers and dies, showing nothing but a black screen.

I rush to the door of the communication room and throw it open. The hybrids don't bother trying to stop me. I suppose it's because I'm one of them now, or maybe they just know there's nowhere for me to run. A blast of cool air hits me, making my hair swirl in front of my face. I swipe it away and run to the center of the compound, where the auto-shuttle stood not too long ago, before Elder boarded it.

I throw my head back and stare into the sky.

 

And I see.

The dark sky.

A hundred million stars.

More stars than I've ever seen before. My eyes let me see farther, but they don't show me the one thing I want to see. I would trade all the stars in the universe if I could just have him back again.

 

Wind whistles through the trees nearby. Birdsong weaves in and out of the sound.

 

The hybrids emerge from the communication building, heads tilted to the sky.

 

And then we see the end.

Godspeed
's engine was nuclear; who knows what fueled the biological weapons. But they explode together. In space, they don't make the familiar mushroom cloud. They don't make the
boom!
of an exploding bomb.

 

There is, against the dark sky, a brief flash of light. It is filled with colors, like a nebula or the aurora borealis, bursting like a popped bubble.

 

Nothing else—no sound of an explosion, no tremors in the earth, no smell of smoke. Not here, on the surface of the planet.

Nothing else to signify Elder's death.

Just light.

And then it's gone.

 

And then he's gone.

71:
AMY

I am numb, inside and out.

I stare up at the cold night sky until it is as empty as I am.

Behind me, the hybrids talk. I suppress a shudder. I am a hybrid now too. My eyes see far better in the dark than they've ever been able to before. I notice each leaf of the trees in shadow, I hear the tiniest sounds distinctly.

I hear the hybrids talking.

“The threat is eliminated; our communication specialists confirm it,” one of the hybrids says.

“Elder saved us all,” Chris says.

The rogue leader grumbles something.

I turn. I have lost everything I have ever loved. But in the absence of love, a resolve made of steel fills me up. I stride toward the rogue leader. Chris halfheartedly raises his gun—my gun—the gun used to kill my father—toward me, but I knock his hand aside as if he held nothing more dangerous than a flower. I stand directly in front of the rogue leader and look him straight in the eyes. I'm uncomfortably close to him; I've invaded his personal space, and he doesn't like it, but he's unwilling to step back.

“I believe,” I say flatly, “that we have a peace treaty to negotiate. And I think we can start with the release of my colony, the people you are currently holding in captivity.”

“That can wait until—” the leader starts to say.

I cut him off. “It will not wait. You have imprisoned my people, abused us, and killed us. You're going to
start
by letting them go.
Now.
And then we can talk about the rest of the retribution you owe my colony.”

The rogue leader cocks his head, looking down at me. Finally, he extends his hand. When I take it and we shake, he adds, “My name is Zane. And now that the FRX is out of the equation, I think both of our people can learn to live together very well.”

 

Zane has some sort of communication device that is far beyond the radios and even wi-coms that we had. He calls for trucks to come to us while at the same time sending information to release the colony and bring the people back to the ruins to live.

“How many of the buildings still stand?” I ask. When I escaped, at least three of the buildings—including the one I had lived in with my family—were destroyed.

“We tried to keep damage minimal,” Zane says. “And whether you believe it or not, we tried to keep deaths at a minimum, too.”

I don't believe that, not at all. They could have destroyed the auto-shuttle rather than kill everyone inside it when my mom was leaving. But they didn't. They wanted to intimidate us, take us by force so we could surrender. Or maybe killing us was just simpler.

I narrow my eyes. Killing us
would
have been simpler. “You tried to wreck the shuttle before we even landed,” I say, remembering the way we were knocked off course.

Zane nods slowly, watching me as if he's afraid I'm about to attack him. But I'm too busy lining up all the pieces. The hacked communication Dad and Elder heard when we first arrived. The shuttle lockdown. Every stumbling block and miscommunication. All because of the rogue hybrids.

“You know,” I say bitterly, “if you'd just been honest with us from the start, we could have worked together.”

Zane raises his eyebrow. “Colonel Martin did not seem the kind of man to abandon his mission.”

I force myself to look at my father's body, and I can't seem to quiet the part of myself that realizes Zane might be right. Maybe my dad
wouldn't
have negotiated with the rogue hybrids. I don't think he agreed with the FRX and their program of forced slavery, but it
is
possible that my father, who was in the military all his life and whose first instinct upon landing on Centauri-Earth was to get his orders from the FRX, would not have been able to think about peace without first seeing bloodshed.

I tell that annoying—but truthful—part of myself to shut up.

 

Trucks arrive, and even though they're larger than the biggest gas-guzzlers on Sol-Earth, they move across the rough terrain silently. Cubes of solar glass line the roof of each truck. I suspect the hybrids have figured out a way to use the suns' energy to fuel the vehicles, but I don't bother asking about it as Chris and Zane usher me into the first one. Zane leaves the other at the communication building with orders that, when the auto-shuttle lands, they are to take Bartie and the formula for the Inhibitor medicine to a secure location.

“I want to take you to the city first,” Zane says eventually. When I don't respond, he shifts uncomfortably, looking out the window at the passing landscape. He and Chris are both nervous around me—they're waiting for me to break down.

But I won't.

Not in front of them.

The truck takes us past the lake and toward one of the tall, jagged mountains behind the colony. Even as I contemplate how a whole city within reach of the colony has been hidden, I realize how unnatural it is that the hybrids haven't spread out more. Phydus didn't just make them obey the FRX—it killed their sense of wonder and exploration.

We don't speak again as the truck drives through a long, dark tunnel cut into the mountain and emerges into a populated area. We are the only vehicle on the street but are surrounded by people and vast buildings made of glass and steel—factories, mostly, judging from the grime and sweat on the people who emerge from them.

They shuffle straight ahead, their eyes and faces directed forward. Even though they all seem to have a purposeful direction, their shoulders slump and their arms hang limply at their sides. They look more like zombies than any monster I've seen in a horror film. The driver stops the truck in the middle of the largest intersection of the city. There are so many people around that I expect the city to be loud, but when Zane opens the door, the only thing I hear is the rhythmic pounding of feet on pavement.

Something bumps into the door Zane still holds open. A woman with short curly hair and blank eyes—they're crystal-blue eyes, with oval irises, but blank all the same. Her feet keep going up and down, up and down, but she doesn't seem to notice she's not moving forward. She doesn't even really notice the door that's blocking her path. Zane slams it—no one even flinches at the reverberating sound—and the woman plods forward as if nothing was ever in her way.

“Why are you showing me this?” I say, my voice barely a whisper.

“I wanted you to see what we were fighting for,” Zane says. His voice carries, but no one even seems to register his presence.

I've seen Phydus. I saw the City on
Godspeed
, I saw the blank stares, the empty expressions.

This is worse somehow. I think because of the open sky above us. Eldest had made the use of Phydus almost excusable behind the steel walls of the ship. But nothing like this can ever be excusable in a world without walls.

Zane turns his attention to me. He's trying to make his face as emotionless as those of the people walking around us, but it's not working. “Did you know the drug you call Phydus—it was developed in part from research the first colony did on some of the plants they discovered here? Phydus wouldn't exist without this planet, and yet it's caused . . . all this.” He moves his hands weakly, indicating the whole city.

I look up and out, trying to determine how many people are in this sprawling city. Thousands, at least. All drugged by Phydus.

Zane takes in my reaction before continuing. “They mixed the Phydus—which I suppose they eventually wanted to test out for use on Sol-Earth—with gen mod material.”

I flinch. I don't know what's worse—his assumption that much of the population on today's Earth might be just as doped up as the zombie-like people before me or his mention of the same gen mod material my mother helped develop before she ever set foot on
Godspeed
.

“The combined drug was designed to attack the adrenal and pituitary glands, as well as the senses, and as a result, Phydus becomes a natural part of the body's response to stimulation, creating passivity instead of individual thought.”

“The first people were infected generations ago,” Chris says. “The FRX didn't count on people like us—the ones who have defective glands.”

“It's a mutation.” Zane shrugs. “It would have happened eventually.”

The empty shells of people move robotically down the street. They hardly seem human.

I look down at myself. My muscles still ache, my bones still throb from the effects of the hybrid solution I've been injected with. Who am I to judge who seems human or not?

Zane stares at something high up, and it takes me a moment to realize he's looking at a pole embedded into the sidewalk with a giant speaker perched atop it. “They used to have people from the FRX here at all times,” he tells me. “They would live here until a shipment was done, then new masters would come to give orders until the next shipment was complete. Now they don't even bother with that. They know all they have to do is say what they want, and my people will do it.”

The way he says that—
my people
—reminds me of how Elder felt about the shipborns. I swallow down the lump rising in my throat.

“For at least a decade, they've just used the satellites to issue orders. Now they can't even do that, but my people keep working anyway.”

And I know they will all continue working, because even without the FRX telling them to do so, the Phydus in their systems won't let them stop. “The Inhibitor formula Bartie's bringing will work,” I assure Zane.

Zane shrugs. He's not willing to get his hopes up. “I am glad, at least, that the humans from the FRX aren't here anymore.” He looks down at me, forcing me to meet his gaze. “It was bad when they were here. I wonder, sometimes . . . ”

“What?” I ask. It takes me a moment to recognize the feeling that's welling up inside me. Sympathy.

“I wonder if the only reason the rogue hybrids like me mutated is because the humans from the FRX . . . ” He turns away, unable to finish speaking.

I don't need him to explain his thoughts, though. If there were FRX leaders here, seeing to the day-to-day operations of the colony they'd turned into mindless slaves . . . I rub my wrists. The women who lived here, born with Phydus already in their systems, were nothing more than dolls to the slave masters on Centauri-Earth. The kind of men who had no problem turning people into mindless automatons would have no problem doing exactly what they wanted with the women, the women who could not even think to protest.

I swallow dryly. I can do nothing about the past. But I won't let this sort of thing ever happen again on my planet, my home.

 

73:
AMY

The peace negotiations go surprisingly well.
Zane has a team of his own scientists read over the Inhibitor formula that Bartie gives him, and they seem confident that the meds will work.

Even so, negotiations take hours. Mostly because I insist that everything be written down, witnessed, and signed by all present. I leave nothing to chance or spoken promises.

“And one thing I want to make clear,” I say as we near the end. “My people are independent from yours. We are not merging colonies. We are our own. We will elect our own leaders, have our own laws.”

Zane starts to speak, but Bartie cuts him off—one of the few times Bartie has spoken at all. He and the other people from
Godspeed
are still recovering from their journey. “Elder would want that,” he says.

I raise my eyebrow at Zane, waiting for him to object to my demand. But he doesn't. He just nods, adds it to the contract, and signs his name.

 

The worst part was the first night. When I really came to realize that I'm here, and he's not. That I'm alive and he's . . .

I let myself cry that night. Alone, in one of the stone buildings not destroyed by the hybrids, I weep until I have no more tears left, ever.

I have the whole world now, but I don't have him.

 

Zane is true to his word. On the first day after our peace treaty, he sends half his group of rogue hybrids to help clear away the damage of the battle at the building. None of my people—Earthborn or shipborn—want to work with them.

“They killed our people,” one of the shipborns, a man named Tiernan, says. He has a gun, a weapon he plucked from one of the dead military, in his hand, pointed at the trucks arriving from the rogue hybrids. “They killed Elder!”

“They did kill our people. And my parents,” I say, looking evenly into his eyes until he flinches, unable to keep staring at my oval irises. “But they didn't kill Elder. Elder chose to die. And he did it so we could have a life here. With them.”

A crowd of shipborns gathers around. The sky is cloudy, the air humid. It'll storm later. But they know what a storm is now and how to survive it. One of the women drops her hand protectively over her stomach, and I'm reminded that most of the female population is pregnant. In a few months, there will be babies born in our little village who will never know
Godspeed
. Their parents will tell them stories about metal walls and a painted sky, and they won't understand, not really. They'll never know a cage for a home.

They'll never truly be able to comprehend how much was lost for their limitless sky.

“We can't trust them . . . ” Tiernan says, lowering his gun but not releasing it.

“We have to,” I say, putting a hand on his arm. “We will
not
survive in this world without help. Look around you. We have almost nothing. The supplies brought from
Godspeed
helped, but we need more. We need knowledge and help and training.”

“I don't like it,” Tiernan growls.

“Neither do I.” I cast another look behind me—and then look past Tiernan, to the other shipborns that are crowding around him, their wide-open eyes, the fear they wear on their faces. “But it's time for us to work together,” I say, more loudly so the others can hear. “It's what Elder would have wanted.”

And this is the true legacy of Elder: his people are willing to accept peace.

 

A few days after the peace treaty is drafted, Zane comes to the colony in one of his big trucks. “I wanted you to see the first treatment,” he says. “We couldn't have done this without you.”

Bartie and I both go on behalf of the colony. Zane and Chris sit across from us. The tension is palpable—not just between us and them, but also in the way Bartie is afraid to sit too close to me. He keeps peeking up at me when he thinks I'm not looking, comparing who I am now to the girl he used to know.

He thinks me even more of a freak than before, I can tell that much.

Zane's set up his base in the old tunnels used by the first colonists for their mining operations—an extension of the same tunnels Elder discovered when he helped dig for the latrines. The entrance is blocked off by a high-tech door that reminds me of the one at the compound. Zane scans his thumb at the keypad, and
HYBRID
flashes across the screen. I look down at my hands. They don't
feel
different, not now that whatever transformation I underwent is over, but I know if I pressed my finger against the lock, it would flash
HYBRID
too. Not human. Never human again.

I wonder what Elder would think of me if he were still alive. My eyes are blue now, not green, with oval irises. I can see so much clearer now, so much farther. I can sense from which direction the wind blows before it touches my face; I can shut my eyes and still tell where everyone is based on their scent alone.

Elder is a clone; he must know what it feels like to wonder if your DNA even belongs to you anymore.

And then I remember: Elder's gone.

Something inside my soul snaps like a string pulled too tight, but I put one foot in front of the other and stare straight ahead.

Zane strides off to the laboratories—despite the fact that his headquarters are in abandoned mine tunnels, he's been stealing from the FRX for long enough to make this base camp just as high tech as anything we had on the shuttle. Rogue hybrids pop out of rooms built into the walls of the tunnel, greeting him as he walks by them.

He is truly their leader. In his late twenties or early thirties, it can't have been easy for him to assume control of the entire rogue hybrid population. I wonder what it was like for him, realizing that he had control of his own mind but his parents did not. Hiding when the FRX came to inspect the glass factories. Wanting to save his people, a people that, for the most part, aren't even aware they are enslaved.

He reminds me very much of Elder.

I chew on the inside of my cheeks until I taste blood. I will
not
cry. I will
not
show emotion. Not now. Not here.

Chris sidles close. Hi
s presence makes me uncomfortable, but I'm not willing to let him know that. I turn my back to him, but that doesn't stop him from talking to me.

“Look at the way Bartie flinches from you,” Chris says in a whisper so low that no one else can hear.
I
wouldn't be able to hear it if it weren't for the fact that my ears have betrayed me, becoming bat-like in their hybrid clarity.

I ignore him.

“I saw the way they treated you before. You lived with them for how long? Months? And they were still scared of your perfectly normal skin color. What will they think of you now?”

I stare straight ahead.

“They'll never accept you.”

I whirl around and grab Chris's collar, all in one swift motion that startles Bartie so much he curses in surprise, jumping back to the far wall so there's plenty of space between us and him.

“If you have something to say,” I growl, “say it to my face, you coward.”

Chris jerks free, and for a moment he looks angry. But as he smooths down his shirt, he says, almost as if it is an excuse for me, “A violent temper. Side effect of hybridization. Your adrenal glands are more likely to make you fight than run away, in other words.”

What I don't tell him is that I was always more likely to fight.

“There's a difference between you and me,” I say. “I know that one day, my people
will
accept me again. They've done it before. They'll forget about how I look because they'll remember who I am and how I act. But they won't forget about what you've done. You're the one who'll never be accepted. Not me.”

Chris's eyes slide away from mine.

I can
feel
my muscles flexing, still shifting, growing stronger as my body comes to terms with the fact that I'm no longer just human. And I can smell the fear radiating from Chris.

Chris doesn't whisper any more cruel words to me. But the fact remains: a part of me got angry because I know what he's said is true.