The Search for Sam (4 page)

A lie. They left me for dead.

“… that they were as heartbroken as I was …”

More lies.

“But they didn’t find your body, and that gave me some hope. I knew in my heart that
somehow you had managed to survive.”

She hugs me again. It takes all of my effort to receive her hug without betraying
the revolution going on inside me. I expected to return home to a Mogadorian firing
squad, but instead I’ve come back as a fallen soldier.

“No.” His voice. My mother and I turn at once to see my father in the doorway, his
mouth open in shock.

“He’s come back to us,” my mother exclaims. “Our boy’s alive!”

I have never in my entire life seen the General at a loss for words, but there he
is, too stunned to speak.

In a flash I understand everything. My father lied to my mother. My father lied to
the rest of the Mogadorians. Whether to protect his ego from disgrace or to maintain
his authority as a general, or both, he fabricated an honorable death for me. No one
here except my father—and Ivan, wherever he is—knows that I turned against the Mogadorian
cause.

I only have a moment to act, to interpret my father’s stunned silence and play it
to my advantage.

I leap off the couch and embrace him.

“I’m alive, Father.” I feel all six and a half feet of his body stiffen in disgust,
but I forge ahead with my ruse. “I’ve come home.”

I tell them a story of my return to Ashwood. Washing up on the shore at the bottom
of the ravine, being rescued by a local, recovering at the aid camp. I adjust the
truth slightly, characterizing my human friends as fools, claiming that I deliberately
manipulated Elswit for his assistance in order to get back here, painting myself as
the Mogadorian loyalist I no longer am—but this version is close enough to the truth.
And I know it’s what they need to hear.

“I had to get back here to see you,” I conclude. “To keep serving the cause.”

I force myself to stare right into my father’s eyes. It takes all of my effort not
to flinch from his gaze, just as I know it’s taking all of his will not to lunge across
the coffee table and strangle me where I stand.

In the kitchen, the oven timer dings. My mother, clucking over my heroic and daring
escape, excuses herself to check on whatever is in the oven.

“So …” I say to my father, waiting for his reaction.

He says nothing but jumps at me, gathering my shirt in his fist and lifting me off
the ground. I hover inches from the floor, held tight by his grip.

His face, getting redder every second, glowers before mine. “Tell me why I shouldn’t
break your neck right this instant.”

“If you wanted the truth to come out, wanted people to know how I failed you, you
wouldn’t have bothered to lie to everyone.” My twisted collar is beginning to cut
off my oxygen. I force myself to keep talking. “How’d you convince Ivan to keep your
secret?”

He ignores my question. “If you think having this over me will keep you safe, you
are sorely mistaken. If I killed you now, the only person I’d have to tell the truth
to is your mother.” He gives me a violent shake. “She’d learn to accept it. She’d
have no choice.”

My heart seizes: I know he’s serious. He could kill me. He
wants
to kill me.

I quickly switch tacks, hoping I’m not too late.

“I’m sorry, General.” Channeling my own mortal terror, I will repentant tears to my
eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

He looks at me with renewed contempt: the sight of his son groveling for his life
is probably as hard for him as the sight of me turning against the cause. I know my
new tactic is as risky as my old one: he could just as easily kill me out of disgust
as out of anger.

But I keep going. This is the only gambit I have.

“I failed you and I failed my people. I’m a coward. I don’t have what it takes to
kill. On the field of battle I … I couldn’t stand to see bloodshed.”

My father releases my shirt and I drop hard to the floor.

“I knew coming back was a risk. That I might be justifiably executed for treason.
But I thought it was worth it.”

“Why?”

“Because,” I say, pausing for dramatic effect, scrambling back onto my feet. “I hoped
you would give me a chance to make up for my failure.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

I fix my shirt and give him the most unblinking stare I can muster. “Clearly, I don’t
have what it takes to be a warrior. I’m not like Ivan.”

At that, my father lets out a derisive snort. “Son, you are unworthy of even an unflattering
comparison to Ivanick.”

“But I am a better tactician. Ivan never would’ve gotten through his early studies
if I hadn’t been there to do his work for him, every step of the way.”

The General’s not even looking at me anymore: he’s staring towards the kitchen, no
doubt preparing himself for the explanation he’ll have to give my mother once he’s
killed me. I can see I’m losing him. Yet I press on, trying not to let my desperation
show.

“I found Number Two first. Back in London, well before your entire team of surveyors
managed to pinpoint her location. And in Kenya I got to Number Three ahead of Ivan.
I didn’t have the will to kill them myself, but I found them first. I could be one
of the best trackers you have if you just give me a chance—”

My father lunges at me again, grabbing me by the throat this time. I can’t breathe.

This is it,
I think.
This is the end
.

“One week,” he says. “I’ll give you one week to show me what you can do.”

He releases me.

“And if you fail to produce a miracle for me in that time …” He trails off. I can
tell from his look he expects me to finish his statement.

“You’ll kill me.”

His level stare confirms that I’ve guessed right.

I nod, accepting his terms.

I lie in my old bed, in my old bedroom, staring at the wall. I was surprised to find
everything just as I left it, half-expecting it to be stripped bare following my supposed
“death.” I guess my mother won
that
battle with the General.

I try to get comfortable. After months on a bare cot at the aid camp, my expensive
pillow-top mattress should feel unbelievably fluffy and soft. But it feels like a
bed of nails.

After a strained dinner, during which my father and I both pretended to be happy I
was home, alone in my room I can finally let my guard down and drop the fake smile.
I’m exhausted and scared. Even if I somehow manage to avoid being executed within
the trial week the General has granted me, that’s no guarantee I’ll manage to break
into the labs. And even if I do, that’s no guarantee I’ll find a successful means
of reviving One, of keeping her imminent disappearance at bay. And even if I manage
to save her, I have no plan for how to save myself, for how to escape this place once
I’m done.

I’ll need to figure that out, because right now death doesn’t even feel like the worst-case
scenario. Passing my father’s test and being “allowed” to remain in this place, having
to indefinitely maintain the pretense of being a loyal Mogadorian, feels like the
grimmest fate of all.

“That was hard to watch.” One appears, standing in the doorway.

I sigh, grateful for her presence.

“Didn’t realize you were there.”

She ambles towards me and sits at the foot of the bed. “I hung back. Tried to stay
out of your line of sight. Figured you needed to focus.” She gives me an affectionate
look. “Performance of a lifetime, huh?”

“You said it.”

She looks guilty, worried for my safety. “You sure I’m worth it?”

I manage to fake a confident smile. “Definitely.”

My bedroom door opens and my sister Kelly swings in.

Surprised, I hop off the bed.

“So you’re back,” she says bluntly, sizing me up.

“Yeah,” I say. I’m not sure if I should rush up and embrace her.

I decide to wait and follow her lead.

“Well, that’s good, I guess.” She fiddles with the doorknob hesitantly.

“You weren’t at dinner.” Over dinner my father explained that Ivan had been promoted
to a new position somewhere in the Southwest—news that filled me with such relief
I had to cover my mouth so the General wouldn’t see how happy I was—but I hadn’t been
given a reason for Kelly’s absence.

“Ran late. I’m doing an afterschool program at the Nursery now.” The Nursery is what
some of us call the piken pens in the underground complex. Pikens are bred in the
labs down there and conditioned for combat. “I think I’m going to be a trainer when
I graduate. They say I have what it takes.”

“Oh,” I reply. “That’s great.”

I can’t believe how dumb I sound, how tentative. Back in the hornets’ nest of Ashwood,
and I’m scared of my own kid sister. It’s pathetic.

“Whatever,” she says. “So listen. Congratulations on surviving and stuff, and for
coming back here. But, you know, having you dead was embarrassing enough. Now I have
to explain to my friends that my loser brother is back. You’re basically ruining my
life.”

I’m stunned by her callousness, but I understand. In Mogadorian society, dying in
combat is not afforded the prestige it is among most human cultures. And
failing
in combat and surviving is hardly better than being a traitor. My mother’s relief
at my survival won’t be shared by my sister … or anyone else at Ashwood.

“I’m just telling you this so when I ignore you in front of the others, you don’t
freak out, okay?”

“Fair enough,” I say.

“Okay,” she says.

She leaves, without a good night, much less that hug.

I shoot One a despairing look.

She quickly covers her expression of pity with one of her best, most sarcastic grins.
“Welcome home, Adamus,” she says.

A kid a little older than me named Serkova comes to get me in the morning. According
to the General, he’s a promising young surveyor in the Media Surveillance division.
My father assigned him to bring me up to speed and put me to work.

We ride the elevator down to the underground complex together. He gives me a sidelong
glance. “Heard you bit it in Kenya.”

“Yeah,” I concede, feigning sheepishness.

“And now you’re angling for a position as a surveyor?”

“That’s the idea,” I say.

He snorts. Serkova has a generic trueborn face, but there is something gross and oddly
piggish about his nose that’s even grosser when he snorts.

“I didn’t know we were in the business of giving failed soldiers second chances.”
He turns his stare on me. “Guess there’s an exception for the General’s son.”

The elevator doors open and we stride into the hub at the center of the underground
complex. The domed ceiling and orb-like fluorescent light fixture give it the feel
of a massive—and massively ugly—atrium.

Trueborns and vatborns stride in every direction in and out of the various tunnels
radiating out from the hub. I feel them react to my presence: the trueborns avoid
my gaze, while the vatborns sneer at me with naked contempt. Word sure traveled fast,
even down here.

We make our way past the entrances to the Southeast and Northeast tunnels on our way
to the Northwest tunnel. With the exception of the General’s briefing room, I’ve never
been granted access to any of the tunnels off the hub before. But it’s fairly common
knowledge that the tunnels lead in one direction to combat training facilities, and
in the other direction to weapons stores and bunkers for the vatborn. We’re heading
down a third tunnel, to the R+D laboratories and the media and surveillance compounds.

I struggle to keep pace with Serkova. It’s obvious he doesn’t like me and resents
being saddled with the job of babysitting me.

“What’s your problem with me?” I genuinely want to know: the Mogadorian worldview
has become foreign to me so quickly. “So I’m being given a second chance. Why should
you care?”

Serkova turns to me, a contemptuous sneer on his lips. “You think I don’t get enough
shit as it is from the combat Mogs for being a surveyor? They already call us tech
wienies. Now we’re being forced to take on a
proven
loser in combat. So the next time they say we’re only surveyors because we’re not
good enough for combat, they’ll be
right
. All thanks to you.”

Great.

I follow him into the Media Surveillance facility, a large room lit only by the screens
of the twenty or so computer monitors throughout the room. No one looks up as Serkova
leads me to my monitor. Thanks to his outburst, I don’t have to wonder why.

He explains to me what our job is, then sits down at the console next to mine. “Good
luck, Adamus,” he says, with evident sarcasm, then gets to work.

I turn to my monitor.

A steady stream of links scrolls across my screen, in color-coded text. The Mogadorian
mainframe scours satellite and cable TV, radio transmissions, and every last corner
of the internet, 24/7. A certain amount of automated culling occurs before these links
reach our screens: most human interest stories are weeded out in advance, as are most
articles or news segments devoted to U.S. or international politics. But a significant
majority of what remains—weather reports, natural-disaster coverage, police blotters—makes
it to our screens as a veritable geyser of hyperlinks.