The Earth Dwellers

I turn, nod to Tawni. She raises the control and presses a button. I gesture for the generals to look at the screen, which goes from black to fuzzy gray to an orange-lit room, a textured brown-rock wall in the background. Adele’s mother sits at a desk, wearing a blue uniform. A flashing red light above the screen indicates our cameras are working. She can see us.

“Tristan,” she says, her face not showing even the slightest degree of surprise. I wonder if this unflappable woman has ever been astonished by something. Adele’s got so much of her mother in her, but has a softer side, too, a side that clearly was a gift from her father. She got the best of both her parents. “Where is my daughter?” She asks the question as if I’m the only one in the room, as if there aren’t ten generals staring at her. It’s a question I’ve been dreading.

“In the New City,” I say. Unlike the generals, we told her everything before we went above. “She’s on a mission.”

“But she’s alive?” she asks. She makes the most important question in the world sound like any other question. She might as well have asked Is my uniform blue? for all the emotion she put into her words.

I want to, but I can’t lie to her. “I don’t know,” I say. “But I’m operating under that assumption.”

Aboud raises a fist in the air. “I want answers and I want them now. What the hell are you talking about?”

I nod slowly, but my eyes never leave General Rose’s. Is that a glimmer of fear I see? She blinks quickly and it’s gone, once more replaced by steel and fire. “I need your help,” I say. For the next hour I recap everything that happened from the moment Adele and I stepped onto Earth. When I finish, I ask, “Will you help me defeat Lecter?”

Aboud looks me in the eye and says, “Not with her.” He spits at the screen. “If you want us to do this, we’re doing it our way, the right way, the way we’ve always done it. Your father’s way.”

I glance at Roc and Tawni. And then I draw my sword.

Chapter Thirty-One

Adele

I awake to a shaking bed. Not hard, more like a buzz beneath me. “Your bed will wake you up.” Now I get what Lin meant.

When I roll over and put my feet down, the bed stops and the lights flash on. The moment I take my weight off the mattress, the wall shifts and the bed disappears. I blow a sharp breath through tight lips. This world is really starting to freak me out.

My white corpse-clothes are wrinkled and smelling far less fresh than they were when I stole them yesterday. I’ll have to check with Lin to see if she has some clean ones I might be able to borrow. She’s shorter than me, but it’ll have to do.

Or not. When I scan my wrist on the metal ration dispenser, two things happen: One, the metal door opens and out pops a white-yellow rectangle, steaming hot; and two, another part of the wall moves behind me, revealing several sets of white clothes and a narrow cubicle with a metal fixture at the top and a drain at the bottom. There’s a handle on the wall in the middle. Some kind of cleaning device.

And I don’t need to inspect the clothes to know: they’re all in my size.

Suddenly I realize the power of the chips in our wrists. Not power for us, but power for him. For Lecter. Control. We have to use them for everything, and therefore, he can track and control everything we do. He doesn’t need cameras set up to monitor us, because we tell him what we’re doing each and every time we scan our wrists.

I clench my fists and resist the desire to rip off my bandage and dig out the chip. I have to be like everyone else if I want to win this fight.

Sitting down at the table—which only has one chair, I guess guests are frowned upon—I eat the egg-like block in front of me. It tastes too salty but I force myself to swallow, washing it down with the single glass of water the liquid dispenser will allow me. Finished, I stare at the wall, which has gone from white to black in an instant, like someone turned off the lights. Only the lights are still on and the rest of the room is bright.

There’s a flash and numbers appear. 6:30. A voice drones from a speaker built somewhere into the ceiling. “You have fifteen minutes to read this morning’s a

My chest heaves and the eggs rise up in my throat. I cough, choke, look away. Try to breathe. Slowly, slowly, slowly, I return my eyes to the screen, breathing through my nose. Tears blurring my vision. Seeing only bodies. Not a few. Not hundreds. Thousands, scattered in the sand, spotted with blood. Men and women and kids. A lot of freaking kids, their bodies so much smaller.

A group of soldiers stand in front of the carnage, mugging and smiling and giving thumbs up signs for the camera.

It was murder. No, even that is too soft a word for what the Glassies have done. What Lecter ordered them to do. Genocide. It’s a word I learned in school. A word that captures the very essence of the hate and the fear and the mass killing the Glassy army is set on carrying out, has already carried out.

I raise a fist, intent on smashing it through the image, but then it falls limply to my side, defeated. It’s just a picture; I can’t hurt the soldiers by breaking my hand on the wall. But I can hurt them other ways, and I will.

The image vanishes, text appearing in its place:

Yesterday’s victory was decisive in the fight for the liberty of the good citizens of the New City. The savage Icers will never threaten us again. The army’s efforts now turn to the desert mongrels who have consistently avoided peace talks, using brute force as an alternative. President Lecter has stated publicly that he’s confident good will prevail. “Because of the sacrifices of our brave men and women, the Earth will once more become a civilized world, where our children can grow and prosper, where Godless savages exist no more,” Lecter said in a recent interview. A memorial service will be held to honor the courageous souls who perished in what has been coined as The Battle for the North.

I turn away. If there’s more, I don’t need to read it. They’re just words, lies, propaganda. In reality, all the savages in the world are gathered inside the very glass dome that has become my prison.

There’s a knock on the door. “One minute,” I say, hurriedly changing out of my disheveled clothes and into fresh ones, ignoring the cleaning I so desperately need.

When I throw open the door, Lin’s there. “Did you read the a

I don’t have to respond; the look on my face says enough. “You did,” she says. “Want to go throw rocks at the presidential building?”

I offer up a grim smile. “I want to do a whole lot more than that,” I say.

“Then let’s go. We’ve got a sicko to kill.”

We make our way out of the building, just two birds in a flock of many, each bird with white wings and silent beaks. Are they too defeated to even talk to each other? Doesn’t anyone have a comment about the a

When we get on the street, I want to run, to sprint, to feel my muscles working, my blood flowing, as if maybe that would cleanse my mind of the image I saw on the screen, help to focus me. But we can’t. There are too many people. And it would look strange, anyway, draw attention when that’s the last thing I need. Just be like everyone else. Walk at a normal speed, silent, going about my business. Another fish in the school. Another zombie in the…what do you call a group of zombies? A pack? A herd? A gaggle? My slight chuckle draws a stern look from Lin. Is laughter not allowed? Will I be Tasered and hauled off to prison for laughing at my own, admittedly bad, internal joke?