Hero (Gone 9)

“It’s 11:26 p.m.,” Dekka said. “We should think, and we should talk to each other, and for me at least, I will pray. At midnight we vote.”

From the Purple Moleskine

WE ARE VOTING. It’s taking a while; we aren’t exactly voting on class president. We’re voting on existence. On life.

Shade and Malik are in each other’s arms, whispering into each other’s ears. Dekka, Simone, Francis, and Edilio sit together, murmuring in low voices, their eyes cast down. Sam and Astrid are silent, side by side in their chairs, reaching across the gap between them to hold hands. I sense that they’ve made up their minds.

Armo is beside me. He’s said nothing and I almost imagine that Armo, of all people, is leaving the decision to me.

The choice is brutal. To live in this universe as freaks, superpowered people under constant threat. To live with Malik never able to experience a single moment of privacy alone in his head. To live knowing that we are not alone in this world; each of the planet’s seven billion people are as alive and as aware as we are. To live knowing that with that choice we keep alive Rockborn monsters, horrors like Vector, some already wreaking havoc, some yet to reveal themselves.

We know that the Ranch will not be the end of governments trying to use the rock for their own ends. We know that if we vote for existence, we condemn billions to unimaginable sadness, and loss, and pain.

But they don’t get a vote, those billions. We have to vote for them.

I see Sam and Astrid stand up and walk together to the little wastebasket we’re using as our life-and-death sorting hat. Each folds and drops their vote. The paper strikes an almost musical note as it lands.

Armo squeezes my hand gently.

We have decided that the vote must be unanimous. No one is trying to persuade anyone else. Those who are talking are questioning, not dictating. No one knows the right answer.

Armo turns a sad smile to me and asks, “So?”

I don’t know the right answer. There is no hope that the horror will end. None.

Armo’s hand encloses mine.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s right.

I don’t know.

And yet, I vote.