“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. His 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.