“What kind of promise?”
“That in the end you will love my plan.”
“And in the meantime?”
“Deal with it.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
WAYWARD STATION
“The plan,” Corla says, now that we’ve reached the end of the tunnel and are entering the park, “is to get the hell away from these crazy fucked-up people. Are you in?”
“Who are you?” I say.
She laughs. And God, she’s pretty when she laughs. “I’m your genetically engineered princess, Crux. Duh.” She stops in the middle of the grass and takes my hand. There’s still that feeling hiding underneath my skin. I don’t understand it, I just know every time she and I make contact I have this overwhelming urge to never let her go. “Listen.” She sighs. “I don’t know what they’re doing. I just know you and I were brought together to make babies. Congrats, by the way. You’re going to be a father.”
“How do you know that? We did it once for less than five minutes.”
“Trust me,” she says. “I’m pregnant. They didn’t drag me a hundred light years from home and set up that crazy ritual back there for nothing.”
“Yeah, what was up with that? Red and black? Why am I wearing this stupid outfit?”
She looks me up and down, taking in my ceremonial uniform. “It is kinda creepy.”
“Evil creepy,” I say.
“Well, they are evil creepy so I guess it fits. But I’m sort of envious of you. I’d rather not have known what was coming. Your father was probably afraid you’d reject me or something. And believe me, that’s not in the plan.”
“OK, back up. What plan?”
She sighs, then walks over to a tree and says, “Sit. It’s a long story.”
I sit, and she talks, and it is a long story. But I get the main points pretty quick.
The Akeelians and Cygnians used to be one race of people. Then something catastrophic happened and they were no longer genetically compatible. So for the past however many years they’ve been engineering children so that one day—today, in fact—the two species could mate again and produce—wait for it—
“Stars.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” I say. “OK.”
She makes a face at me. “I light up. Do you not find that weird?”
“You’re a star?” I say. Then I laugh. I can’t help it.
“That’s fine,” she says. “It’s weird. I get it. But this light comes from somewhere. And these two races sure are trying really hard to produce children.”
“Maybe they’re just a bunch of sick fucks who get off on watching two teenagers get horny?”
“You think this is funny?”
“Not at all, princess. I think this is… I think… I don’t fucking know what I think. But people don’t turn into stars.”
“OK,” she says. “But maybe this thing inside me isn’t people.”
“Well, I’m a people. And you’re a people. So it stands to reason that if we create offspring, they’ll be people too.”
“Maybe we’re not people? Ever think of that?”
I sigh and massage the center of my forehead with two fingertips. Tired, and confused, and not ready to fight this battle, that’s for sure.
“Look,” Corla says, placing her hands on my shoulders. I like her touch. It makes me close my eyes and forget all this bullshit about babies, and stars, and escape plans. “You don’t have to believe me. Just believe this. Something is going on. You are standing here in a creepy red and black uniform talking to a girl they set you up to breed with. That’s an irrefutable fact. So if you want to forget about the baby, and the stars, and the light, cool. Let it go. But you can’t just pretend that creepy clown show back there didn’t happen. The only other thing you need to accept is that these people have to be stopped. Whatever is growing inside me is too powerful, that’s why ALCOR helped separate the Cygnians and Akeelians thousands of years ago.”
“Who?”
“ALCOR? That insane AI who runs that station that guards the gates to the Seven Sisters?”
“Go on,” I say. This might actually be useful information because I sorta-kinda remember hearing about this AI from some gate-mapping class.
“ALCOR messed up the offspring of the Cygnians and Akeelians thousands of years ago and our races have been struggling to survive ever since. The Cygnians genetically engineer our daughters, then back-breed them to a previous paternal generation trying to create one girl—like me—who can actually mate with an Akeelian boy, like you.”
“Oh, God. I feel sick.”
“And you Akeelians… well, you guys just screw any woman who will have you, hoping that you get more boys. But—and this is the big but—you and your friends, like that guy you were with last night? You’ve been altered to match one of us. You and I were meant to be together, Crux. True soulmates, so to speak. But there’s another but. Are you ready for it?”
“Hit me,” I say. “I have a feeling I’ll never be ready, so just give it to me straight, princess. I need to know what’s happening.”