"That's not an answer."

Jason scrubbed a hand over his face, not looking at any of them. "Yeah, I do."

"Then you need to do this."

After a moment, Jason pushed past Lucas to walk back into the lab, letting the old door slam shut behind him.

SEVENTEEN.

SEPTEMBER 2379.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA.

When Africa died, it took history with it. A continent of deserts and jungles, Saharan plains and winding rivers, teeming with a biodiversity of life that sp.a.w.ned the human race in all its forms, it should have been worth saving. Records existed, Samantha knew, of a time when people tried. Drought, desertification, poaching, and stubborn human greed destroyed it, just as humans destroyed the rest of the world.

Too many places in Africa were bombed to ruins. Johannesburg was no different. The surface was jagged wreckage and displaced melted slag. People lived among the remains if they weren't lucky enough to live in bunkers.

Resources were provided by the government. Johannesburg only had a single SkyFarms tower, heavily guarded by the government. Combo-detox water plants desalinized and filtered out toxins from the polluted Indian Ocean before the water was transported inland on maglev trains. The city limits incorporated bunkers, not sealed towers, and the skin trade was a currency most people used in some form or another alongside credit chips. Survival came with a cost and always would.

Samantha touched a finger to the dark gla.s.ses that sat on her nose. Translucent bioware woven through clear synthskin was stuck to her facial recognition points, hiding her ident.i.ty from the government's security grid. Matron's stockpile of the tech was large, most of it top-notch. Samantha had to admit that Lucas's ability to find useful people was on par with Nathan's.

"Smells like lunch," Kristen said. The girl crouched in the dirt just inside the broken entrance to one of the converted ruins, watching the oblivious humans pa.s.s them by. The dilapidated building they were in leaned at a precarious angle. Since it hadn't fallen down in the last decade or so, Samantha considered the odds of its staying up to be on their side.

Johannesburg smelled of too many people living in too small of a place, with the harsh scent of toxins rolling over the flat, devastated land on the back of the wind. It was making Samantha sick.

"You only think you're hungry," Samantha said.

"It's waning, Sammy-girl." Kristen canted her head to the side, her own dark gla.s.ses sliding down her nose. "Things are falling apart."

It was a warning, plain and simple. Nathan once predicted that Kristen would never live to see the age of eighteen. Judging by how skewed Kristen's mind was, even with a borrowed framework of sanity, Samantha knew Nathan had been right.

"Come along, Kristen."

Samantha grabbed at the collar of Kristen's skinsuit. She was the only one still wearing it; everyone else wore street clothes. It made hauling her around easier and made it more difficult for Kristen to cut into her own skin.

It's a pity we can't attach bioware to it, Samantha thought absently. Shocking her into obedience was always so much easier than having a row with her.

Samantha hauled her unruly sister into the depths of the building where Fahad and his a.s.sistants had set up a portable work terminal with Novak's help. The media pirate was barking out orders to the men and women around him, ruthlessly running the show, as he had for so long. He gleaned rumors from conspiracy streams and paired them with hard facts from anonymous sources to create a whole picture. The government had a bounty on his head for the information he streamed to the unregistered ma.s.ses, inciting riots and spreading truth the World Court could ill afford. What he was about to broadcast next would trump all his previous endeavors.

"You just gonna stand there and watch?" Novak said as Samantha put herself and Kristen against the wall, out of the way.

Samantha slid her power through Novak's mind, uncaring of the sudden pain she caused the man.

I am not my brother, Samantha said as she increased the presence of her telepathy in his thoughts to a critical degree. Speak to me like that again, and you won't live beyond those words. Do I make myself clear?

"Very," Novak gasped out.

Samantha released him, ignoring the faint trickle of blood that dripped out of Novak's nose. Novak turned his back on the sisters and moved out of physical, it not mental, reach. Kristen watched him retreat with a hungry look on her face. Samantha made sure she had a firm hold on her sister.

Lucas had charged them to oversee this mission with the knowledge that Johannesburg had both Warhounds and Strykers on the ground. Samantha was needed for defense, but was uncertain of her strength. Recovering from the trauma of Buffalo had taken days. For Samantha, it had meant the restructuring of her mind from the bottom up.

In Buffalo, Lucas had ripped out of her mind layers of false thoughts that had seemed real, revealing a mindwipe that had forged her into whatever Lucas needed her to be beneath Nathan's seemingly solid control. Samantha wasn't sure when Lucas had implanted this loyalty in her, she just knew it was there, that it was foreign, and she could do nothing to break it. Odd to sift through one's own mind and not recognize it. Odder still to realize that maybe it was better this way.

What she still couldn't come to terms with was the hole that had been punched in her mind where her twin once resided. Even Lucas couldn't make her forget eighteen years of living with Gideon in her head. If she was grieving for her loss, she didn't know where that grief was.

"We're ready," Fahad said, a satisfied bite to his words. "Let's get this uploaded and begin. I can't wait to see how it all goes down."

Samantha pulled Kristen to her when the girl would have followed Fahad's a.s.sistants around the portable work terminals. Hacking into the media streams took effort, but the results were always interesting. Samantha had seen the outline of what Fahad was going to report. That it would be picked up on all conspiracy and public streams meant the government wouldn't be able to keep it hidden, that the information they would be disseminating would never die.

Fahad took his place before the camera, wearing the same sort of street clothes as the rest of them, his face covered by a shapeless headscarf that was lined with bioware to hide his ident.i.ty and the same sort of dark gla.s.ses Samantha wore. Technology wasn't the only detail he employed-a quick retreat was always on the table. Their bolt hole was a squeeze in the back between two collapsed walls, out into a thin alley that linked to a market square always teeming with people.

Samantha loosened her grip on Kristen's shoulder, fingers tapping against the other girl's skinny frame. Patience.

Novak finished uploading the program with the help of Fahad's a.s.sistants, having worked on the actual hack on the flight over to get faster access to the public streams. They were able to access the backdoor in minutes, not hours.

"We're reporting on the edge," Fahad said, altered voice coming out strong. "If you're hearing this, seeing this, then it's a reminder that the government doesn't own all of us. Here's to the fallen, to the righteous, to Allah, who guides us. The government can't control everyone, but control was never their final goal.

"The World Court has lied to everyone since the Border Wars. The Fifth Generation Act is a long-running con for the rich to buy their way into the promised land. Their hope isn't our hope. What succors them won't succor us. How many people have died, will die, for their greed? The rest of the world, if they have their way."

Fahad gestured off camera to one of his a.s.sistants. The woman tapped out a few commands into her console. Fahad continued, "This is a picture of the Paris Basin, where the capital of France once stood. As you can see, it's not all ruins and water. It's not just a deadzone, but a hidden lifeline." The picture switched to a closer magnification, rows and rows of shuttles, waiting to launch on a sleek ramp. "What you see is the government's real plan, their way off this rock to the stars.

"Leftover nukes haven't wrecked this area, no matter the lies the government tells. The truth is that our ancestors didn't own one planet-they owned two. A colony s.h.i.+p is docked near the moon waiting to ferry the government's chosen people into paradise."

Another hand wave and Samantha knew the satellite pictures of the Ark were being added to the mix. She could see them on the vidscreen over Novak's shoulder.

"But I tell you this, my brothers and sisters, that we-we who have bled and died for want of a better life-we have been betrayed, for we will not be on those shuttles. We will never see that s.h.i.+p."

Samantha had seen the Ark before, when she was a child and Nathan had shown her what was promised to them. The pixels of a stream did the colony s.h.i.+p no justice, the nongovernment-controlled satellite providing the pictures old and barely functioning. But it still showed the ma.s.sive scale of the Ark, large enough to take many citizens, but not all, to a new life.

It was a new life she had dreamed of once.

"This is the proof people have died to uncover. We deserve more than the government will leave us. We deserve more than sc.r.a.ps and walls and beatings and graves," Fahad said, staring into the camera. "The government talks about laws and resources, as if this world was all we were left with, when they knew of some place better. They say we aren't meant for some distant alien sh.o.r.e. I say, who are they to destroy our future? Who in the gutters will fight for it?"

The connection cut off, the actual feed of the pirate stream barely two minutes long, but it was two minutes that would live in infamy. Samantha knew that better than most. She had played at being human for her entire life and knew exactly how the registered elite would react in the face of such a reveal. The rest of the world, those who had never met the requirements of the Fifth Generation Act, would either take the stream as truth and riot, or do nothing and keep living the only life they knew.

"It's done," Fahad said, yanking off his headscarf and gla.s.ses.

A giddy, satisfied smile sat on his face, one born of pride and antic.i.p.ation. The expression turned to horror as he watched Kristen approach one of his a.s.sistants. Kristen pressed her hand to the young man's head and ripped through his mind with her empathy. The man's scream lasted only a second or two, a sound that shredded their ears before it cut off.

"Your words are useful," Kristen said as she turned her head to face the others, gleaming dark blue eyes full of malice. "You aren't. At least, not anymore."

Fahad and his people crumpled before Kristen's unwavering onslaught, the hunger for sanity driving her. Jason's s.h.i.+elds hadn't been enough. Nothing would be. The cracks in her mind were widening, and no one could stop her descent back into insanity.

Novak put his back against the wall. Five bodies lay scattered around the area where the pirate stream played in a continuous loop. It would run until someone on the government's end managed to hack it out of existence, which he doubted they could, because the damage was done.

"I knew Lucas was gonna kill us. Matron never listens to me," Novak said, curling in on himself as he hid his face. Samantha tore her gaze from the vidscreen and the loop, to where Kristen was approaching Novak with a dreamy smile on her face.

"Don't kill that one," Samantha reminded her sister, erecting a mental s.h.i.+eld between Kristen and Novak's mind.

"Oh, f.u.c.k, why not?" Novak asked, head jerking up, eyes wide with fear. His own or Kristen's, Samantha didn't really care.

"We needed a message people would believe in. Fahad delivered it perfectly."

"So you killed him for doing a good job?"

"We have the message. We don't need the messenger, especially not one with traitorous thoughts. Now get up," Samantha said, already stretching her telepathy through the mental grid beneath the s.h.i.+eld of static human minds, reaching for Lucas. "Lucas still has use for you, so stop yelling. Kristen won't kill you."

Kristen's smile was wide and vicious. "Yet."

Novak closed his mouth.

Did you finish? Lucas said as he drew Samantha into a psi link, suddenly there in her thoughts.

We're done, Samantha said. Pirate stream is running, information is uploaded, Fahad and his people are dead.

Good. Show me the others.

Obediently, Samantha looked at Kristen and Novak. Her vision doubled, the light from the vidscreens wrapping everything in halos as Lucas stared through her eyes. Lucas's telekinesis settled over her and pulled.

In an instant, all three were gone, leaving behind corpses, the voice of a dead man, and evidence of a betrayal that society wasn't strong enough to survive intact.

"They say we aren't meant for some distant alien sh.o.r.e. I say, who are they to destroy our future? Who in the gutters will fight for it?"

PART FOUR.

Clarity.

SESSION DATE: 2128.08.13.

LOCATION: Inst.i.tute of Psionics Research.

CLEARANCE ID: Dr. Amy Bennett.

SUBJECT: 2581.

FILE NUMBER: 750.

"We can find others like you," the doctor says as she stares down at her notes. "We're learning what makes you different from us. It's in your blood. In your brain."

"In my mind," Aisling concedes. "We're different."

"Not human."

"Human enough." Aisling coils a wire around one finger, never looking away from the doctor's face. "Do you want to know a secret?"

"Of course."

"It never works when those like me are free at the beginning." She raises a finger and presses it to her lips. "Shh. Don't tell anyone."

The doctor folds her hands together over the table, knuckles white. The hum of machines fills the air and echoes on the feed. "Your parents signed you over to us. Did you know that?"

"You told them to."

"Where is your brother, Aisling?"

"You can't have him." The girl smiles; a slow, precise motion beneath bleached-out violet eyes. "You asked me once to save you. This is how I do it."

EIGHTEEN.

SEPTEMBER 2379.

LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY.

The government shuttle came in from the south, flying across Spitsbergen. Four teams of quads were strapped in for the flight out of The Hague. They escorted a single man into the cold of the Arctic, a man who would have preferred to remain in j.a.pan. For the first time since the government started security s.h.i.+fts after the island was rediscovered, the watch team in the north had missed their check-in.