The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (23 page)

“Not really,” said Victoria. “It’s a powerful thing, what they feel on a night like tonight. It’s human, it’s animal, it’s divine. We remember that we are part of nature. We sacrifice to save the many, to ensure resources for the healthy and young, so that the species may advance. It’s scary, but isn’t it also brave?

“The Great Rise was humanity’s fault. We killed more than half our species by being selfish. We stretched the ecosystem like a rubber band, and then it snapped back. This has happened over and over in history, the rise and fall, since the Atlanteans. This time, I say let’s try something different and stay in balance. Back to being part of nature, not trying to master it. Don’t you see how that’s dignified? It’s not war criminals and thieves that we’re marching up here and killing—”

“You just kill them in the basement of the courthouse,” said Seven.

Victoria shrugged. “True. No resources to spare for a jail, after all. But when it comes to the volunteers, we take our turn, until nature takes us. And we are helping selection. The more of us live and die, the more generations, the more chances there are that one day, a child will come along who no longer feels the burn of the sun or suffers the Rad effects, and then humanity will adapt to this future. It is possible that the next rise of humanity doesn’t include this version of us at all, but rather the next one.”

“Seems kinda hopeless in the meantime,” said Leech. “Knowing you’re doomed to die young.”

“No one has to be here,” said Victoria. “When I led us out of EdenSouth, many people made their way to other parts of the world. That’s fine. But people choose to be here because their eyes are open. They see the reality of this world, and they’d rather face it head-on.”

“But,” I said, “in EdenSouth, you had all those resources you’re missing now: medical facilities, sun protection. So why revolt?”

Victoria’s eyes seemed to light up as I was saying this. “It’s simple, Owen. Because EdenSouth was a lie.”

“You mean the fake sun and the fake sky and everything.”

“All of that, sure,” said Victoria, “but I mean the real lie, the entire premise of the Edens.” She moved across the room to her desk. “Here’s my question to you,” she said as she unlocked the top drawer. “What is the purpose of the Eden domes?”

“Which one?” Leech asked. “The one they say publicly or Project Elysium?”

Victoria rooted around in her desk. “Tell me both.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess what they say is that the domes are supposed to be a safe place to live.”

“For people who can afford it,” Leech added.

“But their real purpose is to learn about Atlantis,” I said, “and to find the Paintbrush of the Gods before their domes fail.”

“And why would they do that?” Victoria asked. She’d found whatever she was looking for in her desk, and was moving around to us again.

“Well, to save their people—”

Victoria cut me off. “And
that’s
the lie, right there. Or at least, part of it.” She stepped in front of us and held up a small, black cylinder. She flicked a switch on it, and a purple light shone from one end. “They don’t want to save all of their people,” she said.

She held out her right hand, palm up, and aimed the light at her pinkie finger, the one everyone else in Desenna was missing. The light pierced through her skin like an X-ray, through the flesh and muscles. In that circle of light we could see all the way to the bones. They were outlined in shimmery purple.

And on the middle bone of Victoria’s pinkie, we could see a series of black lines.

“What’s she doing?” asked Leech.

“Showing us the bar code on her finger bone,” I said.

“It’s an access code given each selectee by EdenCorp,” said Victoria.

“The only ones who will actually be saved,” I added.

“Yes,” Victoria agreed, “and in all of EdenSouth, population two hundred and fifty thousand, take a guess how many selectees there were?”

“Just you?” said Leech.

“Hah.” Victoria chuckled. “No, three hundred. A hair over point one percent.”

Victoria flicked the light off and moved to the window. She swept a hand over Desenna. “All these people,” she said, “they were never part of Eden’s plan.” Her voice quieted. “I couldn’t live with it. So I told them, showed them the dome integrity data . . . and we made a different choice.”

My initial horror at the sacrifice had faded, and now I didn’t know what I felt. One part fear, one part awe.

“That’s pretty bad ass,” Leech said. He seemed to be firmly on the positive side.

“Yeah, Superhero Mom,” said Seven, though this time with less sarcasm than before.

“Everybody chops off their pinkies to show . . . unity?” I asked.

“Precisely.”

“But you didn’t chop off yours.”

Victoria smiled. “If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to show you this now, would I? A leader needs to be prepared for all possibilities. Now, you’re probably wondering where you fit in. . . .”

As she continued, I thought about what she’d just said. It didn’t seem like a complete answer.

“For Paul,” Victoria was saying, “you’re a means to an end. Here, you are a different kind of hope. You’ve heard of the Epics of the Three.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a piece of it in the temple below EdenSouth. I’ll show you when we go there tomorrow. I used it to create a mythology, about the Three, and how you would someday return. I had a feeling you would, after I discovered that we had a very likely candidate in EdenSouth’s cryo facilities, our lovely Seven.”

“Lucky me,” Seven said.

“Always so grateful,” said Victoria. “In my revolt, we took out most of Eden’s technology, but I kept the cryo containment facility intact.”

“Wait,” said Leech, “you did?”

I thought he’d tell her about Isaac, but when Victoria asked him, “Yes, why?” he answered, “Just curious.” Here was Leech, holding his cards again. His instincts had been right in Gambler’s Falls.

“I introduced the prophecy of Heliad returning to earth someday,” Victoria continued, “then I waited awhile after the revolt, until we’d built most of Desenna, and people were getting restless for something new. Then I woke up Seven and she found the skull, and that really got the people excited. It gave them hope in a force larger than themselves. That a better life would await the future generations. You two are the second part of that.”

“How are we going to bring a better life for your people?” I asked.

“You already have,” said Victoria. “It doesn’t matter what you do from here on out. Just by actually arriving, and being connected to the ancient myths, you are real proof of the massive forces at work in life. It creates a sense of oneness, like we’re connected to something larger, something divine. You’d be surprised how far that goes.”

I thought of Harvey and Lucinda and Ripley. It hadn’t gone far enough for them. I wondered if there were others here who felt like they had: who would give us over to Paul if they had the chance. “So nobody here cares if we find the Paintbrush of the Gods or not?” I asked.

“What they care about is what I care about: that we stop Paul and his project from finding it and using it to save only his precious selectees. To that end, I am committed to helping you. Which is the other reason I brought you here.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Sorry,” said Victoria. “Mica knows not to disturb me unless it’s important. Yes!”

Mica stepped in.

“Sorry, Mother,” he said, using stage names again. “We have a visitor that I . . .” He gave Victoria a weird look. “Can I see you outside?”

“Okay,” said Victoria uncertainly. “I’ll be right back.” She stepped out.

The three of us were silent for a minute, the conversation sinking in. I looked at Seven, who was by the window gazing out at the city. “So, can we trust her?”

Seven shrugged. “You can trust that she’s telling the truth. I’ve been around her awhile and I am pretty certain that she really believes in all this business. She believes in us.”

“I’m still waiting for the catch,” said Leech.

“You don’t think human sacrifice is a catch?” I said.

Leech didn’t answer and the door opened. Victoria entered and her eyes leveled on me. “Owen,” she said, “we have . . . an unexpected visitor.”

Mica stepped in, and then a woman. She had long, brown hair with gray streaks, held back by brightly colored barrettes. She wore a bright blue dress and had a frilly scarf around her neck. She was trembling, her hands fiddling with each other.

And inside, with no warning, I felt something slip and give way, like a floor falling through.

I knew this woman.

Her eyes looked wet. I knew this was how they’d always looked.

The chasm opened, and up from it flew memories, fluttering bat wings all around me, like from the cave depths beneath Hub at sunset . . . but no.

There was no way.

My brain had to be playing more tricks. . . .

“Owen?” she said softly.

“Mom?”

I STARTED TOWARD HER. THERE WAS NO WAY, AND yet with every step I became more certain that after eight years and so many questions and hurt thoughts and all the silence . . .

“Owen, honey!”

There she was in front of me and she looked the same, or older—she must have looked older, more lines on her face, her skin tanned and leathery compared to the pale subterranean complexion I remembered—but it was still her eyes, brown and wet. I used to think that she always looked like she’d either just been crying, or she was just about to. But they were also bright and wide, always showing exactly what she felt. That was something I remembered, too, that my mother, Nina, had never been able to hide what she felt, even when it was something I didn’t want to know.

I threw my arms around her.

I remembered her taller, but we were the same height now, with the years that had passed. Now her chin buried in my shoulder, her frame smaller than mine, almost like I was the grown-up. Her hands rubbed up and down my back. And with my face in her hair I smelled her and that scent ignited inside me a deep feeling, wriggling like a fish being reeled up from somewhere down at the base of my spine, a feeling of familiarity that nearly made me cry. I knew this smell, this salty, powdery scent. It was Hub, it was home, it was my childhood, something I’d never even known that I’d lost, but that I’d been missing for so long and now here it was, a part of me again, that space filling in and me feeling . . .

Whole.

“Oh, honey,” she said in my ear, “I can’t believe it’s you. I . . .” I felt her tears on my neck. “I saw you up there and I thought there was no way, it couldn’t be possible that you were here, not to mention that you were”—she pulled back, gazing at me with gleaming eyes—“one of the Three! I—I can’t even imagine.”

I stared at her and I didn’t know what to say. I felt myself vibrating inside, whirring on all frequencies, happy and also confused, relieved but also sort of lost. Again, that untethered feeling, like I was adrift in reality with no firm keel. Finally I found some words. I had no idea what to say first. What came out was “What are you doing here?”

Nina ran her hand down my face. “I’ve been living here. I—I’m sorry I never let you know that. I wanted to, just . . . finding the right way to say it, the right time . . .”

“But . . .” I wondered,
What would have been so hard about just telling me, Hey, Owen, I’m in Desenna?
I didn’t see how that was so difficult at all. But I didn’t say that.

“Owen . . .” I turned to find Victoria watching us carefully, making no attempt to hide her suspicion. “This is your mother?” she asked me, dead serious. And I had a weird thought:
Am I sure this is her?
I glanced at her again, taking this new image of her and trying to match it to the memories I had, but those had been made by a seven-year-old mind. . . . What memories did I even have in there? I searched around. There were glimpses from in our apartment at Hub, one where she was picking me up from school, walking me home through the caverns. The most vivid one was the night of the Three-Year Fire that I’d been reliving lately—

My head swam for a minute. I felt lost in time again, like I didn’t know exactly where in my life I was. Was I here in Desenna? Was I back at Hub as a kid? Everything had already been too much. Now, this was more.

“Owen? Where’d you go, sweetie?” Mom reached to me. She cupped my chin in her hand, pressed her thumb against my cheek and began inscribing a clockwise circle.

And I knew, more than the smell or the sight of her, this touch . . .

“Yeah.” I looked back at Mom, then to Victoria. “This is her. This is my mom.”

“Fascinating,” said Victoria. Mica handed Victoria a small black folder, nodding as he did so. Victoria flipped it open. “Your paperwork all checks out. Seems you’re a fine medic in our infirmary, Nina, and have been for some years, since arriving here from . . .”

“Yellowstone Hub,” said Nina. “Well, by way of a medical caravan and then a Nomad pod.”

“Of course,” said Victoria. “And it says here that you live on Avenida de Rata?”