Unravel (54 page)

“I'm going to let Lin know now,” her father's voice continued. “Her directions were spot on—IPL forces would never have tracked them, or at least nothing like so fast, if she hadn't been able to point out your general location on a map.”

Against the stinging, heavy waves, Elissa opened her eyes. “Lin found me? But I tried—when I was there, at the place they took me—I couldn't reach her.”

“She did, all the same,” her father said. “She knew the instant you were taken. She screamed herself hoarse raising the alarm. Then you lost consciousness, and then you were so far away she couldn't pinpoint your location. But she could say what direction you'd been taken in.” He nodded toward Cadan. “Cadan was in the shuttlebug, ready to join IPL and local forces to make sweeps of the area, when Bruce's SOS came through.”

He turned back to the door. “She'll be glad, I hope, to know your abductors are to face justice, at least.”

Elissa shut her eyes again. How could he, of all people, not understand that it made no difference who was to face whatever he thought of as justice? The words she'd screamed at Bruce flared once more across her brain.
Can they give her back? Can they make the link again?
Aside from that, there wasn't going to be any justice.

She was vaguely aware of her father lingering, hesitating a moment by the door, as if one of them was supposed to say something else. But she didn't speak, and nor did Cadan, and after a minute her father went away.

Shortly afterward the doctor came. He shone a light in her eyes, took a blood test, inspected her head, and told her that a therapist would come to see her later.

A therapist?
Elissa had to bite down on a sudden wave of hysterical laughter. What was a therapist going to do?

Cadan had been sitting away across the room during the doctor's visit, but as the door shut behind the doctor, his eyes met Elissa's.

“It might be helpful,” he said, but he couldn't suppress the wry twist to his voice.

Elissa's laughter broke out. “Oh for God's
sake
,” she managed to say. “
How?
What experience can a therapist possibly have that's going to help with
this
?”

Cadan shrugged. “Yeah, I know.” He looked at her, and his lips twitched. “Lis, if you don't stop laughing I'm going to start, and then it's going to look like I actually find it funny. Which I can assure you I really don't.”

Elissa waved a hand, almost beyond speech. “It's fine. I promise I—” The laughter took her again and she had to stop, wiping her eyes. “I promise I won't get offended. I—” She choked on another burst of laughter. “It's really
not
funny, I know, but—”

The door hushed open, and Elissa's laughter cut off as suddenly as if someone had slapped a hand across her mouth. Her new visitor was Bruce.

Cadan was on his feet the moment Bruce stepped into the room. “I don't think we need you here.”

“I didn't come to see you,” Bruce said, looking straight across the room, not even glancing at Cadan. “I came to see Lissa.”

Although he was looking at her, he wasn't quite meeting her eyes. She paused a moment to see if he would, but he stayed in the same position, waiting for her to speak.

“They didn't put you in prison yet, then,” she said to him.

Bruce swallowed. “They might yet.” He put his hand out, extending his wrist so his sleeve pulled back and she could see the steel band that had replaced his com-unit. “I'm security-shackled. If I so much as go out on the balcony, it'll set off alarms.”

“Whoa,” said Cadan, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “Severe sentence.”

“It's not my sentence.” Bruce still didn't look at him. “It's to make sure I don't escape trial. Lissa . . .”

“What?”
She didn't even try to hold back the hostility in her voice.

Finally, Bruce met her eyes. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I was as stupid as Cadan called me. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

Anger licked through her. If he was going to try to
excuse
himself . . . “You really weren't.”

“I know. Like I said, I was stupid.”

“And what? Is that supposed to fix things?”

“No.” He held her gaze, although it looked like an effort. “I know I can't fix what—what I've done to you.”

“And Lin.”

“And Lin. I'm just . . . God, I'm so sorry, Lissa. They—the group—they approached me a week or so after we arrived on Philomel. They said they wanted to learn from SFI's mistakes, they wanted to restore Sekoia. I did ask some questions, but not enough. I—the thought of doing something,
anything
 . . .”

He looked miserable, every scrap of arrogance—or even confidence—as absent as if it had been beaten out of him. She'd have felt pity if it hadn't been for the image in her mind of how Lin had looked. Lin, who hadn't done anything
to deserve it. Lin, who'd just been trying to learn how to live in a world she didn't understand.

“Was it really for my sake?” she asked him, her voice cold.

For a moment Bruce's eyes dropped, then he forced them back up to hers. “No. I mean, hearing what you said, earlier—that was like the catalyst. But I”—he swallowed—“I was looking for a reason to do it. I . . .” He spread his hands, a helpless gesture. “They said they were going to restore Sekoia. Said they were going to restore our space force.”

“At what freaking cost?” Cadan interjected. “For God's
sake
, Bruce, how SFI powered the hyperdrives isn't a secret anymore. You must have known what they were planning—how they were going to restore it.”

For the first time Bruce looked at him. His shoulders were slumped, a gesture as helpless as the way he'd spread his hands. “I thought of them like clones. The Spares. They
said
they were like clones. That's how people keep talking about them.” He swallowed. “It's . . . God, Lissa, look. We had
lives
on Sekoia, and all of a sudden they're over. Dad's career, mine, everything Ma cared about. We can't even stay on our own planet. And it's because of these . . . these
Spares
, that we didn't even know existed. And then we're being told
we're
not the victims,
they
are. They're getting priority—safe houses, expedited evacuation, freaking
compensation
.”

Anger flamed up once more behind Elissa's eyes. “You think
you're
more of a victim than they are? Because you
lost your career
?”

“Lissa, for God's sake, I'm trying to
explain
. That's not just how Ma and I thought—it's how everyone's been thinking. We had a whole
world
, and then it got taken away from us in order to protect these . . . products of abnormal births,
creatures we didn't even know existed, that people were saying shouldn't have been
allowed
to exist. And then we're being told we're supposed to feel sorry for them, that we
owe
them something. It was like—I mean, yeah, human rights and everything, they're important, we all know that. But this was like human rights gone mad.”

“
Human rights gone mad?
Are you even
listening
to yourself?”

“I'm
explaining
to you, Lissa! We
weren't thinking of them
as human. None of us. We were thinking of them as . . . things . . . creatures . . . that were just kind of human shaped.”

“So you're
not
sorry! You're sorry for what it did to me—your nice clean
all-human
sister. You don't care what it did to Lin!”

“I do care.” His eyes came back to hers.

“
Why?
Why would you, if you think all she is is”—she bit out the words with furious emphasis—“ ‘
kind of human shaped
'?”

“I don't think that anymore. I—Lis, I know she's human. I know.”

“How?”

“She looks like you,” said Bruce, miserable. “When she came to fetch us, with Cadan and the others, when I saw her . . . She looks just like you.”

“Yeah, you keep saying. Like a
clone.
”

“No. I don't mean just . . . just physically. Just her features. I . . .” He swallowed again. “Her eyes. The way she
looked
. It's your expression, Lis. It's the way you looked when you were younger, when someone hurt your feelings, when you wanted to cry but you were determined not to.” His mouth twisted a little. “I'm your mean big
brother, after all—that's the sort of expression I recognize.”

He stopped talking, folding his arms across himself, his shoulders hunching.

Elissa looked at him. What he'd done to her and Lin—it was worse than a betrayal, it was so beyond horrific she didn't know if she'd ever be able to forgive him. But seeing him like this, knowing that he, too, was feeling the impact of what he'd done, knowing that he understood how bad it was . . . She might not be able to forgive him, but at least she no longer hated him.

“Bit late.” There was no forgiveness in Cadan's voice.

“I know,” said Bruce. “Lissa, look, if I could do something to fix it, I would.”

You can't.
She was going to say it, but something caught her back. He couldn't fix what he'd done to her and Lin. But there were hundreds of Spares. There wasn't anything Bruce could do to help her and Lin, but was there anything he could do to help the others?

It was just the germ of an idea in her head. Nothing fully formed, nothing she could say out loud. Not yet. But . . .

Days ago, just after landing on Sekoia, she'd thought:
Calling them clones isn't just semantics! If everyone keeps calling them clones then everyone keeps seeing them as nonhuman . . . It does matter. It matters what you call them.

She'd been right. Like so many people, Bruce had called the Spares “clones.” He'd seen them as nonhuman. He, like so many others, had been willing to use them—despite IPL declaring it illegal, despite being told that the procedures caused pain.

Because he never met any.

It was like tiny lights snapping on, one after another, all
over her brain. Connection after connection being made, things falling into place, thoughts making sense.

IPL did it wrong. They were trying to protect the Spares, but by keeping them away from ordinary citizens, they made them even more alien than they would have been. Those people on the rescue flyer, back on Sekoia—they were scared of Lin, and angry that she was allowed to talk to them like a normal person. But if they'd gotten a chance to know her . . . Like I have, and Cadan, and Felicia and Ivan, and like how Cadan's parents got to know the Spares at the safe house, and how Sofia and Ady got to know their twins, even though there was no link to help them . . .

And now Bruce. Bruce had changed his mind. Not because of big ethical considerations, like those that Markus or Commander Dacre had. And not even because he'd had a chance to get to know Lin. Just because he'd looked at her and seen, in her face, emotions—human emotions—that he recognized.

If other people could do the same, those other people who still see Spares as nothing more than full-body clones . . .

Her mind returned to the people on the rescue flyer.
I couldn't persuade them to see her differently. But then I couldn't persuade Bruce, either—he saw me as too close, too influenced by her. But if they'd been able to talk to someone like them, someone who'd thought the same thing as they had but who had changed his mind . . .

“Lissa?” said Cadan. “What is it?”

She looked up, frowning. What good would it do, even if Bruce could persuade people? How was he ever going to talk to all the people who needed persuading? Then, as the bleakness descended over her once more:
What do I even care? It's too late for me and Lin. Let the other twins worry about their Spares. Let them find solutions. I'm done with trying to save everybody.

“Lissa?”

Oh but
hell
, that wasn't okay. It was exactly what she'd told Lin wasn't okay.
If you're human, you have to care about other humans.
It wasn't about whether it was fun, or fair, or whether it hurt you so much you thought you were going to die of it. It was just that you
had
to.

She opened her mouth, ready to try to explain an idea that wasn't even a proper idea yet, that she wasn't even sure was
possible
, and that Bruce might refuse to be involved with even if it
was
possible—

Then the door sprang open, and Elissa's mother rushed in, shrieking.

“That monster!” she was screaming. “That monster hurt your father!”

Lin,
was Elissa's first thought. And then,
Dad? Dad's hurt?

Bruce had swung around as his mother entered. “What happened? Ma, what's going on?”

Mrs. Ivory threw a distraught, furious look at Elissa. “That Spare—that Spare everyone keeps treating as if it matters more than anyone else—it attacked Edward! It attacked
your father
!”

Elissa was on her feet, cold with horror.
I'm the trigger. If I'm not there, she's supposed to stay safe, she's not supposed to go psycho. If she's hurt him, what will it do to her?

At least her mother had said
hurt
, not
killed
. Then, a weird undercurrent of thought:
The link has gone, but still, a crisis happens and I'm not terrified for my dad, who I've lived with my whole life, but for Lin. The link wasn't all we had. I should have told her that—