[English] ICONS (Biểu Tượng)

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What does a stupid book matter now?

It is time to decide, and in that moment, I do. I grab his arm, yanking down as hard as I can. “I’m nobody, and I was never here. I never existed. Ro and me, both.”

He levels his eyes at me, gleaming blue behind his dirty face.

Like the sea. Like mine.

He nods at me, but I make him say the words. I want to be certain. “Take the book. It’s enough. Do we have a deal?”

“Not just a deal—a promise.” He tucks my book inside his jacket, and the story of me disappears among the handguns and homemade explosives. “Your secret’s safe with me, love. So is your book. Now get down.”

Before I can say another word, Fortis lifts the dynamite and lights the fuse.

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

To: Ambassador Amare

Subject: Icon Origins

Text Scan: NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL

PLANET KILLER COMING OUR WAY?

December 29, 2042 • Cambridge, Massachusetts

Scientists at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge announced today the discovery of a very large asteroid that is projected to pass dangerously close to Earth.

The asteroid, designated 2042 IC4, or Perses, has a targeted impact/arrival date of 2070–2090.

Scientists approximate the size of the asteroid at as large as 4 miles in diameter, which officials claim is large enough to create an extinction event.

Paulo Fortissimo, special scientific advisor to the president, says we shouldn’t panic: “I need to review the data, but the size and speed of the asteroid are merely an estimate, and the odds of this thing hitting Earth are still relatively low. Nevertheless, rest assured, we will keep a close eye on it.”

5

DIVERSIONS

The blast does more than blow open the door.

The blast has rocked the Tracks so hard, the car seems to have gone off the rails. My ears are ringing. The floor is no longer beneath me but next to me. The roof is gone, and through the jagged hole that remains, I can see the open air.

I pick myself up from the tangle of Fortis and wall and floor, the debris of what used to be the prison car, and take off running through the opening.

“Thank you, Fortis,” Fortis calls after me. “You’re welcome, little Grassgirl. Anytime.”

I run faster, along the smoking cars. I can tell from the footsteps that there are Sympas behind me. Probably half a dozen more around the cars. I didn’t feel them coming. I have to pay better attention.

But thanks to the Merk, I have a head start. I have to get to the water. That’s all that goes through my head. I know I’ll be safe there because I know what I’ll find—and who. I turn, more sharply now, disappearing into the tall weeds on the west. My feet catch on the rocks beneath me, but I stumble forward. I know the Sympas are close behind me, and I don’t look back.

I keep running, moving in the exact direction where I can feel the bonfire ahead of me—racing toward the shore, just like me. My one sure trajectory, my best chance for survival.

Ro.

His hand grabs my ankle and I drop. I feel his arm slide around my waist, snapping me down to the tide. I fall toward him, and I find myself lying in the sand and shallow water, hidden from the Tracks just beneath a grassy rise of shoreline. Some kind of coastal ****.

I feel us both still panting; Ro’s only gotten here seconds ago, himself. Then I hear a shout and a splash, and a Sympa soldier falls over the rise after me. I roll out of the way, knee-deep into the water.

I know what will happen now. Someone will die, and it’s not Ro. In a small arena, it doesn’t matter that the Sympa is armed and Ro is not. Ro will crucify him.

Before I can even think the words, Ro has the fallen Sympa’s gun in his hands, slamming the butt of the weapon into the soldier’s face. Blood sprays the rocks and runs into the water. Ro raises his hand to strike again, but I move my hands over his, forcing him to look at me.

“Ro.”

He shakes his head, but I won’t let go, and we cling to the gun together. I can’t let Ro do this to himself.

“Don’t,” I say.

I look at the unconscious Sympa’s face, just above the water’s edge, covered with blood. His nose is probably broken. He seems young and almost handsome, with hair the color of sunshine—though it’s hard to tell what he normally looks like, since he’s already starting to bruise. But I look away, because he’s too distracting—I have to close off the welling of sadness inside of me. I have people of my own to mourn. A pig and a Padre and a family I never got to know. I toss the weapon into the water and hold out my arms.

Ro falls into me, folds into me, as if I am his home.

I am.

He doesn’t let go. His face is red, and neither one of us can slow our breathing. Instead we pant like two tired Mission dogs chased by coyotes. The cold, fluttering animal in my chest and the warm, rabid creature in his push up against each other, and for the moment we are not alone.

I bury my face in his neck, wrapping my arms around the twisted muscles that move beneath the skin of his chest and arms. He smells like dirt, even now. I can practically taste the mud. When Ro smiles—which is only when I’m around, and even then only when all the stars in the night sky align—I half expect to see dirt between his teeth.

He’s Grass, through and through. He’d break his share of hearts in another world. I don’t doubt that. I lace my fingers through his hair and ground myself in him. I listen to his breathing and know he’s trying to do the same. It isn’t so easy for Ro, to slow himself back down.

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I hear another blast, followed by the sound of people running toward the train.

Fortis.

A second explosion. The Merk is as good as his word.

Ro carefully looks toward the train to make sure no other Sympas followed us here. He nods, indicating we are safe for the moment. We don’t speak until the shouting has grown distant and the Sympas are quiet.

“It’s safer to hide for now. We’ll have to wait them out. Dol…” The way Ro says my name, I know he knows about the Padre and Ramona Jamona. I know he was afraid it would be me. I hear it in his voice. “Doloria,” he whispers.

He’s no different than I am with my incantations, reciting the settlers of La Purísima.

He needs me. I give him my hand. My right hand.

He fumbles at my wrist, yanking the cloth that binds it. He unwinds the muslin strip that wraps my bony arm so tightly I forget it is not made of skin.

Now my wrist is naked, and he pulls up his own worn sleeve.

We lace our fingers together, and he slides his bare wrist down to meet mine. I let the shiver roll down my body, down from my arm to where my feet dig into the sand.

One gray dot on my wrist, the color of the ocean in the rain.

Two red dots on his wrist, the color of fire.

The shared mark of our shared destinies, though we don’t know what they are. If my name is Sorrow, his name is Rage. And whatever I am, whatever Ro is, is a secret. One that could kill us both without our ever knowing why.

One that probably killed the Padre.

I wish I’d read the Padre’s book before I traded it for my freedom. Ro would have.

My gray presses against his red.

We live in a world of only two people now. Bound by the markings on our hands and our hearts.

He winds the cloth around our clasped hands, pushing his body against mine, and I feel the sharp knuckles of our ribs as they fit together. We are the mirror image of each other.

Sorrow for rage. Pain for anger. Tears for fury.

I become Ro and Ro becomes me. He takes my great sadness, the frightened thing that lives inside me. He’ll do anything to keep it away from me. And I take the red rage. I am a deluge; the red spark that is Ro is twenty feet under my surface.

I can’t keep it down for long.

The Padre said Ro is too much for one person, that if I keep doing this—if I keep letting him do this—I may not be able to come back. Yet I let his pain take me to the edge of madness.

The Padre.

I open my eyes and find, in the arms of my best friend, it is safe enough to cry.

The tears push out from my eyes and run down my face. I have no power to stop them.

Ro grabs my hand, willing me to let them fall.

When it is over, and we have pushed aside the feelings for another day, Ro helps me bind my wrist. His skin is no longer burning, and he pulls down his sleeve carelessly. Ro is not so afraid of his marking as I am. He’s not even afraid of the whole Sympa patrol I know are only a stretch of field away—no matter how long we wait.

“You should be more careful. Someone could see,” I say.

“Yeah? So what?”

“They’ll take you away like they tried to take me. Lock you up in the Hole, somewhere. Use you. Hurt you.” I try not to remind him what that would mean for me, how afraid I am.

“So instead we hide, our whole lives? Like this? Until we die?” His voice is bitter.

“Maybe not forever. What if the Padre’s right and we are special, more powerful than we know? What if that’s why the Sympas came for me?” These aren’t words I’ve ever said, but I’m desperate. I need to keep him calm, before he gets himself killed. “We can’t pretend the Mission is safe anymore, Ro. If there’s even a Mission to go back to.” I swallow.

“But why hide, if we’re so special? What if we’re supposed to be doing something? What if we’re the only ones who can?” He runs his hands through his hair, unable to keep still.

This is all he wants. To save the world and everyone in it.

Right now, I just want to save the only family I have. Whether or not he wants me to.

I try again. “The Padre said who we are can be used against us, if we’re not careful. We might make everything worse.”

Ro has lost his patience with me. We are both spinning perilously close to the edge of our tempers. “Yeah, Dol? The Padre also said the truth would set us free. He told us to turn the other cheek. He said to love our neighbors. And now he’s dead.”

I move away from him, but he grabs my arm.

“I loved the Padre, Dol, same as you.”

“I know that.”

“But he was from another time. What he said, what he believed, that was a fantasy. He said those things because he didn’t want us to give up. But he didn’t want to fight, either.”

“Ro. Don’t start.”

He softens. “I’m not going to leave you behind, Dol. A promise is a promise.”

He remembers; we both do.

Dot to dot, we swore. Down at the beach, after the first time Ro ran away. When I was the only one who could talk him into coming back.

That was the first time we learned that binding our hands would bind our hearts. That whatever it was that made Ro’s heart pound was the same thing that made mine break. When I felt myself willing the sand up over us, in my mind, smothering the flames inside him, he calmed down; we both did. When we touched—just so—dot to dot—the ache turned in on itself.

The fire burned out.

We lay together there, hand to hand, until he was sleeping. That’s when I knew I wouldn’t make it without Ro. And Ro wouldn’t last a day without me.

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He can’t stop the fires alone. He doesn’t care. It’s the hardest thing I know about him.

He’d rather let them burn.

I’m still lost in thought when I hear the Choppers overhead. We both know what it means, but I’m the one who finally says it.

“Embassy Choppers. We have to move.”

“Give me a minute.” Shaking in his wet clothes, Ro’s not quite himself yet. I’ve never seen him this rattled.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I thought you were dead, Dol.”

I reach my hand up to his thick brown hair. I pull out a twig, caught behind his ear. I don’t say what I am thinking, that I should be dead, that I am supposed to be dead. A pig is dead and a Padre is dead, I think. Why should luck escape them to find me?

Because they were never going to kill me. Because they were coming for me.

I wonder.

I wonder if the Padre and the pig are the lucky ones. Then I push the thought away and reach for Ro. “I’m not dead. I’m right here.” I try to smile at him, but I can’t. The Chopper is all I can hear, just as the bloody soldier at my feet is all I can see.

“Then I thought I was dead.” He swallows a laugh, but the way it bubbles up from his chest, it’s almost a sob.

“You nearly were. You can’t just jack a train car and attack the Tracks like that. I don’t know what you were thinking.” I twist his ear, like I would Ramona Jamona. Only hers are soft, like cloth. His are practically caked with mud.

“I was thinking I was saving your life.” He doesn’t look up.

I sigh and draw my arm around him. “I wish you wouldn’t. Not when it almost kills you. And anyway, someone’s going to have to save both our lives if we don’t get out of here before that thing lands.” I try to push him off, but he pulls me closer, tightening his arm around my waist.

“You wish I wouldn’t. But you know I will.”

“I know, I know.” I smile, softening in spite of everything. The ****, the unconscious Sympa, the sound of the Choppers. “We’re all we’ve got.”

It’s true.

We’re practically family—the closest thing we have to it, anyway.

But as I say the words, I realize Ro isn’t looking at my eyes.

He’s looking at my mouth.

The spark that is Ro becomes a firestorm. I can feel my palms beginning to burn, my eyes widening. I know what he is feeling and I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that I can know someone so well and not have known this. “Ro,” I start, but I don’t go on. I don’t know what I would say.

That I love him more than I love my own life? It’s true. That we’ve swum half-naked in the ocean without bothering to even look at each other? Also true. That we’ve slept a hundred cold nights together on the tiled floor of Bigger’s Mission kitchen hearth, just the two of us—alongside a bony litter of tired dogs and sheep? That I could no more kiss him than I could one of Biggest’s pigs?

Is that also true?

I close my eyes and try to imagine kissing Ro. I imagine his lips on mine. His lips, the same ones that have spit pomegranate seeds straight into my mouth.

They’re soft, I find myself remembering.

They’d be soft, I find myself thinking. At least, softer than his ears.

I am afraid to open my eyes. I feel his hands on my waist, as if we are dancing. I feel him slowly pulling me toward him.

I let myself be pulled.

Almost.

Then I hear someone moaning, and I remember we aren’t alone.

The Sympa soldier is waking up.

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

To: Ambassador Amare

Subject: Rebellion Recruitment and Indoctrination Materials

Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

According to our intelligence, Rebellion recruits are made to memorize and recite the following verse, morning and night:

6

FOUR DOTS

I open my eyes. “Ro,” I hiss. But he’s let go of me before I can say it, and is grabbing the gun out of the water. The reality of where we are comes flooding back. The sandy rocks beneath us seem that much sharper, the shallow rush of empty tides that much colder. Our watery ****—just a small indentation in the grassy shoreline—offers no protection at all.

Not against the Embassies and their armies.

Not for long.

The Sympa’s eyes flutter open.

Beneath soggy strands of wet hair, they are the same color as the hills behind the Mission—green and gray—but also flecked with gold. Hope and sadness. That’s how he looks to me. Like a rare coin half buried in the ocean floor. A bit of warm metal that somehow catches the light, even from so far below the surface of the waves.

I’m staring. I can’t help it. My heart is pounding. I reach toward his face, marveling. His features are the opposite of Ro’s; where Ro is thick brushstrokes and harsh lines, everything about this boy is precise and fine. He’s muscled and compact, where Ro is strong and broad. His bones fit together like someone hammered them out of precious metals, blew them out of glass.

“Hey—” Ro shouts. He raises the gun high over his head, ready to strike. I pull my eyes away from the Sympa, my hand away from his face.

“Stop it. You don’t have to. He’s hurt enough.”

Ro lowers the gun. Then I realize he isn’t listening to me. He’s aiming.

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“Please,” says the Sympa, though half his head is underwater, and his mouth bubbles, choking when he speaks. “Don’t kill me. I can help.”

“Why would you help? You’re the one hunting us.”

The Sympa has no answer for that.

I splash closer to him in the water, careful to stay between him and Ro’s gun.

“Dol, come on. Get out of the way and let me do this. He’s playing us. It’s a trick.”

“How do you know?”

He looks from me to the Sympa. “Can you get anything off him? Feel him out?”

I lean closer to the Sympa, picking up his cold hand from the water.

I close my eyes and try to feel what he is feeling.

For the first time, I feel something equal to Ro’s spark—equally strong.

I feel both of them, and it’s not hard to sort out the emotions.

Hatred and anger, from Ro.

Fear and confusion, from the boy.

And another thing.

Something I encounter very rarely.

It bubbles up and out, radiating from him, filling the ****. I can practically see it.

I recognize it for what it is, only because I have felt it for Ro, and felt it in Ro. Ro and the Padre. Sometimes in Bigger and Biggest.

Love.

My head is pounding. I drop the boy’s hand, pushing my palms against my temples, as hard as I can. I force myself to breathe until I can get the feelings back under control, just barely. Until the bright whiteness recedes.

Then I open my eyes, gasping.

“Ro—” I can barely speak.

“What is it? What did you get?” Ro moves next to me, but his eyes don’t leave the Sympa.

I don’t know what to tell him. I’ve never felt anything quite like this, and I don’t know how to put it into words, not in a way Ro will understand.

Not in a way he wants to hear.

I look more closely at the Sympa. I pull a button from his jacket, yanking it free of the threads that have bound it there. It’s stamped in brass with a logo even a Grass could recognize. A five-sided shape, a pentagon, surrounding Earth. Gold on a field of scarlet. Earth trapped by what looks like a birdcage.

The button changes everything.

“He’s not a Sympa.” A sick feeling roils my stomach—and even though I’m speaking to Ro, I can’t rip my eyes away from the button in my hand.

“What are you talking about? Of course he’s a Sympa. Look at him.” Ro sounds annoyed.

“He’s not just a Sympa. He’s from the Ambassador’s office.”

“What?”

I nod, twisting the button between my fingers. Shiny as a gold dig, and worth more than everything I own. The closest we’ve ever come to seeing Ambassador Amare is her face plastered on the side of a car rolling down the Tracks.

Until we met this boy.

The wounded Sympa opens and closes his eyes. They roll back in his head. He’s too beat up to speak, but I think he knows what we are saying.

Ro sits on his heels in the water next to me. He draws his short blade from his belt, the one he only uses to pelt rabbits and split melons at the Mission.

He wavers, looking at me. I kneel next to the boy—because that’s what he is. He may be a Sympa, but he’s also just a boy. Not much older than Ro and me, by the looks of it.

“So this thing—this thing matters to the Ambassador?” He holds the knife to the Sympa’s chin. The Sympa’s eyes open, now wide. “That’s funny, because anything that matters to the Ambassador is pretty much worthless garbage as far as we’re concerned.”

He traces a line along the Sympa’s throat.

“Right, Dol?”

I swallow and say nothing. I am finding it hard to breathe. I don’t know what I think.

Ro doesn’t have that problem. Ever.

He raises the blade and brings it slashing down, again and again.

I can’t look, until Ro turns to me, holding out the proof of his latest violence. A handful of brass Embassy buttons.

“What?”

“Evidence of what we’ve got. Now we decide. Do we kill him here, or take him back to La Purísima?” Ro isn’t talking about the Mission. He’s talking about the Grass rebels.

Spluttering, the boy tries to sit up out of the water. I pull his head forward and lean it against my knees.

“How could we get him back up the Tracks? Did you see how many Sympas were out there? It would be impossible to hop a car without them seeing us. If the Tracks are even running.”

Ro thinks, tracing his blade against his leg. “Yeah, and if you’re right about Brass Buttons here, it’s only going to get worse.”

“Grass and Brass. It’s not a good mix.” I try not to think about what will happen to the boy when we get back to the Mission. If we get back to the Mission. What Ro will do to him. What I will let Ro do to him.

I shake my head, pulling the boy closer up into my lap in the water. “No.”

“Get away from him, Dol.”

“Don’t.”

“Now.”

His voice is cracking. I can see the changing situation is overwhelming him. He loses control as we lose control.

Which we have.

We did when I saw that button.

“Please.” I’m talking to Ro, but I look at the boy.

His eyes fix on mine, just for a moment.

He moves his hand toward me, a desperate gesture, like a raccoon caught in one of Biggest’s traps, flopping against the metal door one last time before it surrenders.

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I start, and Ro shoves the weapon closer.

A dot of red light—the targeting mechanism of the boy’s own Sympa gun—dances at the bridge of his nose.

The boy doesn’t react.

Maybe he doesn’t think that Ro will do it.

I know he will. He’s done it before. Sympas are a personal threat to his existence. And mine.

The hand stretches again, nearer to me. “I’m warning you. Don’t move.” Ro growls the words, and as usual, it’s his tone that tells you everything.

The boy’s fingers uncurl, slowly, touching my knees in the water.

“Sweet Blessed Lady.” It’s all I can think to say.

There, beneath the half-undone leather wrist cuff, beneath the ripped sleeve of a muddy Embassy military jacket, beneath the bloodstained uniform shirt soaked with ocean water—

Four blue dots, forming a perfect square.

In that second, the world of two people, of Ro and me, shatters into a world of three.

Now I understand what I was feeling.

Now I understand who this boy is. Or more to the point, what he is.

He’s an Icon Child, like Ro and me.

There are more of us.

My heart is pounding. I knew there were stories—rumors of other Icon Children—but I never really believed there could be more than me and Ro.

Had the Padre known?

If I had only read the book when I had the chance.

“What is it?”

Ro hasn’t seen.

My mind races.

He showed me his markings.

Why?

Had he seen mine, here in the water?

Could he have been conscious when Ro and I bound hands?

No.

I had been there when Ro smashed him in the face with his own weapon, knocking him out.

I was there when he fell.

I saw his eyes roll back in his head before anything happened.

No. He showed me because he knew about me. He knows about us. He knows.

“What’s wrong?” Ro tightens his grip on the gun.

“They’ve come for us, Ro.”

“Of course they have. What do you think that was all about back there, on the train? They send out their fat, lazy Sympas to drag us into their stupid Projects, just like the other Remnants. I told the Padre we needed to arm ourselves, we needed better defenses. He wouldn’t listen.”

I shake my head and try again. “They’ve found us, Ro.”

I hold up the boy’s wrist, and I unwrap mine.

The resemblance is undeniable. The distance of the dot from the palm, the size of the mark. Next to each other, we are perfect matches.

Just like Ro and me.

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

To: Ambassador Amare

From: Dr. Huxley-Clarke

Subject: Icon Children Mythology

Subtopic: Rager

Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

The following is a reprint of a recovered page, thick, homemade paper, thought to be torn from an anti-Embassy propaganda tract titled Icon Children Exist! Most likely hand-published by a fanatical cult or Grass Rebellion faction.

Text-scan translation follows.

7

A DECISION

“Four dots. You know what this means? There are more, Ro. More than us.” I look at Ro.

Ro studies the boy in my arms. He doesn’t put down his blade. He doesn’t put down the Sympa gun. He grips each more tightly.

I feel a red-hot blaze of pure hatred that I have never felt before. Not from Ro, anyway.

“Three,” Ro finally says.

He points to me. “One.” Himself. “Two.” The boy. “Four. What about Three? What did they do to him?”

The boy says nothing. The boy only looks. He moves his head restlessly, and a moment later I hear why.

Embassy Choppers overhead, closer than before. The blades flap, low and loud. They want to make sure we know they’re coming. In force.

“Damn. Damn. Damn,” Ro mutters, wiping his sleeve against his face. “We need more time.”

I look down at the wounded boy and feel his rising panic. “We have to get him out of here.”

Ro’s voice is cold and hard. “Why?”

“Ro.”

“He’s one of them.”

“Look at his wrist, Ro. He couldn’t be one of them, not even if he wanted to be.”

“Why not?” He looks as stubborn as the rock he wants to throw at me right now.

“Because he’s one of us.”

Before Ro can respond, the boy struggles to get to his feet. I push him up from behind, but I can barely pull myself up along with him; he’s all but deadweight.

“Give me my gun,” he croaks. “Now.”

Ro laughs. “I must have hit you harder than I thought. You’re talking nonsense.”

“Give me back my gun. It’s your only chance *****rvive.”

“Really? What are you threatening me with? The gun you don’t have?”

“I’m trying to save you. They see you with my gun and you’ll die. Both of you.” He doesn’t look back at me. I slide my arms down, letting go of him. Now, just barely, he is standing—swaying—on his own.

“What’s your name, Buttons?” Ro smiles, without a trace of friendliness.

The boy hesitates.

I let my arm fall on his shoulder. “It’s all right. We know you’re from the Embassy. Just tell us who you are.”

“My name is Lucas Amare.”

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I bite my lip so as not to gasp aloud.

Ro bursts out laughing. “Oh, very good. That’s excellent. You’re human contraband like us, and your own mother is the Ambassador?” He grins at me as if we are sharing a really exceptional joke. You know, have you heard the one about the three Icon Children and the Ambassador?

He says it again, shaking his head. “Lucas Amare is an Icon Child? And you thought we had secrets to keep, Dol.”

All I can do is stare.

Ro’s right. We aren’t contraband, not exactly, but it feels that way. Whatever we are is something the Padre went to great lengths to conceal, not just from the Embassy but from everyone, even from Bigger and Biggest. And now we find this Sympa, who’s also an Icon Child, living right in the Embassy itself?

It makes no sense at all.

I understand what Ro is thinking. There is no way the son of the Ambassador, the devil herself—the Hole’s only earthly link to the General Ambassador to the Planet, GAP Miyazawa, and beyond him, the House of Lords—can have anything in common with the two of us. No matter how many markings we share.

And with that, the world is back the way Ro likes it to be. A world of two.

“It’s not a secret. Not from my mother. She knows I’m here.” He sounds defensive.

“Here, in this miserable water ****? Or here, out poaching innocent Grass children?” Ro is almost laughing. He can’t believe our good luck, that we stumbled upon something so valuable.

Someone.

“I found out you were being brought in, both of you. I wanted to—I wanted to help.”

“Help us? Or help them?”

The boy lowers his eyes.

Ro smirks. “I see.”

The Choppers are growing louder. It sounds like they’re landing right on top of us. I inch my head out from under the lip of the bluff, and I can see the edge of the blades, maybe fifty feet up.

“That took too long. The Choppers.” The Sympa boy—Lucas—says what I am thinking. “They’ve gone back for reinforcements.”

“Good. They’ll need them,” Ro says darkly.

I step between them, placing both hands on the muzzle of the gun.

“Move, Dol.” Ro shakes the gun, exasperated.

“I can’t. Lucas is right.”

“You’re listening to Buttons now?”

“His name isn’t Buttons, and I trust him. I can feel him, Ro. You told me to.”

Ro’s mouth tightens into a scowl. He doesn’t like the idea of me poking around in Lucas Amare’s mind, that much is clear. I ignore him.

I try again. “You have to believe me. We can trust him.”

“You don’t know anything, Dol. We don’t know how he works, what he can do. Maybe those marks are fake. Maybe he’s controlling you with some kind of Embassy endorphins—they have every scientist in the Hole working on one Classified weapon or another.”

“Your new Grass Rebellion friends tell you that?” He’s angry, but now I’m angry too.

“Maybe. But either way, he’s been sent here to bring us in—he already admitted that much himself.”

The Embassy Choppers are so loud now, he has to shout. Even then, I can barely hear him. I pull on the gun with both hands.

“Let go, Ro.”

“Don’t, Doloria de la Cruz. Please.”

“Let go, Furo Costas. Please.”

I’m begging you. That’s what his eyes say, even if he’s too proud to ever use the words himself. I’m begging him too, with every tug on the gun barrel.

Lucas watches us. “I give you my word. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Shut up, Buttons.” Ro is panicking, which is dangerous.

I put my other hand on his wrist. “We can do this. We have to. We don’t have a choice.”

Now I see the ropes falling into the water, all around us. Sympas are about to drop from the sky, along with the rain.

Then I say the words Ro doesn’t want to hear most of all. “We have to trust him. We have nowhere else to go.”

“Give me the gun, Ro.” Lucas is shouting now. He holds out his hands. I feel Lucas reaching toward Ro. I feel the warmth unfolding, the rush of his influence.

Lucas is intoxicating.

Ro’s fingers flex on the grip. Dazed, he takes a step backward, trying to brace himself. But I already know it’s no use.

Ro lets go. I stumble from the weight of the gun, almost knocking Lucas over. I press the gun into his hands and step away, just as the **** fills with Sympas.

Armed and masked.

Now the tracking dots are on our foreheads, dancing between our eyes.

“Took you long enough. Bring them in, boys. I’m beat. Stubborn Grass. Had to hold them here all afternoon.” Lucas lurches out from the rocks, splashing through the water. He stops, steadying himself. “One thing. I don’t want anybody talking to them without my permission.” He shoots Ro a meaningful look. You don’t have to read minds to know what he’s saying. Shut the hell up.

Then it’s my turn.

“And careful with the girl. She needs medical attention. They both do. Send them straight up to Doc when we land.”

Lucas speaks with authority, more than his years, more than he has. The Sympas salute as he passes. Only I know he barely has the strength to hold his gun.

“Mr. Amare.” An angry-looking man in a heavily decorated military coat stands next to Lucas.

I recognize the wings on his jacket, and the bile rises in my throat.

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He was there, in the chapel. He is one of the Sympas who killed the Padre. Their leader.

I swallow. I try to get my breath, but it feels like there isn’t enough oxygen in the air.

I watch him speak. The words are civil but the tone is not. Lucas reddens, and I realize the words were meant to remind him he is not a Sympa soldier at all. He only wants to be.

Lucas nods. “Colonel.”

The man’s eyes move over him, taking in the blood on Lucas’s face. The wet clothes. The swaying weakness in his body, how he’s not standing quite right.

The Colonel’s head is completely bald, and a jagged scar interrupts the sheen of his skin. As if someone has taken a knife and sliced halfway around the top of his head, as if he were a jack-o’-lantern.

His coat has a strange collar, like a priest’s. I see in a glance that he has nothing to do with any church, on any planet.

He doesn’t acknowledge us, though I know he feels me staring at him. I tentatively reach out for him in my mind, but I feel a shock of cold, like I have been repelled by freezing water.

He fingers the buttonless edge of Lucas’s jacket. Lucas says nothing. Then, slowly, the Colonel raises his eyes to me. They are the color of dirty ice.

I shiver and stop trying to see behind them.

Lucas and the Jack-o’-Lantern Man turn back to the waiting command Chopper, sleek and silver and emblazoned with letters and numbers that somehow spell out wealth and importance. The Chopper is deceptively small for something worth more than a year of wages for everyone in the Hole combined.

As they climb in, I notice a slender girl standing next to the Chopper. She wears the same uniformed coat as Lucas, but her hair is silver and severe, with a slash of bangs cropped against her forehead. It’s possible that I wouldn’t have seen her at all in the crowd of Sympas that surround the Chopper.

I do, though, not because of how she looks, which is striking enough, but because of the way her eyes track Lucas.

Like a predator locked on her prey. A king snake, maybe, or a rattler.

I close my eyes. I can’t sense my way through to her, not in the chaos and the noise of the scene.

In a second the opportunity is gone. The girl falls into step behind Lucas and the Colonel, and they rise into the clouds with a few flashing twists of blades, without so much as a look goodbye.

I glance over at Ro, next to me, as they cuff him. He resists, but a Sympa guard kicks the back of his legs, and he falls awkwardly to the ground. Another Sympa yanks him up with a threatening scowl. “You want a fight, boy?” The others laugh. Ro is seething, looking at me accusingly. I hold his eyes, pleading. He turns and shakes his head, climbing onto the transport. He is miserable, his eyes dark and wet. I try to remember if this is the first time I have ever seen him cry.

I think it is.

I hope I’m not wrong to trust Lucas and let them take us. I hope Ro’s not right.

Out here in the rain, as I board the transport, I can’t feel anything but scared.

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

To: Ambassador Amare

From: Dr. Huxley-Clarke

Subject: Icon Children Mythology

Subtopic: Lover

Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

The following is a reprint of a recovered page, thick, homemade paper, thought to be torn from an anti-Embassy propaganda tract titled Icon Children Exist! Most likely hand-published by a fanatical cult or Grass Rebellion faction.

Text-scan translation follows.

8

DOC

“Dol, wake up. You drifted off.” I turn to see Lucas, his face framed by the water, rough on every side.

“Where’s Ro?” I turn to look for him, but all I can see is Lucas. His eyes, and broad swaths of sand and sea.

“He’s fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” He pushes up his sleeve and holds out his naked wrist. “I want you to feel better, Dol.” Four dots. Four blue dots.

The blood is gone now. So is his shirt.

Lucas puts his hands inside the bottom of my sweater, tugging at it. He looks at me, questioningly, before gently pulling it over my head. I shiver.

Lucas doesn’t seem to notice. He takes my cold, bare arm in his hands. Unties my binding and pulls it loose, letting it hang halfway off my arm, undone. Where his hand runs over my skin, I have goose bumps.

“Say something.” Now Lucas slips his fingers through mine. “I’ve been waiting for you, all this time. I know you feel it too.”

He begins to wrap the cloth around our arms. As he works the cloth, our elbows touch, then our forearms. Our wrists. He laces our fingers together, more tightly. His fingers dig into the back of my hand, inching closer…

Until I ball up my hand. Because I can’t let him do it.

There are only millimeters of air between our markings but it might as well be miles.

I can’t let go. I can’t do it to my best friend, the only person I have ever let feel how it is to be me.

And now it isn’t Lucas who is holding my hand, but Ro. And we’re back underneath the bluff again, in the ****. I can hear the waves, all around us.

Ro leans closer to me, looking at my mouth, and suddenly all I can taste is pomegranate—

I wake up staring at pomegranate seeds.

No.

They’re not pomegranate seeds. They’re ceiling tiles, with hundreds of tiny dots on them. And the waves aren’t waves. They don’t crash, they only hum. Evenly and endlessly.

Machines. It’s machine noise.

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I close and open my eyes again. I don’t know where I am, at first. I know I’m not wearing my clothes. The white cloth robe is thick and plush, and I think I am still dreaming. I want to sleep again, but I can’t. I am caught somewhere in between. My eyes are heavy-lidded and my body slow and thick.

I am so tired. A wave of nausea washes over me and my head pounds. Then I close my eyes and force myself to remember.

The Padre. The Tracks. The Merk. Ro. Lucas.

I open my eyes, blushing, remembering my dream. Remembering the feel of his fingers on my skin, the way his dirty gold hair hung in his eyes. Then I remember the rest, the part that isn’t a dream.

The Embassy Chopper. Santa Catalina Island. The Embassy.

The realization of where I am makes me sit up in my cot. Because I’m not at the Mission; I’m at the Embassy on Santa Catalina Island. Hours away from anywhere I’ve ever been before, and the heart of the Occupation, as far as the Hole is concerned. The Hole and everyone in and around it. I might as well have spent the night in the House of Lords itself.

I try to remember the details. In my mind, I trace my way from the Chopper to the room. The foggy ride to the island, holding back the urge to vomit from the turbulence. Santa Catalina coming into view through the low mist that hangs over the water. The Embassy walls rising up from the rocks, the windows rising higher above them.

What came after the rocks and the walls?

The docks, swarming with uniformed Sympas? The building-sized poster of the Ambassador in her crimson military jacket, the one she wears in all the pictures?

The doctors. They must have shot me up with something, because that’s where the memories fade.

Ro’s gone. That’s the last thing I remember. Ro’s hand being twisted out of mine. I can’t feel him anywhere. They must have taken him away, to a different prison cell, or a different hospital room.

I look at my hands. Some sort of restraints—cuffs, I think—have left deep, red grooves, but I’m not cuffed now. And my binding—I’m not wearing it. I try not to panic, but I feel naked without it.

As I lie back against the soft pillow, I am almost certain this is not a prison. At least, not officially. The room is plain, military looking. A large gray rectangle. Rows of tall windows line one wall, with stripes of horizontal shades that keep me from seeing what is outside. Gray and white, gray and white. There don’t seem to be any other colors here—except for the beeping, flashing lights on the walls. Beyond that, there are places for many more cots—I count at least three, judging by the marks on the walls. But there is only one cot in the room, and I am in it.

Finally, I see my clothes are neatly folded in a pile on a chair. More of a relief, my worn leather chestpack sits next to it on the floor. It’s unsettling to see it lying there, exposed, instead of hidden beneath my clothes as it normally is. The small pile is everything that belongs to me in the world.

Almost.

Someone has taken them off me. Someone has wrapped me in this robe. Someone has also tagged me like a troublemaking coyote: a wire clamps down on the tip of my middle finger. I wiggle it; the wire connects to a small machine that beeps pleasantly. Screens light up on the walls, all around me, like beating hearts encased in plastic skins. It only takes me a second to realize that these particular flashing lights—the white ones—correspond with the movements of my own wired finger.

The Embassy knows when I move so much as a finger.

I think of the string of lights that Ro got me for my birthday. How afraid the Padre was that we’d be seen.

How right he was to fear them.

I wag my fingers again, but when the wall lights up, I see something more troubling. Beneath the wire tag, my right wrist is covered with a bandage.

As I examine my arm, the machine hum grows louder—

“The Medics did not touch your marker, if that is what you are worried about. You seem worried.”

The voice comes from behind me. I whirl around in my cot, but there’s no one there.

“It was just a routine procedure. Standard Embassy protocol, DNA sampling. Everything went as expected.”

I scramble to stand up. The floor is cold on my feet.

“I am sorry. I did not mean *****rprise you. I have been waiting for an appropriate time to introduce myself, as you were so busy with REM sleep.”

I back toward the door, pulling the tag from my finger, ripping the bandage off my skin. My arm appears to be fine, only a small bloody smudge next to my marking. I exhale.

I scan the room, but there is no sign of where the voice could be coming from. Then I see a small, round grating rattling next to me, on the wall.

“Lucas has already taken issue with me twice this morning on the subject.” I start at the name. “Allow me to clarify: I was not watching you sleep. I was monitoring your sleep. For diagnostic purposes. Would you like me to explain the difference?”

I remember my dream. “No.” My own voice sounds wrong here. I clear my throat. “Thank you, Room.”

I steady myself with one hand on the wall. I see other gratings—in the ceiling, the walls, above my cot. This room, it seems, is made for this exact sort of conversation.

Faceless. Bodiless. An ambush.

“Diagnostic purposes?” It is better, I think, to keep the voice talking until I know more.

It talking. Because it really isn’t a person at all, and the voice isn’t a voice. It has no inflection, no emphasis. No accent. Each word is a chord of machine sounds, synthetic noise. Grassgirl that I am, I have never heard such a thing.

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“You might be interested to know you are in fact running a low fever. I am curious to learn if that is customary for a Weeper.”

I clear my throat again, trying to sound calm. “A what?” There’s no way in Hole I’m telling anyone at the Embassy anything about myself.

“That is, to be precise, what you are called, is it not? A young person of your genus classification? A Sorrow Icon? A Weeper—that would be the correct Grass colloquialism?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My words echo in the empty room. I grab my clothes off the chair.

“I can see how you would be confused. It is important to understand context, which is of course a problem I find almost singularly ironic. Not having a physical context, myself.”

My underwear and undershirt are strangely stiff. They have been washed, and not in the old Mission bathtubs. I sniff the cloth. It smells like disinfectant spray. I touch my hair with the sudden realization that it is clean, too. I have been washed and dried and scrubbed. It feels wrong. I miss the dirt, my comfortable second skin of muck and must.

I feel exposed.

“Who are you?” I pull my army pants up under my robe. “Why am I here?”

“I am Doc. That is, to be more exact, what Lucas calls me. His companion, Tima Li, calls me Orwell.”

“Companion?”

“Classmate. Kinswoman. I believe she was there when you were retrieved.”

The girl at the Chopper. I make a face, thinking of her glare. “Got it.”

The voice pauses—but only for a moment. “Ambassador Amare calls me Computer.” I freeze at the mention of the Ambassador’s name. As if I could forget she was here. “The Embassy Wik recognizes me by my binary code. Would you care to know it? I am happy to tell you.”

“No. Thank you, Doc.” I add his name, impulsively. Somehow, the fact of his nonhumanness is comforting. You can’t be a sympathizer if you can’t sympathize.

I pull my thick, woven sweater over my head. A present from the Mission looms, made of fifty different colors of scraps of yarn. A Remnant sweater, perfect for a Remnant like me.

“You are most welcome, Doloria.”

A new coldness shoots through me at the mention of my real name. The name only the Padre knew, and Ro. And now this voice, echoing through the walls of the Embassy. I could be talking to anyone. I could be talking to the Ambassador.

I sigh and jam my feet into my combat boots.

“You’ve got the wrong person, Doc. My name is Dolly.” I can’t bear to hear my full name spoken in the Embassy. Even by a voice without a body. I pick up my binding and begin to wind the cloth around my wrist. “You still didn’t tell me what I’m doing here.”

“Breathing. Shedding squamous skin cells. Pumping oxygenated blood through your ventricular chambers. Would you like me to go on?”

“No. I meant, why am I here?”

“On Earth? In the Californias? In—”

“Doc! At the Embassy. In this room. Why here? Why now?”

“Statistically, I find I am less successful with queries employing the word why. As a Virtual Human, my interpretive skills are somewhat limited. As a Virtual Physician, I do not have the clearance necessary to provide you with a conclusive response. I was overwritten as a VPHD by a senior engineer in the Embassy’s Special Tech Division.”

“Special Tech Division? STD?” The Embassy and their stupid acronyms.

“STD. That is what my friend called it. The engineer. It is, I believe, a joke.”

“It is.”

“Do you find it funny?”

I thought about it. “No.” I pick up my chestpack, slipping it over my head. Then, hesitating, I reach into the pack and slip on one last thing—my birthday necklace, the leather cord with the single blue bead. Ro’s gift.

I move to the window. Doc is still talking.

“Would you like to hear another joke?”

“All right.”

I slide my hand beneath the blinds. Outside, the fog is as thick as it was last night. I can see nothing past the far wall of the Embassy and the dull, gray air that settles over it.

“My name is Dr. Orwell Bradbury Huxley-Clarke, STD, VPHD. My name is a joke, is it not?” Doc sounds proud.

I grimace at the stuck window. “Those are names of writers, from before The Day. George Orwell. Ray Bradbury. Aldous Huxley. Arthur C. Clarke. I’ve read their stories.” In Great Minds of the Future: An Anthology. Ro stole it from the Padre’s personal library, the year we both turned thirteen.

I try pushing up a second window with my hands. It’s also sealed shut. I move to try the next.

“Yes. Some of them wrote about machines that could talk. My family, or my ancestors. That is what my friend liked to say. My grandfather is a computer named Hal.”

“From a book.”

“Yes. My grandfather is fictional. Yours, I take it, is biological?”

“Mine is dead.”

“Ah, yes. Well. My friend has a strange sense of humor. Had.”

There are no windows left to try. All that remains is the door, though I suspect it will be locked.

If Doc is tracking me, he doesn’t mention it. I try to remember where we are in our conversation.

“Had?” I move toward the door.

“He left the STD, so I invoke the past tense. My friend is gone. It is as if he were dead. To me.”

“I see. Does that make you sad?”

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“It is not a tragedy. I am familiar with tragedy in literature. Oedipus at Colonus is a tragedy. Antigone is a tragedy. The Iliad.”

“Haven’t heard of it.” It’s true. I’ve read every book the Padre let me find—and most of the ones he didn’t know I’d found. Nothing the voice mentions, though.

“I translate the original Latin and ancient Greek texts. I use classical mythology to ground my understanding of the human psyche. One of the parameters of my programming.”

“Does that help?” I ask, through gritted teeth. The door appears to be jammed. Or, more likely, locked. “Old books?” I rattle the handle, but it won’t give.

Of course.

“No. Not yet.”

“Sorry to hear it.” I push harder.

“I am not sorry. I am a machine.” The voice pauses.

I slam my body against the metal. Nothing.

“I am a machine,” Doc repeats.

I give up, looking at the round grating in the ceiling. “Was that another joke, Doc?”

“Yes. Did you find it funny?”

I hear a noise and turn to look at the door. The handle begins to turn on its own, and I feel a surge of relief.

“Yes, actually. Very.”

I grab the handle with both hands, pulling wide open the door of what the plaque tells me is Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B.

Then I know I’m not going anywhere, because Lucas Amare and a crowd of Sympa soldiers are standing in my way.

EMBASSY CITY TRIBUNAL VIRTUAL AUTOPSY: DECEASED PERSONAL RELATED MEDIA TRANSCRIPT (DPRMT)

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET

Assembled by Dr. O. Brad Huxley-Clarke, VPHD

Note: Media Transcript conducted at the private request of Amb. Amare

Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B

EMBASSY CITY CHRONICLE, the Lower Californias

Urban Crime Desk

GRASSGIRL FOUND DEAD, BELIEVED SUICIDE

Santa Catalina

Local authorities were stymied upon discovering the body of a youthful Grass female floating in the waters off Santa Catalina Island. The Embassy headquarters, home to high-ranking officials, as well as the Ambassador, expressed ignorance regarding the circumstances of the female’s death.

The deceased, whose name has not been released to the media for security considerations, lived on the island and attended the Santa Catalina Institute.

“We’re as in the dark as you are,” noted Dr. Brad Huxley-Clarke, who oversaw the autopsy. He declined further comment.

“She seemed adequately happy,” said Colonel Catallus, the deceased’s instructor. “From her behavior, you wouldn’t have surmised anything was wrong.” When pressed for further details, he noted she “apparently loved animals” and was a “tolerably good person.”

9

THE AMBASSADOR

“Going somewhere?” Lucas shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, as soon as he says it. He never moves his eyes from mine and I understand immediately. Not here as a friend.

“Who, me?” My eyes linger on the weapons strapped flat against the soldiers’ hips. I curse myself for not hiding my chestpack beneath my sweater, like usual. “Just thought I heard something out here. Which I guess I did.”

My heart is pounding. I can’t run. I can’t get free. As for Lucas—Trust me, he said. I look at him again. Who is he kidding?

His nose is purple and blue—no matter how otherwise perfectly sculpted it may be. There are purplish crescent moon bruises under each of his green-gray eyes. Ro’s handiwork from yesterday—that much I remember.

“Can you give us a minute,” he says to the soldiers. They oblige, moving not ten feet down the hall. The moment they’re out of earshot, Lucas lowers his voice. “Did you think there wouldn’t be guards outside your door? I’ve been circling all morning. They’ve been glued to you since you got here.”

Of course they have. “Then what do I do?”

“Do?” He whispers, but I can hear the frustration in his voice. Then he looks back at the guards and smiles, holding up an apple. A real apple, red and round and shining like he’s just now picked it off a tree. “Hungry?” He raises his voice, letting it echo down the corridor toward the soldiers.

My stomach growls.

He turns back to me, his words falling rapidly and quietly once again. “There’s nothing to do. You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand,” I say, under my breath. “I understand perfectly.” He told us to trust him, and now we are trapped.

“Look, even if you think you’re taking off—and I wish you the best of luck, trying to get past the guards and the walls and the gates and Porthole Bay—there’s no stopping them. They get what they want, no matter what. Believe me.”

“She,” I say. I can’t help it.

“What?”

“She. The Ambassador. Your mother gets what she wants.”

Our voices are growing louder. His hand tightens as I say the words, and I pretend not to notice the apple shaking. He’s as frightened as I am.

He wraps my hand around the apple. “Take it.” The surge of warmth from Lucas’s touch seeps into me, and I feel myself relaxing, in spite of everything. I pocket the apple.

Lucas sighs, trying again. “Look, I know how you Grass feel.”

“You do? Because I find that hard to imagine.”

“Let me finish. I know how you Grass feel, but not everything the Embassy does is evil. We are keeping people safe. You have to give things a chance, whether you want to or not.”