On the wall, the fake stars shimmered. He had already risked so much for her—and now he was willing to sacrifice more. She picked up the glass and twirled it in her fingers.
“It isn’t about the comforts of Earth. It’s about what’s real. My life at home was as fake as my life here. I was never allowed to be myself—I always had to be a senator’s daughter. My mother couldn’t be an actress, like she wanted, and it made her bitter and resentful. I could never be a songwriter, because my dad’s handlers thought that if any of my songs got online, it would hurt might dad’s chances at reelection. We had to be these artificial versions of ourselves, always smiling when we were sad, cloaking our real emotions, just like you do.
“If I can go home, I can change that. I can truly live, even if it’s painful. I want a real relationship with my father and my mother. We can be a real family again, even with the divorce—we were making progress. I want to write songs about the things I’ve been through, and I want to fall in love with someone I choose, not who was chosen for me.” She tore her hand away from her necklace. “You probably don’t understand that.”
He was quiet for some time, and then very slowly rubbed the scar on his neck. “I understand more than you think. I could not have observed humanity for this long without being affected by it. The others of my kind are fascinated by the brightly colored parts of humanity: your clothing, your architecture, the tricks you can perform. I’m not as interested in those. I like the quieter part, like how humans wish on stars knowing they won’t be answered. And what you told me once, about how some mistakes are worth making. I have made mistakes myself.” He took the glass and took another sip, as though he could swallow whatever memories pained him. “That is why your capacity for emotional depth intrigues me. The Kindred do not have those notions. Forgiveness. Sacrifice. They are remarkable traits.”
His face had looked so otherworldly at first, like a god, or someone from her dreams. But now she knew he was just a person, and he was young too, and felt things like guilt and shame and the need for forgiveness.
“You should not be ashamed to be one of the unintelligent species,” he said, looking into the glass. “The intelligent species are not perfect, though we may pretend to be. We can lie. We can manipulate. We can betray. Your kind are not capable of the same level of evil as mine is.” He set the glass back down, and the liquid settled. It was cold in his room, but he didn’t seem to feel it.
“Yes, we are.” She thought of the girls at Bay Pines who bullied each other just for fun, and of her friends who had vanished after her arrest, and even of herself, who had been so careless with Lucky’s heart. She took the glass and downed the rest of it. “You admit that the Kindred lie. Were you lying when you said your people had taken us for our own benefit? All your talk about swearing altruistic oaths . . .” She looked down into the glass. “It isn’t true, is it?”
He didn’t answer. This close, his eyes weren’t just black; there was depth to them, like the cut crystal of the glass.
“Tell me why the Warden really had you take us,” she asked.
The angles of his room felt extra sharp. The tension was heavy in the air, nearly at the point of bursting. No more lies. Please.
He leaned in slowly. “Our oath is not a lie. We do see ourselves as stewards, and not just because of our fondness for humans. It is our duty to ensure your survival—and all the lesser species’ survival—because the universe would lose its richness without humanity, and diversity of thought leads to the ultimate intelligence.” He paused. “But you in particular. You six. There is more to it than what we have told you, and more to your enclosure.”
“So you admit that those researchers have been manipulating us.” Her vindication was immediately swallowed by anger. “But why would they mess with the puzzles? Why put us in such strange pairs? Why turn the others against me?”
“Mali has mentioned rumors to you that certain humans are beginning to demonstrate signs of perceptive ability. Some have claimed to be mildly psychic, even telekinetic. None of the claims have been verified. The six of you were chosen, in part, because of your potential to display perceptive ability, if your minds were pushed in the correct manner. Challenging your concepts of time and space, for example. Altering the weather. Putting pressure on you in terms of presenting puzzles with variable rewards.”