Adombukar holds the door, silently calling for the animals. They streak off headlong toward the main gate. Behind us in the dome are the screams of the twelve vasana as they follow our scent. Whatever’s been done to them has altered their brains in such a way that they can’t speak to us in the tunnel, can’t see us in the way that other creatures of Faloiv can. Worse than death.
The last of the animals we freed storm past us. Two igua throw their bodies at the gate, shoving with their tusks, digging in with their back legs. It topples underneath their immense power, the sound of the metal striking the ground echoing out into the trees. I search the tunnel for Rasimbukar, but if she’s out there she’s sealed herself off from me. I turn to call for Adombukar, but he’s standing in the archway looking back into the dome, the spots on his forehead arranged into a low, flat line. I dash to his side, hoping to persuade him to come with me. But when I reach him, glancing into the dome to gauge the distance of the vasana, I see Dr. Albatur.
He’s one hundred yards away, taking slow, almost leisurely steps toward us. He has a bit of a limp: I wonder if it’s from me and Alma tranqing him, or if it’s the effect of the door outside to Faloiv being open. I have no idea what else this planet does to his body—maybe even the air hates him. I hope it does. Behind him, the vasana wander loosely, dizzily—a flock following their pale shepherd. His left hand is behind his back; in his right is the black control.
“English, stop this nonsense,” he calls. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” I scream. “How could you do this? The vasana? The Solossius! You’re putting the whole planet in danger!”
“This planet!” he shouts, taking his left hand from behind his back and balling it into a fist. “This tiny, sweaty planet! We’re only here because we have no choice. Our choice has been taken from us.”
“But we’re here!” I yell. “I was born here! Just because you have to wear a red hood—”
“Me? This is infinitely more vast!” he shouts. “This is about our survival: our legacy! We did not come so far to be limited to one sphere! We will return to our former greatness. Faloiv will be ours, and we will be free to make of it what we wish!”
“But we are free!” I scream. “This is our home. We’re here and you’re putting that all at risk by—”
“The risk is stagnancy,” he bellows, stopping to glare at me. “This is about rebuilding the life we used to have! I came here with one purpose. I will not die here, with that purpose unfulfilled. And his people”—Albatur aims his finger like a buzzgun at Adombukar—“have what we need to change that! Their greed keeps us from rebuilding a civilization greater than our ancestors ever imagined. . . .”
“People like you killed our ancestors, Eric.” My mother steps through the door, her arm bleeding steadily. “We came here to start over, not to make the same mistakes. Or did you forget what my parents always said? They were your peers.”
“Your parents were traitors!” he roars.
Truth seems to be all around me, but every piece is wearing a mask. I want to interrupt, to demand answers once and for all, but my mother is raging on.
“If it wasn’t for them, we would already be dead,” my mother says.
Someone is running toward us from the labs. My father. The sight of him chokes me: love and fear like two serpents rising from the abyss between us, teeth bared as they wrap each other in their coils. I want to run to him and from him at the same time.
“Samirah,” he shouts desperately at my mother as he nears us. He’s on the other side of the pack of vasana and stands there hesitantly. His creation or not, he fears them. Scientist face-to-face with the monster he created. “Why are you doing this?”
“I could ask you the same thing, Octavius,” my mother calls. She has none of his desperation: despite the pain from her wound, she’s as calm as ever.
He shakes both his hands at her, his face a mask of storms.
“Look what you’ve done! The containment room is in ruins! Work lost! Death! For them!”
“What I’ve done? Eric did this!” My mother shouts at my father. “You did this!”
“The only thing I’ve done is pursue progress,” Albatur yells, spit flying. “The Solossius will succeed and we will go on!”
“And this entire time you’ve been lying to me!” My father interrupts. He paces, looking for a way to get around the vasana, which stand swaying between him and us. He sounds the way he sounded when I last spoke to him in the ’wam: wild sorrow colors his voice. “Going behind my back. Sabotaging work that would get us closer to our goals! This is why I ordered that the vasana project be kept secret! I knew someone was causing trouble. And you! You tried to keep the telepathy discovery secret, when you knew something that significant could turn the tables for N’Terra. Why, Samirah?”
My mother lifts her chin.
“Because you’re lost, Octavius. Because I knew you and Albatur would find a way to weaponize it all. To try to control the Faloii: make them do what you want. He has made you believe that the future is what lies behind, not ahead. . . .”
My father’s voice is like thunder. The silence that has filled our family for so many years is finally broken, but the bridge across the chasm is uncrossable.
“You lied to N’Terra! You lied to me!”
“And I’d lie again,” my mother shouts, “if it meant protecting this planet from people like Albatur. People like you.”
“Albatur is a genius. He’s overcoming his condition and providing us with a future—”
“I don’t have a condition!” Albatur shouts. His eyes seem as empty and wild as the vasana. “This planet is the condition, for which I have a solution!” He pauses, his chin trembling—he looks so old. The ogwe trees pulse their warning into my nostrils. “And you will not jeopardize that.”
He raises the black control, pointing at us like an arrow, and presses the button.
“Mom, run!” I scream, grabbing her shoulder and dragging her through the doorway. Adombukar runs with us, his long legs keeping him several paces ahead. I don’t see Alma anywhere. But I hear her calling my name, and as I run, tripping in the dim light of the moon, I look for the source of her voice. I find her on the roof of the guards’ ’wam, brandishing a buzzgun.
“Octavia! Up here!”
I don’t stop to think how she got the gun or what she plans to do with it. I run toward the ’wam, gripping my mother’s hand, wet with blood, thinking that if we can just get away from the vasana, maybe we can reason with Dr. Albatur. But the hope is shallow, desperate; my prayer is a shout down a well I know to be dry.