“What do you mean?” Noemi demands as she sits upright. She still feels a little woozy, but compared to the terrible fever yesterday, this is nothing. “Where are you taking us?”
“To your ship.” The satchel he walked in with seemed like an ordinary bag, but now he unzips it to reveal a few thin black hyperwarm jackets. He tosses two toward her and Abel, then begins shrugging the third on himself. “I brought some of the strongest sedatives we’ve got outside lock and key. When you guys are off-planet again, I’ll drug myself and tell them you were responsible.”
“Stop!” Noemi hops off the gurney. “Can you explain exactly why you’re framing us for a crime?”
Abel’s eyes narrow, his anger intensely human as he says, “We can’t engage in criminal activity based on the suggestion of someone who hasn’t been wholly honest about his intentions.”
“And now you have the nerve to call me dishonest. Unbelievable.” As obviously annoyed as Ephraim is, he continues preparing to smuggle them out of the hospital.
Yet Noemi believes Ephraim is doing this for their own good—or, at least, what he thinks is their own good.
She ventures, “Is this—is this about Abel?” If Stronghold’s authorities figured out what he is, would they want to keep him for themselves? Is that what Ephraim’s trying to save them from?
Ephraim shakes his head. “It would be about him, too, I bet, if his blood test hadn’t come out so strange. As it is, it’s only about you.”
“That’s not an explanation.” Abel’s voice has become firmer. Almost defiant.
Ephraim looks nearly as irritated as she feels. “You two know the reason. Why are you pretending you don’t?”
Noemi says, “Could you just say, in plain words, what—”
She falls silent as Ephraim steps closer and points at her to emphasize every word. “You. Are. From. Genesis.”
A wave of dizziness washes through her, but Noemi grabs the edge of the bed to remain upright; Abel’s hand closes around her upper arm, supporting her for the second it takes to regain balance. This is no time to lose control. She and Abel exchange glances. Should they deny it? No, there’s no point. She says only, “How did you know?”
“Your medical results.” Ephraim zips up his jacket. “Your lungs are almost completely free from contaminants. So is your blood. We don’t see that anymore. Either you were cloned in a lab or you’re from Genesis, but your genetic structures are too stable to be a clone. Plus, you responded to those antiviral drugs so fast it’s obvious you’ve never built up any resistance. Most people run the gamut of all the antiviral meds we have while they’re still kids. So, Genesis.”
Noemi’s gut tightens. “There weren’t going to be other tests, were there? Was the Tare sending me to—to interrogation, or prison, or—”
“The tests were real. They haven’t caught on yet.” Ephraim goes to a monitor—checking the hallway, she realizes, to make sure no one’s coming. “See, a Tare model’s programmed to deal with illness or injury. It would never occur to one of them that someone might be too healthy.”
“Of course,” Abel says. His face reflects the confused wonder she’s seen in him before when humans glimpsed something no mech ever could.
Ephraim continues, “But when we ran the next battery of tests, those results would go to our ward supervisor, who’s human. Chances are she’d put it together as quickly as I did, then order testing on your hubby here, too. If his test hadn’t been contaminated, I bet it would show the same results, wouldn’t it?”
Abel says only, “Don’t be so sure.”
Running one hand over his close-shorn hair, Ephraim takes a deep breath. Noemi hadn’t realized how worried he is until now, as she sees him steadying himself. “So you don’t go for those tests. You guys get off-world before the authorities here realize they’ve got traitors in their midst.”
The word traitors stings. “If that’s what you think of us, then why are you helping me?” Noemi demands.
“Do I have to tell you my whole life story?”
She folds her arms in front of her chest. “If you want me to go against orders and agree to be set up for a crime, yeah, actually, you do.”
Taken aback, Ephraim holds up both his hands. “Hey, this isn’t any kind of trap or anything.”
Abel raises an eyebrow. “Convince us.”
“We don’t have that long!” Ephraim protests.
Noemi thinks this guy is being honest—but she can’t afford to go on her gut alone. “Then you’d better talk fast.”
Ephraim stands still for a few seconds, long enough that she thinks he might confess his real plan or call for security. When he speaks, though, his voice is low and grave. “Thirty years ago, my mother served on a medical ship in Earth’s fleet. Her ship was shot down during one of the worst battles of the war. Mom was the only survivor of that crash on Genesis—and she was six months pregnant with my big brother. So she was stranded. Helpless. Scared she was going to miscarry in the wreckage or in prison. But then some people from Genesis found the wreck. They’d been told to report any military survivors, but they took pity on Mom. Showed her mercy. They got her to a nearby house where a nurse could make sure the pregnancy was okay. After that, they helped her detach a hoverpod from the wreckage, and with that she was able to get into low orbit around Genesis and call for rescue. They said it was what their gods would want them to do.” His dark eyes focus on Noemi’s with uncanny intensity. “I don’t like what your world has done to this galaxy. I don’t see how you can be merciful to an individual but tell all of humanity to go straight to hell. But my whole life, I’ve always known I owe you. I owe Genesis for my mother’s life, for my brother’s, and for my own. The minute I figured out where you were from, I knew I finally had a chance to pay that debt. So I’m paying it.”
Noemi’s come to second-guess so much about Genesis on this mission—but she remembers what her world can be at its best. “Thank you.”
Ephraim gestures toward the hyperwarm jackets. “You can thank me by putting those on already! We need to move.”
She and Abel exchange a look. Abel still seems wary, but when she reaches for her jacket, he follows suit.
Fever blurred her memories of arriving at the hospital. Everything after the landing pad is nothing but whirling confusion. Noemi feels as if she’s only now about to see Stronghold for the first time. The hospital corridor looks ordinary enough; so does the service area Ephraim rushes them into.
But going outside is worse.
As they walk out into the cold air, Noemi’s breath turns to fog as she looks upward. The dark gray sky looms low over Stronghold as though it were a dome built to keep them in.