Aliens. That’s what Grandpapa Cyrus calls the Earth people. Alien invaders from another world.
I back away, to the other end of the room, clutching my pack until I feel one of the decorative half columns that ring the room’s outer wall behind me. I can’t believe I’m alive. That I’m here, in the Cursed City, with two aliens from Earth. That I didn’t tell the Council, shout out that Earth was crouched just on the other side of that wall. But all my options were terrible. They still are. How dare the Council throw my parents on my own funeral pyre? Those were my sins. Not theirs. They had no control over my choices, no matter how much my mother might have wished to. And cutting off the Archiva bloodline is pointless. Mother isn’t going to have more children. This is all about fear. The Council keeping their control of the Knowing. The rage inside me smolders. Flames.
But even if I did go back to the city, attended the Changing of the Seasons celebrations like I’d just come out of seclusion, removed the need to make an example of my parents, warned them about Earth, the Council is never going to let me live. Not even until Judgment.
Unless I have something to bargain with. Something they would want.
I look up and find Beckett watching me. He glances away, grinning a little, like he’s been caught at something. The shouts outside the rubble mound are distant now. Fading. Jillian hoists her pack.
“Time to break contact, Beckett,” she whispers.
I don’t know what she means, but Beckett does. He walks to the edge of the light, the last sunbeam of the season, his smile gone, staring down at the stone I set his ankle on. I watch him think, letting one idea inside my head knock the next into existence.
What would the Council give to talk to two aliens from Earth? Maybe anything I ask. Like the life of my parents. Maybe even my life until Judgment. And if I could live that long, I still might be able to find the Forgetting.
Hope is a treacherous feeling, and yet here it comes again, sprouting in my chest. Clearing my head. I think the Forgetting is real, and I think the Council must Know how it works already. And that means my answers are in the city. If I could get the keys, get back into that room in the Archives, like I did before, it’s still possible that I could heal the Knowing. That I could break the illusion of the Council’s power. I could still fix this. But I’d have to convince these two to come with me.
I have no idea how to do that. I breathe, my air unsteady, and I think I must actually be homesick, because I can smell the Underneath.
“Beckett, time to break contact,” Jillian says again.
He’s standing in the exact same spot, eyes closed, magnifiers off, arms stretched up and on top of his head, face dirty and bloody, the ends of his dusty black hair sticking against his sweaty neck. I hadn’t realized he was quite this lovely an alien. Or at least, not when I was an infant. How can I have dreamed him? A boy from Earth? But I did. Everything but the shape of the eyes. I don’t understand it. Or him.
Why pull me out of the street, save me from the Council, if he meant me harm? But he hasn’t admitted where he’s really from, has he? Neither of them has. They lied about—or at least hid—that fact, just like they waited until I was gone to use the technology that healed Beckett’s foot. Why hide, if Earth isn’t a threat? If I asked him about Earth right now, would Beckett lie to me, or tell me the truth?
It shouldn’t matter. I need him to come with me, either way. Both of them. To keep my city safe. To save my parents. To buy me time to heal the Knowing.
But it does matter. Somehow. He’s been in my head since I was a baby.
I think I will have to test him.
He’s standing perfectly still in the sunlight. I don’t Know what’s happening, but he needs to say something. Something he doesn’t want to. I can see it on his face.
“Beckett,” Jillian says. “You have your orders.”
Beckett opens his eyes.
And then a shadow flits across the last beam of the sun.
Rule one in initiation contact training, according to the eminent Dr. Sean Rodriguez: Establish trust, but never trust them. Because you cannot trust what you do not understand.
FROM THE LOG BOOK OF BECKETT RODRIGUEZ
Day 98, Year 1
The Lost Canaan Project
I catch the quick shadow moving across the light, and I know it’s a skimmer. I’m not sure if Jill saw, but there’s no time to figure out a way to tell her. I slide on the glasses and write, fast, choosing letters with my gaze. I don’t know how long we’ll have communication, and I need to tell Dad that I’m breaking orders. That I’m with a local, and will stay to continue establishing relationship. That Canaan is still a living city, only moved somewhere underground. That I need help getting Jill out.
Jill is not going to understand this. I think I’m going to hurt her. But Samara is exactly what we came for, and this is an opportunity that won’t come again. And when I glance to the side, I find her amber eyes on me. Beautiful, in a smooth mask of a face. I need to write, but I can’t help searching her for cracks like before, for a hint of what’s beneath.
“The dark days are coming,” she says, out of nowhere. Her voice lilts with the words. “It must be difficult to know how to live through the dark when you’ve forgotten.”
Forgotten. That’s what she said had happened to us, before she set my ankle. That we were from “outside,” and we had “forgotten.” It really would be nice to have the first clue about what’s been happening on this planet.
Samara asks, “Will you go on living in the Cursed City? When the Council has gone?”
I’m processing “cursed” when a message slides across the lenses. One word. “Don’t.” The signature is Dr. Sean Rodriguez. Something must be glitching. Jill comes to stand beside me, close against my elbow. Like she’s closing ranks. It’s time to tell her. I take a breath. “Actually, we—”
“Yes,” Jillian says abruptly. “That’s right. We’ll stay in the city. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Samara’s gaze flows over Jillian like a chilly stream. “And have you gathered and preserved?” she asks both of us. “Do you have seeds for the sunrising?”
“Of course,” Jillian replies. She smiles, all bright hair and innocence, but I’m watching Samara, and I see one of those cracks I was looking for. A quick fracture. She knows Jillian just lied to her. I don’t know how or why, but she knows. And when those eyes flick to me, what I see is … disappointment. I wish I were as good as Jill at cussing, because right now I feel like I just failed an exam I never took.
“Wait,” I say. “I … ” Then another message scrolls fast across my eyes:
“Situation understood. Revised orders: Maintain contact according to protocol. Find and report position of subterranean city as soon as possible.”