“You are unharmed,” Hickory said, at some point. “You may get up.”
I stayed on the ground, not moving, eyes turned toward Hickory’s knife, buried in the ground so close to my head that I couldn’t actually focus on it. Then I propped myself up on my elbows, turned away from the knife, and threw up.
Hickory waited until I was done. “We offer no apology for this,” it said. “And will accept whatever consequences for it that you may choose. Know only this: You were not physically harmed. You are unlikely even to bruise. We made sure of this. For all of that you were at our mercy in seconds. Others who will come for you will not show you such consideration. They will not hold back. They will not stop. They will have no concern for you. They will not show you mercy. They will seek to kill you. And they will succeed. We knew you would not believe us if we only told you this. We had to show you.”
I rose to my feet, barely able to stay upright, and staggered back from the two of them as best I could. “God damn you,” I said. “God damn you both. You stay away from me from now on.” I headed back to Croatoan. As soon as my legs could do it, I started running.
“Hey,” Gretchen said, coming into the information center and sealing the inside door behind her. “Mr. Bennett said I could find you here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I asked him if I could be his printer monkey a little more today.”
“Couldn’t keep away from the music?” Gretchen said, trying to make a little joke.
I shook my head and showed her what I was looking at.
“These are classified files, Zo?,” she said. “CDF intelligence reports. You’re going to get in trouble if anyone ever finds out. And Bennett definitely won’t let you back in here.”
“I don’t care,” I said, and my voice cracked enough that Gretchen looked at me in alarm. “I have to know how bad it is. I have to know who’s out there and what they want from us. From me. Look.” I took the PDA and pulled a file on General Gau, the leader of the Conclave, the one who ordered the destruction of the colony on the video file. “This general is going to kill us all if he finds us, and we know next to nothing about him. What makes someone do this? Killing innocent people? What happened in his life that gets him to a place where wiping out entire planets seems like a good idea? Don’t you think we should know? And we don’t. We’ve got statistics on his military service and that’s it.” I tossed the PDA back on the table, carelessly, alarming Gretchen. “I want to know why this general wants me to die. Why he wants us all to die. Don’t you?” I put my hand on my forehead and slumped a little against the worktable.
“Okay,” Gretchen said, after a minute. “I think you need to tell me what happened to you today. Because this is not how you were when I left you this afternoon.”
I glanced over at Gretchen, stifled a laugh, and then broke down and started crying. Gretchen came over to give me a hug, and after a good long while, I told her everything. And I do mean everything.
She was quiet after I had unloaded. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said.
“If I tell you, you’re going to hate me,” she said.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “I’m not going to hate you.”
“I think they’re right,” she said. “Hickory and Dickory.”
“I hate you,” I said.
She pushed me lightly. “Stop that,” she said. “I don’t mean they were right to attack you. That was just over the line. But, and don’t take this the wrong way, you’re not an ordinary girl.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Do you see me acting any different than anyone else? Ever? Do I hold myself out as someone special? Have you ever once heard me talk about any of this to people?”
“They know anyway,” Gretchen said.
“I know that,” I said. “But it doesn’t come from me. I work at being normal.”
“Okay, you’re a perfectly normal girl,” Gretchen said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“A perfectly normal girl who’s had six attempted assassinations,” Gretchen said.
“But that’s not me,” I said, poking myself in the chest. “It’s about me. About someone else’s idea of who I am. And that doesn’t matter to me.”
“It would matter to you if you were dead,” Gretchen said, and then held her hand up before I could respond. “And it would matter to your parents. It would matter to me. I’m pretty sure it would matter to Enzo. And it seems like it would matter a whole lot to a couple billion aliens. Think about that. Someone even thinks about coming after you, they bomb a planet.”
“I don’t want to think about it,” I said.
“I know,” Gretchen said. “But I don’t think you have a choice anymore. No matter what you do, you’re still who you are, whether you want to be or not. You can’t change it. You’ve got to work with it.”
“Thanks for that uplifting message,” I said.