“No, Jesse.” Avery grips onto my wrist. “It’s a trap.”
“Preposterous.” Madame moves her thumb along the side of the pad and presses a silver button. Avery’s body falls limp. “Too late. Better be on the ball next time, young man.”
“No!” I crouch by her side, running my fingers over her cheek. Her eyes are shut-arms lifeless at her side.
“Relax,” Madame says, “she’s not dead. Yet.”
I gently set Avery down on the ground, take one last look at her unconscious face, and stand to confront Madame. “If you hurt her… ”
She laughs. “You’ll do what? Tackle me? Mr. Fisher, I’ve been tracking you since the minute you left the Academy. I could have had you dead a thousand times over by now. There’s a chip in her head capable of disrupting brain patterns. With the press of a button I could reduce her to a vegetable. You will do nothing unless I tell you to.” Her eyes shift to Cassius. He stands behind me, fingers drumming nervously on his thighs. Her voice softens. “Cassius. What a job you’ve done. A test, and you passed it brilliantly.”
“Why did you send me on this mission?” His voice comes out quiet and meek. “If you knew where Fisher was-”
“Ah.” She raises a hand to silence him. “Your brother survived the fall from the building in Syracuse because the two of you triggered your abilities. He was bathed in Pearl energy. It protected him. But it’s a process, Cassius. Your bodies needed to adjust in order to accommodate your new abilities. You were both dangerous, but not to each other. Not directly, at least. You were the perfect person for the job.”
“Wait,” I start, “did you say brother?”
Her eyebrows raise. “Didn’t you know? Two children without family, drawn together by Pearl energy. Etcetera, etcetera. I thought it was becoming quite obvious.”
Cassius glances at me, then frowns at the realization. “You… you sent me to kill my own brother?”
“Not kill,” Madame replies. “ Recruit. I sent you to find your brother and bring him back where he belongs. I couldn’t have done it without you, Cassius.”
“She’s lying,” I say. “You’re expendable. Just like Avery.”
She chuckles, voice calm and steady. “Now what would give you that idea? On the contrary, you’re very valuable to me. One half of a very exclusive set.”
I glance at Cassius. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t try to stop her either.
She steps forward, gripping the controller pad. “The two of you are going to help me save the planet, ensuring the continued strength of the Unified Party.”
I scoff. “Like I’d ever help the Unified-”
“Twelve years ago I found you, Cassius.” She ignores me. “Our radar picked up an anomaly over Seattle. I came to investigate. I didn’t know there was another until I took you back to the Lodge. By then it was too late. Fisher had already been rescued.” She sighs, continuing to step forward. “By Jeremiah Alkine, no less.
“You were wearing a curious bracelet, Cassius. The rest of your attire was so simple, but the bracelet… I’d never seen anything like it before. Deep and dark and endless. I nearly got lost staring at the seamless material. It was cold to the touch. Didn’t want to part from your arm, either, but I had my methods.”
I stare at Cassius, watching him squirm as Madame approaches. Like usual, he tries to control his expression. But it’s not working very well. He’s crumbling.
“It wasn’t from Earth,” she continues. “Neither were you, for that matter. But I didn’t discover that until two nights later, when the bracelet began to glow by my bedside. I watched as text scrolled across the band-illuminated characters unlike any known language. Seconds later, the writing translated itself into English, as if it knew that I was reading.” Her eyes fall on me. “And that night I learned about you, Jesse Fisher.”
I look to the side, trying to avoid her eyes.
“For many years I was convinced that you’d been knocked off course, sidestepping Earth altogether. I was relieved. As long as Cassius didn’t develop his powers, our planet would be safe.” She sighs. “And then I got word from Avery. Just fragments of information-strange little orphan child that all the teachers were whispering about-but enough for me to connect the dots. The mystery boy was alive.” She frowns. “He was a Skyshipper.”
She shrugs. “As it turned out, we’d still dodged a bullet. The Hernandez Treaty kept the two of you separated for a handful of years, but it was bound to happen eventually. I only wish I’d acted sooner.” She pauses. “The rooftop changed everything. Pearls are treacherous now. They are capable of being unlocked. By you. We’re in danger of being overcome by your people.”
“Our people?” My voice comes out as a whisper.
“That’s right,” she replies. “Alien. Extraterrestrial. Invader.”
My stomach turns. I fight back nausea as the words repeat in my head. I feel like I’m not really here now, that I’m watching someone else’s life.
Alien. The word doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound real-just something made up by people with too much imagination. Groups like Heaven’s Rain. But as my heart starts to slow, I realize that I know it’s true. I’ve known it since I saw the girl.
The girl. I look down at her, lying unconscious in the rubble. She looks so… human.
Cassius scoffs. “Aliens don’t exist.”
Madame shakes her head. “There are things we don’t talk about, remember? Your past is one of them. You are one of them.”
“No,” I sputter. “No. I’ve been here my whole life. I would’ve remembered-”
“You were very young,” she interrupts. “The first. The first Pearls and the means to unlock every one that fell after.”
I look down at my hands, the hands that destroyed two Pearls already.
“And that makes you dangerous,” she continues. “An enemy to both the Surface and the Skyships. To the entire planet.”
I clench my fists. “You’re crazy.”
“Am I? Or am I the one unlucky soul who must carry this secret?”
“No,” I respond, “you’re crazy.”
Her eyes narrow. “Tell that to the millions of people who died the day our country exploded, the day your chemicals nearly drove this planet to extinction.”
Cassius steps up beside me. “The Scarlet Bombings. But terrorists did that. You said… ”
“There is terror beyond this planet.” She frowns. “The invaders were sneaky, disabling our radar systems to mask their location.”
I shake my head, unwilling to believe that anybody related to me could be responsible for killing millions of people.
Cassius frowns. “But the government’s retaliation efforts-”
“I told you I must carry this secret, Cassius. Our people demanded revenge. Someone had to pay. That someone happened to be a group of people that had been troubling our country for far too long.”
“Skyship was right,” I say, gritting my teeth. “There were no terrorists. Your retaliation… it was… murder.”
Madame pauses. For a moment I think that she’s gonna defend herself, but she just shakes her head, eyes shut. “No one knows what Pearls really are, what they carry inside. And nobody knows the terrible sins we’ve committed better than me. It’s our duty to correct our mistakes… to use the energy from the invaders to make this world livable.”
“And kill people in the process,” I say.
“They are not people,” she counters. “It’s Homeland Security. They’ve prepared this world for colonization… triggered environmental change and pitted us against one another. They thrive in heat, Jesse, and they’d prefer we lie down and die before they arrive. I cannot let them win.”
I look up at the charred, skeletal buildings around us, trying to imagine chemical-filled missiles shooting down from space. The only missiles I can imagine are the ones deployed by America after the bombings. It’s true what the Tribunal always said. The Unified Party is more than dangerous. They destroyed an entire chunk of the world. They’d do it again if they had to.