Living up to my father’s standards was difficult enough when I was a child, but after my experiences in One’s mind, it became impossible. I had grown soft, had developed sympathies and concerns that I knew would be impossible for my father to understand, let alone tolerate. Elswit and I have a certain amount in common. We’re both disappointments to our fathers.
But I quickly realized the similarities between us don’t stretch that far. Despite Elswit’s claims of “estrangement” from his family, he’s still in touch with his wealthy parents, and still has unlimited access to their wealth. Apparently his father has even arranged for a private plane to pick him up in Nairobi in a few weeks just so Elswit can be back home for his birthday. Meanwhile my dad thinks I’m dead and I can only guess he’s happy about it.
After dinner I have a well-earned shower and get into bed. One’s curled up in a rattan chair in the corner. “Bed? Already?” she teases.
I give the room a once-over. No one’s around, so it’s safe to talk out loud, as long as I keep my voice down. Talking out loud feels more natural than communicating silently.
“I want to get up with the others from here on out.”
One shoots me a look.
“What? My cast’s off, my limp’s almost gone . . . I’m recovered. It’s time for me to pull equal weight around here.”
One frowns and picks at her shirt. Of course I know what’s bothering her.
Her people are out there, earmarked for extinction by my race. And here she is, stuck in Kenya. Moreover, she’s stuck inside my consciousness, disembodied, with no will or agency of her own. If she had her wish, I know she’d be somewhere else—anywhere else—taking up the fight.
“How long are we going to stay here?” she asks, somberly.
I play dumb, pretending I don’t know how she feels, and shrug as I pull up the covers and turn over on my side. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
I’m dreaming.
It’s the night I tried to save Hannu. I’m running from the aid camp into the jungle, towards Hannu’s hut, desperate to get there before Ivan and my father do. I know how this ends—Hannu killed, me left for dead—but in this dream all of the naïve urgency of that night comes back to me, propelling me forward through the vines and brush, the shadows, the animal sounds.
The communicator I swiped from the hut crackles at my hip, an ominous sound. I know the other Mogadorians are closing in.
I have to get there first. I have to.
I arrive at a clearing in the jungle. The hut where Hannu and his Cêpan lived stands right where I remembered it. My eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness.
Then I see the difference.
The hut and the clearing itself are completely overgrown with vines and foliage. Half of the hut’s façade has been blown out, and the roof sags heavily over the missing section of wall. The obstacle course at the edge of the grounds that Hannu must have used for training is so overgrown I can barely tell what it is anymore.
“I’m sorry,” comes a voice from the jungle.
I whip around. “Who’s there?”
One emerges from the trees.
“You’re sorry for what?” I’m confused, out of breath. And my feet hurt from running.
That’s when it clicks. “I’m not dreaming,” I say.
One shakes her head. “Nope.”
“You took over.” The words escape my lips before I even understand what I’m saying. But I can tell from her face I’m right: she took over my consciousness while I slept, leading me out here to the site of Hannu’s death. She’s never done this before. I had no idea she even could do this. But her being is so intimately enmeshed with my own at this point, I shouldn’t be surprised. “You hijacked me.”
“I’m sorry, Adam,” she says. “But I needed you to come here, to remind you . . .”
“Well, it didn’t work!” I’m confused, angered by One’s manipulation of my will.
But as soon as I say it, I know it’s a lie. It did work.
My adrenaline’s up, my heart is racing, and I feel it: the crushing importance of what I tried and failed to do months ago. The threat my people still pose to the Garde and to the rest of the world.
They must be stopped.
I turn away, so One can’t see the doubt on my face.
But we share a mind. There’s no hiding from her.
“I know you feel it too,” she says.
She’s right, but I push it away, that nagging sense that I have a calling I’m ignoring out here in Kenya. Things were just starting to get good again. I like my life in Kenya, I like that I’m making a difference, and until One dragged me out here to rub my nose in the site of Hannu’s murder, it had gotten easy for me to forget about the coming war.
I shake my head. “I’m doing good work, One. I’m helping people.”
“Yeah,” she says. “What about doing great? You could be helping the Garde to save the planet! Besides, do you really think the Mogadorians will spare this place when their ultimate plan takes form? Don’t you realize that any work you do in the village is just building on quicksand unless you join the fight to stop your people?”
Sensing that she’s getting through to me, she steps closer. “Adam, you could be so much more.”
“I’m not a hero!” I cry, my voice catching in my throat. “I’m a weakling. A defector!”
“Adam,” she begs, her voice catching now too. “You know I like to tease you, and I’d really hate for you to get a big head or something. But you are one in a million. One in ten million. You are the only Mogadorian who has ever defied Mogadorian authority. You have no idea how special you are, how useful to the cause you could be!”
All I’ve ever wanted is for One to see me as special, as a hero. I wish I could believe her now. But I know she’s wrong.
“No. The only thing that’s special about me is you. If Dr. Anu hadn’t hooked me up to your brain, if I hadn’t spent three years living inside your memories . . . I’d have been the one who killed Hannu. And I’d probably have been proud of it.”
I see One flinch.
Good, I think. I’m getting through to her.
“You were a member of the Garde. You had powers,” I say. “I’m just a skinny, powerless ex-Mogadorian. The best I can do is survive. I’m sorry.”
I turn around and begin my long walk back to camp.
One doesn’t follow.
CHAPTER 2
Despite my exhausting middle-of-the-night run to Hannu’s hut, I manage to wake up with the other aid-workers the following morning.
“Look at you, getting up early,” jokes Elswit. “Sure you want to cut into your beauty sleep?”
I almost retaliate by teasing Elswit, calling him the prince like the other workers sometimes do. He earned the nickname when he arrived here with a bunch of expensive nonessentials, none more ridiculous than a luxurious pair of shiny silk pajamas. Nobody makes fun of him to his face, though: he also brought a top-of-the-line laptop with high-tech global wireless, a device he lets us all use and that no one wants to jeopardize their access to.