Evolution (21 page)

I hate that he's saying exactly what Commander Charlie and the other people in the strategy room said. I also hate that I don't disagree.

“I don't know, Logan. Maybe there isn't a better solution. But I don't think that means we should give up. Our friends were taken prisoner,” I remind him. “Beechy, Sandy, Uma, Paley, Mal. All of them. After everything Beechy has done for me—for
us
—rescuing us from Karum, giving us a safe place with the Alliance, and helping me come from the Surface mission … I just can't leave him. Not without at least trying to bring him home.”

Logan is silent, his lips pressed together hard. “So you want to work out a plan to rescue them, even if it means potentially screwing up Commander Charlie's current plan?”

“Yes,” I say. “Will you help me?”

He closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, he looks at me with a steadier gaze. “I'm in. How long do we have until Fred finishes building the bomb?”

“A little less than fifteen hours.”

Logan exhales. “Great. Should be plenty of time. Do you have any idea where to start?”

“I think we need to simplify our problems before we can start thinking of a solution.”

We list the problems as the two of us head down the stairs to the lower level of Recreation Division.

Problem one: The Mardenites are in control of the Surface. Any troops we send up there could easily be shot down or crippled by another pulse bomb. Even more people could be captured.

Problem two: the battle stations. We don't know anything about their design or their weaknesses. We don't know where the prisoners are being kept, or how to get them out.

Problem three: time. We need more time to study the Mardenites and learn their weaknesses, to strengthen our army so we can attack their fleet. Unless we can convince the Developers to postpone detonating their bomb, we only have fifteen hours.

Which brings us to our biggest problem: the Developers. They're the ones in control of the citizens, the army, and the weapons. As long as they're in control, we can't send troops anywhere without their permission. Our hands are tied.

“But all we need to do is get the Mardenites to stop fighting, right?” Logan says. “Force them to surrender. Then we wouldn't need to set off any bomb. We wouldn't have to run.”

I chew on my lip, considering. He's right. We don't necessarily need to rescue the prisoners; we just need to overpower their captors. But
how
? We've taken out forty of their raiders, but they have thousands of ships in their fleet.

There has to be a missing piece, something we're overlooking. A way to discover a weakness of the Mardenite army we could exploit.

It doesn't hit me until Logan and I are almost to the cafeteria for lunch. We've been silent for the last few minutes, both of us deep in thought, still not much closer to finding a solution.

“You know what I really want to know?” Logan says, his brows furrowing.

“What?” I ask.

“What the Mardenites want with us. We thought they came here to slaughter us, but they captured everyone instead. And they're setting up settlements. Why? I think there's something more going on with them we need to understand. If we knew what they wanted from us, we'd have a better idea how to deal with them.”

I gasp. Just like that, I realize what I've been overlooking: We have one of the Mardenites in captivity. The leader we captured in a war long ago; the alien god. The Developers promised me a visit with him.

I'm sure they've already tried to extract information from him, but that doesn't mean I can't try. It's the best lead we've had so far, and I'm going to take it.

 

21

Since Logan can't come with me, we arrange to meet back in the cafeteria for dinner. Hopefully my meeting with the Mardenite will be over long before then.

I go alone to Restricted Division to find the Developers. It turns out they're overseeing the start of the bomb's construction. I have to talk to several security guards before someone grants me access to them, and even then I'm not allowed into the room. Someone carries my request to Commander Charlie and returns with the answer.

I expect to have to give an excuse for why I'm asking to see the Mardenite after today's events, but it turns out to be easy. Cadet Waller will escort me to see the prisoner. Apparently the Developers don't think letting me see the Mardenite will endanger their plans. I'm guessing they're also busy and they want me out of their hair.

Cadet Waller doesn't seem terribly pleased she's been assigned the task of escort. She purses her lips as she leads me down the hallway.

“Where is the prisoner being kept?” I ask.

“In a secure location,” is all she says.

At the end of the hallway, Cadet Waller taps a code into the panel beside the door, and it zips open. She ducks her head to move through the door, and I follow. The corridor ahead of us is much narrower than the last. It makes me feel a bit claustrophobic.

We turn three corners—left, right, right—passing at least six unmarked doors before she stops in front of another. Waller's fingers fly across the keys on another security console, typing in a new code. All I'm able to catch is that the last number is two.

The door opens with a hiss. As we move into the room, a low sound of boiling liquid fills my ears. We've entered a laboratory. There are tubes of bubbling chemicals and stacks of glass vials and scales on the tables. A short set of steps at the back of the room leads to a glass door. The lights beyond the door are dark, so I can't see what's back there. But that must be where they're keeping the Mardenite.

A man with thick, dark hair stands in front of a giant microscope on the right side of the room, peering through the eyepieces. He doesn't seem to have heard us come in.

“Hello, Dr. Troy,” Cadet Waller says.

The doctor startles and turns around. Clearing his throat, he switches off the microscope and sets the scalpel he was holding on the table. He walks toward us with a smile. “Afternoon, Ms. Waller. How may I help you?”

“We're here to see Prisoner V. I have orders from the commanders to allow this girl a short visit with him.”

“I see,” Dr. Troy says. He turns to me. “And your name is…”

“Clementine,” I say.

“You would know her as Subject 7,” Waller says.

Dr. Troy's eyes shift to me again, wider this time. “I see,” he says in a softer voice.

There's a trickle of discomfort down the back of my neck. He's studying me like I'm a specimen in one of his jars, an experiment, instead of a person.

He clears his throat again, rolls up the sleeves of his lab coat, and offers a hand. “Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Dr. Troy, resident Mardenite expert, head of the department of evolutionary sciences.”

“It's nice to meet you,” I say, shaking his hand and giving him what I hope is a warm smile. His palm leaves a sticky residue of sweat on my skin.

“You'll take her from here?” Waller asks. “She'll need an escort out of the area when she's finished.”

“Yes, I'll take care of it,” Dr. Troy says.

The door zips shut after Waller's gone. With a sweeping motion of his arm, Dr. Troy gestures for me to follow him to the stairs. He seems twitchy. I can't tell if he's nervous or excited. He must not get visitors often.

“So, you want to see our Mardenite,” he says. “Any particular reason why?”

To find a way to end the war that doesn't involve killing thousands of innocent people.

I shrug. “Not really. Just curiosity. I'd like to know what we're fighting.”

“A very good reason. It's always a smart idea to try to understand our enemies.” Instead of a security code, Dr. Troy uses his thumbprint to open the glass door at the top of the staircase. He flips a light switch on in the next room.

A blue glow fills the darkness, emitting from three glass tanks in the center of the room. Each is a cylindrical shape at least three times my size. The far left and right tanks are empty, but the one in the middle has something inside it.

The alien is curled up in the fetal position and tangled in tubes, floating in the water. It almost looks like it's dead; the alien's skin is shriveled up. I take careful steps toward it, my heartbeat thrumming in my fingertips. I've seen a Mardenite before, of course, on the hillside after the hovercraft crashed. But it was much farther away. This one is separated from me by glass, but I can't help worrying it will still be able to harm me.

A foot away from the tank, the alien opens its eyes. I freeze in my tracks. Two fiery red eyes stare at me, unable to blink because they are lidless.

I've seen those eyes before, this close.

Slowly, the alien unfolds its limbs and stretches out in the water. It has a humanoid body structure: two legs, two arms, two feet, two hands. But it has gills where it should have ears, and its hands and fingers are webbed. Its skin is clear, almost gelatinous, with thin blue blood vessels visible underneath.

Vul
. That's what Beechy called this creature when he showed him to me in another tank in the Core, a tank far bigger than this room. He told me the vul had been discovered in the ocean on the Surface with others of its kind, but they attacked us and we had no choice but to wipe most of them out. Neither Beechy nor I had heard of Mardenites back then; all we knew is the lies we'd been taught.

“This is the Mardenite?” I ask.

“Among scientists, we refer to them as the
vul
, which is short for their scientific name,
vulyn sabius
,” Dr. Troy says. “But yes, this is the Mardenite we captured in the last war. His people call him
Tessar
which, roughly translated, means ‘savior.' They worship him because his birth brought forth a great flowering of life on their world. They believe he's a source of creation in the universe. He's been alive for centuries, his cells regenerating at an alarming rate. The genetic makeup of the vul is truly astounding. They're able to adapt and thrive in both saltwater conditions and on land.”

The Tessar must've been transferred here recently, I bet soon after the Developers realized Marden's army was coming. They wanted to be able to keep a closer eye on him.

I walk slowly around the tank. The Tessar spins in the water to follow my movement, his unblinking eyes glued to my face. I wonder if he recognizes me at all.

“Can you communicate with him?” I ask Dr. Troy.

“Yes,” Dr. Troy says. “I have a basic grasp of the vulyn language, but the Tessar hardly uses it. Mostly he doesn't vocalize at all. We communicate through gestures, or he responds to commands I give him in Kielan.”

The vul inside the tank tilts his head, watching me curiously, slowly kicking his webbed feet to keep himself off the bottom of the tank. The tubes he's tangled in are connected to his stomach, some sort of catheter tube. Maybe to give him nutrients. Maybe because he could escape otherwise.

I take another step closer to the tank. Commander Charlie said the Tessar is much too powerful to be released from his prison, this creature the Mardenites believe is the source of life in the universe. Are the Developers afraid it's true?

“Would you say he's dangerous?” I ask.

“He won't be escaping anytime soon, if that's what you mean,” Dr. Troy says. “The vul have exceptional strength, so we've had to take measures to keep the Tessar weaker than he normally would be.”

They've been starving him. If I look closely, I can see bones poking through the vul's gelatinous skin.

“So, yes, in some ways he is very dangerous,” Dr. Troy continues. “The vul are a genetically advanced race compared to humans; there is no denying it. But in all the years I've spent observing the Tessar, I can't say I've seen many signs of him having a particularly vicious nature. He's a curious creature, but mostly a docile one. At least, he is smart enough to know fighting won't get him anywhere. And he knows the Developers would order his execution if he caused any real damage.”

“I'm surprised they've kept him alive this long,” I say. “Especially knowing the Mardenites might come back for him.”

“Well, the Mardenites don't know the Tessar is still alive. We spread word that he was executed after we captured him during the last war.”

The vul in the tank swims closer to me, its lidless eyes piercing mine. He's so close I could touch him without moving my feet if there wasn't glass between us.

If the other vul don't know he's still alive, they didn't come to Kiel to rescue him. Unless they somehow discovered we lied about his execution. Either way, I still don't understand why they're capturing Kielans instead of killing us.

I need to somehow communicate with the Tessar and see if he can tell me anything more about the vul than what Dr. Troy learned from his observations and old war records. But I can't do it with Dr. Troy in the room, or he'll tell Commander Charlie everything.

“If you have any more questions, I'm happy to answer them,” Dr. Troy says. There's eagerness in his eyes.

He's not going to leave me alone. Not without some prodding, at least.

“Do you believe the Tessar is really a god?” I ask.

Dr. Troy chuckles. “No, I can't say I do. I've spent most of my life observing the Tessar, and I've seen him do some … strange things. But not enough to believe he's a creator of the universe.”

A memory tugs at me as the Tessar continues staring at me, his webbed feet still moving slowly in the water. He did something strange with his hands the last time I saw him. He pressed his fingertips together and they emitted a blue glow, and he let out a garbled noise that almost could've been speech. I had no idea what he was saying. But it seemed like he was trying to communicate.