The Search for Sam (2 page)

“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.

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.

As I get dressed, I notice that One is nowhere to be seen. She’s usually up before
I am, hanging around. I figure she’s sulking from our fight in the jungle.

That, or she’s just disappeared for a while. She does that sometimes. Once I asked
her about it. “Where do you go when you’re not here?” She gave me a cryptic look.
“Nowhere” was all she said.

We step outside to begin our chores, only to find a light rain is starting. It’s good
for the village, but it means the water project will be suspended for the day: the
soil is too difficult to work with when it’s raining. So after our chores, me, Marco,
and Elswit are free to loaf around, and to read or write letters.

I ask Elswit if I can have an hour with his computer. He’s quick to say yes. Elswit
might be a spoiled prince, but he’s a generous one.

I take the laptop to the hut and begin poking around on news sites. When I get time
with Elswit’s laptop, I always research possible Loric or Mogadorian activities. I
may have removed myself from the battle, but I’m still curious about the fate of the
Garde.

It’s a slow news day. I double-check to make sure that I’m alone, then open up a program
I’ve created and installed on Elswit’s laptop. I’ve hacked into the wireless signals
from Ashwood Estates, my former home, and created a shadow directory that caches Ashwood
IM and email chatter.

I wish I could claim I was motivated by some heroic agenda. But the truth is my motive
is so pathetic I’d rather die than discuss it with One: I just want to find out if
my family misses me.

My family. They think I’m dead. The truth is, they’re probably happy about it.

I spent most of my life on earth in a gated community in Virginia called Ashwood Estates,
where trueborn Mogadorians live in normal suburban houses, wearing normal American
clothes, living under normal American names, hiding in plain sight. But below the
granite countertops and walk-in closets and faux-marble flooring, unseen by the mortals
of earth, spreads a massive network of laboratories and training facilities where
trueborns and vatborn Mogs work and plot together to bring about the destruction and
subjugation of the entire universe.

As the son of the legendary Mogadorian warrior Andrakkus Sutekh, I was expected to
be a faithful soldier in this shadowy war. I was enlisted as a subject in an experiment
to extract the memories of the first fallen Loric, the girl known as One. The plan
was to use the information from those memories against her people, to help us track
and exterminate the rest of her kind.

The mind-transfer experiment worked only too well: I spent three years in a coma,
locked inside the memories of the dead Loric, living through her happiest and most
painful moments as if they were my own.

Eventually I woke from the coma. But I came back to my Mogadorian life different,
with an abiding distaste for bloodshed, a queasy but consuming sympathy for the hunted
Loric, and with the ghost of One as my constant companion.

In the first of my betrayals, I lied to my people, claiming the experiment had failed
and that I had no memory of my encounter with One’s consciousness. I tried to change
back, to be a normal, bloodthirsty Mogadorian. But with One always around me, whether
as a voice in my head or a vision at my side, it became impossible to assist my people
in their attacks on the Loric.

As if led by some inexorable force, I became a traitor, working against my people’s
efforts. I attempted to save the third Loric marked for death.

This Loric died anyway, gleefully murdered by my father right before my eyes. Despite
my pathetic efforts, I failed to save him. Exposed as a traitor, I was thrown from
a ravine by Ivanick, and left for dead.

In all of my electronic snooping, I haven’t been able to pinpoint any communication
from my family. Maybe that’s a good thing. Something tells me that it would probably
just hurt my feelings.

Obviously all official communication from the underground Mogadorian facilities are
firewalled well beyond my ability to hack, but the Ashwood Estates signals weren’t
too difficult to break into. One chink in the Mogadorian armor is their expectation
of total obedience. But as a former suburban Mog kid I know that Mogadorian teenagers
often flout their parents’ rules and use the aboveground wireless to talk about things
they’re not technically supposed to.

Not that they’re
that
loose lipped. The cache I’ve created is mostly filled with tedious emails and chats
that have nothing to do with Mogadorian secrets. But the last time I logged on, I
did manage to decrypt the IM chatter of a particularly bigmouthed trueborn Mog, Arsis.
Apparently, this Arsis kid was demoted from combat training to a job working as an
assistant technician in the labs. Arsis is so eager for information about combat ops
that all he does is whine and blab to some friend from his former unit about everything
he sees and does in the lab, all in the hopes that his friend will reciprocate.

So far his friend has been mum, but I’ve managed to learn a good deal about what’s
going on below Ashwood.

    
Arsis: It’s so borrrring. Another hole day guarding the door to Dr. Zakos lab. Apperently
they’ve got humans in their plugged into machines. I dont know if they are being tortured
or what, cuz Im not even allowed inside …

Whatever sympathy I feel for Arsis is obliterated by his atrocious spelling and grammar.
It’s worse than Ivan’s. I didn’t think such a thing was even possible.

Farther down in the transcript, I discover another detail.

    
Arsis:… there’s only one left, and I guess he’s not even awake, just plugged into
machines that drege their brains for info. Doctor Zakos thinks tech will imrpove in
the next few years and they will get decent intel from their brains. Whatever. It’s
been a hole week and all I get to do is clean the lab equipment.

I’ve never even heard of Dr. Zakos. I wonder if he is Dr. Anu’s successor. I wonder
if there’s some connection between this “dreging” they are doing to the captive humans
and the technology they used to hook me into One’s memories. I wonder—

“What you doing?”

Startled, I realize that One has curled up beside me on the bed, a cheshire grin on
her face. As nonchalantly as I can manage, I click out of my program and close the
laptop.

Her grin curls into a frown. “Keeping secrets now, are we?”

“We share a brain,” I say. “It’s not like I can hide anything from you, even if I
want to.”

She’s quiet for a moment, no doubt processing everything I’ve just learned from my
snooping.

“Answer me this,” she says.

I put my hands up. Shoot.

“If you’re so determined not to get involved, why bother digging around at all?”

It’s a good question, but I brush it off.

“Just because I’m curious doesn’t mean I can do anything.” I pick up the laptop and
get off the bed. “I have to get this back to Elswit.”

I pause in the doorway. One has a pensive, inscrutable look on her face. The only
thing I can read is her continued disappointment in me.

“Sorry, One,” I say, turning to go. “My answer’s still no.”

The rain finally stops in the middle of the night, so the following morning after
chores, Marco, Elswit, and I head back into the village on the jeep and resume our
work on the well. It’s muddy, which slows us down and complicates our work. As a result,
I’m so involved in my job I don’t even notice One’s absence until I’m halfway done
with the day.

I don’t have her usual chatter to help pass the rest of the time, but I’m kind of
relieved she’s not around. I’m still haunted by the disappointed look on her face
yesterday, and I could use a little time off from her judgment.

After work, me and Elswit make a yam mash for dinner, and then join a few of the other
workers for a game of cards in the recreation tent. Around ten, I return to the hut.
Marco’s already under the covers, asleep. I undress quietly and slip into my bed,
conscious of One’s continued absence. It’s unlike her to disappear for so long.

I scan the room, looking to see if she’s tucked into some corner, hiding, but she’s
nowhere to be seen.

“One?” I whisper, as quietly as I can. “You there?”

No answer.

“Come on, One.” A little louder this time.

“
Dude
.” It’s Marco. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Hearing Marco say “dude” with his funny Italian accent is usually a highlight of my
time at the camp. But getting caught talking to my invisible friend, I’m mortified.

“Sorry, man,” I say, blushing, annoyed with One for making me raise my voice.

I still expect to see her emerge from a doorway or closet any minute, laughing at
me for getting busted talking to “myself.”

But she’s nowhere to be seen.

I try to sleep, tossing and turning as the room fills up with the other aid-workers,
one by one. But sleep doesn’t come.

For all of One’s comings and goings I’ve never gone a whole day without seeing her—not
since those three years I spent plugged into her memories. She’s just always been
there.

Eventually I give up trying to sleep. I half dress, put on my sandals, and shuffle
out to the compound’s backyard. It’s surprisingly cold and I clutch my arms to my
chest for warmth. It’s dark outside, barely illuminated by moonlight and the dim lamp
next to the latrine, and it takes me a minute for my eyes to adjust.

That’s when I see her, a faint outline crouched beside the baobab tree at the center
of the yard.

I approach slowly. “One?”

She looks up at me. I can’t tell if it’s a trick of the moonlight, but there’s something
strange about the way she looks: it’s like she’s both luminescent and too dark to
see.