“Keller,” Nina says from somewhere to my left. “I’d really hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
I spin around and think,No.
A band of armed thugs emerge, and we’re surrounded.
37
We’ve been tricked.
My gut seems to understand this before my mind does. I feel queasy as I stare at my mother there in the middle of the cargo hold, dressed in the Determinist colors gray and yellow, her face streaked with dirt, hair out of place. Professor Trey Morton stands to her right, looking nervous and uptight in a rumpled plaid suit.
Around us, the roguish thugs tighten their circle. I don’t know how many there are. Twenty? Thirty? They look nothing like the uniformed soldiers from The Parallax, probably because thereareno more uniformed soldiers from The Parallax. Instead, these men (and one woman) are greasy, dressed in mismatched armor, and carrying an array of weapons that makes me wonder if the Determinists didn’t hire them right off the street.
“It’s you,” Lament says. He’s never seen Nina before, but it’s not hard to guess who she is. We have the same brown hair, the same broad nose and shoulders.
“I had so much hope for you,” Nina tells me. She has tears in her eyes, which makes me unaccountably furious. Like, who is she crying for? She literally tricked us onto this ship and then ambushed us with an army ofrogue gangsters. How did she think this was going to end? “I wanted you to join me. I wanted us to be a family again—”
“I really don’t care.” I need her to shut up. My heart is going a mile a minute as I glance at the thugs, cataloguing their weapons, their positions. The room’s single door hangs open, but given our odds of escaping unscathed, it might as well be nailed shut. “Where is it?” I demand, hand on my ray gun. “Where’s the neutralizer?”
“Not here.” Nina wipes her eyes on the back of her wrist. “After you destroyed the BlackWing, we were in a dangerous position. You saw his laboratory. You escaped with your old Master, who undoubtably revealed the rest of our secrets. Ran suspected you might try to infiltrate this A-Line like you infiltrated The Parallax, so he changed the plan.”
“And you’re okay with this?” I ask. “You’re okay with tricking millions of people into pledging their lives to your leader and just murdering anyone who doesn’t?”
“I believe in Determinism,” Nina says. “I believe our movement has the power to change this galaxy. But being a Determinist has never been easy. The Legion mistrusts us. Oh, they’ve allowed us to practice, but only within the bounds they set. They uphold the law, but they alsomakeit. And our movement suffers as a result.”
“Your movement is alie.”
“Just because FPS isn’t real yet,” comes the voice of Ran Doc Min, “doesn’t mean it never will be.”
We all spin to see the man himself striding into the room. Ran Doc Min is still in that absurd cape, his expression supervillain evil, his hair done up with so much gel it looks like it might crack. To my right, I can feel Lament brace. Behind me, Vera lets out a small breath; Jester and Youvu Hum shift on their feet.
“Nice slogan,” I drawl. “Not real yet, but maybe one day!”
“Laugh all you want,” Doc Min returns. “I stand by my beliefs.”
“Does this mean you’re still going to destroy the galaxy?”
“I am not going todestroyit. Once again, you have not been listening. I have a vision.” Doc Min’s face smooths, his eyes going glassy. I can practicallyfeela monologue coming. “For too long, the Legion has held total sway over Romothrida and its inhabitants. I believe our galaxy is ready to usher in a new era. One united under a single basic principle…”
He keeps talking, but over his shoulder, I’m distracted by movement just beyond the open doorway. A flash of red hair. The swing of a ponytail.
“You arestillnot listening,” Doc Min snaps.
I jerk my eyes back to him, heart fluttering. “I’m listening fine.”
“You insist on misunderstanding our aims.”
“Not much to misunderstand about genocide.”
“It is notgenocide. As I have made clear…” He returns to his monologue, but I’m back to watching Avi through the corner of my eye. She pokes her tongue between her teeth as she drags a full-size mortar into the doorway (not one for subtlety, Avi) and gets it into position, securing the baseplate and producing a projectile missile the size of her forearm. Toph appears behind her, meeting my eye through the doorframe. He flashes his fingers:fifteen seconds.
Slowly—as slowly as we possibly can—Jester, Vera, Lament, Youvu Hum, and I start to inch backward.
“—and today is just the start,” Doc Min is saying, really getting into his speech now. Nina’s eyes are glued to him, as if he’s the center of her universe. Trey, too, has lost some of his anxious energy and is gazing at his leader along with the rest of the thugs. “You had a chance to join us, Keller. It should have been a great privilege. But you declined.”
Avi finishes lining up her shot. Even from here, I can tell the angle isn’t perfect, but it’ll do the job. She holds the torpedo-shaped bomb over the mortar’s barrel and watches Toph’s countdown.Six, five, four…
“That is your choice,” Ran Doc Min says, oblivious to the scene playing out behind him, “and as with all choices, you must bear the consequences.”
