“I—oh. Oh fucking hell.”
“I know this must be—”
“You’re a Determinist.” My hands are shaking. My lifestone is a cold lump against my skin. “The both of you. You’re Ran Doc Min fanatics.”
“I don’t thinkfanaticsis quite—”
“I don’t give afuckwhat you think.”
Nina’s lips go tight. And it’s worse, somehow, that she doesn’t look evil or heartless. She looks hurt.
She has noright.
I try the door again, rattling it with all my strength.
“I know how sudden this must be,” Nina says over the desperate sound of the door handle, “but everything that’s happened these last ten years have all been part of the plan. Ran Doc Min aims to save lives. Once he gains enough support, he plans to use his simulation to craft the galaxy in his image. To make Romothrida better for all. With the use of FPS, he can predict the most devastating planetary events of our era and work to circumvent them. You’ve seen the power of FPS. You and your friends detected the voroxide leaking out of Mount Kilmon firsthand.”
“Yeah, but there are—wait.” I turn to stare at her. “How do you know we found the voroxide?”
“Ran Doc Min knows many things.”
“I’m starting to get sick of that line.”
“It’s the truth.”
My brain is scrambled eggs. Once again, Doc Min has unearthed information about me, specific details that no simulation should be able to predict. I feel like I’m standing over two halves of a chasm, one foot on either side: half of me looking for a way out, half trying to put the puzzle together.
Then it clicks.
“Or,” I breathe, “Ran Doc Min has been talking to Trey Morton.”
It would make sense. Morton is on the Board of Directors. We already know he’s been meddling in Legion meetings, blocking a deeperinvestigation into Bast’s death and the voroxide, while nudging the Legion to support Doc Min. Why wouldn’t he act as an informant for the Determinist movement? And yet, ifthat’strue, it digs up a dozen new questions. What information, exactly, has Morton been feeding his leader? How many other Determinists have infiltrated the Legion? What’s the goal here? What the hell are we really up against?
“Keller.” Nina briefly closes her eyes. “You need time to process this. I know that. And there is still so much I haven’t explained. But I hope you can come to understand that what happened to you was for a purpose. Leaving you at that children’s home, severing all contact—these were necessary steps on a premeditated path. I know they seem harsh, but look at where it’s brought you. You’ve become a gunner. One of the best in the galaxy. And you’ve secured a spot in the most prestigious fleet in the Legion.”
“No.” I slash a hand through the air. “You don’t get to take pride in me. Everything I’ve accomplished ismine. You had nothing to do with it.”
“Well…” She trails off, glancing at my hip where my ray gun is usually holstered. “Notnothing.”
I don’t like where this is going. “What?”
“This is what it means to have your future written, Keller. Your path was predetermined by Ran Doc Min’s simulation. We’ve known since the day you were born that you would become a gunner for the Legion.”
My heart is beating in my ears. “That’s not true.”
Her eyes are soft. How can her eyes be so soft? “Your ray gun. Those Academy recruiting pamphlets. All the things that inspired you to leave Venthros and join the Academy. Where do you think they came from?”
“I don’t know,” I croak. “The Academy sends those pamphlets to everyone. And the gun was an accident. Someone misplaced it in my room.”
“No, Keller. I put it there.”
I feel, suddenly, very strange. There’s a blank space in my head rippling outward. My ray gun. The one I’ve cherished since the very beginning. That gun was the start of everything—without it, I would never have learned to shoot.
I think about my admission into the Academy. How I was denied entry at first but pushed for my chance and was accepted without a sponsor. The first cadet ever to do so. I stare at my mother, and it’s like shingles being torn off a roof in a storm, one by one until there’s nothing left. Just an empty hole, and rain pouring through.
Was I accepted into the Academy because I was good enough, or because the Determinists decided to meddle? I graduated top of my class. I was recruited into the Sixth.Unusual, people said.Rarely happens to a rookie. Was any of that my own doing? How much has Nina Hartman been interfering with my life?
Who evenamI?
