Now it’s gone off track, talking about the first tribes and queendoms and kingdoms and I’m only half listening because I keep thinking, Just give me the good stuff, but I’m also surprised at how human it sounds. Not human like me . . . or maybe human like me. I’m getting confused and I think of Uncle June and all the movies I’ve seen about time travel and I wish I and Uncle June and Santos and her family and everyone on Earth could just leap into a different universe, a different timeline, one in which we weren’t invaded by orcs.
“I have a sister,” it says, and then it stops talking, like it wants me to say something.
“That’s . . . nice.”
“You belong to a family?”
“My parents passed away in a mining accident. Asteroid mining. My uncle Junior is . . .” The orc’s shoulders slump a little, and when I see its eyes I jump up because it doesn’t deserve to be sad. “You orcs should’ve left us alone. Do you know how many lives you’ve snuffed? How many you’ve ruined? Why couldn’t you just stay here? Or find some other planet? Why Earth?”
“We are all part of a greater whole, of the Vast Story. The Great Leaping was foretold many ages past, from the Time of the Beginning.”
In the dimness of the cell, the orc looks just like Uncle June, and he kind of talks like him, too, the day he told me about Mom and Dad. The day he lost his little brother. Uncle June rasped about things being meant to be and part of something bigger. I stormed to my room and kicked a hole in the closet door.
I realize it now:
The orc . . . he feels alone, too.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“I am Kaizahn.”
I take a breath and say, “I’m Mae Mitchell,” and he gives a short nod.
There’s a reason they use certain words in the military, words like eliminate and target instead of kill and person. It’s so you gain distance. It’s so you don’t waver. It’s so you don’t see your enemy close enough to see yourself.
I whisper, “What are you?”
“We are the Nokira,” he says. “The first companions of Goddess Santosa.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The next morning, everyone’s called to muster at what would be Earth eleven hundred hours. As most of our fellow UDLs crack jokes in the main hall, Santos and I sit in uneasy silence. Probably because we know about the time-travel issue with Earth and they don’t.
“At exactly nineteen hundred hours tomorrow,” says the commander, “all personnel will leave this base via transport ship. You will report to the transport at eighteen hundred hours. If you do not report, no one will come looking for you. No one will wait.”
Are we returning to Earth? Have they found the solution to the time issue? I know what the others are wondering. We’re supposed to be here for another five, six months, so they’re surprised we’re heading out already, and the whole thing about no one waiting is against code, which makes the withdrawal sound like an evacuation under duress.
A senior officer takes over, briefing us about the withdrawal, but all I can think is: if they have figured a way to get back to our own time, where does this leave me? I’m finally making progress with Kaizahn, but I need more time. Will our objectives be considered met? Can Uncle June make it to Sanctum after all?
As I raise a hand, someone asks that very question.
“That would be affirmative,” the senior officer says, but I don’t feel better. Something about his voice. Like it’s not going to matter.
“What about the orcs?” someone blurts.
“They return to Earth with us.” To remain imprisoned and interrogated.
I tell myself there’s no difference. That here or on Earth, their fate remains the same.
But I’m unconvinced.
Afterward, I pull Santos aside. “Why the rush?”
“The wormhole is closing. They’d leave tonight if they could do it safely.”
“And the fact that the only person on Earth to talk to right now is covered in fur and hanging ten from a tree branch?”
“They . . . they think going back through the wormhole might return us to our own time.”
“Might.” I cock a brow.
“I don’t trust it any more than you do, but what other option is there?”
She’s right. “Let’s just hope we don’t come out the other end to discover the continents are fused together and we’ve got meat-loving dinosaurs waiting, mouths open.”
I turn to leave but Santos grabs my arm. “The Nokira.”
“What about them?” But already guilt tugs at me from beneath my ribs. “Well, what are we supposed to do? Let them escape so they can find the others?”
Santos shakes her head. “There are no others to find.”
“What do you mean—”
“We can’t let them go back to Earth. You know they’ll be killed. And it’ll be on us. The right thing is to let them go. Tonight.” I start to say no but Santos closes her hand around mine. “Help me.”
“But I don’t want to help you to a death sentence, Santos. Myself, either.” Because that’s what we’d earn in a court-martial. “And it probably won’t work.”
“We can only try.”
A familiar sentiment. I think of Uncle June heading out to save the world one person at a time.
“Mitchell.”
It’s obvious she’s made up her mind. “Fine. But only because you’ll definitely get caught if I let you do it alone.”
But this is a half-truth. The other half is that after all that talking, it’s gotten harder to see the orc—see Kaizahn—as a target.
As an it.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
We don’t make our move until hours into Santos’ shift.
“Like I said, I’ve been talking to them,” Santos says as we creep through the main corridor of the prison. “The Nokira. For a couple of weeks, I’ve been learning about their people, their history, their various cultures.” She glances off to the corner of her eye, and I know she’s reading the time from her feed. “The guards will be waking in an hour. Maybe forty-five minutes.”
They’ll be real pleased to discover that the so-called UDL .Reg3.3 regulatory neuralnet feed update that Santos claimed was from the guys in the comms department was, in fact, a sleep-enhancement virus.
Now we’re running through the prison, unlocking the doors so that the Nokira can make their way to the south wing to escape. According to Kaizahn, they don’t need pods or anything: We need only the water.