“What do you mean?” How many injections were there? I’d only passed over one kind to the rebel leaders. Were they missing something?
“The one that makes you forget,” Sanaa answered. “Wiped clean, only knowing what the Overseer says.”
I stared at her in horror. “He’s rebooting people?” The living room blurred around me. “Oh no! What’s in that serum I passed off?”
“Don’t worry, Daraja. The final injection is a separate thing. They’ll end up like Merrick. It’s okay.”
“You’re sure?” I choked out.
“Yes. He’s still him, just enhanced. He was undoubtably sexy and quiet before, but now he can rip a metal spaceship apart with his bare hands and use it for a shield.” Her smile turned almost dreamy. “I wish I’d seen that.”
A little breath burst from me. I had two super soldiers aboard the Endeavor. If they had wild sex, would it…throw us off course or something?
I coughed and glanced around the apartment. “So, where’s this info my uncle might’ve left us?” There had to be a safe somewhere. And it looked as if there were some rooms off a hallway. Bedrooms, no doubt.
It struck me again how the place seemed stocked with everything a family could need to live here; it just didn’t look like anyone did.
“What’s that?” I asked, a small metallic square snagging my eye before Sanaa could answer my previous question. Curious, I moved toward the picture frame on the kitchen island. It was facing away from the living room, so that someone at the sink might see it.
I turned it, and everything in me stopped. It was a picture of Mom, me, and Uncle Nate. I was…six maybe? I was on his shoulders, and Mom looked up at me, smiling. He looked at her, smiling also, his hands up to hold mine just above his head.
The sudden rush of blood in my veins threw me off-balance. My heart pounding, I set down the picture, suddenly on a vital mission to inspect every single inch of this place. I couldn’t articulate why, exactly, but I knew I had to—and that what I found might change everything.
Breathing harder than usual, I entered the first room along the hallway.
A large bed, definitely for two people. Nice colors. Good light. A closet. A dresser with a framed photo on it. A rather feminine writing desk and chair. On the desk, still in the store packaging, sat a sketchpad and set of drawing pencils. Everything about the room screamed A couple belongs here, not a bachelor general.
I picked up the photo, seeing Mom when she was younger. Probably a late teen and well before she married the Overseer. Her smile was radiant. I’d never seen her smile like that. It almost hurt to look at.
I put down the picture, a tremble in my fingers. The truth was starting to weave itself into my consciousness, but I wanted more proof before I let myself believe.
I ignored the bathroom off the master suite and opened the closet. It was huge, a walk-in, but not very full. I recognized some of Mom’s clothing and reached out to touch a red dress she’d kept from before her marriage but had never worn again, as far as I knew. I bent and sniffed the dress on impulse. The fabric didn’t hold her scent. It didn’t smell like anything. Or maybe I didn’t remember what she smelled like to begin with.
I closed the closet door and left the master bedroom, continuing down the hallway in a sort of trance. Sanaa walked behind me, keeping a slight distance. The next door I opened revealed a large playroom. Toys. A hopscotch rug. A rocking horse. Books and games. I shut the door with a clack.
I opened the final door along the hallway, shaking hard now. This was my room, wasn’t it?
I stepped inside and had no doubt. Color everywhere. Pale-pink walls, bright-raspberry bed, a mound of pillows in every shade of the rainbow piled high against the headboard. A stuffed-animal monkey sat perched on top of the pillows, and I almost lost it. At the last second, I trapped the sob in my throat.
Blinking a hot sheen of tears from my eyes, I went and looked at the picture on the bookshelf. Mom held an infant. Me—I was her only kid. I was fast asleep, a happy little blob in her arms, having no idea what life was really like. The white blanket wrapped around me in the photograph now lay carefully folded at the foot of the bed. I dragged down a hiccupping breath.
Sanaa ducked out of the doorway, saying, “I’ll go check the safe.”
And then I was alone in this little girl’s bedroom, with the life I might have had staring me in the face.
Oddly, the most pounding thought in my head was that I had to tell Shade and Jax. I wished they’d come with me after all. I wanted Shade’s warm hand on my back.
I swallowed hard as my gaze landed on the bedside table and the lamp with constellations printed across the shade. Lit up at night, it would throw stars across the bedroom. Another framed photograph sat next to it, angled toward the bed. Stiffly, I sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the picture while I realigned my life.
Nathaniel Bridgebane held me on his lap as he pointed to illustrations of what looked like old Earth animals in a big glossy-paged book. I wasn’t paying attention at all and chewed on a finger while I played with my foot. I was a good judge of age after growing up in an orphanage and knew I was about five months old in that shot.
It was just a flat, 2-D image, but it told a story with almost more depth than I could handle. That was what a father looked like.
Tears welled up. I opened the bedside table drawer. A fake ID—what would have been my fake ID—stared up at me, the picture of myself at age eight hitting me like a Red Beam’s crimson shock. The small document had a Sector 10 citizen matriculation number on it, as if I’d been born here when I hadn’t. My hair color wasn’t right, which was the only effort at disguising me. It was a dark red that made my freckles stand out. My blue eyes still blazed like beacons in my head.
Margaret Suzanna Walker. The birth date wasn’t mine. It was about five months early.
A tarnished silver bracelet for a small wrist circled the Sector 10 ID card. The drawer was otherwise empty apart from a box of red hair dye.
Natural pigments. Two universal months without fading. Safe for children and adults.
I didn’t move for a long time. Everything just sort of stopped as an alternate life filled my glazed-over vision and my aching soul reached for it, even though it was far too late for any of the careful things that had been planned here. Eventually, I picked up the silver bracelet. The name Maggie scrawled across the top in an engraved script with pretty swirls and dips. My heart jerked sideways. I put the bracelet back and closed the drawer, my lips pressed flat. If I could keep the worst of the tears in, I might not shatter from the inside out.
Sanaa appeared again in the doorway. She carried a bag in her hand.
I met her cautious gaze with watery eyes. “Nathaniel Bridgebane is my father.”