“Garan, no! NO!”
Pearl and Peony latched back on to their mother’s sides, both screaming for their father, but perhaps they were too afraid of the androids to go any closer. The androids rolled themselves back up into the hover. The doors shut. The sirens and the lights filled up the quiet suburb before fading slowly away. Adri and her daughters stayed clumped together in the snow, sobbing and clutching one another while the neighbors watched. While Cinder watched, wondering why her eyes stayed so dry—stinging dry—when dread was encompassing her like slush freezing over.
“What is happening?”
Cinder glanced down. The android had woken up and disconnected herself from the charging station and now stood before her with her sensor faintly glowing.
She’d done it. She’d fixed the android. She’d proven her worth.
But her success was drowned out by their sobs and the memory of the sirens. She couldn’t quite grasp the unfairness of it.
“They took Garan away,” she said, licking her lips. “They called him a letumosis victim.”
A series of clicks echoed inside the android’s body. “Oh, dear … not Garan.”
Cinder barely heard her. In saying the words, she realized that her brain had been downloading information for some time, but she’d been too caught up in everything to realize it. Now dozens of useless bits of information were scrolling across her vision. LETUMOSIS, ALSO CALLED THE BLUE FEVER OR THE PLAGUE, HAS CLAIMED THOUSANDS OF LIVES SINCE THE FIRST KNOWN VICTIMS OF THE DISEASE DIED IN NORTHERN AFRICA IN MAY OF 114 T.E.…Cinder read faster, scanning until she found the words that she feared, but had somehow known she would find. TO DATE, THERE HAVE BEEN NO KNOWN SURVIVORS.
Iko was speaking again and Cinder shook her head to clear it. “—can’t stand to see them cry, especially lovely Peony. Nothing makes an android feel more useless than when a human is crying.”
Finding it suddenly hard to breathe, Cinder deserted the doorway and slumped back against the inside wall, unable to listen to the sobs any longer. “You won’t have to worry about me, then. I don’t think I can cry anymore.” She hesitated. “Maybe I never could.”
“Is that so? How peculiar. Perhaps it’s a programming glitch.”
She stared down into Iko’s single sensor. “A programming glitch.”
“Sure. You have programming, don’t you?” Iko lifted a spindly arm and gestured toward Cinder’s steel prosthetic. “I have a glitch, too. Sometimes I forget that I’m not human. I don’t think that happens to most androids.”
Cinder gaped down at Iko’s smooth body, beat-up treads, three-fingered prongs, and wondered what it would be like to be stuck in such a body and not know if you were human or robot.
She raised the pad of her finger to the corner of her right eye, searching for wetness that wasn’t there.
“Right. A glitch.” She feigned a nonchalant smile, hoping the android couldn’t detect the grimace that came with it. “Maybe that’s all it is.”
The Queen’s Army
They came at the end of the long night, when the mining sector had not seen sunlight for almost two weeks. Z had crossed his twelfth birthday some months ago, and just enough time had passed that he’d stopped imagining glimpses of gold embroidery on black coats. He’d just stopped questioning every thought that flickered through his brain. He had just begun to hope that he would not be chosen.
But he was not surprised when he was awoken by a tap at the front door. It was so early that his father hadn’t left for the plant, one sector over, where he assembled engines for podships and tractors. Z stared at the dark ceiling and listened to his parents’ whisperings through the wall, then to his father’s footsteps padding past his door.
Muffled voices in the front room.
Z balled up his blanket between his fists and tried to pour all his fears into it and then release them all at once. He had to do it three times to keep from hyperventilating. He didn’t want his brother, still asleep on the other side of the room, to be afraid for him.
He had known this was inevitable.
He was at the top of his class. He was stronger than some of the men his father worked with in the plant. Still, he’d thought that maybe his instructors would overlook him. Maybe he would be skipped.
But those thoughts were always fleeting. Since he was a little boy, he had been raised to expect a visit from the queen’s thaumaturges during his twelfth year, and knew if he was deemed worthy, he would be conscripted into the new army she was building. It was a great honor to serve the crown. It would bring pride to his family and his sector.
“You should get dressed.”
He lifted his head to find his brother’s eyes shining in the darkness. So he wasn’t asleep after all.
“They’ll ask for you soon. You don’t want to make them wait.”
Not wanting his brother to think he was scared, he swung his legs out of the bed.
He met his mother in the hallway. Her cropped hair was sticking up on one side and she had pulled on a cotton dress, though the static of her slip had it clinging around her left thigh. She paused from adjusting the material, and, for one crushing second, he saw the despair that she’d always hidden when they talked about the soldier conscription. Then it was gone and she was licking her fingers and desperately trying to smooth down Z’s unkempt hair. He flinched, but didn’t fidget or complain, until his father appeared beside them.
“Ze’ev.” His voice was thick with an emotion that Z didn’t recognize. “Don’t be afraid.”
His father took his hand and guided him to the front of the house where not one but two thaumaturges were waiting for him. They both wore the traditional uniform of the queen’s court—high-collared coats that swept down to their thighs with wide, elaborately embroidered sleeves. However, the woman wore black, denoting a third-level thaumaturge, while the man wore red. Second level. Z didn’t think there were more than a dozen second-level thaumaturges on all of Luna, and now one was standing in his house.
He couldn’t help picturing his home as it must look through the eyes of such high officials. The front room was large enough for only a worn sofa and a rocking chair, and his mom kept a vase of dusty faux flowers on the side table. If they’d bothered to look through the second doorway, they would have seen a sink piled with dishes where flies were buzzing, because his mother had been too tired to clean last night and Ran and Z had decided to play kicks with the other sector kids rather than do their chores. He regretted that now.
“Ze’ev Kesley?” said the man, the second level.
He nodded, clutching his father’s hand and using all his will not to duck behind him.
“I am pleased to inform you that we have reviewed your aptitude tests and chosen you to receive the physical modifications and training in order to become one of the great soldiers of Her Majesty’s army. Your enrollment is effective immediately. There is no need to pack any belongings—you will be provided with all that you need. As it is expected that henceforth you will have no more contact with your biological family, you may now say your good-byes.”
His mother sucked in a breath behind him. Z didn’t realize he was shaking until his father turned and grasped him by both shoulders.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said again. A faint smile flickered, then disappeared. “Do what they ask, and make us proud. This is a great honor.”