I left the room and chased Saidan down the corridor. "Can you do it? Hack Little Sister?"
"I don't know," he said, turning to me. His cold confidence was gone, replaced with the wide, amber-eyed, doubtful look that I knew. "All we can do is try."
We walked together to what I considered our room and I tore off my clothing, leaving it in a pile as I walked to the shower. It might have been a stupid thought and a waste of time, but I wanted one more shower before the end of my life. I was relieved when Saidan joined me. He grabbed the liquid soap and rubbed it down my back as I had done for him.
"We may not make it back." Saidan's voice was calm, the only undercurrent not the fear that I would have expected, but sadness. I could understand that. He was sad at the future we would leave unfulfilled if we died. The years that we could spend at each other's side would be lost with this final act.
"I know," I said, unwilling to let on that I planned to protect Saidan no matter what. I closed my eyes as his gentle hands washed the soap away. I lathered him up and rinsed him down, and we stepped out of the shower ready to discuss business.
"So what's the plan?" I asked.
"When I was in the learning program, I hacked into the Sisters using my reading terminal in the Children's Building. It was unintentional: a basic backdoor that I had figured out while learning how to create programs. It wasn't an act of rebellion, just my natural curiosity at work. Nobody else, even the teachers, understood what I had done. I'm not even sure that the Sisters detected my intrusion."
"If they did, they would have patched the exploit, correct?" I wasn't a computer whiz-kid, I had to admit. I was competent with what I needed to know, but hackers had always exercised knowledge far superior to mine. The lines of code in a dozen programming languages that made up computer programs were alien to me. I was a layman, unable to help Saidan. The entire plan hinged on his mind and the few things he'd been able to glean from his tinkering at the Learning Building.
"If they did detect my intrusion, this plan is over before it begins." Saidan lowered his head, pulling the towel around him like a security blanket.
The size of the risk we were taking dawned on me. There were so many things that could go wrong. Even if Saidan was able to hack into Little Sister and wrest control of the nuclear launch controls from the A.I., there was no guarantee that the weapon would launch or even work correctly. The missile could backfire and detonate in the bay, killing everyone on Valeria. Or it could simply fizzle, leaving our entire plan in tatters and alerting Little Sister.
Those were chances I knew we were going to have to take. It wasn't an easy prospect, knowing that I could be the cause of an accidental genocide, but Saidan bore the risk as well. Saidan had looked at the calculations, assessed the danger, and deemed the whole thing worth a try, just as I had. The rest was up to luck. We had to hope that the robots down in the facility still continued their maintenance protocol after two hundred years on the job.
A chime indicated there was someone outside the door. Saidan walked over, towel still wrapped around him, and pressed the button for the door to slide open. A Valerian stood in the hallway, two black combat suits neatly folded in his arms. I felt a chill run down my spine as Saidan unfolded one; it was identical to the uniforms the guards wore in the Re-Education Building.
The Valerian stood impassively in the doorway. "One requests your presence as soon as you are ready for briefing."
"Understood." I nodded, and the Valerian walked away. Saidan closed the door and we examined the uniforms.
"It would be foolish to pass on these suits because of our emotions about them." Saidan held one up. "They're far more protective than the regular jumpsuits. This material could mean the difference between life and death." He handed one to me. I realized that I had no choice but to agree. I slipped it on and it felt tight, but the material created a thick barrier between me and anything that might try to harm me.
"I suppose we should go." Apprehension and doubt were growing inside me like a cancer, feeding on my strength.
Saidan must have noticed, because he grasped my arm as I walked to the door and pulled me into his embrace. His hands on my back gave me comfort and reassurance, his lips igniting the twin flames of love and desire that burned inside me. We parted and I rested my head on his shoulder, gathering strength from him as he took comfort from me.
When we stood up straight, it was as one being united in a purpose. His hand found mine and we made our way to the door as one unit: Julian and Saidan on our quest to save Valeria. How odd it felt, after all those days of hating Valeria's rigid rules and weeks of imprisonment and despair, to be contemplating saving the world. The lonely soul who had lain restlessly in his pod every night for weeks had harbored no dreams beyond surviving his stay and going back to Earth. That man was a long way away now, lost in dreams of a world he would never see again. The Julian that stood at the door was a changed man. The threads of fate had bound me to this alien planet and its destiny.
I wondered at that moment, like a man on his way to the gallows, if I had any regrets. Looking at Saidan beside me, the answer was a resounding
no
. No matter what we had suffered through and what our eventual fate might be, I couldn't say I would change the path that had brought us together. If I had the power to turn back time, I wouldn't have told Lankis that I didn't want to go to Valeria. I might have listened to him a little more closely, but I doubt much would have changed. I wondered what he might have thought to my hare-brained, half-cocked scheme to detonate a nuclear missile in the relatively unpredictable atmosphere of an alien planet—a scheme based on tests on Earth and a lot of guesswork. I suppose a man of science and goodness like him would have disapproved, but then he wasn't in the situation I was, with everything on the line.
Sometimes, it was as if Saidan could read my thoughts. His hand squeezed mine and I turned to him in the corridor.
"In Earth's history, what did humans do when backed into a corner?"
I thought about Saidan's question long and hard. "We resisted," I said. "Human history is full of skirmishes over pointless scraps of land or religion... but other times, we fought for our survival. Sometimes, we didn't even pick up weapons, but simply refused to participate in the systems that were holding people down. Just like the Valerians are doing now. But sometimes, that's not enough. Sometimes, you have to kill in order to survive, as hideous as that might be. It's not always possible for conflicting ideologies to coexist, especially if one demands the extinction of the other."
Saidan nodded. "Have you considered that perhaps the Valerians think that as well?"
"If that was true, more would have defected," I said. "They wouldn't have been afraid, cowering under Little Sister's banner for the promise of protein bars."
"Are you telling me humans are never too afraid to stand up when the price might be their own lives?"
His point struck home: a solid crack between the eyes for my romanticism of Earth's history. "Of course we are... There are plenty of people who are too afraid to risk their lives for others, and we can't really blame them. It takes extraordinary courage to overcome our instinct for self-preservation. Double agents, traitors, collaborators, those who abandoned their causes... our history is full of those, too." I stopped for a moment, a sudden thought occurring to me. "Do you think that is how we will be remembered? As traitors?"
"Only if we lose. Whatever happens today, I suspect we have earned ourselves a place in Valeria's histories, be it as heroes or villains," Saidan said. "This world may not even have enough people left to keep a record of this day once we are finished... and yet, to turn away is to condemn Valeria to a slow death under the hands of Little Sister as she sucks the last scraps of life from the ground we walk on."
"That's why we have to do it," I said. "Yet, I don't feel qualified, Saidan. I've always been taught not to interfere in the affairs of other worlds. To have an entire race's fate rest on my shoulders..."
"It rests on mine as well," Saidan said. There was a firm resolve in his eyes that I tried to draw courage from. "Perhaps we will be the villains of this tale, a cautionary warning to other worlds not to dabble in the affairs of others. But there is the chance we will succeed, and create a future where currently, there is none. Of course, it's easier to think that we could just leave Valeria as it is. A slow death seems natural, like an old person succumbing to his failing heart. The world ends quietly, and nobody holds the blame. Or we can take responsibility and try to change our fate. If we fail, we only speed up the inevitable. What do we have to lose?"
"I'm not sure I have the courage." Valerians milled past us as if nothing was wrong, but I was oblivious to them. There was just Saidan and I in that corridor, having the discussion of our lives as I wrestled with my conscience. I wasn't sure I had the strength to end a world or save it, now that it truly came down to it. I wondered how gods were supposed to deal with the massive responsibility of billions of individual wishes and prayers, hopes and dreams, lives and deaths. It seemed an impossible weight to bear for any being, mortal or immortal. I was just a mere human being, who felt tiny in that instant, a drop in the massive ocean that was the universe. I felt like a child who was a long, long way from home.
"You do have the courage." Saidan was firm in a way I'd never seen him, a being complete and resolute in his path. Whatever damage the torture had done to him seemed to have been erased as he focused on his final destiny. "You had the courage to come to this planet, even though you knew what our society was like. You had the courage to teach me what love is, even though it was forbidden."
"No, the courage was all yours," I argued. "You were the one who gave me those looks in the hallway. You were the one who sat at my table and initiated conversation. You were the one who set up those expeditions so that we could be alone. You took all the risks. I just walked along the path you laid down for me."
He fell silent, and we continued our way to the elevator. Winning our little argument didn't make me feel any better. In fact, my resolve drained away as I realized that Saidan had been the one with all the strength all along. Nothing would have happened if not for him. I would have spent my days under the Sisters' command until they took my ship and I was abandoned without an ally in the world.
Can a coward truly love? It was the foremost question on my mind. Love, to me, was an act of self-sacrifice, the act of giving something of yourself to another. One hopes to receive something in return, but the giving is the truly joyful part. I felt our equation was unbalanced. Normal lovers, even the quintet I had known, had given equally and received equally in return. Yet Saidan had given all to me and received barely anything. I knew that something had to change. Promising to give my life for his was a start, but it meant nothing if I couldn't actually protect him, if I balked at the decisive moment.
The elevator doors opened and we made our way wordlessly to the conference room, where One sat alone. I pushed my self-analysis away and focused on the task at hand as she bade us to sit down. I took a chair next to Saidan, with One on the other side of me.
"We've drawn up plans for a three-pronged approach. I will lead the team to help the Valerians in the facility, along with the doctor. The Ones from the Learning Building and Children's Building will be going into the city with you, to lead as many people underground as possible when the missile goes off. You and Saidan will take this route." She pulled out a blueprint of the Science Building and pointed out the elevator shaft that descended into tunnels below the building. "I'm going to give you the jamming device. Try to keep Little Sister in the dark for as long as possible as you make your way down. You'll have to use the stairs if she halts the elevator on you, slowing you to a crawl. Time is of the essence here. Once chaos erupts in the city and our team gets underground, we won't be able to keep our plan a secret from her for very long. If she manages to lock us out of her systems, we're doomed."
"If everything goes to plan, what then?" I asked.
"If the missile is detonated as planned, you must stay underground." She circled an empty tunnel that led off the blueprint. "I have reason to believe that all the tunnels are connected, though I have no idea of their condition after two hundred years. I will lead the Valerians towards your position. We can live in the Science Building's lowest rooms and the underground tunnels until we can emerge above ground."
My mouth felt dry at the thought of living below ground for an extended period of time. I had no idea of the capabilities of the warhead, nor how much radiation would be spread, or even the Valerians' resistance level. Tunnel living might become a way of life for the remainder of the Valerians' existence.
I swallowed heavily. It all came down to me. Everyone else had their cards on the table, but I was the only one left who hadn't placed their bet. My shaking hand closed into a fist as I thought of all my ancestors who had fought for freedom over oppression. I looked at Saidan, whose eyes were filled with hope and resolve. He needed me to step up to the plate, to summon my courage and take a stand by his side.
"Let's do this," I said.
We sorted through crates, stuffing protein bars into our backpacks along with chemical glow-sticks, so that we could see in the dark without electricity after Little Sister's demise. I tried to focus on the positive as we prepared ourselves, knowing that to entertain the thought of defeat was to invite it. We strapped weapons to our sides that would be useless after the fall, but we felt safer just knowing they were there.
Time raced along and before we knew it, all three teams were assembling above ground. Three buses stood in the near-darkness and I found myself walking away from the crowd so I could take a good look at the purple sunset. I knew it could easily be my last: if not forever, then at least for a long time. I was glad that it looked nothing like Earth's fiery sky at sunset. The calm purple spoke of peace, not the red fire of destruction. I sat down in the dust, crossing my legs and slipping into meditation to quell my nerves.