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“Tshh,” he said, shushing me. “The mission.”
I gave him a blank stare. “Enlighten me.”
“We are here to get official recognition from Asia.”
“We—the Remnant?”
I heard his smile, though I couldn’t see it. “Yep. See? You’re a natural.”
“Recognition as what, again?”
“A sovereign nation-state of the North American Ark.”
“Isaiah. You can’t possibly be serious that I’m the one you want doing this. And are we even supposed to—”
“You rather I picked Adam? He was eager enough. Can’t trust him, though. You’re the daughter of a senator. You’ve met foreign leaders before.”
“Yeah. When I was, like, eight.”
“You know the inner workings of Central Command, and you understand the Remnant: why it exists, how we do things. And you can predict how bad it’ll be for all that if the Commander takes us over.”
“Okay, but—”
“We don’t want to go to war. We just want to be left alone. And we can’t do that unless we have independence. And the more support we get from the other Arks, this one especially, the less likely the Commander will be to blow us all up, so to speak.”
“Actually, I’m not sure that’s a figure of speech,” I frowned as he strapped my head back onto the chair. “But why this Ark especially? You heard something?”
“Let’s just say I don’t trust them, either.” He stopped fiddling with the strap long enough to fix me with his blind gaze. “Keep focused, Char. Thousands of people are depending on us for everything. They need safety. They need justice. And they need to eat. As a separate nation-state, we’ll have the authority to fight back whenever those things are taken away from us, and more importantly, we’ll be in a better position to form alliances.”
“This proves my point, Ise. I can barely remember any Chinese from middle school. They do speak Chinese, right?”
“And Hindi, officially.”
“Officially. Right.” I shook my head. “That’s not much of a plan.”
“Adam reached out weeks ago and established a backchannel. There’s a big party tonight. The Commander will be there to state his case.”
“I take it we’re not exactly on the guest list.”
There was a pause, and I pictured him tilting his head, as though weighing his answer. “We’re not not on the guest list. Adam found us a contact: an ambassador’s assistant. They’re sympathetic.”
“As far as we know,” I sighed. “I don’t like our odds.”
“’S not the first Ark we’ve boarded without an invitation. This time, we won’t even have to hide once the party starts. You gotta remember, most people don’t want a war.”
“I haven’t even read the Treaty yet. Everyone keeps referring to the pre-OPT training that I kinda missed, what with being in prison. And, Isaiah, people go to school for years to learn how to be ambassadors.”
“You think you’re the only criminal we got? No one in the Remnant went to pre-OPT training. That was kind of the point, Char. We weren’t supposed to survive the meteor. Most of them don’t even accept the Treaty as valid, seeing as it planned for them to die. We don’t have years. And we don’t have a diplomacy program. Yet.” He let out a sharp breath. “But I will build this nation-state out of what we do have. And right now, that’s you.”
I sat in silence, focusing for a moment on assisting Isaiah with his own headstrap. “This leader thing looks really good on you. You know that, right?”
“I think a lot of that is going to depend on you, Ambassador.”
“I’m not talking about the outcome. I mean they’re lucky to have you right now.”
He clucked his tongue. “They?”
“We. Maybe.” I squinted at him. “Anything you’re not telling me this time? Like, I don’t know. Something critical that I’m really going to wish I’d known earlier, or something?”
The airlock before us opened, and our little ship found a harbor.
“Oh, there’s plenty,” said Isaiah. “Now, let’s go be diplomats.”
Nine (#ulink_0f030f5e-fe45-591d-ac20-6d3abd5c09dd)
The hatch of the Arkhopper popped open easily, and we were greeted by silence.
The air was cold—too cold—and I suppressed the urge to hang onto Isaiah. As comforting as it would be, it was far better for us both to be ready.
“Should we … I don’t know. Just start running? Look for a place to hide?”
“They should be here any minute. We’ll stick around.”
I shivered. “May I suggest a new plan? Get me away from this airlock before someone flips a switch somewhere and we end up dying in space.”
“Tell me what you see. And get me out of this strap; I can’t find the buckle-thing.”
I fumbled around his wrists and legs, keeping my eyes on the hatch. If we were walking into a trap, I wanted to know as soon as possible. Not that there was anything I could do about it. “Okay, it’s dark,” I said in a low voice. “But the airlock opened on both ends of the port as soon as we docked, probably automatically. That’s the last strap—you’re free. There’s a little room on the other end. I guess we should get in there before it locks again. What’s his name? Your friend, I mean.”
“Her name. An. But I never met her. She was more friends with Adam, to be—did you hear that?”
I froze. His hand brushed my arm, beckoning me forward, and we slid through the port and into the little receiving room. We were both pretty good at sneaking anyway, but at that moment, we were like silent snakes. My metric was off, thanks to my stint in the Remnant, but it felt like we were in reduced gravity. Maybe it was lower on purpose, to help other visitors adjust to regular gravity after space.
I was still resisting clinging to him when we straightened out in the dark room and pressed the lock to seal off the Arkhopper.
“All right, your highness,” I whispered to Isaiah. “We’re here. What now?”
“They monitor everything. They know we’re here. Be patient.”
“Light?”
“If you must.”
I placed a hand over the lightpad soundlessly, then ended up pressing it a little harder than necessary when it didn’t respond. Finally, I slapped it in frustration, and the lights clicked on. My jaw dropped, then flapped shut.
We were surrounded.
Four faces popped into view, each staring openly, and I stopped breathing.
I gave in to my lesser judgment and reached for Isaiah, speaking to him in a whisper. “So, we’re—”
“Welcome, Mr. Underwood,” said the man seated directly before me. A woman stood next to him, and the room was flanked on two sides by uniformed guards. “Adam informed us of your change in plans.”
“Shan,” Isaiah said pleasantly.
He steadied his arm without forcing me off it, so that my hand was resting in the crook of his elbow. The motion was smooth, as though we’d planned it that way. Like he was escorting me to a waltz or something.
Like I wasn’t terrified.
He continued. “May I introduce Charlotte Turner, our newest ambassador. Charlotte, this is Shan Hui, Ambassador to the North American Ark.”
I cleared my throat. “Uh, they have guns pointed at us.”
Isaiah’s jaw tightened. “Ah.”
“Yep.”
There was an awkward pause while I collected my wits. Well, awkward for me. Everyone else in the room seemed perfectly comfortable, if oddly quiet. The others continued to stare at us, as though taking our measure.
“I must say, I am surprised to welcome you here in person, Mr. Underwood,” Shan said at last. “May I introduce An Zhao, my assistant?”
An bowed. “A pleasure.”
Perplexed, I imitated the motion, looking back to Isaiah for guidance. He appeared pleasantly relaxed, so no help there. I squared my shoulders and met Shan’s eye. After a moment, he stood.
“You have heard about our little reception this evening. I am pleased to inform you that the Imperial has decided that you should be allowed to state your case.”
Isaiah nodded. “Good.”
“I am afraid that, as you are here without permission, you will be detained until your appearance.”
Neither Isaiah nor I were inclined to respond to that, so Shan motioned toward the door. “If you please,” he said, and we preceded him into the hallway.
Now, our arms were positioned so that I was leading Isaiah. We couldn’t have choreographed it better.
Whatever grace I’d mustered up to that moment didn’t last long. As I passed the first guard, he grabbed me by the hips.
So I elbowed him in the chest.
“Hey!” said Isaiah.
“I’m afraid you are under arrest,” said Shan. “And while we don’t wish to restrain you, Mr. Underwood, we really must insist on searching Miss Turner.”
“No need. She has a gun. Probably a knife, too. Char, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Isaiah.
The men looked at me in silence.
I looked right back at them, but they didn’t budge, so I finally sighed and slid the gun out of the nest of wire behind my back and plunked it onto a nearby table. “All right. Fine. Here.”
Shan examined it calmly before pressing it into his robe and returning to his patient stance.
“It’s not a knife,” I said awkwardly, sticking my hand down the front of my shirt and pulling out the wire cutters. “There. Happy?”
“Certainly,” said Shan. He nodded at the guard, who produced a shiny set of silver handcuffs.
On hearing their familiar clink, Isaiah frowned.
“No,” I said. “No cuffs.”
“I really must insist,” Shan repeated. “For Miss Turner, pending our dispensation of your organization’s legal status.”
“She is a diplomat,” Isaiah said in a low voice.
“She has no official standing, Mr. Underwood, and neither do you. Furthermore, she just smuggled a gun onto our sovereign territory. Now, I’m willing to forego any reasonable security measures for yourself, but I really must in—”
“No cuffs,” I repeated, coating the room in a glare. I laid a hand on Isaiah’s arm to remind them of whom I’d showed up with, invited or not.
The two guards waited, expressionless, while the four of us wordlessly assessed the invisible power structure in the room. Shan glanced back at his assistant, whose expression barely shifted from the look of politely detached concern she’d adopted when the first guard assaulted me. Then he locked onto Isaiah, who, to my horror, didn’t seem half as outraged as I thought he should be. After all, I realized, he’d gotten what he wanted: a meeting with the Imperial. I kept right on glaring, for all the good it did me.
“Go ahead,” said Isaiah finally.
“No!” I shouted, my voice about eight steps higher than I’d intended. “Go to—”
“Remember our conversation, Charlotte?” said Isaiah. His jaw relaxed, but the tension had spread through his usually-smooth forehead.
The balance was weighed, and my vote was as consequential as a sack of feathers. Shan lifted my wrist off Isaiah’s arm with surprising gentleness and clasped the cuffs on as though they were a pair of delicate silver bracelets. I revised my glare to a slight frown. It usually hurt enough to leave a mark.
Didn’t mean I had to like him.
No one had touched Isaiah yet, which I supposed was a good sign, so I squared my shoulders as I was prodded forward through the door.
I nearly gasped at the sight before me. A bright red carpet led us out of the tiny hangar. I couldn’t help but notice the differences between my Ark and this one. In the North American Ark, only the Guardian Level could be described as decorated. Here, on the outermost edge of the Asian Ark, the path was already beautiful.
Shan stopped, expecting Isaiah to walk with him. Isaiah gave a nearly imperceptible twitch of his lower arm, signaling me to release him, and I realized I’d taken his arm yet again. As we walked, An fell into step beside me. For awhile, we walked in silence, watching the men converse, but unable to hear their words.
I began a mental catalog of everything I saw, so that I could repeat it all to Isaiah later, but I was quickly overwhelmed. The biggest immediate difference was the lighting. It was a trick of the eye, of course, but the lights appeared to be completely natural: open flames alternated with elaborately painted lanterns. The ceiling itself seemed to glow. It was white, along with the walls and the floor beneath the carpet.
The next thing I noticed was the calligraphy. On either side of the red carpet, rows of perfectly balanced symbols lined our path.
“Poetry,” said An, noticing the direction of my eyes.
“It’s beautiful,” I said honestly.
“You read Japanese?”
“I—no, not at all. But it’s very pretty.” I squinted at the symbols. The artist had pressed the brush hard, leaving the edges rough, in spite of the precisely equal weight he or she had given each word. This was a calligrapher who could easily have produced smooth edges, vanishing the mere idea of the instrument’s individual bristles, but had chosen otherwise. As I stared, I could almost feel the artist’s frustration. “It seems almost… angry.”
An rewarded my observation with another sweeping glance, landing this time at my eyes, but she didn’t comment on my thoughts directly. “Each culture has contributed literature to this path, which begins on the outer edge of the Ark and spirals continuously to the center. In many places, the inscriptions are still being created. It is the same on every level, but the words are different.” She gave me a sharp look. “We believe we have found unity in spite of our differences.”
