CHAPTER THREE

2114 CE

The top brass at Sigma would give our laboratory one last chance. The Reed Incident had been mostly kept from the limelight but Cullin’s research now lived on the razor’s edge. There would be one more genome set experiment–the Recovery-Rate test with Julian as the subject. 

This was what the Keepers wanted as well, despite the obvious risks. 

Subject Nassar’s true potential must be measured. 

Follow through on the project. Observe and report.

In the months that had passed between the Reed Incident and now, Julian and I had grown immeasurably closer. A part of me still wondered if he questioned the events of that day, but his behavior projected his complete and total faith. It terrified me but it was intoxicating. Was it because he honored me with this trust? Or because I knew it meant I would always have the upper hand? I tried not to think about it. I just let my love grow. 

I had spoken the word aloud one night, as we lay entwined in the cramped quarters of my apartment. Julian had nearly been asleep. Maybe that’s why I said it–whispered it really. To myself, more than anything. But Julian heard me, opened his eyes, and kissed my forehead as he told me the same. “I love you too.” 

I’d always heard that love was a pleasant thing. I did not find it so. It was a tortuous layer to a life I quickly realized was already greatly overburdened. Each small lie I told to uphold my mission, especially the ones told to Julian, was another stone placed upon my back. 

It was in such a breathless state that I laid the night before the final genome test. Julian’s test. As was ritual to us by then, he laid by my side. 

“Why did you agree to this?” 

Neither of us moved to look each other in the eye. We both stared at the ceiling. Finally, he sighed. “A little late to be asking that.” 

“I’m serious. The first time I called you and asked you to be part of Clive’s study…you didn’t hesitate. You didn’t even know the extent of the testing it would require.” 

“Maybe it was because I wanted to impress you.”

I gave a skeptical look, not trying to banter. 

“Fine,” he relented. “But you already know. I agreed because for as long as I can remember…maybe it was a story my father put in my head, or maybe it’s just who I am. But I’ve thought my life was given to me for a purpose. And ever since, I’ve been seeking that purpose. I don’t expect to know it until it arises. But…I’ll know it when I see it.” He took me in his arms and held me close. “And now I believe that you’ll be at my side when it does.” 

It was a night I never wanted to end, made up of nothing but small tenderness and quiet connection. It felt even more peaceful than what I could achieve in meditation. Because yes, I wasn’t alone. 

Somewhere in the night, Julian and I made a plan. At first light, we dressed and went to one of the chapels scattered across Sigma Central. Non-denominational and plain, but there was an ordained official on staff, twenty-four seven. I guess that love, or its product, was technically another one of Sigma’s projects. 

We were married, with no other witness but each other. I hoped that Marilyn wouldn’t be upset. I knew her own bond with Cullin was deeply strained by the pressure they faced over this final test. But there was a possibility that failure would mean something much larger for me now–the loss of my husband. 

Julian and I split off from one another before we reached the Sigma Mu checkpoint so that we would enter separately. I’m not sure why we felt the need to keep everything about our love hidden. It was probably me, wasn’t it? I feared the loss of control over others’ perception of me. I wanted that all to change. Suddenly, I wanted everything to be different. 

My wish was granted. The RRG trial returned anti-climactic and unimpressive results, though at least they weren’t deadly this time. Julian displayed a hint of an enhanced healing rate and did seem flushed with a vitality that he had lacked since the disaster with Reed. I knew a heavy guilt plagued him over the loss of his junior lieutenant Jacobs and those who had died in the weapons lab. It was his guilt, I decided upon reflection, that spared us from having to discuss the subject of that day at all. 

Despite Marilyn’s best efforts, Cullin’s Sigma 3 project was officially shuttered. I had expected that. What came as a surprise was the Keepers’ response to the test’s failure. Suddenly, all outsized interest in Subject Nassar was dropped. I was informed that I would receive a new placement in due time. Clearly Julian had not lived up to some benchmark they sought–and irrationally or not, this enraged me. 

After all, what did they really know about him? My reports had outlined his life, but I had never captured his character in mere words. While the Keepers judged him otherwise, I had all the evidence I needed on the man. I was finished living a lie. 

Or that’s what I tell myself now. Truthfully, it was going to come out soon whether I liked it or not. Two months after Julian’s test and the closure of our program, I learned I was pregnant. I sat in my shoebox bathroom, the toilet practically inside the shower, my legs pinned up against the walls around me. A coffin of porcelain and fiberglass. I’m not ready for this, I thought as tears unwillingly rolled. 

But then a laugh escaped my throat, hoarse but joyous. I thought about telling Julian. I thought about how happy he would be. 

“You thought you were so sly,” Marilyn teased me. She tidied my apartment, as she always did without my asking her. Unconscious reflex, I saw it, from living with a man as disordered and chaotic as Clive Cullin. 

“I’m really not that messy,” I scolded. 

“Don’t change the subject. You’re married to him already, and you didn’t even invite me.” 

I knew she was joking but Marilyn was hurt. Already wounded from the failure of Sigma 3, all of her carefully built visions of her life were threatening total collapse. I wanted to reach out and cement her into place, reminding her that she was far from finished–but I didn’t. Looking back, it was selfishness. I thought that I would always have more time with her. 

“It’s not just that…Marilyn, I’m pregnant.” 

That’s why I called her over, just minutes after taking the test. I wanted to do this, but procreation could be fraught during the Brink. On top of that, this would necessitate finally admitting the full truth to the Keepers–that I had fallen for my subject. That I had married him. I gripped my Velari pendant but it brought me no serenity or focus. I needed my friend. 

I realized she was on the edge of crying. “You…you are. Lilla…that’s wonderful.” Another thing I had selfishly ignored was Marilyn’s own desire for children–and her belief that Cullin lacked such a desire. She had told me many times but I never internalized it as something close to her heart. That my own revelation to her, supposed to be a moment of happiness, would lash at that tender part of her. Clearly, friendship was not my specialty. 

I stumbled over my own response. “But…do you see the world getting any better? Despite all our efforts. I…I can’t get his face out of my head…Reed. He saw beyond us here. He believed that Sigma was pushing us toward the end of all things. Not saving us.”

“He went insane,” Marilyn said, firm in her belief. She put on this strong front to protect Cullin’s ego and heart, but she invested herself so fully in it that her conviction was pure. “No one can predict the future. But we can make educated guesses–and hope. That’s what this child could be for you. And Julian.” There was nothing that held any of us to Sigma Central anymore. I think we all questioned our place in the universe in our own ways. “We need to teach the next generation to be stewards. Explorers. And to not give in to despair. Lilla, your child…she is the future. There’s nothing more important.” 

Her words illuminated to me a new path. It’s awful to admit this, but it wasn’t due to her idealism. Not necessarily. For whatever reasons they had, the Keepers sought a bloodline. Despite the failure of the RRG test, Julian’s blood still meant something to them. Now it had mingled with my own. Our genetics, bound. And perhaps with that, a way to reveal to the Keepers what I had done. A way to preserve my mission–and stay with Julian at the same time.

It took me hours to compose even the barest message after Marilyn left.

An important development that I have not yet reported.

I am pregnant with Subject Nassar’s child.

I left it encoded on my transmitter, unable to work up the courage to take it any further. I had obscured so much of the truth from them that to be so indelicate felt wrong. But what other words were there? Like Reed told me: the truth. That’s what the world needed more of. Yet before I potentially blew up my life, I decided to see Julian first. 

It was the biggest smile I’d ever seen. The way Julian radiated happiness made me question my own. It was there, of course, but it was deep. Buried. I suppose like everything else. I could only access them in the abstract. Or through Julian, and his joy, and the way his arms wrapped around me. 

“We might not be able to stay at Central,” I said. 

“Forget Central!” Julian loved his job. He had wanted it so badly, but at my hesitant suggestion he opened his palm and let that dream fly away. “A kid shouldn’t be raised around all this…steel and chrome. I want you to have fresh air as soon as you can. He, or she…they breathe what we breathe. Eat what we eat. So let’s go. Wherever you want to go. Somewhere green.”

I placed my hands on his shoulders to slow his racing mind. “I didn’t mean now – ”

“Why not? Technically, you’re unemployed. I’m a disgrace – ”

There it was, in hiding. The past he wanted to leave behind. “You’re not a disgrace.” 

“I’m well on my way.” Julian broke his gaze with me. “Just…forget I said that. That’s not the important thing here. I don’t need this job. I don’t need Sigma.” 

I took his face in my hands and turned him back to me. “What about our shared purpose?”

“This is it. This is our purpose, Lilla. This is everything.” 

So our decision was made. Late that night, with Julian asleep by my side, I snuck my transmitter from its safe and finished my message. 

An important development that I have not yet reported.

I am pregnant with Subject Nassar’s child.

I will carry the child to term. 

I want to be a mother. 

I understand if this breaks our contract.

But I will raise my child with the same drive that has committed me to the Keepers cause for so long. She is more valuable to the future than any new position.

I accept whatever decision you make toward me on this matter.

But you will not change my mind.

Thank you. For everything. For putting me on the path to my purpose.

Because I’ve found it.

We named her Amara. From Julian’s Spanish side, to love. And from Greek, one of my favorite languages to study at the HAST, unfading. Julian and I would raise her within such enduring love. 

Or so had been our ideals at the time. We bid a tearful farewell to Cullin and Marilyn, and left Sigma Central behind, ending up in western Idaho and the forests that blanketed our smaller world there. It was a part of the Federation with an independent streak, with few Sigma installations and fewer lovers of the Initiative at all. It wasn’t hostile to the effort, but dedicated to a different vision of the future. Smaller, decentralized. I couldn’t tell if it was a bunch of people sticking their head in the ground or a collective of enlightened granola Buddhas. 

Julian headed up security for an upstart pharmaceutical cooperative, a fulcrum of the local economy that provided local jobs and a non-pollutive industrial base that kept us well enough connected with the rest of the Federation. It was also a sleepy job, as few opposed the mission of the cooperative and, in fact, most depended on it. They loved Julian, a handsome hero who seemed drawn from another era. 

To me, he seemed more like a tamed animal. Not that I ever expressed this to him. I didn’t stand in judgment either. This wasn’t his environment, not as a soldier. He wanted so desperately to make the transition from fighter to father, but whenever he looked at how helpless Amara was, he was overcome by the same feeling. War was nothing compared to staring down his daughter and all that he already felt he owed to her. I wanted to reach out and tell him I felt the same. That I still saw him the same way I always had. 

But I never did. I figured he must know it in his heart, but now…I’m not certain. Amara’s first year of life was when Julian and I first began to lose touch with one another–a passive slide, a melting down, like the ice caps that had unleashed the virus that stole my best friend away from this world.

Looking back, my own judgment at the time wasn’t in great shape. Six months after Julian and I had left Central, Marilyn was exposed to an unknown infection and entered a coma. Julian was never able to even properly reach Cullin after the fact, and her visitations were strictly limited and monitored due to the high risk factor of the virus and her own precarious hold upon life. Amara was born a month after we received the news about Marilyn. My dream of returning with her to Central to visit my friend, to thank Marilyn for what she had done to convince me to pursue this path…just another dream to forget. 

While I wore the pendant when I gave birth, once we returned from the hospital I packed away that reminder of the Code. I stopped meditating. My actions during the course of the Reed Incident replayed in my mind as I stalked around the house at midnight rocking my bawling child in my arms. Was my higher power, my guiding force, actually my cherished Code? Or had I given all of myself to the faceless Keepers? Or…did I only serve myself? My own needs, deep and endless and unexamined as they had become. 

I feared that these negative emotions were going to be passed down to our child. How could she not pick up on the energy deficits of her parents? Whenever Julian was at work, I was home with Amara, fretting, learning, trying to be her mother. Yet the darkest cloud of them all hung over me. 

I never once received another message from the Keepers after I told them about Amara. 

Perhaps I should have expected as much. Maybe it had always been a resignation and I didn’t want to admit it. 

Or was it something else? 

I thought back to the HAST. To Scotty, the boy chosen for his blood. The one the Keepers had wanted. And that had always been in my message to them, wasn’t it? The thought that I was still committed to my mission because it was Julian I had married. Julian’s child I carried. Beyond any other position that my handlers might find for me within Sigma…

That it was Amara who might interest the Keepers most of all. So when I looked at my daughter, I could not see her as just my child. She was born to a bloodline. She was born with a target on her back and I had knowingly inscribed it upon her. 

One night Julian got home from work, already drained from wearing a false face all day, and found Amara wailing in her crib. 

“Lilla? Where the hell are you?!” 

His search grew frantic but as he went from room to room I couldn’t be found. He finally stumbled out into the backyard, halfway mindless from panic, only to spot me beneath the large maple tree. Legs crossed. Eyes closed. My hand grasped around my pendant. I had come out here, where my transmitter was hidden in the earth, to send another desperate message to the Keepers but I had stopped myself. Yet I suppose my meditation had taken me too deep. 

I barely remember opening my eyes and seeing his fury. I was still so far away from this life I thought I had so deeply desired. The one that now felt like a trap that I had sprung myself. That it had always been an emotional disaster just waiting to unfold. 

And there was nothing I could say to Julian about the depth of it. He took it as postpartum depression. Surely the hormonal chaos did not help. But no. I could never tell him the true despair and fear that welled in my heart over this perfect being we had made. I could not admit that my selfish desire for a family with him had overrun what I knew about the world. 

My world, still invisible to him. 

I also don’t recall his harsh words that evening. Only the red leaf that cascaded down upon the wind to land in my lap. The red of that spotlight upon Reed and his dark prophecy. The red of the blood I spilled to bring Amara into this world. The red fury that I had left festering within me since childhood. 

I gently picked it up by the stem and then the wind took it again. Julian stood stock still. Speechless. We never talked about that day again, but from that point forward, Julian always came home an hour earlier to ensure Amara was fed on time and watched over. 

But then came the call. 

Julian lit up when he picked up the phone and heard that voice—Barclay, his oldest friend. After he hung up, he related it to me in detail, careful to contain his excitement though it was so obvious to me nonetheless. 

“A new program, undisclosed. Sigma 6. But it’s not genetics. And it’s not at Central.” 

I picked at the battered salad I had tried to whip up that night. Amara sat in her high chair next to me, giggling at thoughts I could not even guess at. I cursed myself that it didn’t make me happy. All I could think was how happiness would be so far away from her should the Keepers come calling. 

“Lilla, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sorry…where is it?”

“The Amazon. Can you believe it? Barclay’s already down there setting up a dig site.” 

“Archaeological?” 

Julian’s brow furrowed. “He…wouldn’t say exactly. But Clive’s leading it. They have backing from that billionaire, Preston Swift. Apparently the program’s already had some success at other sites in Canada and Mexico, but this…this is supposed to be a big find.” 

I vaguely remembered the name Swift from my college years. The architect of the Exodus Armada and Sigma’s other orbital and interstellar efforts. So why the hell was he digging in the ground? 

“It’s all very hush-hush. But that’s why he called. They need someone to head up security. The Federation and the Allied States aren’t exactly on great terms, Barclay’s not sure how long they’ll be able to keep it going down there. So they need to move fast.” Julian must have noticed my thousand yard stare. He reined in his excitement. “But…he knows we left Sigma for a reason. I don’t think he could help himself. I told him it was impossible…” He trailed off, clearly hoping for me to pick up the slack. 

Amara reached out and grabbed my finger. “She’s almost one,” I said, dodging the questioning look on Julian’s face. “Can you believe it?” Amara stuck my finger between her teeth and grinned, half-growling like a feral cat. 

Julian softened as he scooted his chair closer to us. “Our little tiger.” She released my finger and lovingly gazed at him as he ruffled the patch of thick, dark hair on her head. 

“You should go,” I said suddenly. “This isn’t working.” 

“This…isn’t?” Julian delicately approached the ledge we had been trying to ignore. “Do you mean…us?”

“No!” Even such a vague insinuation reactivated me. “That’s not what I meant…but you don’t like it here. Don’t try to hide it.”

“Do you?” 

Of course not, I wanted to tell him. I’ve led all three of us into a corner. I’ve put us at the mercy of a shadowy organization with even more shadowy intentions and I’ve done it all without telling you a thing. 

“I’m not leaving,” Julian firmly stated. “We’re a family. It’s hard. It’s…confusing. But we’re going to figure this out. We have time. I didn’t mean to make it seem like I wanted this. It was…just good to hear from an old friend. And to hear that Clive has found something. I’d gotten worried, not hearing from him for so long.”

Julian kissed me—chaste, as our kisses now were—and collected our dishes. As he turned the corner into the kitchen, he kept traveling away from this divergent point in the road. “We’ll need to start figuring out some sort of birthday party, huh? Everyone at work keeps asking about it.”

“Oh, yes,” I replied, my mind already drifting away. “Nothing more important than a girl’s first birthday party. She’ll remember it forever…” 

The seed was planted and it grew swiftly, my anxiety as its sunlight and water. What if Julian didn’t have to go alone? What if we could all go together? 

If there was anything that might be of more interest to the Keepers than Amara, surely it was a top-secret Sigma project funded by an elusive billionaire. What if Barclay’s offer was the way out of this dead end I had steered into? 

What if this was the mission for which I had always been waiting? 

When I was certain Julian was asleep, I snuck from bed and out into the yard. I dug up the box I had hidden beneath the maple tree. I took out my transmitter, and woke it from its long hibernation. 

And for the first time in a year, I felt like I was regaining control of my life. 

What was I expecting? That my handlers were waiting with bated breath for another message from their reject? I wasn’t even sure if my line was still tethered to the Keepers at all. 

And with every passing day, I felt the distance between Julian and me grow wider. I hadn’t told him that I considered Barclay’s offer a lifeline for us, as without assurance from the Keepers I couldn’t take such a risk. They already had me on a razor’s edge and Amara might be the cost.

Amara’s first birthday came and went. Julian and I orbited one another like distant stars at the party held in our backyard. It was like we were playacting in a life neither of us thought to be real. I knew that this wasn’t sustainable for our daughter, but paradoxically I could not imagine a reality where I truly bared my full self either. To Julian. To anyone at all. I had been lost in the cave of myself for decades. I was deeply afraid of the light. 

To escape such thoughts, I packed Amara into her stroller one afternoon and walked to the playground set up by the cooperative in a nearby field. Backlit with rolling hills and a cloudless sky, the air was chilled to the perfect degree. A few other families gathered near the monkey bars and swings, while joggers used the path that wound through it. Pigeons gathered near an older man on a bench, pecking scattered breadcrumbs near his feet. The man was slumped backward, the bag of crumbs open in his lap. My pace quickened, worried for him–until I saw his face. 

Enoch. Lost again in some strange haze. I still had time–to pick up Amara, to leave the stroller behind. To run. 

Or…I parked the stroller and put myself between it and Enoch. I slowly approached. He was vulnerable, as he had been the first time. Whatever his fits were, I don’t think he controlled them. If he had come for Amara, this was the one chance I had. No one else in the park was watching me. Just another mother. I could knock him truly unconscious in a second flat and make it home in time to flee. Of course, our lives as we knew them would end. I’d have to tell Julian the truth and we would go on the run, forever wondering if the Keepers were about to descend… 

So instead, I sat at the far end of the bench and waited. I snuck another look at his wrists. The forked tongues of those strange tattoos showed and reflected that odd, internal light. I had always wondered if that was my childhood imagination, but no. Enoch’s skin glowed as he rode out his trance. What was I really up against? Who were the Keepers? And then, like he had all those years ago in the headmaster’s office at the HAST, Enoch suddenly returned to himself –and nearly jumped from his seat when he saw me next to him. 

“Stars above…”

I frowned at the antiquated phrase, trying not to snort. Since our last meeting, it seems I developed some resentment toward Enoch and all he represented, alongside all the fear. I enjoyed scaring him, after what the Keepers had made me endure over the years. I decided not to give him time to recover.

“Where is it that you go?”

His shock settled and a beguiling glint appeared in his eyes. My efforts clearly did not succeed. “I know we’ve only met the once, Lilla, but you must remember I am a man who plays it close to the chest.” 

“I know the feeling.” I crossed my arms and glanced at Amara's stroller, taking solace in her beautiful face, seemingly hypnotized by the chorus of birds above. She clambered onto her knees and reached up out of the stroller.

Enoch chuckled. “She’s beautiful, truly.”

Suddenly, an American robin dipped low and Amara lunged forward as if to catch it. I caught her in time and got her settled in my lap as I jiggled my knee up and down. 

“And with your same fighting spirit.”

I met Enoch’s gaze, wanting to get his own off of my daughter. “She’ll be better than me.” 

“The dreams we have for our children.” 

“Do you have children?” I couldn’t hide my accusatory tone. 

“How can you ask me that?”

“Oh, sure, all of us at the Home saw you as a warm, friendly father figure. Like Santa Claus, with tribal tattoos.” 

The calm that usually sat atop Enoch’s face rippled, and I noticed he unconsciously pulled at his sleeves. “The ink upon my flesh holds deep meaning for me. I would appreciate it if it wasn’t taken lightly. Do not forget your place.” 

I gazed around. Enoch and I sat within an isolated bubble within the park, as if it was another world. The voices of the real people out there, living their lives, were nothing but a buzz in my mind. I leaned in closer to Enoch. “My place? As far as I can tell, the Keepers don’t give much of a goddamn about me anymore.” 

“You chose a path. You knew what it might hold.”

“How about respect? I invested my entire existence in their obscured missions and directives. Was I supposed to be a shell of a person forever?”

Enoch heaved a sad sigh. “You were never seen that way. I…I am sorry you felt that way. The manner of our communication is solely to protect us. All of us. Should Sigma, or, God forbid, the darker elements of this world, ever learn of the Keepers…of the role we serve…” 

“Ah, the mysterious trailing off before you actually tell me anything.” 

Enoch grew stern once more. “You knew how this would work. Has it ever not been that way?” 

“I was a child. I was in debt to the Home, to you…I understood the opportunity that the Keepers offered me. So I…accepted that knowledge was something to be earned. But I believe that I’ve earned it.”

“Have you? I might posit that you relinquished that right. Do you remember the words you used? You told us that we would not be able to change your mind.”

I kept on the offensive. “Was I wrong?” 

Enoch retreated. He emptied the bag of the last breadcrumbs and watched the cooing pigeons swarm. Amara pointed at the birds and chuckled. She helped to ease the tension. My anger subsided. I was tired. Exhausted from this game. 

“Just tell me, Enoch. Why are you here?” 

“Because you called,” he said simply. “Because this program–Sigma 6…your telling us of this was highly respected by your handlers. While your commitment had been questioned…this may in fact be the most important intelligence any of our agents has ever provided.” 

I didn’t want it to, but my heart swelled with pride. 

“Yet they still do not know where your heart lies. So they sent me to ask you directly. A placement within Sigma 6 would be of great strategic importance for us. But is that really what you want?” 

Amara looked up at me. I tried not to cry, not from sadness but from an overwhelming gratitude. They weren’t here for her. 

“If Julian and Amara are with me…if they’re safe with me…then yes. I haven’t forgotten my promise to the Keepers. Or what they’ve given me. What you’ve given me. But they are part of my promise now. My mission.” 

Enoch watched Amara squirm in my lap. He seemed far away, though not in a trance. Like had been in this position before, and knew that hopes like my own were fragile, futile feelings. “The Keepers will never harm your family, Lilla. But this mission itself…there could be dangers present. We don’t expect immediate danger, and yet…it brings you closer to the truth. And it is a truth I have kept hidden to protect you. You must understand.” 

I looked around at the other people in the park. People like Julian and I who tried to escape the forefront of the Brink, and pretend that we were free of it. “The world’s a dangerous place,” I told Enoch. “If my daughter’s going to be prepared for it, I need to be the one to show her its true face.” 

Enoch pointed to the pendant around my neck. Amara pawed at it, the crystal nearly the size of her fist. “A future Velari too? Passing on Devi’s wisdom. She would be proud of you. I hope you know.” 

“...how is she?”

“I’ve lost touch with her. Sadly, I was forced to sell the Home. My funding was needed…elsewhere.” Enoch bowed his head, hiding the magnitude of his disappointment. “Though one day, I hope it can be reborn. Until then…don’t forget the lessons of that place. That’s all I can ask.”

I put Amara into her stroller and tucked her beneath her blanket. “I never could. Even if I tried.” I stood up and offered Enoch my hand. Bemused, he took it and shook. Did I feel a faint electrical charge travel up my arm, or was it just a phantom feeling? 

“Prepare yourselves, then, and I will make the proper arrangements.”

I took hold of the stroller and began to wheel away. I don’t know why I did it, but I turned back. “One day…you’re going to tell me the truth. Of the Keepers. Of…everything.”

“Is that so? Hm.” 

I turned and left the man to his park bench. 

That night, I sat Julian down, took his hands in mine, and told him we should go. His fingers interlaced with mine and held fast. “You mean it?”

“Of course I do.”

“It’s only…I had begun to wonder. Who we’d become to each other. If I had killed something when I told us we should leave Sigma behind.” 

“We thought that Amara would change us,” I said. “But no. She changed everything else. But us…I think we’re too stubborn.” 

Julian laughed. “Barclay says there are a few other families. And you know how these projects go. Close quarters. I’m sure some new young scientist and, say, a very manly soldier will end up eloping. Amara might have a lot of other kids around when all’s said and done. Plus, I guess I should tell you about the pay. Preston Swift is…generous, to put it lightly.” 

His palpable excitement heartened me. “This is what we’ve been missing, Julian,” I assured him. “It’s who we are. Our purpose. All three of us. Together.” 

“Together. ‘Til the end.”