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“I know you can do the right thing,” the Pilot says. The break in his voice is gone, and now he sounds coaxing, gentle. “Your father may have sided with the Society and refused to join the Rising, but your grandfather worked for us. You are, of course, the great-granddaughter of Pilot Reyes. And you’ve helped us before, though you don’t remember it. ”
I barely hear the last thing he says because—
My great-grandmother. She was the Pilot.
She was the one who sang the poems to my grandfather, even when the Society had told her she could only choose a hundred. She was the one who saved the page I burned.
“I never met Pilot Reyes in person,” the Pilot says. “She came before my predecessor. But as the Pilot, I am one of the only people who knows the names of the Pilots who came before. And I know her from her writings. She was the right Pilot at the right time. She preserved records and gathered what we needed to know to take action later. But one thing is the same for all Pilots: We have to understand what it means to be the Pilot. Your great-grandmother understood that if you don’t save, you fail. And she knew that the smallest rebel who does their job is as great as the Pilot who leads. She didn’t just believe that. She knew it. ”
“We haven’t done anything—” I begin, but the ship drops suddenly, down, down.
Ky loses his balance and slams into the cases against the wall. Both Xander and I move to help him.
“I’m fine,” Ky says. I can barely hear him over the sounds of the ship, and then we hit the ground hard. My whole body snaps with the impact.
“When he opens the hold,” Ky says, “we’re going to run. We’ll get away. ”
“Ky,” I say, “wait. ”
“We can get past him,” Ky says. “There are three of us and only one of him. ”
“Two of you,” Xander says. “I’m not going. ”
Ky stares at Xander in astonishment. “Have you been listening at all?”
“Yes,” Xander says. “The Pilot wants a cure. So do I. I’ll help him however I can. ” Xander looks at me and I see that he still believes in the Pilot. He’s choosing the Pilot over everything else, in this at least.
Why wouldn’t he? Ky and I left Xander behind; I never taught him to write. And I never asked Xander for his story because I thought I already knew it. Looking at him now, I realize that I didn’t know it all then, and I certainly don’t know it all now. He has traveled through canyons of his own and come through changed.
And he’s right. All that matters is the cure. That is what we have to fight for now.
I’m the vote in the balance. They both wait for me. And this time, I choose Xander, or at least, I choose his side. “Let’s talk to the Pilot,” I tell Ky. “Just a little more. ”
“Are you sure?” Ky asks.
“Yes,” I say, and the Pilot opens the door to the hold. I follow Ky up the ladder, Xander coming after, and I hand the Pilot the datapod with my parents’ pictures on it.
“The Gallery was a place for meeting and poetry,” I tell him. “The blue tablets were an accident. We didn’t know they killed. We used the wiring in the Carving to seal off the cave so that the Society wouldn’t take the villagers’ stores. The poisoned streams and water—that’s the Society’s signature, and we are not the Society, nor do we sympathize with them. ”
For a moment everything is as quiet as it can be in a ship in the mountains. The wind moves in the trees outside, and under that is the breathing of those of us who are not still, not yet.
“We’re not trying to take down the Rising,” I say. “We believed in it. All we want is a cure. ” And then I realize who the other person the Pilot trusts must be—the pilot he asked to gather us together when he couldn’t spare the time or the risk. “You should listen to Indie,” I say. “We can help you. ”
The Pilot doesn’t seem surprised that I’ve figured it out.
“Indie,” Ky says. “Does she have the mark?”
“No,” the Pilot says, “but we’ll do our best to keep her flying. ”
“You lied to her,” Ky says. “You used her to bring us all in. ”
“There is no stone I won’t overturn,” the Pilot says, “to find the cure. ”
“We can help you,” I tell the Pilot again. “I can sort data. Xander has been working with the sick and has seen the mutation firsthand. Ky—”
“May be the most useful of all,” the Pilot says.
“I’ll be a body,” Ky says. “Just like in the Outer Provinces. ” Ky walks away from me, closer to the door. He moves slower than usual, but with the same fluidity that I’ve always associated with him; his body belongs to him more than most people’s do, and I ache at the thought that it might have to stop, be still.
“You don’t know that, yet,” I say, my heart sinking. “You might not be sick. ” But Ky’s expression is resigned. Does he know more than he’s saying? Can he feel the mutation inside of him, running through his veins, making him ill?
“Either way, Ky’s been exposed to the virus,” Xander says. “You don’t want to risk him exposing the people you have working on the cure to the mutation. ”
“There’s no risk,” the Pilot says. “The villagers are immune. ”
“So that’s why you’re looking here for a cure,” Xander says, and he smiles. His voice fills with hope. “There is a chance we’ll find it. ”
“But if you knew about the red mark, why didn’t you bring some of those who had it out here earlier?” I ask the Pilot. “Maybe our data could be useful. ” If I’m immune, they could correlate my data with that of the villagers from the mountain.
The moment the words leave my mouth, I shake my head. “It won’t work,” I say, answering my own question, “because our data is compromised. All the immunizations, the exposures we’ve had—you need a pure sample group to find the cure. ”
“Yes,” the Pilot says, looking at me with a measuring expression. “We can only use those who have lived outside of the Society since birth. Others can help us work on the cure, but we can’t use their data. ”
