Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book One)

Chapter Six

"Being a paranoid asshole?" I nodded. "I'll try. Seriously."

My final training sessions had a perfunctory feel to them. I had learned as much Krav Maga as I could in two weeks, which to me was a depressingly inadequate amount. My food and gear were packed and ready for transport onto the Pinion. Anton had numbed my right wrist with an anesthetic spray and inserted a tiny medical transmitter under the skin. A second transmitter had been inserted on my left hip, below the line of my underwear. Anton had checked a dozen times to make sure both devices were functioning properly, which they were, sending a constant stream of medical telemetry to designated locations in the cloud and the Villiger Center's data banks.

Tristan was finally satisfied that I would be able to at least approximate our covert signals under real strain. "Don't worry about getting the codes wrong," he said, deadpan as ever, at the conclusion of our last session. "The important thing is to keep sending messages. We know the Vardeshi have glitches in their communications network. No message doesn't automatically mean there's a problem. Silence isn't a signal."

I thanked him and left. The hours seemed suddenly to be accelerating toward the moment of my departure. I had the same unsettling feeling I'd had on the flight over from California of being a fixed point at the center of a vastly complex machine, a maze of tiny whirring parts ceaselessly clicking over. The sensation wasn't entirely unpleasant, but it was peculiar.

The next day was the one set aside for me to see my parents. The visit didn't go as badly as I'd anticipated. I wondered if someone—possibly Dr. Okoye—had cautioned them against upsetting me so close to launch. They didn't question me or make me feel guilty or urge me to change my mind. I showed them around the facility, and they made polite comments about it, and equally polite conversation with the Strangers we met on our way. We toured the local winery and had dinner at a little bistro in the village. To me it all felt as perfunctory as my last few training sessions. There was a hollowness to our interactions, a sense of artifice about the day, with its carefully composed itinerary. Inside, I was counting the hours until tomorrow, when my real training started, and from then until the next day. Launch day.

The good-byes were real. I hadn't expected that. After dinner, we walked along the main street of the village to the end of the sidewalk and back again. It took only a few minutes; there wasn't much to see, only a cluster of storefronts, a café, a train station. The café was warmly lit and inviting, the other buildings dark and shuttered. When we returned to the restaurant, the inevitable black sedans were waiting by the curb: one to take me back to the Villiger Center, one to take my parents to the airport. My father began to cry. I had never seen him cry before, and I was horrified. I looked at my mother. She wasn't crying. She was looking at me. Her expression was sad and intent at the same time. I understood. She was trying to fix my face in her mind. She was afraid she would never see me again.

She said quietly, "Avery, the hardest thing about being a parent isn't the sleepless nights or the tuition bills. It's that you have to trust so many people. So many strangers. And the leaps of faith just keep getting bigger. First day of school. First sleepover. First boyfriend. First trip abroad."

"First trip offworld?" There was a catch in my voice: a laugh, maybe, or a sob.

"You have to believe, over and over again, that other people mean no harm to your child. And you have to do it knowing all the while that we live in an imperfect world." She sighed. "At least all the people we had to trust before were human."

"I trust the Vardeshi," I said.

"You made that choice for all of us. Without asking us." There were still tears on my father's face, but his voice was steady.