Icons

He was there, in the chapel. He is one of the Sympas who killed the Padre. Their leader.

I swallow. I try to get my breath, but it feels like there isn’t enough oxygen in the air.

I watch him speak. The words are civil but the tone is not. Lucas reddens, and I realize the words were meant to remind him he is not a Sympa soldier at all. He only wants to be.

Lucas nods. “Colonel.”

The man’s eyes move over him, taking in the blood on Lucas’s face. The wet clothes. The swaying weakness in his body, how he’s not standing quite right.

The Colonel’s head is completely bald, and a jagged scar interrupts the sheen of his skin. As if someone has taken a knife and sliced halfway around the top of his head, as if he were a jack-o’-lantern.

His coat has a strange collar, like a priest’s. I see in a glance that he has nothing to do with any church, on any planet.

He doesn’t acknowledge us, though I know he feels me staring at him. I tentatively reach out for him in my mind, but I feel a shock of cold, like I have been repelled by freezing water.

He fingers the buttonless edge of Lucas’s jacket. Lucas says nothing. Then, slowly, the Colonel raises his eyes to me. They are the color of dirty ice.

I shiver and stop trying to see behind them.

Lucas and the Jack-o’-Lantern Man turn back to the waiting command Chopper, sleek and silver and emblazoned with letters and numbers that somehow spell out wealth and importance. The Chopper is deceptively small for something worth more than a year of wages for everyone in the Hole combined.

As they climb in, I notice a slender girl standing next to the Chopper. She wears the same uniformed coat as Lucas, but her hair is silver and severe, with a slash of bangs cropped against her forehead. It’s possible that I wouldn’t have seen her at all in the crowd of Sympas that surround the Chopper.

I do, though, not because of how she looks, which is striking enough, but because of the way her eyes track Lucas.

Like a predator locked on her prey. A king snake, maybe, or a rattler.

I close my eyes. I can’t sense my way through to her, not in the chaos and the noise of the scene.

In a second the opportunity is gone. The girl falls into step behind Lucas and the Colonel, and they rise into the clouds with a few flashing twists of blades, without so much as a look goodbye.

I glance over at Ro, next to me, as they cuff him. He resists, but a Sympa guard kicks the back of his legs, and he falls awkwardly to the ground. Another Sympa yanks him up with a threatening scowl. “You want a fight, boy?” The others laugh. Ro is seething, looking at me accusingly. I hold his eyes, pleading. He turns and shakes his head, climbing onto the transport. He is miserable, his eyes dark and wet. I try to remember if this is the first time I have ever seen him cry.

I think it is.

I hope I’m not wrong to trust Lucas and let them take us. I hope Ro’s not right.

Out here in the rain, as I board the transport, I can’t feel anything but scared.

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

To: Ambassador Amare

From: Dr. Huxley-Clarke

Subject: Icon Children Mythology

Subtopic: Lover

Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

The following is a reprint of a recovered page, thick, homemade paper, thought to be torn from an anti-Embassy propaganda tract titled Icon Children Exist! Most likely hand-published by a fanatical cult or Grass Rebellion faction.

Text-scan translation follows.

8

Doc

“Dol, wake up. You drifted off.” I turn to see Lucas, his face framed by the water, rough on every side.

“Where’s Ro?” I turn to look for him, but all I can see is Lucas. His eyes, and broad swaths of sand and sea.

“He’s fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” He pushes up his sleeve and holds out his naked wrist. “I want you to feel better, Dol.” Four dots. Four blue dots.

The blood is gone now. So is his shirt.

Lucas puts his hands inside the bottom of my sweater, tugging at it. He looks at me, questioningly, before gently pulling it over my head. I shiver.

Lucas doesn’t seem to notice. He takes my cold, bare arm in his hands. Unties my binding and pulls it loose, letting it hang halfway off my arm, undone. Where his hand runs over my skin, I have goose bumps.

“Say something.” Now Lucas slips his fingers through mine. “I’ve been waiting for you, all this time. I know you feel it too.”

He begins to wrap the cloth around our arms. As he works the cloth, our elbows touch, then our forearms. Our wrists. He laces our fingers together, more tightly. His fingers dig into the back of my hand, inching closer …

Until I ball up my hand. Because I can’t let him do it.

There are only millimeters of air between our markings but it might as well be miles.

I can’t let go. I can’t do it to my best friend, the only person I have ever let feel how it is to be me.

And now it isn’t Lucas who is holding my hand, but Ro. And we’re back underneath the bluff again, in the cave. I can hear the waves, all around us.

Ro leans closer to me, looking at my mouth, and suddenly all I can taste is pomegranate—

I wake up staring at pomegranate seeds.

No.

They’re not pomegranate seeds. They’re ceiling tiles, with hundreds of tiny dots on them. And the waves aren’t waves. They don’t crash, they only hum. Evenly and endlessly.

Machines. It’s machine noise.

I close and open my eyes again. I don’t know where I am, at first. I know I’m not wearing my clothes. The white cloth robe is thick and plush, and I think I am still dreaming. I want to sleep again, but I can’t. I am caught somewhere in between. My eyes are heavy-lidded and my body slow and thick.

I am so tired. A wave of nausea washes over me and my head pounds. Then I close my eyes and force myself to remember.