They came for me at dawn, and all I could think was, it is way too early for this.
And actually, it might have been. Adam’s programming tended to be erratic at the best of times, and downright scary at the worst. Looking back, I guess we should have been grateful. Surely any dawn at all, however cruel, is better than the endless night of space.
Hindsight, and all that.
“Charlotte Turner.” The judge glanced at me over the top of her delicate, silver-rimmed glasses. The crowd quieted down, just for a moment, in spite of itself, but when rough hands shoved me up onto the platform, giving the Remnant its first good look at me, the shouting cranked right back up again. Death to the traitor! and She’s a terrorist! Worse than the Commander! echoed through my mind. I stopped trying to make sense of the words, letting them roll over me like pebbles on a riverbed, until I heard one I couldn’t ignore: Throw her out the airlock.
Something like fear, or horror, made me tilt up my chin and square my shoulders. My tongue was nearly numb, so I turned up the corners of my mouth to keep from crying.
“I’m glad to see that we amuse you, Prisoner.” Her voice was warm and sure, like a kindly librarian, and sounded older than her face appeared. “You got any last words before we vote?”
“Vote?” I twisted around to look at her. Gray hair. Wrong side of forty, especially up here. Slightly heavy in her chair, but thin to the point of frailty around the shoulders. Nothing about her qualified her for a spot on the Ark. But then, this was the Remnant: the Earth’s last rebels. So she fit right in.
She returned the favor, sizing me up before responding. “On your sentence.” She raised her eyebrows, anticipating my reaction. “Life or death.”
From my new vantage point, I could see the upturned faces of the crowd, and I scanned them as fast as I could, a growing sense of desperation gnawing at my lungs.
No Isaiah, which stung. No Adam, thank goodness. There was the gardener, a withered old man who’d taught me how to grow potatoes, and maybe a couple hundred strangers, including a large group of feral-looking children whose faces I searched more thoroughly.
No West.
The thought of his face, his wide brown eyes, flared through my mind, and I felt a weird sense of disconnect, like trying to laugh and gasping for air all at once. It had been years since I’d seen my brother, and I was so close. I searched and searched, but the room grew smaller as my panic expanded, and I ran out of places to look before I found him.
I pressed my lips together. In my experience, these things tended to go a lot better if you dropped the act and showed a little vulnerability, but again, there was my brother’s face in my mind, so my ribs were like steel around my lungs.
The crowd shouted louder, and the sounds merged together in my mind, until all I heard was a single accusatory voice. I tried to imagine what that voice would sound like when it sentenced me to die.
I didn’t have to wonder long.
“Nothing at all?” The judge regarded me dispassionately. “Then I’m afraid it’s time for the sentence.”
“Your Honor, I never meant to betray the Remnant.”
“She speaks,” said the judge, and the other voice quieted to a low buzz. “Is it your position that your actions on the day of the Battle for Sector Seven were undertaken with the interest of the Remnant at heart?”
“I—no. But I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I only wanted to save my family. I’d just started to belong here, and my family, my blood family, was still living in Central Command. When I found out what the Noah Board was capable of I—”
“Was? Where are they now?”
It was a good question. “I’m not sure, Your Honor. My brother joined the Remnant, but I haven’t seen him since…” my voice caught, and I stopped talking for the space of several heartbeats. When I spoke, it was in a low, even tone, my face carefully composed. “I haven’t been out of my cell for six weeks. And my father is… somewhere in Central Command, I think.”
“And your mother?”
My throat tightened again, and my volume was reduced further. “She died. On Earth.”
It was a common story, but her voice softened. “Charlotte Turner. You placed every life in our sector in peril when you betrayed us to the High Commander. You’ve been found guilty of high treason.”
“Wait. Please.”
“Please what, Prisoner?”
“Please don’t… throw me out the airlock.”
“I’ve been a judge for over a decade. In that time I have never found any particular pleasure in ruining the lives of the young people who come before me. But in your case, Miss Turner, I fail to see what you gained from ruining us so thoroughly.” She shook her head. “In any event, that’s not how we’d execute someone, surely. Airlocks. Honestly.”
“I did bring you the Noah Board,” I said, hopefully.
“You brought us a strike team straight from the Commander himself,” she said, referring to Eren’s failed mission to retrieve the program I’d stolen. I had the sense not to point out that Isaiah,