Kora

Kora couldn't remember her parents.

She must have had them—everyone did, even the soldiers in the special programs on the Base, the ones who had been conceived in tubes, perfected under microscopes, and birthed by surrogates. It was an unavoidable biological fact.

When she was young, no more than ten or eleven, she'd gone looking for them. She'd just finished a module about the role of genetics and heredity in disease, and all she could think about was the fact that she had no idea where she'd come from. Who were her mother and father—soldiers? Scientists? Farmers that the Base doctors had taken in and tried to heal? All her adoptive father, Dr. Middleton, had ever told her was that they were dead.

She knew she was healthy. Her regular tests and scans would have shown any illnesses or conditions that needed attention. But she'd been positively gripped by the notion that the past was the future, that without knowing her history, she would be adrift with no direction for tomorrow.

Her search started and ended in the same place—with her poring through computer files for any mention of them, any hint of where she might have begun to look. When she found nothing, she dove deeper, accessing secured databases and poking around in classified data.

Still nothing.

She didn't simply not know her history. She didn't have one.

Maybe that was why she liked Sector One so much. It was impossible to ignore the history here, and not a shred of it was hidden. The people here celebrated their dead, with art and songs and shrines and tattoos. They marked their bodies with their shared history and bore the ink even more proudly than their scars.

All Kora had were two bar codes on the inside of her wrist.

Sector One was beautiful, not just the scenery or the architecture, but the people, too. Kora could stay here—easily, happily—but not when she was needed elsewhere.

She turned toward Gideon Rios, the sector's leader, and prepared to plead her case again. “I delivered another baby yesterday.”

“That's wonderful.” Gideon looked flushed and tired, but pleased. He'd been pushing himself hard to recover from his brush with death, but every day brought strength back to his body. He refilled their tea glasses and gazed out over the garden. “It eases everyone's minds, knowing we have someone qualified here to help them if something goes wrong.”

“Yes, but—” Kora bit her lip. Demands didn't work on Gideon, but an appeal to his sense of logic might. “They don't need me, strictly speaking. Your midwives are very skilled. They would have plenty of time to send for me if—”

“Kora.” Gideon had a gentle smile for a hard man, a smile befitting a prophet. “The midwives are skilled. More skilled every day, in fact. If you leave now when they're still learning so much, I'll have a riot on my hands.”

Her gut twisted. She had come to One with no other thought than to help the women and children who had been wounded when the city bombed Sector Two. She could still remember the rage, the urge to scream at the heavens that anyone could do such a thing, could kill and maim and terrify an entire sector.

But it would be childish and dishonest to pretend she hadn't known the city leaders could do such a thing. After all, she'd seen their files. They'd tried very hard to keep her and the other doctors oblivious to the depths of their depravity, but she didn't just have Special Clearance. She'd used it.

The patients from Two were all gone now, for better or worse. And she was left attending births and patching up scrapes.

At first, she'd assumed that Gideon wanted her close because of his own injuries. It hadn't taken her long to set that thought aside—Gideon possessed a wealth of concern, but he seemed to lavish it on everyone but himself. So she'd moved on to thinking he wanted her here for his family, in case the city attacked his sector next. But something about that didn't sit quite right, either.

Nothing did, and it was starting to make her nervous.

She opened her mouth to question him further, but Avery Parrino came out into the garden, holding a carved wooden tray with another glass pitcher of tea.

She set it on the table between them and winced when a bit of tea and crushed mint sloshed over the rim of the pitcher. “Sorry,” she breathed. “I thought you could use a fresh one.”

Gideon straightened slightly in his chair. “That's very thoughtful, Avery. Thank you. Would you care to join us?”

She began shaking her head before he even finished speaking. “Oh, I couldn't.”

“Of course you could. You have to help me convince Kora that we still need her here.”

She watched him for a moment. Her usual fidgeting ceased as she gazed down at him like an equation she wasn't quite sure how to solve. Then she turned to Kora, a warm smile curving her lips. “If you left, we'd miss you terribly.”

Kora hid her answering smile. “Thank you, Avery.”

She bowed her head, the heavy fall of her dark hair almost obscuring her face as she glanced at Gideon again.

He smiled as well, but Kora could sense the emptiness behind it. “Yes, thank you. If you're going back in, would you mind taking the empty pitcher?”

Wordlessly, she bowed, more deeply this time, and removed the pitcher. Then she removed herself, practically fleeing back to the house.

Kora snorted. “Why did you do that?”

The smile vanished, and Gideon rubbed a hand over his face with a soft sigh. “You'd think I'd be used to it, wouldn't you? Every stray word being mistaken for a command. But I'm not used to it here, in my own house.”

Turmoil rolled off of him in waves that turned Kora's stomach. “You're the most powerful man in this sector, and all Avery knows is that powerful men are to be obeyed.”

“Well, she'll have to learn otherwise,” Gideon said firmly. Then he arched an eyebrow at her. “You don't share that problem.”

“If I'd been taught obedience, I wouldn't be here.” She'd be back at home, and a sudden wave of emotion swelled in her throat. Home. The city was a pleasant place to live—if you had money and status. If you could ignore the dark undercurrents of violence and greed that lurked beneath its polished surface.

Kora didn't miss it. But she did miss the Base, and her patients, and being able to do her damn job.

She put down her glass, careful not to betray her agitation. “Why am I not allowed to leave?”

To his credit, Gideon didn't deny it. He sipped his tea, then set his glass gently on the table. “I've been given information indicating that you could be in danger if you leave Sector One. And you're the best trained regeneration technician on either side of the wall. I had hoped you'd be happy enough here that you didn't want to leave, but…” He shrugged. “If happiness won't keep you here, perhaps responsibility will.”

So many layers in those words. Kora turned them over in her mind, dissecting them, teasing them apart. The stuff about responsibility she discarded immediately. They'd already established that she could move quickly if she needed to return, and her sense of responsibility was the reason she wanted to leave in the first place. But the rest of it…

She was in danger. Someone had told Gideon this, someone who would know.

It could be a lie, but she didn't think so. It didn't feel like a lie, didn't have that slick, greasy quality that made her shudder in revulsion as it slid over her. So Gideon, at least, believed it to be truth.

There was only one person she knew who was this involved with sector politics, who might have the sway to convince a sector leader to keep her out of the city's clutches. Thinking about him hurt, like falling onto a flat surface so hard it ripped the breath right out of your lungs for long, agonizing seconds.

It hurt even more when she closed her eyes and saw his face. Ashwin Malhotra was a patient, a soldier, and she'd had no trouble shutting him out of her thoughts when she shed her lab coat at the end of the day.

Until, that is, the night he'd kidnapped her.

She wasn't supposed to know it was him. He'd taken every precaution—bindings, a blindfold, he'd even blocked her hearing. But he couldn't blot out all of her senses, and when he'd touched her—

She knew who he was. But not why he'd snatched her out of her bed, not until he'd left her in a room alone with a dying man. She'd saved the man's life, of course, and he told her volumes in return.

Not verbally. Not wittingly. But his tattoos had been impossible to ignore, especially the skulls and crossed guns on his wrists. Later, using one of the dummy logins she'd bought at the side-street market, she discovered the truth—she'd been in Sector Four, and she'd saved the life of an O'Kane. She even found his face, and along with it his name—Alexander Santana. Ace.

Who was he to Ashwin, and why? Kora had always planned to ask. The next time she saw him, she decided, she would make him explain—and tell him that all he ever had to do was ask.

She'd never had the chance.

Gideon's hand touched hers. “You're safe here, you know. Deacon and I did a complete security review after the assassination attempt.”

“What?” She shook herself. “No, I'm not worried about that. I was just thinking.”

“It's a lot to think about.” He pulled his head back and reclined in his chair. “Do you know what would have happened if you hadn't saved my life, Kora?”

She didn't ponder such things. If she did, the weight of it all would collapse on her, heavy and stifling. Paralyzing. Because no one could save every life.

She rose abruptly. “I'll stay. But, at some point, I want answers, Gideon. Real ones.”

“I don't have them,” he replied, again with no hint or trace of deception. “But when we reach that point, I'll help you find them.”

“I won't need help.” This time, she knew exactly where to look.