Nori was limping after landing on her side in an awkward way but otherwise she seemed fine. The crowds were gathering around from both sides, wondering what had just happened with the mechara looking surprised after seeing Nori in the group.

  The ground underneath us was rumbling softly as the massive ramp for the gravity games was retracting back into the ring, giving me a last glance at the hole we’d emerged from before it settled back into the floor, leaving the central ring smooth like it normally was.

  “Is that… It can’t be…” someone from the crowd whispered as they approached.

  “Nori? Is that you?” a woman asked, her hand up to her beak as she spoke.

  Before Nori could speak a gentle beeping sound came from between the two crowds that were gathering around us from either side.

  It was a small automated transporter, gently pushing through the crowd and making its way toward us.

  Nobody in our party knew what we could say to the crowd that would make any sense, so we all decided to just get into the little car together without saying a word.

  As the crowd saw us leaving, more questions filled the air, mostly directed toward Nori as they wondered what had just happened.

  Abel was the last to get in, closing the door behind us as we all took a seat in the vehicle as it started to push through the crowd once more.

  We didn’t say anything at first as we just focused on each other, making sure everyone else was okay.

  Flint looked as excited as ever, looking as though he’d just gotten off a roller coaster ride and wanted to go another round. Nori sat forward, her hands over her eyes as she looked like she was trying to control her breathing. Abel on the other hand was looking directly at me, her eyes focused entirely on me, ignoring the scene around us.

  I was just happy to see everyone was okay. I took another look out the window, trying to calm my nerves a bit.

  Another crowd was gathering around the remains of the car we’d driven up through the lifeboat. It was laying on its side, every corner of it was smashed in, the windows shattered, some of the wheels were missing and one of the doors had broken off. The car looked like it didn’t have anything salvageable, becoming nothing more than a heap of scrap metal.

  “I know why you did it” Abel said softly.

  I turned back to her, feeling a little put off by the intensity in her eyes.

  “I… What?” I asked.

  “The question is, did she know about this plan or was this as much of a surprise to her as it was to us?” she asked, gesturing toward Nori.

  “I’m sorry…” I started to say before she cut me off.

  “I think the time for playing dumb is over Tess. You wanted to put on a show. To impress me. Right?” she asked, leaning toward me.

  Before I could answer Flint jumped in “Abel I don’t think…” he started to say before she held her hand up, gesturing for him to stop talking.

  “You knew I was in charge of the people heading down for first contact. Did you make up the story about being from earth or did you just want to give me a reason to bring you along?” she asked.

  I shook my head but before I could say anything she started speaking again.

  “Well you have my attention” she said “So what did you expect? For me to be impressed? To welcome you to our team? If you think for one moment that I’d bring someone who aligns themselves with a mechara along then I think you underestimated how important this moment is for us.”

  “Wait, you’re the one in charge of that?” Flint asked.

  She crossed her arms, her eyes remaining focused on me “I was told to keep it a secret until the right moment. I asked him what that moment would be and he told me I’d know it when I saw it. I believe this was the test.”

  “I’m sorry but I wasn’t expecting any of that either” I said softly.

  “Sure” Abel said, squinting her eyes “and we’re supposed to believe that you just so happened to…”

  A loud clap rang through the car, startling everyone as we turned to see Nori with her hands together.

  “Hey everyone I have a great idea” she said loudly, “it sounds like we’ve all been through a lot and rather than accusing each other of whatever comes to mind, how about we just talk to each other instead of making assumptions? How does that sound?”

  Abel was about to speak up when the car came to a stop.

  Nori was the first to get out, followed by Flint. Abel glared at me a moment longer before following after them.

  As I got out I realized the car had taken us just outside of Nori’s place.

  Nori wasn’t limping as badly as when we’d first crashed but she was still noticeably hurt.

  As we walked through the front door and into the lobby I saw that all the mechara inside were centered around a large screen on the far side of the room.

  It looked like a news broadcast, similar to the one I’d seen earlier with Nori and Rosa. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but as the mehcara on screen was speaking the camera zoomed back as a video appeared at their side, revealing a shot of the gravity games.

  It looked like it was shot from the mechara side of the central ring, the video showing a very disappointed looking crowd as the ring was slowing down, but just before the ring came to a stop the presenter stopped talking as the video feed took over the entire screen as our car went barrelling out of the vertical wall of the ramp. The crowd gasped, mechara reaching out, pointing in the direction of the car as it went flying out of the ramp and crashed to the floor. I could barely make myself out as myself and the three other passengers skidded along the floor as the car started to tumble along the central ring with metal and glass flying in all directions.

  “We should get going,” Nori said as she tapped my shoulder.

  “Oh. Right” I said as I followed her along with Abel and Flint.

  Nobody spoke as we made our way up to where Nori lived. We passed by a few mechara in the hallways, all of them looking out at the screen from their balcony and talking about what was going on.

  As we arrived at Nori’s door I looked over the balcony for a moment, seeing more mechara gathering around the news broadcast. Just before I left it looked like they were interviewing mechara that had been standing around the destroyed vehicle.

  Nori closed the door behind us and made her way to the living room, collapsing on the couch.

  We all made our way over, standing around the edges of the coffee table.

  Flint was the first to speak “So how did you do that?” he asked.

  “Obviously it was planned,” Abel said in a familiar accusatory tone.

  “Abel, can you just let her answer for herself?” Flint asked.

  “Why should I believe anything she says?” she asked, glaring at me again before continuing “she came out of nowhere, has been spending way too much time with the mechara and seems to be working with our leader at the same time. He knew what was going to happen. None of this adds up. Has he been compromised? What’s their plan?” she asked as she gestured to Nori.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Are you asking me?” Nori asked, her eyes still closed.

  “Yes I’m asking you” Abel said as she crossed her arms.

  Nori slowly sat up and looked around the room, taking a moment to look at each of us.

  “I’m sorry” she said as she addressed Abel “I didn’t plan any of this. You guys asked me to go down there to speak to you, but everything after that was as much of a surprise to me as it was to you.”

  “How did you give her access to lifeboat seven?” Abel asked, glancing toward me for a moment.

  “We didn’t” she said, “She already had it. Like me, she’s a survivor, but before it was destroyed she was sent to earth rather than staying near seven like Rosa and I. I know it sounds crazy, but her story is true.”

  “Think about it Abel” Flint said “she was able to listen to the music better than any of us. I think she hears something in it that we don’t. If she didn’t grow up on the lifeboats, then she would have never used the assembler.”

  Abel’s brow furled a little “Is that true?” she asked as she turned her attention back to me “Have you never used it?”

  “I… Uh… I have, but only recently. We made it work with what we found in the escape ship. That’s how I found you guys, that’s how I reached out” I said.

  “So Flint was right…” she said, looking back to Nori “You all stopped at this planet because you thought that was Sloan reaching out, didn’t you? Is that why we’re here? Are you after the black shard?”

  “Sorry” I said, cutting in, but could someone tell me what the black shard is?” I asked.

  Flint decided to speak up “It’s like our shards, but it’s a lot older. A whole lot older. The black shard belonged to Artemis, but it went missing when lifeboat seven was destroyed. I think when they heard your message, they thought it was from Sloan, they believe she has the shard with her.”

  “Okay so, why do they want it so badly?” I asked.

  “The computer stored its memories in there. They’re looking for something before they bring him fully back online” Abel said.

  “What are they looking for?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” Abel said, gesturing to Nori.

  As I looked to Nori I saw her expression had changed, looking a lot more nervous than she was before.

  “How… Did you know all that?” she asked.

  “We have ears everywhere, Nori. We knew something was strange about this whole endeavor with earth” Abel said.

  “Nori?” I asked, giving her an expecting look.

  She sighed “We think… We think that Sloan didn’t act alone. It’s possible that Artemis was responsible for the lifeboat seven disaster as well as Sloan. But if that’s true, then we’d be in danger if we brought him fully back online because he could try it again.”

  Flint huffed as he spoke up “And all this time you’ve been blaming the melodians for it. Keeping us suppressed because of this narrative that we were responsible for lifeboat seven.”

  Nori shook her head “It’s not that simple. We have suspicions but we don’t know why he would do that. We know Sloan was responsible, but we can’t trust Artemis until we see the contents of the shard. We don’t know how much involvement he had with the whole thing. For all we know Sloan could have been acting on her own. But we didn’t want to make any of this public because it would cause too much fear. If the ship decided to destroy itself, what would stop the other ships from doing the same thing? Why would we scare everyone with that information if it could turn out to not be true?”

  “So you decided to just blame it all on us?” Abel said, her hand clenching.

  “It wasn’t me! I was a kid when I got here!” she exclaimed.

  “That’s a nice excuse, but you got older Nori. How long have you known about this?” Abel asked, pointing a set of fingers at her.

  “I promise, I didn’t find out about Artemis until we got the signal” she said.

  “And Rosa?” Abel asked.

  Nori shook her head “I have no idea. She barely says anything about the past. She was a lot older when she arrived here, I don’t know how much she knew.”

  A thought came to my head as they were talking. They said Artemis was only partially turned on, which would explain why they only expected him to carry out simple tasks while running the basic parts of the ship. But he’d spoken to me. Not only that, when I first met him out in the woods of Colorado, I spoke to him in English, but somehow he understood me. He even responded to me within the vision.

  He tried to stop me from going back to the lifeboats.

  “So… Was it you?” Flint asked.

  “Me?” Nori asked, sitting back a little.

  “Are you the leader of the listeners?” he asked.

  Nori shook her head as the others continued to talk.

  Artemis had given my father the coordinates to earth. He sent me away from the lifeboats intentionally. When he spoke to me, he said he saved me. He could have sent me to lifeboat eight just like Nori and Rosa, but he sent me to earth. He didn’t mean that he’d saved me from lifeboat seven, he meant he saved me from the lifeboats as a whole.

  “We’ve asked Rosa” Flint said “She knows who we are, but she said she wanted nothing to do with us. So who else could it be?”

  I blinked, getting lost in thought again.

  When I arrived Artemis was protecting me. He gave me food, kept people away from me, but he also brought Lampro and Nori to me. He wanted me to meet them. If he was truly braindead like they thought, then he wouldn’t have been making those choices for me. He wouldn’t have spoken to me and tried to get me to stay on earth. He was making decisions but doing it in a way that it wouldn’t be obvious.

  The leader of the listeners was only speaking to them indirectly, in a way that kept his identity a secret.

  “Nori?” I asked, interrupting something Flint was saying.

  “Hm?” she asked.

  “Why do you think Artemis isn’t brought fully online?” I asked.

  “When we first started him up again we didn’t allow everything to go back online at once” she said.

  I nodded “And you didn’t do that because you were afraid he might be responsible for what happened on lifeboat seven?”

  She nodded.

  “What if he lied?” I asked.

  “He can’t do that” Abel said.

  “But he did” I said “he lied to Nori and I when he locked us in a room together.”

  “Is that true?” Abel asked, turning to Nori.

  She nodded “I haven’t been able to make sense of it myself, but I do think he lied to us. Yes.”

  “And he wasn’t trying to hide it. He wanted us to know” I said.

  “That’s… Incredibly worrying…” Flint said.

  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the pieces were fitting together.

  “Abel” I said, grabbing her attention “You said you’re in charge of leading the group that goes down to earth, right?” I asked.

  “I am, yes” she said, looking at me a little skeptically.

  I took a deep breath. It all made sense.

  “What is it?” Flint asked.

  “Artemis saved me from lifeboat seven. He sent me to earth. When you all arrived, he spoke to me. He told me that… He told me that I wasn’t abandoned, that I was saved.”

  “He spoke to you? Directly?” Nori asked.

  I nodded “And ever since getting on lifeboat eight it seems like he’s been helping me. He brought you to me” I said, looking at Nori, “but the listeners also started paying attention to me. They were watching me because they were told that there was something special about me. Their leader arranged that meeting downstairs because he wanted to show Abel that I was different. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she’s in charge of the group going down to earth. Ever since I got here, Artemis has been trying to find a way to get me back out. He wants me to leave.”

  “But that… Doesn’t make any sense…” Flint said softly.

  “Why’s that?” Nori asked.

  I knew where he was going “Because the whole point of the listeners is to kill Artemis.”

  Flint and Abel both looked at me with wide eyes.

  “You… That’s… That’s not true, she’s lying again” Abel exclaimed.

  I shook my head.

  “Abel, you’re not understanding,” I said calmly. I was too caught up in thought to feel afraid from her outburst.

  “Why do you want to do that?” Nori asked, sounding alarmed at the thought.

  I responded before Abel could cut in “Because he’s the one that keeps our people down. They want to get rid of him and get rid of the assembler.”

  Flint tilted his head “Okay but shouldn’t Artemis be trying to stop us?”

  I shook my head “I don’t think you understand. The question isn’t why Artemis is trying to get himself killed. The question is why he’s trying to do it again.”

  “What are you saying Tess?” Flint asked.

  “I’m saying… The leader of the listeners…” I said softly, barely believing what was coming out of my own mouth, yet knowing that no other answer made sense “The leader of the listeners, is Artemis.”