The Secret War - 1st novel in the Shadow Series

Chapter 3 .

VAI

On Saturday nights, my friends and I rode as high as we could up the side of the mountain in Callie's old Levitric repulsor with Olympus City stretched out behind us—an entire horizon of red and white glowing lights.

We went up until our okuli were screeching at us to stop. Went up until it wasn't safe to go any higher. Or we'd go above the oxygen. Go above the gravity zone. Go skin-out into the death-cold of Mars-natural. Die.

Then Callie would turn the thing around, and I'd put my hand on her knee and squeeze. She'd look at me, adjust the mirror to stare for a moment at Emilio and Posha making out in the back seat, and smile.

It seemed then like all of civilization was laid out before us. How could there be anything more than what we could see from here? Mars was all there was. At least on Saturday nights.

Callie would lean over and kiss me. "Ready?" she'd say.

Posha broke away from Emilio and threw her blue arms high. "I'm ready!" she screamed. "I'M RREADDDDYYYYY!"

And Callie had already given it everything. Full fusion.

We sped down the slope toward the endless city. Scraggles of vegetation passed by so quickly they were just blurs racing past us in the dark.

I swear when I looked at Callie, I saw colors surrounding her. Perhaps it was only my imagination. Perhaps there was nothing around her except my love.

Have you ever felt like you could see love?

On Saturday nights with my friends, it seemed like we were falling forever toward some unspoken dream, some glittering heaven, some field of welcoming red stars.

Sometimes, we told Callie to disable the collision avoidance features on the repulsor.

We wanted to blast down that mountainside at 200km per hour, not knowing if it was everything that we saw before us, or nothing. We wanted to know what it felt like to risk something together.

Emilio, in the seat behind me, leaned forward and clapped my shoulders, bouncing and laughing. There were worse ways to go, we knew, than to die with the people who loved you.

I would get in late on those nights. Sometimes the pink of the dawn would already be creeping over the houses.

And my dad—because back then, I still thought of him as my dad—he wouldn't become my father until later—he would rage. How could I show such disrespect for the man who raised me, who loved me, who only wanted what was best for me? What was I doing? He wanted answers. Was I out there wilding? Was I abusing drugs? What was I thinking?

I would suffer whatever punishments he gave me.

But when I was free again, I would be right back there, living inside that joy with my friends. I didn't care what he did to me. It was worth it.

Those were just the low moments. Most of the time, my dad and I got along all right.

Callie and Posha were dead now. They both made it right about to the ages of their life expectancies. Without longevity treatments, the average Human woman lived to be 92—and so did Callie. The average Bundu-jo female only lived to be 80. Posha had made it to 81 before she'd died.

They'd both passed away while I was asleep.

Only Emilio was left. He was 97 years old. He'd lived a good 18 years past the life expectancy for a Human man. I didn't want to think about what he might look like now. I'd never checked. After I came out of stasis, I had checked only one thing. Whether or not they were still alive. No, yes, no. Then I'd spent nearly an entire month in the dark of my bedroom, doing nothing, thinking nothing, eating almost nothing, staring at the shadows.