Nova Read Free Page B

It’s just . . . I don’t want him to let go of my wrists. I don’t want him to stop looking at me.
    I stall for time. “Who did you think I’d be?”
    “I don’t know. Some other Lia Johansen from Aurora Colony, I suppose.”
    “Were there that many of us?”
    “If there were, none of them mattered but you.” He ducks his head, looking embarrassed, and adds, “It’s good to see you again, Lia.”
    “It’s good to see you too, Michael.”
    Michael?
The name popped out without thought, but it must be right or he wouldn’t be smiling at me. When the overlay shattered, Lia’s memories scattered and fell away, disappearing from my conscious mind. I’d thought they were gone for good, but apparently they’re still in there, crouching somewhere within the pockets of my mind.
    I plumb the depths of my memory, trying to place this Michael. He looks about my age—or rather, Lia’s age—but with his skin dark and mine pale, it seems unlikely that we’re related. Besides, Lia has no living relatives. A friend, then?
    “It’s been a long time since those summer days in the park, hasn’t it?” he continues. “Seven years now?”
    The park.
    A playground, grass, white flowers everywhere.
    “Higher, Michael! Push me higher!”
    “How high, Li-Li?”
    “To the sky!”
    I blink, surprised by the memory. Now where did
that
come from? In my three weeks aboard the
Xenia Anneli
,
I never recalled that. “You used to push L—me on the swings.”
    He grins. “You always wanted to go higher.”
    “To the sky,” I agree. It’s starting to come back now. Michael, from Aurora Colony. Childhood playmates, he and Lia lived next door all their lives until his family left the colony when he was nine. I cried for days after he left.
    She
, I correct myself.
Lia
cried for days after he left. I have never met Michael, and he has never met me. For the first time, I suddenly feel like the imposter I am. Not because I’m an enemy agent, not because I’m a bomb, but because I’m basking in the warm glow of a gaze meant for someone else. Someone special. Someone who is not me.
    In its way, that’s even worse than being looked at like I’m no one.
    I pull my wrists from his grasp and look away, suddenly all too aware that they aren’t my hands Michael is holding but Lia’s. “I should go,” I say, careful to avoid his eyes as I begin edging around him. “Thanks for coming to see me.”
    He doesn’t take the hint, falling into step beside me as I head for the lift station. “Where are you going? Maybe I can show you the way.”
    “The cafeteria, but I can fi—”
    “Oh, sure. You must be hungry after traveling all day. Come on, we’ll go up to the one on Five.”
    We?
“That’s okay, you don’t—”
    “There’s one on Nine, too,” he continues, reaching out to take my sleeping kit before I even realize what he’s about, “but Five always has better desserts.”
    Somehow our positions have gotten reversed, and now instead of Michael following me to the lift, I’m following him. I trail behind him, uncertain how to detach myself from him now that he’s so neatly taken charge.
    The lift station is essentially a giant metal pulley that is continually in motion, one side always going up while the other goes down. I watch as the man in front of us steps onto a platform sliding up a track in the pulley as it comes level with the floor, briefly touching the metal pole to steady himself as the lift continues up. Glancing down the hole, I hesitate as the next platform comes into view. As if sensing my uncertainty, Michael grabs my hand and steps on, pulling me with him.
    On instinct, I latch onto the metal pulley only to find that I don’t really need it. The lift isn’t moving particularly fast, and besides, the platform is surrounded on three sides by waist-high glass walls. The crowd shrinks as the lift bears us up and away. We pass the thick metal divider that serves as both floor and ceiling, and then