“A replicant?”

“A copy. A perfect copy.”

“So how come I never heard nothing of it? How come we never knew?”

“Because our father wanted to keep you safe.”

“Safe?” My mind groped at each word, at each new bit of information. But it was like everything was slipping past me and shattering on the ground. I wanted my father. I wanted to see him. But at the same time, everything felt wrong. And he’d never seemed so far.

“You’ll see,” Zee said. She nudged me over so she could sit beside me.

“So what? You’re my sister?” My hands were trembling and I dug my fists at my side.

“I suppose,” she said.

But I’d never had a sister. I never had anyone except Pop. I tried to make sense of it. I kept trying to start at the beginning, but then I’d just lose my way all over again.

“I should have looked for you longer,” I told her. “On that slave ship. I got Hina out, though. But I couldn’t save her. Not in the end.”

Zee started to cry and it was enough to make me quit shaking. I tried to breathe proper, but I couldn’t slow down.

“I couldn’t do nothing,” I said, the words tumbling out. “For Hina. Or Sal. And I think it might be my fault. Dragging them along.”

“No,” Zee said, and she tried saying something else, but her tears messed the words and then she just cried till she’d drained herself out. And when she’d got done crying, I could hear her wheezing through those crusted lungs of hers. That tight, shriveled sound.

“Hina remembered,” I said. “In the end. Like she could see her whole life. And she was clean. Free of old Frost and clean of the crystal.”

“What about Sal?”

“He saved me,” I said, remembering him pulling me out of the mud pit. Remembering when I’d called him my friend.

“He used to try and hide me. When Frost got crazy.” Zee started sobbing again. And I reckon Sal had been like a brother to her. No matter the shit that he’d said.

“They took you to Vega?” I said, thinking about that spinning wheel that had arced across the plains. “The Harvesters?”

“I don’t know. I just woke up here.”

“I didn’t see one agent out there with a dust mask.”

“The air’s clean,” she said. “All the time.”

“So can it fix you up? Your lungs?”

“The Creator says they can’t get better. But at least here they won’t get worse.”

“The Creator.” I stood up off the bed, stuck my head in my hands. “Who the hell calls themself that?”

“It’s her title. That’s what everyone calls her.”

“Kind of like you still got a mom, I guess.”

“I told you,” Zee said. “She’s your mom. Not mine.”

“It’s impossible. My mom died. She starved herself so I could live.”

“That’s what our father told you?”

I rubbed at the back of my neck. I refused to believe that woman was my mother. The very idea sent a pain through my skull.

“Our dad came to build for the bigwigs,” Zee said. “For GenTech. They wanted statues of the people who found this place.”

“They’re making him build?” For a moment I pictured my father and a thousand others all slaving over some GenTech shrine.

“That was when he first came to the island. Your mother said that’s how they met.” Zee scooped up the rose and placed it on the bed between us. “He made her this. But he never built the statues GenTech wanted. Soon as you were born, he took you and ran. Stayed hidden.”

“Hidden?”

“Until last winter.”

“Right,” I said, and my body trembled as the very reason I’d come all this way carved through the confusion inside. “Last winter. When he got taken.”

“No,” Zee said, her voice soft. Her face like an apology. “He wasn’t taken.”

I went to speak, but I couldn’t. I just seized up. Like an engine run dry.

“He traveled to Vega,” Zee said. “He turned himself in.”

“To GenTech?” The words crawled out my mouth and then crept down my spine.

“It was the only way he could get back here. Through the Rift. Across the water.”

“To the trees,” I whispered.

“Right.” Zee almost smiled. “To the trees.”

Don’t know how long it lasted. Once I’d let it all sink in. Zee did her best to try and comfort me, but I didn’t want Zee. All I wanted was my old man, and I shouted for him in the darkness and then I rammed my fists at the wall.

Eventually my voice gave out. I tried breathing but it felt exactly like drowning in that yellow river all those years before. Only this time there was no one to pull me back out. And that’s what made it all hurt so damn much. Because Pop had been my only friend in the whole world. And he hadn’t been taken at all. He’d just upped and left.

But why?

I started for the door but Zee grabbed me, pulled me back.

“You have to stay, Banyan. With me.”

“No.” I tried to force past her, but I was still too weak. “I gotta see him.”

“You can’t. The agents won’t let you.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“No one can.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ve got him locked up.”

Locked up? I shouldn’t give a damn, I told myself. So what if they’d tossed him in a cell and thrown away the key? Pop had left me. Ditched me. Made up some shit about hearing voices and he just snuck out the wagon and he probably never once looked back. Just ran through the dust storm. Headed for Vega. Headed for GenTech and this island of trash. Left me with nothing but things that were hollow. He’d lied to me. Always. And I’d believed in him.

Right from the start.

I curled up in the corner with my guts like concrete. My skin was hot. But I was shivering. Silent. Trying not to let myself crack. Zee gave up talking after a bit. And once she’d slipped into a twitchy sleep, I peeled myself off the floor.

I shuffled back inside the laboratory and sat watching the lights and screens as they bubbled and flashed. It was almost like I was dreaming. Everything inside me was numb. I fell down in a chair and tried to be empty. But I kept seeing my old man’s face. I kept looping over our life together, trying to figure out how he’d been able to walk away from me.

I tried to remember every little thing, searching for clues. But my father seemed a whole different person than the bag of memories I’d been carting around. He was like someone I’d never even known. A stranger.

I started turning over the steps it had taken to get to this place. I started to think about Alpha. And Crow. I worked myself up in a right state. And by the time the Creator came in, brushing snow off her shoulders, I felt I’d lost more than I ever knew I had.

“Why’d he do it?” I said, watching the woman shrug off her coat. I’d surprised her, but she tried to look relaxed about me sitting there. “Why’d he come back here? For you?”

The woman sank into a chair across from me and she made that same sad smile that Hina had used and Zee had perfected.

“He’d have never come for me,” she said. “He came because of the experiments. Told me he’d waited till he’d raised you. He said you were free.”

“What experiments?” I pictured Alpha, shorn and shriveled and covered in plastic. And I pictured Crow, his chopped-off body being carried away. “Where are the others?” I said, panic welling up inside me. “The others from the boat?”

“Don’t worry,” the woman said. “They’re sleeping.”

“Sleeping?”

“They’re special, Banyan. And they’re safe.”

“Not like the ones you burned in Vega.” I saw Sal’s face like a ghost in my mind, remembered how the kid hadn’t even screamed when he sizzled and smoked.

“Vega’s nothing to do with me,” the woman said. “That’s the Executive Chief and the number crunchers. The bottom line. It’s not something anyone enjoys. It’s just something we have to tolerate.”