“Just don’t press any buttons you’re not sure of.”
“Thank you.” Her fingers itched to go back and press some.
“What have you been up to?” he asked.
“I saw some men but I hid, and they didn’t see me. Then I stayed inside after that.”
“There’s no one around now. You want to go for a walk?”
With Milo? Oh yes. She nodded, placed her bag of food on the floor, then delved inside and picked out a donut.
“I’m going to stay and look around a bit,” Dylan said. “Let you two lovebirds have some alone time.”
Lovebirds? She blinked, then glanced at Milo. He was scowling at Dylan, but that didn’t stop her heart tripping a beat.
They walked side by side out of the tunnels and into the forest.
“Did Dr. Yang ever talk to you about her family?” Milo asked as they skirted the edge of the lake. The air was warm and the second of the suns was just hovering on the edge of the horizon, so the light was golden. She swallowed her last bite of donut, licking the sugar from her lips. “No, not really.”
“She didn’t mention she had three daughters aboard the Trakis Two?”
For some reason, a flash of hurt swept through her. Dr. Yang had shared nothing of her real life with her. Though really, that came as no surprise. From the books she had read, Destiny could see that Dr. Yang had never treated her as even a normal human being, had never shown any warmth, certainly never treated her as a daughter. Sometimes, despite the fact that they looked nothing like each other, Destiny had dreamed that Dr. Yang was actually her mother and would one day admit it and tell her she loved her and… And what? She hadn’t been able to come up with an “and what” back then and she certainly couldn’t now.
What she did know was that the doctor had been manipulative and…cruel. There, she’d admitted it to herself. Dr. Yang had been cruel. Not vindictive, but cold and heartless to a lonely child. Maybe that’s just the way she was. Except now it seemed she had real daughters. Waiting for her on the Trakis Two. Had she cuddled them when they were babies, sang them to sleep, played with them, hugged them when they were scared and lonely? All the things she hadn’t done with Destiny.
Her eyes pricked and she blinked and pressed her hands to them. She’d been pretty emotional lately. She suspected it was due to an overload of too many fictional emotions. From a life with no inkling that such things were normal, she was being flooded by feelings. She’d been emotionally repressed and now she was in no way prepared to cope with them. She cried at books—even the ones that were supposed to be funny.
“Hey,” Milo said, “are you all right?”
She nodded and then sniffed to prove she was lying. “I just accepted that Dr. Yang never really loved me.” She sniffed again. “I actually think sometimes she hated me. And I have no clue why. And she was all I had. All I have really.” She flashed a glance at his face, analyzed his expression. He looked worried. He was probably scared she was going to break down or something. She’d read that a lot of men didn’t like emotional scenes.
“You have me and Dylan,” he said.
She stopped then and turned to look at him, her eyes narrowing. “Have I? For how long?”
She knew now that they were up to something. She’d suspected it from that first night when Milo had hidden in her cell. Then Milo himself had confirmed it and the books she had read since had given her the contexts to understand a little more about what was going on.
He looked at her sharply. “Why do you say that?”
“You were right about stories. They help you make sense of the world and I can see more clearly now. You think there’s something hidden beneath the tunnels. That’s what you were looking for that night when you hid in my cell. And I think that when you’ve found what you’re looking for, then you’ll leave.” After all, he’d told her they would return to Trakis Two at some point. “What do you think is down there?”
He shrugged. “Weapons. We need to find out what are the possible consequences if we go our separate ways. Will he be able to enforce his…wishes on us when we’re on a different planet? Or can we just ignore