The Lying Planet Read online

  Shelly Fergusen is the final graduate to get capped. The silvery arms begin slashing. Thirty seconds go by. My stomach knots as I watch the gauge. No. It’s moving in slow-motion, not even to twenty yet.

  It creeps up a bit more. The red glow fades.

  “Twenty-two.” Commander Farrow’s face is pasty. “We have another branding to perform.”

  The crowd groans. Shelly throws a wide-eyed look at Blake, who gives his head a weary shake and stares at the ground. Two brandings in one ceremony is unheard of—it’s as many as we sometimes get in an entire year.

  Her branding happens in a drawn-out jumble. More forced kneeling, more smoking branding irons, more searing flesh and screams of pain. The commander’s parting words to us are a mix of encouragement and firm reprimand.

  The moment he dismisses us, Aubrie shoots off down the bleachers. “See you at the Nebula tomorrow night, Jay,” she calls back over her shoulder, like it’s an afterthought.

  I know where she’s heading. To say good-bye to Blake. I can’t make myself join her, even though I thought I’d be glad to have him out of my life forever. But I don’t want it like this, in shame and shock and confusion. I’d rather comfort Tammi, who’s just seen her first brandings.

  Harrel gives me a solemn nod of farewell. I leave the stadium and board a transport with my family. Rachel and Tammi drift into fresh tears beside me, sobbing onto my shirt sleeves. Mom and Dad send us watchful glances across the aisle, while I smooth Tammi’s hair and stare out the window. Words are useless right now. I wish Aubrie were here, too, but I guess that’s my fault for not going down to the viewing area to have a final moment with Blake—or at least hanging around until she was done.

  I frown. Although it didn’t really sound like she wanted me to wait for her.

  Once we reach our unit, Mom herds Rachel and Tammi down the hall to take their nightly pills and get ready for bed, murmuring soothing words. Dad hovers in the entryway.

  “Son.” He places a hesitant hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  I try not to look devastated. “Shocked, mostly. I’ll work through it. I’m going to my room now.”

  “All right. Just remember, Blake and Shelly had years to prove themselves, and somehow they sabotaged that.”

  “Yeah. However they did it.”

  “It doesn’t matter what specific things they did or didn’t do. Don’t worry. You’ll get an exceptionally high score…you follow the rules and you’re a great kid. I hope you know that.” Dad’s hand slides from my shoulder, and he turns away. “I need a cup of nice, hot broth,” he mutters.

  I close myself in my room. Blood pounds in my head like a frenzy of hammers. How did Blake end up being banished? Whatever he did, those actions completely canceled out his good. I have no idea how many constructive things we have to do to guarantee a high result. Or even to get a score of fifty, compared to one hundred or one hundred and fifty. Before, it was easy to guess based on my friends’ everyday lives. I thought I knew.

  Not anymore.

  What if the Machine does make mistakes or has a warped idea of what’s good? What if it sentenced Blake to banishment for thinking too much of himself? Or for too much flirting? It might grade us randomly or extremely hard. The spooky contraption might give lower scores to kids who hate broccoli or don’t take time to play with their younger siblings. Even I could spend more time with my family.

  Blake should’ve scored higher than nineteen. He definitely should’ve scored higher than a session-ditching girl like Shelly. Blake always logged in community service hours above the required daily three. Like I do. That has to count for something.

  My room grows dark. My thoughts grow darker. Blake Zemik, that conceited pus-worm. Aubrie sure rushed off fast after the ceremony to go hug and weep over the guy. We’ve all grown up together and she cares for everyone, but the fool isn’t some hunky hero riding off into the sunset. He basically flunked life, and—unless he was Tested wrong—he spent time doing things the Machine thought were worthy of banishment.

  He’s always had a bad attitude toward me. At the Nebula, he was showing off by spouting nonsense about vermals and briarcats. Like the guy knows anything about wild indigenous animals. What kind of “legit” adult-supervised outing was he part of in the woods, anyway?

  Wait a minute—

  The woods. The thought jolts through me. Those trips he made probably weren’t legit at all. Whatever the swaggering jerk did out there tipped the Machine’s scales into a nosedive. Going beyond the perimeter fence is a serious act of rebellion, sneaking past the guards and being where the Board has forbidden us to go. Was he out there taking a stroll or doing something worse?

  Somehow I have to find out details, what else he’s done. My confidence in the Testing depends on it. I need to be sure I can not only pass, but also score high enough to win a cloudskimmer. If I don’t, Mom and Dad will be publicly shamed and my future plans to explore Promise City with Aubrie will be ruined. First thing tomorrow, I’m finding out what’s going on.

  With that strategy, my thoughts turn to sludge. Fatigue claims my body. I yawn, and close out the world with my eyelids.

  …

  I wake, groggy. With my eyes mere slits, I see a shaft of diffused light invade the smudgy darkness of my room. Murmured voices drift into my ears.

  “He’s out,” Dad whispers. “Still dressed in his uniform. Poor guy, the ceremony was rough on him.”

  “It was hard on everyone,” Mom says. “Come on. Let’s relax for a bit before we go to bed.”

  The shaft of light disappears with the click of the closing door.

  I blink, then blink again. It’s nighttime. Why did I awaken before daylight? My pill should’ve knocked me out until seven in the morning. I suck in a sharp breath. Oh, scorch it all. I forgot to take my protection pill. For once, Mom and Dad didn’t remind me or hand one to me—even they forgot in the shock of the ceremony banishments.

  I sit up and reach for my pill tin on the clothing cubicle, where Mom lets me keep a few extras. As I do, a loud slushing noise fills the room. It’s gravelly. Creepy. My hand freezes in mid-air. The hairs on my arms and neck shoot upward, electrified with instant gooseflesh. What in the infinite galaxies is that? Something in our unit is making that sound. It continues in an irregular rhythm like the hisses of dying snakes.

  Padding in socked feet, I cross to the door and put my ear against it. I catch garbled snatches of Mom’s and Dad’s voices, their words mingling with the slushy sounds.

  I steel myself against my initial spineless reaction. There has to be a good explanation for these noises. A ludmium appliance, maybe a broken one. Dad must be fixing some sort of gadget, although it’s weird he’s doing it this late at night.

  With a slow, careful hand, I turn the doorknob. Quiet, now. I don’t want Mom and Dad to know I’ve been careless enough to forget my pill. I ease the door open and slip down the hall toward the dull glow of the lounge room. The hoarse sounds grow louder, making it harder to hear my parents’ words.

  “…I hope our next crop is better,” Mom is saying. “It’s a lot of time spent cultivating to have some of it wasted.”

  “All we can do is try,” Dad says. “It’s like planting beans and strawberries in this miserable alien soil, even with terraforming adjustments. Some things are out of our control.”

  “Well, I hate that it is. Grains like wheat keep this zone from starving, but that’s about it. It’s pretty tasteless, and frankly, I think we should be feeding more of it to our children instead of eating it ourselves.”

  “I agree. We need to make sacrifices for the future.”

  “Yes, and regulate our frozen and canned rations better.” Mom gives an odd, gurgling sigh. “The broth powder, too. If we just had better quality stock to start with, we wouldn’t have to add such a large amount of grain filler. We should talk to Brother Boggs and see what he says, or bring it up to Master Farrow himself.”

  Dad mutters an unintelligible
response. Are they fixing some sort of machinery while discussing food and gardening strategies? I can’t tell. And why did Mom call Boggs “brother” and Farrow “master”? Avoiding the creaky spot in the middle of the hall floor, I sidle to the wall and flatten myself against it. I move toward the edge, and tip my head until one eye clears the end.

  What I see stuns me into near senselessness.

  There, by the light of a lud-lamp, sit the sources of the horrifying noises. Not one cog or circuit of machinery is in sight. No gadgets whatsoever. My parents’ words ramble on as if nothing is out of the ordinary, their voices merging with the snake-like sounds in the room.

  The two figures sitting there are using Mom’s and Dad’s voices.

  But they look nothing like Mom and Dad.

  Chapter Five

  I stare only for a split second. In that brief moment, I see a whole lot more than I want to. A pair of grotesque creatures sit hunched in my parents’ chairs. Their bodies are like warped fusions of hairy mammals and giant spiny lobsters. Pointy snouts, black eyes on short stalks, and fanged teeth as sharp as the vermal that attacked me.

  Tufted ears jut from their heads. Their bodies look crustacean. Shelled, the color of amber. Five pairs of spiky legs.

  Nightmarish.

  Evil.

  My head snaps back so fast I bite my tongue. Fighting a rise of bile in my throat, I flee to my room. I close my door fast—and as quietly as I can. My heart pounds in my neck, whams in my ears, and ricochets through my head. I leap for the bed and bury my face in my pillow.

  No, no no no no. What the crap was that? Something unnatural. It doesn’t make sense. I’m positive I’m not dreaming. Is this a hallucination, a side effect of forgetting to take my pill?

  I try to still myself, to listen for signs that my retreat has been heard. The slushy voices continue their irregular tempo. I’m glad they haven’t heard me, but I can’t make my lungs work right. I shift onto my side, facing away from the door, and lie there for what feels like an eternity.

  At last the gravelly sounds stop. Muted footsteps go into my parents’ room. Soon I hear nothing except my tortured heartbeat and the rasp of my breathing.

  Those creatures and their waving spiny legs, the unblinking eyes. The hideous noises that came from their throats along with Mom’s and Dad’s voices. This can’t be right. Not unless a pair of beasts have taken over my parents’ bodies, like parasites or some sort of alien invasion.

  But Mom and Dad haven’t been acting any different lately. They’ve been great parents. Everything has been normal. For years. Surely they haven’t been these ugly, secret beasts all my life.

  Have they?

  I try to swallow but fail. No. I refuse to believe that. Because if that’s true, these mutations, these monsters—these foreign things—have raised me. A shudder racks my spine. I hope I’m not one of those things or grow up to be like them. The people of Liberty are listed in the database as humans originating from Earth, fleeing overpopulation and pollution and conflict, making this planet livable for humans by terraforming, and existing here for the last ninety years. We colonized an unspoiled planet with no higher-intelligence life forms.

  There must be another reason Mom and Dad look like something from my worst nightmares. Maybe the beasts abducted and hid my real parents somewhere. Maybe they control my parents’ bodies during the day. I don’t know. Whatever is going on, these creatures are posing as my parents.

  That can’t be a good thing. Not good at all.

  I toss and turn while the night wears on. A protection pill would help me sleep, but if I take it this late, I might not wake in time for my education training.

  Another jolt runs through me. Flippin’ asteroids—the pills.

  The pills are supposed to be made up of an immune booster and a sleeping powder for genomide protection. But the sleep aid part might have nothing to do with helping us to rest well and stay healthy. Instead, maybe we’re drugged so our fake parents can roam around in their beast forms at night. I chew on my knuckles. Come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen Mom or Dad swallow pills themselves. Only talk about taking them.

  It’s all very sinister…or else a crazy hallucination.

  By the time dawn lightens my room, I know what I have to do. Instead of finding out why Blake flunked his Testing, I need to figure out what’s going on with Mom and Dad, and see if other adults in Sanctuary are like that. Somehow. Without getting caught.

  When the zone tower’s distant bell gongs at my normal waking time of 7:00, I spring from bed and take a quick shower. Unlike most mornings, I don’t feel a leftover sluggishness from my pill, and I don’t miss it, either. I get dressed in record time and fry a couple of eggs in the kitchen. Unfortunately, Dad wanders in as I fork in the last bites.

  “Good morning, son,” Dad greets with a yawn, looking exactly like he usually does. Fatherly. Calm and matter-of-fact. “Don’t forget to have fruit so your breakfast is well-balanced.”

  I grunt a reply while my egg lodges in my throat like a chunk of permawalk. The normal, easygoing feeling I have around Dad is gone. I make myself swallow while he opens the bin of brownish broth powder on the counter. What’s in there—some sort of monster food? Is that why it tastes nasty?

  Stars in the endless universe, it’s an adult-only drink.

  All the adults in Sanctuary have to be those hideous creatures. That would explain the rule that no one under eighteen can drink their broth. And Mom in her creature form called Commander Farrow “master” when talking about the broth, which is what Dad called him after my vermal attack. Dad must’ve slipped up that night because he was stressed out.

  I snatch a plumquat from the counter, eat it quickly, and sanitize my plate. “I’m off to see Aubrie,” I say, my words tumbling out. “If I don’t catch ya later at the gardens, I’ll be back tonight.”

  “Enjoy your day.”

  I rush out the front door, trying not to think of the black eyes and sharp teeth that lurk under Dad’s skin. There aren’t any training sessions on Sundays, but I can’t go to the gardens today. I won’t be able to handle being around Mom and Dad. Or any adult. I need to find answers, but I need help thinking this through. Maybe Aubrie can help me, and if we need another opinion, we can ask Harrel.

  Two streets over, Aubrie’s unit stands in a sleepy row of others. The lights are already on as I walk up, so I knock. Her twelve-year-old brother answers the door in his pajamas.

  “Aubrie up yet?” I ask.

  “Yeah, but she looks like a transport ran her over. And she’s reaaally crabby.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” I step inside. Great, Aubrie must still be upset about Blake’s banishment. I follow her brother into the kitchen and find her sitting with a glass of milk. A puffiness by her eyes shows she’s been crying a long time. Her parents sit at the meal nook with her, drinking protein broth and eating bowls of steaming wheat cereal. I try not to back away.

  “Hi, everyone,” I manage to say. “Aubrie, do you have a minute to talk?”

  I have to get out of here. Fast.

  She gives me the barest flick of a glance. “I said I’d see you at the Nebula tonight.”

  “I need to talk to you before that. Let’s go for a walk.” Dinner at the commons isn’t served until six. I can’t wait that long.

  “I don’t really feel like it, Jay.”

  I’ve never seen her like this. Dull, almost sullen. “Please? A quick favor. It’ll be a short walk.”

  She blows out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine.”

  I fidget while she drains her milk, rinses her glass, and hands a muffin to her six-year-old brother who wanders in. She follows me out the door. I lead her away from the dwelling compound and onto the quiet road that heads north.

  “How far are we going?” Aubrie grumbles, her fingers slipping from mine.

  “I need to talk to you about something in private. I know you’re upset about last night’s ceremony, but this is way more important.�
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  I practically hear the sizzles that spark from her as she frowns. “You’ve got to be kidding. What’s more important than people being banished and sent off to die in the outer zones?”

  “Listen, last night I was so anxious and weirded out, I forgot to take my pill.”

  She throws me a sharp, sudden look. “That’s dangerous.”

  “Maybe. I’m wondering if the pills only make us sleep, and have nothing to do with genomide dust protection.”

  “Give me a break.”

  I hesitate. Man, her brother wasn’t wrong about the crabbiness. “I fell asleep on my own and woke up a little later. I heard a terrible noise and got up to see what it was.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was Mom and Dad talking in the lounge room, and they didn’t look like themselves. They were…uh, this will be hard to believe, but they looked like giant spiny lobsters with vermal fangs and ears. It was really, really scary.”

  Aubrie stares hard at me for a few moments. “You’re right. That is hard to believe. You must’ve been dreaming.”

  “I’m telling you, I was totally awake. I’ll check again tonight to make sure, but Mom and Dad seem to be these horrible beast-things in disguise, and I think all the adults in Sanctuary are, because of the broth they drink and how they call Boggs ‘brother’ and Farrow ‘master’ when we’re not around. They only show their true selves at night. I don’t know whether they’ve just taken over our parents or if they’ve always been like that.”

  She shakes her head. “What you saw had to be a reaction from forgetting your pill. You hallucinated, big time. Ask your mom or dad if seeing things is a side effect of skipping a dose.”

  “No!” I say more loudly than I meant to. “I’m not asking them. Don’t tell this to anyone, especially adults. We can’t take chances. At the very least, I’d get in trouble for not taking my pill.”

  “Take it easy, will you?” She pats my arm, like I’m Tammi acting fearful of a tiny skitterbug. “I won’t tell anyone. I know you’re usually not like this. Just take your pill from now on and everything will be fine.”