“Oh, uh… just an ordinary place, I guess.” She shrugged. “Well, it was before it all went wrong and we had to leave, which is how I ended up here. Uh, there’s one thing I wanted to ask…”
“Yes?”
“Well, I always knew I was different, you know? I mean, really different.”
“In what way?”
“I, uh… I mean I’m different. Do you know what I mean?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“I’m stronger, I’m tougher, I’m faster, I don’t get sick… the doctors said I was some kinda genetic abnormality…”
Vawlin nodded with a smile. “It may be your heritage. If you are Quillian.”
“You mean we’re all like this…?”
“I think you’ll find a number of more developed species have adjusted their genomes. The kind of differences you’re talking about are quite simple ones to implement.”
“Simple. Wow.”
“Certainly. Did you discover any other abilities?”
“I can see pretty well.”
“Can you see things other people can’t?”
“Yeah! Like flowers, you see pictures on a screen and they look all dull and boring but if you look at the actual flowers they’ve got spots and bands on them and nobody else can see it…”
Vawlin nodded again. “We usually have our sight extended into the infra-red and ultraviolet. The markings on the flowers are what, say, a pollinating insect might see. But most humans can’t. You may also have a very long life.”
“Really?”
“Several hundred years. We generally settle on an adult form in our mid twenties and stay that way for a very long time. I myself am two hundred and seventy three years old.”
“No!”
“And therefore I have no idea how old you are.”
“Oh, um, not that old…”
“Well. I can’t confirm you’re a member of my species, not right away. We have to do some background checks first.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll accept the IU’s analysis of your genome, of course, but we would like it done again, just to be sure.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And we will need to know something about the world you’ve been on all this time, so we can match it against our list of missing persons.”
“Right.”
“And if we can find any relatives, of course, we can make doubly sure. I understand you’re very interested in finding your parents.”
Liss’s smile subsided and she seemed more serious. “Yes.”
The Mediator noticed the sudden change in her voice. He’d spent his time politely studying the night sky, but now he looked back down at Liss. Vawlin noticed it too. “I’m sure they didn’t abandon you. Sometimes things can… well, things can happen.”
Liss nodded.
“I don’t want to promise anything. It’s possible they might have died in the years since.”
“I know.”
“Well—”
“What kind of worlds do you go to?”
The question took him by surprise. “Many kinds. I was going to ask you about your world. The one you grew up on. I would imagine that if you’re here, something bad happened.”
“You could say that.”
“Was there an evacuation?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
“Can you tell me about your world?” Liss didn’t answer for a moment. Vawlin looked utterly sympathetic, and put a hand on hers. “It could help us a lot in finding your family.”
The Mediator watched, sensing tension. Vawlin went on. “I know it must have been a terrible experience to see the end of the world you grew up on. But if you really are one of us… I promise you: we won’t let you down. You’ll be part of a species again. You’ll have a world to call home. Whatever happened on that world… you can put it behind you. You can be one of us.”
Behind the blur mask, Liss’s eyes hardened.
“But first you need to tell me something about your world.”
There was a moment of silence before she replied. “You want me to tell you about my world…?”
He couldn’t see the dagger-stare of her eyes, and made the obvious assumption: she’d been traumatised by whatever apocalypse she’d survived. So he let her have her moment, and did a perfect job of looking sympathetic.
“Okay. I’ll tell you about my world.” Vawlin missed the dangerous tone in her voice. The Mediator didn’t, and narrowed his eyes.
“Thank you,” said Vawlin.
“It was… primitive. I guess you’d call it that.”
“We usually prefer ‘less developed’,” he said with a reassuring smile that had no effect on her at all.
“Everything was wrong.”
“What about it was wrong?”
“A lot of people there were special. Special like I was. But they were natives. Stronger than me. Faster than me. Tougher than me. Smarter than me. Some of them were so smart they went mad. They built insane machines for no reason. Released viruses that destroyed livestock and crops. Turned mountains into volcanoes. It was all in the name of science, do you understand me?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I do.”
“People had powers. They used their powers for all kinds of things. For themselves. For the good of humanity. To kill people. To fight crime.
“I fought crime. But it didn’t do any good. It kept getting worse. We lost the infonet. We lost all our food crops. We lost the moon!
“Do you know what else we lost? Calafaria. In the volcanoes. That’s where my parents were keeping me, that’s where the Quillians lived while they were dong their surveys, wasn’t it?”
“I really don’t know without—”
“And it was all in the name of science, yeah? The way everyone on my world was special?”
“I don’t know what it is you’re implying—”
“Do you know what happened to them all? All the people on my world? My friends? My real parents, the ones who raised me after I was abandoned?”
Vawlin listened, suddenly aware of a trap. The Mediator saw it, too, and said: “Ms. Doe, are you sure you wish to continue—”
But Liss ignored him. “They all died. At the same time. They burnt to ash, all at the same time. Somebody used their DNA to kill them. Somebody put a deathtrap in their genome. Somebody gave them powers so they could experiment on them and put in a way to hide their tracks. But it didn’t get me. Because I’m one of you. Do you understand me?”
Vawlin’s jaw wobbled. He didn’t understand, to begin with. Then his eyes went wide for a moment.
He shot to his feet and the diplomatic mask slammed shut.
“This meeting can serve no further purpose.”
“Security,” said the Mediator. Liss jumped at him.
Vawlin barely had time to see what happened before she had the Mediator by the neck and groin, making him gasp. She lifted him above her head, hardly noticing his weight, as two guards in power armour ran through the ripple of air into the room, weapons already raised and pointing at her.
She flung the Mediator at them, absorbing the stun bolts they fired at her, then knocking them down as he crashed into them. They pushed his dead weight off, but she was already on them, ripping off their helmets, crushing their weapons and banging their heads against the fake stone floor before they could do anything else.
Vawlin gasped, finding her between him and the exit, with no one to protect him. The blur mask stayed on her face, and her posture was all he could read: legs apart, still tensed and ready to fight.
“You’re under arrest,” she said.
He was incredulous. “What…?”
“By the powers granted me in the One World Accord of NR 643, I detain you as a material witness to the crime of genocide. You have the right to silence but may be subject to neural interrogation under circumstances outlined in paragraph ten subsection three of the Emergency Powers Annex, which most certainly fucking applies in this case!”