James Decker - Fallout

“My people would never allow a human control over such a device,” Nix said, his eyes scanning the panel of contacts. “Only a haan can activate it.”

“Gohan knows that,” I said. “That’s why he’s creating this situation where—”

“I didn’t create this situation,” a voice said.

We turned to see Gohan Sòng himself standing just outside the doors. He stared at me, one eye wide, the other drooped as if half asleep.

Next to him stood a lithe haan female dressed only in a long, draping cloak. Her eyes glowed ember red, surrounded by blazing blue coronas.

“Ava?” I asked. She turned to me, and I felt her recognition.

“Hello, Sam.”

“Ava, is it true?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Thank you for messaging me,” Gohan said to Alexei. I turned and saw Alexei nod in his direction.

He’d contacted him. Alexei had contacted Gohan and let him know exactly where we were.

“No problem,” Alexei said. Gohan turned his attention back to me.

“As I said, I didn’t create this situation. You did.”

“I—”

“In your desperate paranoia,” he continued. “In your dreadful obsession to leave the haan exposed, to tear from them the one reliable piece of security they have left to them, you have spelled their doom.”

“This isn’t about the force field,” I said. “It’s about letting people see the truth.”

“Even with the isolated blackouts, many have, by now,” she said. “The city is beginning to panic, as we foresaw.”

“Give them some time,” I told her. “Have some faith.”

“Faith?” Gohan spat. He looked amused. I ignored him, talking straight to Ava.

“Give us some credit, Ava. We can get through this thing.”

“But the force field will drop,” she replied. “And we will be exposed.”

“Those yáng guı zi barbarians waiting offshore are arming their nukes as we speak,” Gohan said. “That force field is the only reason they haven’t attacked, because they know it would be pointless. The moment they see their opportunity, they’ll strike with everything they’ve got—”

“You don’t know what they’ll do!” I shouted. “They see what we can’t, and they haven’t come in yet! Nobody knows what they’re thinking or what they’ll do! We don’t mean you any harm!”

“That would mean more without a gun in your hand,” Gohan said.

I looked down at the pistol, having forgotten I even had it.

“Ava, I…”

“We will wait,” Ava said. “But if we are exposed, and the foreigners attack, we may be left with no choice.”

“Ava, you can’t do this…. Gohan has been messing with your head. Look, look at the monitors, he’s been letting Sillith’s virus spread, he wants this to happen—”

“I know that, now.”

“I did no such thing,” Gohan said, raising his voice. Ava raised one delicate hand to silence him.

“The reality is,” Ava said, and I felt a sort of empty sadness through the cluster, “that it doesn’t matter. Whatever has brought us to this point, we are here, now.”

“But he—”

“The Impact was a mistake,” she said. “If it can be undone, if I could put right what went wrong, then perhaps it would be for the best.”

“But what will happen to us?”

It wasn’t until that moment that I noticed Alexei, who had been quiet up to that point, had begun to move away from us, and toward Gohan.

“If it is possible,” she said, “if we could undo what we’d done, then our worlds would separate. We could each go back to the way things were.”

“The way they were?” I asked. “Your planet is gone, and your accident collapsed our entire universe, there’s nothing left for any of us to go back to!”

The sadness I felt from Ava ran deep with guilt, but I also felt her desperation.

“We are all too aware that your people don’t want our solution,” she said. “That, in order to preserve you in some form, we have to deceive you into it. Once you evolve, you will see the sense of it, but you are terrified to take that step, we know. I wonder if maybe it would be better to let you go.”

“Ava, your people are the reason we’re in this mess,” I said. “You can’t just wipe us out.”

“I don’t know if our people can coexist,” she said. “Especially after what Sillith has done, I don’t know if we will ever be able to coexist and my people have hung by a thread for so long. I am afraid of what our future holds.”

“Have some faith,” I told her, but even as I did I knew that what Gohan said might be true. It could be that the foreigners had stayed their hand so far only because they knew attacking with the force field still in place would hurt only the humans of Hangfei, and not the haan themselves. It could be that they, able to see the truth of what Hangfei had become, were so frightened by that prospect that they would try to destroy the haan, given the chance. Hadn’t I known that all along?

“Faith,” Ava said. “Do you still have faith in us?”

“Some of you, Ava, but you don’t make it easy.” Alexei had crossed the room by then, and stood halfway between us and Gohan. “Alexei, come away from him.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Gohan said, holding out his hand. “Come here, Alexei.”

“Alexei, come back here!” I snapped.

“Give me what I want, and you’ll get what you want,” Gohan said.

“And what is that, Gohan? Just what the hell is it that you want from me?”

“Tell me how the haan changed you,” he said. “Tell me how you convinced them to bestow their blessing on you.”

“What?”

“Please, I need to know,” he said. “I need to. You don’t understand….”

Alexei had begun to walk faster, heading toward Gohan with a new determination, and I saw a flicker of confusion in Gohan’s eyes at whatever he read on Alexei’s face.

“Alexei!” I called.

He threw his gonzo robe off, and too late, I saw the remaining two explosive bricks strapped tightly around his scrawny waist. Gohan saw them, too, and the color drained from his face.

“Race traitor!” Alexei screamed, holding out a detonator in one small hand.

I stared, unable to process what I was seeing. I’d worried he’d gone back to Dao-Ming’s apartment to get them, but thought they were in his pack. I’d been wrong. Gohan put it together that he had not been using Alexei all this time, but that if anything, Alexei had been using him. Whatever he saw in the boy’s eyes, it caused him to lose that detached calm of his.

“Alexei,” he stammered, putting his hands up in front of him. “Calm down. Just… calm down for a moment and—”

“Those things killed my mother!” His voice cracked, and I saw tears had begun to stream down his face. “You let my people starve to feed them and they killed my mother! They took everything from us! Everything!”

His Mandarin had turned almost flawless. He’d thought about what he’d say if this moment ever came. He’d practiced it.

“Alexei!” I started toward him, when he spun around with one thumb on the detonator’s trigger.

“Stay away!”

“Alexei, please,” I said, stopping. I held out my hands to him. “Please don’t do this.”

“Sam, go away from here.”

“No. Just… stop a minute, listen to me.”

I stepped closer, the gun in my hand forgotten until Alexei waved his free hand at it.

“You gonna shoot me?”

“No,” I said. I held up the pistol, aiming it away to try to calm him.

“Please, you can’t…”

“Why not?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t want you to.”

His eyes welled with tears, but he didn’t put down the detonator.