Page 155 of The Last Hope
“No.” I pass her the pouch.
She reverses the folds. Empty.
I glance over at Stork, and I freeze. His hands are on his head and eyes tightened on the stone. Looking whiplashed.
“You know what this is?” I ask.
He nods strongly, and his hands fall to the back of his neck. “It’s a UHR, a Universal Hologram Record.” He licks his lips. “But it doesn’t make any bloody sense.”
“Why?” Franny asks.
“It’s a human device, dove.”
My frown deepens. I flip the stone over in my left palm, the baby clinging to my other hand. “How could a human device end up on Saltare-1?”
“It couldn’t have.” Stork stares off in thought, trying to findreasonin this impossibility.
“Well, how do we open it?” Franny asks.
“You can’t.” Stork lets out a broken laugh. He sinks down on the unmade bed and kicks a pillow, thread stitched in a pattern of breaking waves. “UHRs are one of the most encrypted devices. Only the owner’s fingerprint can open one.”
And we have no way of finding the owner.
Franny searches the cleaning cart to see if there’s anything else.
The baby shrieks gleefully. Catching our attention. She wiggles against me and stares up with glittering blue eyes.
Life is precious. I was never taught just how muchlivesare worth our sacrifice and devotion and love. On Saltare, life means something different, but there is a world out there waiting for us and for new generations. A world still worth fighting for.
I narrow my stern gaze at Stork. “Earth can’t become another Saltare.”
He watches the restless baby and sighs, conflicted.
She tries to rattle my hand, and I drop the UHR out of my other. It slides across the waxed floorboards toward Stork.
He reaches for the stone. “If we take the baby—” His voice dies as the deviceclicks.
He opens his palm, and the stone is glowing bright green.
“That’s not possible,” Stork says, mouth ajar as he rises off the bed. Standing and nearing us.
“It’s opening?” Franny asks, just as a hologram projects from the UHR like a film screen. I tune out my surrounding as I fixate on the video.
Wait…
Wait.
I sway back at the image. Blinking in a daze, as though this is a dream. In my logical, reasonable mind, there is no conceivable way this can be real.
What I see is…
Me.
But it’s not me. Not really. My jaw is a little wider and wrinkles crease the edges of my bloodshot eyes. I’m older. Thirties, possibly. Bronze armor shields my chest, the Earthen emblem etched on the breastplate.
I cradle a baby against my armor, my hands coated in blood. The baby is tightly swaddled, blankets stained crimson. Green tufts of hair puff off her little head.
This can’t be real.
