The Defiant
Chapter Twenty

I was out of bed and in the hall before I stopped to think.

What if it hadn’t actually been a memory, but just a simple dream? Maybe I was just totally overreacting.

Or maybe not. After all, I had felt brief flashes of remembrance before, like when we entered the atmosphere in the shuttle. And if I remembered Seven’s face, a face two years younger than she is now, maybe we knew each other before. And, like the other memories, these were starting to come back.

Before I could second guess myself again, I buzzed Seven’s door.

After about a minute, she opened the door, bleary-eyed and messy-haired.

“What?” she asked, yawning widely.

“You knew me before.” It wasn’t a question.

Seven opened her eyes all the way, suddenly fully awake. “Get inside,” she hissed, ushering me inside and shutting the door.

She leaned against the back of the door and sighed, blinking slowly.

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“I knew you before. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but—”

“Wait. You remember me? Why didn’t you tell me? When did you replace out? What do you remember about me? Do you—do you know my name?” I asked, my voice faltering. If Seven knew about my life before, and hadn’t told me, I don’t think I could forgive her.

“Look, I don’t really remember you. It’s just a feeling—like when someone says a name, and it’s familiar to you, but you can’t figure out how you know it. It’s just like that.”

“So you don’t remember who I am, or where we met?” My heart sank.

“Nope. Just your face—it’s familiar. And I know I knew you, and not Eight.”

“How?”

“Your scar.”

“Ugh. It all comes back to this stupid scar.” I touched the offending feature, annoyed. It had been the reason I wasn’t allowed to be on the crew the police met with, too.

“Yeah, sorry.”

“And you don’t remember anything else?”

“A word. A foreign word. It popped into my head when I first saw you. I don’t know what it means. I tried to ask the computer, but it gave me an error message. Said I didn’t have authorized access.”

“Ieaheia.”

“How’d you know that?” Seven asked, startled.

“I—I had a dream. That’s why I knew that I knew you. That you knew me. I remembered you, as a kid. Like fourteen or fifteen.”

“Your memories are coming back.”

“Not yet. And maybe it wasn’t really a memory, but just a dream?”

“But then how would you know the word?”

“There’s no way I could’ve, unless it actually was a memory.”

“If it was, that’s great!” said Seven excitedly. “Maybe we’ll get the rest of our memories back, too. I wonder if any of the others remembers anything?”

“They might, but we shouldn’t tell them about this,” I said, making up my mind as I spoke.

“Well, why? Even if they haven’t had memories of their own, this’ll give them some hope that they’ll eventually get them back!”

“Exactly. False hope. What if it turns out this was just some weird coincidence or shared delusion or something, and not actually a memory? It would crush them.”

“False hope is better than none at all,” argued Seven stubbornly.

“But what if they think that this means we lied to them from the beginning, and turn on us? It’s too risky to tell the rest of them now. Let’s just wait until we’re sure my memories are coming back, and then tell them.”

Seven agreed, rather reluctantly, and we went our separate ways.

The word ieaheia swirled around my mind all the rest of the night and into the morning. What did it mean?

And if I’d known Seven, what if I’d known the rest before—all this? We had previously assumed that we all came from different places, based on our accents and appearances. What if that wasn’t true?

Even though there was obviously a chance we’d all known each other before the memory wipe, once I calmed down enough to think properly, I decided that it was slim. After all, as far as I knew, no one had had memories of knowing each other before.

Though I wasn’t exactly sure keeping this information from the others was the right decision, I figured it was better than the alternative, which would be a very risky gamble indeed. Although, I was beginning to tire of keeping secrets from the crew. First, Five’s suspicions about the Aerzhu, then his and my ill-fated relationship, and finally my resurfacing memories of Seven.

Also, I’ll admit I didn’t want to tell anyone because it would spoil the mood.

Morale on the ship was flying high. We worked as a team. Our education was progressing in leaps and bounds. Two days after our first dance lesson, Four recited the entire Eranian royal family tree from memory without a single mistake. (And that’s impressive, considering they all have four or five middle names).

We continued with the dance lessons. We all seemed to be improving slightly, but we still went to bed every night with bruised feet, mostly because of Seven stepping on them.

The girl had the grace of an intoxicated elephant. She stepped on toes, knocked over chairs, and on one memorable occasion, let go of Four too early on one of the round step spins, sending the smaller girl sailing across the galley and into the kitchen. Seven apologized profusely and offered to stop dancing, but we refused to let her quit.

I, on the other hand, was excelling. Three told me she suspected I had dance experience, probably ballet. Three, Five, and Eight were good. Two, Six, and Four were passable. Seven was so bad her dancing was a safety hazard.

Day four of our dance lessons found Seven and I preparing to dance a round step. I was not looking forward to it. Not because I disliked Seven, in fact, she was probably my favorite--and certainly the nicest--person on board, but because my poor feet didn’t want another pounding.

“Hey, Seven,” I said with my teeth clenched a few minutes later as we bumped into yet another chair, “Look up at me instead of down at your feet. It might help you get a better hold on the music. Just don’t think about what your feet are doing. Better yet, don’t think about dancing at all.”

“If I don’t look at my feet,” she said, looking up at me briefly, “How should I know where to put them?”

“Just follow me.”

“All right. But remember, we do this at your own risk.”

“Deal.” We started to dance again.

“Step forward, back, forward, clap, back, out, in, forward,” I instructed with the music. Seven was looking very determinedly over my shoulder so she wouldn’t look down.

I had been right. Seven was marginally better now that she’d gotten out of her head.

“Great job,” I praised.

She shifted her gaze from the air behind me to my face and smiled. She had a lovely smile. And beautiful eyes, warm brown with flecks of gold that brought out the color in her skin. I stumbled a bit in the dance, and we tumbled to the floor.

“Alright, guys?” Two asked from where he stood dancing with Three.

“Yep, just fine,” Seven chirped and bounced to her feet then helped me up. “For once it wasn’t my fault that we fell!”

Three looked at me curiously but didn’t comment.

We moved on to the village dance but I was still rattled and missed a few steps. After Six put me down and I didn’t execute the proper move to cycle over to Five, he signed. Three told me he was asking what was wrong.

What was wrong, I couldn’t tell them.

I remembered those eyes, shining with tears in a darkened room, the strains of violin music rising over a cacophony of voices. A whispered condolence reached my ears, and I realized where we were. A funeral. But for whom?

Before I could figure it out, I returned to the present with a jolt.

I was either going nuts, or I was remembering scenes from my past. I hoped for the latter. I consulted Seven in the garden after the dance lesson, and she told me she thought it was a memory.

“I mean, if you are crazy, why would you have dreamed up the exact same words that I thought of when I first saw you?”

“Shared delusion?”

“I’m telling you, it’s a memory.”

“And if it is, do you think… Do you think Ieaheia is my name?”

“No,” she said firmly, shaking her head. “It just doesn’t sound right to me. I just don’t think it’s your name. It might be a nickname, though.”

“Are any of your other memories coming back? Because, if yours are, the rest of ours might, too.”

I opened my mouth to respond when we heard a tiny sound, like a gasp or an exhale, from the hallway, where the door’s closing had been impeded by a bit of soil.

I jumped up and raced to the hallway, where I caught Six entering the lift. I seized his arm and dragged him back into the hallway.

“Listen Six, it’s not what you think. I’m not concealing anything from the rest of you. Well, not anything big,” I amended, wincing. Six started signing furiously, but I interrupted him, desperate to make him understand.

“I have had two memories. Neither specific, both involving Seven, whom I apparently knew before. I don’t think my other memories are coming back, and I have not remembered anything of use about myself, her, or any other member of the crew. The only reason I didn’t tell anyone was that I didn’t want to give anyone false hope that their memories will come back, yeah? I wasn’t trying to be deceitful. Do you get what I’m saying?”

He shrugged sullenly.

“Listen, you can’t tell anyone about this, okay? I don’t want to others to think I’m a liar or a spy or something.”

He seemed to think about it for a moment, then nodded unenthusiastically.

“Do you promise?” I asked.

He made a cross-my-heart gesture.

“Good. I just don’t want to hurt anyone’s confidence so close to the ball.”

He nodded again, and I left with him, riding up to the upper decks.

I watched Six like a hawk for the last few days of our journey, but he seemed to be keeping his word. The only person he could even communicate with was Three, who was often mysteriously absent.

Three days out from Cebos, and the stress level was rising again. Four studied in silence when she wasn’t at her post at the pilot’s console, and often snapped angrily when interrupted. Which is not actually all that different than how she usually acts, now that I think on it.

Three, who had elected herself our unofficial mission instructor, decided that we all needed a lesson on poise.

She bellowed things like, “Come on, Seven, you’re supposed to be a countess, not the letter S!” to correct posture, and “Four, that was not a curtsy, that was you slipping over your own feet!”

Her goals were to teach us proper posture and court manners. Four had given her some of the Cebosian culture information that had been left to us by the Aerzhu, a decision I think she now regretted.

The entire mission preparation process had brought out a task-master, authoritarian side of Three. It was an interesting phenomenon, as just three weeks ago she seemed not to care at all about the outcome of the mission, and now she appeared determined to whip us all into shape.

Even the boys were not exempt from Drill Sergeant Three. She repeatedly tried to trick them into speaking, which Eranian guards were not supposed to do under any circumstances. She also talked us into doing sneak attacks to test their combat skills, “just in case someone has a bone to pick with the Eranian royalty and they’re too stupid to realize we’re imposters.”

I had a mix of feelings about the whole mission. Anxiety, obviously, because if one of us screwed up and revealed ourselves, we could be arrested or killed. Trepidation. Curiosity as to the identity of the man we’d be transporting to Earth. And an odd excitement, born from getting ready to do something potentially hazardous. When I confided this feeling to Two, he said,

“Well, see, that’s part of being a teenager. Doing stupid stuff and having the time of your life doing it.”

Fair enough.

On the fifteenth, the day before we were supposed to enter Erana and Cebos’s star system, Four called a meeting in the mess hall to discuss the plan.

“Okay. We are almost to Cebos. The Aerzhu sent us information on the Eranian fleet. Well, I’m not sure you can call two ships a fleet. One for the princesses and their guards, the other for the countesses and their guard. They’ll be traveling to Cebos tomorrow.”

“How are we supposed to take out two ships?” Two asked.

“We don’t. We’re not trying to kill them, remember? Just kidnap them while we go to the ball, and then we let them go back home. So here’s the plan…”