Dust

Twenty-Five: Catastrophe is my Middle Name

Day 58 of the epidemic: August 4, 2138

Evan and I found Emma again this morning. Except... she's not Emma anymore. Not really, at least. Her skin is pale and somewhat disfigured, like burn tissue that occasionally flakes when she scratches at it. Her eyes that were once as blue as the sky are now grey and colorless, void of any life.

She refers to herself some weird name that resembles Emma, referring to herself in the third person every so often. Sometimes, she'll get random fits where she screams at the sky and clutches her head, convulsing on the ground as the disease ravages her body. It hurts to watch her.

When she's not suffering, she talks to us, mostly taunting us with memories of the old Emma. Even her voice is no longer Emma's; it's raspy and lower, sounding diabolical. Evan managed to bind her arms and legs, so we're holding onto her for now. When they finally develop a cure for the Burning, we both want Emma to be the first one cured. We can't stop moving though, so we're bringing her with us on our way to the ocean.

For now, though, gone is the girl we once knew.

"Alright, Mickey, what've you got to tell us?" Callista asks the blond Skywalker, after we've all assembled in the living room. The room is so thick with tension you could probably slice through it with a knife, and I shift uncomfortably in my seat next to Titus. My brother, in his defense, is awfully calm considering his distaste for Mikhail.

"I should probably explain why I waited this long to tell you all," he says, looking sad but not entirely distraught over our judgmental glares.

"Yeah, maybe," Titus breathes, scratching the back of his head as Mikhail gives us all a nervous smile.

"Lockman... well. My parents were the definition of what our dome hated. My mother was from the Lower Levels, and she looked like it. Dark clothes, pale skin, blue hair, tattoos... the whole package. My father was a Topsider, who was a lot like you guys used to be,"

"What does this have to do with anything?" I ask, and Callie shoots me a surprised glare. We both know this level of rudeness is uncharacteristic of me.

"I'm getting there," he replies, hands outstretched as if asking me to bear with him.

"They got married in secret. My father found out a few days afterwards that his wife was Lockman's daughter. For years, he had told the Topsiders that she was dead. Apparently, her constant rebellion caused him to banish her to the Lower Levels. But after the initial shock, they kind of forgot about it. I mean, neither of them wanted anything to do with Lockman and his lies. Until he found out..."

"Wait, wait. wait... so Lockman is your grandfather?!" Kyros sputters, vocalizing all of our thoughts.

"Yeah. And he also killed my mother," he finishes, and we all stare at him blankly.

"So if he's done all this horrible stuff to his family, why did you just tell us? We would've understood," Callie asks, and Mikhail shrugs.

"Lockman became obsessed with trying to build me up to follow him. That's how I ended up with a Skywalker job at eighteen. I don't know, I guess I just thought you'd hate me for the blood we share," he finishes, and I purse my lips as my thoughts run wild.

So he's not for Lockman, but he still lied to us. He still broke our trust. He's still... Mikhail.

"We wouldn't have hated you, Mikhail. You were our friend. But you kept secrets from us that could have gotten people killed," Callista says, trying to be the voice of reason while Titus and I struggle with our hate. Kyros and Kara, not having known Mikhail before the desert, merely keep their mouths shut, waiting to see what we'll do. Kyros seems angry, jaw tight as he stares at Mikhail with an unreadable expression on his face. Kara is more passive, merely gauging our reactions as she waits.