Jetson let her go and ran both hands across his face. “Arika? Tell me she’s lying.”

Instead of answering, I cowered inside my own body. If Covington spoke the truth, Hannibal was gone forever—and I had killed her.

He didn’t ask again.

From the fog that seemed to engulf me, I heard him speak to Hosea. “You can take her. She’s yours.”

Part Three: The Kongo

The Desert

THE DESERT

Determined to deliver me to Director Kumar, Hosea carried my unconscious body across the Cobane perimeter and into the wild Kongo desert. The minute I awoke, every moment of the past two days washed over me. Accusations blared and Covington’s last words made me wish I was dead. Why is Hannibal in the Pit, Arika? Pit, Arika? Pit, Arika?

Despite my wish, I remained begrudgingly alive. Blindfolded and gagged, I was crippled with pain. My wrists chafed beneath a leather strap. The little finger Jones abused throbbed and my temples ached mercilessly. My right ear, which had taken a direct blow, felt thick. My stomach dropped as falling sensations consumed me, disoriented.

The physical agony paled compared to the silence. Hosea was there, just beyond the blindfold. We traveled by horse. His chest to my back, his breath on my cheek. And, through my gag, I railed at him: Speak to me; this silence is worse than the Pit. But he did not listen. And so, for a day, I suffered as revelations mounted an attack on my psyche. Years of suppressed knowledge marched forth, loosed by Jones’ hypocrisy.

The law is supreme, she said. And yet, she ignored the law as she pleased, planting the New Seed without consent. She claimed efficiency justified her actions, but I was not a fool. Imposing a law before the Assembly enacted it was not efficiency—it was tyranny.

But then, the Kongo had suffered many tyrants, beginning with the Great Obi Solomon. I’d known for some time that something about Obi was wrong. My latent suspicion began one evening, years ago. I was reading in the library when a picture captured my attention: Obi Solomon poses, triumphant. In the photo, the Great Obi sat on a carved rock.

The photograph was staged. Sternly upright, legs splayed, hands on his knees. His hands were always fists since, years before the end of the War, he lost the little finger on his left hand, and didn’t like to display it. He often exchanged his Kongo attire for English frocks when he traveled north, so his English clothing was not why I stared. Something about the picture was wrong. At the time, I hadn’t been willing to name it.