"Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice."

Woodrow Wilson

The walls of one cozy cubby of the cave dipped down into luminescent sapphire pools. Cascading water from unseen streams filled the chamber with echoes that mingled in a melancholy melody with my sobs. I dipped a foot into the water and shivered. It wasn't only the cold that made me tremble: I could almost hear the dark mouths of the labyrinthine tunnels calling.

The pool was the colour of Gem's eyes, but it was Casper's warm brown ones that I wanted to see reflected on the rippled surface. I wanted to go home. Even though it was my most desperate desire, I would have given it up in a heartbeat to know Casper was safe.

Gem broke me out of my reverie by saying, "Why do you shut everyone out when you get upset?"

He wore a sweater that looked much warmer than my sheer dress. It crossed my mind to ask if I could borrow it. With Casper on my mind, I wondered if having Gem's scent wrapped around me would be like some strange ménage à trois—an entanglement of smells, bodies, and souls.

One of the spikey-toothed tunnel mouths looked ready to devour Gem. I couldn't help thinking it should be me. It might even feel like mercy. I said with a shuddery breath, "I can't even handle my own emotions. If I didn't shut people out, I'd end up taking on their emotions as well."

"Maybe they'd take on some of your load. Make it lighter," Gem said.

"You don't get it. My dad's life has been a pantomime. A shadow show. It's bad enough that my dad isn't human. Now it appears he's not even as separated from the original mission of his ancestors as I'd hoped. How many Incepterrians are on Earth? Are they hunting what's left of my family as we speak?"

"Shouldn't they have hurt humanity a long time ago, if that was the goal of the Incepterrians on Earth? Why wait for your technology

to become so advanced?" Gem said. There was only one reason I could think of that might explain why they hadn't been meddling in life on Earth all along.

"Could the Incepterrians on Earth have done it without risking their lives? I don't mean the ones on this planet. Is there a chance they'd risk their own lives if they did something on Earth that caused humans to die, such as terrorist attacks or starting a war? Is there any reason to think they don't have second selves of their own? They might hate humans, but that doesn't mean they hate us enough to kill themselves."

"Whatever their mission, whatever their commitment to that mission, your dad is about as close to it as you are to the original reason Adam and Eve were in the Garden. Do you have the overwhelming desire to be fruitful and multiply?" Gem said.

I snorted. "I think I'll wait a few years on that one."

Gem moved away from the mouth of the tunnel to join me by the pool. "Denovo hates Barjit because he hates humanity. He can't

forgive Barjit, because he can't forgive anyone for loyalty to humanity," he said.

"I'm not sure that's all there is to it. Denovo's hatred for my father seems too intense for them to be strangers."

"Rory, it's going to be alright. I know it doesn't feel that way right now." I watched Gem's reflection in the pool as he moved behind me to wrap his arms around my waist. As gentle as he was trying to be, it still felt like being hugged by a bear. I squirmed against the pressure until he pushed me away. I turned to see him glaring at the water. "I don't understand why you won't let me touch you. I saw your testimony. You didn't have a problem letting Casper touch you. You even let him kiss you!"

I hadn't had time to think about what Gem might be feeling during my testimony, preoccupied with trying to keep my mixed emotions from messing with the way people perceived what I was saying. It was easy to imagine parts of the narrative making him uncomfortable. Gemini might not want to claim me, but some part of him had weighed the possible outcomes of trying.

"I'm not going to give up on Casper." I needed Gem to understand that when I made my mind up about something, I was as immovable as Earth's solid metalcore.

"I'm not asking you to give up on Casper. I wasn't lying when I said I don't know what I want from our relationship. Right now, I only want to help a friend in pain," Gem said.

I stared at the water, wondering if it would cool the molten layer that swirled over my surface. After a moment, I decided to strip down to my underwear and wade into the water.

"What are you doing? The water must be freezing," Gem said.

"It's all good, once you go numb," I said to Gem. It was an echo of something I used to say to Daniel when we'd go for our first swim of the summer. We'd made a point of doing it every year on

Canada Day, fully aware that the lake was frozen two months earlier.

The liquid was thicker than water back home. It pushed against my limbs, resisting my movements. The effort it required was a welcome distraction. "Don't just stand there watching," I said to Gem after a minute. "Try living in the moment for a change. Get wet."

I didn't need to turn to see if Gem had decided to take my advice. I heard the splash. He still managed to catch me by surprise, pressing himself against my back. "What are you doing?" I whispered, feeling the fabric of his underclothes brush against my skin.

"Living in the moment," Gem answered hoarsely. He lowered his mouth to deliver feather-light kisses along my neck.

"I thought you didn't know what you wanted our relationship to be," I said.

My first impulse was to shrug away his touch but found myself reaching up to stroke his face instead. I could feel his jaw moving under my hand as he said, "I wasn't lying about that. I've just realized something. We're the same. I don't mean skin deep, and I don't mean we're clones of each other either."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"I've always thought of you as a human, with a little Incepterrian DNA. The truth is, you're as much Incepterrian as you are human." Gem reached out his hand and placed his palm over my womb as if he was laying claim to it.

I pulled away.

"You've been a genetics snob this whole time? I'm not going to breed with you just because you've discovered we're genetically compatible," I said.

"Yeah, because that's what I was thinking." The blue puddles of Gem's eyes froze over. He swam to the rocky edge of the pool and gathered the rest of his clothes in a huff. "You can't blurt every stupid thought that runs through your head," he shouted over his shoulder as he stomped away.

I watched him retreat with only a little sense of regret for what I'd said. It felt like I'd gone a little too far, hurting him that way, but I was glad to see Gem was capable of being angry with me. I was grateful to see any emotion from him, beyond blind devotion. I stretched out in the water and stared up at the patterns in the veined ceiling. A list of all the people I'd pushed away throughout my life ran through my mind as I floated. I wished relationships felt more natural to me. Then again, I doubted many seventeen-year-olds would claim they were easy. With a lot of help from the world outside my family home, I'd come to believe autism made me different in ways that made me a misfit in that world. When it came to romantic relationships, I was just like every teenager I knew. Confused.

~ ~ ~

Within Conception's walls, the orderliness that seemed to define Incepterrene disappeared. Edges scooped and flared in chaotic juxtaposition. Jagged teeth smoothed out into nubby stubs. Fingers of stone scratched craggy cat's backs. Sometime during the tour, it became clear that Gem's role as a Keeper didn't include housekeeping. Dust lay thick on the sheets draped over the furniture and equipment, although it appeared the storerooms were well stocked. One cavern was divided into bunkrooms as well as individual rooms. Another was outfitted with an industrial kitchen and cafeteria, making it seem like the facilities were being kept ready to take in hundreds of people at a moment's notice. Apart from the practical functions, shrines and carvings were spread throughout the caverns, proving the spiritual importance of the place.

Gem paused his tour in front of a locked door. He nudged his chin at it. "Here we have Denovo's new home. The firing range is the only room I could lock from the outside alone. We planned to use the cell in a pinch."

"What about Colla? Considering you picked him up at a Severant rally, he might not be trustworthy enough to let wander around here unaccompanied."

"In normal circumstances, I'd worry about Colla getting access to computers since he works for the Ministry of Technology. I think we're safe on that front since none of the computers here connect to an external network," Gem said.

"What's to stop him from opening the door and letting Denovo out?" I said.

"I put a tracking device on him. An alarm on my monitoring device will let me know if he goes too close to certain areas," Gem said. It seemed best to keep to my relief that Colla wasn't occupying a cell-like Denovo's to myself, given my preference that Gem didn't know how much I wanted to get Colla on his own for a few minutes.

Gem mumbled something about needing to take care of some business at the end of our tour. As soon as he disappeared, I headed straight for Colla. The tracking device around his ankle glowed in the gloom of the room where I'd last seen him. It seemed strange that his curiosity hadn't inspired him to wander. He raked his eyes over me as I approached.

"I guess I can understand why Casper finds you appealing. So are you here to ask me your unbearable question again?" He said.

"This is a Penitent facility. There's no way they don't have the technology somewhere in this place for you to upload chip files for review. They're compulsive about it. Can you use it to show me, Casper?" I said.

"You don't want to see. How about I tell you—"

"Show me," I said.

Something about my tone or expression seemed to tell him I meant business. "What makes you think I can do that?" He asked.

"Don't play games. You work for the Ministry of Technology," I said.

"Rory, please, take my word for it. You don't want to see him," Colla said.

"He's..." I winced before finishing, "He's still alive?"

"There are degrees... Okay, I'll show you, but you could have said please." He pushed me out of the way, fished around a drawer until he found a cord, pulled a flap behind his ear that looked almost the same as skin, plugged the cable into his head, turned on the computer and typed in a series of commands.

"I thought Canadians had better manners than that. Doesn't a beaver cry every time a Canadian is rude?" Colla mumbled as he worked.

I scowled.

"Rory, you need to remember that I'm not your enemy. Denovo has a way of getting what he wants. The truth is, I wish I'd killed him when I had the chance," Colla said.

"You really could kill someone?" I asked softly.

"He'd already have been dead if I could. I'm beginning to think I did the math wrong. I put my peace of mind ahead of the common good. It seemed easier at the time to let Denovo be someone else's problem. I told myself I'd be no better than him if I did it," Colla said.

"Sounds selfish," I said.

"Exactly. Here we go," Colla said, pointing at the computer screen before I could say anything. Casper's face appeared. His eyes were dim and unfocused. His skin was chaffed and bloody from a metal cuff around his ankle that was attached to a chain bolted to the wall. More than anything, I wanted to reach out and touch him. I would trade places with Casper if I could.

Knowing this was what Colla had to see all day made my heart soften a little toward him. I quietly asked him, "What does it mean to you to have Casper as your second self? Does it make you sad to see him this way?"

Tears brimmed in Colla's eyes and slid down his face. He croaked, "There have been times I've hated Casper more than anyone alive, but he's part of me. I don't know how to switch him off. It's a constant grinding on the inside of my skull, seeing him that way."

"Mine too... Can you communicate with him?" I said.

"No...I'm not sure," Colla admitted.

"Denovo says I brought myself here. Maybe he's telling the truth. Gem told me that he thinks I can make things happen just by thinking about them. Maybe Denovo was trying to make something happen when he had my brother killed. Perhaps it was more than just messing with my head. Gem seems to think that when we couldn't communicate, telling me the same thing over and over made a difference in my reactions. Maybe the things Incepterrians are saying—the things Red said they've been accusing me of—have some basis in reality. On a subconscious level, maybe every human can communicate through the membrane. If that's true, it might mean there's a way for you to communicate with Casper. I need you to try. I'm going to say some things, and I need you to repeat them to Casper. Maybe he'll here you if we do it long enough," I said to Colla.

"You think that'll work?" Colla said, his tone laced with hope.

"No," I glumly answered, "I'm not that special. Casper is special enough that it might work for his sake."

"What do you want me to say?" Colla said.

"Rory's watching you. She's not going to stop working on getting you back," I answered. It reminded me of what Gem had said to me the day he'd told me what was happening to his sister. It must have been Gem's words that day that subconsciously had given me a reason to keep trying to remember what I'd lost.

An hour passed of Colla repeating my words before we saw a spark of life return to Casper's eyes. He looked around and whispered, "Rory, I believe in you. I'm waiting."

The door banged open behind Casper and his face twisted in panic. "Make her stop watching," he hissed. Colla tugged out the cord from behind his ear, cutting off the feed.

I picked it up and thrust it toward him. "Turn it back on!" I yelled.

"You don't want to see what's going to happen next. Not when there isn't anything you can do about it. Casper doesn't want you to see it either," Colla said.

I couldn't keep pushing Colla. Casper had made himself clear. All I knew was that no matter what it took, I couldn't abandon Casper with Daniel's killer. There was no equation where Casper wasn't a constant. There would be no solution to the problem if you removed Casper from the equation. I didn't know how, but I was going to get both of us back to our families.