Page 94 of The Alien in the Archive

And yeah…maybe a little bit of sadness—and hope that we somehow pull this thing off—because the test is negative.

I step back into the living room and Lyn looks up from where she’s browsing her tablet on the couch. I hold up the test. “Negative,” I mutter, exhaling. “Thank God.”

“Good,” Lyn says with a small nod. “That’s one less thing to worry about.”

I collapse onto the couch beside her, where she hands me a glass of that emerald green booze. I think it’s Merati mead. “You have no idea.”

Lyn holds up her glass. “How about a toast to being footloose and fancy-free for at least a few more years?”

I snort. “Cheers.”

We clink our glasses together and I take a big gulp, nearly choking on how sweet it is. Lyn does the same, glaring at the bottle still sitting on the kitchen counter. “That’s the last time I take Thalara’s advice on what to drink,” she mutters.

“Of course this was Thalara’s doing,” I laugh. “God help her, but she’s sweet enough to charm the sugar out of candy.”

“Tell me about it,” Lyn says. She tucks her feet underneath her, still cradling the glass even if it isn’t to our taste. For a moment, we sit and watch the fire as I try to steady my breathing. I’m still in the aftermath of the adrenaline rush, I think—the comedown from realizing I’m not dealing with an even bigger crisis.

Then Lyn clears her throat. “You know…I was actually wondering if I could ask you something a bit sensitive?”

I frown, no idea what she’s going to ask. “Sure.”

“You and Riley both use religious language,” she says. “I guess it just…surprises me. I don’t know a lot of people back on Earth who still believe.”

“Well, we grew up in a convent,” I shrug.

“But you aren’t Catholic, are you?”

“Hmm…” I purse my lips, looking up at the ceiling as if I’ll find a sign there. “I don’t know. I don’t practice, obviously; there aren’t any churches here on M’mir. But the ritual of it was comforting when me and Riley were kids. The rules, though? Not so much.”

“Yeah, you two don’t seem much like rule-followers,” she chuckles. “But I guess I didn’t peg you for religious folks either.”

“I think Riley is more of a believer than I am, oddly enough,” I say. “He was still praying on a rosary before we left Earth.”

“No way.”

“Yes way,” I laugh. “Neither of us are really serious about it, but…well, there were still plenty of religious folks in Boston. Not where you’re from?”

Lyn’s face falls and she lets out a long breath. “No…but I’m from Oklahoma. Shit got real bad there after the Convergence. Worse than New England. My great-grandma had fucking horrific stories, even battle scars.”

I blink, caught off guard by how heavy this just got. “Really? I didn’t realize there were too many survivors left, other than people who left Earth and got Elixir bonded.”

She nods. “Yeah, well…she lived through it. I think she hated the Boreans more than anyone I’ve ever known. She had good reason to.”

I go quiet, unable to figure out what to say. I want to get a read on her first, but she’s giving me nothing.

“I mean…they were ugly times,” I say. “No one would expect her to forgive them. But I’m not really sure about the religious part.”

Lyn blows out a breath. “I mean…that’s the thing. Down south, people were believers—and the Boreans preyed on that. They came in posing as angels, said the Skoll couldn’t be trusted when they were only trying to help. They trickedso manypeople and claimed to be rapturing them up. My great-grandma was one of them.”

“Oh my God,” I breathe, because there’s nothing else to say.

“She scared me as a kid,” Lyn says. “They had like…carved her up. She was missing an eye, had these like…broken wings attached to her back. I guess they worked at one point, but they’d left her with permanent deformity. It was so messed up.”

“Fuck.”

“They said she’d been hallowed,” Lyn says with a bitter laugh. “Grafted wings onto her body, called it salvation. Needless to say, she never went back to church. None of us did.”

Her words twist something in my chest, the implications clear as I think about what Thorne said when I gave him the book on dissenters, what he’s told me over and over again.“I didn’t do enough. When people were being tortured and slaughtered, all I did was write.”

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