Reached

scientists who came up with the immunity to the red tablet were true rebels. So was your great-grandmother. And so were many of the others, especially those of us in the Army. But then, the Society realized that their power was slipping and discovered that they had a rebellion in their midst. At first, they tried to take back control by getting rid of the Aberrations and Anomalies. Then the Society began to infiltrate us the way we had infiltrated them. Now I don’t know who is who anymore.”
    “Then who put the Plague in the Cities’ water supplies?” I ask. “Who tried to sabotage the Rising, if it wasn’t people working for the Society?”
    “It appears,” says the Pilot, “that the water supplies were contaminated by well-intentioned supporters of the Rising who felt that the rebellion wasn’t happening quickly enough and decided to move it along.”
    For a few long moments, none of us speak. When things like this happen—when what was meant to help results in harm, when a salve brings pain instead of healing—it is clear how wrong even choices intended to be right can become.
    “But why didn’t the Society destroy the Rising outright if they knew you existed?” Xander asks, breaking the silence. “The Society could have cured everyone on their own—Oker told me that they
always
had the cure. Why didn’t the Society make enough cures so that
they
could let the Plague come in and administer the cure themselves?”
    “The Society decided that it would be easier to
become
the Rising,” Ky says. “Didn’t they?”
    As soon as he says this, I know that he’s right. That’s why the transition of power was so smooth, with so little fighting.
    “Because if they became the Rising,” I say, “they could predict the outcome.”
    The final predicted outcome
. That’s what my Official said back in Oria at the Museum. That’s what she wanted to see in my case, and what the Society always took into account.
    “The Society had discovered that we’d been making people immune to the red tablet,” the Pilot says.
    “So more and more people couldn’t forget,” I say, understanding. “People were showing signs of wanting a change, a rebellion. This way, they got one, and the Society stayed in power without the people—including many of those who participated in the Rising—knowing what had really happened. They’d make a few changes, but for the most part, things would go on as they had.” The Society must have known that people become restless eventually. They may even have predicted it. Why
not
have a rebellion, if they could calculate the outcome and secure their power again under a different name? Why not use the Rising, a real rebellion in the beginning, to make things seem authentic? The Society knew people believed in the Pilot, and they took advantage of that.
    But it didn’t turn out as the Society intended. The Plague mutated. And the people know more and want more than the Society thought they did, even people who weren’t chosen for immunity to the red tablet. People like me.
    The Society
is
dead, even if they don’t know it yet.
    I believe in a new beginning. And so do many others out there—those writing on scraps to hang in the Gallery, those who continue to work hard to take care of the sick, those who dare to believe that we can
all
be the pilots of something new and better.
     
    We step like plush, we stand like snow—
    The waters murmur now,
    Three rivers and the hill are passed,
    Two deserts and the sea!
     
    I look at Ky and rewrite the end of the poem in my mind.
     
    But I must count this journey, all
    For it has brought me thee.
     

    The door to the hold opens and Xander comes down, the light from the cockpit flooding in behind him. “I thought I should check on Ky,” he says, and I smile at Xander and he smiles back and for a moment it is all as it was, it is the same. Xander looks at me with longing and pain in his eyes; we are flying wild through a world that could belong to anyone, and I know why Ky kissed Indie back.
    And then it is gone, and I know for a certainty that it is too late for us, for Xander and me, in that way. Not because I can’t still love him, but because I can no longer reach him.
    “Thank you,” I say to Xander, and I mean those words as much as
I love you,
as much as anything I’ve ever said. And I feel a heavy, low, longing note of regret. For in the end, I didn’t fail him because I didn’t love him back, because I
do
love him