Necahual | Page 5

came we were changing the Azteca from the bottom up, and inside out. The Azteca a hornet's nest, and we blow some sweet smoke their way. Now you throwing rocks." 
 Thunder rolls and a small oval speck drops down out of the sky. The long carbon filament trailing behind it is strong enough to reel us all up from the ground we're standing on into orbit and then into hold of a waiting mothership.
"Snap in when it drops," I order everyone. But I turn and look at Jami.
The pod slows to a halt and falls into our midst. Smith walks over and snaps on. Paige does the same, and Steve looks at me follows suit. Three soldiers, ready to get lifted, the cable rising up from between them to rise into the heavens.
"We have a minute, maybe two," Steve says to me.
I'm still staring at Jami.
"Just because you can't spot the power we wield don't mean we defenseless." He stares right back. "We study you. You machines run everything, solider-man. When the conflict came you choose to wipe out the alien threat you faced. And now you all still working on purifying The League. Only human."
"There was no other choice," I say. "When the killing started, we realized it was us or them. Damnit, I was four. You can't hold me responsible. It's different now."
"You kill millions of aliens, we hear. Deport the rest. Cleanse any human not pure human, that tamper with they DNA. You almost wipe yourselves out. Yet you come here to tell us what to do? That's hypocritical."
"We'd never survived if it wasn't for adopting the tais, like they did. We could never have matched their superior military skill." And, despite the fever, I have a trump. "You talk hypocritical. Hypocritical is the mermaid," I hiss. "You let that Azteca keep his slave in his tank. How dirty does that make you?"
I might as well have struck Jami.
"The line is tightening," Steve yells at me.
"You do not give natural rights to any clone in The League?" Jami says. "Any robot? The tais? Artificial people? Because even you wouldn't grant the person in that tank her life. Why the high ground now?"
I walk towards the pod. In a second I'll be yanked out of here into the stratosphere, my suit bubbling out to enclose and protect me. Back to the warrens inside the depths of a troop ship.
"We ain't ignorant," Jami said. "We couldn't make do with metal tech. When the wormhole closed, it was just us and the alien who stayed behind used a different kind of tech. If there is one thing we're good at, it's taking things and adapting them. All my ancestors got handed the trash of the more advanced. Technological hand me downs. Less than perfect trade agreements. Yeah, physical domination gone, but economic and political domination follow. So when we came from the islands to here, we say, never again.
"But then came the aliens, and they created the Azteca to destroy us. We had to make do, take these things and mash them up and sent back up as something unique to us. But now you here. You League would destroy either of us for figuring out how to work with the alien. We need to be cleanse, right? You a superior force, with bigger guns. So we have something you didn't expect. The only way you can find out how to deal with this is talk to us. That's why the Azteca give us the antidote."
They want to 'mash me up,' take me and make me their own and spit me back out to see what changes. They want to figure out how best to handle the new situation that just opened up in their backyard. And I'm a key to a puzzle for them.
I remember a small biological part of what being human is. The reason we fear the Ais, the alien, death, and why The League fights so hard and maniacally against everything.
Survival.
Smith's ears are broken, I realize as he signs something at me. A hand flutter, like that of the woman in the tank.
I turn to Jami.
"Okay," I tell him. "I want the same antidote you have, okay?"
Jami nods.
"The very same. I promise you."
Paige recognizes what is happening.
"You can't desert," she shouts. "They'll deactivate you."
The rest of the objection is lost. The starhook goes taught and all three of them lift of the ground and accelerate towards space.
I drop to my hands and knees and puke. Tiny pieces of machinery I didn't even know were in me litter the grass with the remains of pasty meals from the last day of eating.
With a deep breath I stand back up.
Jami helps steady me.
"But I have a condition," he says. "You have to help me free her." He's