June stretched her whole body as she yawned. She slipped out of her hammock and landed lightly onto the cold metal floor. The asteroid’s gravity was currently only a third of standard. The Enclave carefully adjusted their home’s path through the belt so as to avoid attention from the rest of the planetary system, especially from the prying eyes of the AIs. June had told the Sisters of the New Dawn that the rest of humanity knew who and where they were, but it didn’t seem to faze any of them, especially not the Matriarch Mother.

“Our ways have always kept us hidden and safe. We all know how they lie. We doubt it was more than just rumors that they had heard and spun them as knowledge,” is what the Sisters had told June.

June nodded and acted like she believed them, while keeping her doubts close to her heart. She had witnessed firsthand just who Lars, Pierce, and the rest of the men were, and she didn’t believe for a second they’d lie like that. Lars especially seemed confident about his knowledge of the Enclave.

June padded barefoot to her private washing facilities in preparation for the day. She exited her room at the same time a number of other sisters were leaving their rooms, all wearing white jumpers. Some of the girls, like June, had a gold band around their sleeves and neckline, indicating they had successfully returned from their Rituals. Quickly, they formed a line heading out of the sleeping dorms as they talked and chatted.

“June!” cried one of them as soon as the other girl spotted her.

The Initiates were all around June’s age—some younger, some older—all of them here had either gone through the Ritual of Separation and returned, or were about to leave. Margaret had returned a few months ago from her Ritual on Iznik. She and June had been Pod Sisters from birth. Margaret had her black hair cut to her shoulders. It had been the style on Iznik, and the girl kept it when she returned to the Enclave.

June had managed to get back home after knocking around in some small transport vehicles before getting a ride on one of the Enclave-vetted shuttles. It hadn’t been two weeks since she had returned.

“Mags!” June called back. Margaret was a number of girls ahead of her in the line, and June didn’t want to be pushy. Besides, they were all going to the mess hall. “Save me a spot!”

“Will do, June.” Margaret waved then turned to chat with the girl in front of her.

The line moved quickly in the low gravity. June was happy to be swept along, talking with the girls in the line. The girls filed into the mess hall, laughing and talking. Even in the hallway, June could smell the food. She swallowed, trying not to salivate too much.

The girls found their seats quickly in the sparsely efficient mess hall. Everyone had different dietary needs based on their unique metabolisms and genetic code. The Enclave’s Expert System prepared individual meals to meet those needs.

The Pod Matron stood up. The rest of the girls followed.

“Now, girls, before breakfast let us sing. Today’s song is the healing mantra. Monica, would you lead us?”

“Of course, Matron.”

The healing mantra was sung at least once a seven-day cycle. It was a favorite for all the girls who had finished their Ritual; there wasn’t one that hadn’t used it at least once while away.

June was deep into her own meal—vat-grown rare steak and rice—casually chatting with her friends when she suddenly missed Pierce. It had been happening more often lately. She didn’t fully understand her own feelings on the matter. June had talked to the Mind Matron and understood there was a bond forged between them because of their shared danger, but that was all there was to it. That’s all that should have been to her. Pierce was just a human.

And yet, he withstood a great evil. Pierce should have broken easily, but he just took whatever Legion threw at him, like a small sponge that could soak up a sea. June never met anyone like him. She could still see him barely standing but still defiant against that monster. But Pierce was just a human, she told herself again. And yet a certain loneliness and longing for him had been creeping into her mind.

“Enclave to June,” Margaret said, laughing. Her fish and steamed vegetables were nearly gone already.

June started, realizing she was just poking at her food. She laughed at herself and pulled her now brown hair into a ponytail to distract herself mostly.

“Sorry about that, Mags. What were you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing really.” Margaret narrowed her yellow eyes, covering much of her vertical pupils. “What were you thinking about?”

June sighed. “That menace, Legion.” She shuddered. June didn’t mention Pierce. Mags didn’t need to know.

Margaret’s face fell, and she turned somber. “Did you hear that Legion has almost all of the outer planets under their control?”

une nodded sadly. “It worries me, Mags. Legion is far stronger than anything I’ve seen— ” except Pierce and Lars she said to herself “—and if they find us?” She shook her head as she poked at her food. “It’ll be bad.”

Mags chewed in silence for a bit. “We shouldn’t worry about it. The Matriarch will have a plan. She always does.”

June nodded, forcing a smile on her face. “True.” She kept her reservations to herself.

After the girls finished eating, the Devotion Matron stood at the head of the mess hall. Three dozen girls quickly stood up and faced her.

The Matron led them in reciting the Four Pillars of Transhumanism.

“One, the old ways are dying, we will help them die, by our hand or others. Two, the new ways are rising, we will help them rise in all we do. Three, we are the new ways, we will rise and shed all remnants of the old ways, at any cost. Four, there will be no more inequality in the new dawn, we will all be equal, without race or gender. This is our unstoppable, unified will.”

The girls cleared off the tables quickly and efficiently without speaking, and headed to their respective classrooms.

June was grateful for the silence. She still had a lot on her mind. For one thing, the Four Pillars seemed less important since she had seen Pierce, Lars, and the rest of their team at work. Those men were outmatched, outnumbered, and outmaneuvered by Legion—and yet they still fought on. June never saw them even waver in the face of certain death. Lars’ team had put an end to Legion’s schemes on the moon Rho. And it had cost many of them their lives. She couldn’t understand what drove them. Sure, they mentioned they were Christians and that monk seemed to have some sort of power over Legion, but how could such a useless and outdated faith have any bearing on today’s world? And where did she fit? Was it with them? No, that was ridiculous. Archie? No, she and the AI had become friends after Rho, but it wasn’t like they were Sisters or anything that close. But June didn’t feel at home here like she had before.

“What’s going on in your head, June?” Margaret asked while the girls grabbed a snack at one of the kiosks scattered through the Enclave.

June shook her packet to warm up the protein sludge. “Nothing,” she lied to her friend. Mags scoffed.

June rolled her eyes, then turned serious. “I hate to admit it, Mags, but I don’t feel like I’m fitting in. Not really.”

This time Mags rolled her eyes. “June-bug,” (she only called June that when she thought the other girl needed it), “everyone has a little bit of shock when coming back. It’s normal, and it’ll pass. But you should see the Pod Matron about different drugs to help smooth things out. I had to see her last month, but since then things have been so much better. Got some new pinks that were double strength. And just a shot of some liquid gold.”

June smiled at her friend, not letting the loneliness she was feeling touch her smile. “Thanks, Mags. I’ll see her tonight.” It was another lie; June didn’t want to take anything that she hadn’t prepared herself. This creeping feeling of loneliness was nothing compared to the daze she felt on whatever drugs they gave her. She hadn’t used her drug shunt since she got back. In fact, she didn’t know if it was still open or had closed up. June had heard about that happening to girls.

Good girl!” Mags broke out her pouch and took a few. She smiled back. “All better for me. All better soon for you.”

The girls entered their first class. Now that June had passed through her Ritual, her training had changed to focus on the DNA arts. Manipulating the genetic code was the heart of the Enclave, and every Sister that survived the Ritual was trained to replace the Genetic Purity Matron, if ever the need should arise.

It would be ten more years before the next generation would be born. The Genetic Purity Matron would focus her work on perfecting the next generation’s DNA from all the matriarchal lines. The girls that completed their Ritual would be called on at times to assist. This class was designed to help them delve deeper into the DNA purity rituals and knowledge.

Today, they studied in utero genetic sampling from a batch grown specifically for the class. The nanomachines they used were small enough to slip into a cell and read the DNA chain without triggering a response from the cell. The Matron pulled up each strand on her holodisplay, and the girls spent the day isolating flaws and strengths of the strand. After they were done, they flushed the human fetuses down the biological reclamation pipe. Something nudged at June and she felt, well, not guilty exactly, but something was off for her. Those were living tissues, just as she had been at one point. All her life, she had dealt with the biological extra materials like this, even up to the third trimester of development, as part of her education on how to manipulate the human body. She was used to discarding the remains without a second thought. But now, something tugged at her.

Again, June kept her thoughts to herself and her face neutral. Mags would listen, June knew that, but she felt like laying that much on her would be too much for the other girl. Instead, June kept her mental turmoil hidden. She laughed and joked with her friends and other girls in the classrooms between lectures and experiments.

Lunch rations were doubled compared to breakfast because the afternoon was reserved for transformations.

The lunch song was fitting; it was the song for change and transformation. June liked the tune, even though it never did much for her. Some girls swore by it, though.

“Can I sit with you two?” Becky asked as she slid next to Mags. She was one of the younger Sisters in the pod and always interested in what June and Margaret had to say during class discussions.

“Would it matter if we said no?” June asked while Margaret hid a laugh behind a roll.

“Don’t be a grump,” Becky said cheerily as she started in on her own plate of food. “You two are always hanging out and, as our Pod Matron always says—“

“’We are all Sisters, so act like it’!” The girls repeated with a giggle.

“Do you think we’ll become that predictable?” Mags asked between bites of her lunch.

June shook her head. “Impossible.”

“I’m pretty sure we all say that,” Becky pointed out.

“What do you know, short stuff?” Mags asked with a scoff. Becky was a good two inches shorter than the other two. “You’re still months away from your Ritual.”

Becky rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t take much of a genius to see what happens. Besides, the Ritual is for experience; it doesn’t make you two smarter than me. Unless there’s something you aren’t telling?” She looked at June.

The other girls shook their heads.

“Fine.” Becky tossed her blonde hair to the side. “Besides, all the Matrons went through it, and they all are cranky old ladies.”

“Shh!” Mags gasped with a laugh. “Don’t say that where they can hear you!”

The girls looked around to make sure no one had, then burst out laughing. The conversation shifted to lighter topics.

As with most days, June and Margaret were in the same training pod. The two girls sat together up front as their Transformation Matron gave a lecture on how their bodies dealt with the excess of amino acids after the shifting. June only listened with one ear, since she had become very familiar with her body’s processes during the shapeshifting. And that led her to think about what had happened on Rho. She and Margaret had exchanged stories, even if June had glossed over a lot of it, and Mags didn’t have nearly the same number of transformations June had done. But Mags hadn’t been running for her life from anyone, either. June thought back on how her shapeshifting had been the only thing that kept her alive until Pierce and Lars had beaten back Legion.

“June, since you’ve had the most experience lately, would you be so kind as to demonstrate to the class your transformation, then allow us to examine your musculature?” the Matron asked, snapping June out of her reverie.

“Of course!” June said as she quickly stood up and disrobed. She walked up to the front of the pod of seven other girls and took the pharms to initiate the transformation. Liquid would have been faster, but she didn’t want to test her shunt in front of the class. Her shapeshifting was still as painful as ever, but she had learned how to ignore most of it. June had never touched a pink pill since her Ritual, and the Matrons never asked about her intake. Her mind was clear, which meant the pain was sharp and undulled. June willed herself to power through the change.

As soon as she had dropped to all fours, June pulled her lips back in a snarl she couldn’t control. The room wasn’t anything like on Rho, but it felt like it. Her eyes darted around, seeking any possible enemies. She could only see the smooth oranges of her sisters’ body heat and smell their lightly perfumed bodies. Two of them smelled a little sour, probably jealousy, but the Matron was giving off a scent June had never quite smelled before. June realized she had never fully shapeshifted since she had returned. Her senses were picking up things she hadn’t noticed before the Ritual. June forced herself to calm down as the Matron pointed out different aspects of her changed body.

When the examination table slid out of a recess in the smooth metal wall, June had a sudden panicked flashback to what Legion had done to her on Rho. She fled the room in a blind panic, bowling over two classmates as she charged out and ran deeper in the Enclave’s physical infrastructure as her heart raced. Blood sang in her ears as she tore deeper into her home, avoiding girls and Matrons as she fled.

June worked her way down deep into the Enclave asteroid, past the normal habitats, down corridors that hadn’t seen anyone in a decade or more, until she found a dark spot next to some warm exhaust tubing. She curled up into a ball and felt sorry for herself. She missed Pierce. It wasn’t a desire to mate with him; it was a desire to feel his presence and take comfort in it. She missed Archie for much the same reason.

She let her transformation lapse. The darkness rushed at her as her human eyes lost the power to see in the dark. The sounds of the Enclave, already faint, faded away from her human ears, leaving nothing but the vibrations of machinery felt through the rock. She had a good cry in the dark. When the emotions had run out of her, leaving her drained but somehow relieved, she curled up against the pipe and slept. After Rho, even a place like this offered some comfort.

une woke to a slight shuffling sound. She looked into the dark and gasped. Two yellow eyes stared back. A large form, felt more than seen, crouched in the inky darkness, not far from June. She almost panicked again; memories of being chased by the monsters on Rho threatened to replace all rational thought. June took a deep breath to steady herself.

“Mags! You gave me such a fright!”

The yellow eyes blinked, then turned away.

June scrambled to her feet, transformed painfully and poorly, then raced after her friend back to their living quarters. She had to change something; she couldn’t keep living like this.

“Every Sister is to remain in her assigned pod. Everyone is to silence all activities. This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill.” The message repeated five times before it stopped.

June and Margaret sat quietly at the desk they shared in the Pharmaceutical Pod. The rest of the pod fell silent as girls settled in.

This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. Occasionally, the long-range sensors would pick up something in the asteroid belt heading in their general direction and, to avoid detection, the Enclave would go silent and shut down all heat-producing machinery.

“You aren’t going to get PTSD again, are you?” Margaret wrote on a piece of scrap paper.

“Give me a break!” June wrote back. “Mind Matron said I had it under control.”

Margaret looked at her friend. June looked calm. “Ok, but if you—” she started to say.

“I won’t.”

The girls stopped talking when the Pharmaceutical Matron clacked her fingernails against her desk and glared at them.

Thirty minutes later, the Matriarch spoke to the Enclave over the intercom.

“While the immediate threat has passed, we’ll be moving the Enclave in three hours towards the inner belt, roughly one hundred and seventy miles from here. We will be doing a quick burn for twenty minutes—expect up to seven gravs at peak—then a long slow burn for five hours before letting the Belt gravity take over. Matrons, have each of your pods locked down and your students returned to the dorms in two hours. All classes are canceled for today, but will resume tomorrow.”

The girls burst into activity, securing everything in their pod while the Pharmaceutical Matron supervised.

“I wonder what got too close?” Mags mused as she put loose items into a secure locker.

June shrugged. “Humans, AI, or demons. In any case, I don’t want to have anything to do with them.” She shoved some chemical equipment into a different storage locker and turned her back to her friend to hide the lie.

“You’re just upset it’s not Pierce,” Mags said in a sing-song voice. “Come to rekindle your dying embers of love!”

June rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Mags. I liked the guy, sure, but only because he helped save my life. He’s human, dummy.”

“Suuure,” Margaret said, drawing out the word. “Hey, I’m not trying to judge whatever kink gets you goin—”

“Girls!” The Matron interjected sharply. “Back to work!”

“Yes, Matron!” they both said in unison and turned back to their cleaning.

June was glad to turn her red face away from her friend until she could regulate her heartbeat better. She still didn’t understand how she could miss Pierce at all, or why the thought of him was so comforting. And not just Pierce, Archie too. June hadn’t said much about the AI other than Archie being there. The Enclave as a whole had little interest in the AIs, since they weren’t bio-organisms. June’s feelings toward Archie were different, more akin to how she felt about Mags. Focusing on the conversations June and Archie had on the way to the inner planets from Rho helped calm June down.

June caught a reflection of herself in one of the mirrors. Outwardly, she looked fine. Normal, even. It’d have to do for now, June decided.

After that, a noticeable shift occurred in the atmosphere of the Enclave. June couldn’t quite put it into words, but the Matrons all seemed to be more on edge. More girls were starting to have small nightmares, even those that hadn’t gone through their Ritual. Drugs and medications were adjusted to smooth out the emotional responses, though the Matrons didn’t seem to know the causes.

June began to notice girls whispering about her when she entered a room. They’d hurriedly look away and stop talking. She ignored it, thinking her disastrous transformation was once again a topic of conversation. But then even the Matrons were doing it at times. Once, June even saw two of them get into a heated whispered argument before her Pod Matron stomped off in a huff, both Matrons casting glances at June. She thought about asking what was going on but, on further reflection, June didn’t know if she wanted to find out.

In response to this odd feeling in the Enclave, and whatever was going on in the rumor mill about her, June started staying late after normal class hours at the Pharmaceuticals lab. One thing post-Ritual girls were granted was more freedom to pursue whatever interested them. June had some questions she wanted answered about her own body structure and chemistry. She only remembered pieces about what bacteria and viruses Legion had used against them on Rho. And June didn’t know if Legion changed up their formulae or not. Still, she did the best she could to emulate what she remembered. Not wanting to mess up her cell structures and maybe kick off an autoimmune negative feedback loop by trying to incubate her version in her body, she only experimented with samples in Petri dishes, using her own blood and tissue samples. There was no way she was going to inject anything she didn’t feel comfortable about into her system.

Modifying her own chemistry was easier. After several dead ends, she made her shapeshifting less painful. She removed a of number standard Enclave chemical hooks and responses. Her DNA was unchangeable, of course, and even the thought of making edits was more than slightly blasphemous to June. Instead, she focused on activating different preexisting blocks and put others dormant to induce different responses to the standard drugs, often nullifying the effects.

The shunt she removed. For some reason, it felt off to her. Like something foreign she didn’t want or need anymore. June hummed the healing mantra as her body closed up around a wound that had been there for as long as she could remember. After, she felt more whole. If someone had asked her why, she wouldn’t have been able to express it in words. It just felt that way to her.

June wasn’t affected by the nightmares that seemed to be sweeping the entire Enclave. She pretended to take the medications all the Sisters were receiving in an attempt to quell whatever was going on. Instead, she used the drugs to further her research into what made her tick.

At breakfast after a late night at the lab, June was lost in thought as she went over possible reasons why her latest experiment didn’t work. She had found ways to neutralize most of the common Enclave drugs, especially the ones she now understood to put the user into a more suggestive mode, while making them a bit mentally unstable, especially her. The pink pills were the worst of the lot, but so far June hadn’t been able to crack the chemical composition and neutralize all of it. She poked at her plate without really seeing what was in front of her.

“And that’s when she pulled out a knife and stabbed the air, screaming the alphabet,” Mags said.

“Wait, what?” June asked, startled. The story wasn’t too far-fetched lately, but it still caught her off-guard.

“Ha! I knew you weren’t really listening. You’ve been preoccupied all morning. What’s up?” Mags asked.

In truth, June didn’t know where to begin. She slowly had begun to distrust aspects of the Enclave, and doubt that the Matrons knew as much as they claimed. She still loved her Sisters, but she couldn’t ignore the growing rift between them. There seemed to be no way of stopping it from happening. What was worse, June didn’t want it to stop. The less she used the official pharms and drugs, the more alert and aware she felt. The more like she was becoming herself—whatever that meant for her.

“You know how I tweaked the shapeshifting drugs a little? Well, I wanted to make a few more general changes to help other Sisters, but I’ve run into a roadblock. I can’t stop thinking about it.” June sort of lied to her friend. It was getting to be a bad habit with her.

“I can swing by and take a look with you, if you want? I’m not as good in the lab as you are, but another pair of eyes can’t hurt.”

“Thanks! Let me try one last thing and then we can take a look at it together tomorrow night.” June smiled at her friend with all the feigned sincerity and enthusiasm she could muster.

“Sure!”

“How are your dreams?” June asked to change the subject.

“Oh, fine!” Mags almost giggled. “These new pinks and the yellows have been really helping! I don’t hardly dream at all.”

“That’s good,” June lied. She added that to her list of things she needed to get to the bottom of. She almost asked Mags if she knew what people were saying about her, but her pride and shame kept her from opening her mouth.

That night, June destroyed evidence of her research and put together a mock series for the shapeshifting project. She had a lot of notes and data on that from a few weeks ago. Putting together something that looked reasonable took her the rest of the evening. June looked over her faked research project with a wistful sigh. Hiding things from the Matrons and the other girls was getting easier, but lying to Mags still made her feel, not wrong, but certainly not right. She wished she could talk to Pierce or Archie about this. They wouldn’t understand the Enclave but they’d certainly understand what happened to her on Rho.

June shoved those thoughts down for now. She took a deep, shuddering breath and forced a smile for her friend. She vowed she’d find a solution to this impasse. Even if it meant she’d go outside of the Enclave to find it.

That thought gave her pause and changed her focus. Before Margaret showed up, June thought furiously about how something like that could be managed and what obstacles she’d face.

Mags bounced in before June had really sunk her teeth into the problem.

“Hey, Mags!” June said brightly, again shoving her thoughts deep away to worry over later. “Let me show you what I’ve done so far…”

Almost three full months had passed before they had to run silent again. This time they traveled for two days, starting with a full four-hour burn. They didn’t start to slow down until nine hours later. After they had hidden their home next to a much larger asteroid, all the Matrons were called to a special meeting with the Matriarch Mother. The nightmares had dimmed to mere background noise for most of the Sisters. The medication regimen remained in place.

The girls had all their classes canceled once again. June and Mags decided to hang out in the gym. Several other girls were present, and an impromptu game of freeball broke out. The girls broke into two teams, and Becky volunteered to be the referee. Both teams agreed to use only basic enhancements; any pharms were out.

Becky strapped herself into the referee chair harness and shouted “Play!” The chair zipped up off the ground, suspended by thick cabling. A skillful referee could zoom around to keep an eye on the action without tripping up players.

June and Mags were on the same team, naturally. The team captain placed them as forwards because they worked so well together.

“Get her!” screamed Mags as a particularly adroit opponent slipped past the blockers.

June kicked out of the zero-g zone and landed on her feet not far from the other girl. She launched herself toward her opponent, quickly closing the gap as the other ran as fast as she could. All that time on Rho trying to stay alive was paying off for June; she was faster, quicker, able to change direction on a dime, and anticipate her opponent’s next moves.

June tackled the girl into a zero-g zone, swarmed around her, and wrested the ball away from her before they both drifted back into gravity. June took off at a run with Mags running parallel to her. The two of them dodged the blockers while bouncing the ball off the walls to each other. The goalie looked worried as the two of them bore down on her, the rest of the opposing team unable to do much more than slow them down slightly.

June saw the shot, faked a throw, then hurled the ball past a defender into Margaret’s waiting hands. Mags used her own momentum to drop and slide into the end zone on her knees. The goalie was too slow to respond, still trying to recover from June’s fake.

Becky blew on her whistle. “Clean goal! Three points for a run.”

Before Mags could catch her breath, the other team immediately started accusing June and Mags of cheating.

“Come on, Becky! There’s no way June could possibly outrun Georgina without amps. She’s not even breathing hard!” Sybil shouted at Becky while pointing accusingly at June.

“June?” Becky asked.

June shook her head. “Nah, I’m clean.” This was a light workout for her.

“There you have it.”

“Fine,” Sybil said curtly. “But if you won’t enforce the rules…” She stopped and spun on her heel.

Mags swore under her breath. “She’s going to pharm up,” she said to her teammates.

Mags was right. Sybil got the ball in the tee-off and hit the floor on all fours, the ball in her mouth, her horn looking more evil than normal. She charged, her wide feet thundering along the ground.

“NO RHINOS!” Becky shouted.

Sybil didn’t slow down.

June and Mags watched as the rhino charged into the end zone—the goalie throwing herself out of the way—and well over to the other side.

“NO POINTS!” Becky was still shouting, whirling overhead.

But the girls ignored her and all started popping their own pills, laughing. No one was mad at Sybil; she just got the jump on what they were all planning anyway.

Everyone but June. Even in the midst of the feathers and fur, she could see most of them, even the girls that had come back from the Ritual, still weren’t close to her skill level. It felt odd. She felt odd. June slipped away as the game turned into more of a brawl of animal aspects than anything else.

June walked down the corridor to a food kiosk and lounge area. She got herself a small bite and some hot coffee before she sat down in the lounge and began to chew her food. She didn’t really taste it as she thought. For some reason, June felt more and more like an outsider in the Enclave. The Ritual was designed to help weed out the weaker girls, but when someone returned, she was met with open arms and integrated back into the society to continue her education. Once she had passed all her courses, then the Matriarch would decide what role she’d play in the future. Most Sisters ended up staying in the Enclave, but sometimes a Sister was sent out into the wider worlds to do some specific job. A job could last for months or years, but all that returned fit right back in.

June wasn’t fitting in. She wanted to talk to more than just Margaret about it, but she was worried. She had asked as circuitously as she could about that. Very few Sisters never re-integrated, even going back two hundred years of records. Nothing was ever recorded about what happened to them except their DNA was expunged. June shuddered as she recalled that. June knew where her DNA came from along which matriarchal line and who contributed what major DNA blocks. Having your DNA forgotten was a fate worse than death.

Then again, no one had experienced anything like what June had undergone. She knew about fates worse than just being forgotten. Far worse.

“How did I know I’d find you here?” Becky asked as the slim, shorter girl dropped into a chair next to June, holding her own cup of coffee.

June shrugged and offered a slight smile to the other girl. “Luck or fate?”

Becky smiled back. “Or I just followed the scent of melancholy and self-absorption.”

June scoffed. “Oh, please. We’re a bunch of girls. That’s our stock-in-trade.”

Becky actually laughed. While she smiled often and easily, she rarely laughed.

“What are you doing out of the gym, Becky?” June asked.

Becky looked back down the corridor with a slight frown. “No one was paying any attention to me. Things were getting crazy, and I didn’t want to be there when someone got really hurt.”

“Or when a Matron shows up with fire in her eyes and voice,” June said slyly.

Becky nodded. “Or that. Mostly that.”

This time June laughed. “I don’t blame you.”

“Is that why you’re out here?”

June shook her head. “No.” She almost said she was more afraid of hurting someone than being caught by an irate Matron, but she held her thoughts to herself.

Becky looked at the older girl expectantly, clearly wanting June to expound on her one word answer.

June sighed. “The Ritual changes you,” she ad-libbed with some truth to the lie, “I just don’t find games like that as engaging as I used to.”

Becky looked at the other girl before sipping on her coffee. “Let’s say I believe you, would you tell me something about your Ritual? I mean, more than what you’ve already told the Pod?”

June had delivered her report to her Pod soon after returning to the Enclave. It was the basic outline of what had happened with Legion and Lars, with minor details about the rest of the team. But aside from talking a little to Mags, June had been very closed-mouthed about her experience with the other girls. Most Sisters talked a lot about their Rituals; however, it wasn’t too unusual for a Sister not to say much. June, though, had said almost nothing to the others.

“I can tell you I wouldn’t wish my experience on my worst enemy,” June said earnestly. “Legion… Legion is a nightmare. It was a living nightmare. I… I don’t know what else to say.”

Becky frowned. “Boo. That wasn’t very informative.”

“You know everyone’s nightmares that have been happening?”

Becky shuddered. “Yeah, I finally found the right combination of medications.”

June sipped the last of her coffee. “Legion is like that, but you can’t wake up. You can’t medicate yourself away.”

“Like that how?” Becky asked. “Like a vague feeling of helplessness? Those have been mine.”

June hesitated before shaking her head and looking into her empty coffee cup. “It was—Sorry, Becky. I just don’t feel comfortable talking about the details yet.” But she wanted to, she just didn’t know how.

Becky sniffed and stood up. “Well, you’re no fun. I’m going to go see if anyone is dead yet.” She bounced back down the corridor.

As June watched her leave, she was struck by two thoughts. One, for some reason she was sure Becky was sent by the Matrons to gather what information she could about June. And the second thought was almost blasphemous and shameful but thrilled her all the same. June could send a message to Archie. If anyone would listen to June, really listen, and not judge her it would be that AI. She didn’t want to think about being that vulnerable in front of Pierce. But she was sure Archie would understand her. June had worked out some of the details already; she just had to try it.

Three evenings later, the Matrons filed into the girls’ mess hall. Matriarch Mother herself swept into the room. All of the elders were dressed in their most somber outfits; silver-colored clothing under dark crushed velvet outer layers, faces behind veils that sparkled and shone from the diamonds woven into the sheer.

All the girls dropped to the floor and knelt in reverence to the great Matriarch Mother. She had been witness to each of their births, spent time when they were still children in the creches, singing songs, playing games, telling stories, until puberty when the Matrons took over the next stage of the girls’ lives. The Matriarch was known by each Sister, young or old, and she knew each by her name.

Matriarch Mother stood in front of the girls, her thin hands pressed together and pointing toward the ground, her fingers covered in glittering gemstones. Her face was as hard as June had ever seen it. A general sense of unease spread around the room.

“My dear daughters, after analysis and consideration, it’s clear we can’t stay inside our usual paths in the asteroid belt. The inner planets have launched hundreds, if not thousands, of spacecraft, and many have already started building devices throughout the belt. Our spies confirmed they are some form of gravity wave generators; the speeches made by the coalition talk of them building a gravity bubble to delay the forces of the outer planets. Our normal orbits would take us in and out of this planned gravity bubble. Plans acquired show it would alert the inner planet humans each and every time we cross over. We’d be found out.”

The whole hall burst into commotion as the girls took in the news with confusion and a tinge of fear. Mags looked at June to see her with a thoughtful frown. Mags didn’t know what to make of it; she herself felt more fear than worry, being exposed to the inner ring humans like that.

June cautiously sniffed the air. Something smelled sour. She couldn’t place her finger on it. That was happening more often than she liked.

The Matriarch waited until the noise had died down. “We have a new purpose for our Enclave. We have to decide how to stay the most neutral as this war between humans and the so-called Legion escalates. Maybe we’ll strike a deal with Legion. You will all be given a chance to voice your opinion to your Pod Matron and rest assured we will consider what each and every one of you has to say before we reach our final decision. I will go to the next Pod and tell them this, as well.”

With that, the women all filed out of the mess hall leaving a group of confused and concerned girls wrestling with their feelings. A number of arguments broke out as girls fell into two basic camps: staying inside the new bubble or outside. A few argued for making a deal with Legion.

June waited until the arguments were reaching peak fury before she slipped out, thinking no one would notice her leaving. She headed towards the bathroom facilities, not believing her luck tonight. June had made a plan to send a message to Archie with the assumption it would be weeks, if not longer, before she would have the opportunity. Even if she hadn’t wanted to seize this opportunity to reach out, June had to leave. There was no way she could sit by as they discussed anything but how to get as far away from Legion as possible. The idea that they wanted to even negotiate with Legion turned her stomach. Something was off in the Enclave in a way that made her unsettled whenever she thought about it. No, she had to do this and do it now.

June hastily swallowed a handful of pills she had brewed yesterday as she was making plans, not realizing how soon she’d need them. She dodged down a different corridor leading toward the Enclave communications center, her steps ringing out on the metal flooring. She slowed her breathing and adjusted her stride to a soft walk in case she ran into someone in the corridors. The pills kicked in long before she reached the first security door.

She moved silently, her ears picking up even the hum of electricity coursing through the insulated wires in the ceiling. The door was closed to anyone who hadn’t completed a Ritual. June dabbed the reader with the DNA of another girl who had returned a month ago, then she slipped a keratin-based fake fingertip over her own and pressed a copy of the girl’s fingerprint against the screen.

The door slid open. June chewed up the fingerprint impression and swallowed the remains. She entered the next corridor and paused to listen. Two Sisters were headed her way, talking to each other, heart rates normal. June found a secluded turn in the corridor where the lighting was dim and pressed herself against a rough plasticrete support column, making herself as small as possible. She slowed down her heart rate and breathing to almost nothing. The two Sisters walked by without noticing June, engrossed as they were in their conversation.

June counted a slow ten before heading further into the facility. Communications was one of the more secure sections of the Enclave. The Matron of Media was one of the most important positions, and the current Matron was a renowned zealot. June had done a thirty-day-cycle rotation here before her Ritual, and knew most of the layout and security measures. She hoped nothing major had changed since the last time she had been there.

There were two rules in the Enclave for the various facilities and labs. If you had permission in an area, you could go anywhere. If you didn’t, you’d get into serious trouble if you were caught. Most younger Sisters violated the second rule as a dare, taking their lumps when they failed. Rarely after a Ritual would anyone try it. June knew if she was caught she’d be soundly reprimanded and have to serve a harsher community service sentence than if someone like Becky tried.

June paused to listen in front of her. Aside from the normal mechanical sounds she didn’t hear anything. She passed into the first work cubicle area then entered the small office that used to have a terminal connected to the main communications system.

The thing was still there and plugged in. June pulled up a chair and sat down in front of it. The system was old. It still operated with pheromones and pressure points on the input organ. June slipped off her shoes and rubbed her feet vigorously to activate one of her drugs. She inhaled deeply and then let out short spurts of air as she dosed them with the right pheromones to initiate the security check. After it cleared her, the screen flickered to life, and June grabbed the input organ, a dull grayish blob on the desk. She worked the pressure sections all while letting out a sequence of pheromones in short gusts of her breath. June used older credentials to navigate the security checks before she finally got access to the antenna array. The message was short—“A lets talk J”—and she wrapped it up in a standard security envelope tagged with “P.M.” before she sent it out as a burst toward the inner planets. Hastily, she wiped all traces of her activities, reset the array back to its original position, and exited the system.

June sat at the desk for a minute longer. She wasn’t sure what she did could be considered treason to the Enclave, but it was certainly getting cozy with the line she shouldn’t cross. June hoped her preparations would be enough to see her through if things went bad.

If anyone, or thing, could sort of relate to June it had to be Archie. The AI had come up close and personal with Legion. And June knew what a departure Archie had been from the rest of the AIs. She had managed to fish a few snippets about the inner planets and from what she could piece together the entire AI community had rallied completely behind Archie and her eyewitness account of Legion. June had no idea how the AIs related to each other. It was her hope they’d be as kind as Archie had been to her and pass the message along to Archie if it went astray. And if not, surely they’d pass it along to Pierce. And, if she was being honest with herself, June really wanted to talk to him most of all. But Archie had a better chance of picking up her signal and responding to her.

June shrugged off feeling isolated and a bit melancholy. She pushed away from the desk and stood up in one fluid motion. The scent of three Sisters coming toward her made her stop in the middle of the room. She sniffed the air as she listened with everything she had. They were moving silently, barely making the slightest sound as they walked along in footwear designed for stealth. June almost cursed under her breath. She must have triggered some sort of alarm. She pulled off her shoes again and tucked them into her pants before taking big gulps of air. There was no telling what pharms the Sisters had taken already. With a soundless leap she bounded out of the room and landed on the other side of the cubicle desks. She hit the floor and did a short roll to minimize the noise. The lights went out. June nodded to herself. Made sense; the Sisters checking out the alarm had tuned their eyesight to thermal signatures and the lights would interfere. She spent a minute cooling her body core to near ambient temperatures while the Sisters carefully patrolled the area.

June took a deep breath. She held it. Taking careful steps away from her safe hiding spot, she started to work her way back toward the entrance. By keeping track of the Sisters by sound, June could avoid their searching. She didn’t breathe, losing her sense of smell in exchange for increased stealth. It was a gamble. Everything she had done in here was a gamble. What was one more?

June could see the door leading out into the corridor when she felt a sharp prick on the side of her neck. Instinctively, she slapped at the pain, and felt a slim dart in her neck. June let out a gasp, knowing what had just happened. The room suddenly spun as her vision blurred. June didn’t feel it when she hit the hard metal floor. The last thing she saw was the dim figure of a Sister Huntress and two others standing next to her. June couldn’t understand a word being said. She tried to keep her eyes open, but her eyelids were so heavy. She blinked once, twice, and then knew no more.