The Forbidden Zone by Victoria Zagar Page A

balanced it. I would spend the rest of my life on Valeria. Alone.
    I realized I couldn't make myself believe that Saidan was dead. To believe he was gone was to give up all hope and reason to live. Without Saidan, there was nothing to fight for. Without him, I would become a drone in Little Sister's world, forced to while away my life on meaningless high-school science just to pass the time. I realized I would rather die than become a cog in a system determined to destroy my individuality, with no hope of ever returning home. So I had to believe Saidan was alive. It was the only hope I held, the only reason for my continued existence.
    "Little Sister." I didn't expect her to respond, but even her voice would have been welcome in the silence and blackness. Anything to tell me that the world still existed and that I wasn't caught in some kind of Purgatory, neither dead nor alive. The sensory deprivation was quickly wearing on me.
    "I know you're watching. I want you to know that I will save Saidan and destroy you." There was a hatred in my voice that I'd never felt before, a thick, black rage that seemed to consume my entire soul.
    "Saidan is dead." Little Sister's voice sounded almost happy at the prospect. "He will make good protein bars, like all dead synthetics. There's no waste on Valeria, off-worlder."
    I felt like I'd been shot through the heart and stomach at the same time. I threw up on the floor next to me, just processing Little Sister's words.
    I tried to use logic to protect me from my natural revulsion. Protein bars?  Protein bars were made from synthesized proteins mixed with the corn grown in the last remaining fields.  Therefore, what she'd described wasn't—couldn't be—happening.
    "You're just playing with me. I won't be your toy. Saidan is alive, I know it. And you're not feeding the synthetics to themselves. Studies have shown that cannibalism leads to increased chances of fatal brain diseases. It would be impractical for you to do such a thing."
    "If you don't believe it, then why did you vomit?"
    "Emotional reactions are based on the brain's interpretation and imaginings of thoughts, not necessarily their basis in fact." I had to become the robot they'd always accused me of being on Earth. The me that loved Saidan was too soft, too emotional. I had to revert to the soul of steel that I'd always had on Earth, raising the barriers that kept myself safe and others away.
    "Why are you keeping me in the dark, Little Sister? Are you afraid of me? Afraid of what I'll do when I get my hands on your central core? Perhaps I'll turn you into a vending machine."
    "What is a vending machine?"
    "It's a machine that dispenses protein bars, Little Sister. People on Earth like to abuse them, kick them, and call them names when their food doesn't arrive in a timely manner. I think you'd do well as one."
    "I could kill you at any moment."
    "I'm sure you could. But you haven't. I do have to wonder why. You must have some kind of further use for me, or I'd be dead already." I stood up, feeling more confident now that I'd pushed my emotions into a box and locked them up tightly. "The Sisters were ready to kill me, but you want me alive. Why?"
    "Human protein bars are an interesting prospect, but we cannot be sure of the effect on Valerian bodies from eating such alien material."
    "You're lying. You need me. I think I know why. The same reason that your big sisters had Saidan and me working on the Forbidden Zone project: because you need a solution. Valeria will die in less than two generations. No life to suck from this world means no more energy and no more synthetics. You need my mind, and Saidan's. That's why we're both still alive." I grew in my certainty as I threw my theories out into the air, pulling together what I knew and coupling it with my guesses to form a theory. It was the most scientific thing I'd done since arriving on Valeria. Old pathways reawakened in my mind, the neurons in my brain firing in the way