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“I’ve got to go, gals.” Novak lowered his face to Liv’s for a quick kiss and then walked over to me. Same thing.

“Do you need me today?” Victoria asked. I wondered if he realized he hadn’t kissed her as well.

“No.” Novak was already busy checking his phone.

“My dad wants a meeting,” she said. Novak had been voted in as leader—already a legend for being the youngest we’d ever had—replacing Victoria’s father soon after we’d arrived in Austin.

Novak didn’t look up. “It’s not a democracy,” he joked. It was in fact a democracy. Or it used to be, with everyone’s needs equally considered. But if Victor had been a traditional leader, Novak was more like a shaman. He had a small inner circle, but these days it was clearly just Novak calling the shots.

Novak’s leadership had been divisive. On the one hand, by making us rich, he’d bought us a kind of security we’d never had before. On the other, we found ourselves living further than ever from how we used to live. According to stories, we had once been a communal culture of what’s mine is yours, with no emphasis placed on acquiring personal possessions.

“He—”

“I can’t stop everything to have fifty council sessions a month like he had.” Novak looked up at Victoria when he said this, and she stared back for a millisecond before breaking eye contact first.

“Do you really have to leave? You just got here!” A whine crept into Liv’s voice.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said.

We knew it was unlikely.

Liv nodded. For some reason I felt sad, and a flash of the old protectiveness for Liv. It was never enough. His presence and the energy he exuded made you want more. Always more.

It was what got him in trouble with the people he interfaced with at work. Among us kids there was speculation that maybe Novak had the power to affect people’s emotional states and that’s why we felt almost high in his presence. The outsiders who weren’t too shy to interact with him could too easily become infatuated with him, his intense focus making them feel like the center of the world. Novak came across as deferential and unwaveringly polite to anyone he had dealings with, which was a heady combination in someone so powerful and attractive.

Novak was our liaison to the outside world, but he was maybe too good at it, because now the business world and admirers in general followed his every move. The SEC had been plaguing him now for the past several months.

With Novak gone we were left alone in the kitchen with Victoria, a different energy completely. “Where are you going?” she asked. Dammit.

Dressed in an expensive tunic she wore as a dress, Liv was all legs. She opened the glass door of the refrigerator and grabbed a few bottles of water. Except for the fruit, breakfast sat untouched on the table. Presumably Victoria had explained our plant-based diet to the housekeeper, but it had probably seemed so unsustainable, it went ignored. I wondered if anyone else was always hungry like me.

Victoria walked over to Liv and touched her sleeve almost like she was holding on. Victoria was trained as a doctor, but she had never practiced. Instead she waited around, bored, like everyone else in the group, until Novak called on her for her area of expertise to consult on his grand plan. Our goal was to relocate somewhere that would be environmentally more protected and less directly impacted by the climate change that was worsening every year. Not to mention the other man-made messes that were inarguably coming home to roost. Novak knew future wars would be fought over water, just like wars were fought over oil now. None of us felt bad about Novak’s plan to pump water for our sole use, not when outsiders had first disturbed our way of life, not when they had almost exterminated us.

The teens in our group never stopped hearing how our generation was lazy in comparison with previous ones, that we lacked any sense of urgency about contributing to the group’s well-being. Maybe it was because we had a sense of futility about the future. We were the last generation. Not one child had been born to the group in sixteen years. None of the couples in their twenties and thirties had children. Liv had been the last, and it was a never-ending source of grief.

The childless couples and even the adults my parents’ age had done everything they could and had kept trying in spite of Novak’s vision, which had predicted it would be futile. From a pure biological standpoint, the group, now numbering fewer than sixty, had stayed too insular. The idea of diluting our DNA wasn’t an option anyone ever discussed. It seemed we would rather die out. Otherwise, what would all this have been for—the decades of running, the hiding in plain sight? Everything had been in the name of staying together in spite of the odds.

My eyes flew to Victoria when she loudly placed a water glass on the countertop. Victoria was tall—in heels, taller than my dad—her hair a darker shade of brown than Liv’s. She always kept her lips bare, even though the rest of her face was made up. It suited her to appear always a little edgy and not just a little severe. Today she was dressed in a tight black dress worth thousands.

Victoria and I were both experts at wiping our faces of emotion when we entered each other’s company. So proud of her daughter, she melted every time she laid eyes on the younger, almost-identical version of herself. Since I looked nothing like my dad or Liv except for the color of my eyes, I knew I must take after my mother. Whoever she was.

I assumed my birth mother had not been allowed to relocate with the rest of the group when we moved to Austin, that maybe there was truth to the rumor that not everyone had made the cut. I wondered if Victoria had something to do with it. That was the best explanation I could come up with. To keep our identities as protected as possible, everyone was prohibited from talking about the past, even among ourselves.