Star's End

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  “Where’s my sister?” I said, walking up to meet her.

  “I’d prefer not to discuss this in the guest lobby.” She didn’t smile at me, didn’t pretend to play nice or try to soothe me down. In a way, I appreciated it.

  Flor brushed past me, heading toward the waiting room. I followed. The guard watched us. He was better at keeping his emotions under wraps than Flor was.

  “Close the door,” she told him as we walked into the waiting room. The door whisked shut, as if it were automatic.

  Flor stopped in the middle of the room. She didn’t turn around to look at me.

  “All right,” I said. “We’re alone. Where the hell is my sister?”

  “Isabel is fine,” Flor said, her back still turned. I scowled at it, then walked over to her side to force her to look at me.

  “Where is she?”

  “We are working in one of the production labs.” Flor stared at the pile of packaged food spread out on the table. “She’s sorting files for me. It’s a huge project, and I don’t want to interrupt her.”

  I glared at Flor. I didn’t care about keeping my emotions under wraps either. This wasn’t some delicate business meeting with a foreign dignitary. This was a colleague, a woman in my own company. Of course, secrets were necessary in a corpocracy like the Coromina Group. But my sister did not need to be a part of them.

  “I don’t know why you’re so upset,” Flor said. “Her father knows she’s here. We didn’t kidnap her, for God’s sake.” Flor gave me a small, cruel smile.

  “I’m aware my father knows she’s here,” I snapped. “It still feels like a kidnapping. She didn’t tell me or her sisters. She just vanished. You can’t blame me for getting upset when things are so unstable with OCI right now.”

  “She didn’t tell anyone because she was instructed not to. This is a high-clearance project.”

  “I want to see her,” I said. “Now. I have the clearance level to go into the production labs.”

  Flor finally turned to face me. She was smiling again, her mouth cutting her face in half. I faltered. I did not like the look of that smile.

  “You don’t have the clearance for this,” she said.

  I blinked, stunned. Flor had a higher clearance than me? Isabel did?

  “No Psych project has that high a clearance,” I said, “and if this really is an interdepartmental project with Genetics, I have a right to know—”

  “You don’t have the clearance.” Flor moved toward the door.

  I stepped in front of her. “I have permission from Mr. Coromina to oversee Isabel’s internship. You’ll let me see her immediately.”

  Flor blinked at me. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Then she stepped around me. I watched her, not knowing what to do. I hadn’t expected this, to be shut out because of clearance levels. I thought it was my father and one of his byzantine plans of action. He always scattered them into pieces. But I still thought I could get access if I demanded hard enough. Especially since Dad had promised me he’d let me check up on Isabel’s internship. But it also didn’t surprise me he had lied. I was used to him breaking his promises by now.

  “When Isabel is finished,” Flor said, “I’ll send her over to you. I assume you’re staying at the hotel?”

  I nodded—too late now to pretend otherwise.

  “She should be done in about an hour or so. Just go back to your room and wait.” Flor smiled again, but this time it was sweeter, a placating smile. “I promise you she’s quite all right. We’re just very busy.”

  “What are you working on?” My voice was edged with malice. I didn’t care.

  Flor kept smiling. “You know damn well I can’t tell you that. Not until you’re a Ninety-Nine.”

  Her statement pounded around inside my head. I stared at her. A Ninety-Nine. The highest clearance in the company. For all my connections, I was only at Level Eighty-Six.

  “How is Isabel working on a Level Ninety-Nine project?” I whispered.

  Flor shrugged. “Ask her when she stops by.”

  She walked over to the door, pressed her palm against the lightscreen. The door hissed open. She glanced over her shoulder at me, one last time. I felt deflated. And confused. Bewildered, really. A Ninety-Nine project? And Isabel?

  Flor’s eyes glittered. She knew she had won. All I could do was watch her walk away.

  • • •

  This first thing I did when I got back to my room was try to contact my father’s holo. I tried the ordinary connection as well as the encrypted one. The second thing I did was contact Daphne and Adrienne. Adrienne answered, her eyes wide. Daphne crowded in behind her.

  “Did you find her?” she asked.

  “Isabel’s here,” I said. “I haven’t spoken to her yet, but I will. Flor promised to send her over to my room when she finished her work for the day.” I didn’t tell them about the project being at Level Ninety-Nine, and I didn’t tell them about Flor’s mocking smiles. I didn’t want them to worry. “We’ll both holo you when she’s here, okay? I promise.”

  They nodded. Daphne wanted to stay on the holo, but Adrienne reminded her they had tutoring, and I sent them on their way. Tutoring should be enough of a distraction. And honestly, I wanted some time alone.

  My room had one little square window—no balcony, the way my rooms usually did. I pulled the curtains aside and looked out at my view of a city street. A single tree grew out of the cement sidewalk, its trunk twisted to the right so that it was almost parallel to the ground. Hardly anything grew out here except for those trees, which grew deformed, brutalized by the wind.

  Nothing about this trip made any sense. An intern working on a Level Ninety-Nine project was unheard of. Level Ninety-Nine projects were, in general, unheard of. Only a handful of people had that clearance level, and it still left me rattled that Flor was one of them. I wondered if this was all related to the tensions with OCI—it would have to be, right? Some kind of propaganda project, maybe involving an engineered soldier or two? But why would such a thing be Level Ninety-Nine? And why would they bring in Isabel for filing?

  My thoughts spun around as I waited for Isabel to come to my room. The glass rattled in the window frame. I stared out at the twisted tree. My chest felt empty.

  Eventually, I pulled out my lightbox. Work would distract me, just like I wanted it to distract the twins. I plunged myself into my messages, fingers flying over the lightscreen, responding to and confirming and approving one project or request after another. It worked, but it worked too well. When I had finished, I glanced at the time and saw that two hours had passed.

  Two hours and Isabel hadn’t shown up.

  For a moment, I was numb. Then I switched off the lightbox and stood up, my legs shaking. Flor had lied. That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did, a little. I had honestly believed that if I came to my room, if I waited, I would get to see Isabel.

  My sisters made me naive.

  Anger surged inside of me; I spun around the room, looking for something to throw, to break, to destroy. I wound up slamming my fist into the soft pile of the pillows on my bed. Hot tears sprouted at the edge of my eyes. Then I took a deep breath. Anger solved nothing. I smoothed one hand over my hair. I was Esme Coromina. I was going to be CEO of this company someday. And I was not going to let them keep secrets from me.

  The guard in the guest building had told me Flor was on the opposite side of the city. It could have been a bit of obfuscation, but I doubted it—it would put her in the main laboratory, which was exactly the sort of place I would imagine there to be Level Ninety-Nine projects going on.

  Level Ninety-Nine. God, none of this made sense. It left a strange feeling in the pit of my belly, like whatever I was going to find was going to be worse than not knowing.

  I called the lobby and asked for a cart to take me over to the main laboratory. There were no quibbles over my identity, at least; I’d been to the lab before. I went down to the lobby. It was still empty. Starspray City was an isolat
ed place even at the best of times, but ordinarily there would be a few mid-ranking Coromina Group officials drinking at the bar, laughing with some of the scientists or technicians from the labs. Especially this late in the day. The lobby was eerie as an empty place, those lovely chandeliers glittering for no one but the bored clerk behind the desk.

  The cart was waiting for me when I stepped through the revolving doors, preprogrammed for the main lab. It wound through the city streets, rocking to the rhythm of the wind, and I focused my thoughts on Isabel: finding her, tearing her away from whatever project they had her working on, bringing her home. I didn’t care if she was just sitting in some back room, swiping through files. I didn’t care if she had no access to Level Ninety-Nine information. I didn’t like this, and I wanted her back at Star’s End.

  The cart rattled to a stop in front of the main lab. Staring up at that curving organic building, I felt momentarily paralyzed, fear gluing me in place. Because it was one thing to decide that I would do whatever I needed to in order to keep Isabel safe. It was another to actually do it. To actually defy my father. Because that was what I was doing there, right? Defying my father. If he wanted, he could spin this, turn me into an OCI spy. Exile me, or worse. We did worse sometimes. Capital punishment was supposed to be a cruelty from a barbaric past, but there were times it was necessary.

  Not this time, I told myself, stepping out into the wind. Dad wasn’t going to kill me for snooping around for my sister. He wasn’t insane.

  I walked up to the door, wind battering all around me. I expected it to slide open on my approach, but it stayed put. Locked. But the doors were never locked.

  Panic gripped at my chest. I tried tugging on the door, to pull it open, but it didn’t work.

  The main laboratory of Starspray City was locked down.

  A lightscreen was set into the wall, inset deeply enough to protect it from the wind. I activated it. A cheery message illuminated the lengthening dusk: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. PLEASE CONTACT FLOR DECRIE FOR ENTRANCE PRIVILEGES.

  “Fuck!” I slammed the side of my fist against the wall. This really was Level Ninety-Nine work. The main lab of Starspray City had never been locked in all the times that I had visited. And it certainly shouldn’t be locked to me, Level Eighty-Six, the Assistant Vice President of Genetics.

  I stomped back to my cart, slammed back inside, activated my lightbox. My fury made me tremble, but I knew too there was a faint undercurrent of fear there as well—because I did not understand why Isabel was involved with any of this.

  I connected to my father’s holo channel. The holo light flooded through the cart, hurting my eyes. But I was not going to leave this place until he answered live.

  The holo light flickered. My father’s face materialized above the dashboard of the cart.

  “What the fuck are you doing in Starspray City?” he asked.

  At the sight of him, some of my resolve shimmered away. I slumped back against my seat. But I forced myself to look him in the eye, even if it was just the eye of a holo.

  “I’m worried about Isabel,” I said. “Flor told me I could see her, but she never showed up at my hotel.” I swallowed. Dad’s face was unreadable in the blinding holo light. “This isn’t typical intern work, and you know it.”

  My father studied me. “You came all this way just to make sure your sister was safe. You didn’t believe me? You thought I would lie to you?”

  Yes. “No. I just wanted to see for myself. Adrienne and Daphne were in a panic.”

  Dad moved out of the line of the holo, leaving a transmission of his background—some kind of office. Not his office at the main campus. I didn’t recognize this one.

  “You’re just going to walk off?” I said, anger surging because of the fear beneath it. “You’re not going to answer my questions?”

  Dad reappeared, suddenly, streaks of holo light radiating off him. The winds of Catequil, interfering with the Connectivity.

  “I was resetting the permissions for the laboratory doors,” Dad said. “You can get in now.”

  My mouth dropped open in surprise. “You’re letting me in?”

  “Don’t make me regret it,” Dad said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  “With Isabel?”

  Dad’s eyes glinted. The holo twitched. My breath was in my throat.

  “No,” he said. “With an explanation.”

  And then he switched off.

  • • •

  Dad was waiting for me in the lobby when I barreled in, my hair windblown, my clothes rumpled. He looked as unflappable as he always did, in his neat gray Coromina Group suit. I stopped halfway across the lobby and stared at him, my arms hanging limply at my side. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Let’s talk in the courtyard,” Dad said.

  I shook my head, curled my hands into fists. “I want to see Isabel,” I said. “Now.”

  “Isabel’s sleeping.”

  I was ready to protest, to fight for more information, but this was so straightforward and so simple that the words just evaporated in my mouth.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “She’s had a difficult last few days,” Dad said. “But let’s talk about it in the courtyard.” He held out one arm, as if inviting me. I drifted toward him, feeling dazed. All those unanswered messages, all of Flor’s lies—and yet here was Dad, telling me what I wanted to know. He was almost being honest.

  Dad put one arm around my shoulder, gave me a squeeze that was not quite a hug. I wanted to put my guard up, but instead, I just melted against him. We probably made an awkward pair. Father and daughter. CEO and employee. I was so used to being the employee that I didn’t know what it was to be the daughter.

  “Have you ever been out to the courtyard?” Dad’s arm slipped away from me as we walked toward a darkened glass doorway on the other side of the lobby.

  “Probably,” I said. “I don’t remember. I don’t exactly come out here to sightsee.” I shook my head. “I’m not here to sightsee tonight, either. Where’s Isabel? At the hotel? Why didn’t she come see me?”

  “She’s not at the hotel.” Dad pushed open the door and stepped out into the courtyard. I had been there, once before, for some lunch meeting. A glass ceiling shielded us from the wind, and the nighttime plants glowed. They were the product of genetic engineering, experiments that would go out into the galactic market in a year’s time. But pomegranates that cast an incandescent shimmer of red, beautiful though they were, would never be the primary income of the Coromina Group.

  “Where is she, then?”

  “Here. At the lab.” Dad sat down on a metalwork bench. An awning of softly glowing moonflowers stretched overhead. He patted the seat beside him, but I stayed standing, arms crossed over my chest.

  “Will you please just give me a straight answer?”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Dad.”

  He peered up at me. His eyes seemed suddenly very old, a reflection of his true age. Maybe it was the light.

  “One of the ID scanners pinged her as being infected with Lasely fever.”

  It felt as if something had slammed into my stomach. I gaped at him. “You can’t possibly be serious. She’s fourteen.”

  Dad shrugged. “You were fucking that village boy by the time you were fourteen, if I recall correctly.”

  Paco. He was talking about Paco. My cheeks burned, and I looked away from him, at the manicured growth of the courtyard. Lasely fever was sexually transmitted; there was no other way to catch it. If the ID scanners had spotted the virus in her blood, she might not have been showing symptoms yet.

  “I really didn’t want to have to tell you this,” Dad said. “I know you treat her like she’s your own child.”

  I floated over to him and sank down beside him on the bench. The plants swayed around us; the building let in just enough wind to create a breeze.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “I don’t under—” I stopped myself, glanced sideway
s at him. “And I wasn’t fucking anyone when I was fourteen, by the way.”

  Dad shrugged. “Congratulations. Isabel was. I brought her here for the surgery—we caught it early enough that we could go in and burn it out of her system. It’s a new method of disease eradication we’re trying out. That’s why Flor was being so damned squirrelly.”

  I turned to him in horror. “You tried an experimental surgery on her!”

  “It wasn’t experimental,” Dad shot back. “It passed the experimental stage ages ago. You probably signed off on the damn test subjects and forgot about it.”

  I scowled. He could be right, since the medical division used engineered soldiers when they needed human subjects. I didn’t like thinking about it, signing away the permissions. “Then why the hell did Flor go on about it being Level Ninety-Nine?”

  Dad snorted. “Power-play bullshit. Flor is Level Ninety-Nine. This isn’t. Look, I’ll take you up to see Isabel. She’s knocked out right now, but you can see that she’s okay. The surgery is tough, but she’s young and she pulled through just fine. Now she gets to go home, be good as new, and no one has to know she got a damn STD.”

  He looked at me expectantly. I sighed, tried to work everything through in my head. It made sense, mostly. I thought about how Isabel always snuck out to the woods. She’d be gone for hours, sometimes, but she always came back, smelling of the soil and tree sap. It never once occurred to me that she could be meeting someone out there, some villager who told her sweet things and suggested a whole wider world than the one she knew. But I didn’t have to think on it long to understand that it made sense, too. That it made more sense than her spending hours in the woods alone.

  “She could have told me,” I mumbled. Something in my heart stung. It was like when my sisters were younger, when they had that strange hissing language that I couldn’t understand. “She didn’t need to keep it a secret from her family.”

  “She was embarrassed,” Dad said. “And she should have been. Lasely is a prostitute’s disease.”

  I glared at him.

  “I’m not saying she’s a prostitute,” Dad said, “only that this is why I never liked you girls going down to the village.”