by Naomi Hughes
“I had to make sure.” But that’s not quite right. “I was afraid,” I confess instead. “I thought there was a chance you might be like me after all. That you’d abandon me, if it came down to it.”
“You think you’d abandon me, if our positions had been reversed?”
“In a heartbeat.”
He breathes an almost-laugh. “Bastard,” he says, more lightly than I deserve. Probably because it doesn’t really matter anymore for either of us.
“Hero,” I reply, striving for the same tone.
“That’s not even an insult.”
“Shows what you know.”
We fall silent. I’m not sure if it’s because it hurts him too much to talk or because there’s nothing else to say. My injured hand is starting to sting again, the sign of an oncoming wave of pain. I wish Mirage would finish crashing before it hits. I’d rather die quick and brilliant than slow and painful.
“I’m guessing you’ve already tried to conjure up a mirror to get back out?” I ask after a moment.
“First thing,” he confirms. “Didn’t work—no Beings, no exit. Probably because your construct doesn’t have the same rules as the shared dream. And also maybe because I’ve lost too much blood to wake up by now anyway.” Before I can respond to that, he rolls his head to the side to look at me. “There’s one thing I haven’t been able to figure out. You claimed earlier that your sting went away in the real world—that that’s what you were getting out of waking everyone up. But we both know that isn’t true. So what were you trying to get out of it?”
I lift my injured hand. The skin is gray and corpselike all the way up to my shoulder now, and the black veins are spreading across my collarbone and chest. They’re crawling across my skin so fast that I can almost see their growth in real time. “He was going to heal me,” I say, and then pause.
Mirage said he might have enough energy to heal me once everyone was awake. It’s been two hours—at this point everyone is either awake and escaped, or dead. If Mirage could heal me, he should be able to do it by now … if I wasn’t trapped in here.
But am I trapped in here? Elliott probably is. His body is in shock, unable to wake up. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to wake up, though. I was knocked unconscious for a while but I’m fine now. And this is my construct, just like the memory of my old house. When I wanted to get out of there …
All I had to do was walk out.
Which means all I’d have to do now is walk out too. Get up, step off the side of this tower, and leave Elliott to die.
In a heartbeat, I’d told him a second ago. And it only makes sense. In the state he’s in he’d never make it to Earth before he died. But me, I could live. I could go home, see Ty, finally get the things I’ve worked so hard for.
I can leave Elliott behind and get everything—or we can both die here, and get nothing.
I laugh out loud. The sound is harsh and brittle with irony.
“What’s … so funny?” Elliott asks, his breathing more labored now.
I stand up. “Me. This. All of it.” I step to the edge of the platform. “Thanks for everything, Elliott. I mean it. You’re a good guy. And that’s not an insult this time.”
He lifts his head off the iron bar. He stares at me, something like alarm tugging his eyes tight. “What are you doing, Marty?” he asks carefully.
I close my eyes. “Being the middle ground,” I tell him.
And then I step out over the empty air.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I JOLT UPRIGHT, GASPING. THE RAINBOW FLOOR IS flickering wildly: beeswax gold urgency, burnt umber frustration, emerald worry, and some brilliant, flaring shade of red that reminds me of a phoenix. I think it means pain.
Elliott’s body is a few feet away, crumpled up like he dropped where he stood. One hand is over his chest, over his injury, like he still can’t believe it’s there. Like he can’t believe his mother put it there. He doesn’t deserve to die like this. Doesn’t deserve to die at all.
I put my injured palm, which is starting to tingle with the beginnings of agony, on the floor. Instantly the colors flick to orange. I frown for a second until I understand—it’s fire. Mirage is on fire. He’s entering the atmosphere, burning up. Crashing.
Marty, he whispers.
“Mirage. I’m sorry,” I tell him. “Is there no way you can save yourself?”
No. But I think I can heal you now. Thank you for saving the others. About two-thirds of them made it out of the dream.
Two-thirds. That means one-third of the citizens of Cisco Island—nearly a thousand people—are dead now, because of the plan I enacted.
They would have died anyway. I did the only thing I could have done. Not in the right way or for the right reasons, though.
I glance at the body by my side. “I don’t want you to heal me,” I tell Mirage.
A pause. Why not? The escape pods I made, they’re built to survive re-entry. You could probably make it to one before I burn up. You would be fine.
“But Elliott wouldn’t. Could you heal him?”
I … think so. Yes. But I only have enough energy to heal one of you.
Everything in me curls up tight, even though I’d already guessed his answer. “Do you have enough energy for healing plus a short-range teleport?” I ask. “From here to the escape pods?”
I believe so. But, Marty—
“Do it. Heal him and teleport him to a pod. Quick, before I change my mind.”
Mirage hesitates again. In my head, he’s lit up bright orange with regret. You won’t change your mind, he says.
I manage a smile. “Shows what you know,” I say again, my voice shaking only a little.
What about you, then? What will you do? Won’t you at least try to get to a pod yourself? I might have enough energy left to transport you, too. You might survive long enough to see your brother.
“I’d only see him for a few minutes, if at all. And you’d die alone. You were by yourself all those years, traveling through space, trying to fulfill your purpose. And then when you did fulfill it, you got shot out of the sky. You deserve at least this much. You deserve to not be alone.”
Thank you, he says softly.
The floor beneath me is growing warm, getting eaten away by the orange flames. “Hurry, Mirage.”
His focus turns inward. Gently, with my free hand, I roll Elliott onto his back. His hand flops limply to the ground, fingers rusted in red-brown. The wound looks wrong now—too ragged, too vulnerable—so I cover it myself. His chest is barely moving with his breaths. There’s a long pause, much longer than it should be, between his inhales and exhales. His skin is cool beneath my hand.
When the wound starts to knit back together, I feel it under my fingers. First the bullet hole closes. Then his breathing eases, gets quicker, deeper. His skin takes on a healthy flush instead of that awful gray pallor. Then his forehead wrinkles like he’s starting to wake up.
He must be exiting the construct. He saw me step out over the empty air and vanish just a moment ago. What would he have to lose by following me, at this point? And now that his body is no longer in shock, he’ll be able to regain consciousness.
“Mirage,” I say, “teleport him now.”
Elliott’s eyes blink open. He squints, then starts to sit up. He spots me—one hand still on his chest, the other pressed to the rainbow floor.
I smile at him. I make it look careless. “Just say hi to Ty for me when you get the chance, would you?” My voice wavers despite my resolve.
His eyes widen. He starts to open his mouth. And then he blinks out of existence, successfully teleported away.
My right hand drops back to my side, empty. I bow my head, now that he’s not here to see, and let myself feel all the things that are clawing through me. Despair, fear, triumph. And pain, too. My skin is clammy under the wave of agony that’s slowly building in my palm, about to explode over me, about to incinerate me.
The ship around me trembles and shri
eks: a high, visceral, metallic sound. “What’s that?” I ask Mirage.
I’m letting parts of me break off and burn up, he explains. So I won’t be too big when I hit the ground. I don’t want to cause damage.
I shake my head, look down at the blood that’s still smudged on the floor where Elliott was. “You two are just alike, you know that? Always trying to save people you shouldn’t. They shot you down. I’d leave them to burn.”
No, you wouldn’t.
His faith in my good nature isn’t warranted, but I want to let him keep it, so I stay quiet.
Elliott is safe, he reports. I jettisoned the pod. It’ll land near the others in a few minutes.
I nod and squeeze my eyes closed. Then I open them, because the bright orange flames are still scorching the outside of the ship, and didn’t I wish for a brilliant death?
So brilliant that there can’t be any darkness. So brilliant that I can’t see the shadows eating me alive.
There’s another trembling in the floor beneath me, more violent now, and transparent walls spring up only a dozen or so feet around me. The flames encircle me completely now, below, around, above. Mirage is letting the rest of himself burn up. I can hear him screaming. Then the wave of pain hits me and we’re screaming together. My fingers curl violently inward, nails scraping against the smooth floor, splitting and tearing under the pressure.
You got my name wrong, Mirage whispers. I can feel the effort it takes for him to speak. I grit my teeth, trying to think through the pain that’s still gaining strength. He’s trying to distract me. Trying to distract both of us. The least I can do is let him.
“What?” I manage, the word barely a hiss of breath.
I was thinking about it more, going through all the knowledge I’ve gained from watching the humans, from watching you. And I don’t think Mirage is the best translation of my name. It’s more like … Refraction. The way fog scatters the lightning. The way a prism breaks sunshine apart into a rainbow. How a lens can focus light to make things seem bigger, or smaller, or distorted. That’s me. And that’s a better word for my abilities, too.
I think about the mirrors in the shared dream. The way we all thought the Beings were alien weapons coming through some portal when really they were just pieces of ourselves, bits of our own fears bent and reflected back to us. Or—not reflected. Refracted.
The way fog scatters lightning. The way a lens changes a person’s perception, makes things look bigger, warped, both more and less real.
One minute to impact, Mirage reports quietly, strain fraying the words.
The pain in my hand is burning too high for me to respond now, too high for me to think. I curl up on the floor and try to brace myself. Mirage is shaking violently, screaming across the atmosphere and in my head. Scarlet agony is everywhere.
Then, suddenly, it shifts into a startling mix of emerald and cobalt blue. “Mirage?” I gasp.
The colors swirl in my head, tuck themselves around me. Emerald is worry, I remember. But cobalt—cobalt is pleasure. Mirage is glad. Of what?
The floor is cracking now, violent fissures spreading across it. But even though everything around me is burning up, somehow coolness is centering under my palm, calming the pain there. I can’t heal it, Mirage says softly. I don’t have the energy. But I can minimize it. I can make you strong enough to bear it.
The pain eases. I gulp down a breath, confused but glad. A terrible rending noise snarls through the ship around me, reminding me of the way the earth sounded when the dragon-Being punched through it. Something snaps under my hand. The fiery walls around me grow closer, closer. More of Mirage burning up. We’re almost to the ground now. How long can he cocoon me, before I burn too?
Be well, Mirage says. Tell them I meant no harm.
I squint. “What are you—” I say, and then everything around me vanishes.
I’m standing in front of a window. It’s bordered by ugly gray and pink floral curtains. They frame a view of an overgrown front lawn, and above that, Mirage. Crashing.
He’s a fireball. A screaming, burning, dazzling comet. He plunges through the last bit of atmosphere and streaks toward the ground. Outside, people are yelling in the streets. Some have their phones lifted high to track his descent. Others have their hands over their ears, their heads ducked as if to protect themselves. Shattered glass is scattered all over the road—broken windows, I realize, from Mirage’s sonic boom. The pane in front of me is broken too, and wind is curling through the frame and batting at the curtains.
My eyes follow the comet overhead but my brain is stalled, trying to figure out what’s happening. This must be another construct. Mirage must be giving me an outside view of him as he crashes. I don’t know why he wants me to see it this way, though. Maybe to distract me, or maybe so it won’t seem so terrifying.
But—the people. They aren’t flat holograms. They’re running, shrieking, gasping, pointing. I thought Mirage said he couldn’t replicate a sentient being in a construct?
Above their heads, the comet that is Mirage shrinks suddenly. Half of him breaks off and burns to ether. The rest is seconds away from gouging a new crater into a hill in the distance when it folds in on itself, flares brighter than ever, and then … crumbles into nothingness.
The last bit of Mirage burns away seconds before he hits the ground.
Something inside me twists hard at the sight of his death, and my own. I wonder if this construct is somehow protecting my consciousness, letting it live for a few more seconds after my body is already burnt up. I lift a hand to pull the curtains aside so I can get a better view of the streak of slate-gray smoke that’s still emblazoned on the sky—and then I freeze, the back of my left hand hovering in front of me.
The black veins are gone.
I turn my hand over and open it. Only then do I realize I’m holding something. It’s about six inches long, jagged-edged, warped and damaged but smooth on the top like it’s made of glass. It’s transparent, but the faintest trace of a motionless rainbow sheen is still glazed across its surface. I remember something snapping off in my hand—a piece of Mirage’s floor.
Through the shard, I can make out the Being sting in my palm. The injury looks magnified, showing every detail, as if the piece of floor is a lens. The circle of white flesh is still wreathed in black veins, but they’re much smaller and confined to my palm rather than streaking across my whole body. The skin on my arm and hand is a healthy tan, not gray. The wound still hurts, but it’s a faint, bone-deep ache now, not a wave of unbearable agony.
What did Mirage say a second ago? I can’t heal it.
But I can minimize it. I can make you strong enough to bear it.
And then: Be well. A goodbye.
I look back at the people in the street. At the curtains—the ugly floral curtains. I touch them. They feel real. They feel as familiar as they look, because they’re my curtains, the curtains that have hung in the house my brother and I have lived in since we were kids.
Someone moves behind me.
I turn slowly. My gaze skims across the beige carpet, the chocolate-brown monstrosity of a couch, the piano. And, in the far corner with a bright red climbing harness slung around his waist and a coil of rope in his hands—my brother.
All impossibilities.
But my breath catches somewhere between my heart and my throat anyway, because it all looks so real. Realer even than the last hologram I saw of him. His hair is still wrong: now it’s too long, too shaggy. His face looks haggard instead of smiling, and his shoulders slump when he was always chiding me for the same thing, but it all looks so alive on him. Not like a memory of my brother. More like the person my brother might be today—if he’d spent the last year mourning me.
His eyes are glossy with shock, with disbelief. He squeezes them shut, hard, then opens them again, like he’s the one afraid he’s in a dream. “Marty?” he says. The word arcs into me like life. I’m scared to let it in. Scared to acknowledge the possibility that this
might not be a construct—that Mirage could have somehow used the last dregs of his power to teleport me to the ground while he was crashing.
I force myself to breathe. I have to step sideways. I have to know whether he’s a construct, whether he folds into a flat fiction when my perspective changes. Desperation claws at me, tries to hold me in place, tries to tell me to just stand here, right here, for the rest of my life. That way I can believe he’s real, no matter what.
But Ty’s across the room before I can finish arguing with myself. He moves differently now too. He’s quicker, lither. The studious botanist brother is gone. In his place is this person who moves with easy grace, his worn climbing harness jingling at his waist. When he reaches me, the coil of rope drops to the floor, forgotten. His hands clamp on my shoulders like he’s afraid I’ll dissipate.
His hands. His hands. Their grip is painfully tight, impossibly warm, solid and real. He didn’t fold into a flat hologram when he stepped around the couch. My brother is real. My brother is alive. My brother is here—and somehow, so am I.
He holds me at arm’s length. His eyes are still shining as he scans my face, like he’s looking for proof I’m really me. He believes, and doesn’t believe, and he’s scared of both options.
“I kept thinking if I came back, if I stayed, you’d come back too,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper. “That maybe one day I would walk out of my room and you’d be here. It doesn’t make any sense, you’re dead, but—” He stops, swallows. “Marty. Tell me you’re really here.”
My brain is fumbling, darting from one detail to the next. I can’t take it in. I can’t wrap my mind around my brother, whole and alive and standing in front of me. I have to say something. I don’t know what to say. I open my mouth anyway. “Why are you wearing a climbing harness?” is what comes out.
He looks down at himself like he’s forgotten what he looks like. The coil of rope is still splayed across the floor at his feet. “I—I climb that damn radio tower every month,” he says. “For you. To … find you. To remember you.”
My brain still isn’t working. I’m overwhelmed. Joy courses through my veins, brilliant and liquid like sunlight, like a jar of upended honey, like “Stand by Me” on the radio and an old Camaro humming beneath me. I can hardly speak through it. “Isn’t that illegal?” I manage.