Linked
Page 32
She looked up at him, aware that her helplessness showed in her expression. “If it were just me.”
But it’s not just me. It’s Lin. I can’t leave Lin. And I can never even suggest the possibility of going back to Sekoia, not to her, not ever. It felt like a betrayal to say it out loud, but in Cadan’s eyes she read understanding. As she would never ask it of Lin, he would never ask it of her.
But as she lay, sleepless, later that night, the thought—unwanted, unasked for—returned. It wasn’t just about rescuing Cadan’s family. Once again she saw the pale, shocked faces of all those Spares, coming out of imprisonment into a world they didn’t understand. Lin had said the telepathic link between one twin and another usually died out when they were still young. Would it have survived for any of them, or would they be totally adrift, without the anchor, the safety net that Elissa knew she’d been to Lin? Would the Spares ever adjust to the outside world? And if they didn’t, would they be as dangerous as Lin had been—still could be? Lin’s wasn’t the only brain that had the power to fuel a hyperdrive—it couldn’t be just Lin who had some kind of electrokinesis.
Elissa thumped over in bed, tugging the covers with her. She and Lin, linked, could move a spaceship. Without hurting themselves, without putting themselves in danger. If the links between other Spares and their twins hadn’t died out completely, could the pairs be as powerful as she and Lin?
Sekoia needs its spaceflight industry. It needs hyperdrives. But the only way it can power them—
Oh God, though. It’s not okay to even think it, after what’s been done to them.
She flumped back onto her other side.
She and Lin, going back, voluntarily, to show how Sekoia’s spaceflight industry could be restored, to let other Spares see that their power could be used without pain or danger, that might be the one thing that could rebuild a shattered society. She and Lin might be able to turn the tide of anger and desperation, stem the inexorable march of events dragging Sekoia down into the poverty from which it had so recently struggled free.
If we went back, we could get Cadan’s family to safety, and help other Spares recover, and even . . .
“Lissa?” said Lin’s voice in the dark.
Elissa’s heart skipped a guilty beat. “Yes?”
“I don’t want to go to college.”
Irritation jabbed fingernails into Elissa. She had to think about Lin’s education now?
“What do you want to do?” she said patiently.
“I want to go back to Sekoia.”
“What?” Elissa snapped upright in bed and clicked the light on. Across the room Lin blinked at her. “What are you talking about?”
Lin’s chin set in a stubborn look that was becoming familiar. “Cadan will take us if you ask him.”
“Yes, I know he—” Elissa shook her head. “Wait, what are you talking about? What do you want to do on Sekoia?”
Lin gave her a sidelong look. “I just . . . I don’t like seeing the news. Your family’s being moved off-planet, and Ivan and Markus don’t have family there, but Cadan and Felicia do. I keep thinking, if it was you stuck down there, and I was here and couldn’t do anything . . .” She wriggled to a sitting position, wrapping her arms around herself. “When I got out of the facility, I knew where I was going. I knew I was going to you. Some of those Spares—their link will have died off like it’s supposed to. They won’t have anyone—if they meet their twins, it’ll be just like meeting some stranger. And their twins, they might not be like you. They might be like your mother, or Stewart.” Her eyes came up to Elissa’s. “If you’d hated me . . . if I’d gotten out and come to find you and you’d looked at me like Stewart looked at me when he found out what I was . . .”
Her arms tightened around herself, a movement like a shudder. Her eyes were dark, distant. “I don’t like it, that’s all. And I keep thinking, we could help them. The Spares. And their twins. And Cadan’s and Felicia’s families—even if it’s just getting them off the planet. But . . .” She met Elissa’s gaze again. “We’re millions of times stronger now, Lissa. It wouldn’t have to stop with just that. If the planet got safer again, no one would have to leave it. If we went back, together, we could . . .” She trailed off, biting her lip, her expression suddenly full of uncertainty.
Elissa looked at her. Into the face so like hers, the face she’d seen bleak with terror, lit with happiness, bone white with the determination that had saved them both.
Lin’s face was anxious now, anxious and hopeful, waiting for Elissa to speak.
“If we went back . . . ,” Elissa repeated, and Lin’s eyes lit up as she recognized what Elissa was going to say an instant before she said it. “We could help Cadan’s family, and the Spares, and save our world.”
Through the viewscreen the stars were a distant mist of lights. Paths and signposts all over the galaxy, pointing the way back across the star system to Sekoia. To the planet Elissa would once have called home.
“Take the speed up a notch,” said Cadan.
Elissa slid her finger over the control panel, watching the line on the display climb, feeling the Phoenix respond to her command.
“It has to be my turn now,” said Lin, leaning over the railing for the third time.
“Oh, good God,” said Cadan, exasperated. “You learn every damn thing twenty times faster than your sister—can you just give her a bit longer?”
Lin sighed, breathing down Elissa’s neck. “I could be your copilot by the time we get there, if you just let me practice some more.”
“That’s assuming I want you as my copilot,” said Cadan crisply. “Right now I’m about ready to drop you off on the nearest deserted moon.”
“Oh, please.” Lin pushed away from the rail and wandered over to get herself a chocograin bar. “I saved your life, and paid to refuel your ship. You owe me forever.”
Cadan slanted a look at Elissa. “To think I ever thought you were a brat.”
“Tell me what you think I am now.” A smile pulled at her lips, and Cadan grinned at her.
“Maybe later.” He reset the controls to where they’d been. “Okay, you want to try that sequence again?”
Elissa went through the routine, ticking procedures off in her head. She was probably years away from ever learning to really fly a ship, and she’d never keep up with Lin, but it felt good to be learning a few of the basics. They were no longer being pursued by SFI, of course, but there were other dangers out here between the planets. If the Phoenix were attacked again, she wanted to be able to do more than buckle up and wait for Cadan to save her.
She’d reached saturation point now, though. When Lin next came to lean hopefully over the rail, Elissa got up and let her sister take the controls. She moved to the seat at Cadan’s other side, watching him as he explained another complicated maneuver to Lin.
Ivan, Markus, and Felicia had joined them for this return to a planet in chaos. She hadn’t expected them to want to, had thought they’d already risked more than enough for her and Lin. But they had wanted to come—people with whom she would once have had nothing in common, who were fast turning from friends into something like family.
And the Phoenix, the ship she’d once seen as nothing but an escape route, a means to an end, was becoming home.
Elissa edged her hand over so it just touched Cadan’s. He didn’t turn from the screen, from the code he was translating for Lin, but his fingers closed around hers, warm and firm.
All her life she’d just wanted to be normal, ordinary. She was a long way from either now.
She’d wanted safety, too, something else she was a long way from. Sekoia was a different place now, a dangerous place. There’d be people there who’d see her, Lin, Cadan, and the crew as the people who’d caused the planet’s disintegration, as bad as terrorists themselves.
But going into danger yourself, of your own will—it was so very much better than having your will taken away, than having other people’s decisions imposed on you. And
there were things more important than a guarantee of safety—or of being normal.
And, anyway . . . Elissa looked past Cadan to what she could see of Lin, whose eyes were intent on the screen, fingers flickering over the controls. Her twin, her double—stubborn, freakily talented, frighteningly powerful—linked to Elissa by a bond neither of them fully understood.
Anyway, she wasn’t normal. She never had been normal. And it didn’t matter anymore.
IMOGEN HOWSON writes science fiction and fantasy for adults and young adults, and is the winner of the 2008 Elizabeth Goudge Award for her romantic fiction. She works as an occasional editor for Samhain Publishing. Imogen lives with her partner and their two teenage daughters near Sherwood Forest in England, where she reads, writes, and drinks too much coffee. Visit her at imogenhowson.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Imogen Howson
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The text for this book is set in Garamond
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Howson, Imogen.
Linked / Imogen Howson. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When Elissa’s nightmarish visions and inexplicable bruises lead to the discovery of a battered twin sister on the run from government agents, Elissa enlists the help of an arrogant new graduate from the space academy.
ISBN 978-1-4424-4656-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4424-4657-1 (eBook)
[1. Science fiction. 2. Telepathy—Fiction. 3. Sisters—Fiction. 4. Twins—Fiction. 5. Love—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H849Li 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2011050035
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
About Imogen Howson