WHEN HEROES FALL

by Abby J. Reed

  A barrier slammed over the room’s entrance.

  Emergency gravity engaged. Depressurization imminent.

  A lightheaded feeling washed over me. Next to the window, a red bullseye appeared on the inner wall, showcasing the problem. Something, maybe a projectile from one of the crashed ships, maybe a direct shot, had penetrated the room. Oxygen leaked out the pinprick hole into space.

  And I was trapped inside. Behind yet another locked door.

  Fear closed around my heart. I didn’t want to die. Not without plunging my hands into soil. Not behind a locked door. Not like this.

  Tahlia.

  I turned my head and the reverberating ache made me wince. My name wasn’t a dream, then. “Who’s there?”

  Tahlia.

  Nobody was there. Not with the locked door.

  The locked metal door.

  I breathed in and sang. The song was weak, but the thrumming in my veins was a pounding call-to-arms. I flung the melody toward the door like a grappling hook. It fell short due to my range of motion. Come on, girl. It shouldn’t be this hard. It’s all in your head. You can do this.

  I tried again and again until I finally aimed it in the direction I wanted. It lodged into the door. I yanked, hard as I could. A hunk came free. I tugged it close, shaping the scrap until it was sharp enough to cut through my bindings. I sat upright, gasping, and yanked the tube out of my arm. I hacked at the bindings around my waist and feet.

  I stood, wobbly. The room spun. My arm throbbed. I pressed a hand to the insertion spot. Blood trickled around my fingers.

  I trudged to the door, readying the song to hack through the remaining layers of metal. Once on the other side, I could seal this door behind me to keep the oxygen from being sucked away. Then hack through the next door, then the next, until I was finally free.

  Tahlia.

  The wrongness of the name twanged. I stopped a meter from the door. I knew that voice, I’d sensed that wrong, that evil before. On Syktyv with the—

  Dark matter.

  It was here.

  But where? Where was the dark matter coming from?

  I glanced toward the red bullseye.

  Outside.

  The dark matter was outside.

  The view beyond continued to rotate back toward Scarlatti, then toward the asteroid. I glanced below at the valley as if I could see what was going on. I glanced back to the asteroid, back to the valley, and oh—

  The dark matter wasn’t only in the Elik mines. It was in the asteroid. An asteroid that might’ve once been part of the planet or collided with it as it formed cycles and cycles ago and sent fragments into the rest of the galaxy. The true source of the dark matter.

  Oh stars.

  I tested and sent some of my melody through the hole in the ship. It only took a sec. Like waking a slumbering giant. The weight of it—all that metal crammed inside the asteroid. More than the Elik mines could ever hold. I could hear it.

  I see you, Tahlia.

  I know you.

  I own you.

  You are afraid. You are weak, weak, weak.

  I clenched my arm. “I’m not afraid of you,” I said. “I beat you before. I can beat you again.”

  You’re afraid of being Elik. You’re afraid of the power that lives in your veins. You’re afraid of the pain it can cause. I see all. I see—

  The voice broke off, as if something tugged at its attention.

  Flashes of light burst among the stars. Ships crashing? Shots fired? Then the asteroid wobbled. Almost as though it were being prodded very tentatively from the underside. How in the world could the asteroid move?

  I felt it then—a brush against my cheek, drifting in through the side of the ship. A song.

  Someone was singing, trying to nudge the asteroid. Malani—her vibrations were all over the music. What was she doing?

  Her melodies . . . they weren’t a random barrage. Focused. Purposeful. A shoving away? I gasped. Malani was trying to get rid of the dark matter, the thing the Queen so desperately wanted, the thing that caused greed and wars and bled Scarlatti dry. But her song wasn’t enough. She needed me.

  I looked toward the door.

  You’re afraid. You don’t want this. You don’t want to be Elik. You don’t want this power.

  I told Jupe to choose. I didn’t realize my words also applied to me.

  There’s power in the blood, the Queen had said.

  I glanced toward the sealed pails of my blood. My muscles were tired, my bones were tired. I’d traveled so far and all I wanted to do was curl up in my garden and sleep. The goblet the Queen used was nowhere in sight. So I straightened and tugged one pail, then another closer to the hole in the wall. Every movement ached.

  What are you doing?

  I lifted the last pail onto the floating chair the Queen had graced and dragged it across the room.

  Oxygen in this room is at fifty percent, the auto voice said.

  The air was thinner here. So thin. Breathing felt like inhaling glass. “You’re right,” I said. “I am afraid and I don’t want this power. But I don’t have to be afraid of it. I don’t have to be afraid of having control. I can embrace being Elik and do something with it.”

  I hefted the shard of metal I’d formed from the door, took a breath. Stabbed one calf, then the other with it. Blue blood ran down my tendons, swirled around my ankles. I stabbed again, on both arms, opening my skin to the thinning air.

  There’s power in the blood. I plunged one foot into the pail. Lifted the other and plunged it in. Thrust my fist into the pail on the chair. My blood seeped between my toes, my fingers, splashed onto my skin. My blood in my body. My blood outside my body. All my blood. All my power. All connected. More power than I would ever have access to in my life.

  I set my jaw and faced the asteroid through the bullseye. “You should be afraid. Of me.”

  Let me sing you a lullaby filled my mouth. The power swept through my veins, pure joy, pure life, and crashed through the hole of the ship. I flung all my power toward the asteroid and hooked it into its flesh. Rock and the tinny vibration of metal reverberated along my melody.

  I grabbed the melody and tied it to Malani’s and yanked.

  No, no don’t, it howled.

  “You are nothing,” I said. “You are nothing but a weed to be dug out. And I will hunt you until I root you from the end of the galaxy.”

  The asteroid budged.

  I sang, wove a tighter cord, tugged in time to Malani’s previous melodies.

  No.

  Its fear, its hate, its want thrummed. Destroy, destroy, destroy.

  And now, I would destroy it.

  I, who hid in the back of a tiny bedroom, too scared to stand up to the monster wearing Human flesh.

  I, who shook a spacestation from the force of a scream.

  I, who faced the Extrats and tore them limb from limb.

  I, who was both Tahnya and Tahlia, would destroy the monster hiding beneath the rock.

  My neck bulged with force. My scream was raw, bloody, a billowing force from the pit of my core. The sound burst through, tearing open blood vessels, wet trickled from my eyes.

  My consciousness split and I was suddenly in the ship and not.

  I spread across the galaxy, all those tiny little systems, tracing my fingertips along the roots holding the universe together. Time and space smeared and I was both here and far away, in the past and future with a great beginning, a great ending, and now, all at once.

  A smaller song grasped toward the asteroid, a song that would’ve once been bigger than my own.

  I raised my fist and plucked the asteroid from its orbit.

  I held it in my song, in my power, at my mercy.

 
Keep me. Use me. Let me be your servant. Let me show you the way to true power. Let me show you what power can do.

  But the Queen was right. You cannot control something that only wants to destroy. It needed to be gone.

  I felt its terror, the one direction it most dreaded going. My arm drew back, winding in a cosmic swing, felt when its fear reached its peak—and released.

  Through the window, the asteroid hurtled away from Scarlatti, away from the Queen, away from the war, toward the singularity.

  My song broke in my hands.

  My consciousness folded back into the tiny person who held shards of melody with cobalt-spotted hands, into the tiny person who still stood in the pails of blood, into the tiny person who was a single shoot in the grand garden of life.

  I blinked through a haze of blue blood in the direction I’d hurled the asteroid.

  Somewhere behind me, a voice said, Oxygen in this room is at five percent.

  A triumphant smile broke across my face like a reddrop turning its face to welcome dawn. I fought back.

  I collapsed with my arms outstretched toward the new Scarlatti horizon.

  Chapter 53

  BREAKER

  My cap turned into a whip and plucked fleeing Extrats out of my way as I ran from Brody as fast as Circuit would let me. As I hoped, my decision to run ticked off the Queen and Houtiri followed after me. The mass of rubble traveled over the valley, raining boulders and concrete like meteorites. They pummeled the ground, creating thunder with each bone-crushing strike. Each groundshake threatened to throw me to the grass.

  My lungs burned. The city quickly caught up, its monstrous shadow drowning me in dark. It crashed into the ground, ahead of me. The concussion rippled through the soil, a rolling wave of tumbling trees and rising dirt. Blocks of glass, of rock, of steel beams, a chair, boulders cascaded toward me.

  I immediately dropped into a ball, arms raised to protect my head.

  A corner of a building caught me and I rolled across the ground with a crack. I threw out my cap, grappling for anything to keep from sliding underneath another building. The pain was everywhere at once. Couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. What had broke? Dancing lights flooded my vision. No, not lights. Ships. Ships filled the skies.

  Scorpia!

  The ships fired in bursts and the rubble still hurtling toward me turned into a fine dust. I gasped through the pain. Scorpia’s ships circled around the city, vaporizing the falling chunks to prevent them from falling on me.

  Move, Breaker, move.

  I kicked out, but Circuit . . . Gone, he was gone. There, there. He had fallen next to me, barely welded together anymore. My hand was on auto as I grabbed him, shoved him back on, not minding bits of shattered glass stuck in the half-functioning seal.

  Move, move, move—

  A shriek cut through the haze. I knew that voice anywhere.

  I scrambled back toward the Queen.

  There—with Brody—she was a full Extrat now. Brody had wrestled out of her grasp and fought her, parrying her claws with the kpinga. How did he get it from her? She knocked the weapon aside, pinning him to the platform.

  No, no, no—

  I hobbled toward them, maneuvering around rubble of the fallen city. Extrats flowed around me. I screamed, lashed out when they came close.

  Too far, I was too far away. Always too late. Always too slow.

  The Extrat Queen bent over Brody.

  Time skipped and suddenly— There, the platform was just there, within reach, my cap rippled, sharpened into a blade—

  I collapsed onto the Queen’s back. My sudden weight knocked her from Brody. She shook me off easily and righted herself. Her metal arms now outstretched to the heavens as though straining to reach for something, her sing-song voice lifting in supplication—

  I rose to my feet and more pain slammed into my body. Why wouldn’t my leg work right and—

  A blinding, searing light burst across the valley. My vision whited. When the sudden burning eased, the Queen wasn’t looking at me, but at a gap in the sky. “Where is it?” Her voice croaked with surprise.

  I took the opening and plunged my dark matter dagger deep into her heart.

  Her body tipped, turned with the weight of death, and fell face up on the platform.

  Bile coated my tongue. My bones refused to work together, my tendons refused to pull, my blood refused to pump. As if every part of my body split apart and forgot how to communicate. Her face—that was Brody’s face.

  A yank on my tunic. It turned me toward Brody’s blank face. He was sitting up and pawing at my tunic, pounding against my bruised body. Panic rode his limbs.

  Brody, Brody—

  He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe. Oh stars, oh stars—

  Brandon, the brother I couldn’t save—

  Not Brandon, Brody—

  I shoved Brody back to the ground, pinning one flailing arm back with a bleeding knee, but I couldn’t fight off the other. Let me banging save you. If I had two hands, if I had two legs—so tired, so much pain—Brody’s body blurred underneath me.

  His flailing slowed and his body bucked. Then stopped moving.

  I finally was able to knock aside his hand. Punched down with my dagger, right in the spot where I’d practiced.

  I leaned back, breath tearing, fumbled for my pocket—tubing, tubing, where was the tubing?—inserted it—heart screaming at Brody’s stillness—

  Was I—

  Too late—

  Again—

  Brody’s ribs expanded with one giant sucking breath as his lungs rattled with air. His chest crashed back down, rose again as he breathed, crashed and rose, crashed and rose. I’d never seen a movement so beautiful.

  I slid off him, sinking onto the platform as my own chest heaved with sobs. I buried my face in the crook of my elbow, blocking out the view of his sightless blank face, of the ships finally landing and expelling faction members, and let the tears roll free. His hand grasped my arm, squeezing three times on repeat, I love you. I love you. I love you.

  Brody was alive.

  Brody was alive.

  Brody was alive.

  Chapter 54

  JUPE

  The grip on my throat loosened. I slid against the wall, my feet slamming into the floor. I bent over, coughing and massaging out my throat. I crawled out from underneath the soldier. Run, run, run to Tahnya.

  “Wait,” the man said.

  I froze halfway to the door. Looked at him. “You can talk?” My voice came out crunchy. Angel, this was gonna be a nasty bruise.

  He stared at me, backed away slowly, and sank onto the stair step. He grasped his head, as though holding a most precious treasure, and shook it gently as though trying to clear brain fog. “What’s going on?”

  I struggled to my feet, still massaging my neck. Took the gun muzzle and tipped his chin with it. His eyes were no longer glazed. They were sap green and full of confusion. The hacking had ended.

  That could only mean one thing.

  The Queen was dead.

  That meant we won. I should have felt relief. Joy, even. We won. But the words were an emotionless fact with no outside meaning. The only thing carrying weight was the throbbing in my throat and the confused man hunched on the step.

  The man didn’t notice the gun, only studied his hands. “Why are my hands bloody?” He tried to wipe his palms on his uniform, only to find more blood there. He lifted the hem to find bruises he didn’t remember and bleeding cuts that didn’t match the blood on his shirt. “Did I hurt somebody? Did I dream of killing that woman?” He drifted into his Solteran dialect, bewildered.

  He looked at me like a child looking to his papá for answers. I saw myself in his gaze. Lost and alone as th
e world he knew shifted.

  I glanced into the stairwell, sickness crawling into my belly. Broken bodies strewn everywhere. Some dead from each other, some dead from the out-of-control ship. Others wishing they could join the dead. Purple blood smeared along the walls, along their clothes, along their skin.

  What happened?

  Where’s my arm?

  Why am I holding this?

  Dear Angel, make it stop, make the pain stop.

  Oh stars, did I kill him?

  She’s dead! Oh Angel, she’s dead!

  Their voices rose in a hysterical keening, clawing at my throat. These, these unanswerable questions were worse than the screams on Syktyv. This was what ShuShu wanted to prevent. This was what Scorpia hoped to stop. It took all my strength to not curl into a ball and cover my ears to block out the despair.

  I looked again at the man. He stared blankly at his crusted hands. “I don’t understand,” he whispered. “I don’t understand.”

  I laid my hand on his shoulder. I tried to speak but my words wouldn’t come. After the third try, I managed, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” My voice was thick with grief. “But I can’t stay. I need to find someone.”

  But the solider still didn’t hear me, caught in his own mind trap. He sat with his legs curled the same way I did before the achiness gnawed. I couldn’t have entered his world even if he wanted me there. He was utterly alone.

  My eyes burned. I had to find Tahnya.

  In the med bay hallway, bodies and people lay like collapsed building blocks. “I’m sorry,” I whispered with each step over them. “I’m so sorry.” I forced open each room, looking inside.

  No Tahnya.

  I kept going.

  I kept going until I found the last corridor and the metal door at the end.

  I beat against it, my fists going raw. “Tahnya, are you in there?” I pressed my ear to the metal. Silence. “Tahnya, open up!”

  I backtracked, found the control panel. NO ENTRY PERMITTED WHILE BREECHED.