by Maura Milan
And that was why she was so worried. She looked across the room to see if Ia had stirred, but her figure remained still in the other bed. Brinn could have woken her so that she could talk about all the anxiety she was feeling. Then she remembered how Ia had brushed it off when she mentioned Faren was out there protesting, standing up to the Commonwealth in those crowded streets. Ia had ignored it, as though he wasn’t important. As if Brinn shouldn’t be worrying every night because of it. But that was impossible. To Brinn, there was nothing more important than her brother’s safety. She would rather take a dagger to the throat than see anything awful happen to him.
No. It’s okay. He’s safe. That was her mantra every night before she went to bed.
And so she chanted it again tonight, murmuring it over and over like a prayer before sleep could take her.
Brinn woke up a few hours later, her holowatch buzzing around her wrist again. Under the cover of blankets, she looked at the notification icon on the screen. Another message. What was Faren up to now?
Before she clicked on the icon, she examined the sender address at the bottom of the screen. The letters were garbled, shifting and changing so that she couldn’t read the name. The last time she had received a message from an unknown sender, her identity had almost been exposed to the whole school.
She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and stared at the triangle icon for a long moment. Finally, she tapped it.
She scrolled to the side to see if there was a subject line.
There was.
A bristle of alarm crept up her spine.
Tell the Blood Wolf I’m here.
CHAPTER 9
IA
IA DREAMED about another home—one that floated on a bed of rocks, nestled in the abyss of the All Black. She was surrounded by familiar faces—Vetty, Eve, and even her brother, Einn—and somehow she felt safe. They called her. Ia, Ia, Ia. Their voices merged together to a unified whisper.
“Ia.” It was Brinn’s voice.
Ia groaned and turned in her bed. In her dream, the images of familiar faces rolled with her, swirling and swirling into the pit of a black hole.
She blinked into the sterile darkness. The smooth panels of the ceiling joined together in a grid. Six of them. She had counted them over and over so that now they were almost as familiar as the place in her dream.
“Ia, wake up,” Brinn said.
Ia turned, propping herself up on her elbow. Brinn stood in the middle of the room, the light of her holoscreen dim upon her pale-white skin.
“I think we’re in danger.”
Ia squinted into the corners of their dorm room, but no one and nothing else was there except for some dirty academy flight suits that she had discarded and never dropped off for laundry service.
“What are you talking about?” Ia grumbled to Brinn before dipping her head back down to go back to sleep. But before she could close her eyes again, a holoscreen zoomed across the room and hovered in front of her face above her pillow.
“This message came for you just now,” Brinn pointed out.
She squinted to get used to the screen’s brightness. Her eyes read the subject line, and she saw the title that had replaced her own name for years. One that inspired fear across the deep reaches of the All Black.
Ia sat up, studying the screen. So this person was looking for the Blood Wolf of the Skies. Only a madman would seek her out. Her viciousness was what had gotten her on the Commonwealth’s Most Wanted list for four consecutive years. Not as the third or the second. But numero uno. Go hard, or go home, she always said. And she didn’t have a home, so she didn’t have an option.
Brinn was already on her way toward the door. “We should warn someone.”
“No, if it was another one of my brother’s attacks, you’d already be snatched up and gone by now,” Ia said as she grabbed a flight suit from the floor and zipped it on, touching the fit buttons on her shoulders so the material would conform to her body.
Besides, she had an idea who it was, and if it was indeed him, he was already here.
“Come on,” she said as she walked to the door and tapped the sensor on the wall.
The door opened, and her eyes landed on the empty chairs in front of their room, the ones usually occupied by her tedious guards. Aaron was in the borg development department receiving his full system update, and Geoff—poor Geoff—had already been shipped offworld to recover from a broken clavicle. The med bay, in its current state, was in no condition to tend to critical injuries.
Fortunately for her, Aphelion Academy was in shambles and understaffed so there was no replacement to supervise her. Besides, her agreement to work with the general had given her some leeway.
“Where are we going?” Brinn asked behind her.
She thought of the infestation in the core room that Brinn had mentioned. If one pest could get in, so could another. Ia stepped out into the dark and empty hallway. “We’re going to find ourselves a rat.”
Ia stopped in front of the elevator to the core room. She looked back at Brinn, who stood at a distance.
Ia nodded at the security panel. “I need access.”
Brinn stared at her carefully, her eyes filled with questions the shape of needles. “This doesn’t seem right.”
Ia bristled with annoyance. “Nothing is ever right.”
Brinn crossed her arms. “What does that mean?”
“You question every single thing I do and say,” Ia snapped. This had become a pattern. Ia would tell her to do something, and Brinn’s immediate response was to refuse. And complain. And make things difficult. Ia just didn’t understand.
“This is so like you,” Brinn said. Even in the darkness, Ia could see Brinn’s temper flash across her face. “Sometimes it’s impossible to talk to you because you don’t bother to listen to me. It takes two people to have a discussion, Ia. If you can’t understand that, you can do everything yourself.”
Ia took a deep breath and reached out to hold Brinn’s hand, something she hadn’t done since the night they went after the Armada. The night they survived, the night she gained a friend, a confidante. But even now, there was a distance between them. There was always a storm, and no calm. Maybe it was all her own doing. With Einn out there waiting to make his move, it was hard for Ia to act lightly and accept help when she was responsible for her friend’s life.
“You have to trust me.” Ia’s eyes searched Brinn’s for some sort of recognition, some spark of faith. “Please.”
Brinn stared at her, and her eyes softened a tiny bit. She moved toward the elevator and placed her hand against the scanner. The lights on the panel illuminated, reading the grooves and patterns of Tarver’s palm print.
Ia clapped her friend on the shoulder. It was the only way she could express her thanks. If she actually said it, she’d have to punch herself in the face for being such a sap.
The doors to the elevator slid open, but there was no elevator. Ia looked down the empty, dark shaft.
The lift was stuck at the bottom. Deus. The blackout. The security systems must be on backup generators, while the elevators were on the main grid. Without the power on, there was no way this one was coming back up.
As Ia’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she spotted the rungs to a ladder that led to the ground floor. Well then, she’d have to climb.
Ia turned to Brinn. “If I’m not back in thirty minutes, shut these doors and don’t open them.”
Brinn’s eyes widened as if she finally understood the danger of the situation. “If that happens, I’m going for the headmaster.”
Ia nodded, even though she knew Knives wouldn’t be able to do anything. The rat that was down there was a big pain in her ass. He was strong and resilient, and no matter how many times she beat him down, he always survived.
She hopped down the ladder, skipping two or three rungs at a time. Once her feet touched even ground, she turned, following the bright-blue glow of the uranium core. A dry and dangerous heat filled the space. B
eads of sweat rolled down her forehead, and she wiped them away, keeping her eyes alert, sweeping through all corners of the room. This rat, in particular, had a tendency to hide.
“You got here quick,” she called out, knowing that he was lurking somewhere, watching.
In her periphery, a shadow slipped closer. She turned, catching a glint of light mold over a seemingly transparent shape. Camouflage, through a layer of specialized cells built onto the skin, eyes, and hair’s surface.
If he had stayed still, he would be impossible to pick out from her surroundings, but she knew he wanted to be found. She knew he wanted to see the look on her face when she discovered it was him.
“Well, it’s not every day you get a message from your archnemesis.” His voice was small, a whisper, almost gone but not quite.
Archnemesis. She wanted to laugh in his face, but she kept it down for the sake of bargaining for his favor.
She crossed her arms. “Show yourself already, Goner.”
Slowly, she started to see the outline of a figure merging not quite completely with its surroundings, like an image under flowing water. All at once, the strange surface rippled like puzzle pieces being rearranged before her, each skin cell of his body shifting to a new shade until she could distinguish his sharp eyes, the lavender irises so large that there was very little white. The skin around his eyes was black, and so were his nose and the flesh of his bottom lip all the way down to the chin. The rest of his skin was a stark white. From a distance, it looked like a skull. And that was the face that everyone recognized.
Goner, that perpetual parasite in her backside and second on the Commonwealth’s Most Wanted list.
His abilities were unique; she had never seen anyone like him. Someone who could completely disappear. Goner’s skin was similar to that of a scuttlesquix, a marine creature with the ability to create millions of shades and patterns upon the surface of its skin. It allowed him to blend into any environment.
His armored flight suit was also somewhat of a rare commodity, made with iridescent metal that could absorb and reflect the same light waves as its surroundings. With his natural abilities and his armor, he was destined to be an expert thief, and an even more capable spy. Too bad he had a habit of destroying everything in his path.
She didn’t know much about his past. Dead Spacers usually liked to keep their previous lives secret since anything and anyone could be used against them. Goner had shown up a year after she had landed on the scene. Ia had already started to make a name for herself, though not as the Blood Wolf. At that point, she had been called the Hunter of the Wastelands, known for picking up Commonwealth convoy ships that hovered near the Fringe Planets.
But there were whisperings of someone new. Someone who loved blowing things up.
She’d witnessed this firsthand when she and Einn had taken control of a supply train at the edge of the territories. They were about to reroute it when an explosion ripped the coupling connecting the front ship from the rest of haul.
Ia had scrubbed through the security footage to see what happened. She had to blink twice the moment she saw it. At first, she thought it was a trick of the eyes. But then a very person-like shape slipped across the shadows, its colors changing uniformly to the surrounding patterns, and for a split second, she saw that skull. She wore her helmet; this was his mask. A pattern on his skin, so no one else would see his true self underneath.
That same ghastly skull stared back at her now.
“So, this is the famous Aphelion Academy,” Goner said as he stood in front of the core, staying close to it because he knew that Ia couldn’t. His skin had built-in defensive measures, thick enough to withstand extreme temperature, radiation, and high-impact attacks. She had found that out when she tried to shoot him in the face, but the blast bounced off him, smoldering a little bit on his skin but not leaving a mark. It annoyed her. He was so hard to get rid of.
“Wasn’t too hard for you to get here?” Ia asked.
“You know more than anyone—there’s always a way in.”
He stared at her, and she glared back at him. “What?”
“It’s funny. Seeing you face-to-face.” He waved his hand between them. “Without that red feather in the way.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Rumor has it that you’ve found yourself a Bug to bed with, and that’s why you’re here.”
“Careful,” she hissed. “The last person who said that to me almost got all his fingers broken off.”
“The key word there is ‘almost.’”
She wanted to tear at his eyes until the lavender flecks turned to red.
“So why did you call me here?” A smile danced on his lips, and he leaned his ear an inch closer, almost close enough for her to knock her knuckles right into it. “Please tell me you want to fight.”
She arched an eyebrow. “There’s a reason why I was always number one on the list. You never came close to winning.”
He snorted. “But now that you’re off the list and working with the Bugs, I wonder where that puts me?”
He swiped the holowatch on his wrist and a screen materialized in between his fingers. A series of names appeared on the screen, all people she knew from her Dead Space days. Terrorists. Assassins. Superhackers. And on the top of the list was Goner.
“You’re such a child,” she said. Goner was only a little older than she was, but most eighteen-year-old boys she knew often acted like children.
“Am I?” He leaned in, a wild sneer striped across his face.
This time he was closer, and she lunged forward, wincing at the momentary heat of the uranium core. She grabbed him—one hand at the back of his head and the other hand on his shoulder—and yanked, tipping his balance forward. He stumbled away from the protection of the core’s heat.
He threw a punch to her sternum. She blocked it, then grabbed his wrist, pulling him off-balance. He stumbled to the ground, rolling into his shoulder to avoid the crack of the floor to his forehead. He was up on his feet in no time, glaring at her.
“I could do this all day long,” Ia said, “but that’s not why I called you.”
“What are we doing, then? Grabbing a cup of bokhi and catching up?”
She pointed between them. “This is all the catching up that we need.” She took a deep breath, knowing she was going to hate herself after she said her next words. “But I do have a request.”
Goner angled his head. The color receptors on his skin brightened a shade before settling into their natural tone. Which meant he was either very surprised or very pleased. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
Ia clenched her jaw. “I need your help.”
A smile drew across his face like a knife slicing through frail skin.
“Why aren’t you asking your crew? What about Vetty?”
That wasn’t a completely foolish question. She trusted her crew more than anyone, but she didn’t want to drag them into this. Plus there were other reasons. It would be awkward to see Vetty again, even though they had ended their relationship on good terms. She wasn’t sure how keen he’d be to see her once he found out she was now allies with Olympus, the Commonwealth that he had so eagerly escaped from.
But calling Goner in for this favor was more of a strategic choice.
“If I ask Vetty and the rest of the crew to do this, Einn will know I sent them,” she answered. “But you? He knows I hate you.”
“So what is it that you want me to do?”
“I want you to track down my brother,” Ia said. She had some ideas where he’d be. The word Nirvana rang clearly above the rest, but she needed to be sure. “I need to know where he’s positioning his base.”
“And why would I ever do anything for you? I could burn this place to the ground if I wanted to.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re going to help me.”
Ia looked him in the eyes, long enough that it made him flinch, a ripple of colorful patterns flaring across his face like endless stains
of ink. There was something that she had never told him until now, interesting information she’d found out on her trip to the Kope system over a year ago.
“Because,” Ia said, “I know where to find your twin.”
Goner pressed his lips together.
“All right then,” she said as she turned her back. “I guess I was wrong. You can burn this place to the ground and be on your merry way.”
“Fine.” His voice reached across the gap between them, softer and less wild.
She glanced over her shoulder. She never knew if she could trust him, but when she looked at him, his shoulders were hunched, and his eyes studied the floor. It was a side of Goner that she had never seen before. Vulnerable. But it was only a moment before he had activated his camouflage again and began to fade. He was invisible. A ghost. Gone.
“We’ll be in touch,” she said to the empty space, and she made her way up the ladder.
Once she was at the top rung, she looked up to see Brinn, wide-eyed and holding a spare pipe in her hand, her arm arched to strike.
“It’s me,” Ia said.
Brinn’s arm relaxed, and she extended a hand to help Ia up. She didn’t need the help, but she took it anyway.
“Who was down there?” Brinn asked.
Ia pinched the bridge of her nose. “Just a rat.” She moved out of the elevator corridor and into the hallway. “Let’s get back to the room before Knives catches us.”
“No, Ia,” Brinn said sharply. “Tell me what happened. I heard someone else’s voice down there.”
Ia stopped in her place, weighing her options. She knew Brinn was going to be upset if she told her and more upset if she didn’t. “It was Goner.”
“He’s here?” she hissed. The horrified look on her face perfectly matched the tone of her voice.