Eclipse the Skies

by Maura Milan

  “You want to tear open the universe, don’t you?” she asked Einn.

  He gave her a wicked grin. “Don’t you?”

  This universe was violent and erratic. It made no sense to her, and the people along with it. The only thing that she understood was the logic set by science, numbers, and that monstrous structure that hovered before her.

  “Well, then,” Brinn said. “Let’s get to work.”

  CHAPTER 24

  IA

  THERE WAS NOTHING for Ia to grasp onto. No thoughts, ideas, or even the notion of time. All she had was the pain. Her eyes opened, and there it was—an unwanted companion, the first thing to greet her. It rippled throughout her body, delighting in the splits in her pieces.

  Her vision blinded her at first, that wave of reality that rushed into her, but after a few blinks, it dimmed to what was actually there. She looked up at an old metal ceiling with rusting beams crisscrossing from one wall to the other.

  Her hands clutched the cloth bedsheet at her sides, rough yet almost bare-thin. Even curling her fingers felt foreign to her. As if this body was not hers.

  With every ounce of strength, she tilted her chin down, gritting her teeth all throughout to bear the sharp pangs ripping through her body. She saw the apparatus gripping her right arm. A thin, angular spider made of metal crawled on her skin, sticking large, sharp pins into several points of her wrist.

  She cried out. Not from the sight of it, not even from the pain. And oh, there was pain. But she was faced with a revelation more alarming than that. No matter how much she willed it, she couldn’t make her body move.

  Ia heard the sound of metal scraping against the floor as the door lumbered open at the other end of the room.

  Eve stood in the doorframe, holding a bucket. Her eyes locked on Ia’s. The bucket slipped from her hands, water cascading across the floor.

  What was this? A memory? Was she even awake, or had her dreams taken her back to the last time she had set foot on Myth? What the mif are you doing here? she wanted to scream, but her voice came out a garbled mess, as if every syllable had sloshed into one. When she blinked, the world jumped.

  “Don’t panic,” a calm voice floated toward her. Knives was now in the room. He was wearing his brown leather jacket, but his flight suit was old and dirty, as though he’d worn it for weeks straight.

  How did he get here?

  Ia looked behind him to the empty doorframe, where Eve was no longer standing.

  How much time had passed since she’d seen her? Her eyes widened, and then she looked down at her arm. The vise that was holding down her wrist had disappeared, and the metal spider was nowhere to be seen.

  “I had to give you a sedative,” Knives explained. “You woke up too soon.”

  She tried to move her wrist, but all she could manage was a slight twitch in her fingers.

  Knives reached out, his hand stopping hers.

  “Don’t overwork yourself.”

  She looked at his hand over hers, and she knew she should feel something. His fingers against hers. That warmth that flushed against the surface of the skin.

  “I can’t,” she said as she tried to find the words. “I can’t feel you.”

  His eyes tensed, and for a split second she glimpsed shock reflected in the blue, darkening for an almost undetectable moment before he blinked. “Professor Patel said it was all going to come back.”

  His voice was soft, pleasant, but she could tell he was trying too hard to keep it that way. She closed her eyes, wanting to shut everything out, to return to that empty space of slumber, a place where dreams didn’t even dare to lurk. But she was awake, and everything was crashing back toward her.

  If Knives was still holding her hand, she couldn’t feel it. Was it the sedative that was barreling through her veins, numbing her whole entire body? Or was it a fate worse than that? In the dark, she was alone with her thoughts, and there was nothing she could do to stop them.

  Her last memories played in slow motion. Goner staring down at her with his pistol pointed. Einn letting her fall from the sky. And Brinn, that look in her eyes. Was it sadness? It seemed more like what Ia was feeling now. Numb.

  She opened her eyes and found Knives’s face. Her throat felt like sand. “Where is everyone?”

  “Everyone…” he repeated. “Hopefully as far away from us as possible. The last I knew, Professor Patel was back on Calvinal, and the rest of the RSF are gathering their forces.” He looked away as if the memory was something he didn’t want to stare in the face. “That attack was big, Ia. Nema and half of our squadrons were lost once they crossed that wormhole.”

  Each word required her to fill her lungs with enough oxygen to speak. “Then how are you still here?”

  He looked down. “Because I turned back.”

  There was something he wasn’t telling her. She could see it, that weight in his shoulders dragging him down. It may not have been something she needed to hear. Not the facts and statistics of the events, death counts and explosions, because he was being very forthcoming about the news he shared. It was something a bit more buried. An emotion or a fear. Or perhaps a guilt he didn’t even want to confront just yet.

  “But if I didn’t,” he continued, “I wouldn’t have found you. You wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “And where is here?”

  A knock came at the door. “Can I come in?”

  Knives turned his head. “Yeah. She’s awake.”

  The door slid open, churning to a stop at the midpoint. Long, slender fingers grabbed onto the edge, pushing the door the rest of the way. Eve stepped out from the shadows of the hallway. The dying light from the ceiling flickered onto her face, glistening with sweat and dirt.

  So it hadn’t been a dream at all.

  “We’re on Myth,” Ia said.

  Knives nodded.

  Eve walked in. “You should have seen him. He was almost on his knees begging for a place to stay.”

  Eve stopped at the corner table, unscrewed her canister, and poured some soup into the lid. She crossed to the bed and knelt beside her.

  Ia couldn’t quite move, but she eyed Eve up and down, unsure whether or not to trust her. She had asked Eve before what side she was on, and she never answered. She was a wild card. Unpredictable. Ia was surprised Eve had even gotten her message to Goner. And look what happened there. He shot her.

  Well, Ia thought, that was entirely her own fault for trusting him.

  Eve held up the cup of soup. “You need to get your strength back if you want to go after your brother.”

  “He already has what he wants,” she said. Einn sought Brinn just as Ia knew he would, but instead of using force to steal her away, to snatch her from Ia’s side, all he’d needed were the sweet words in his mouth.

  Her brother was better than she was.

  Ia let out a slow breath. A sigh. A release. Einn was stronger and faster than she’d ever seen him. Yes, she had the confidence. She had the ego, but Einn didn’t even need all that.

  Einn wasn’t just better than Ia; he was more than her. He could tear open physical space. Something that no being should ever be able to do. If he could do that, what would happen at their next fight?

  She looked at the cup of steaming soup, brownish-green from the algae baths where it was cultivated and full of the right kind of nutrients to get her back on track to facing him again.

  Instead of eating, she closed her eyes.

  Because there wasn’t going to be a next fight.

  CHAPTER 25

  KNIVES

  IT’D BEEN ABOUT a month since Eve took them in at Myth, and almost two weeks since Ia woke up. Since Knives had left his holowatch back at the hospital, he watched the program streams that floated in the center of the barroom to gauge how much time had passed.

  Which meant he often had to watch the news. The two Queens’ press conference ran on repeat. “We will find them, and we will retaliate.” That was the sound bite that was used the most.r />
  When it played on the streams, the bar patrons always laughed, and he joined them.

  Retaliate with what? The Star Force was cut down by half, and one of their most respected captains was gone and left for dead all in one swoop. General Adams was the last leader on the field, but Knives knew his father. He was an angry bull toeing the dirt, ready to follow this all the way through.

  Knives sat at the corner seat of the counter, his elbow propped on the sticky tabletop and head cocked to the side, watching the general take over the press conference and go on about the rest of the details.

  “We have a designated team combing through our territories.”

  That was all fancy military talk. It meant they were flying in circles and finding nothing. Knives rolled his eyes.

  “I saw that,” Eve snickered. She leaned up against the ledge of various archnol concoctions with a smirk on her face.

  “Why do you even play this stuff here?”

  She blew out a steady stream of mint vapor and pointed her vaporizer out at the crowd. “Because we’re all celebrating.”

  The inebriated patrons who were sprinkled through the room shared the same look of delight on their faces. Knives assumed it was great watching the Commonwealth fail and fail and fail again. Especially after Olympus had colonized their planets. More Commonwealth code for taking people’s homes and resources.

  Knives dug his hands into his pockets, his fingers curling around an object he found inside. It was Bastian’s pen, its metal surface cool in his palm.

  Knives should be happy. Hiding out like this, he was free from his responsibilities to the Star Force and to the Academy. No more worrying about being a headmaster the cadets could look up to. But why did his heart feel so heavy?

  A sharp scream tore toward them, coming from down the hallway. Eve looked over to her customers, some of whom had turned their heads and noticed.

  Eve’s eyes whipped over to his. “Quiet her down.”

  “I’m not going to stuff a rag in her mouth if that’s what you’re thinking,” he snapped.

  Eve crossed the gap between them and tapped at the name tag on his jacket, which was the exact place his inside pocket was located. The amber glass cylinder knocked lightly against his chest. He knew what Eve was getting at.

  Meneva had told him to be careful with Ia’s dosage. Since Ia woke up, it was something he’d had to give her to dull the bouts of pain she was experiencing. He thought it was mercy at first, seeing the effect it had upon her. But after a few days, he had started to notice a change. That ravaged look twisted upon her face the moment he produced the bottle from his jacket, and the sweet solace that fell upon her eyes when just one drop landed on her tongue.

  “We shouldn’t be using this all the time,” he said.

  “Don’t think it’s a good idea if these people actually know that the Blood Wolf is here. Dead Spacers are gossipy folk. One way or another, it will get back to Einn. If you’re too scared to dose her, I will.” She reached over the counter to dig out the contents of his pocket.

  Knives stood up before she could reach him. “I’ll take care of it.”

  He turned and made his way down the hallway. Eve was right. If people found out Ia was there, they’d have a field day. Ia had more enemies than her brother. Many knew she had switched sides; others had very deep grudges against the Blood Wolf of the Skies. She wouldn’t be able to defend herself, not in her condition. What’s worse, Knives was sure she wouldn’t even try.

  He tapped the door sensor over and over again, but the door took its time to slide open. The screams from inside fell harshly on his ears. He gripped the edge of the door and slammed it to the side.

  His eyes landed on Ia. A slick layer of sweat coated her entire face. She had ripped the bedsheets right off the mattress, clutching what she could, her fists so tight that her knuckles were a stark white. She screamed out in agony.

  He knew that the microscopic bio-bots in the sedative were losing their charge. As a result, her body was purging them, resulting in a high fever and more pain than humanly possible. It would have been easy to give her another dose, a new surge of bio-bots to numb her pain sensors while the old bots were getting flushed out of her system. But that was how the addiction usually started.

  Ia looked at him, shaking. “It hurts.” She tried to pull herself upright, her body trembling.

  Knives kneeled down and scooped her up. He placed her in a nearby chair. He glanced over at her bed. The sheets were soaking wet from sweat. He started pulling them from the corners to replace them with a new set.

  “Knives.” Her voice was tiny, cracked. “Please.”

  “Listen to me,” Knives said as he turned to meet her eyes. “Not this way, all right?”

  He thought she’d understand, but her eyes hardened at him. She screamed, her voice curdling the blood in his veins.

  “Ia,” Knives said. “This sedative is highly addictive. I don’t want to even chance it.”

  She looked down to the ground, her eyes drifting. “If you wanted me to suffer,” she whispered, “you should have let me die.”

  His heart deflated. If there was some way he could share in all the pain she was feeling, he would, even though he had way too much weighing down his soul as it was. He would do it. Because it was her.

  “Ia.” But that was all he could say. All other words were lost to him. Fight, he wanted to tell her. He knew she could. Where was the Ia that he knew? Where was the girl who never gave up?

  When he didn’t move to help her, she screamed, “Get out!”

  Knives could have refused, could have brought over a chair and sat down right next to her. Instead, he took a deep breath and left.

  He stepped back into the main bar, what used to be a captain’s deck before it was renovated into the local watering hole it was now. Ia’s screams echoed behind him, reverberating throughout the hallways.

  He glanced over at Eve, whose brow was furrowed at the sight of him.

  “You didn’t give her the meds?”

  Before Eve could even finish her question, he pulled the amber container out of his pocket, opened it. He leaned over the counter and tipped its contents down the drain.

  Eve raised her voice. “What the mif are you doing?”

  Instead of answering, Knives reached over and grabbed her holopad, turning the music up to high volume. It was loud enough to mask the sound of Ia’s screams.

  There was no way he was going to let Ia sink farther down into that hole. He cared about her too much to do that.

  “You don’t want people to hear her?” He slid the holopad over to Eve. “There. Problem solved.”

  CHAPTER 26

  BRINN

  BRINN STOOD in the elevator, waiting as it completed its ascent. Since she’d arrived almost a month ago, she had been working nonstop. The testing laboratories were on the other side of the ring, and she needed to get to them to check on everyone’s progress.

  As the elevator crossed the gap between Nirvana and Penance, she gazed up through the glass ceiling, admiring the gate’s large arches. It was bigger than its predecessor, at least according to what the blueprints from Bastian’s journals suggested.

  The new structure was a replica—no, an improvement—of the original, which had been torn to scrap by the Commonwealth before Einn could actually make any use of it. They had called the prototype GodsEye. Einn used another name for this one. Penance, to punish everyone for their wrongs.

  As they reached the arch of the upper ring, an entryway in the metal paneling opened, and the elevator was swallowed up. The lift came to a stop, and the doors slid open to a large workshop with multiple stations, some for construction and others for research and development.

  When she stepped onto the floor, everyone’s eyes were on her. She would never be used to the attention, but Einn had given her lead on this project.

  In the sea of white lab coats, her navy-blue hair, now grown into a pixie cut, was easy to spot. She was the on
ly Tawny in the Nirvana colony, which made her valuable to the team. She made connections and solved problems that no one else could figure out. More than that, she knew Bastian’s work. That, paired with her Tawny intelligence, was an unstoppable combination that would finally create that bridge from one universe to the next.

  It also meant there were a lot of expectations for her. To perform. To actually succeed.

  As she walked down the path to the testing labs, a man in a white coat approached her to sign off on some calculations. She looked them over, making corrections as she made her way to the testing labs. When she was done, another engineer stepped up. And another. And another.

  With each one, she blinked the fatigue out of her eyes. It was a lot of information. But she was the only one who knew how it’d all work.

  “You’re back.” She looked up to see Einn beside her. He stood out in the crowded room, his flight suit tailored to fit close to his body. A mesh of gray iridescent webbing patterned the sleeves, accentuating the corded muscles underneath. It made him appear strong, intimidating to anyone he met. Still, after seeing him take down Ia so easily, she no longer needed the suit to be reminded of his strength.

  “I didn’t want to miss the test,” she told him.

  Brinn had insisted on running the experiment on a smaller scale before trying it out with the larger structure. So they’d replicated another unit, a smaller version of Penance, within a controlled space in the laboratory.

  This wasn’t known physics they were tampering with. If they created a bridge between their universe and the next, they had to get it right. Most nights, Brinn worked without rest. As a result, dark circles had appeared underneath her eyes.

  Einn handed her some H2O jelly, and she grabbed it thankfully. She was dehydrated, so focused on her work that she had forgotten to drink or eat throughout the day.

  As she slurped up the contents of the foil pouch, Einn nodded over the testing site. “It’s looking good.”