by Maura Milan
“Minotaur,” they cheered. “Minotaur!”
His chin lowered, his confidence deflated.
Victory screens circled around them, all with the same face he’d seen when he first arrived. Those green eyes followed him, even as the holoscreens arced throughout the space. Taunting him.
“That was a close one, kid.” The announcer’s hand stretched out for a handshake.
But Knives’s gaze was fixed upward, watching Minotaur’s pedestal rise up toward the victor’s tower.
Knives tightened his fist around the bottle cap, feeling the edges dig into his skin. He reached out and gripped the announcer’s hand. As Knives pulled away from the handshake, the announcer’s expression shifted, his eyebrows arched in question at the bottlecap now resting in the center of his palm.
“If you see him, give him that,” Knives said.
And he turned back to his jet, signaling for the mechanics on deck to deliver a new batch of fuel pods, a charged battery, and a fresh set of tires. Then he climbed back into the driver seat of his Kaiken.
“Theseus,” he muttered. So much for a lucky name.
CHAPTER 30
BRINN
BRINN LEANED AGAINST the railings of the upper plankway of Nirvana. The domed roof made it the perfect observation spot. But instead of looking up into the All Black, Brinn’s head was tilted downward at her holowatch. Her button tapped on a command. Refresh.
Her inbox was empty.
Every morning, Brinn secretly sent a message to her parents. Faren was gone, but she had to hold on to the hope that they were still out there. That was what she had to tell herself. Because with each new day, her soul sank farther into the ground. There was no way to climb up. The feelings that had carved their way through her—sadness? grief?—she couldn’t say it was one thing or the other. It was much more complicated than that. As though she was being hollowed out inside, layer by layer, slowly being replaced by someone she didn’t recognize.
“Are you all right?”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Liam on the plankway. A smile on his face, that mask that he always wore. In the quiet moments, he often found her here, standing in this exact hallway, staring up through the observation plexiglass at Penance hovering before a tapestry of distant stars.
That was where her future lay. In that bulk of heartless steel.
Her eyes met his. “We’re not kids anymore, are we?”
The smile on his face vanished, and she saw all the turmoil churning within. He shook his head. “No, we’re not.”
“That day we decided to leave with Einn,” Liam said. “You mentioned that you lost someone, too.”
She gripped her hands against the side rail, the sweat on her palms against the metal unleashing the heavy scent of iron around them. “My brother died in the riots of Nova Grae. And my parents, I don’t know where they are. They could be…”
She couldn’t say the word. It was too final.
“Death is easy to accept. It’s the memories…” he said. “They remind you how happy you used to be. It makes everything so much harder. “
The pain in her heart pulsated through her. It brought up questions she had never asked before. Why do we even keep going?
If it was for the people you loved, if that was where happiness dwelled, then it was gone now. It wasn’t just her family she’d lost. She had also lost the chance to ever experience that joy again.
Perhaps that was why she was willing to work on Penance. It filled the hole inside her, if only temporarily. It gave her purpose where there was none anymore. A chance to piece all the broken fragments back together. Just for this tiny moment in her tiny life. That was a good enough reason for her. Anything to keep from falling apart.
“Do you think your parents would be proud of your decision to come here?” Brinn asked.
“My dad lived and breathed for the Star Force, but now he’s paralyzed. I want to say that I’m fighting for him, for everything he’s lost. For all the brothers I’ve lost. But it’s not just about that. I’m fighting because I’m angry. I’m so angry. And I’m alone with that. I want people to see all of it, to know that it’s real.”
She understood him. Perhaps that was what everyone else on this rock felt, too. Maybe that was why they were all there.
Liam leaned against the railing, his eyes lowered. “And now with the Commonwealth sifting existing Citizens into send-off ships, this is the only place that makes sense to me anymore.”
“What?” She craned her neck to look at him. “What did you say about Citizens being sifted?”
“They’re sending everyone from refugee planets away, even Citizens,” Liam said.
Like her mom. Her blood stopped cold inside her veins.
They were stripping away people’s rights. If her mom was still alive, then she’d be on her way to a refugee camp.
She didn’t bother to finish their conversation. She was already up and running.
Brinn knew that Einn had harmed Tawnies in the past, using their brains as power sources for GodsEye. When she’d found this out, she was horrified. But the more she thought about it, it was a resourceful thing to do. Einn needed to get the job done, one way or another, and he used the tools he had to do it. These were thoughts that she shouldn’t be thinking. They went against her heart, even if they didn’t go against logic.
That was how she realized that she and Einn had something in common. They were both logical people. Like her, he calculated every move he made.
Perhaps that was why she wasn’t scared of him. If Einn was ruled by logic, he wouldn’t kill her. He needed her too much. When someone was that precious, that integral in achieving one’s greatest accomplishment, one would do anything to keep that person happy.
That was the logical thing to do.
And that was the very reason why she stood in the doorway of his war room.
Einn was alone, his eyes fixed on the holoprojections on the spherical ceiling. He swiped on the holoscreen, zooming from one star system to the next. Colorful lights streaked around him as constellations shifted with each new location.
He grumbled in dissatisfaction. It seemed like he was trying to make a decision, but nothing was good enough for him.
“Are you trying to find a new place to target?” she guessed.
He glanced up, lips already tight in a sneer, but when he saw it was her, he smiled. She didn’t know if it was genuine or not.
“I’m trying to pinpoint the location of Olympus’s remaining fleet.” His eyes returned to the transforming skycaps above him. “I know they’re hiding somewhere. All it takes is one battle to wipe them all out.”
Brinn scratched a finger behind her ear. There was no easy way to ask for this, so she had to just blurt it out. “I’d like to go to Nova Grae.”
“Nova Grae…” Einn whispered. Then he swiped on the screen to pull up the map of the planet.
“That’s where I’m from,” she explained. “It hasn’t been long since Olympus started deploying send-off ships. I just want to find my parents, to make sure they’re all right.”
His fingers drummed against his chin as he stared up at the holo image of Nova Grae slowly spinning in orbit before him. “A medium-trafficked port of import-export. Population of 4.5 billion people.” After a moment of silent thought, he turned to her in decision. “I’ll find your parents. I’ll go to Nova Grae.”
“Really?” Her voice swelled with a sudden burst of hope.
“We’ll assemble a few units.”
“A strike force?” she asked. “Why would you need that?”
“You’ve got me thinking. The Star Force fleet is nearly wiped out. They must be reserving all of their resources for a decisive confrontation. If one of their colonies was attacked, would they even answer the call?”
Her eyes widened in horror. She already knew the answer. Nova Grae was the perfect place to terrorize. It was mostly a residential planet, with only one military base to defend itself. “Why wipe
them out when you can humiliate them first…”
His eyes fell to hers, a glint of chaos stirring deep inside.
Perhaps she was wrong. Maybe Einn wasn’t ruled by logic, but by something else entirely.
Her heart shriveled within her chest at the thought of her old neighborhood—the streets she used to walk, the buildings she saw on her way to school—completely destroyed, an echo of what happened at Rigel Kentaurus.
“And my parents. You’ll still try to find them?”
Einn looked at her, his eyes a little less wild than the moment before. “I will do everything I can.”
A small victory. Nova Grae was going to burn. But at least there was still a chance of finding the only family she had left.
Two weeks later, Brinn rushed to the flight deck, weaving in and out of the line of returning starjets. A fleet had recently arrived from their mission to Nova Grae. Her eyes darted back and forth at the soldiers disembarking from their vessels.
She passed a group of refugees. Some even had blue hair like her own. Her eyes traced their features trying to find some likeness to her mother—the soft eyes and mouth, hardened into a grim line from all the days she’d had to hide. All the days Brinn forced her to because of the shame she felt about who she was. The tears swelled in her eyes, blurring her vision.
In the thick of the crowd, she saw a woman with her hair pulled neatly atop her head, just the way her mother used to wear it. Her eyes locked on the shock of blue, on that burst of hope, bright like a flare in the sky guiding her back to where she should be.
Brinn’s fingers shook as she reached out to her. She tapped her on the shoulder, and the woman turned.
The woman stared at her, her eyes warming to see someone of her kind. But they weren’t eyes Brinn recognized, the eyes that she wanted to see. Stern and gray, gazing at her with a complicated love that a mother has for the child she wants to protect.
The woman’s lips parted. Before she could say anything, Brinn turned away. No matter how quickly she blinked, the tears fell.
Like a ghost, she wandered the grounds. There were moments where she’d briefly come back to life at the sight of someone slightly familiar, but when she found out it wasn’t her mother, she’d fade out once again.
“Brinn,” a low voice said.
She turned to see Einn. He stood tall, his figure like a dark sword ready to strike. Even now, even when they were safe.
He flinched slightly at the sight of the tears slick against her cheeks. “I found your home.” For a moment, her heart rose, only to sink again when Einn paused to find his words. “Your parents are gone, Brinn. I’m sorry.”
Her spine curved forward as if it lost all willingness to move, and she turned away. In her head she started to rationalize that simple phrase. I’m sorry. That was what a normal person would say. What did that even mean? What were they sorry for? There was nothing they did to cause that loss. Not unless they were holding the gun, or slashing the knife, or throwing that fatal punch.
She staggered away from the noise of the arriving crowd, and she looked up to see Liam standing in the corner. He was still in full combat gear, head between his hands. She rested a hand on his shoulder, and he looked up, his face weary.
“What happened over there?” she asked.
He closed his eyes as if trying to will the memories away. As if they were still with him, even now. Not just the sight of it, but all the sensations. The smell of smoke. The thick blood on his hands.
“Do you think our parents will ever forgive us for what we do?” he asked.
She no longer had any parents, but she still knew the truth. “No,” she said.
That night, lying in her cot, Brinn pulled up her sent folder and tapped on the last message she sent to her parents.
Her own image played back on the screen. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.” The girl on the screen paused. “I don’t have anything else to say. I just wanted to say ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ again. I want to remember how that feels.”
There was more to that message, like how she’d promise to never fight with her mom about how all bokhi blends tasted the same or how she’d go with her dad to the museum he always wanted to visit. But instead of watching the rest, she clicked out of the recording.
It was her SOS message, a reminder that there were still traces of the person she used to be and the daughter that her parents wanted her to become. Her thumb pressed down on the file until a command dialog appeared. She tapped Delete.
CHAPTER 31
IA
SHE LIVED IN THE MIDDLE of dreams. In the atom of space between one and the next. And in those dreams, memories floated toward her, dancing like an orchestral reverie. They painted the scenery of the bright-white interiors of the Sinsia towship, the rise and fall of an alarm, a pistol gripped loosely in her hand.
Sights and sounds played together like notes racing to the end of their measure, and by the finale of the first movement, she saw her brother.
Ia wasn’t always the Blood Wolf.
When she was twelve, no one except Einn knew her name.
“Ia,” he called.
At fifteen years old, he was still small, but the captain of the ship knelt captive and quivering before him.
Einn waved his hand, motioning for her to join him.
Jogging up, she stopped beside him. He smiled so she would forget the man sweating next to her. Einn grabbed her pistol and slipped a combat knife between her fingers. The wooden handle felt rough to touch.
“Hold it tight,” he said, examining her grip. And she dug her fingers down until her knuckles were white.
He placed a hand on top of her head. “Don’t be scared. You can do it.”
It was only when she nodded that he backed away.
Her grip was unstable, and her knife shook in her hand. The vessel’s captain kneeled before her. A trickle of blood dripped from a gash across his eyebrow and down into his sharp, guarded eyes that darted back toward her brother. Einn had backed off to the far end of the hall.
The captain’s gaze came back to her. She saw the decision cycling through his head, and soon he was no longer quivering.
The captain rose, and with his broad palms, he shoved her backward. Her body, her muscles light and her bones still soft, slammed into the metal wall. She slid down to her side.
Ia was frozen from the pain, but her eyes moved until they found her brother who stood still, watching. She needed to learn, he had told her, in order to survive. But she was too afraid.
Her eyes drifted back to the captain, who was on his way to her, his hand already reaching for the pistol at his side. He won’t shoot, she told herself. What kind of man would kill a little girl? He would let her go. Because in another life, on another planet, with his crew, with his family, she was sure he was kind.
The captain raised his pistol, his finger tensing against the trigger.
It only took that instant to see how wrong she was. People can do very bad things, she realized. People of all sizes.
She rolled onto her knees. Gripping the handle of her knife with both hands, she lunged.
The captain’s body slumped forward, and as the tip of her knife tore deeper into him, his heat and his sweat enveloped her. The weight of him made her stumble backward, his body rolling off her in a thump.
She looked up to see her brother’s extended arm.
“You survived,” he said.
Seeing him before her, she drew out a staggered breath and wept.
Einn wiped the tears from her eyes.
“It’ll get easier,” he said. “I promise.”
He held her hand, and her fingernails dug into the skin of his knuckles. But that fear, it was still there.
Ia woke up, sweat coating her skin. She pulled herself into a sitting position. Her hand combed through her messy hair, now drenched from the effects of her night terror.
Her body trembled, not from the cold, but from the strange feeling inside her. Like a plug had been pulled, her l
ife force completely drained.
As her breathing slowed, she glanced up. A chill ran up her spine. There was someone in the room. A dark outline, the sharp angular lines of an exo suit along its body. It stood with its back to her.
The phantom figure turned slowly, and she saw the demon tips on Einn’s helmet. “It’ll get easier,” it whispered.
The muscles in her body turned to stone.
“Einn?” she asked. Her voice felt small, as if the word itself was a parasite, stealing the oxygen from the confines of her lungs.
Suddenly, its features shifted so that another vision stood before her. The Blood Wolf’s feather drawn in fresh blood across the visor. As the figure stepped closer, Ia saw its hands around its belly, blood dripping out of a gaping wound, a peek of pink intestines slipping through.
“It’ll get easier,” it assured her.
It walked toward her, and she felt the life jolt out of her.
She grabbed what was closest to her, a dinged thermos on the side table, and hurled it before the thing could get any closer.
The phantom vanished.
The thermos clanged against the metal wall, falling to the floor in a clatter.
She stared at it as it rolled to a stop.
The lights flickered on. Eve stood in the doorway, her eyebrows raised in alarm. “Is everything all right?”
Ia looked down, too ashamed to face her. “I knocked it over in my sleep.”
Eve looked down at the canister and picked it up. She poured more water into it and then returned it to the bedside table. It clinked on the tabletop, the sound so loud in Ia’s ears that it made her flinch.
Eve furrowed her brows, and Ia turned to face the wall.
“You should get some rest,” Eve said, her voice calm. “We start physical therapy this week.”
After Eve left the room, Ia closed her eyes, but even as she did, that image of the phantom was there, staring back at her.