Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

  Far didn’t really care about the angels’ names so much as the time they crowned.

  10:20.

  T minus one hour and twenty minutes. Gotta keep moving.

  Past the bronze cherub candelabra, down to A deck and another collection of chatty passengers. He was just curling around to the second flight of stairs, past a young couple seated on a settee, when Imogen spoke again.

  “Um, Farway.”

  That tone—stretched, a little sticky, the one that only meant trouble. If Far never heard it again it would be too soon. There were too many people around to reply to his cousin without drawing attention, but Imogen knew this and kept talking. “Gram just did a heat scan of the ship. There are 2,225 people on board. The manifest in the databases has 2,223 names. You’re 2,224, so… there’s someone else on board who isn’t supposed to be.”

  Who? Who was the 2,225th? A Recorder? Or worse, security from the future who’d figured out what they were up to, come to prevent it? If that was the case, they were already hashed. Unless they dumped the mission and returned to Lux empty-handed. That would go over well: lots of screaming, guns pointed at them, the Invictus seized and given to another crew. And Far, back to square one…

  No no no no. An old fear stirred inside him, whispering that he was on the wrong side of a dream, that this life could get torn away, that everything would crumble to nothing again and Far would never be what he’d hoped: heroic son, unstoppable wanderer.

  NO. Fire threaded through his veins, fight hot. Running wasn’t an option. Far belonged here, sneaking through a soon-to-be-sunk steam liner like the spectacular thief he was. Besides, if it was Corps Security coming to intervene with this mission, there’d be more than one extra body. It was probably a CTM Recorder. All Far had to do was keep his head down, blend in like he always did, and keep walking.

  8

  A ROYAL GREETING

  “THERE’S SOMEONE ELSE ON BOARD WHO isn’t supposed to be.”

  Eliot fiddled with her bracelet as she eavesdropped on the Invictus’s comms. A few subjects ago this statement would’ve summoned a smile. As things stood, her pulse pushed between the tendons on her wrist, a scattershot tempo it had kept up since the afternoon, when she strolled up to the first-class promenade and saw everything she feared beyond the ocean.

  “I hope I’m not boring you, Ms.—” the gentleman across the settee from Eliot faltered, blushing. “Forgive me, my memory has been wretched today. What did you say your name was?”

  She stared at the sandy-haired man. Man? No, even at nineteen Charles was more of a boy. Baby fat clung stubbornly to his cheeks, and there was such a hope in his eyes. The kind that looked like fresh-smelt copper, before the world ate it away in cruel patina chunks. Eliot couldn’t remember the last time she felt so bright….

  Unfortunately, the shine was about to end for Charles as well. She’d made the mistake of running his profile as soon as he’d sat down to chat. He wasn’t one of the 710 souls who survived the night. Throughout their entire conversation together, this knowledge boiled inside her: He’s going to die.

  Eliot wanted to stay and give him a piece of happiness to hold on to when he plunged into the frigid water and his fingers, toes, arms, legs, thoughts, heart withered under the cold. That was the way destruction always crept: outside in. From the edges to the core.

  He’s going to die.

  Aren’t we all?

  In a perfect world Eliot would linger on this settee and teach Charles some foreign curse words. It was a hobby of hers, learning obscenities in other languages: The French always sounded like poets when they swore, while Latin often felt dusty off the tongue. Her favorite insult was in Japanese: Hit your head on the corner of tofu and die! Charles would laugh when she translated it for him. Eliot would smile back. The Titanic would push on into the dawn, all the way to New York City.

  The entire scenario was a paradox, though. ’Twere this world perfect, Eliot wouldn’t be here at all. She couldn’t spend the evening with Charles any more than she could warn the boy of his fate. If she didn’t go do her job, there were going to be even more deaths. A whole haze of a lot more than a shipful.

  “I’m sorry,” she told Charles. And she really was. “I’ve got to go.”

  With that, Eliot left the boy, beet-faced and stuttering. She walked fast so she didn’t have to hear him. It helped to have other voices buzzing through her comm.

  “Once you get to B deck, you’ll round back to where the elevators are and go through the baize-covered doors. Walk to the end of the hall and take the door out to the deck.” The Historian was getting ahead of herself, Eliot noted, rushing despite her own instructions not to do so.

  They could hurry all they wanted. It wouldn’t help. Subject Seven—aka Farway Gaius McCarthy—had failed before he’d even stepped foot on this boat, because Eliot had boarded first. She’d already combed through the cargo bay’s FRAGILE THIS SIDE UP crates, collecting splinters in her fingertips during her search for the Rubaiyat. To some, the book was a fount of wisdom: poetry that dissected birth and death and the life between. To others, the Great Omar was art bound in fortune, a collector’s dream.

  Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it was wise. But to Eliot, it was so much more.

  She paused by the Grand Staircase, watching Subject Seven as he descended to B deck. Her heart rattled over the steps. What a wonder it kept beating so fiercely when her weariness went so deep: down to the level of atoms and quarks, to fraying threads of fear and an always dreamless black sleep.

  Disaster was exhausting. She’d lived so much of it.

  And now, through Subject Seven, she was about to live it again.

  Far was only too glad to ditch the first-class getup. He didn’t even wait around to watch them hit the water as he tossed the clothes overboard: Good-bye, bird-tail jacket! Peace out, top hat! Vale, gentlemanly cane!

  The second outfit, with its trousers and rough shirt, was much more flexible. No one looked twice at a scuffed-up workman windmilling down five flights of stairs to the orlop deck. He was deep in the ship now, beneath the waterline, where engines hummed like warring whales and the dim lights served only to silhouette the mountains of crates and luggage. There were ranges of wooden boxes, leather wardrobes, even cars.

  “Now what?” Far asked his cousin.

  “You’re looking for a small oak case. Probably near the top of one of these piles.”

  “Probably?” Far walked toward the nearest pile. Boxes on boxes on boxes, all netted together like a bunch of king mackerel to keep from tumbling with the ship. No small oak case here. Unless it was buried deep.

  T minus one hour and ten minutes.

  “It’s the best I can do, Farway.” Imogen sounded as stretched as Far felt. “You’ll find it.”

  He moved to the second pile, using a Louis Vuitton trunk as a launch point for his climb to the top. Once there, Far pulled aside some crates, peering into the maze of leather and wood. Nothing of note. It was on to the next stack. And the next. He scaled mound after mound of expensive luggage, his stomach shrinking a size with every overturned crate, every passing minute.

  T minus one hour and five minutes. T minus fifty-five minutes. T minus forty minutes…

  Though Far kept searching, his mind was starting to wander—picturing his own empty hands outstretched, and Lux before them. Even in imagination the man was cold—no sneer on his face, no rageful tone: I gave you a 1.2-billion-credit TM and three million credits’ worth of fuel and you’ve brought me nothing. What am I supposed to do about that, Mr. McCarthy? What forfeit is equivalent to this loss?

  The answer that was sure to follow made Far search harder, but this mission had turned into a handful of dust and the tighter he gripped, the faster everything slipped. The Rubaiyat wasn’t in this stack or the next or the last, and what else could he do except swear?

  “We are so hashed.”

  “There’s another cargo room with a lot of first-class luggage one deck up,” Imogen
told him. “The Rubaiyat’s probably in there.”

  True or not, this didn’t make up for the thirty-minute countdown. Twenty if you counted the time it’d take for him to return to the Invictus—

  Far halted, trying to understand what he was seeing.

  An entire ship away, Imogen processed the same image. “What’s a first-class lass doing in the cargo bay?”

  The girl in the door was decked out in first-class frippery—floor-length daffodil-colored gown; chestnut hair coiled and pinned—but just from her stance Far could tell she was out of her era. She stood with her shoulder to the doorframe, elegantly slumped, an oak case propped on her hip. Far was a universe and a half certain this box contained the Rubaiyat, but it was what he saw on the girl’s face that rendered him speechless. Or rather, who he recognized there.

  Marie Antoinette.

  The queen of France was on the hashing Titanic.

  It was her, and yet… it wasn’t. There was no beauty mark. No beehive wig. Her eyebrows still appeared scripted, the product of a pen nib. The gaze beneath was unmistakable: dark as glistening.

  “You,” he croaked.

  Marie Antoinette—Far was certain that wasn’t actually her name, but what else could he call her?—smiled and opened the case. Peacock jewels gleamed under the cargo bay’s flimsy light. “Looking for this?”

  “Um.” Imogen’s bewilderment was palpable. “Who is that? And why does she have the Great Omar?”

  Far wanted these answers, too, but with T minus twenty-seven minutes to disaster and the Rubaiyat in the hands of another, there was only one question that mattered: “What do you want?”

  The girl shut the box and tucked it under her arm. “To get your attention.”

  “Consider it obtained.” Far took a step forward. “Now can I have the book?”

  Marie Antoinette didn’t move. Her smile was as unnerving as it had been in Versailles, just a twitch away from becoming a snarl. “You didn’t say the magic word.”

  “Now can I please have the book?” he tried.

  “You’re going to have to work a little harder than that.”

  “Pretty please?” Far raised both eyebrows. “With a cherry on top?”

  She winked.

  And then she ran.

  9

  RACE AGAINST TIME

  YOU’D THINK A FLOOR-LENGTH DRESS, BUTTON-UP boots, and a hefty oak box combined with five flights of stairs would put a damper on someone’s running skills. This didn’t seem to be the case. Hash it all, this girl was fast! She leaped up the stairs with a springbok’s grace, two flights to Far’s one. He was still huffing up the third level when she slipped out of the stairwell.

  “I told you we need to get a walkabout machine. Cardio is important. Your exercise routine can’t be all pull-ups and push-ups and up-ups.” Imogen’s nervous chatter filled Far’s ear. He wanted to tell her to stop, but he couldn’t gather the breath for it. Every gram of oxygen in his lungs was dedicated to reaching Marie Antoinette before she disappeared altogether.

  Where was she going? Far supposed she’d gotten here by means of a different TM. But TMs were crewed by many bodies, and the heat scans Gram ran only detected the two of them as anomalies. This girl was here alone. But to what end? If it was the Rubaiyat she was after, why dangle it in front of him like bait? If it was his attention she wanted, as she claimed, why run? And why run so fast?

  Far panted through these questions, step by step. Nothing made sense, but it didn’t have to. This girl wasn’t going to ruin his life again! Come Hades or high water or stupid cardio staircases, he was going to get the Rubaiyat!

  When Far blasted out into the cold night, he found C deck deserted. Two cranes bent like a giant’s skeleton fingers, propped on glossy lengths of pitch pine. Marie Antoinette was nowhere in sight.

  “Rat farts! Where’d she go?” Imogen’s shout burst firework red across Far’s eardrum, making him wince. “Sorry. But who is she, Farway? She acted like she knew you.”

  “It’s a long story. I’m pretty sure I don’t know the half of it.” Far stepped into the middle of the deck and did a 360-degree sweep of the ship. There were plenty of places the girl could’ve gone, but based on her dress, Far figured his previous route was the best bet: up the iron staircase by the second crane, through the swing gate, into first-class territory.

  He started running.

  “Your clothes!” Imogen warned.

  Clothes be hashed! These trousers were better for running in anyway. Far vaulted over stairs and gate alike, blasting past a steward on his way to the door. Through it, he caught sight of the yellow gown: Marie Antoinette was a whole quarter of a Titanic away, clutching the case to her chest. The corridor between them was ill lit, but Far could’ve sworn the queen of France was smiling as she slipped through the door. A silken ghost—there and gone.

  “Oi! You!” It was the steward. “You can’t be here! First-class passengers only!”

  “Farway, you’re being noticed,” Imogen’s voice jittered through the comm, shaken double by Far’s sprint. “This is bad. This is bad, bad. The Corps is going to figure out we’re here and haul us off to jail for the rest of our lives. Who’s going to feed Saffron? I can’t go to jail, Farway!”

  So much for her grass is green on any side attitude.

  Far tore down the red carpet corridor, past B deck’s berths and lavatories, barreling through the door back into the Grand Staircase, making eye contact with at least four very startled late-night socialites as he did. All of them gasped. None of them wore yellow gowns.

  Which way had she gone? Up? Down? Forward? There were too many choices and no time to choose. The steward was shazm hot on Far’s heels. He’d be swinging through the door any second now—

  Canary fabric flashed through the gaps in A deck’s banister. Far looked up to see Marie Antoinette leaning over the railing. She wasn’t even breathing hard….

  “There she is! Go up, Farway!” His cousin hyperventilated useless instructions as Far ran for the staircase. “Go up! Go up!”

  The girl was gone by the time he reached A deck. All Far found were settees full of wide-eyed passengers and the glory-honor-angel clock, its hands ticking closer and closer to T time.

  “There!” Imogen caught the yellow this time, with Far spotting the color a second later. Again, it was a flight of stairs away, quick to vanish. “She’s going out to the promenade!”

  It struck Far as eerie, that this girl knew exactly how he’d arrived on the ship, knew exactly what item he was looking for, not to mention the fact that she was A HISTORICAL HOLOGRAM FROM HIS FINAL EXAM SIM.

  She acted like she knew you.

  Did she? If so… how?

  Far ran outside, cheeks burning, arctic air knifing his lungs. Wind, water, sky, everything around him was moving. Their vastness accented the fact that the promenade deck was empty. He climbed to the base of the smokestack, where a full view of the Titanic’s top decks pooled out under starlight.

  Marie Antoinette and the Rubaiyat were nowhere to be found.

  “What the Hades?” he hissed at the night.

  “Um… maybe she went back inside?” Imogen suggested. “Or maybe she’s getting a head start and hiding in one of the lifeboats?”

  Maybe. Far didn’t have time to play detective. The doors to the Grand Staircase opened to reveal the steward, flushed and fuming. He’d collected a wake of curious passengers, who trailed him onto the deck.

  So much for going unnoticed.

  Far scanned the promenade again, but of all the gowns belonging to the scandalized ladies who fluttered after the steward, none were yellow. And beyond them? No one. Nothing but the void of surrounding ocean and… an iceberg.

  The iceberg.

  It was a small thing at the moment. If Far hadn’t already known it was there, he would’ve passed over the faint silhouette, just as the lookouts in the crow’s nest were doing now. Just as they’d keep doing until the chunk of ice was undeniably there, scraping
back the steel hull with curtain-like ease.

  Imogen saw it, too. Her breath cut against the comm: “You have to come back.”

  Even though Far’s hands clutched the ladder rungs, they felt so empty. He couldn’t leave without the Rubaiyat. He just couldn’t. He hadn’t failed a mission yet….

  Then again, he hadn’t failed a Sim exam, either, until this girl showed up.

  The iceberg rose higher, higher. How couldn’t the watchmen see it? Even the tip was a minor mountain, close to one hundred feet high, according to Imogen’s study of eyewitness accounts. Far suspected, as he watched the ice draw closer, that it was really more in the range of one hundred and twenty or so. All of that doom and death, sitting on waveless waters, and the Titanic plunging full speed toward it.

  “You don’t have time to chase that girl!” Imogen warned. “All Hades is about to break loose on that ship, and I am not sending Gram down there to rescue your tail from drowning.”

  A sharp cry left the crow’s nest, but it had come too late. The path was set; the Titanic’s fate was sealed. The unsinkable ship under Far’s feet would soon be dragged down to its grave of darkness, swallowing all these people with it. Maelstrom swirling vortex black cold drown gently down no need to fight…

  The end had begun. The ice of the headwind slid under Far’s skin, crackled through his joints. He hunched his shoulders, but the chill stuck, following him as he turned his back on the tragic past-future and hauled tail up the smokestack.

  10.

  THE GIRL IN THE YELLOW DRESS

  IMOGEN WAS ALREADY DRAFTING HER NEXT ship’s log when the Invictus’s rear hatch opened, spitting in a wind-licked, royally peeved version of her cousin. His curls were everywhere, hands clenched into fists.

  RMS FARWAY HAS TAKEN AN ICEBERG BLOW. ABANDON SHIP! WOMEN AND RED PANDAS FIRST!