Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

  But it wasn’t just green. Imogen’s head was phosphorescent. It looked as if she’d snapped a glow stick in half and used the insides as conditioner. The predawn shadows through the Invictus’s vistaport made her shine all the brighter.

  “‘Nuclear Green’ is the colloquial term,” she told him. “It’s a 2020 throwback color. Do you like it?”

  “It’s…” Of all the times for Gram’s vocabulary to abandon him! “Shiny.”

  “It’d be rubbish for a stealth mission,” the Historian admitted. “But Las Vegas isn’t really known for its subtlety. When in Las Vegas, glow as the Las Vegans do. Vegans… that can’t be right.”

  “It is,” Gram said.

  “History’s ironies abound much.” She swiveled her chair back to the screen, radiant hair aflutter.

  Radiant. Resplendent. Pulchritudinous. These were the words Gram should have used, queuing up ten seconds too late. He couldn’t voice them now, not when Far appeared in the doorway, scanning the console room with bleary eyes.

  It wasn’t hard to guess who he was looking for. Gram glanced at the bunk door, still sealed. Eliot: a piece that didn’t fit. The girl’s sudden appearance was as much of an outlier as the hashed landing, both of which had happened in the span of an hour. Correlation didn’t imply causation, but he was willing to bet that the events were linked. Was Eliot the cause of the disturbance?

  Or was she here because of it?

  Twisty, turny, not-quite-solving puzzles. Gram wasn’t used to problems that lasted so long. He looked up at his Rubik’s Cubes—each solved and back in place, their rainbow row complete. There was an answer out there. There had to be.

  Far sidled up to the console. “Think we can land when we want to this time? Ship’s guts look good according to Priya.”

  “Priya checked the engines?”

  “Well, yeah.” There was a seedling frown on Far’s face, threatening to grow. “You asked her to, didn’t you?”

  “Did I?” It’d slipped Gram’s mind, like much of the moment after the landing. Strange… Adrenaline often heightened his senses, whetting his memories until their edges were razor sharp. Too much cortisol must’ve flooded his system. “Mechanics wouldn’t make a jump go sideways like that. Last time we were in the Grid, I was running the numbers, but I couldn’t solve for the landing time we wanted. That’s when…” Both cousins stared at Gram, expectant. He wasn’t sure if his words would work—they didn’t add up. He said them anyway. “That’s when the equation changed.”

  “Huh.” Far took the news far better than expected, though this could be because he didn’t quite grasp what the statement meant. Even Gram wasn’t sure. What happened when the laws of the universe became suggestions?

  Far cleared his throat. “Well, I’m sorry for hitting your Tetris screen. And yelling. You were under pressure and I was making a proper tail of myself.”

  Imogen’s mouth opened wide enough to catch flies. Gram didn’t need the visual cue to know the behavior was aberrational. Far apologizing was almost as strange as math not being math. Things really were in flux….

  “All’s forgiven,” Gram told his friend. “Just aim for something less antiquey next time.”

  “Hopefully there won’t be a next time.” Far took a seat in his captain’s chair and stared out the vistaport, where Las Vegas was taking shape in the darkness. One could count the sleepy town’s lights on both hands. The horizon was beginning to lighten—black to blooming indigo—revealing hills. These were the bones of the place. For millions of years the earth had been carving out the sky, as it would keep doing four centuries from now, long after the casinos had crumbled, their swimming pools sucked as dry as Lake Mead, their flash and glitz and neon lights fading to nothing….

  Through all this, the hills would remain.

  Gram guided the Invictus into this steady distance. The outskirts of the outskirts. It would be the best place to jump—out of range of future flight paths, close to stretches of empty desert that would be perfect for parking an invisible time machine.

  “All of us are stressed and yell-y.” Imogen sighed. “That’s why it’s imperative we stay on track with this vacation. We all need some fun. Dining! Drinks! Dallying the days away!”

  “This is a mission, too,” Far reminded them. “Eliot’s got the drop on us right now, and I need that to change before we return to Central. Vegas affords us some wiggle room to dig up information. Priya has a plan, and I need you two to keep our guest distracted so she won’t catch on.”

  “Consider it done. As long as we can wiggle,” Imogen added. “There’s supposed to be a dance party of epic proportions at Caesars Palace on Saturday night. DJ Rory is hosting.”

  Far looked less than enthused. “Eliot doesn’t strike me as the dancing type.”

  “Don’t be so quick to judge books by their covers, Far. I contain multitudes.”

  All three of them jumped. Eliot. There was no telling how much the girl had heard, for she was but a shadow in the doorway, and just as soundless. It was as if she’d teleported. Twenty-four hours ago Gram would’ve deemed that impossible. But the word meant nothing now….

  Their captain scowled. “Sometimes the covers are all that matter. Particularly when they’re loaded up with one hundred mil in jewels.”

  With a dancer’s grace and a smuggler’s smugness, Eliot whirled into the console room. “‘One thing is certain, that Life flies; / One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies; / The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.’ Words of wisdom from the very book you deem matterless.”

  Again, Far was less than enthused. “My life’s flight will be a hash of a lot shorter if you keep the Rubaiyat stashed away.”

  “O ye of little faith…” A smile twisted Eliot’s face as she stared out the vistaport. Not even dawn light could soften her features. In fact, it only brought out the shadows under her eyes, the tendons stringing her neck—things that made Gram weary by proxy. Though both of her feet stood firm on the Invictus’s floor panels, it seemed to him that she was standing on some sort of edge, close to tumbling.

  None of this helped the anxiety piling in Gram’s chest. He tried his best to swallow it back as he shifted the Invictus into hover mode.

  “We’re ready to attempt a jump,” he told Far. “Cross your fingers.”

  Their captain, not one for lucky charms, nodded. Imogen made up for it by crossing both sets of fingers and her arms to boot, as if luck were something you could simply pluck out of thin air, cling to for dear life. Gram knew wishes weren’t quantifiable, but he found himself hoping she’d collected enough fortune for their journey.

  “Three, two, one…”

  14

  THE GRID

  BLAST OFF without noise

  without anything.

  Gone—the hills, the skies, the light

  Darkness returns, even deeper than night

  unfolding forever and ever, refolding into nothing, nothing.

  Here is a place of contradictions.

  Here is not here. It is there. And there. And there.

  It is everywhere.

  Or nowhere.

  Time spins around. It stands perfectly still.

  Moments within moments between moments

  Each contains multitudes larger and smaller…

  Find the numbers. Make them fit.

  Shift and…

  … click!

  15

  FOLLICLE FALLACIES

  FROM DAWN GLOW, TO SEARING DARKNESS, to blistering midday light. Ow. Far should’ve known better than to stare out the vistaport during a jump—the shift in views paired with the Grid’s timelessness created a special kind of queasy—but it was better than being forced to face Eliot’s smirk. He’d thought, after some alone time with Priya and a nap, that the girl might be less infuriating. Not so. Her cockiness was salt in the wound, stinging for how easily she’d sent Far’s future spinning. A single wink, a shiny book. Years of work down the drain…

  Phosphene
stars marred Far’s vision, crept through the writing on the wall before him. He stared hard at what chalky fragments he could—Rembrandt, sapphire, fire, Hindenburg—and dug his fingers into the armrest. Priya was right: no sense in losing his head. This was far from over. He’d pin his life back into place piece by piece, starting with this chair. He’d never liked the captain’s seat—it was uncomfortable and such a violent shade of orange—but now it felt like his, because he’d had to fight for it.

  “Time?” he asked Gram.

  “We hit our target,” the Engineer said. He himself had the look of a man who’d dodged ten bullets. “April eighteenth, 2020. Noon.”

  At least something was going Far’s way today. “Let the vacation commence.”

  He really did want a vacation. Ideally, it’d involve him and Priya by a pool, a pale lager with two lime wedges, and a world without cares. Las Vegas had most of these things—true—but Far couldn’t rest until he knew what Eliot was up to.

  The girl stood close to him, barefoot. Without her boots, she was quite short, small enough to blow away. Her hair was still coiffed in a first-class style, but its fanciness had frayed. Single strands quirked out from the pins, flew around her shoulders. All it would take was a quick pluck….

  “I’ll gather our wardrobes!” Imogen headed toward the common area closet. “What are your measurements, Eliot? I can lend you one of my outfits, if it fits. Your waist is so tiny!”

  “It’s this haze of a corset.” Eliot turned her back to Far.

  There, just there! A lone hair ripe for the taking. He was certain he could snag it without Eliot noticing—working for Lux, he’d developed quite a set of thief fingers—but when he tugged the strand, it didn’t break the way it should have. To his horror, Far realized that he’d not only gathered a single hair from Eliot’s head but an entire wig. He dropped the hairpiece.

  Eliot turned to face him. Where Far expected to see anger, there was only a hoity twist of lips. Where he expected to find her natural hair, there was none. Eliot’s scalp was as smooth as the rest of her. Those eyebrows, the ones that reminded him of penwork—they really were drawn on. Even her eyelashes were missing. Far’s brain must have autofilled them in before now.

  “Well, shazm.” He glanced at the wig, now a glossy brown pile by his feet. “This is awkward.”

  It became even more so when Saffron emerged to attack what he mistook for a fellow fur-thing. The red panda snatched the wig in his jaws and took off for the common area, striped tail waving.

  “Saffron! No!” Imogen wasn’t fast enough to catch him. The animal leaped from couch to shelf to pipes, beyond their reach.

  “Your hair…” Far trailed off, at a loss.

  “Has been purloined by a ginger raccoon, from the looks of things.” Eliot squinted at the wardrobe: army uniforms, a pair of riding chaps, a prison jumpsuit. The original flowered waistcoat he’d worn in the Versailles Sim hung among them. Far wondered if she recognized the outfit. “Or were you referring to my lack of it?”

  “Um…”

  Imogen climbed on top of the couch, swatting clothing aside to find her furry ward. “Get back here, you scallywag! You can’t just steal people’s hair.”

  One of Eliot’s inked eyebrows rose as she looked back at Far. Clearly she harbored the same sentiment. He needed to think of an excuse, anything other than the obvious—

  “I thought I saw a feather,” he said lamely. “I was trying to pull it out.”

  “How considerate,” Eliot grunted. Far doubted she believed him. He wouldn’t believe him, and so far this girl had outwitted him at every turn.

  Imogen continued uttering swears as colorful as her hair, standing on tiptoes in an attempt to reach the red panda’s roost. Gram joined her. His reach was longer, but Saffron had scooted so far back into the pipes that they’d have to dismantle the Invictus to get to the creature.

  “Best surrender.” It was all Far could do to keep from laughing, not because this was funny, but because the whole wig- napping scene had surpassed absurd. “It’s in the lair of the beast now.”

  “Saffron isn’t a beast,” Imogen huffed. “He’s a beastie.”

  Gram balanced on the couch’s highest point, swiping as far as he could. No use. He fell back onto Imogen’s cushion. His weight created a seesaw effect—and Imogen, having nowhere else to steady herself, grasped Gram’s biceps.

  “What on earth is going on?” Priya’s bunk door slid open. The gold BeatBix headphones slung around her neck were genuine, BB logo righted, snatched and gifted by Far for their six-month anniversary. She’d worn them to sleep ever since. Indeed, she looked like she did most mornings: hair mussed, eyes misty with dreams as they peered into the common area. “Oh—”

  Imogen snatched her hands back. Far had never seen his cousin so pink: hotter than bubble gum, deeper than coral. He wished they’d sort things out and kiss already. The Invictus was small enough as it was. There simply wasn’t room for so many unaddressed pheromones.

  “Saffron ran off with Eliot’s hair.” Gram stepped off the couch, clearing his throat. “I mean, wig.”

  Far could pinpoint the moment his girlfriend went into Medic mode. Her stare went sharp, then soft as she examined Eliot’s baldness. “Alopecia universalis. Right?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Medic worth her salt!” Eliot’s voice held a showmanship boom—all the ship’s a stage. “You’d be amazed how many don’t know the proper name without a med-droid beeping it in their ear.”

  “Alopecia universalis.” Imogen considered the Latin, face aflame. “Universal foxsickness?”

  “A fancy way of saying my immune system isn’t such a fan of my hair follicles. Every single hair on my body fell out when I was six years old and never returned.”

  “It’s rare,” Priya remarked. “Rarer than rare in Central time. I’ve only ever read up on cases.”

  This was yet another sign that Eliot was out of her era. But if her condition was rare in Central time, wouldn’t it be almost nonexistent in the future? Was it possible she was from the past? More questions, endless questions. The spinning feeling from looking out the Invictus’s vistaport hadn’t faded the way it usually did. Instead, Far felt himself winding tighter. This girl. This smirking, roundabout riddle of a girl. She was impossible to get a handle on, and it vexed him….

  “I’m so sorry about your wig, Eliot.” Though none of this was Imogen’s fault, she apologized. “I’ll go out and buy you another one before we hit the town. What color do you prefer? Blond? Brunette? Fire-engine red? You’d sport peacock green excellently.”

  “No need,” Eliot told her. “I only use wigs when I need to blend in. No one in Vegas is going to bat an eyelash at the lack of mine.”

  “You’ll turn heads with that dress, though,” the Historian pointed out. “The year 2020 wasn’t really known for floor-length frills.”

  The Invictus fell back into its pre-expedition ritual. Priya disappeared to change out the fuel rods. Gram returned to his console to find a parking spot, while Imogen weeded out any dollars printed post–landing year from their US cash stash. Afterward, she printed age-appropriate false IDs for the five of them, then reprinted them when Gram pointed out that her math had made them all twenty instead of twenty-one, and what was the use of that? Eliot helped sort bills and clothes alike, making piles of swimsuits and clubwear under the Historian’s sporadic direction. Above it all, Saffron nibbled the wig with happy squeaking noises.

  The scene felt so… normal. Eliot had Recorder training, no doubt. How else would she sync with the rhythm of the ship so fast? Far settled back into his captain’s chair, eyes never leaving the thief. She watched him, too. Her glances weren’t subtle or sly or pointed. They just were. Straight on, unabashed. Nothing like the don’t blink duels he held with Lux. He had no idea what game Eliot was playing, much less how to win it. He needed answers. There was more than one way to collect DNA. Skin, blood, spit. All were a good means harder to procure than
hair, especially now that Eliot was onto them, but Far was up for the challenge.

  He’d figure out who this girl was.

  He’d take his future back.

  16

  WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS…

  INVICTUS SHIP’S LOG—ENTRY 3

  CURRENT DATE: APRIL 18, 2020

  CURRENT LOCATION: VEGAS, BABY!

  OBJECT TO ACQUIRE: FUN TIMES. PEACE OF MIND. PRETTY, PRETTY BOOK STILL AT LARGE.

  IMOGEN’S HAIR COLOR: NUCLEAR-GLOW GREEN WITH NEON-YELLOW TIPS

  GRAM’S TETRIS SCORE: 354,000 (ON PAUSE)

  CURRENT SONG ON PRIYA’S SHIPWIDE PLAYLIST: “LIGHT UP THE BRIGHT” BY AURORA WINTERS

  FARWAY’S EGO: DO NOT FEED. MAY BITE. HAS BEEN SEVERELY WOUNDED BY APPEARANCE OF JUST-ELIOT ANTOINETTE, AKA BLACK OPS FUTURE MAGICIAN.

  ELIOT: ????????

  IT WASN’T THE MOST VACATIONY OF vacations, with a blackmailing stowaway in tow, but Imogen was determined to enjoy Las Vegas until she dropped. Or flopped. Or got lost in a sea of sparkles. That seemed the most likely outcome. Vegas was so bright. Even at midafternoon the place was blinding. LED billboards blazed with adverts: OVER HERE BLING BLING. Women walked by in sequined cocktail dresses that could’ve seconded as mermaid tails. Tourists toted drinks even taller than themselves, neon straws flitting into a different color every two seconds. It was too bad, Imogen mused as she sauntered down the Strip with the rest of the Invictus’s crew, that flash leather hadn’t been invented for another century. Her iridescent moto jacket would have fit right in….Though, to be honest, almost anything would. Las Vegas was one of the few sites in history where the entire crew of the Invictus could be unabashedly themselves. Glow hair, no hair, dark skin, light—all of it melted into anonymity here.