by Amie Kaufman
“Eshvaren,” she whispers, staring at me like she doesn’t see me.
“… What?”
The whiny man in front of us in line whispers the word. “E-E-Eshvaren.”
When I whirl around, I see that his right eye has turned white, too.
“What does that mean?”
But neither of them reply. They just whisper the word again, and it spreads up and down the line like a forest catching fire.
“Eshvaren.”
“Eshvaren.”
“Eshvaren.”
Eye burning, fingers trembling, she reaches out to touch my face.
•••••
Oh, hello touch. I see you’ve decided to join us. And now that you’re here, I can tell every single part of me is hurting in ways I didn’t know had been invented yet.
Another wave of pain catches me, sweeping away the last of that creepy memory-that-wasn’t-a-dream thing and reminding me my body seems to be just as messed up as my head is right now. I’m reduced to panting, to whimpering with a raw throat that catches and gags at the effort, to just existing until the hurt starts to ebb away. But with pain, and touch, comes proper mobility. And that means I can push up onto my elbows, looking across for the guy once more. His lower half has turned dark gray, and from this I deduce he is now, unfortunately, wearing pants.
This day really is turning out to be a bust.
The pants discovery prompts a tickle of a question in my head, and I look down to check what I’m wearing. Turns out that beneath the light, silvery sheet that currently covers me, the answer is “nothing at all.”
Huh.
I look back at the boy, and at the same moment, he turns to me, his eyes widening as he realizes I’m awake. I draw breath to try and speak, but I choke, my throat stinging like someone’s ripping out my vocal cords one by one.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Is this Octavia?” I wheeze.
He shakes his head, blue eyes meeting mine. “What’s your name?”
“Aurora,” I manage. “Auri.”
“Tyler,” he replies.
And I should ask him where I am. If we’re on the Hadfield and I was pulled out early, or if I’m on Earth and they aborted the mission. But there’s something in his gaze that makes me shy away from the question.
He lets his forehead rest against the glass between us with a thunk. Like I did at that window on Eighty-Ninth Street. The memory catches me unawares, bringing with it a sharp wave of I-want-my-mom. This boy looks just as lost as I feel.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
“I missed it,” he finally says. “The Draft. I missed the whole thing.”
And I’ve got no idea what a Draft is or why it’s so important. But I ask anyway.
“Had somewhere else to be?”
He nods and sighs. “Rescuing you.”
Rescuing.
That’s not a good word.
“Who knows who I got,” he says, and we both know he’s changing the subject. “I was supposed to have four of the first five picks, and now I’m stuck with the bottom of the barrel. The dregs. And I was just following reg—”
“The news isn’t all bad, Ty.”
The low purr comes from somewhere outside my field of vision. A girl’s voice.
Tyler swings away from me like I’m yesterday’s news, plastering himself against the front of his holding tank. “Scarlett.”
I carefully turn my gaze that way—it still takes thought and strategy, my body refusing to do anything without a plan—to see who he’s greeting. There are two girls standing there in blue-gray uniforms, the same color as the pants he seems to have acquired. One has flaming-red hair—orange, really, amazing dye job—cut in a sharp asymmetrical bob that swings around a chiseled chin just like his. She shares his full lips, too, his strong brows. Her uniform’s skirt is impressively short. She’s tall. And she’s gorgeous. Presumably, this is Scarlett.
The second girl has a narrow face, and a soaring phoenix tattooed right across her throat (ouch). Black hair, longer and spiked on top, shaved to fuzz down the sides with more tattoos underneath. I can tell she has dimples even without a smile, and I can tell that smile would be huge, but I have to deduce it all without seeing the real deal, because right now she looks like somebody killed her grandmother.
“Cat?” Tyler says to her. His voice is low, pleading.
“Ketchett tried to draft me,” Cat says. “And a bunch after that. I told them I already had an Alpha, he just couldn’t make it.”
“Told them, huh? Is Ketchett still breathing?”
“Yeah.” The girl smirks. “Next time you go to chapel, you might wanna say a prayer for his testicles, though.”
He exhales slowly and presses his palm against the glass, and she lifts hers to press it back in return.
The girl with the orange hair watches them. “I didn’t have to insist quite as hard,” she says, wry. “But I could hardly let you out there alone. You’d probably get yourself killed without me to talk our way out of trouble, baby brother.”
Tattoo girl pulls up her uniform sleeves, revealing more ink. “Speaking of getting yourself killed, you wanna tell us what you were doing Folding by yourself? Thinking with your other head again?”
Scarlett nods in agreement. “Rescuing damsels in distress is very twenty-second century, Ty.”
Say what?
Tyler holds up his hands, like What do you want from me? and the girls turn to look at me on my slab with curious eyes. Checking me out. Weighing me up.
“I like her hair,” Scarlett declares. Then as if remembering I’m an actual person, she speaks to me, louder, a little slower. “I like your hair.”
The second girl sniffs, obviously less impressed. “Did you tell her the bad news about her library books yet?”
“Cat!” the other two snap in chorus.
An adult voice cuts in before they can get any further. “Legionnaire Jones, your quarantine has cleared, you’re free to go.”
Ty looks across at me, and our eyes meet. He hesitates.
“Did you tell her the bad news?”
“You can call in the morning to find out when you can visit,” the voice says.
He nods reluctantly, stepping out of his holding pen as the door hisses open in front of him. With a last glance at me, the trio leaves the room, his voice fading out of hearing as he disappears from sight.
“Hey, can I get a shirt?”
My brain’s starting to assemble more facts now, agitation creeping in as the lethargy of cryo slips away.
Where am I? Who are these people? They’re in uniforms, is this some kind of military facility? If so, what am I doing here, and am I safe? I try to croak out a question, but I can’t make my voice work. And there’s no one to ask anyway.
And so I’m left alone in silence, every nerve throbbing in time with my heartbeat, my head swimming with half-asked questions, trying to wade my way free of the confusion I didn’t know came with cryo.
•••••
I don’t know how much time has gone by when I hear voices again. I’m in the middle of another strange dream thing, this one of a world thick with grasping green plants, blue snow drifting down from the sky, when—
“Aurora, can you hear me?”
With effort, I push away the image of the place I’ve never seen, and turn my head. I must have been dozing, because there’s a woman beside me in the same blue-gray uniform as everyone else.
She’s perfectly white. And I don’t mean I’m-half-Chinese-and-you’re-whiter-than-me white, I mean pure-as-the-driven-snow white. Impossibly white. Her eyes are a pale gray—the whole eye, not just the iris—and they’re way too big. Her bone-white hair is pulled back into a ponytail.
“I am Greater Clan Battle Leader Danil de Verra de Stoy.” She p
auses, to let me digest that mouthful. “I am pleased to meet you, Aurora.”
Great Clan what now?
“Mmmm,” I agree, not game to risk a different kind of sound.
Nobody ever calls me Aurora unless I’m in trouble.
“I imagine you have many questions,” she says.
She’s evidently not expecting a reply. I nod a fraction, willing my focus to stay with this moment.
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” she continues. “I know of no way to break this to you gently, so I’ll be frank. There was an incident while your ship was en route to Lei Gong.”
“We were going to Octavia,” I say quietly, but I know the name of my colony isn’t the point. I can tell from the careful reserve in her voice that there’s something much bigger coming. There’s a pressure in the air, like the moments before a storm breaks.
“You were removed from your cryopod improperly,” she continues, “which is why you’re feeling like you’ve been turned inside out. That will improve soon. But the Hadfield was the subject of an incident in the Fold, Aurora.”
“It’s Auri,” I whisper, stalling.
Incident in the Fold.
“Auri.”
“What kind of incident?” I ask.
“You were adrift for some time. You may have noticed I don’t look like you.”
“My mom always said it wasn’t polite to point out that sort of thing.”
She has a sad kind of a smile for that. “I’m a Betraskan. I’m one of many alien species Terrans have encountered in the time since you boarded the Hadfield.”
My mind flatlines with one long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep, all coherent thought shutting down.
Alien species?
Many?
Does not compute, please reboot.
“Um,” I say, very carefully. My brain’s trying its best to throw out possibilities, and getting nowhere good. Are these people conspiracy theorists? Have I been kidnapped by psych cases? Maybe they are military and they’ve been keeping first contact from us civilians?
“I know this must be difficult to process,” she says.
“We encountered aliens?” I manage.
“I’m afraid so.”
“But the Fold to Octavia was only supposed to take a week! If we didn’t even get there, it’s only been a few days, right?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Something’s trying to creep across the corners of my vision, like water seeping in, only this water’s phosphorescent, pricked with a thousand points of turquoise light. I shove it back and focus my attention on the woman at my bedside.
“How …” My throat closes over. I can barely whisper the question. “How long was I gone?”
“I’m sorry, Aurora. Auri.”
“How long?”
“… Two hundred and twenty years.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding me. This is—” But I don’t even have words for what this is. “What are you talking about?”
“I know this must be difficult,” she says carefully.
Difficult?
Difficult?
I need to speak to someone who’s making sense. My heart’s thumping wildly, trying to burst out of my chest, matching the pounding in my temples. I clutch the silvery blanket to myself and sit up, setting the world whirling. But I manage to swing my legs over the edge of the bed, and haul the silver sheet around me like a toga as I stagger to my feet.
“Aurora—”
“I want to speak to someone from Ad Astra, someone from the Octavia expedition. I want to speak to my mom or dad.”
“Aurora, please—”
I stumble my first few steps, and momentum carries me to the door, which slides open as I approach. Two women in blue-gray uniforms swing around to face me, and one steps forward.
I try to dodge, but I nearly fall over sideways and she grabs me by the shoulders. My hands are busy holding up my sheet, so I just kick her in the knee. The woman yelps, her hands tightening painfully on me, fingers digging in.
“Let her through.” It’s Battle Leader White Lady’s voice behind me, and in total contrast to my panic, she sounds calm. Kind of resigned.
The woman releases me, and my legs are shaking as I totter forward, my throat tight, as if someone’s squeezing it.
And then I see the windows across the hallway. I see what’s outside them.
Stars.
My brain tries to understand what’s happening, flipping through options and discarding them at top speed. The view outside the windows isn’t a wall. It’s not a building. It’s a huge sweep of metal, studded with bright lights, stretching away from me in a long curve.
Those are spacecraft zipping around it, like a tiny school of fish darting around a shark.
This is a space station. I’m in space. This place is impossible—it makes the Cid Shipyards that the Hadfield launched from look like a gas station somewhere out in the boondocks.
This place is impossible.
Unless that lady really is an alien.
Unless I’m really in space.
Unless this really is the future.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
Does not compute, please reboot.
I’m two hundred and thirty-seven years old.
Everyone I know is dead.
My parents are dead.
My sister is dead.
My friends are dead.
My home is gone.
Everyone I know is gone.
I can’t.
The next wave of the vision comes for me.
And this time I let the glowing waters sweep over my head.
And they pull me under.
3
Scarlett
This is such crap.
That’s what my baby brother is thinking. I can see it all over his face. He won’t actually say it, because Tyler Jones, Squad Leader, First Class, doesn’t curse. Tyler Jones doesn’t do drugs or drink or do anything we mere mortals do for fun. But if my eighteen years in this strange little galaxy have taught me anything, it’s this:
Just because you’re not saying it, doesn’t mean you’re not thinking it.
We’re sitting on a mezzanine above the arboretum. … Well, Cat and I are sitting, anyway. Tyler’s pacing back and forth, trying to come to grips with the thought that his last five years’ work just got flushed into the recycler. He drags one hand through his golden blond hair, and as he walks past me for the seven hundredth time, I notice a small scuff mark on his normally immaculate boots.
Yeah, he’s really taking it hard.
The dome above us is transparent, letting in the light of a billion distant suns. The garden below is a mix of flora from across the galaxy; swirls of Rigellian glassvine and orbs of Pangean duskbloom and blossoms of singing crystal from the stillsea on Artemis IV. The arboretum is probably my favorite place in the whole academy, but the splendor seems kinda lost on my dear baby brother right now.
Can’t blame him, really.
“It’s not the end of the Way, Ty,” I venture.
“Yeah, but you gotta admit it’s bloody close,” Cat replies.
I look at Cat sidelong and give her my best shut uuuuuup smile, speaking through gritted teeth. “We should look on the bright side, Cat.”
“Come on, Scar,” Cat says, ignoring my smile’s shut uuuuup-edness. “Everyone knows Ty got robbed. He’s the most decorated Alpha in our year. And now he’s stuck with the jank and chaff no other squad leader wanted to touch.”
“Not to feed that rampant ego of yours,” I sigh, “but you’re the best Ace in the academy, Cat. You may be counted as neither jank nor chaff.”
“Cheers.” She smirks. “But I was talking about you and the others.”
“Oh, stop.” I clutch my chest. “My poor heart.”
/>
“Aw. Hug?”
“Kiss.”
“No tongue this time.”
Catherine Brannock is my bunkmate here at Aurora Academy. She’s the yin to my yang. The half-empty glass to my half-full. The mint chocolate chip to my strawberry triple ripple. She’s also Tyler’s and my oldest friend. Ty pushed Cat down on our first day of kindergarten, and she broke a chair over his head in retaliation. When the dust settled, my baby brother ended up with a nice little scar on his right eyebrow to go with his killer dimples, and a friend whose loyalty is pretty much unquestionable.
She’s totally not into him, in case you were wondering.
“That O’Malley girl was stuck in the Fold for two hundred years,” Cat continues. “The brass should be pinning a bloody medal on Ty for rescuing her, not saddling him with a squad of no-hopers.”
“No-hopers?” I say. “You know, you’re lucky I’m such a soulless shrew. Otherwise you might be at risk of quite possibly maybe hurting my feelings.”
Cat scowls. “The Aurora Legion is the best chance we have of bringing stability to the Milky Way. How’re we gonna be of any help out there with a squad of psychos, discipline cases, and gremp fondlers?”
“People fondle gremps now?”
“I mean, I’ve heard rumors. …”
“Who does that?”
“She’s right,” Tyler says.
Cat and I look up at my brother. He’s stopped with the pacing and is staring down at the garden. He reminds me of our dad for a minute. And though I’m doing my best to keep up my Queen of Bitch routine, my shriveled black heart does sort of hurt for him.
“She’s absolutely right,” Tyler sighs again.
“Damn right I am,” Cat growls. “We should go talk to de Stoy. Lodge an official complaint. You earned those points, Ty, it isn’t fair—”
“I mean Scarlett’s right,” Tyler says.
“… She is?”
“… I am?”
Tyler turns to us, leans against the railing, and folds his arms.
“I shouldn’t have been out in the Fold in the first place. It was my mistake.”
“Ty, you risked your—”
“No, Cat,” Ty says, looking at his bestie. “I know you had your pick of squads, and I won’t ever forget that you stuck with me. But the Draft is done. It wouldn’t be fair to ask for special treatment. I’ve gotta go the way.”