Unravel

by Imogen Howson

  “I only talked to Ady. He’s talking to Zee now, though. I think they’ll be here.”

  Lin’s gaze sharpened. “What’s wrong? What did he say to you?”

  Oh God. She hadn’t planned on telling Lin about Zee—not yet, not without planning how she could lessen the impact. But if Lin had noticed there was something wrong, she couldn’t leave her guessing. And she couldn’t lie to her.

  She leaned close to her twin’s ear, dropping her voice. “He told me that when Zee was rescued, it wasn’t from a facility. It was off a ship.”

  Lin’s face went still. Her eyes widened, the pupils shrinking to shocked pinpricks. As clear as if the image were reflected within them, Elissa could see that Lin, too, was being spun back in time to the Phoenix, to when they’d prized open the sealed hyperdrive chamber and found the dead Spare.

  Elissa put her hand out, finding Lin’s, tightening her fingers around Lin’s, noticing how cold they’d gone. “Lin? God, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to tell you with no warning like that.”

  Lin shook her head. “It’s okay. But”—a tiny shudder went through her—“how is he still alive?”

  “Or still sane. God knows. I can’t even imagine it.”

  A few minutes later Ady and Zee entered.

  Now she knew, Elissa couldn’t help her eyes going to the healing burn mark on his neck. His hair was just long enough to fall across, obscuring it, but under the hair the mark would stretch around to the back of his neck, to the hole that had been drilled in the back of his skull, the hole where the hyperdrive plug had fitted. Lin had that too, as did all the Spares; Lin had experienced the agonizing pain of the machines they’d used to test her psychic levels. But she’d never reached the stage of being wired up to a ship’s hyperdrive, left trapped and helpless in a world of lightless pain. Zee had.

  And for how long? How long had he been there? How long was it until he was rescued? She couldn’t ask—she couldn’t even ask Ady, let alone Zee, but she was suddenly desperate to know, desperate to know exactly how bad it had been. Please let it not have been that long. A day, a couple of days . . . She couldn’t conceive of it lasting any more time than that—how long would someone be able to stand it before their mind cracked like a blown egg?

  The door slid open, and Commander Dacre came briskly in. She’s not in uniform today? thought Elissa, then felt silly. Of course officials weren’t going to visit the safe houses in IPL uniform, advertising their presence to the security cams mounted at every corner of every building—security cams that could, at any point, be relaying information to hostile eyes.

  Uniform or not, the commander still had her gun, holstered at her belt within easy reach. And Elissa caught the discreet gleam of a com-unit on her wrist, its earpiece clipped neatly over—no, through—the upper lobe of her ear. Someone must have offered her a drink, as if she were a normal guest, because she held a coffee cup in one hand, but nothing else about her demeanor suggested that she was here in anything other than an official capacity.

  Her gaze skimmed the room, making only the briefest pause at Lin, then she walked across the no-color carpet to stand just past the window, a vantage point where she could see outside to the weirdly traffic-free sky.

  Her gaze skimmed over them all again. This time it snagged briefly on Zee before moving on. When she spoke, her voice was as colorless as the carpet, as flatly calm as the sky.

  “You’re being relocated today. All of you. We’ve arranged clearance for Captain Greythorn’s ship—the Phoenix—to take you and your families off Sekoia and to Philomel. You’ll be leaving this evening.”

  Some of the faces in the room lit up so fast it was as if a single wave of smiles had broken across them. Sofia, Ady, Cadan’s mother. Others—like Felicia’s, El’s, Cadan’s—became entirely still. And Lin shot upright, vibrating with indignation.

  “No,” she said. “We’re not. We’re not. Cadan already told you what we came here for.”

  “Be quiet, please,” said Commander Dacre, and Lin closed her mouth with an almost audible snap, looking as if she’d taken herself by surprise. Elissa fought down a ridiculous giggle. No matter how unpleasant the commander had been so far, it was kind of impressive to see anyone be able to shut Lin down like that. She managed to suppress the giggle, but then she looked up, caught Ivan’s eye and saw exactly the same expression of suppressed amusement on his face, and she had to fight the laughter back down all over again.

  The commander’s gaze moved from Lin, to Cadan, to Elissa and the rest of the crew. “You appear,” she said, “not to have grasped the full gravity of the situation. Allow me to help you.”

  She set her coffee down on the windowsill. “As you’ll be aware, Sekoia still has a space force, but it’s had to be brought entirely under IPL’s control. Nearly all your higher-ranking officials have been grounded while we investigate to see how much inside knowledge they had about the use of Spares. We’ve drafted in most of the pilots—and ships—to help our own with the evacuation process. Except without any access to hyperspeed, the process is still painfully slow, which has left us without the flight power for orbital patrols. Which means the planet is at constant risk of pirate attacks.”

  Her eyes shifted for a moment to the window. “And this is before the next outbreak of Elloran flu. Which is due at some point over the next six months. And if Sekoia’s infrastructure isn’t in better shape by then, the consequences could be serious.”

  Complete understatement. Elloran superflu wasn’t usually fatal to anyone in normal health, but it was super contagious. And if it spread through a population that had lost the ability to buy in mass stocks of antiviral drugs . . .

  Elissa crossed her arms. If I’d known, right at the start of it all, what this was going to do to my whole world, would I have made the same decisions? The answer was yes, of course—it had to be yes, because of Lin, because of what SFI had been doing to the Spares. But all the same, the thought kept circling back. If I’d known the consequences, if I’d known it meant people were going to die . . . what would I really have done? How easily would I have made the decision to sacrifice them all?

  “What about IPL’s own ships?” asked Markus.

  The commander looked a little surprised to have been asked anything, but she answered. “We’re using them, of course. But IPL forces are needed all across the star system—once the takeover was accomplished, we had no authority to keep them serving Sekoia when other societies stand in greater need.”

  She sipped coffee. “We’re operating a triage system for the evacuation. The top priority is, of course, Spares and their families, plus staff from the former SFI facilities.”

  Staff from the . . . ? Elissa was still sticking on that, her brain telling her it couldn’t mean what it sounded like, when Lin spoke, her voice sharp with incredulity.

  “Staff? Staff from the facilities? They need relocating? You’re rescuing them?”

  The commander set her coffee down again. “Hardly. They’re being taken off-planet in prison ships to await trial—on Philomel, mostly.”

  “But they’re being moved?” said Lin. “They have the same priority as Spares? You’re spending money on getting them off-planet?”

  “Off-planet to prison,” said the commander.

  “To safety!”

  “If you choose to see it that way.”

  “I don’t choose to see it that way. That’s how it is!”

  Fury shook her voice. Elissa put out an anxious hand. “Lin . . . Don’t freak—”

  Lin slewed around to face her. “You think this is okay? Taking them off Sekoia before they’ve even gotten all of us out?”

  “No.” The word came out with more emphasis than she’d known she was going to give it. The idea that the people who’d put restraints on Lin, who’d drilled a hole in her head and plugged cables into the back of her skull, who’d put Zee in the bowels of a spaceship, trapping him alone in agony-filled darkness—the idea that they were being given priority, tha
t they were being taken from a dangerous planet to a safe one ahead of other people, innocent people, like Felicia’s family, who hadn’t even known about Spares, was like a mockery of the justice IPL had talked about, the justice Lin had been promised.

  “No, I don’t think it’s anything like okay,” she said to Lin, and her voice, like Lin’s, was shaking.

  “The course of justice doesn’t depend on what you think is okay.” Elissa turned at the sound of Commander Dacre’s words, to see her looking straight at her and Lin, her expression chilly. “Unfortunately for your sense of fairness, IPL adheres to a policy of innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Oh it so does not!” The words came on a wave of heat that blazed through her, like flames bursting from the punctured hull of a spaceship. “IPL’s treating everyone like they’re guilty! You’re treating everyone like they’re criminals! You wouldn’t even let Cadan bring the Phoenix here, although you can see how useful it would be. With your whole military law thing, it’s probably your fault everything’s gone so crazy! You’re treating everyone like criminals so they’re behaving like criminals, but when it comes to real criminals, people who did horrific things to the Spares, you’re all ‘blah blah blah, innocent till proven guilty,’ when it’s obvious they’re not innocent.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the commander. Her voice was as chilly as her expression, and now Elissa realized that everyone was staring at her, that everyone else had gone quiet.

  “I can see what you’ve done to my planet!” she said, holding on to the flare of defiance that had allowed her to talk like that to an official, a grown-up. “I can see you’re doing it all wrong. People on Sekoia—they like keeping the law, they like being law-abiding. They don’t need curfews and rationing and military law. And those—those people from the facilities—they’re not innocent. They’re criminals. Not just potential criminals, real criminals. They don’t deserve special treatment.”

  “You’d advocate summary execution, maybe?” said Commander Dacre.

  “No,” Elissa said, irritated. “I just don’t see why they get priority. You could leave them here—like, lock them in the facilities or something—until the people in the most danger have been taken to safety.”

  “People in the most danger?” For the first time, the commander laughed. Her eyes still lacked all warmth. “You don’t know what happened to the staff they did that to, do you?”

  Like I care? “What?” said Elissa, folding her arms, glaring. The commander was wrong. IPL was wrong. If they could only see—

  “It was one of the aboveground facilities,” said the commander. “We’d reached it, and we were extracting the Spares. We’d been extracting staff, too, up until that point, but as timing got tighter we made the decision to give the Spares priority. So this time—this time only—we left the staff there and locked the place down from outside.”

  Her eyes flicked across Lin’s face, then across Elissa’s. “There was a security breach. A leak. People found out, both that the staff was there and that they couldn’t get out. A mob took off from the nearest city.”

  Her voice lost the last traces of expression. “The security cameras at the facility were still running, so the people inside saw the mob coming. They couldn’t lock any of the doors—external or internal—from inside, but they managed to barricade themselves into the staff lounges. They held out for eighty-two minutes.”

  Elissa wrapped her arms around herself. Something prickled up her back, onto her neck. If she could, she would have taken back what she’d said. Not because she hadn’t meant it but because it had led to this story—this story she was all at once 100 percent certain she didn’t want to know. If she’s just going to tell me they were killed, I can cope, I don’t care. But I don’t think they were just killed. I think something worse happened to them, and I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear.

  Across the room, Cadan’s face was set. Markus was squinting, as if by doing so he could withdraw himself from what he was about to hear.

  “The mob tore them to pieces,” said the commander. “Twenty-nine of them. They showed that on the newscasts, too—not the events themselves, but what the place looked like afterward.” Her eyes met Elissa’s. “You don’t like that IPL’s instituted military law? We hadn’t, until that point, until we saw what sort of things your law-abiding population is capable of. And we have no desire to allow criminals to escape justice. But what happened to the staff in that facility wasn’t justice.”

  Silence fell, heavy in the room. Elissa felt sick. Thoughts battered against the inside of her head. But Sekoia is law-abiding. It is. Things like that don’t happen here. People don’t form mobs, don’t . . . Automatically, her eyes squinched closed, as if by shutting them she could shut out the images in her head.

  Cadan spoke into the silence, his voice tight with self-control. “Commander, the Phoenix is entirely at IPL’s disposal to relocate anyone who needs it. But I have to request that IPL allows a crew of volunteers to return the same way. As you say, your forces are overstretched. I’ve been getting caught up since five this morning, and if you’ll give me ten minutes I can explain what we can offer to aid IPL in—”

  Commander Dacre turned cold eyes upon him. “Out of the question.”

  Flushing, Cadan opened his mouth again, but she held up a hand, cutting him off as effectively as she’d done to Lin.

  “Let me finish, please. Your . . . information source”—her eyes turned for a moment toward Cadan’s father—“is correct. We are, as you say, overstretched. And if it were just you and your adult crew, we would find you extremely useful.”

  She paused for no more than a few seconds. But even that short pause was enough to make Cadan look as if he’d been slapped, enough for Elissa to realize that the commander could have said nothing more angled to make Cadan feel terrible. If he and the crew had come alone, if he’d refused to take me and Lin, he’d be able to help people now.

  For a moment she felt the drag of guilt, familiar, unwelcome, then anger sparked through her. She said that on purpose. She said that to make him feel bad. However much they disagree with what we’ve done, she didn’t need to say that to him.

  It seemed like Commander Dacre didn’t mind turning the knife a little either. “If you’d wanted to help,” she said, her voice expressionless, “you should have left your extra passengers on Sanctuary and come back with an entirely adult crew. As it is, you’ve got two teenage girls—one of whom is still dealing with the aftereffects of a lifetime’s imprisonment—and you’re expecting us to use them in a situation that’s scarcely suitable for untrained adults.”

  Another little pause, as vicious as her words, as vicious as the twist of a knife, and the anger flared, bright and hot, within Elissa. “However, as you didn’t leave them, IPL is permitting you to use your ship for one relocation journey. Your own family members and your crew, plus a number of already existing candidates for relocation, including the inhabitants of this apartment. Also, of course, your two underage passengers. But you should understand that’s all. Once you get them off this planet”—the merest flick of her eyes left Elissa in no doubt as to whom, specifically, she meant—“you will not be permitted to bring them back.”

  Cadan’s jaw was rigid. “Are there rules for where I can take my ship after leaving the passengers at Philomel, too?”

  “Not as far as IPL is concerned, Captain. Our agreement with the Philomel authorities does ensure that there’s a place for you there, should you wish to take advantage of it.” Her voice was still utterly indifferent. “The majority of the refugees have been taken there, of course, so if you still want to . . . help . . . by offering any particular understanding you have, to aid in their rehabilitation, you are all, of course, entirely at liberty to do so.”

  Elissa supposed she should feel glad about that, feel that at least they were being given something. If they were condemned to being bundled back off Sekoia, to be the perpetually r
ootless refugees Lin had talked about, at least they could do one of the things they’d wanted. At least they could try helping the other Spares.

  But if it had been meant to pacify them, it was too little, and too late. Commander Dacre had behaved as if she was nothing but contemptuous of Cadan, of the decisions he’d made, she’d spoken as if she blamed him for the decisions that had been made by Elissa and Lin, not by him at all. She’d ignored what they could do—what they could offer. She’d treated them like nothing but kids, out of place and in the way.

  I might not have minded before all this happened. When all I knew was living at home, being looked after, being told what to do. But when you’ve had to do everything I’ve had to do over the last few weeks, when you’ve faced pain and danger and death—no one should be treating you like a child anymore.

  And I don’t want to go to Philomel. Already her stomach was clenching, like a spring being wound tighter. The people who’d worked in the facilities were on Philomel. They might be imprisoned, but all the same, sharing the same planet with them felt too close, as if it were a violation to be breathing the same atmosphere.

  That’s silly. We won’t even necessarily be on the same continent.

  I don’t care. It’s not silly.

  Her eyes caught Cadan’s, and she knew the plea showed in her face. Don’t let her dismiss us like that. Don’t give up yet.

  “Commander,” said Cadan. “With respect, I don’t believe you’ve got all the details of what we’re offering. When I arrived at IPL headquarters, I gave them a full rundown on exactly how we were able to escape from the SFI forces that were sent after us. If it hadn’t been for Elissa and Lin and what they can do, my ship would have been blown to pieces before it ever reached Sanctuary. You do have that information, don’t you? You do know what they did? And you must have a report from the base, from last night? Lin destroyed two flyers—she probably saved the entire base.”

  “I’m aware of both those incidents, yes. However, IPL does not use teenagers as power sources. Or as weapons.” For an instant there was something other than chilly calm in her voice, a tone as if Cadan were forcing her into distasteful proximity with something slimy, stinking of decay.