“Okay. I’m coming.”
A few minutes later Lin arrived on the flight deck and hurried up the steps to the bridge. She looked flushed and bright eyed, obviously riding a sugar-and-chocolate high.
“What is it?” she said as Cadan let her through the barrier.
He explained briefly. He’d tried to get the message again while they waited for Lin to arrive, and again it had come through in a spatter of meaningless pixels on the screen, a disjointed buzz and crackle of static in the speakers. The emergency marker—a tiny, ultrastable block of code designed to make it through nearly any type of interference—blinked on the screen and repeated in a short pattern of beeps in the midst of the storm of static. And on the main viewscreen, Cadan pointed out the broken, blinking line that showed that the message was originating from on or near Philomel. But nothing else came through. No ID marker, no hint of whether the emergency was on the planet itself, or between the Phoenix and its destination.
“For all I know they’re warning us away,” said Cadan, wiping the screen clear and resetting the receivers—yet again—to their widest sweep. “But without knowing for sure, I can’t take the ship blinding back out into space. Damn it, Philomel’s supposed to be a first-grade planet—what are they doing with this kind of shoddy equipment? For all SFI’s faults, we did at least keep our communications going.”
Lin had slid into a seat next to him, her gaze intent on the screens. “What do you want me for?”
“Okay,” said Cadan. “It’s a long shot, I know. But you picked up incoming aircraft down on Sekoia. I don’t know which bit of your mind you’re working with when you do that—”
Lin shrugged. “Me neither.”
“—but if it’s tied to your electrokinesis, then it might be that you’re sensing the presence of electrical fields. In which case you might be able to read this message before it hits whatever it is that’s scrambling it before it reaches us.”
Lin was nodding. “Yeah. Okay.” She reached a finger out to the com-unit, then hesitated. “Can I touch?”
“Sure. Try not to fry the circuits, though.”
Lin grinned, amused, then put her fingertip to the screen of the unit, and her smile was brushed away by a look of intense concentration.
Silence stretched out, second after second of it, ticking soundlessly by, measured only by the blinking, changing numbers of the control-panel clock. Lin shut her eyes and spread her other fingers over the screen, still resting just her fingertips on the shiny surface.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s . . . very empty.”
Vertigo made Elissa’s stomach swoop as it came to her that Lin was looking out into space, into all that emptiness, into a dark, airless, lifeless ocean that went out and out and down forever. For a terrifying moment she was afraid Lin, as she had so many times before, would pull Elissa into experiencing it with her, would pull Elissa into staring, through Lin’s eyes, into all that directionless dark. A random, out-of-place quote swam into her brain: “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” She couldn’t remember where it came from or what it meant, but that was what it felt like—the abyss gazing into her, huge, impersonal and merciless. Her head spun, and she dug her nails into her palms, trying to anchor herself in her own body, her own consciousness.
“Oh,” said Lin again. “That’s why it’s not getting through. There’s a . . . like a cloud of . . . bits, debris. A whole band of it.”
“Can you tell what the message is?” said Cadan.
Lin’s eyes, already shut, screwed up tighter. “It’s such a long way . . . and it’s so empty.”
“Stop it,” said Elissa suddenly. “Stop it. It’s too much.”
“Lissa,” said Cadan, “we have to get this message.”
“You don’t. Lin, come back! Stop trying.”
“Lissa—”
“Cadan, she’s not a machine! You can’t just use her like this!”
For a moment his mouth opened as if to snap back at her, then he changed what he’d been going to say. “Okay. You’re right. Lin? Lin, you heard what your sister said.”
“Emergency,” said Lin, her voice expressionless. All of a sudden it was as if she were a machine, a speech-robot processing a communication from unspoken words to spoken. Elissa’s skin went as instantly cold as if she had stepped physically into that airless, freezing ocean outside the ship. That was Lin speaking in that robot voice. Lin who’d gazed into the abyss and seen it gazing back at her.
“Emergency transmission to all ships carrying Sekoian Spares,” said Lin. “All Spares and their twins are at extreme risk. Repeat, extreme risk. Spares and twins must be separated immediately—”
She broke off, choked, then spoke in her normal voice. “What? What are they trying to do?” She scrambled up and around in her seat, her hands going out to Elissa. “They’re wanting to separate us? Now? I thought we were coming to Philomel because it was safe.”
“Lin.” Cadan had half risen in his seat. “What else did it say? The message, what else did it say?”
Lin shook her head. She was clutching Elissa’s hands now, her own tight with panic. “I don’t know. I don’t know what else. It said that—they want to separate us—”
Elissa’s heart was thumping, high in her chest, her throat, her temples, making it hard to think, making it so that she couldn’t draw enough breath to speak. Extreme risk. All Spares and their twins are at extreme risk. And suddenly it wasn’t Lin’s face in her mind, but Zee’s.
Cadan touched the controls, turning the autopilot on, then got up and came around the safety bar at the back of the control-panel seats. He reached over Elissa’s arm and grasped Lin’s shoulder. “Lin, listen to me. You’re at risk. You and Lissa. That’s why they’re saying separation. If you didn’t hear the rest, then we won’t know why, but we’re going to have to do it.”
“No. No.” Lin wrenched her shoulder away from him, her gaze clinging frantically to Elissa’s. “Lissa, say something. You said you believed me. You said you knew I wouldn’t hurt you. I won’t, I wouldn’t ever—”
“And if you want to make sure of that, you’ll let yourselves be separated.” Cadan’s voice rose. “Lin, listen to me. If you want to keep Lissa safe, you’ll do as they said.”
“But I won’t hurt her! I won’t!” Lin’s fingers were a death grip now.
“Lin! No one’s saying you will! It’s both of you in danger—you read the message yourself. It’s not saying who the danger’s from, it’s just saying in order to be protected you need to be separated. Now for God’s sake will you stop freaking out and putting your sister in more danger than she needs to be?”
That, finally, got through to Lin. Her hands dropped. She took a step back, bumping against the edge of the control panel, her eyes fixed on Elissa’s face. “Then what is it? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” said Cadan, a slight snap to his voice. “You didn’t listen to all the message. Look, Lis, you stay here for a minute. Lin, I’ll take you back to Ivan. I—” He broke off. “God, what am I thinking? The other Spares.” He lifted his hand, about to switch his wrist-communicator on, but as if he’d broken Elissa’s paralysis, her throat unfroze. She could speak, and she knew what she had to say.
“Zee,” she said. “If there’s danger, it’s from Zee.”
Cadan’s eyes met hers. “You’re sure? Just Zee?”
“I don’t know. I mean—yes, definitely Zee. But I don’t know. The message—maybe it just meant Zee, maybe it meant the rest of us too.”
“Okay.” He clicked his wrist-unit on. “Attention, all passengers and crew. Attention. This is an emergency directive. All Spares and twins must separate immediately. All Spares, go to the passenger lounge. All twins, go to your cabins. Go immediately. This is an emergency directive from the ship’s captain. You must comply immediately. Official personnel will contact you shortly to explain further.”
He clicked the wrist-unit again. “Dad?”
&nb
sp; “Cadan?” came Clement Greythorn’s voice. “What do you need?”
“Isolate Zee,” said Cadan. “He’s the priority. Get him away from Ady. Sedate him—both of them—if you have to. I need him secured.”
“Got it,” said his father.
“Where are you now?”
“On my way to the passenger lounge. I’ll find them, son, don’t worry.”
In the background, there was a sudden clamor of voices, loud enough to be heard even through the narrowly focused mic of Clement’s wrist-unit.
“What’s that?” said Cadan.
“Arguments.” His father’s voice sharpened. “Possibly resistance. I’m outside the lounge. It sounds like they don’t want to get separated. You might want to get down here too, Cay.”
“On my way.” Cadan strode to the door, then swung around to the twins. “You both come. Lissa, walk in front of me. Lin, come behind. When we reach the lounge, Lissa, go to your cabin, okay? Lock yourself in. Lin, you need to go into the lounge with the other Spares.”
Lin didn’t so much as murmur an objection. She was silent as they left the bridge, then the flight deck, then went down the corridor through door after door, each snapping shut behind them with a whoosh and clunk.
They weren’t far from the passenger areas now. Resistance, Mr. Greythorn had said, but Elissa was sure it wasn’t anything as deliberate as that. They’d be panicking, afraid that “separated” meant “separated for good.” Maybe appalled, as Lin had been appalled, at the implication that it was they who would put their twins in danger.
She threw a quick glance back over her shoulder—and that one glance showed her that although Cadan didn’t yet have his blaster out of its halter, he had dropped his hand to rest near it. He was capable of shooting to kill, she knew it—had seen it—but never before had he used a weapon against anyone other than people attacking them.
“Cadan,” she said, “they won’t be resisting, like, on purpose. It’s not a mutiny. They’ll be freaked out.”
“I know.” Although she’d flung only one glance toward him, she knew he must have seen her eyes widen when she saw his hand on his blaster. “I’m not going to mow them down, Lis. But they have to be separated for their own safety, and if I need to frighten them into doing it and apologize afterward . . .”
“Yeah. Okay.” It was okay. Of course that might be what he needed to do—she did understand. But all the same . . .
They went through another door, into one of the amber-edged passenger-area corridors.
. . . all the same, if I got it wrong and the danger isn’t from Zee—if it isn’t from anyone, if we misunderstood and it’s something else altogether . . .
And that was when the screaming started.
ELISSA FROZE, all her blood suddenly beating just below her skin, a thrumming all over her body, cutting off coherent thought. Screaming. Screaming coming from one of the rooms in the passenger area ahead of them.
Then she was shoved against the wall as Cadan pushed past her. “Keep back,” he said. “Both of you. Keep out of the way.”
He strode ahead, past one door, another, then paused outside the door of the passenger lounge, where most of the Spares and twins were. His blaster was in his hand, but for a horrible frozen instant he hesitated, hand half up to the panel that would open the door. His face was pale in the overhead lights, and Elissa suddenly knew that he, like she, was all at once hyperaware of everything that could be waiting behind that door. He, being Cadan, probably wasn’t considering putting his hands over his ears and shutting his eyes and running to his cabin to bury his head in the pillow, though. Or—once again his expression hit her—maybe he was.
Cadan moved his hand up to the panel, and the door opened.
The screams hit her like something solid, so loud that for a moment every sense save hearing ceased to operate.
There were lots of mouths the screams were coming from, but the person Elissa noticed first was Cassiopeia. Her eyes were so wide with shock that they seemed to be bulging from her head. She’d been stumbling across the room, and as the door opened she half fell out. She would have fallen onto Cadan if he hadn’t sidestepped. Instead she crashed into Elissa. Her hands came up, a death grip on Elissa’s arms, and her mouth formed shapes that seemed to have no connection to words.
Elissa’s gaze went frantically over her head, trying to see what was happening, trying to scan the room. Cadan’s dad had said they were resisting, that was all, that was all. What had happened to cause that screaming, to make Cassiopeia look like that?
Cadan was in the room now, pushing through the crowd, snapping commands for them to move back. Then someone lurched into him, knocking him sideways.
A space cleared, and Elissa saw what had caused the screaming.
It was Zee she saw first. Zee, his eyes as blank as a white sky, his teeth bared, and around them, his lips drawn back as far as they would go. His face was empty, but it wasn’t just the emptiness—the fugue state—she’d seen on it before. This was the face of someone whose mind had been rinsed of every scrap of sanity.
The next thing she saw was the blood on his hands. On his fingernails—under his fingernails. As if he’d—oh God, no. That can’t be someone else’s blood. What can he have done to get someone else’s blood under his nails like that?
Even as she stared, Zee’s arms were seized from behind, dragged behind his back. One arm had been grabbed by Samuel, the other by Ivan, and even Ivan looked as if it was taking every bit of his strength. Zee was struggling against them—furiously, Elissa’s mind supplied, but that word didn’t even begin to describe the insane energy powering Zee’s limbs as he fought to get free. Samuel’s wrist was bleeding, and there was a spatter of scarlet across Ivan’s chef’s shirt collar. Oh God, it was someone else’s blood. He attacked them—Ivan and Samuel. But why? Why?
And Ady. Where’s Ady? If Zee’s freaking out, Ady must be able to do something?
Then, as if her mind was deliberately narrowing her field of vision, forcing her to take in only one horrifying thing at a time, she realized where Ady was. Realized what had happened to him.
Ady was standing by the viewing panel, facing Zee. His hands were to his face, and blood was streaming down between his fingers. Blood was smeared around his eyes, too, from where it had poured from long scratches that raked his forehead, hairline to eyebrow. Long scratches that were the marks of fingernails.
“Zee.” She spoke out loud without realizing, her voice drowned in the noise of the crowd around her. She disentangled herself from Cassiopeia’s clutching hands and went forward, her legs numb beneath her, her gaze fixed as if she were mesmerized on Zee’s awful, blank-eyed, snarling face. “Zee. My God, what have you done?”
“Don’t go near him.” Ady’s voice was choked with tears, wavery with shock and pain. “Something’s gone wrong. It’s my fault. I should have known, I should have spoken to someone sooner. His mind—all the stuff he went through—”
But you? He attacked you? Elissa’s mind was a fog of horror. Somewhere in the distance she heard Cadan’s voice and realized vaguely that he’d been speaking for a while, although she hadn’t heard anything of what he’d said.
“Restraints,” he was saying now. “Get me the goddamn restraints.” Then: “Lissa, get away from him! Get back, everyone. Ady, get away, for God’s sake.”
Elissa backed away, partly in response to the note in Cadan’s voice, mostly from an instinctive, panicked impulse to put as much distance as she possibly could between herself and the blood-streaked creature in front of her that was this nightmare version of Zee.
She crashed into someone, and she must have been moving faster than she realized because whoever it was staggered, throwing her off balance. She trod on someone else’s foot, flung a hand out to steady herself, missed grabbing anything, and was only stopped from falling by someone’s hands coming out to hold her. She threw a look up, and it was Mrs. Greythorn.
“What’s happening?” ask
ed Elissa, her voice coming out so thin she could hardly hear it, then rising and cracking, an out-of-control note that scared her all over again. “What’s going on?”
Mrs. Greythorn’s voice was flat with shock. “I have no idea. We were starting to organize them into separating. El got upset, and a couple of the others, and I went over to them to talk to them. Then”—she shook her head—“I heard Ady say his brother’s name, and I looked back, and Zee had . . . frozen. And then . . .” She shut her eyes, her face going motionless, swallowed, and reopened her eyes. “Just . . . that. He just . . .”
All the time she was talking, Elissa hadn’t been able to look away for longer than a second from where Zee was now being wrestled into wrist restraints. He was shrieking now, on an impossibly high note that sounded as if it would tear out the lining of his throat, and it was taking not only Samuel and Ivan but Cadan and Mr. Greythorn to hold him still enough to get the restraints around his wrists.
He can’t be that strong, not naturally. And this—it’s not just panic. He’s actually gone insane. Oh God, Ady and I both knew there was something not right, and we didn’t tell anyone. We didn’t think . . .
What if it was too late? What if, after everything he’d been through, Zee’s mind had cracked beyond fixing? What if, so soon after finding his twin, Ady was going to lose him all over again?
Faces set with effort, shoulders straining, Cadan and Mr. Greythorn had gotten the restraints around one of Zee’s wrists. Now they were struggling to pull his other wrist close enough to lock the restraints around that one too. Just as the second restraint snapped shut, Zee gave a high, ululating wail, and all Elissa’s skin seemed to shrink closer on her body, part in terror—no one should be able to make that noise—and part in horrified pity. Are they hurting him? He’s gone crazy, but he’s still Zee, and such awful things have happened to him—
One more awful thing still to come, as it turned out.
The wail hadn’t been a noise of pain, but of defiance. So fast Elissa hardly realized what he was doing, Zee braced himself and slammed his head back into Cadan’s face. Cadan’s head snapped backward, his face stunned and blank but seemingly unhurt for a second—until the bright blood began to gush from his nose.
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