“You’re not sick, Kara,” she said. “Ancestors forgive me. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“What do you mean?” Kara’s voice wavered. Now her eyes were more than half green. What the hell? He’d never seen anything like it. Back in the Wray, some of the ladies used to take bleaching pills to lighten their skin and their eyes, but it always turned out blotchy and made everyone gossip. But this—this was different.
“Those nightmares you have? They’re memories.” Lydia was consumed by another coughing fit. Kara used her shirt to wipe away the blood.
“Memories? Whose memories?” Kara asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Yours. Before the accident. The overwriter—I was the one who invented it. I was the one who hid it, on Wraeta, not far from my first laboratory.” Aly sucked in a breath as Lydia wheezed, struggling to continue. “Diac Zofim was my partner. We developed it together, but he ended up dead, and I had to hide it. I used it only once . . . on you. The medication helped keep the new memories from doing harm. It helped change your facial features, too, and your eye color . . .”
It all feels made up. Like I made it up, Kara had told him.
Lydia was slipping away. “But your blood—it’s the key to everything.” She fumbled for the coin Kara had shown Aly on the zeppelin, the one Kara had kept stashed in her pocket. “This binds you to your family. There’s history in this coin . . .”
“What family? You’re my family. You have to stay with me.” Kara was crying so hard, Aly could hear her gasping for breath between sobs. He felt his own heart breaking. He wanted to grab the both of them and sprint to safety, erase everything bad that had happened. “Please, Mom. I can’t do this without you.”
“You can,” she said, even as she started to choke. “You have to. In Nau Fruma, the Lancer will—”
Suddenly Kara was screaming, as more and more blood bubbled out of Lydia’s mouth.
“Clear her throat,” Aly yelled, narrowly swerving to avoid a metal roadblock. “Clear her throat.” He slammed the rover into park and lunged into the crowded backseat. Kara scooted aside to make room as they laid Lydia flat, working on getting her windpipe clear, telling her to hold on, to keep going, that it was going to be all right. They worked long after Aly knew there was nothing more they could do for her, and when finally, exhausted and shaking, he felt Kara’s hand on his shoulder, he stopped. Lydia was gone.
Kara scooted back into the seat and eased her mom’s head into her lap. “So she’s comfortable when she wakes up,” Kara said, her eyes now a vivid green, luminous and terrible, splintered with faint pieces of black.
“Yeah, of course,” he said.
Kara ran her fingers through Lydia’s hair and leaned her head against the window, crying quietly. Aly drove north, and tried not to look in the rearview mirror.
TWENTY-FIVE
RHIANNON
WITH a wave of Nero’s hand, Dahlen was wheeled out, strapped to a rolling gurney. An NX pushed him into the center of the white-tiled pit and took a step back. Rhee felt raw and exposed. She urged her breath to slow. Honor, bravery, loyalty as she inhaled and exhaled, on the count of three, spacing them out so as not to feel faint. This was her fault. For all her talk of ma’tan sarili, she had abandoned Dahlen.
She was a fraud.
“What have you done to him?” Even from here, Rhee could see Dahlen’s eyes were dilated. He took in the lights with a dazed expression that looked eerie on the boy she’d come to know. He was always so aware of every detail of his surroundings.
“We’ve prepped him.” Nero walked over to Dahlen and picked up his limp hand, prying the Fontisian’s index finger free so he could press it to Dahlen’s cube. Dahlen’s body stiffened, just barely, and Rhee knew it was from the jolt of electricity traveling to his brain as his cube was turned back on. He’d been offline for years. Nero had made him break his vow.
Nero pressed a panel on the wall, and a large holoscreen projected above them. It began to illuminate, and something took shape—an island against a dark sea. But as it started to sharpen and focus, Rhee understood.
“Get out of his head!”
Dahlen merely squinted up at it.
“Oh, we’re not in his head yet. This is only the diagnostic makeup. Think of it like one of those paintings your mother loved to collect. It has an artist quality, doesn’t it?” Nero said. “But we can scratch off the paint, unpeel the layers . . .”
“Leave him alone!” Rhee backed up and brought her knee up high, kicking down on the glass. It wobbled under the impact and immediately repaired itself.
Projected up on the light box were the peaks and valleys of Dahlen’s brain. So many colors. The form of it was outlined in neon pink; jagged, yellow streaks looked like bolts of lightning scattered about. There were large swaths of green and blue, and they swirled into each other like a lush ocean. She wanted to tear it down so that no one would see.
“Let’s access his playback, shall we?” An ornate metal crown, three feet tall and torturous looking, lowered from the center of the room.
Rhee looked at Nero. “What? No—” There are things locked away in his mind. “You want to . . . to Ravage him?”
He rolled his eyes as he circled Dahlen’s body slowly. “Don’t you want to know what specter haunted his childhood? What horrors produced the boy he is today?”
Rhee thought of the casual breathlessness with which Dahlen had killed. How he’d belittled her for mourning Veyron; cut away that Miseu’s cube without so much as blinking; electrocuted Seotra, who moaned in agony until he turned to ash. Dahlen was psychotic, emotionless, cruel—Rhee had been certain at times. But his dedication, his loyalty—that was part of him too. And who was she, of all people, to judge his bloodlust?
Rhee shook her head. A small no was all she could manage to say.
“Then what of that memory?” Nero continued. “The one buried way deep down in this soup of consciousness—the one of your family? Maybe you can finally know the truth of how they died.”
“You can’t,” she choked out. And yet, she did want to know. She’d obsessed over her family’s deaths; she’d thought about their deaths even more than she had their lives. She had imagined the moment of impact, the fiery explosion, a thousand different ways. Filling in the gaps—however gruesome the details—had been like drinking salt water to quench a thirst.
If she could see, then she could know. She could stop obsessing. She could let it go.
“Or even,” he continued, “where your sister is.” He feigned surprise at the look on her face. “You hoped I hadn’t known?”
She froze. He was one step ahead. He’d always been.
There are things he knows, and things he doesn’t know that he knows, the Elder had said of Dahlen.
“Say the word, Princess. We can download his cube into yours. All his memories, his feelings, his knowledge—yours to experience. Even the moments he himself can’t remember.”
“What would—what would happen to him?” she asked. Rhee could hear the uncertainty in her own voice. Her ma’tan sarili corroding, just like her resolve. She was weak. She’d always been too weak.
“Does it matter?” he asked. “Agree to join me. Relinquish the throne and hand power over to your council, to me, and I’ll let you live. You will be my top adviser. You never had what it takes to be empress. You were never meant to be empress, after all.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“There’s no shame, Rhiannon. Not all of us were meant to rule. Join me. I’ll help you find your sister, and I’ll let her live as well.”
Rhee couldn’t help the desire she felt, like all her atoms were rearranging at this moment, making room for the new knowledge she wanted so badly. For a way to find her sister, finally, after all these years. But at what cost? To make Dahlen a shell? To Ravage him, to reach in and
steal his soul and wring it dry? It made her nauseated, then angry.
Honor. Loyalty. Bravery.
She wasn’t capable of what Nero was asking. Killing was one thing. She couldn’t ask someone to live after she’d taken away the very thing that made him human. The ancestors were watching, and perhaps Vodhan was too.
“No.”
“You stupid girl! You’d die for a Vodhead?” Finally, Nero lost his temper. Spit gathered in the corners of his mouth. All his earlier composure had drained away, and what bubbled up in its place was his rage, his hatred, his petty ambitions. “I’d be doing your people a favor by killing you. A bleeding heart could not serve the throne. It certainly didn’t serve your father.”
“Don’t speak about my father,” Rhee said. She wanted to rip his tongue out of his mouth. “My father died with honor.”
“How quaint.” Nero grabbed the largest scalpel from the table next to him. The droids in the auditorium marched toward her, one coming in from either side. “I’ll make sure you follow in his footsteps.”
Rhee kicked at the glass once more as Nero moved slowly, methodically, lifting the scalpel to Dahlen’s neck. Rhee saw the gleam of the razor-sharp edge from where she stood. It mocked her. She rammed the barrier with her right shoulder and felt the pain bloom in her joint.
Rhee heard it before she looked up—the crunch of metal, the hiss of air. Four prongs, each the size of her forearm, pierced through the ceiling of the auditorium. And then the walls clamped toward the center, closing like a fist. Something unbearable invaded her chest. The oxygen was vacuumed out, replaced by the poisonous compounds outside, filling up her lungs and lining her insides. Her face bloating, her body growing hot, strands of her hair burning away. The sound of an alarm, and red flashing lights . . .
The metal fist pulled, and the whole ceiling ripped away to reveal a gaping hole. The sound was swallowed up into a roaring, scorched black sky.
The droids that had run toward Rhee flew away mid-step, their legs still pumping as they were sucked into the darkness and swatted toward the ground in the heavy gravity. She, too, was lifted into the air.
And the split second before her death, she saw Death.
Death was blue. Death was familiar . . .
It was the Fisherman she’d paid with Julian’s telescope, the one who’d marked her. She couldn’t understand what he was doing there, but it didn’t matter. There was no time to think. He was fitted with a jetpack, a harpoon gun tucked under his arm. He bent backward, reeling in the giant slab of alloy wall as you would a giant fish. In his other hand, he held a short-barreled gun that he aimed straight at Rhee.
She hurtled toward him, forcing her eyelids to stay open despite the swelling. If she’d die, it would be with her eyes open. The Fisherman fired once. Twice.
Some sort of slime hit her square in the face. It hardened instantaneously into a soft plastic, and underneath the strange mask, suddenly she could breathe. The jellylike substance thinned out and spread all around her body, protecting her from the elements. She looked over and saw that the second shot had been aimed at Dahlen, and the same strange plastic encompassed him, too, gurney and all. Rhee nearly melted with relief.
The bully, the madman, and the empress—together once more.
Their protective shells thinned out into a ropelike plastic, tethering them to the Fisherman’s belt. Through the cloudy plastic, Rhee could see little pockets of air bubbling up and circulating within the substance—all of it funneling toward her nostrils and mouth. It felt heavy on her eyelids, but she kept them open and managed to turn, somehow. The medical section of the prison had unspooled behind them. Debris was scattered across the metal ground, half-buried deep into the electromagnetic soil, so that it all looked like an organism that had withered on a vine. She searched for Nero, or the scarred man, but she could not see them.
Then the Fisherman fired up his jetpack and they thrust upward at launch speed, so that everything became a blur. Rhee and Dahlen sped behind him, tethered in their plastic cocoons.
TWENTY-SIX
ALYOSHA
ALY’S feet dangled out of the open tailgate. He turned his face up to the sun and thought of his ma, nagging him to cover up and get in the shade with her and Alina. “You’ll get even darker,” she’d say, like it was some sort of threat. Now Aly rolled up his sleeves so the sun could touch every last bit of skin.
Maybe he’d get darker. So what?
It was like the sun’s warmth fueled him, activated his insides and made him even more pissed off. The whole godsdamned thing was rigged, and everyone was losing. But at least there was something he could do about it, finally.
At least he could help Kara.
She was taking forever, and the only way Aly could measure how much time had passed was by the layer of grit that formed on his arms. In the weak gravity, the moondust floated up in a haze and landed lazily wherever it felt like. Wild, how much Nau Fruma reminded him of Wraeta. It was the same kind of heat that made everything lag, even your brain. The kind of sunlight that made you squint or shade your eyes with the palm of your hand.
They’d come to Nau Fruma to find the Lancer, whoever that was, as Lydia had instructed them to do. Kara’d gotten them to this moon—talking her way into a trading post on Houl, bartering some simple repair work Aly did on a droid for their passage onto a freighter, scraping together spare credits to buy them clothes. All those languages she knew had helped them a lot.
It’d been less than a week since they’d escaped the prison on Houl, and since they’d buried Lydia’s body. Kara had said she should’ve been cremated, it’s what she would’ve wanted—but beyond that she didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe she was processing it on her own? What could you say to someone who’d had her whole history overwritten? He felt like a choirtoi, the way he’d run around wanting to forget his past. Yeah, there were things that hurt to remember.
But his past was everything that made him him.
Kara didn’t know who she was.
“Does this work?” Kara asked. He turned around to see her messing with a purple scarf around her head. When all her hair was tucked away, it brought out the shape of her face, like a heart. There were freckles across her cheeks he’d never noticed on her tan skin. He tried to memorize her, tried to soak in every detail, as if he could absorb the truth of her, of this moment, through the heat between them. “Do I blend in?”
What she didn’t get was that she would never blend in. Not really. Plus she was wearing the duhatj too far back.
“Not exactly,” Aly said. He stood up and brushed himself off. “You gotta kind of . . .”
He reached behind Kara to unravel the scarf, and her messy black hair fell everywhere. It smelled good—just a little bit sweet—and he brushed it out of her eyes for no good reason.
“Your eyes are still changing color,” he said. Her right one had specks of green and yellow in it, like the first days of spring. And her left one was brown and deep and perfect for exactly those reasons. Aly cupped her face and she grabbed his arm; he thought she’d pull it away, but her hand stayed there, soft and warm.
“You don’t have to help me,” Kara said.
“I want to help,” Aly said, taking in her face, the slight pout of her lip. His cube wasn’t on. He’d have to remember every detail. Gods. It felt more important, precious somehow, knowing that once the moment passed it would be gone forever. “I’m not going anywhere, Kara.”
She squeezed his arm, just a little. But a little was all he needed.
He ran his hand up the back of her head and felt her thick hair tangle in his fingers. She ran her palm up his chest, then grabbed a handful of his thin cotton shirt and pulled him in. Closing the distance between them was fast and slow at once, a desperate sprint to the finish line, where there was everything he’d ever wanted. Then, finally, his mouth was on hers—her lips soft and yield
ing and opening, a tiny gasp, a hot breath. The warmth of them finding each other in that dark spot, in that very center of their souls, was so perfect he thought he might lose his mind. Aly wrapped his arms around Kara and felt the small of her back, right there where it dipped—and when she wrapped her arms around him he pressed his mouth in harder. She met him, and pushed back, and it felt like the only battle worth fighting. It didn’t matter if he won or lost; he just hoped it would never end.
This was home, with Kara, with the girl who’d always believed he was innocent.
TWENTY-SEVEN
RHIANNON
ON board Dahlen’s ship, they floated. Here on the outer edges of the Desuco Quadrant, massive rocks were adrift in the darkness, like giants curled up in a long slumber. The Fisherman often made catches here. Perfect conditions for the octoerces’ feeding ground, Rhee had been told. And a perfect place for them to hide.
She pulled out Julian’s telescope and sought out the octoerces in the darkness. There was enough radiant heat coming off the rocks to keep the temperatures warm, but there was no air, no atmosphere—and still somehow the creatures lived.
Before, she saw herself in them. Rhee, too, was resilient. She’d survive.
But now she thought differently. The octoerces were merely trying to feed. Swept up in the gravitational pull of any nearby bodies, their life was one of constant movement, from one food source to the next. Survival, it turned out, wasn’t the same as living.
Dahlen balanced Rhee’s coin across his knuckles, moving it back and forth between his pinky and index finger. It was the souvenir her dad had given her, the very coin that she’d snuck off the craft for—the one that saved her life. Rhee thought she’d lost it in the move to Nau Fruma, but Tai Reyanna had it this whole time. She’d planned to give it to Rhee on the day of her coronation.
Empress of a Thousand Skies Page 24