This Shattered World

by Amie Kaufman

  She takes a while to answer, and when she does, her voice is oddly detached. “I’m from Verona. I grew up in a city called November.”

  For a long while, the only sounds are the background noises of the base: shuttles taking off and landing in the distance, people moving to and fro, the faint strains of music coming from one of the barracks.

  I’m beginning to understand this soldier a little, the fierceness there, the rage underneath that stony exterior. My sister would have loved her.

  Well, no, I correct myself. Orla would’ve wanted her strung up as an example to the other trodairí.

  But if Jubilee had been born one of us, Orla would’ve been her best friend.

  I glance once more at the photograph on her nightstand. I don’t even have a picture of my sister—I have only the blurry-edged memory of her laugh, her dark braid over her shoulder. Little things, like the way she tied her boots; and big, horrible things, like the look on her face when she said good-bye to me the day before her execution. It’s not enough. It won’t ever be enough.

  Jubilee’s watching me as the silence stretches out between us, until finally she breaks it. “I didn’t tell them anything about you.” She sounds halfway queasy about it, irritated and confused, but I believe her.

  I’m trying to cling to the anger and desperation that brought me here, but it’s growing harder to believe that Jubilee’s the enemy, even one held at bay by a grudging truce. “Why didn’t you?”

  Her eyes dart toward mine, a brief glimmer of the lamp outside reflected there before she looks away sharply. “I don’t know.” Her fingers twist around the sheets, betraying the conflict behind her calm voice. “Because if your people listened to you, there might not be insurgents laying booby traps on our patrol routes. Because if you were arrested, maybe more of them would start.”

  I want to put my hand over hers and ease that white-knuckled grip. My eloquence fails me; there aren’t words for the impossible strangeness of this, sitting on a soldier’s bed in the middle of the night, wishing I could touch her. But I just look at her hand, fixing my eyes there, not trusting myself to look at her face.

  Strangely enough, my voice is steady when I speak. “That’s what scares me about dying. Knowing what will happen here afterward.” Her hand tightens, and I breathe out. The words come from somewhere deep and hidden—not even Sean has heard them before. “And I think I will die, sooner than I want to.”

  She’s quiet so long, I begin to think she didn’t hear me. When she does speak, it’s a murmur. “So will I.”

  I lift my head to find her watching me, her brown eyes intent on my face. The half-hidden empathy in her gaze ought to feel strange, coming from my enemy; the only strangeness is that it doesn’t. “Why doesn’t this Fury touch you?” I find myself asking. “Where are your dreams?”

  Her eyes fall, tension seeping back in along her shoulders. A muscle in her jaw twitches before she speaks. “I don’t dream.”

  “But you said everyone gets the Fury dreams sooner or later.”

  “I don’t dream, Cormac. At all. Not once since—since my parents were killed on Verona. The doctors on the training base ran all kinds of tests on me, certain I just didn’t remember my dreams, but their machines proved I simply don’t.”

  “Everybody dreams, Jubilee. You’d go mad if you didn’t.”

  “Some of the soldiers have a theory.” Her voice is too light, and the smile she tugs into place doesn’t reach her eyes. “They think the reason I don’t dream is the same as the reason the Fury can’t take me. They mean it as a joke, but it’s as good a theory as any. They say I have no soul. That this place can’t break me because I have no heart to break.”

  She’s only lit by the outside lamp that shines in through her broken window, but I can make out the shape of her face, her high cheekbones and the way her lips press together as she works to keep her composure. “Well now,” I murmur. “You know that’s not true. And I know that’s not true.”

  She doesn’t answer right away, and she drops her eyes to the blanket, where our hands are inches apart. In the silence, I can hear the rain on the roof above us finally starting to die out. “You can’t know it’s not true,” she whispers, refusing to look at me. “What do you know of souls and hearts and how they break here? You don’t know me at all.”

  “Oh, Jubilee.” My resolve shatters, and my hand slides toward hers. She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t look up either, watching my fingers curling through hers. “Hearts and souls and how they break? That’s all Avon teaches anyone.”

  But words won’t do.

  It’s wrong, and stupid, and a million other things that flicker through my thoughts. My hand moves anyway, drawing her closer so I can trace my fingertips down her temple and along her cheekbone. A weight carried deep in my heart shifts when my fingers register the softness of her skin, still flushed warm with sleep; it’s a truth I couldn’t dare admit to myself, not when I first saw her at Molly’s, not when I treated her wounds, not when we spoke in the quiet of the Fianna’s caves. But if it’s all headed for an end anyway—if tomorrow is to bring war, and death, and chaos—then this truth, right here, is all I have. All either of us has.

  She doesn’t move until my fingers reach her jawline; abruptly she lifts a hand, fingertips connecting with my wrist as though to pull it away. But she doesn’t. Her touch on my wrist is so warm, her heart beating so quickly that I can feel the flutter of her pulse in the contact of her thumb on my skin. She freezes there, watching me with those eyes. I can see her struggle despite the dim light; I feel it like my own. Because it is my own. Trodaire. Fianna. Fighters, both of us—tired of fighting.

  “I do know you,” I whisper, and hear her breath catch in the darkness.

  I lean forward, tilting my face toward hers, the warmth of her pulling me closer. She shifts too, chin lifting—tiny movements, little invitations and questions, each of us hesitant. But then my lips graze hers, and for an instant, everything else fades away into the rain and the quiet.

  Then her hand at my wrist tightens and she’s shoving me back. “Get out,” she murmurs, those eyes suddenly shuttered. Only the flush remains, shifting toward anger, away from…away from me.

  “What?” I resist her for a beat too long, trying to pull my scattered thoughts back into place.

  “Cormac, go. Now.”

  “Jubilee—”

  Her other hand comes up, and it turns out she’s still gripping the gun, pushing the barrel into my chest and cutting off my words. Her hair’s mussed, and in her T-shirt she looks nothing like Stone-faced Chase, but her grip on the Gleidel doesn’t waver. “I said get out.”

  I ease away slowly, keeping my hands where she can see them, and rise to my feet. “Please, Jubilee. We have to talk about what to do, for the ceasefire, for Avon.” I know what else I should say: I’m sorry. But I’m not. I’m confused as hell, but I can’t apologize; this is the first thing I’ve felt sure about in months.

  “We?” She keeps the gun up, a barrier between us. “We don’t do anything. You go home, Cormac, and I stay here. There’s nothing more for you to do here. Go, and let me do my job.” Her voice is utterly cold, making it hard to imagine there was ever a spark of heat in her response to my touch.

  I back up a step toward the window. “Don’t do this. I need your help. Together we have a chance to stop this.”

  She’s in control now, a soldier from head to toe. “If you wanted a collaborator from my side, you should have picked someone else to kidnap. I don’t work with rebels. Just go, Cormac.” She swallows hard. “Please.”

  That last word is an appeal, not an order, and that’s what defeats me. “Clear skies,” I whisper. A refusal to surrender hope. A wish for the impossible.

  She watches as I turn for the window, and when I glance back before climbing out through it, she’s still holding the gun steady.

  The girl is dreaming about the first time she flew. There are dozens of other orphans from the war on th
e shuttle with her, but most of them are from Oscar and Sierra, and she doesn’t know them. Some are crying with fear, others are talking to combat it, and a few of them are laughing.

  The launch silences most of the children, the shuttle engines roaring. It isn’t until they break through Verona’s atmosphere and the engines quiet a little that the girl hears the other children again, all gasping now, exclaiming at the way their arms and legs are floating up, with nothing but their harnesses to hold them in their seats.

  The girl looks out the window, watching the gentle, familiar blue sky fade into darkness. The stars come out, slowly at first and then all together, diamond-bright, each one a new world to discover.

  But no matter how long the girl looks, she feels nothing. Puzzled, she looks for the girl who wanted to be an explorer, the girl who wanted to learn deep-sea diving and mountain-climbing, the girl who wanted to travel the stars. But she can’t find her. That girl died when her parents did, in a little shop in the slums of November. And now she has no soul left to shatter.

  She closes the shade over the window.

  I KEEP THE GLEIDEL TRAINED on the window for a full minute after he’s gone. I don’t know why—I’m not going to shoot him, and we both know it. Maybe it’s just a reminder. Of what I am, of what he is. Of how things are supposed to be between us. We were only ever supposed to see each other across the barrel of a gun.

  My heart is racing like I’m in the middle of a scramble drill, its beat wild and thumping painfully in my chest. How dare he—how could he be so stupid as to come back, and so soon after the incident in town? I may not have given a description to the commander, but there was a whole bar full of soldiers that night who would stand a good chance of recognizing him if they saw him again.

  I force my arm to relax, letting the gun drop to my blanket, flexing my cramped fingers. I was gripping the gun far too tightly. An emotional response. I grimace, getting to my feet and reaching for the canteen slung over the room’s desk chair.

  I don’t have the luxury of dealing with his hormones—or mine, for that matter. What, did he think I was just going to melt into his arms? Start a tragic and dramatic tale of star-crossed lovers on a war-torn planet?

  I should have told him about the ident chip I found. It’s proof he’s not crazy, that there was something out there in no-man’s-land. That while it might not be the full-blown conspiracy he claims, he’s not entirely wrong either. But the moment I tell him he’s right, we’ll be bound together even more than we are now. He’d have reason to keep endangering both of us with this ridiculous notion that we’re on the same side, that we could ever be allies.

  I take a long pull from the canteen. But suddenly, that’s not enough. So I splash some of the water on my face, scrubbing my hands over my cheeks, my eyes, my mouth. Trying to rid myself of the smell of him close to me, the feel of his fingers against my cheek, the soft feather touch of his breath.

  But no amount of scrubbing will get rid of that tired longing in his voice, the memory of how he looked at me.

  I throw the canteen down onto the bed and cross to the window. There’s nothing to be seen there, only darkness. No stars, no moons—never on Avon. Only thick blackness stretching from here through the rest of the base and out into the swamp. In my mind’s eye I can see the bioluminescent wispfire from the cave, blooming against the night, tricking my eyes. No wonder the men believe in will-o’-the-wisps.

  And then, abruptly, there is a light. Gentle, orange, blossoming somewhere out of sight but reflecting against the buildings nearest me and catching in the rain so that for an instant, I can see individual drops as they fall.

  Then the whole building shakes with a deafening boom that knocks me against the window frame, sending shards of pain shooting up through my ribs. Ears ringing, blinded against the darkness, I stagger to my feet. It’s an explosion.

  My first thought, as I try to get my feet working: Flynn. My mind goes blank, unwilling to imagine him caught in the blast.

  I’m moving before I have time for anything else, jerking my combat suit on over my clothes. I grab my gun and my boots, and lurch for the door. It isn’t until I’m sprinting toward the flames rising on the other side of the base that it occurs to me.

  Maybe Cormac doesn’t know his people as well as he thought he did. Maybe this is the beginning of the war.

  Chaos unfolds before me as I reach the site. It’s one of the barracks, but I can’t stop to think about the implications of a bomb going off in a building full of sleeping soldiers. My eyes are used to chaos, and I shove aside a sobbing civilian in order to push closer.

  Half the building is gone, collapsed into rubble, and the rest is burning fiercely. The stench of burned plastene and wood composite scorches the inside of my nose as I try to catch my breath. I unzip my combat suit and tear a hand-width strip of material from the T-shirt underneath, then wind it around my nose and mouth. There are a few bodies outside, people who were near the barracks at the time of the explosion. My stomach drops painfully, but I don’t have time to see who’s there. In the aggressive glow of the flames, it’s impossible to see any details that will tell me if Cormac is among the dead.

  Not many others have gotten here yet. I’ve served on a first response team, and it’s drilled into me—but not everyone sprints toward the sound of an explosion. No other officers I can see, except for a dazed lieutenant standing a few feet away, one sleeve soaked with blood. No time for him right now.

  The men and women in the barracks next door are starting to pour out, confused and wide-eyed. No purpose, no order. Damn it. Fresh meat. They think they’re sending us trained fighters, but spending a few months on nice, safe obstacle courses and drills doesn’t prepare a soul for life on Avon.

  “Over here, soldiers,” I scream at them over the sound of the flames, and hopefully over the ringing in their ears. Only a few hear me, and I go jogging toward them until I’ve got the attention of the rest.

  “Six groups.” I shove through the slack-jawed crowd, dividing soldiers up as I go. “You and you—yes, you, you can put your pants on later. Get the retardant canisters. You’ve drilled for this. Listen to me, look at me. Run back into your barracks and grab the canisters and get back here. Now.”

  In their shock, the newbies are more afraid of me than of what’s happening behind me. They go sprinting back toward their bunks as if a pack of wild dogs is on their heels.

  I’m busy dividing the rest of the survivors into rescue parties, and as the rain and the fire extinguishers start opening a path, we head into the parts of the building farthest from the explosion site and not burning quite so hotly.

  The moments that follow are lost in a sea of smoke and heat. We pull bodies from the building, some stirring and coughing, others silent and slick with blood. Every ten minutes or so a few of us duck outside for a few lungfuls of less contaminated air, but every time it’s harder to catch our breaths. Firefighting teams have assembled, working with high-pressure hoses and chemicals that burn our eyes almost as much as the smoke.

  After the fourth or fifth time I emerge, a hand grabs my arm and jerks me back when I turn to go back inside.

  “Enough, Captain!” It’s Major Jameson, shouting in my ear. “You’re done.”

  I nod, unable to speak through the smoke in my lungs. I’m too relieved to have an officer outranking me, an actual leader, taking charge. Give me a few minutes to recover my balance and I can rejoin simply as one of the rescue squad.

  But when I get back to my feet, Jameson drags me back through the churned up mud and bodily pushes me into the hands of a waiting medic before vanishing back into the haze of smoke. “You’re benched,” the medic shouts at me. I hear the words, but they don’t process. The medic frowns and shoves an oxygen mask into my hands, then disappears to attend to patients in more dire straits. It’s only then that I realize the soldiers from the neighboring barracks, the crews I organized, have all been replaced by fresher rescue workers. I catch sight of a few of
the original crews huddled with oxygen masks and blankets on the edge of the chaos.

  I tear the dirty strip of T-shirt from my face and suck a lungful of clean air from the mask. It’s a while before I can stand again, dizzy with the rush of oxygen and with my sudden stillness. But I force myself to my feet, taking one last long breath through the mask before I make my way out of the medic’s area.

  There are stretchers everywhere. Some with survivors, being moved to intensive care at the hospital, others with casualties being transferred to a temporary morgue, which right now is no more than bodies laid side by side in the mud with sheets draped over them. I step back to let a team pass carrying a badly wounded man. He’s burned so badly that it’s impossible to tell where his clothes stop and scorched flesh begins. He’s silent, though, when I would’ve expected him to be screaming. His eyes are open, staring at the empty night sky. As they pass, his eyes meet mine for a moment. I don’t know him. My sudden relief at that makes me sick to my stomach. Someone, somewhere, knows him. It shouldn’t matter that he’s not one of mine.

  I pick my way through the hordes of the wounded, examining faces. A few are mine. So far, none are wounded badly enough to be placed in critical condition. Sweat pours down my temples and my back, and the ash in the air sticks to my face. The flames are dying down, but someone’s put up big floodlights around the site, so even as the flames subside, the night is held at bay. My feet itch to turn back for the building, which is starting to creak with the added weight of the water and the fire suppression chemicals. It won’t be standing much longer, and they need all the help they can get evacuating the wounded before it collapses.

  The medic who removed me from duty is nowhere in sight. But before I can head back toward the flames, I’m forced to step aside for another stretcher. I glance down—and the world stops for an infinite second.

  “Captain, we need to get—”