“Yeah,” Shiloh said, every bit of happiness and excitement from a moment ago faded as fast as their spotlight. “It’s still bad?”
“It’s not great.” His eyes flicked down to his arm, then away again just as fast. There were no lasting marks, and he’d just demonstrated full use of his hand easily enough, but he still looked haunted. “Helps to think about anything else. So thanks for helping me out there.”
“It’s okay,” Shiloh said gently. It wasn’t hard to believe xir friend was still in pain. With Indra’s showmanship energy dissipating, the bags under his eyes and the heaviness in his movements were clear. Exhaustion radiated off him in waves. “For a while, you looked happy. I mean really happy. It’s a good look on you.”
“I was. For a minute. I’m okay if I stay with people,” he said quietly. “I think one reason I got so bad over the years is I was alone so much. Too much quiet, alone with everything that hurt. I…” He looked down at his hands.
“It gives you too much time to think, doesn’t it?” Stefanos asked as he came over to join the other two. His low voice carried only a hint of a mechanical whirr underneath. And with the same dark glasses and gloves he’d worn when they’d met, he easily passed for an ordinary, enhancement-less person, cybernetic or otherwise.
Indra cast the big man a wary look. "I suppose you're gonna chew us out for drawing attention like that, huh? Don't bother, I know it was a mistake."
"But did it help?"
“Yeah."
"Then it wasn't a mistake."
That didn't seem to be the answer Indra expected, but he still looked a little leery. "It's something I'm good at. One of the only things. And if I keep busy, things almost seem normal.”
“No such thing as normal anymore. Normal died when Parole was born. Good riddance.” Stefanos chuckled at his own small joke. “But you feel how you feel. Forget the rest.”
“What if I don’t really know how I feel?” Indra’s frown looked pained as he looked away. “My brother kind of died when Parole was born too and I still don’t know what to make of that. Never have. Ever.”
“Then you don’t,” Stefanos said simply, but it didn’t sound dismissive or blunt like it might coming from someone else. “Nothing wrong with that either.”
“Yeah, but it’s kind of annoying.” Indra gave a sigh that certainly sounded it. “Being numb doesn’t hurt, exactly, but eventually it’s like okay, ready to feel something, just to get it over with.”
Shiloh wasn’t sure what to say to any of this, and xie hated it. Xie’d hated it back at Radiance HQ and xie hated it now, even not knowing how to say that Indra didn’t really seem numb. He did seem incredibly driven to see what his brother had seen, as he’d put it. His pain, anger, and grief almost felt tangible, even when they weren’t connected in their dreams. But if Indra said numb, that was really the only word that mattered.
“I was nine when it happened,” Indra continued, still sounding frustrated. “So I don’t really remember a whole lot about Mihir. You know, from before…” He stopped, eyes dropping to the ground. His shoulders slumped and his hands, so quick a moment ago, hung down at his sides.
“And we don’t have to talk about him now either,” Stefanos reassured him. “Not if it’ll do more harm than good.”
“No, it’s fine, it's just…” Indra said faintly, then cleared his throat and tried again. He didn’t sound irritated anymore. Now he really did sound numb, resigned, and very tired. “I never—I don’t know. I hope it didn't hurt, that's all."
Stefanos’s gears whirred audibly as his brow furrowed. "How much do you know about what your brother did that day? When Jay and Celeste saved Parole from the Waste blast?”
"Just that it was the last thing he ever did,” Indra mumbled. “And right before, he and my dad had a fight. Something big was happening in Parole. My dad didn’t want him to go, but Mihir went anyway. I remember…” His eyes went to Shiloh, and xie could almost hear wind in the branches of a towering tree, the crackle of flames far below. “Mom and Dad fighting. Somebody coming to tell us… I don’t know. I think I didn’t want to know.”
“It didn’t hurt.” Stefanos fixed both eyes on Indra. “Happened all at once. Fast. Clean. Turret tried to destroy Parole once and for all. And at the same time, Jay initiated Icarus, the program that would drop the barrier and set us all free. Celeste gave him all the time he could. One minute. And if Mihir hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have been fast or clean for any of us. Your brother was—is—a hero.”
“My dad always blamed Parole.” Indra sounded faraway, head dropping and shoulders rising as he spoke, seeming to cave deeper into himself and memory. “He said it would get Mihir into trouble. And Mihir said what Turret was doing was wrong. He and my… both of them. They were both wrong.”
“Turret was wrong,” Stefanos said firmly. “In every single way someone can be. But I’ll give you an unpopular opinion. Your mother wasn’t the enemy. Turret was.”
“What?” Indra stared, eyes widening as he raised his head. “You don’t think it was her fault?”
“I think she was trying to navigate an impossible situation with minimal bloodshed. Talk to someone else—even on this ship—and you’ll get a different story. But you think I don’t know what a powder keg that city was?” He shook his head. “The only wrong thing your mother did was leave. I know why she did, I understand it. But we were still left alone at Turret’s mercy. And he doesn’t have any.”
Indra looked at the ground, said nothing.
"Without your mother, we didn't have a chance. She was the only thing keeping Parole remotely stable.” He held up his huge gloved hand and then opened wide, miming an explosion. “That’s when Turret’s iron fist closed. The second he took over, everything went up in smoke. You know the rest of the story. Parole is what it is today, because of him.”
“But my mom…”
“Was instrumental in making sure that God-awful place didn’t spread any further.” Stefanos looked over at Shiloh, and smiled. “Both of your mothers. They were already working together to save millions, they just didn’t know it yet.”
“But did she know what Turret tried to do?” The note of desperation hadn’t left Indra’s voice. “I mean, yeah, she left Parole because losing Mihir almost destroyed her, I get that—because hey, same. But before that. I wish I knew what she was thinking.”
Stefanos hesitated, wheels turning in his head. In his case, this may have been literal. “You make up your own mind. But some things we know for sure: Parole needed Mihir. We needed Icarus. And that means we needed Jay and Celeste. Those boys were heroes, your brother just didn’t get to keep being one. The rest is history.”
“Nice to know there’s one hero in the family,” Indra said with a dry smirk that faded fast. Shiloh stayed quiet and watched as worry returned to his face. Xie couldn’t shake the thought that something was odd about what Stefanos had said, but it was hard to focus on abstract weirdness when Indra looked so troubled. “But I can’t stop thinking about my mom. Did she sign off on Turret’s plan? Did she just decide hey, it’s better if this place just disappears?”
“I don’t believe that.” Stefanos shook his head. “And I won’t. The Rishika I know wouldn’t have written us all off like that. Why she left us in his hands… you’d have to ask her.”
“I will,” Indra said, voice filled with determination for the first time. “First chance I get.”
* ☆ *
A short distance away, Annie and Rowan stood together under the shade of a small tree, half-watching the show but not really seeing it. She’d taken off her helmet and Rowan didn’t wear the sunglasses they’d brought; Indra’s magic show attracted enough attention that they could converse with some low-level strangeness relatively unnoticed.
“Thanks for getting me out here,” Rowan said, shifting a little awkwardly in the boots they wore over their hooves. “It’s good to get out and see the world a little, if we’re here. Even if takes some doing.�
�
“Yeah.” Annie nodded. “Gotta get some fresh air sometime, enjoy it while it doesn’t smell like smoke or Tartarus poison.”
They were quiet for a minute. Annie looked over at Rowan a few times, started to say something, and then stopped. Nothing was coming out exactly right and she wasn’t going to actually say anything until it did. Rowan didn’t question or pressure, just waited. Annie could have always turned around and pointed at her jacket; that usually worked, but some things she just wanted to say herself.
“You don’t have to worry,” she said abruptly after a while. “I’m really fine.”
“But I’m still going to.” Rowan’s smile was tired but genuine when they turned. “It’s too late now. In too deep. Couldn’t stop if I tried.”
“I’m really doing okay, though. Haven’t even freaked out or collapsed super bad or anything.” She shrugged. “Couple nights on the road sucked but I picked myself back up again. I’m fine if I keep moving.”Annie reached under her shirt and pulled out the chain and its dangling shark tooth that hung hidden but close to her heart. “And I really did mean for you to take this.”
She held it out to Rowan as she had before. And as before, they shook their head and turned away as if the mere act of looking at it hurt.
“It’s yours, not mine,” they said, voice barely carrying over the noise of the nearby crowd. “It’s what he’d want.”
“No it’s not.” Annie’s face was flushed as she let the tooth drop but she tucked it back under her shirt, hiding it from view again. “It was the same with Indra’s family. They said all the same things about Mihir, except they’d been saying them for ten years. Always arguing about what he would have wanted, and trying to—what’d Indra say? Stand where he stood.” She jammed her hands in her pockets and stared at the ground. “Well, I was right there with Ash. I did stand where he stood and it didn’t change anything.”
“Annie,” Rowan started gently but she cut them off with a frustrated noise that sounded like it had been building up inside her for some time.
“I’m not talking about blaming myself, I’m just saying it doesn’t matter if you’re there or you weren’t. I was with him and I still don’t know what he’d say or do, because he’s not here anymore. I just know that he wouldn’t want… this.” She pulled out her hands, raised them in a helpless gesture to where the tooth hung, then to the both of them, then let her arms drop.
Rowan shut their eyes for a moment and took one full breath before speaking. “He’d want you to get back to us safe and sound. That’s done. He’d want me to get you home, back to your parents. I’ll do my best. And he’d want us to finish what he started, get Zilch’s pancreas and heart and all their organs back together, make sure they're safe.”
“Yeah,” Annie said a little shakily, face falling again. “Yeah, I’m sorry. We looked everywhere, the heart just wasn’t on that ship.”
“And that was not your fault.” Rowan looked up and directly into her eyes as they spoke. “None of it was. It’s no one’s fault but Sharpe’s.”
“We still can’t go back without Zilch’s heart.” She swallowed hard. “Or Regan.”
Rowan was silent for several seconds and their eyes drifted away again. When they snapped back to Annie’s face, they still didn’t look entirely present, like they were looking at her but seeing something, or someone, miles and months away. “You didn’t see any sign of him out there, did you? Anything at all?”
“There was this dream…” Hesitatingly at first, Annie told them what she’d seen and heard in the Emerald Bar, or the place that looked like it in her head. When she was done, Rowan didn’t respond right away. They’d closed their eyes again and seemed deep in thought, or maybe trying not to reveal their feelings, whatever they may be. “But it might not have been him. Maybe it was just a dream. Not like I haven’t dreamed about home before.”
“But your friends were there?” Rowan sounded caught between tentative excitement and worry, as if they couldn’t decide whether any of this was a good or bad sign. That Annie wasn’t sure herself didn’t really help. “They saw this too?”
“Yeah. Usually when we all dream the same thing… I dunno, we pay attention.”
“Was he…” Rowan stopped, seeming to struggle at finding the right words. They’d been doing that a lot lately and it was a strange and somewhat unsettling thing to watch. Annie was used to wrestling with words, trying to fit them into an order that made sense, but Rowan always seemed to know what to say, how, when. Their words came out right. They could even be beautiful instead of just functional, a strength instead of a frustration. And now they weren’t. Another change. She didn’t like it. She waited, feeling slightly sick, until Rowan found the words at last. They were simple but important. “How was he?”
“He seemed… okay,” Annie attempted, immediately realizing this was annoyingly inaccurate. Now it was her turn to search for the right words and come up emptyhanded. “Uh, tired. Worn, um, not ragged, but like, something that’s—that’s—”
“It’s all right. Take your time.”
She did. She made herself take a deep breath and take one word at a time like slow steps. “I think he’s been running really hard. Pushing himself. Harder than back home. But he was happy to see me and that’s what made me think it was him, at first, him for sure. It felt so real. And then he got scared—as soon as he saw this.” She pulled out the shark tooth again, this time letting it swing from her hand back and forth. “He got so upset, I thought he was going to go invisible, like he does. But instead I think it woke us all up.”
“So then…assuming it really was Regan,” Rowan said slowly, studying the tooth as if they were trying to puzzle something out as they spoke. Or perhaps they’d already found the answer, hadn’t liked it, and kept searching for any other possibility. “Did you talk about what that meant?”
“No. We didn’t have time.” She lowered the chain but didn’t let it go, hand curling tightly around the tooth’s sharp edge. “And I don’t think I—I mean, I couldn’t—”
“Don’t worry. I don’t think I could have either.” Rowan reached out and covered her hand with theirs, the shark tooth within them both. “It’s better that he hears… in person, anyway.”
“If there is a better.” Annie sniffed. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Rowan said firmly, giving her wrist a gentle squeeze so as not to cut her hand on the tooth. “And we have everything to thank you for. You did more than anyone should ever be asked to do.”
She shrugged and said nothing, but let go of the tooth to squeeze Rowan’s hand back. Somehow, standing under this unfamiliar tree in a place she’d never been, surrounded by strangers, she felt like she’d come home in a small way after a very long time.
“I should get back to the ship,” Rowan said after a while of easy quiet. They still held her hand and didn’t let go or step away yet. “This so-called disguise won’t fool anyone who looks too closely, and… well, it’s time for another round of organ checks. Are you coming?”
Annie considered that for a moment, thinking about a much taller tree with lights in its high branches and a hammock in its lower ones. Then she heard laughter across the street—Indra’s, she realized a moment later—and caught a glimpse of something sparkling when she turned to look. She’d see the big tree in her dreams tonight anyway. “Think I’ll stay here for a while.”
* ☆ *
“Hey, we heading in too?” Shiloh asked as Annie came up to join xir and Indra and Rowan disappeared down the street that led back to the FireRunner. She’d missed the end of the magic show but caught the way Indra scowled at the suggestion.
“We got a while before it gets dark,” she said, giving Indra a searching look. “You gonna do some more tricks?”
“Probably not.” He shook his head. “But I’m still pretty wired, so best thing to do is keep going at something else until I’m too exhausted to think. Then I’ll crash, nice and easy.”
Xie disliked both the dark circles under Indra’s eyes and the return of his haunted look. “Listen, whatever’ll help you feel better, we’ll do it. Right, Annie?” Xie looked up, raised eyebrows visible behind xir sunglasses.
“Drugs, no,” she said in a tone that left no room for argument. “Murder, no. Suicide, no. Sex, no. And we can stay like an hour—”
“An hour?” Indra shook off his returning glower long enough to whine. “Seriously?”
“Because Rowan and Stef are going back to the ship,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard his interruption or accompanying groan. “And we should get back too before it gets dark.”
“Fine. Okay.” They stood together on the sidewalk for a few more seconds—and then Indra saw it. “That’s it,” he whispered.
“What?” Annie didn’t sound like she entirely trusted his revelation.
“I see a sign.” Electric blue neon flashed from a nearby bar window, lights just coming on in preparation for the sun set. It might not quite have been a divine vision but it was just as welcome in his time of need. He moved forward as if in a trance. “Karaoke.”
Annie shook her head before meeting Shiloh’s pleading gaze, following it to where Indra’s face was lit up by both the neon glow and a real smile. Slowly, she wiped her hand across her helmet to make the visor go dark and turned up the audio insulation. “One song.”
* ☆ *
It was actually several songs before they called it a night.
“Eight in a row,” Annie marveled as they hurried toward the towering ship. Thanks to the unexpectedly long, cathartic karaoke break, it was long past sundown. “I get coping. I respect it…but was that much Queen really necessary?”
“Can’t even believe that’s a question,” Indra snorted, but he was smiling, seeming truly relaxed and happy for the first time since they’d left the Radiance tower. Maybe the entire trip; his face was open and serene and comfortably sleepy without a hint of anxiety—or performance adrenaline. “Besides, Freddie Mercury was Indian, bisexual, ridiculously talented, brilliant, gorgeous, possibly an actual angel descended from the heavens to rock an undeserving Earth…” He stopped counting off on his fingers and sighed contentedly, gesturing to all of himself. “And here I am. Some things are just meant to be.”
The Lifeline Signal Page 25