The Lifeline Signal

by RoAnna Sylver

  “You sound like you’ve got it all figured out,” Annie said with what sounded almost like envy. “Who you are and junk.”

  “Well yeah, kind of.” He looked over, her unusual tone clearly breaking through his post-performance bliss. “Took me a while, but it’s worth it. You haven’t really?”

  “I dunno. All I know is,” she shrugged, shook her head and scowled in frustration. “I don’t know what I don’t know. I don’t get people, I told you that. But I really don’t get the whole romance… sexy… thing. I don’t get why it’s a thing we have to do. And I don’t really want to do it.”

  “Oh! Ace?” Indra held up one of his playing cards, the Ace of Hearts.

  “What?” Annie eyed it with equal parts suspicion and confusion. “Is this one of your card tricks? I thought we were done with that.”

  “Uh, no.” Indra stopped walking, looking every bit as confused as she did. “No, I was just going to… um, never mind.”

  “You can do it, just tell me what you mean.” She was looking at him now, still with confusion but not the same suspicion as she’d regarded the card. “What am I supposed to do here?”

  “Nothing you don’t want.” He shrugged easily. “I was going to use the cards as a… visual pun, I guess, for asexuality. Or a metaphor or—a joke, basically. Just a joke.”

  “Oh.” She seemed to relax. “Okay, I get that. Thanks for explaining. That’s funny.”

  “Thanks! And don’t worry, everyone deals with the hand they’re dealt. You can’t really lose.”

  “I don’t even know the rules, though.”

  “Well, do you have an idea of what…suit?” He paused. “If you want me to keep talking in, uh, cards?”

  She considered this for a second. “Yeah. It’s dorky but it makes talking easier.”

  “Okay, that’s fine, whatever works for you. Do you like something a little more…Aro-mantic?” he held up a second, the Ace of Spades, with an arrow motif.

  “Do you have any with a big question mark on them?” she asked. “Sometimes I don’t even know what game I’m playing.”

  “So, the joker then. That’s pretty wild.”

  She smiled, but aimed it at the ground. “How long have you been sitting on these?”

  “Since I figured out it made asexual and aro friends actually laugh instead of hurt.” Indra watched Annie twirl her hair thoughtfully, shuffling through the cards and studying every one. She stopped on the Ace of Spades and held it. “Bad puns are better than bad names.”

  They were glad to get back to the ship. After not seeing much of xir uncle all day, Shiloh was also happy to catch sight of him walking across the deck a short distance away. But apparently Jay wasn’t nearly as happy to see any of them, because he kept right on walking, clearly pretending he hadn’t seen, but not doing a very good job.

  “He definitely saw us, right?” Indra said, sounding as baffled as he had a day ago, when their paths had crossed in a much more literal way, very suddenly and all at once. “And he’s definitely avoiding us. Again.”

  “I’m sure he’s just, uh—Uncle Jay!” Shiloh called. “Hey, are you… he’s gone.”

  “I’m gone too,” Indra muttered, turning and heading off the opposite direction. “Dunno what his problem is, but I’m pretty sure it’s me. And I’m done. Good night.”

  Annie and Shiloh watched in some confusion as both Jay and Indra quickly disappeared, but there was no time to dwell on why.

  “Ah, there you are!” Aliyah’s voice came from the opposite direction and all three turned to see her striding toward them, her expression determined, decided and thoroughly Captain-Mode. Stefanos followed, face set in a hard mask meant to reveal nothing but its contrast to his usual warmth spoke volumes in itself. “Glad to see you back, I was about to come find you myself. Nobody leaves the ship for the remainder of the night, or tomorrow morning, understand? Actually, nobody leaves, period, not until we settle in again.”

  “Why, what’s going on?” Annie picked up on the tension immediately, mirroring it in the way her shoulders stiffened and hands curled into fists, as if she were anticipating an invisible-but-immediate threat.

  “Nothing’s wrong yet,” the captain explained in a slightly calmer voice, wings that had been partially flared behind her coming to settle around her shoulders. “But I’m afraid we can’t wait any longer to get moving. We’ve sat on our hands here too long as it is and we don’t have the luxury of time. We ship out at first light tomorrow and make full speed for the next beacon.”

  “We can’t,” Annie said bluntly. “We don’t have a shield.”

  “Yes, I’m aware.” Instead of sounding angry at what could very easily be called insubordination, Aliyah just sounded somewhere between ironic amusement and fatigued resignation. “But it’s a much bigger shield I’m worried about. Every minute we spend twiddling our thumbs and not lighting up those beacons, Tartarus has time to advance. Even worse,” she said with a brief glance up toward Stefanos, who sent an inscrutable golden stare down toward her in return. “Parole goes it alone without our help. The faster we get moving, the faster all this is resolved and we get home.”

  “Traveling without a shield’s a recipe for disaster, that’s for sure.” Stefanos folded his arms across his broad chest, eyes narrowing, but not in a glare aimed at any of them. “But so’s sitting around here any longer than we need to. Time to get this show on the road.”

  “Don’t worry,” Aliyah said before Annie could object again. “This isn’t a crisis yet, or anywhere near. We’ll still be able to steer well away from Tartarus with any luck.”

  “But what if it changes around?” Annie asked anyway, voice as tight as her fists. “Like it did on me and—like it did before? Those storms move so much faster than they look. One snuck up on us and if we hadn’t had a shield…”

  “You don’t need to tell me, dear. I did say with any luck. Sometimes that’s all it comes down to.” The nod Aliyah gave wasn’t unsympathetic, but it was a clear sign the discussion was over. She turned on her heel to head toward the stairwell leading up toward the bridge but stopped for one last word. “But we focus on the positive, the productive, and what we can actually control, instead of worrying about what we can’t. And we keep moving forward. No way out but through.”

  She disappeared up the stairs and Stefanos turned to follow. Just then, Shiloh realized exactly what had been bothering xir since they last spoke.

  “Wait, can you hold on for one second?” xie called, hurrying after Stefanos as he took his first long step after his captain. He stopped but didn’t turn or speak, and Shiloh figured that was xir cue to speak fast. “Before, when you told me about Celeste, you said ‘he’ brought down the barrier. I thought Celeste was a girl? Did I have that wrong?”

  “Oh, that.” He hesitated, but so briefly Shiloh couldn’t be sure if xie’d imagined it. “‘Celeste’ is an alias. More like a title. Ten years ago, the first Celeste was Mihir.”

  “Celeste was Mihir,” Shiloh panted. Xie’d run straight to Jay’s room immediately after hearing and now leaned against the doorframe, trying to catch xir breath.

  “Who’s what?” Jay asked, rotating his chair around to face Shiloh and sounding too studiedly casual and innocent to have actually misheard.

  “Mihir,” Shiloh said again, more clearly and less breathlessly. “He was Celeste. ‘It’s more like a title.’ He was the first. That’s why—”

  “Who told you?” Jay asked, dropping all pretense.

  “Stefanos—what?”

  Jay was rolling his eyes before the name was even out. Still, he didn’t seem very upset, or even surprised. “Of course.”

  “Was it supposed to be a secret?” Shiloh asked, worried xie was treading somewhere xie didn’t belong.

  “Yeah—I mean, no!” Jay groaned. “No, it’s not a secret, everybody knows—everybody on this ship, and that’s fine, of course you were gonna find out, I was just hoping we wouldn’t have to talk about this so soon.”
He sighed. “Or maybe ever.”

  “I still don’t really know what we’re talking about,” Shiloh admitted. “Or not talking about, I guess.”

  “It means Turret is a murderer.” Jay’s eyes were cold and Shiloh didn’t have time to ask why before he continued. “But he didn’t just kill Mihir. And he didn’t just cut Parole off from the world behind that barrier. He wrecked the outside world with the Tartarus Blast and set us up to take the fall.”

  There was only one thing Shiloh could think of to say. “Tell me everything.”

  “You gotta understand,” Jay started, sounding apprehensive. “That night, the night we broke out Icarus and dropped the barrier? It was chaos. Thousands of people rushing to escape. Mihir—Celeste the first—managed to get the thing down for one minute. Just sixty seconds, but some of us made it. Not enough.”

  “Mom and I did.” Shiloh recalled crowds, large bodies jostling xir small one until xir mom picked xir up and ran. Everyone running. Smoke. Suddenly, clear sky. “I thought I remembered you being there but I’m not sure how much I remember is real.”

  “That part’s real. Your mom couldn’t find you, so we looked together. So I wasn’t around when Mihir…” Jay fell silent, staring at something Shiloh couldn’t see. “Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have missed getting you out for anything. But sometimes you wish you could do a night over. Anyway.” He seemed to shake the memory off and looked back up at Shiloh. “You and your mom got out. I stayed in Parole. So did Mihir. And Turret killed him.”

  Shiloh stayed quiet, trying to piece everything together, before realizing this was impossible without a few more pieces. “How—why? For dropping the barrier?”

  “No.” Jay’s eyes went very hard. “Mihir was a stepping stone. Turret killed him and used him to grab power from Rishika, who up until then was keeping him in pretty good check. Turret tries to wipe Parole off the map and, when that doesn’t work, he goes to his Plan B. Tartarus.” Jay leaned forward. “There is a smoking gun out there. And I’m gonna find it.”

  Shiloh tried again to make sense of the cause and effect. It didn’t work any better the second time. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to get it, but—”

  Jay flopped backwards again with a frustrated noise. “What happened to Parole after the Tartarus blast?”

  “It disappeared,” Shiloh said after a second of puzzled thought. “To most people, anyway. Nobody can get near it because of SkEye and the story is that Parole was one of the first places Tartarus destroyed—”

  “Exactly,” Jay cut in. “It wasn’t destroyed, but it was definitely supposed to be. First, Turret tries to nuke us. Someone—Mihir—tries to disarm it. It should have worked. But something went sideways, because the thing went off somewhere else.”

  “The Tartarus Blast,” Shiloh said slowly. “So instead of one city, the whole country got burned?”

  “Right, which distracts everyone from Parole. Everyone forgets we exist.” Jay’s shoulders sagged. “And then he kills Mihir. Says he’s so sorry he couldn’t save their son, but this proves that this horrible city full of monsters has to be controlled. Rishika abandons Parole in grief and Turret takes her place. He blames Parole’s disappearance on Tartarus and blames Mihir’s death on us… on me.”

  The CyborJ Syndicate.” Shiloh felt a now-familiar tinge of dread. “That's what Indra's parents said. We didn't believe it, of course--at least I didn't. I don't see how anyone could, everyone knows you've done nothing but good for Parole.”

  “Enough people believed it,” Jay said, sounding resigned and bitter at the same time. “That Mihir--that Celeste--was murdered by the Syndicate. Which isn’t that big a group, contrary to popular belief.”

  “But I mean, does Turret know who you were?”

  “No, kept it away from SkEye so far. Since I’m still, you know. Alive. There’s no way Mihir’s family knew. Pretty sure his parents just saw me—like, me me—as a harmless teenage nerd. Which is still just fine.”

  “What about everyone else?” Shiloh was still missing an important puzzle piece, xie could tell. “Everyone in Parole seems to think you’re a hero—or CyborJ is, anyway.”

  “Right. But it’s the same here; I’m alive because there is no me, there is only CyborJ. There are like six people who know the truth and most of them are on this ship.”

  Shiloh still wasn’t satisfied. “But wouldn’t someone notice if CyborJ was accused of murder?”

  “Oh, they noticed. But nobody believed it because, first of all, this is Turret talking. And second of all…” Jay almost smiled. “Celeste wasn’t even dead.”

  “Wh…” Shiloh stared at him. So far xie’d been keeping up pretty well but not because Jay made it easy. “But then, if he’s not dead, why…?”

  “Mihir was dead. But not Celeste. Some things are harder to destroy than others.”

  “It’s more like a title,” Shiloh whispered as realization struck. “He was the first Celeste. But there’s a new one now.”

  “Right. And nobody is gonna believe CyborJ killed anyone if the alleged-victim is still walking around.” He almost-smiled again. “Plus it totally threw off anyone who was actually onto Mihir. Can’t be Celeste if he’s dead. I think Turret’s still mad about that.”

  “But who is it now?”

  “Celeste runs on secrets.” Jay almost-smiled again. “And that’s one of the biggest.”

  “So why don’t you tell everyone the truth?”

  “What would happen if I did that, right now?” Jay returned, then answered his own question. “It would be bad. The baddest bad. Even if everyone in Parole believes Turret’s to blame—which they probably would—I still need proof. And the only proof I have is my word against his. CyborJ’s word,” he corrected. “Because the only way I’m still alive is by keeping every eye on the CyborJ show, so they’re not looking at mild-mannered me. Or at Celeste 2.0.”

  “Even if you both said it? If she backed you up—”

  “It would mean connecting a bunch of dots that should never line up. If I say ‘Turret killed Celeste,’ it puts 2.0 and me back in the hot seat, because the only reason I was cleared is because the new Celeste stepped up to shatter the suspicion. How can I have killed anyone when Celeste is right here? Turret’s claim auto-debunked. Going ‘no, not that Celeste’ undos everything.”

  “And nobody knew who the first Celeste really was, did they?” Shiloh asked, connecting a couple of those dots. “People would start to wonder.”

  “Exactly. If I say ‘Turret killed Mihir,’ everyone asks ‘so, what does he have to do with anything?’” Jay shook his head. “And I’m not letting that secret out. He wouldn’t want it. I know that for sure.”

  “You think people would be mad? Why, I thought they’d be grateful.”

  “It’s not Parole I’m worried about. It’s the outside.”

  “But nobody knows Parole exists.”

  “Exactly. Because this is Turret’s private kingdom where he gets to do or destroy whatever he wants, only because it’s a total secret. If that secret got out, if Turret lost control for two seconds, what ammo would he use to get it back?”

  “Tartarus.” A few more dots lined up. Shiloh didn’t like the picture they were making. “He’d blame it on Parole.”

  “Because like he said, Parole’s a horrible city full of monsters and now he has a new excuse to hold onto absolute power. He’s got dirt on us, Nibling. Sure, it’s all lies, but my word only means something in Parole. Outside?” Jay shook his head. “I can’t make a move until I get some dirt on him.”

  “I think I get it,” Shiloh said, hoping this was true. “At least I get why you’re doing all this. You don’t want to clear your name if it means Turret can blame everyone else and make life in Parole worse.”

  “That’s why I should be doing it.” Jay rubbed his face, pressing the heels of his hands over his eyes, and gave a sigh that swept through his entire body. “But all I can think is, Turret wouldn’t just blame Parole. If he forces m
y hand, and Celeste-Two and I have to step up—Turret would do one of two things. Either blame me and Mihir for the Tartarus Blast, which the rest of the world will be ready to believe, once they find out who lives in Parole… or he’d blame me for Mihir’s death. And that’s not something I’m prepared to deal with. Not again.”

  “And—oh no,” Shiloh realized mid-word, but asked anyway, hoping to be wrong. “Celeste—the new one—she’s missing, isn’t she? Nobody knows where she is?”

  “She’s alive,” Jay said without hesitation. “She’s just out of contact for a while. But yeah. Can’t say a word of this without her to back me up. If I do…” He covered his face with his hands. “Turret shifts the blame back to me. And Mihir this time. I can deal with suspicion and loathing. I can’t deal with that being slung at him. Even for the greater good or whatever. Guess I’m just not a good enough person.”

  “You’re trying to clear his name too. You look pretty good from where I’m standing.”

  Jay looked up, peered at Shiloh through his fingers. Cracked a smile. “You’re a good kid.”

  “He was important to you, wasn’t he?”

  “Sure.” Jay shrugged. “He was important to all of us; a lot more people would have died without his help.”

  “Have you told Indra any of this?” Shiloh asked, trying to sound casual and actually having success.

  Jay blinked. “No, it’s, uh, never come up.”

  “Probably because you never talk to him.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Jay spun his chair around and stared at the nearest active screen.

  “Stefanos talks to him.” Shiloh continued talking to the back of Jay’s head, remembering all the times xie’d seen it as Jay scrambled to escape being in the same room with Indra. “So does Radio Angel. Rowan and Aliyah too. The only person I’ve seen who hasn’t talked to Indra is you. So am I right?”