“Sure. Yeah. You meant what you said?” Jay asked, voice uncharacteristically tentative.
“What?” Stefanos laid his warm hand on Jay’s back and felt him take a deep breath beneath it.
“You’ll really be okay? I mean, all that crap in your limbs, it has to be torture.”
“An inconvenience. Living in Parole under Turret’s boot, that was torture. Danae locked up in a cage—more torture.” He started counting off on his mechanical hand again. “Working for SkEye to stay close to her, keeping my head down and mouth shut while Turret lays waste to my home city and uses my baby sister to make bombs. Transitioning in the middle of all that. I did it, but not because they made it easy. Never knowing if I’d survive long enough to know what it was like, living as the man I was meant to be—or at least die as myself. That’s torture. This is life.”
“Just because it’s life doesn’t mean it’s a good life.”
“It’s exactly the life I want. I can get by without futuristic cyborg parts. Did fine with plain old prosthetics before Danae figured out how to work her magic. If these break down, that’s all they’d be. Still work, just no fancy upgrades. And I’ve been in…‘transition maintenance mode’ for years, believe me, the hard part is over.” He looked over with a smile. “You’re just spoiled after living with a man with a Swiss Army knife hand.”
“I do like to be prepared.” Jay smiled back, but not for long. “But you really do intend to survive? No redemption, no heroics, no needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-few…nothing like that?”
“Do I intend to survive? No.” He felt Jay tense beside him. “Not just survive. I intend to live. I’ve had more second chances and more miracles than most men could ever dream of. I’m exactly the man I was meant to be and I’m exactly where I want to be. I’m working to protect that, not throw it away.” He smiled. “Contrary to popular perception…I’m the happiest man I know. That means I’ll fight the hardest.”
Jay let out a sigh and lifted his head enough to give Stefanos a kiss and sank back against his broad chest, listening. Stefanos didn’t have a heartbeat anymore; instead there was the steady, constant whir of life-sustaining valves.
“Good. I kind of like having you around.”
* ☆ *
Aliyah stared at the bottom of her empty coffee cup but made no move to refill it. “Lamb, which do you think is more dangerous? Tartarus, or the ghosts inside it?”
“Um… I think both of them are good things to avoid.” Rowan squinted in the last of the sun as it dipped beyond the horizon. Night came on fast and cold here but they still had a warm thermos and strong coffee. They’d go inside when they could see their breath. “And they usually go together, so if you avoid one, you’re mostly safe from both.”
“Mm, that wasn’t really an answer. But it was very sensible. Then let me add something else to the equation. Which is more dangerous? Tartarus, the ghosts, or Major David Turret?”
“Sharpe,” Rowan said without a moment’s thought, then took another sip of their own coffee, hands wrapped firmly around the cup to absorb its warmth.
“That was quick!” Aliyah laughed. “No deliberation at all, no weighing the—”
“Don’t have to. It’s Sharpe.”
“Well, all right, one last puzzle. Is ‘dangerous’ and ‘evil’ always the same thing?”
Now Rowan hesitated, before setting down their cup and looking up at her. “You’re having second thoughts about all of this, aren’t you?”
“More like third. Us, working with Turret, in any capacity, ever? Honestly, has the world gone even more mad?” She rustled her feathers in an agitated sort of way, then took a slow breath to settle them back down. “Believe me, when Shiloh started asking me why we were going along with all this, I was hard-pressed to answer. Wasn’t going to let on, of course, but xie’s really got a point—why is that—that man so eager to see this whole thing blocked off?”
“Well, I want to see it blocked off because it’s a virulent toxic wasteland and it’s spreading—”
“Oh, of course that’s why you want that, because you’re a good and decent person, but Turret is neither! So what’s he after? What’s he hiding? He’s always hiding something, and he never wants what’s best for us or anyone else, so if we seem to be heading in the same direction, we’d better check for extremely certain that we’re not headed straight off a cliff!”
“Agreed. One-hundred percent.” Now Rowan looked up at her with a smile, though it wasn’t a fully confident one. They reached out to smooth down a ruffled feather. “Not all of us have wings.”
Aliyah sighed and leaned forward against the metal railing, wings settling down to lie flatter across her back under Rowan’s hand. “I’ve got arms, they’re good for catching,” she murmured. “Not many cliffs out here anyway. Still, Shiloh’s right about one thing. Can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to these shady specters than meets the eye.”
“And you’re starting to think we’re going about this the wrong way?”
“I don’t know.” She rested her chin on her arms and stared out at the horizon, eyes tracing the jagged shape of a distant mountain range that grew hazy and indistinct in the gathering dark. “I don’t know what I think.”
“Well, I think you’ve never steered us wrong before,” Rowan said, smiling as her feathers calmed further from their voice as well as their hand. “And no matter which way you take us, everyone on this ship is right behind you.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of…” Aliyah’s eyes narrowed and she pushed herself upright, rocking back on her heels. “Ah. Would you look at that,” she said as if she were making a mildly amusing observation. She pointed to where a thick layer of what looked like very low clouds gathered on the horizon, heavy and dark. “Tartarus decided to change ‘round on us again.”
“Can we go around?” Rowan’s voice was tight, sounding like it came from deep in their chest, as if the temperature had dropped below freezing even faster than usual and they were struggling to keep warm. “I know I don’t need to remind you, but… no shields.”
“And no time.” She didn’t look over, but her once-light, conversational tone dropped until it was nearly as low as Rowan’s. “Next beacon’s a straight shot dead ahead. Altering course would add another day at least.”
“So we’re heading straight through.” Rowan stared at the oncoming wall of vapor so thick it blocked out the stars. “Had to say dead ahead, didn’t you?”
“Thought I’d say it so nobody else had to.” She sighed, a visible puff in the chilly air, but neither of them moved from their spot.
Cup and metal thermos clinking together as their hands shook, Rowan poured them both the last of the coffee.
Three A.M. silence stretched over the dark expanse and the ship ran quietly through the night. Except for a small room packed with too many computers and not enough answers. Inside, screens glowed bright and everything vibrated as Jay stomped on a floor pedal. Both the volume and bass pounding out of the nearby speakers increased and so did the tempo of his keystrokes. Soon they were more driving than any rock rhythm, almost frantic. Perfect.
CyborJ was brilliant 24/7, but some hours contained more brilliance than others. True works of genius were reserved for three A.M. Even in Parole, with its weakened sunlight thanks to the barrier and smog. Even with the windows blacked out and no natural light anywhere near. And even out here in the wide open space and blazing Tartarus sun, his circadian biorhythms knew the truth. He didn’t get going until now. And then he couldn’t quit. The habit was too ingrained.
Runtime started at three a.m. Or that’s how it was supposed to go.
“Can’t work under these conditions,” he murmured, breaking his typing groove with one hand to rub a sore eye. “Awful. Totally unacceptable.”
Eye-burn from too-bright screens wasn’t the problem. That came with the job description. (Along with public adoration—for his alter-ego, at least—and the satisfaction of oc
casionally triumphing over evil.) But he needed familiar screens. His screens.
“Smooth, shiny, sleek Radiance crap. Oh, look at me, somebody mass-produced me and a billion like me with my spiffy chrome trim and I’m definitely not gonna spy on you while you sleep or anything!” He leaned back in the chair—not his chair, this thing was hell on his back no matter what position he contorted into. “Probably built right in to be impossible to open on these things, freaking disc probably senses I’m trying to get it open with a… key that it hates.” He was too tired for clever comparisons.
“She’d do that, though. Totally would. I know you know what I’m talking about here.” He swung the chair around, turning to look down at the floor, as if expecting to see a small animal sitting by his foot. There wasn’t. Confused, he was almost about to look further, when he stopped. All the energy and even the frustration slipped from his face.
“Oh. Ha. Yeah…” Jay rubbed at the headache building in his temples and let his head fall forward until his chin was almost touching his chest. “Figures, I finally get out here but everything I need’s stuck back in that hole in the ground. Actual flaming hole. I should just call it quits right now, but... No. No, no, no, is CyborJ a quitter? No, he's--”
A sudden blue light flashed against his closed eyelids. Jay opened his eyes with a start, holding his hands up as if touching anything might make it explode. He couldn’t see anything different about the screen or room in front of him but something had definitely happened.
“IC-A-RUS,” said a voice from behind him. It wasn’t human. But without even looking, Jay knew the voice at once.
Jay froze, afraid he’d been hearing things, afraid to turn around and find nothing again, afraid of raised hopes followed by disappointment. He had to be sure. “Seven?”
Something half-furry, half-shiny jumped into his lap and Jay almost collapsed with joy and overwhelming relief. “AF-FIR-MA-TIVE.”
Jay had never programmed his cat to exclusively meow or deleted her leftover robotically-spoken responses. Or even let Danae make her ‘final adjustments’ before taking Seven home. Her partly-unfinished long Himalayan coat with its occasional bare-metal spots were original and unchanged. He’d never felt the need to ‘upgrade’; Seven was perfect the way she was. She did everything she was supposed to: provided extra signal masking when he was on a dangerous job, swamped SkEye sensors with garbage data to cover his movements, ran constant searches for content relevant to his activities, and acted as her own wi-fi hub. In all their joint operations, Jay had only come up against a couple security protocols beyond his ability to bypass. He’d never met one that could keep Seven out.
At an unprecedented loss for words, Jay hugged his fluffy assistant, therapy animal, and best friend close to his chest, burying his face in her soft fur. She purred up a storm on anti-anxiety frequency #4, so loudly she sounded like a tiny motor. If it were possible, Jay would have purred back. It took several minutes for him to do anything but pet her fur, confirm it was really her and really here and he wasn’t dreaming—and make very emotional noises that didn’t begin to be coherent. Despite the fact that she was being held in a most undignified manner and the top of her head was now damp, Seven continued to purr and rub her head against Jay’s wet face.
“How did you get here?” he asked when he finally remembered how words worked. “How are you even—you can’t just beam in out of nowhere! Someone must have zapped you here with one of those mini-transporter things. Celeste?” Jay turned his chair around now but aside from him and Seven, the room was empty. Still, he felt prickles on the back of his neck. “Celeste, this was you, wasn’t it? Hello?”
He looked down as Seven hopped off his lap and onto the keyboard. It was almost an ordinary cat move but, like her human, Seven’s attention was immediately absorbed by the screen and the locked disk. She sniffed at the encryption display, then at Jay’s lines and lines of failed attempts to unlock it, as if examining it for errors.
“If you think you can do better,” Jay said, scratching down her back to the base of her tail. Now that she was back, he couldn’t stop petting her soft fur and smooth metal patches. Robot cats enjoyed this just as much as their organic counterparts and she arched up against his hand, fluffy tail curling up over her back. “Which I know you can—be my guest. Decrypt that thing! Engage!”
Hearing her command-execute word, Seven bumped the monitor with the metal patch on the top of her head, rubbing her face against the corner.
The lock screen instantly disappeared. The screen went entirely black, suddenly plunging the room into darkness. Jay just had time to let out a startled noise at the empty screen before something filled it again. A word appeared, flashing in huge, bright white font that lit up the dark room like a lightning strike every second.
I C A R U S
I C A R U S
I C A R U S
Just as fast, the word was gone and the screen changed again. Several windows appeared. Security bypassed, disk accessed, secrets revealed.
“Holy…” Jay whispered. “Thank you, Celeste. And thank you, Seven.”
She didn’t reply except to bump her head against his hand, which, although still engrossed in the new, finally open disk contents, he automatically started petting. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Jay took his hand back, cracked his knuckles and dove in. Detailed diagrams. Elaborate plans. Blueprints. Lines of figures and labels and explanations and steps. His eyes—suddenly wide awake—traveled over every inch of the information he’d poured hours of sweat and tears into unlocking. But it wasn’t immediately obvious what all this actually was. Most of it looked like complicated formulas Maureen, or someone else who wasn’t Jay, would easily understand. He’d need a week to get through it. From what he could tell from this first peek, it all looked geared toward building something. One huge device, made of all the different, confusing pieces put together.
When he was done he leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head. “I don’t know what any of this means,” he said to Seven, one of the only beings in the universe who would ever hear him admit this. It felt good not to be talking to himself anymore. “But someone will.”
“NEW-MES-SAGE,” Seven replied.
“Huh?” Jay looked back up at the screen where a popup box alerted him that he had an unopened message with two files inside, one audio, one text. It was the first time he’d seen anything like it on the ship’s computers; nobody knew to send anything to him here and, even if they had, the communication breakdown from Parole would have kept it from being delivered. “Is this from you? I mean, did you bring this with you?”
“Mreh,” Seven said, voice actually resembling a cat’s meow this time, as it usually did when she didn’t have a set verbal response. She stared up at him, bright green eyes round and unblinking.
“Okay. Let’s do this again.” Holding his breath, Jay opened the text file. “Come on, Celeste, tell me something good.”
It wasn’t from her. Or anyone he expected to hear from, not in a million years. But he did know who sent it, from the very first line.
"J—
The water's clear now. But I'm still in too deep to come up for air.
Sorry I had to disappear. I'm too good at that.
I promise I'll resurface. But not until I find what we were looking for.
I'm almost there. YOU WERE RIGHT. I wish you were here to see it.
I'll find your answers, then I'll find you.
Someone once told me there was enough air. They were right.
Keep breathing, J. See you soon.
Love, R."
Jay stared at the message for a long time, face betraying nothing, even to Seven. He didn’t even respond when she nudged his hand. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t to her. "It's not very anonymous if you use your actual initial, and sign it 'love.' You dork lizard."
“Mah,” Seven seemed to agree.
"Exactly." Jay pulled Seven into his lap as she resumed purring, shutt
ing his eyes just as they began to sting again. It was getting hard to read the message anyway. "He's a wreck without me."
* ☆ *
Ten years ago, even in dreams, Parole’s skyline at night had a postcard-from-a-distance beauty, but nobody would call it unusual. Lights shone from buildings, head-and-taillights, strung across bridges like strings on a Christmas tree. But the city wasn’t calm. The roads and sidewalks were packed, skies filled with the thrums of helicopters, darkness cut by flashing blue and red. Sirens. People running. Then it wasn’t dark anymore.
The barrier appeared in an instant, like a bolt of lightning. But instead of going out like lightning’s transient flash, it stayed. The glowing, iridescent dome encapsulated the entire city without ceremony or warning. One moment, people in Parole could look up and see the sky, the next moment they couldn’t. Screams and crashes from the city below rose to a crescendo.
“I hate this dream,” Indra murmured, but he made himself look anyway.
“Just wait it out,” Annie said, heavy boots scuffing at the ground like she wanted to run. “It’ll be over soon.”
Time passed in a heartbeat, a jerky, disjointed time-lapse. A few seconds for them, a week for Parole. The barrier held—until it didn’t. It disappeared in a blinding flare, like a giant strobe light overloading and burning out. The sky was clear, the moon and stars bright once more.
“Icarus,” Shiloh whispered. “I remember everything flashed really bright, then so dark I couldn’t see where we were going. My mom picked me right up and started running.”
“A lot of us didn’t get out,” Annie said grimly.
A high-pitched keening rose through the air and, in an instant, the barrier returned, more radiant and impervious than ever.
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