Pitch Dark

by Courtney Alameda

  As Dad always says, Quisieron enterrarnos, no sabían que éramos semillas. Or, They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds. It’s an old saying, one espoused by twentieth-century Mexican rebels. Dad has a soft spot for insurgents, protesters, and rebellions of all kinds—maybe that’s why he’s downloaded illegal files on hacking for me behind Mami’s back.

  Dad has no idea how hacking’s going to save the Cruz family’s work. Our legacy, too. Maybe even our lives; if the Smithsons were willing to implant a subjugator in me to gain control of the Declaration, who knows what lengths they would go to in order to possess the John Muir, too?

  “Now listen,” Sebastian says, pressing his body against mine. He turns my face toward his with a finger, lips hovering centimeters away. Everything in me recoils. If anyone happened upon us, they might think we’d made up in the wake of the John Muir find and were stealing kisses in the halls to celebrate. Sebastian knows how to manipulate a situation and people’s biases to tell a story. “Before we located the John Muir’s terrarium, all this”—he gestures at the subjugator in my neck—“was just to buy your silence while my mother and I worked to undermine your mother’s credibility with her crew. Had your family merely agreed to sell the Declaration of Independence to the Smithsonian Institution when we kindly asked—”

  Kindly? Something inside me boils. “Your offer didn’t even cover the costs of the initial expedition that retrieved the artifact,” I say through gritted teeth. “That entire expedition was funded by my family—why do you think you should profit so soundly from our sweat and blood?”

  “Laura, I know you are upset, but your tone isn’t as civilized as it should be—”

  “Don’t you lecture me about being civilized,” I say, pointing to the hollow of my throat before the subjugator can lock the action up. “Not when you think it’s acceptable to undermine my … my…” But the subjugator’s swelling in my throat, cutting off my words. I wanted to say, Not when you think it’s acceptable to undermine everything my family’s achieved.

  Sebastian smiles, his gaze touching on my throat. “So if we can’t buy the document from you, we’ll take it by subversion. It’s just that your crew’s ungodly loyal to you, so it’s been difficult to disparage the Cruz name in front of them. You’re almost like … like a family.”

  The Smithsons don’t care to understand how the crew aboard the Conquistador thinks. We are family. Sometimes we are bound by blood, or time, or space, but we are just as concerned about our collective well-being as we are about the individual good. Sometimes, more so.

  Still, it’s frightening to think that the Smithsons have been laboring to discredit my family in front of others, especially the crew. “You say ‘family’ like it’s a bad thing,” I say.

  “It is when your people forget who’s paying them,” Sebastian says.

  “Money can’t buy loyalty,” I spit back.

  “Can’t it?” he asks, stroking the hollow of my throat. “Money bought a collar for a little lioness.”

  “I think you’ve forgotten lion cubs have claws,” I snap, smacking his hand away.

  He lifts one of my hands, pressing the tips of my fingers into his lips. “Oh, but my cariño, can’t you see I’ve clipped them off?”

  “Don’t you call me cariño.” My lip curls. “Not when you don’t have the cojones to stand up to your mother—”

  Sebastian smashes me against the wall. My head bounces off the metal, rattling my brain inside my skull. Galaxies dance through my vision. I groan. If it weren’t for the way he’s got me pinned, I might slide to the floor.

  “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” he says in my ear, the heat of his breath bristling against my skin. His hands slide down the sides of my waist. I shudder. He digs his fingers into my flesh. It’s hard to believe I ever liked his touch. “But here’s the thing, you clever girl”—he pulls a few centimeters away—“tonight, you made my job of discrediting your family easier. What will the crew think, once they hear the Lioness’s little cub snuck into the Narrows and hacked the silocomputers?”

  My eyes widen. I hadn’t considered also being blamed for a black-hat hacker’s work, not even by Sebastian. I fight to swallow down the panic crawling from my heart through my throat, not wanting it to show on my face. I’d prepared for this very situation. I do nothing without a solid, achievable plan, along with backups and safeties to make sure I succeed.

  While I might not be able to prove I wasn’t the hacker in the Narrows, I can prove Sebastian’s a liar and a blackmailer.

  I must do a terrible job at feigning nonchalance, because Sebastian continues, “Ah, now the little cub understands the trouble she’s in.” He smiles as if he’s just made a game-winning play in pulseball. He clucks his tongue. “Hacking a civilian-class starship is a major federal offense, Laura.”

  “So is assaulting a fellow crew member aboard a starship,” I say, nodding toward the secure-cam, whose eye targets us with dynamic precision. “Tell me, do you think they’ll be able to read your lips on camera? Perhaps notice what happened to me when you said the word ‘stop’?”

  Sebastian pushes off me without a word, gaze locked on the cam. The color bleeds from his face. His lip lifts in a small snarl. “All the ship’s sentinels are drunk tonight. I checked.”

  “Why should that matter?” I say, quietly pressing the attack. “After what happened on Launch Day, I used the ship’s GPL systems and facial-recognition tech to document any and all of our encounters. That data gets bitloaded into one of three hundred fifty random off-colony, dark web accounts. I press the right button, and this very moment will be seen by people all over Panamerica.”

  He crushes his lips into a thin, bloodless line. I watch fury coil in his eyes, two great green snakes constricting around his pupils till they turn to pinpricks. This is Sebastian Smithson, plotting his next move, looking for an opening, still trying to win. We are alike in some ways, but mostly in the way we both hate to lose.

  “Which people?” he asks.

  I shrug, which I hope hides the terror creeping into my gut. “I had a hacker friend set it up for me, just as an additional layer of protection. They didn’t know why I needed it, and I don’t know where anything’s stored, nor where it would go, should it be released.”

  “You must be lying. Your sub…” He pauses, glancing up at the secure-cam and turning his back on its lens. “Your little friend is programmed to keep you from doing anything that could harm my family.” He says these words through his teeth.

  “Ay, that’s true,” I say. “I don’t know who built your AI, but it’s not that smart. I’ve spent the last three months testing its limits, and let me tell you, it’s got loopholes.”

  “Loopholes?”

  I allow myself a little grin. “What did I always tell you? Hacking isn’t magic, it’s logic. I find loopholes in systems and exploit them. Did you really think your system would be superior to my skills? That I wouldn’t find some way to exploit its code?”

  Sebastian points a finger in my face. I wish I could bite the tip of it off. “Mother always told me you were too proud.”

  “And Mami always told me you were a racista.”

  The word’s off my tongue before I even think it through. There’s a pause, a single moment where the word sinks into him, irretrievable. Sebastian lifts his hand as if to strike me, thinks twice, and steps back, breathing so hard his shoulders heave. We glare at each other.

  Sometimes anger drags harsh truths off your lips. Though the Smithsons would deny it to their dying breath, what I said was true. Panamerica’s a mezcla of the former North, Central, and South Americas, plus Japan through an alliance with the United States. Pale skin’s uncommon, often curated by white families as carefully as a museum collection.

  When Sebastian and I first started dating, Mami warned me his skin was too pale, and that it might mean something about his family. I didn’t listen, believing that if I loved him enough, I could change him.


  After all, Sebastian’s intelligent. Driven. Kind when he wants to be, and not lacking in empathy. Qualities I could work with.

  Then Launch Day came. I learned all my love couldn’t change seventeen years of social conditioning. It couldn’t shift thousand-year-old thinking, no matter how erroneous that thinking might be. No matter how accomplished I was, or how many historical papers I’d written for my uni classes and presented at major forums, or awards I’d received for my work, it didn’t matter. Not to Dr. Smithson. Not to her son.

  “Laura.” This time he says my name right, and there’s heartbreak packed into his voice. I can’t tell if he’s acting. “How could you even imply … much less say…”

  “History isn’t something you colonize, Sebastian,” I say, my words firm but quiet. “Its stories don’t belong to you because of your family name. My family’s crew doesn’t belong to you because you pay them. I don’t belong to you just because you used to be my boyfriend.”

  His eyes narrow, almost to slits. As he opens his mouth to respond, someone calls out:

  “Laura? You there?” The voice is a deep bass, maybe Alex’s.

  “Over here!” I shout before Sebastian can command me to be silent.

  Alex strides into view, some fifteen meters uptunnel. When he turns his head, his gaze checks me from head to toe, then zeroes in on Sebastian.

  “There you are,” Alex says, the lightness of his tone belying the wariness in his features. Relief floods my body, releasing the tension in my muscles and slowing my heart.

  When Alex moves, he’s all grace, lithe muscles, and sharp intellect. His locs are gathered off his face in a loose ponytail at the back of his neck, the brown of his hair a few shades darker than his umber skin. His parents are historians—old uni friends of my father’s—but Alex is in flight school and already training to fly ships in the Conquistador’s class. His parents are very vocal about his brilliant mathematical mind, knifelike reflexes, and captain-material charisma … and only a little less so about his casual disinterest in their life’s work.

  “You okay, flaca?” Alex asks, his gaze shifting from Sebastian to me. When I move to him, he wraps an arm around my shoulders.

  I nod, swallowing hard. My subjugator pricks my muscles. “I was just on my way to the party,” I say, trying on a smile. It doesn’t fit right with my mood, and I’ve never been an emotional chameleon like my older brother, or Faye. Mami says I wear my heart on my sleeve, and it’s usually true.

  “Looks like you got held up,” Alex says.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” I say, glancing at the secure-cam. Sebastian follows my gaze, and I make a show of straightening my shirt and rolling back my shoulders. Sebastian and I have reached a point of mutually assured interpersonal destruction, with our families’ futures hanging on each move we make. One thing I know for certain: he and his mother won’t try to harm me unless they can be assured of a neat, incontrovertible victory. If the footage of Sebastian commanding me to stop were ever seen by the right pair of eyes, well, the Smithsons could count out the rest of their days behind bars. Sebastian knows so much; but his mother, with a much larger legacy to lose, will feel that threat more keenly. Good.

  A muted call warbles through the tunnels.

  “She’s over here, Faye!” Alex shouts, a riff of anger in his voice.

  Faye shouts something several tunnels away. The distance erodes the meaning off her words. The horsey clip-clop of her high heels bounces downtunnel.

  “Is she really running around the ship in heels?” I ask Alex.

  He shrugs. “It’s Faye.”

  “I know, but she’s going to wedge her ankle—”

  “Laurita!” Faye shouts. I turn, smiling despite the ache in my head and the panic in my heart. Faye has to walk on her toes here or else her heels will sink through the grates. She wobbles, her A-line, midmodern skirt swinging like a red bell. Earlier today, she used her bioware’s canvases to paint an entire mural about the terrarium find, and then used her illusory shifters to apply it temporarily to her skirt. The effect doesn’t last long, though—after a few hours, the painting’s dimming, the regular fabric showing through.

  I squint at her skirt and wonder: Could that effect be applied to a spacesuit?

  “Are you okay?” Faye’s arms go around my neck, breaking through my thoughts. Part of me wants to shatter into a million little pieces, but if I did, Faye would catch them as they fell. There will be time enough to fall apart later, when I can tell her the whole story. Right now, I need to focus, get to the bridge, and get my personal bioware offline. My family’s future depends on it, as does the fate of one of humanity’s greatest finds.

  I pull back from Faye’s embrace. “I’m sorry about the party, cari—”

  “Laura, what are you wearing?” she asks, her perfectly stenciled brows arching, lips pouting. She tugs on one of my carabiners. “And what is this thing? Never mind, you can borrow something of mine. Ven conmigo, back to the party. I’ll make you a margarita.” Her voice lilts on the last note as she slips her arm through mine.

  “I can’t,” I say, digging my feet into the ground as she tries to tug me back toward the ship’s residential areas. “I need to get to the bridge.”

  “What, why?” Alex and Faye ask, almost in tandem.

  “I saw a hacker in the Narrows,” I say. “The pendejo messed with the ship’s gravidar and—”

  “You should go to the party, Laura,” Sebastian says, stressing the command so the subjugator takes hold of my body. I halt in the hallway, one eyelid twitching at the mispronunciation of my name. In order for the subjugator to read the command, Sebastian has to say my name with that exact pronunciation and intonation.

  “It’s Laora,” Faye snaps, oblivious. “Say her name right, or don’t say it at all, chico.”

  The subjugator works best on simple, one-word voice commands. The more complex the command, the easier it is to ignore. Just a few more seconds … five … four …

  “Laura?” Alex asks behind me. He rests a hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  “You know Laura,” Sebastian says, his voice easy, tone mocking, a poor attempt to hide a tinge of anxiety. “She hates being told what to do.”

  “I think she just hates you,” Faye says, snapping her fingers at Sebastian.

  Three … screw you too … one. By the end, I’m breathing hard. I doubt Sebastian will attempt something like that again, risky as it was to issue such a complicated command right in front of the two people who know me best, and on camera. Why is he acting so foolishly? I shake it off, wishing I could slap the smug grin from Sebastian’s face.

  He’s getting bolder. That doesn’t bode well.

  As Faye and Sebastian exchange barbs, Alex leans down. “What’s this gringo doing to you?” he asks me under his breath, as if I could chalk my reactions to Sebastian up to something like, say, trauma. Alex may be the most observant of my friends, but for most people, subjugators aren’t part of ordinary life. They’re the stuff of thriller fiction and sordid news stories, not everyday reality.

  He glances at Sebastian and Faye. “This probably isn’t the time for this conversation, is it?”

  I shake my head. “I’m not sure I can explain it, Alex,” I say softly. “Even to you.”

  “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

  “There’s a big difference between wanting to and being able to, sometimes.”

  His eyes search mine. When I don’t say anything more, he squeezes my shoulder and kisses my temple. It’s not a romantic gesture; we’ve always been close. Sebastian couldn’t stand the casual warmth in my relationship with Alex—it’s fraternal, really, but it’s not something Sebastian’s touch-phobic family understands. I’ve never seen Dr. Smithson so much as hug Sebastian in public. Their relationship seems almost … clinical, at least in public. Though I admit, it’s not much better in private, either.

  “Help me on the bridge?” I ask Alex. “I promise, it�
�s important.”

  “Órale,” he says. “Did you really think you had to ask?”

  As we turn and walk away, Faye cries out, “Ay, where are you two going?”

  “To your party.” I meet Sebastian’s gaze before adding, “By way of the bridge.”

  “What?!” Faye runs after us, her heels clacking against the floor.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Alex says under his breath. “We don’t have clearance to be on the ship’s bridge during the late bells.” There’s an unspoken And we definitely don’t have clearance to be on the Alfa Bridge ever in those words, too.

  “Oh, I do,” I say.

  When it comes to the ship’s computers, I always do.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, we enter the Hall of Artifacts, a gallery of the finds my parents and their teams are currently studying.

  It takes all my nerve to keep from sprinting straight to the bridge. I tell myself I’ve spent weeks preparing for this, and I know my plans both backward and forward. Still, I walk faster. I’ve worked toward escaping Sebastian’s subjugator for months now, and it’s all I’ve wanted. My hands shake, because I know my freedom’s twined up with failure, and that my future now rests on a knife’s edge.

  Situated at the top of the manta ray–shaped Conquistador, the long, arched Hall of Artifacts runs down the ship’s spine. Stars glitter overhead, visible through arches of crysteel supported by metal vertebrae. The artifacts stand in floatglass cases anchored to the walls. We pass a terra-cotta soldier from Emperor Qin’s army—Dad’s almost finished studying the molecular makeup of the clay, and then it will be returned to the Chinese. A huge stone Mayan calendar wheel graces the wall on my right, beside Neil Armstrong’s 1969 moon-landing EVA suit. It’s hard to believe midmodern people wore such bulky, yet fragile suits in space. It seems like a micrometeorite could tear straight through that suit, causing havoc on a massive scale.