I crossed a galaxy for her. What’s one more step?
I stand up and take the woman’s hand again. “I’m ready.”
The Solariat blurs away like smoke, to be replaced by the curving walls of a spaceship.
I flinch, caught off guard by how real it feels. The cabin we’re in is long and boxy, with high, narrow windows looking out to the stars. Tables line either wall, cluttered with scientific-looking but long outdated equipment. I recognize a few things as old versions of Dr. Luka’s machines—gene sequencers, microscopes, brain scanners. There are food wrappers and empty coffee cups scattered around. The windows are covered in markered equations; in some places the numbers have been scribbled out by a frustrated hand, the lines sharp and angry.
After taking it all in, I realize who the woman is.
“Danica Leonova,” I whisper. “You’re the first empress.”
“Not yet,” she replies. “This was my only dominion in those early days.”
She pulls me down the deck, her eyes shining. “My sister and I bought this ship, made it our lab for our less … legal experiments. Human augmentation and genetic enhancement were our business, but our society frowned on such things back then. We had to take our work offworld, into no-man’s-sky. It was here, aboard the Firebird, that we developed our most powerful cybernetic codes.”
“Like the code the tensors have?”
She nods. “It was our first big success. After that, we began working on a new neural enhancement, a code we hoped would spark telepathy. The joining of human minds, the most powerful form of communication that could exist.”
I pull my eyes away from the lab and stare hard at her. “You said you could tell me about Clio. Not ancient history.”
“If you want to know who you are,” she replies, “you must understand who you were.”
The air around us blurs, and we seem to rush forward without ever taking a step. We’re still on the same deck of the ship, only at a different time. A dark-haired woman is lying on the floor—another, older version of Danica herself. She looks exhausted, defeated, surrounded by lab equipment and flickering holograms of neural networks. Now the windows are so covered in messy equations and formulas that I can’t see the stars at all. The mess of cups and wrappers has deepened; there’s hardly a bare spot on the floor or counters. It looks like the lair of a madwoman, and the other Danica perfectly fits the role. Her hair is a mess and her lab coat is covered in stains. She doesn’t look like she’s slept or showered in days. Her bloodshot eyes stare without blinking. As I watch, she picks up a small object and cradles it in her hands.
I catch my breath. “I’ve seen one of those before. The tensors call them Legacy Stones.”
The metal flower unfurls over the other Danica’s palms, and then long, searching tentacles, thin as hairs, sprout from its center. They reach for her, wrapping around her head and inserting their tips into the skin at her temples and the base of her skull. That is something the tensor’s Stones definitely did not do. Perhaps over time, theirs had broken down, unable to perform their original purpose, instead becoming nothing more than relics. But the object Danica holds is still new. I hold my breath as its filaments begin to gleam, beads of light trailing along their lengths and sinking into her brain.
My guide looks down at herself, eyes soft. “All my efforts to activate human telepathy failed. But we had sunk everything into this project, and we couldn’t afford to lose. In my final moments of desperation, I grafted the experimental code to my own DNA.” She shakes her head. “But it didn’t work. My sister, only a deck above, couldn’t hear anything of my thoughts, no matter how hard I broadcast them.”
The Danica on the floor vanishes like smoke.
My Danica turns to me, a slow smile spreading across her face. “But my failure would become our first connection with something even greater. A discovery that would change the course of civilization.”
She wipes off some of the equations on the window, and through the glass, I make out a tiny object spinning just outside the ship, like a bright, curious butterfly.
“Is that a Prism?”
“It’s the very first one we found, drifting in the void of space. And not by accident.” Danica looks at me. “We’d tried to project our thoughts to each other, and failed—in hearing them, but not in sending them. The messages were getting lost in transmission, adrift in the dark channels of space-time. And as we soon found out, someone else was listening.”
“The Prisms … heard you?”
She nods. “They heard, and they came looking.”
I stare at the crystal outside the window, then notice another appear beside it.
Danica presses her hand to the window, smiling fondly at the Prisms, which begin to multiply, more and more materializing out of darkness and clustering at the glass. “Soon, we were finding a new Prism every few days. All we had to do was close our eyes and reach, and we could feel them spinning in the dark. So we gathered them up and studied them, and learned we could even manipulate the energy they produced, using the telepathy code. Before long, we realized they were leading us somewhere, bread crumbs scattered across the stars. And the deeper we went into that sky, the farther we chased the trail they made, the more they called to us. We were terrified of what we would find, of where they would lead us, but all our lives we’d sought the answers to impossible questions. So what could we do but follow?”
The scene changes again, to a larger ship, this one equipped for warp. A Prism in a rudimentary diamantglass box spins on the dash. Danica stands at the controls, with another woman close enough in appearance that I know they are sisters. The new one must be Zorica Leonova. They both look older now, perhaps forty or fifty.
The ship wades through space teeming with spinning Prisms. They are thick as sand in a Rubyati wind, thousands, millions of them glinting in the darkness.
“We finally found the main cloud, in a bit of space we’d come to call the Vault,” Danica says. “We had made a fortune such as no human has ever known. We were already rulers of Alexandrine in practice, thanks to the Prism trade. But the crystals still called to us, drawing us deeper and deeper into the cosmos, light-years away. And this is where the trail ended.”
She points at an orb shining ahead, which I at first mistake for a star. But as the ship drifts toward it and the cabin floods with golden light, I realize it’s only a little larger than a moon.
I stare at the thing hanging in space, my breath still, my heart suspended.
“The Prismata,” says Zorica, turning to smile at me. “This is where Prisms are born.” As we get closer, the Prismata takes shape, less a glowing ball of light and more a defined structure. Unlike the simple diamond-shaped Prisms, the Prismata is a complex, tessellated form with hundreds of points. A beautiful, sparkling crystal that burns like sunlight at its core. It spins slowly, generating just enough gravity to form an orbit of Prisms in a brilliant ring. Its many facets flash and shimmer as it turns, light playing across the ship and glancing off my skin.
I cannot speak for the beauty of it. Overwhelmed, I stare until my eyes begin to burn.
“Who knows how long the Prismata spun in the void of space, all alone? How startled it must have been to have heard my voice calling out, light-years away.” Danica smiles at the great Prism. “In all humanity’s trekking across the galaxy, we’d never found another sign of life. Until now.”
“It’s … alive?” Tears prick my eyes.
She looks at me, the Prismata’s light shining on her face. “Haven’t you heard its voice? Haven’t you heard it calling you?”
“The code was deactivated …”
“The door was closed, but you heard the whispers behind it.”
I blink, and a tear drops, runs down my cheek. The beauty of the crystal takes on new meaning as I stare into its heart.
“It’s Clio,” I whisper.
Danica nods.
I shake my head, unable to comprehend it, but feeling the truth of it in m
y bones. “All along, she was real. She was the Prismata, connected to my mind. But—but how did I imagine that thing as human?”
“How else would a child’s mind make sense of the vast consciousness linked to hers? With the help of the Firebird code, you gave that consciousness a face, a voice, a personality. The Prismata was the soul that inhabited a mask you yourself created.”
She looks back at the crystal, her gaze fond but also a bit sad. “You aren’t the only one who knew Clio, Anya, though she’s worn many faces over the centuries. I was haunted by a boy with a violin. Zorica often saw a woman with one blue eye and one brown. The Prismata took on a different form for each of us, shaped by our individual personalities. But the consciousness behind them was always the same. We called them Clio after the cybernetic code which made them possible.”
Danica turns to me again. “She has always been with the Leonovs; her voice has whispered in the ear of every emperor and empress to rule the Belt. And every iteration of Clio was as unique as the person to whom it was bound. Knowing what they were, we saw through them and understood it was the crystal’s consciousness we felt, while the faces were fabrications of our own minds. But you, Anya, you had no one to tell you the truth, to explain that what you saw was the Prismata, transformed by your imagination into the figure of a girl.”
So Clio was partly my own creation, my mind’s way of understanding this alien life-form to which I’ve always been linked. But how much of Clio was me, and how much of her was the Prismata? Will I ever know where I ended and it began?
I look back at Danica. “Why did she—it—never tell me what Clio was? Why let me think she was a person?”
“The Prismata doesn’t speak, not the way we do. It communicates through feeling, emotion. The words it used were your words, Anya, so how could it tell you what you did not already know?”
“And my parents—my foster parents—they never said anything. They thought Clio was part of the Leonov madness.”
“It’s likely they feared breaking your delusion, lest they break your mind. They could have tried everything to cure you, but it wouldn’t have worked. Until you knew the truth about who and what she really was, Clio would always be there.”
“And they needed the princess more than they needed Stacia,” I mutter. “That was always their first objective: to use me in their war.” I shake my head, looking from the Prismata to Danica. “And what about Clio? Where is she? Will I see her again?”
“You don’t need Clio anymore, now that you know the truth. This is how we cured ourselves of the hallucinations—by remembering what and who was truly real. You may glimpse her in the years to come, but she will never again be as clear as she was.”
Of course I need her. I’ll always need her. She might be a part of me, but my connection to her is still real. She is scattered throughout my memories, intertwined with me in every way. Maybe her body doesn’t exist, but her soul does.
I’m staring straight at it.
“But why hide all this? Why not tell everyone there’s an alien life-form powering their whole society? That we’re not alone in the universe?”
“We tried, in the beginning. We told the ruling council of Alexandrine about the Prismata, as soon as we returned from our voyage to discover it. And the moment they heard that the thing powering our world was sentient, they launched every battleship we had, determined to destroy it. They feared it would come to resent us for harnessing its power, and that it would one day turn against us. By then, Prismic energy was already integrated into our everyday lives. We were rediscovering the other human colonies, piercing the stars with our faster-than-light ships. But the council feared the Prismata more than they dreamed of unifying humanity. They didn’t understand that the power we drew from it was given freely. We’d never asked for its light—it had offered it to us in friendship. For all our flaws and ephemerality, it loved us. And in return, we tried to kill it.”
She shakes her head, her eyes darkening. “We stopped them, but at a high cost. Zorica died defending the Prismata. The rest of us swore our bloodline would protect it from then on, and tell no one of its true nature. We took control of Alexandrine, temporarily, we thought. But then someone whispered the word empress, and … well, here we are.”
“Yes,” I murmur, an acidic taste on my tongue. “Here we are, the great House Leonov, who took that energy—so freely given, you say—and turned it into a personal fortune and an empire and a superweapon to knock down anyone who threatened us. Aren’t we the greatest?”
Danica blinks at me, her expression impassive. Of course. She’s not the real Danica, just a message, and my anger doesn’t seem to register with her. I’m not even sure who wrote this message. Most likely, I suppose, it was Emperor Pyotr. Maybe he composed all this in the days before the palace fell, in case he didn’t survive, and plugged it into my infant DNA like an update to a computer system—or a virus—at the same time he deactivated the Firebird code.
She continues as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “Now, as the last of our name, it is your job to protect it, for the sake of all humanity and the sake of the Prismata itself. There are many who would fear it. Some, like that ancient Alexandrian council, would stop at nothing to destroy it.”
“Volkov,” I whisper, my eyes going round with realization. “Volkov knows.”
Humanity will not be ruled by gods, he said.
He wasn’t talking about the Committee or the Leonovs.
He was talking about the Prismata.
And now the only thing standing between him and it … is me.
“If the Prismata is threatenened, Anya, then you are the only one who can defend it,” says Danica. “The Prismata needs you just as humanity needs you. For you see, our fates are bound together.”
I blink at her.
I’m seventeen years old and barely old enough to pilot a dory. But now they want me to defend an ancient alien consciousness on the edge of space, in the midst of a galactic power struggle, all because I’m the only person who happens to have a cybernetic telepathic code fused to my DNA?
Oh, sure. No problem, ancestors.
Panic spikes through me, followed by black despair.
But then I think: This is Clio.
All my life, I’ve protected her. Even when I didn’t know why, the instinct was driving me. Guarding her isn’t just integrated into my DNA—it’s in my soul.
No matter what form she takes, no matter how deep in the sky she burns, she will always be a part of me.
And for her, I would do anything.
After Danica and the ship vanish, I struggle to wake, to even find my body. I am a million particles of light, shooting through wires and circuits, bouncing between rooms, tracing the small hidden spaces of the Rezidencia. I am a drop in the tide of Prismic energy that flows through the imperial infrastructure. I am nowhere and everywhere.
Danica explained the link between me and the Prisms is a telepathic one, so I’m not just connecting to the flow of energy—I’m communicating with it, absorbing information through its senses. As I fight to disconnect, I am barraged with images and sounds that filter through cameras, recording devices, even the vibrations of footsteps that cause ripples in the Prismic energy flowing under the floors. It’s a whole new way of seeing, and it overwhelms my brain.
The images come in hazy glimpses: vityazes playing Triangulum in the barracks, mechanics arguing over how to repair an engine in the docks, guards recording the daily prisoner log in the gulag.
And it’s there that I “see” Pol and Riyan and Mara, locked in separate cells. I feel a surge of relief that they’re safe. I try to think of a way to communicate with them—but then a twinge of pain jolts through my head. I realize how little I know about what I’m doing. How far can I stretch my consciousness until it snaps? I retreat, pulling myself back as quickly as I can, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell.
I wake with a start, to find myself lying on the examination table in the laboratory.
Holos of my DNA spin all around the lab, with scientists poring over them. I lie still, tasting blood that must have run from my nose. My head aches terribly; the pain pounds in my temples, blurring my vision.
“Well?” Holos play over Alexei Volkov’s skin as he crosses the room. Glowing strands of DNA curl over his face. I pretend to still be unconscious as dread opens a pit in my stomach. “What’s the status? Did you copy everything?”
Dr. Luka looks up from his work. “It’s finished. Now that we have it, it’s only a matter of time before we translate it.”
Streams of data fall like holographic rain around the two men, symbols flitting too fast for my eyes to follow. Through slitted eyes, I can recognize one of the words as it flashes and then vanishes, tucked in the reams of letters: Firebird, just like in the tensor code.
“And the coordinates for the Prismata?” asks Volkov.
“We should have them soon. There’s a huge amount of data to sequence, so it could take a day or two. All the best people are on it, direktor. It won’t be long now.”
“Good,” says Volkov. His face softens, and he reaches out to clutch Dr. Luka’s shoulder. “You’ve been an invaluable asset, Doctor. I always admired you, you know, even as a boy.”
The doctor looks up at him, his face tight, as if he’s holding back words. Then he looks down again, hunched over a screen. His hand absently scratches the metal collar clamped around his neck.
I see Volkov’s hand reach inside his coat and realization bursts in my mind. “NO!”
I lunge upright, but it’s too late; the shot is quick and neatly placed, and the sound it makes is an earsplitting crack. Volkov doesn’t even flinch as he does it; he is as passionless and cool as he was the day he shot Ilya Kepht’s mother back in Afka. He kills as if he is picking a crumb from between his teeth.
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