Last of Her Name

by Jessica Khoury

  Pol has gone absolutely still, watching Mara with violence in his eyes. I find myself grateful they handcuffed him. I’m not sure he wouldn’t attack her and get himself shot—again—in the process.

  “Stars,” Zhar murmurs. “No wonder they were so secretive about the Firebird. All along, they were the greatest weapons in the galaxy.”

  “It’s not what you think,” I whisper. “I’m not a weapon. That’s not the point of the Firebird. That thing”—I point at the crystal—“it’s alive. Don’t you see? The Leonovs protected the Prismata, and in return, it gave us Prisms to power our ships and cities. It’s a living creature, and it’s my job to keep it safe.”

  “Alive?” My mom glances at the Prismata through window, her brow furrowing.

  I clench my fists in frustration; how can I make them believe something they cannot see or hear or experience? How can I make them understand the Prismata isn’t something to be used for death, but for life? They’re making the same mistake the Leonovs made, and that led to the war that killed millions. This time, it’s going to be worse. Even my parents don’t understand.

  I thought I’d come here to protect the Prismata from Volkov, not my own family. How can the people I love most be so blind? How do I make them see that they’re fighting for all the wrong things, and that there can be a better way?

  “Commander!” interrupts a Loyalist soldier, a hand pressed to his comm patch. “Word from our people in the palace. Volkov departed hours ago, destination unknown, but he’s taken the majority of the Union fleet with him.”

  My head jerks up. “He wants to destroy the Prismata. That’s why he overthrew the Empire in the first place—to get to it! He has the coordinates, and he’s coming here.”

  Zhar stares at me, then slowly nods. “He once told me, back when he was only thinking of revolting, that the Leonovs were never the real threat. That the galaxy was controlled by something terrible and unknowable.”

  “Volkov thinks it will wipe out humanity. But I know it, and it wouldn’t do that.”

  “So,” she says, “if your job is to protect it, then protect it. The Leonovs used the Prismata to destroy all threats. So can you. We stick to our original plan.”

  She wants me to blow up Volkov’s fleet the way Pyotr Leonov blew up everyone on Emerault’s moon. All I’d have to do is connect to the network of Prismic energy all around me and, well, ask. The same way I flew the Valentina and turned on the systems in this old station. The Union fleet will be bristling with Prisms. One word, one thought from me could obliterate them in a moment. The Prismata would be safe then, and the war would be over. We’d have control of the galaxy. I’d become an empress. My family would be reunited. I could save anyone I wanted, and all it would take is the sacrifice of a couple thousand Unionist soldiers. Soldiers who would shoot me on sight.

  But can I do that? Can I just wipe out Volkov and all the people on his ships? They might be enemy soldiers, but most of them are still innocent people with families and homes and dreams. Killing them would make me just like Emperor Pyotr or Alexei Volkov, using people like game pieces, discarding the ones I don’t like with ruthless efficiency.

  Yet again, I’m being asked to make a choice I cannot make.

  But this time, I don’t think I can open my multicuff and tinker my way out of it.

  There must be another way. There must be an answer to all this, a path to peace. If I wipe out Volkov’s fleet, then I’m just another tyrant, exploiting power I don’t deserve. More will rise up in the direktor’s place, and the killing and fighting will go on and on. We won’t have to worry about the Prismata destroying us. We’ll destroy ourselves.

  But what can I do?

  I’m tired of being told which path I should follow. Even my parents can’t help me, and I’m not sure I need them to anymore.

  I’m not the helpless girl who was dragged from her home three months ago.

  I am the Firebird, and I was born to guard an ancient being at the edge of the universe.

  I’m a girl who loves her best friend, enough to risk everything.

  I think of her now: the most peaceful person I know, the one who could always be counted on to see the best path. The person I trust more than anyone else in the galaxy, who always saw the best in everyone.

  I have to talk to Clio.

  Everyone around me is still arguing about what to do. Yelling at one another, at me. Pol and my parents and Zhar and Mara—it’s chaos. Riyan starts to rouse, and when he sees Zhar, his eyes open wide and he begins struggling. The air around him pops and crackles as he tries and fails to tessellate.

  Sandwiched between Zhar and my parents, I can’t get to any control consoles. I have no way of reaching the Prism current.

  I shut my eyes and try to think, try to focus. I twist my multicuff—

  Of course.

  The cuff is powered by Prism energy, just a thread of it coiled in a tiny battery that powers the flashlight, but that might be enough to access the wider network around me.

  It has to be enough.

  I wrap my hand around the metal, stilling myself. I let the chaos surrounding me fade away. I feel the quiet, slender current of Prism energy pulsing through the tiny wires inside.

  For some reason, it’s Natalya Ayedi I think of at that moment, telling her brother that now is the time to lose control. No more hesitation, no more fear, no more doubt.

  Instead of just observing the network of light spread around me, I fling myself wholly into it and don’t look back.

  The Prism network sweeps me away.

  It’s like diving into a river and finding the current is much stronger than you’d anticipated. There is nothing I can do but let it take me. I lose all sense of my physical body, instead inhabiting a new state of being, a disembodied mind. My consciousness is ripped from my flesh and bones, leaving my parents and Pol and everyone else far behind. Do they notice that I’m gone? Am I standing still, or has my body collapsed onto the ground? Will I even be able to find myself again?

  I am reduced to a cloud of particles borne on a golden tide. I am a scattering of leaves torn from my tree by a storm-driven wind. I am stretched wider and farther, like ink through water, following the lines and channels and streams of Prismic energy that branch across space. All around me is light: pure, cleansing light that tumbles like water, a cascade of luminescent energy.

  I fight to stay in control of myself, because the current threatens to rip me apart entirely. Here at the heart of the Vault, the Prismic flow is infinitely stronger than it was in the palace. Stronger, and deeper, and stranger. This close to the Prismata, I can feel its pulse, like there really is a heart somewhere in that massive structure. But oddly, I don’t feel panic. Even as my consciousness unravels and my senses explode with alien sensations, I am not afraid. There’s no room for fear in me, because I am filled to the brim with wonder.

  This is where all Prismic energy in the galaxy begins. This is the living light that sustains all humanity. I can feel it all—the billions of tributaries branching away from the source, threading the stars, flowing through every inch of the Belt. But the energy doesn’t just flow out—it also returns, carrying with it a jumble of information, like birds returning to their nest with scavenged treasures.

  The Prismata is collecting things—intangible bits and pieces of humanity. It gathers moments and feelings and memories, draws them into itself, the way it’s drawing me in. I catch fleeting glimpses as these treasures hurtle past, reflected in the bright, gleaming facets of the Prisms themselves: the pattern of lichen dappling the back of a great Emeraultine sky whale, seen through the Prism-powered binoculars held by an excited little girl; the curse of a pilot trying to start the engine of an old and cantankerous racing ship; the flash of a neon sign in the orbital cities drifting over Alexandrine, advertising a night with a beautiful escort to a lone man standing below; the delighted laugh of a young programmer when the companion bot she has built powers on for the first time; the sob of an
eeda looking at an image of a lost love on his tabletka, his webbed fingers pressed to the screen.

  The moments the Prismata collects all have a similar theme. Each one is taut with emotion: excitement, frustration, desire, joy, grief. It isn’t the sights or sounds of the humans the crystal wants—it’s their feelings. That’s why it sent the Prisms to meet Danica and Zorica Leonova all those centuries ago; this is why it still sends them to us. The Prisms are its errand-birds, collecting human emotions and sending them back to their nest, nourishing it with human love and desire and rage.

  The Prismata speaks in emotions, Danica said.

  Now I understand what she meant.

  The closer I get to the Prismata itself, the more fragmented the images become, until I can’t tell where they come from or who they’re about; everything tangible is stripped away until only the emotion remains. The light around me shimmers with a hundred different colors, and every color has a name: fury and lust and sorrow and happiness, many I have no name for but have felt before, like the feeling of music taking hold of you until you can’t help but dance, the oddly sorrowful aftertaste that sometimes follows a moment of delight, the expansion of the soul when looking at a beautiful sunset, the pleasure of being the first to share good news. All these wash over and through me, pulling me farther apart, spreading me thin, dizzying me. I nearly lose myself in them entirely. I have to struggle to remember who I am and why I’m here.

  The Prismata. I have to reach it. I have to find Clio.

  There’s no need to search for it. All I have to do is wait and let it reel me in. From Prism to Prism I bounce, reflected through space, borne on the unseen golden threads that bind all the crystals together. Threads that, inevitably, lead back to the center of the network, veins returning to the heart. I’m just a single cell in its bloodstream.

  I know the moment I arrive, because everything goes still.

  The halt is abrupt, leaving me jarred and dizzy. Though I don’t have any physical sense, the part of my mind where the Firebird connects me to the Prismata—where a tiny fraction of its energy passes through my neural synapses, weaving me into its vast network—is wide open. I’m exploding with sensations that are almost like seeing and hearing and smelling.

  It reminds of the nights when Clio and I would sneak out for a swim in the lake near the vineyard. Out in the hills, there were no artificial lights, only the dusty, glinting stars above. They reflected on the lake’s smooth surface, so when I floated on my back, I couldn’t tell water from sky. Weightless, I’d imagine I was floating in space, my every atom lighter than air. That’s what it’s like now; separated from my body, from all physical sense, from gravity—I am free.

  Gradually, I become aware of the Prismata’s pulsing song. It’s not music I hear, but a feeling that’s like music. It’s not something I could ever re-create, even if I had all the musical talent and all the best instruments in the galaxy. Here, the stolen moments I glimpsed on my strange journey have all been distilled down to their emotional cores. They gather and mingle and coalesce, colors blending until they’re all the same bright, dazzling gold. That one feeling, composed of so many others, is stronger than all the rest, and soon it wraps around me, pushing everything else aside.

  That feeling is love.

  The Prismata knows me. It welcomes me. It invites me deeper, to commune with it fully. And even though I can’t feel my physical eyes, I know I am weeping. I don’t doubt that back in my flesh-and-blood body, there are tears running down my cheeks.

  I reach out and feel the mind around me reach back, curious about me, enjoying my adoration. It knows I’m here and it wants to experience me as much as I am experiencing it. I hold nothing back, but let it see everything: my fear of failing to save it, my anger at Mara and my parents and Zhar, my love for Pol. All the emotions that bind me together and make me who I am, like a different sort of genetic code. The Prismata sifts through all of them, its gentle love suffusing my being.

  Stars, it is purer than I could have imagined. No wonder the Leonovs felt compelled to protect it. This is what I always sensed in Clio—a clarity of spirit far beyond my own. A soul untouched by greed and hate, existing in perfect harmony.

  Volkov’s fears of it turning against us are completely absurd. If he could just know the Prismata, if he could connect with it the way I am connecting with it now, he would see how perfectly affectionate it is, an entity incapable of violence. The attacks the Leonovs made using its power were their own dark nature; it had nothing to do with the Prismata. They exploited it in the name of protecting it.

  But enchanting as this strange entity is, I have to remember why I am here.

  Clio? Are you here?

  My words feel small and inconsequential compared to the Prismata’s much greater existence. It’s like tossing pebbles from the shore to get the ocean’s attention. But still I try to find a point of connection, a way of making myself heard by it.

  You have to leave, please. You’re in danger!

  I can feel it react, a thread of green curiosity flickering in and out, brushing over me like a slinke leaf. So it must hear me—but does it understand?

  Stars, this would be so much easier if she could talk to me! Is Clio even in there? Or was every knowable part of her a result of my own subconscious?

  Where did I end and she begin?

  Did I get it all wrong?

  They’re coming to destroy you. They don’t know what you are. Please, you must let me help you!

  I have to find her if she’s here. Whatever part of the Prismata clung to me all my life, shadowed me in the form of my best friend, I have to find it now. It’s the only way I can stop Volkov and save the people I love.

  It’s the only way this war can end.

  As hard as it is, I have to let my mind clear. I must put aside the words and the pleas, and unearth something deeper. Something more instinctive, that the Prismata will understand.

  I start with an image.

  We are thirteen years old. We sit under the grapevines, spying on a shirtless Pol as he washes the mantibu. But then a slinke spider drops from the vines and lands between us. We scream and Pol sees us, then chases us with a bucket of soapy water. He trips and spills it on himself, and you and I laugh and laugh …

  Warmth spreads through me. I can recall the day so clearly, and the purity of our happiness.

  We are ten years old, sitting on the floor of my bedroom. The window is open, and we can smell the rich wine in the presses below. I draw a spaceship and you color it. We name it Starchaser. We list the planets we’ll visit and what we’ll do. It takes us hours to plan it all out, and finally we fall asleep, back to back on the carpet.

  No one knows me like Clio does. No matter what she is, she’s my best friend, for as long as I live.

  We are eight years old. It’s night, and we’ve snuck away from Pol’s birthday party to sit on the top of the house, looking up at the stars. I point out Alexandrine, and you say we’ll go there first. “You and me against the universe,” you add, and we link pinkies and swear to be friends forever.

  I lay everything before the Prismata—every moment, every smile, every whisper. Every fight we had, every make-up, every prank we pulled. I lay out our love for Pol. I pour our friendship into this ancient being’s mind. And I give it my fear and horror that I might lose her.

  I feel heat rising, softness closing around me. The Prismata is changing, shifting. I struggle to understand, and then—

  “Stacia.”

  Her voice.

  As clear in my thoughts as it ever was.

  Relief floods through me. “Clio? Is that you?”

  Her excitement rises around me; I can feel it, like soap bubbles popping on my skin.

  “I asked you to come to me,” she says, “and you did.”

  “Yes, yes! I’m here, Clio. Stars, I am here. I’m sorry it took so long.”

  A pause, as the current of the Prismata swirls around me. My mind floods with color, curls of
yellow and red. And then, out of the misty hues, a solid form materializes, appearing before my mind’s eye like fog taking shape, colors assembling into the form I know and love so well.

  Clio walks toward me and takes my hands, and I realize I have my body again, or at least the sensation of one. I can see and feel and hear her as if we were standing in the vineyard back home. She’s wearing the blue sundress she had on the last day I saw her, and her hair flows around her shoulders, as golden as the light around us. I’m in my favorite outfit—the tank top and cargo pants that I had to abandon on Sapphine, and even my multicuff is on my wrist. My hair is braided over my shoulder.

  I pull her close, hug her tight, until tears run from my eyes. She squeezes back, and somehow, she feels more herself than she’s ever been before.

  “I miss you,” I whisper.

  “I was never far.” She pulls back to look at me. Her eyes aren’t blue anymore, but all the colors of the Prisms, swirling endlessly. “So. Are you going to tell me all about it, or what?”

  “Tell you …”

  “About Pol, stupid!” She grins. “You kissed him. Finally.”

  Unreal as this body is, it can still flush furiously. I press my hands to my heated cheeks. “I’m sorry! It just—it happened and I didn’t know how to stop and—”

  Clio laughs, bright and sparkling as rain on a sunny day. She grabs my hands and pulls me close. “He’s lucky, you know. Don’t you ever let him forget it.”

  I stare at her, the realness of her, like seeing a dream come to life. My Clio. My dazzling, laughing friend, my twin moon. I want to grab her hand and steal her away, keep her all to myself. I want everything to be the way it was. I want to live our beautiful lie, all else be damned. But I may as well want the stars for a necklace. Clio isn’t mine to steal; she’s only mine to protect for as long as I can.

  “This is you, isn’t it?” I say. “I mean, you’re the Prismata, not just my imagination. But Danica said you couldn’t speak the way we do.”

  “For all her cleverness, Danica never totally understood me. Not many of your ancestors did. They never believed in me the way you do, with the whole of their beings.” There is a touch of sadness in her smile.