Entangled

by Amy Rose Capetta

  “This is for the Express, right?” Lee asked.

  Rennik capped his pen with a liquid-firm click. “Of course.”

  Cade didn’t give one good snug what it was for. She would have something to play. To keep the beat on, to set her voice to, maybe even—if she was lucky—to strum. She lit so pure with happiness that she was sure Xan could feel it.

  She tried to hide her wattage from Rennik, even if he had been the one to spark it. If he saw the true force of her feeling and responded with calm, she might burst. In a shards-all-over sort of way.

  Rennik edged toward the door. “If you ladies will excuse me, I need to be sure that Renna’s on course.”

  That reminded Cade of something she wanted to ask. She figured she had enough good standing to trade it against one stupid question.

  “If you’re here with us,” she said, “who’s flying the ship?”

  He put a hand to the wall and laughed. “Renna flies herself for the most part. She would hate to think I took all the credit for her abilities just because I’m the one with the face. Faces are ridiculous, according to Renna. They make you think you know a person when all you know is a few twitching inches of skin.” He patted the wall and Cade could feel the room . . . sigh. “I do set the courses. I check bearings, make suggestions.”

  The wall shuddered a warning.

  “Gentle suggestions.”

  “So if you’re not a pilot, what are you?” Cade asked.

  “An outlaw,” Rennik said. “It’s a full-time occupation.”

  “We should know.” Lee cocked a leg up on Rennik’s desk chair. She looked half fierce, half adorable.

  “I carry goods,” Rennik said, “and most of those are legitimate.”

  “And he carries us, and we’re not.”

  “Yes, my passengers would be the bottom-feeders of the universe, if it had a bottom.”

  Lee gasped, but her smile was there, firm beneath the outrage. Cade got the feeling that she wasn’t bothered by his comment at all.

  Cade thought of the two things she’d done with her life—headlining at Club V, and now this. She’d gotten into both because she needed to, and because she was the one who could. There had never been much choice involved.

  “How did you get into outlawing?” she asked.

  Rennik flashed a look at Lee, and they both went tighter than overtuned strings.

  “Long story,” Lee said.

  “Yes.” Rennik leaned over Lee and pretended to whisper. “Even longer than the one you just told me four times.”

  She pummeled him on his shoulders and arms as he left. As soon as he passed through the door, she shut it.

  “So,” Lee said, flopping down on top of the soft-blanketed bed. “Boys or girls or both?”

  “What?”

  Cade’s head rang with the question like she was getting reverb.

  “This is basic, Cade. You don’t need to look at me like I’m ten shades of green. Boys . . . or girls . . . or both?”

  Cade sat down at Rennik’s desk, in the welcoming palm of the chair.

  “Is this because of the kiss-attack on Highlea?”

  “No,” Lee said, playing a pouncy game with a loose string on one of the blankets. “I’m just curious.”

  Cade thought through the scene that had just unfolded in front of her. “Is it because of Rennik?”

  “Now I hate you,” Lee said, “and I’m still curious.”

  Cade didn’t have an answer shined up and ready to go, so she stalled.

  “What about you?”

  “Both,” Lee said with a big, cosmic sigh. “Not that it matters when you work the Express. I can’t keep someone waiting for me in every spaceport. Well . . .” She scrunched up her freckles. “I could, but I won’t. Too much mess, too many appointments to keep. Your turn.”

  Cade’s knowledge of coupling was wobbly at best. She had seen men and women together in different combinations on the streets of Voidvil. She paid less attention to their man-or-woman-liness than to how unhappy they looked—faces puckered and pure-sour when they turned to each other, wide and searching for something better when they turned away. The fans that came on to her at the club were men and women, with an emphasis on men. Most of them were spacesicks, and all of them were fevered-up with wanting her. It had never occurred to Cade to want them back.

  Now she wondered if that could change. She was noticing things about people that she’d never noticed before. The sweep of faces, the intricacies of hands. She still didn’t want anyone to touch her—and at the same time she did want them to.

  Then there was Xan. Cade’s feelings for him were strong. Visceral. They touched every part of her and sped through her bloodstream. But he wasn’t just a boy. It was more basic than that, and more complicated at the same time.

  “I haven’t had time to think about it, I guess.”

  Lee had been patient, waiting for Cade’s answer, but now she jumped on it and, with a sweet laugh, tore it apart. “You were living in a desert, alone, for five years and you didn’t have time to think about it?”

  “Look,” Cade said. All of a sudden the tough girl was back, singing her old standards. “You’re abandoned on an ashtray planet as a little girl, you don’t see a lot of people. It doesn’t come up.”

  “Didn’t you have friends?” Lee looked at Cade with wide and wary eyes, like Cade had changed from a human into a strike-anywhere match.

  “No,” Cade muttered. “You can be the first. If you’re interested in the position.”

  “What about your family?” Lee asked.

  “What about yours?” Cade tossed the questions back to deflect—but she was surprised to find how interested she was in Lee’s answers.

  Lee put all of her focus into ripping the stray string out of Rennik’s blanket. She didn’t look like she wanted to say much, but she never dodged a direct question. Cade wondered what it was like, to live that open and honest—not just with one person who’d been planted inside of her head, but with everyone.

  The string popped away from the blanket. Lee picked her words with care. “My family is . . . not on the Express anymore.”

  “Planetbound?” Cade asked.

  “Most of them.”

  “Because of spacesick?”

  Lee twisted the string around and around her fingertip. It darkened to a violent purple.

  “Most of them.”

  “I’m a tubie.” Cade had never said the word out loud. It sounded strange in her ears. Hollow.

  “A tubie with a brother,” Lee said, perking up a little bit. “First-class outrageous.”

  Cade had forgotten that Xan was supposed to be her brother. It had seemed like a harmless lie at the time. But now—when she thought about him—she wasn’t so comfortable with it. Her cheeks splashed warm.

  “Yeah, well, Xan and I are special.”

  Lee stood up and closed in, on her toes, like she might tip forward and crash-hug Cade. Lee was sweetness and storm tossed together in equal parts, but whenever the conversation took a turn toward family, her eyes doubled in wideness, and she became—almost—somber. “So this brother who’s about to be killed,” she said, “he’s the one person you have in your life?”

  “Well . . . we’ve . . . never actually . . . met.”

  Lee laughed and pressed a hand to her forehead.

  “Cade, I have seen a lot of strange things in this universe,” she said. “But you rank higher every time you open your mouth.”

  Lee didn’t even know the half of it.

  Cade thought about telling Lee more than once in the next few days—when they woke up in the same secret bedroom or sat together at lunch after Rennik drained out and Gori sat, not-eating, and stared at Cade for an hour. But no matter how many opportunities she had, she couldn’t get herself to say it.

  I’m entangled.

  My particles are connected on a subatomic level to the particles of someone I haven’t seen since I was two, and I need to save him from double-shad
owed creatures, so we can change the fate of the human race.

  Or something.

  Telling Lee before their feet left soil had been her best chance. Her only chance. And she’d missed it. She could see now that it was too late—off-planet, the situation had one possible ending. Lee would stutter some nervous thing, and decide that Cade had gone spacesick.

  So she had to keep Xan a secret. It was hard enough when he was busting into her head, sending thoughts and feelings. But now he’d gone radio-silent.

  Cade sent messages the same as before—snippets of emotion, flashes of scenes she thought he might like. Once or twice she reached hard and tried to drop him into the moment. But for the first time since the Noise had cleared, Xan wasn’t there to answer her call.

  What could be so strong, so distracting, so terrible that it could keep him from her?

  It made her wild to connect. If Cade’s thoughts about Xan had been a rhythm, now the beats blurred into a hum. She couldn’t sleep, or muscle down more than three bites of egg-dish in the morning as Lee picked the rest off her plate. All she did was stare at the walls and think of ways to get to him.

  And then, on the afternoon of the third day, Cade remembered. The fight-or-flight connection. The automatic snap that brought them together.

  It was time to send Xan a message he couldn’t ignore.

  Cade couldn’t use the bedroom in case Lee came in. The main cabin was too central and the mess was crowded with tables and cookware, and people ate at all hours. Rennik split his time between his cabin and the control room, and sometimes Lee was up there, too, looking out the star glass and chatting to Renna.

  No one seemed to use the common area.

  Cade slipped in and closed the door behind her. It was a spare and clean space, ringed with cushions and dotted with a few game boards and books that could translate themselves into fourteen languages at the touch of a button.

  Cade pulled a cushion to the middle of the room and sat facing the door. She would find Xan. Make sure he was safe. But first she would have to stop the endless Möbius-stripping of her own thoughts.

  What did the Unmakers want with them?

  She and Xan, and the rest of that batch of babies from Firstbloom, could survive better in space than the rest of their kind. But that didn’t help anyone else, as far as Cade could see. Was she supposed to be a blueprint for a new generation? The scientists on Firstbloom were dead, and it’s not like there were hordes of other humans scientists to pick up where they left off—if it was even right to go on with their blatant baby-altering.

  Cade shook her head and rattled out the questions. There were no answers to be had at that moment, sitting on a cushion in the common room. And there was something she could do.

  Check on Xan.

  Get to Xan.

  Xan.

  His name clinked over and over and over.

  Cade reached out into the silent space in her head and then past it, to the edges. But she didn’t feel him there.

  She stood up and ran as many laps around the small room as she could before she felt like a total spacecadet. Her heart rocketed against her skin. She sat down, panting, and the transmission kicked in.

  Xan was with her. Nervous, eager. She could feel the strain of him—a chord aching to resolve.

  She beamed.

  You’re here. You’re here.

  But it wasn’t enough. Cade wanted to be sure he was safe, at least for the moment. And while she was at it, she could search for some clues about why the Unmakers hated them so much. To do that, she needed to see what Xan was seeing. She needed him to feel something strong enough that his own transmissions would kick in, too. She had to flip this channel, or make it run both ways.

  She looked around the small room, desperate to show Xan something that would put him in an excited state. But cushions and boardgames and books in languages he didn’t know weren’t going to do it.

  Cade dug through her pockets and found three things. The circle-glass. The seven-blade knife. The tip of mirror.

  Xan knew that he was entangled, so the shock of the circle-glass was out. That left her with two options, and two ideas, both of which sparked into her head at the same time. It came down to a guess—which one would have more of an effect on his heartbeat.

  Blood or skin.

  Xan had seen horrible things on Firstbloom. The Unmakers had murdered everyone he knew, unless you counted Cade. His system might run fast and wild at the sight of blood—or he might be almost immune to it. But as a human in a coma for most of his life, and then kidnapped, Xan had missed all of his chances to see skin.

  Besides, it seemed like the much nicer shock.

  Cade pulled out the tip of mirror and angled it down. Her tan shirt had a high neckline but the buttons slipped their holds without a fuss. Cade couldn’t ignore the amped-up crashing of her own blood as she undid the first three—then popped one more for good measure.

  She could see the faint underline of her breast where it stretched into the cotton curve of the shirt. Finding a connection to Xan was what mattered. Keeping him safe. But all she could focus on was that line of skin, and the dangerous edge of her feelings. She reached in and brushed a thumb against the dark circle. The touch echoed, first in her fingertips, then farther, chiming through her body.

  That seemed to do it.

  Cade dropped into the picture of Xan’s room.

  Something was wrong. She could feel it even before she saw the two Unmakers posted in the corners.

  Xan sat on the bed. Not tied or lashed, but he couldn’t leave that place. Stuck as fast as a stone in deep sand.

  “She’s here now,” Xan said.

  The Unmakers leaned over him, their robes so black they blotted out the rest of the room. Their faces—if they had them—hid in dark folds. Cade focused on the too-small hands that crept out from the dark swirl of sleeves.

  Here came voices for the first time. Deeper than wells, deeper than steam pits, the deepest sounds Cade knew.

  “Did you tell the girl to come?”

  “No,” Xan said. His own voice was lower than Cade had expected, and scratchy. But it was nothing compared to the bottomless slide of the Unmakers.

  “She’s getting smarter,” said one, his breath tinged with the smell of metal.

  “Too smart,” said the other.

  “This is how it begins.”

  Cade sent all of her fighting strength to Xan. But Xan fought back—against her. He pushed down all of her impulses to kick, scratch, and run until the universe ran out. She pushed, and he pushed back, just as strong.

  He sent her waves of calm and control. Everything about him said, Let it go.

  Cade trusted Xan—and she had never trusted anyone. The feeling was new and uncomfortable, like the hand-me-downs she’d worn at the Parentless Center. Itchy and three sizes too big. But there was relief in trusting, too—knowing that when Xan made a choice she could stand by it. Even now she could see that he’d let her calls go unanswered because the Unmakers kept a tight watch.

  So Cade let it go. If it was too dangerous to fight, she wouldn’t force it. But she wanted the Unmakers to know that they wouldn’t have him. That even if he was sitting on a bed in front of them, he belonged with her, half a universe away.

  She sent the raw thought to him, hoping he would be able to translate it back into words.

  They won’t have you. Tell them. I’m coming for you.

  Xan put up a struggle against this, too. But Cade insisted.

  Tell them.

  The Unmakers bent so close now that Cade could feel the warmth of them, the weight of them, and smell their metal breath.

  All she could do was send her calm, her strength, her steadiness to Xan.

  And he wasn’t afraid.

  “She wants me to tell you . . .”

  Tell them.

  “That she’ll be here soon. For me.”

  The Unmakers must have thought he was making it up. A sad little burst of self-
defense. They started to laugh and it was like the ground opening up beneath Cade’s feet. It was like falling.

  “Cade!”

  Her name rang out—but it wasn’t Xan speaking it, or one of the Unmakers. The voice was flat and warm and familiar.

  “Cade!”

  Sound ripped into the picture. Blacked it out. And then the world faded to white.

  Cade was in the common room, Rennik bounding at her. A strange white object clanked in his hands and a smile claimed most of his face. He stopped short when he saw the wide-open state of Cade’s shirt.

  She jumped to her feet and spun, so she could button up in something like privacy. Rennik turned and faced the door. They talked in opposite directions, to each other.

  “Are you all right?” he asked in the politest tone she’d ever heard. “Your eyes were . . . very far away.”

  “I’m fine,” Cade said, doing her best to keep the snarl out of her voice. It wasn’t Rennik’s fault she had been sitting half-dressed in the middle of the common room.

  “I need a minute.”

  She stabbed the buttons through thin slits on her shirt. She had to get rid of Rennik and get back to Xan.

  “Just . . . getting myself together. I was—”

  “What you do with your free time is none of my concern.”

  She got to the bottom of the shirt only to find that she had one slit left, and no more buttons. All the tugging in the universe wouldn’t make the ends line up right—which meant an open flap at the top. But after what had just happened, Cade didn’t care if Rennik saw one clumsy stripe of skin.

  She turned around, defiant. “What is it, exactly, that you wanted in here?”

  “It’s just . . .” Rennik still faced the door. Cade wanted him to turn and look at her. She wanted him to leave. “I brought you something.”

  He spun, and pressed one arm into the space between them.

  Rennik was holding a guitar.

  “Where did you . . . ?”

  Cade’s hurry slid off, and she wanted to be in the common room, with that perfect white guitar, for as long as she could.

  “It’s something I would love to take credit for,” Rennik said. “But I can’t. Renna wanted you to have it.”