Unmade

by Amy Rose Capetta

  Gori pocketed the knife, flexed his wrinkled fingers. “I have not practiced in six hundred years.”

  Lee stared at him, stunned, as Cade did a quick non-song check.

  “Most of the troops are headed that way.” She pointed to the left. There was another presence on her radar. One silence, winding its way deep into the ventricles of the ship. One Unmaker headed for the heart of it alone had to be confused, scared, or important. Since their kind didn’t believe in confusion or fear, that pretty much decided it.

  “Meet back here,” Cade said. “Ten.”

  Lee was already running. She tossed a quick “Kill some metal-breathers” over her shoulder.

  Gori might have been brass in battle, but he was no match for Lee’s pace. Her long legs made fast work of the hall, and he had to bunch his robes above his ankles and trot to keep up. Cade set off in the opposite direction.

  It wasn’t long before her sureness and sense of direction crumbled. She hadn’t been on an Unmaker ship since Hades, and this one had the same white doors, the same curved design.

  It brought her back to Xan, and the promises of meeting him. Those promises hadn’t gotten crushed when he died, yet when she reached for them now, they fell through her mind like dust.

  Cade kept running.

  She heard footsteps ahead, but not the tight pounding of a guard. Erratic. Unsure. Someone unpredictable, or wounded.

  Cade stopped and scouted before she rushed ahead. She found Rennik, moving down the hall.

  Cade had to stop and breathe. She hadn’t been able to keep the fear of his death from rising, and now relief tumbled through her like fresh water, washing her worry-poisoned insides clean.

  “Where’s the rest of your boarding party?” Cade asked.

  “I heard someone making a distinct noise over here,” Rennik said, running to check the rest of the rooms. Cade claimed the other side of the hall and started to help. “The rest of the boarding party thinks I’m insane.”

  A crust of meanness covered Cade’s voice. “Does that happen to you a lot?”

  She should have felt happy that Rennik was alive, and stayed happy. But the good feelings drained fast, and others volunteered to fill the space. It had been two months without a word from Rennik. He’d left Everlast on the heels of Ayumi and Lee, and Cade had tried to reach him at first. Visits to the ship where he was staying, letters hand-delivered to the rooms where he slept. She was met with empty beds and tossed-off sheets.

  Cade closed her eyes.

  She needed to track the non-song. Rennik was standing too close. When he got in the way, Cade felt stupid for not expecting it; not being ready, in any way, to deal with him. The comfort of Rennik’s old music was gone, dissolved into a tangle of notes. With Renna missing, what had been an intricate loveliness spun into chaos.

  Cade couldn’t ignore him, and she couldn’t blast through, so she opened her eyes and shoved past him.

  The rooms were mostly sleeping cabins. One Unmaker to a cabin, everything neat, sterile, in order, with pieces of spare costumes laid out in lines. Cade prodded her neck farther and farther into each room.

  “What are you finding of such deep interest?” Rennik asked from a doorway five rooms ahead.

  “I need to learn more about the people who are trying to kill us.”

  “It’s not enough that they want you dead?”

  Cade didn’t rise to Rennik’s bait. She knew how people started fights. It was a minor art form, and she had lots of practice.

  “Our forces are matched,” Cade said. “We’ve been proving it, over and over, for months. The only way we’re going to beat them is to understand them. Be smarter.” She remembered Rennik’s books, his carefully worded sentences. “You used to care about that sort of thing.”

  He turned on a heel.

  Rennik’s calm had peeled off, and it showed no signs of reforming. Cade remembered a time when all she wanted was to get a rise out of him, force his emotions to bubble over the edges of the politeness. Now a rise was easy to get, and she wanted the old Rennik back.

  Cade had gotten so twisted up in seeing him, in seeing him like this, that she had stopped checking the song-map in her head. A stray five-man guard rounded a corner and almost walked into Rennik’s back.

  “Rennik!” she cried. “Behind!”

  He planted a foot to turn, and by the time he shifted his weight, he was deep in the swing of his double blades. Cade had firsthand experience of his fight training, but when he added hate to that training, it came out as a breathless hack of blades. Rennik was unforgiving, intense, his muscles set on a fine edge and his mind over it.

  Cade claimed the shelter of the nearest door and used it as a cover to lure Unmakers one at a time. By the time she’d taken on two from her protected position, Rennik had the rest on the floor, writhing or dead.

  “Nice work,” she said, scraping close to sarcasm.

  Rennik grabbed her arm. It left her no choice but to feel him, and when she did that, she remembered.

  Everything.

  Cade endured the gritty feeling of not-blinking as Rennik bent over her. “This is all your doing,” he said.

  So he did blame Cade, or hate her, or both. Now she knew, so there was nothing left to say. Cade waited for Rennik to let her go. She told herself that she would start to forget him as soon as he let go.

  His hand stayed printed on her arm.

  A neat, faint scratch sounded at the far end of the hall. Cade and Rennik both ran, but she was faster. She kicked into a closed room and found a grate that had been tossed to the floor. Whoever had come out hadn’t had time to replace it. Cade threw her shoulders forward, pushing into the vents without thinking.

  “Where are you going?” Rennik asked.

  He wouldn’t even begin to fit in the choked space.

  “Wait here,” she called back.

  Cade snaked through the vents, fighting the dimness as much as she fought to keep moving. She closed her eyes and followed the non-song forward, forward, to the right. It was lodged. Here.

  Cade opened her eyes and found a woman, her long red hair snarled with white, working to open another grate.

  This was the woman who had ordered the attacks on all of those people. She had killed Renna and unbalanced Rennik. Against her will, Cade thought of Mira, and the brutal mind-shaping that had been done since the day she was bought.

  When Cade’s hand touched skin, she thought it would burn. But it was just an ankle, attached to a woman as small as Cade. One she could drag out of the vent and back into the room. One she could smash to the floor. Hold rough at the neck.

  Kill, if she wanted to.

  By the time Cade worked Unmother through the opening where the grate used to be, one of Rennik’s blades was out and raised. Cade had to put her hand in the air and hope he wouldn’t bring it down on her.

  Confusion, disappointment, and anger showed in Rennik, as obvious as colors, blending to a form a dark shade.

  He stopped the blade.

  “She runs this,” Cade said, holding her voice balanced and calm. “All of it.” Unmother had the information they needed to end the fight. Keeping her alive was a risk, but so was walking, so was breathing. If they killed her, someone else would take her place. But if Cade pried enough intel out of this woman’s twisted neurons, she might be able to end the war.

  “We need her,” Cade said. “For now.”

  Still, standing between Rennik and the woman who had killed Renna felt too much like taking her side.

  “There is something you can do.”

  She pulled Unmother’s hair back and exposed the pale-rooted curve at the base of her neck. Cade grabbed Rennik’s hand and guided his fingers, running them over the strict lines under the skin.

  “Biochip,” she said. “Out.” Cade waited for Unmother to scream as the knife worked her skin. Rennik wasn’t gentle.

  Unmother smiled as if she was looking at a pleasant day, or a pair of children.

 
Chapter 21

  Unmother made herself at home.

  Cade had her placed in a cabin on Everlast, a bedroom a lot like the one she shared with Mira. The only difference was that she had Green rig a camera and feed it to a monitor that she set up in a little stub of an unmarked closet.

  Rennik offered to stand guard in front of Unmother’s room. At first, he offered to do more.

  “You need information, and someone to extract it,” he said. “Are you waiting for a better proposition?”

  He had followed Cade back to Everlast, probably in the hope that she would go soft and let him murder someone. She wasn’t going to let Rennik interrogate Unmother, not with those unsettled seas for eyes.

  “Stay here,” Cade said.

  “So you can go find her more pillows?” Rennik asked.

  Cade marched off and left him to stand there. She wondered if she would have to scrounge up a guard for her guard.

  When Cade slipped into the closet, Mira was already stationed, knees folded to her chest, watching Unmother on the monitor and chewing the side of her thumb. She looked up at Cade. “Are you okay?” It was never just a question with Mira. It was part of her ongoing study: How to Be Human.

  “I’m fine,” Cade said.

  If Mira could trick a fleet of humans into thinking she belonged, the least Cade could do was learn to tell a simple lie.

  They settled in to watch Unmother. She moved in slow, deliberate lines around the room, and Mira tensed with each right angle. Unmother didn’t do anything sudden or violent. She made no attempts to escape. After less than an hour, she stretched out, her hands slightly curled, and took a nap.

  That was the first time Cade really wanted to kill her.

  How could she sleep with that loose-breathing ease? Cade’s nights seethed with dreams and startle-awake panics. Did it really not matter to Unmother that so many people were dying around her? Because of her? Didn’t she have anyone that she needed to get back to, enough to keep her from getting comfortable?

  Cade had a thousand questions, but she pinned each one in place. Her time to talk to Unmother would come. First, she had to send in the spy.

  Cade touched Mira’s shoulder, and she jolted. “Can you talk to her?”

  Mira hoisted herself from the chair and neatened her clothes, one square inch at a time. She started up what Cade thought of as her Mission Breathing—short, focused bursts. Mira looked much too grateful for the chance to prove herself.

  “I can do this.”

  Cade had a plan formulated, and if it went right, Mira might actually be the savior the fleet needed. Not that it would make up for Renna’s death, or the blown-apart state of Cade’s friendships.

  “Act like you snuck away,” Cade said. “Act like you’re still on her side.”

  Mira took in the words with long, thirsty nods.

  “So, full Unmaker?” she asked.

  “I want you to live, breathe, and eat metal.”

  Mira forced the change as she walked out of the control room, shaking off emotion like mud.

  Cade tacked herself to the monitor and waited for Mira to show. It was time to find the truth, hidden under the sand-shifting layers of Mira’s alliances. This woman stretched out on the bed was her leader. The one who told her what to do, who to be and who not to be. The closest thing she would ever have to a mother. If there was anything left between them, one fleck of loyalty or love, it would show up now.

  Mira came onto the monitor, and flashed Cade a big-eyed here-we-go.

  She tapped Unmother’s shoulder, and stepped back as the woman lilted out of sleep and sat up with a patient smile. Like she was the one who had been waiting for Mira and not the other way around.

  Cade listened to Mira’s song, sure that it would leap as soon as Unmother looked at her. It gathered and lifted, then settled.

  Mira stood over Unmother as she worked a thumb into the crook of her shoulder, slid firm hands down her calves, pointed her toes. Mira let impatience twitch into her little flat-bridged nose, and Cade yelled at the screen.

  “Keep it together!” Any leakage of emotion would be noticed by Unmother, and used against the girl.

  Mira’s face tilted downward, a slight scowl that meant she was holding back. Cade was surprised that she knew so many of Mira’s tells.

  “I came,” Mira said, so flat that Cade actually cheered. “What now?”

  “Don’t you think it’s time for us to leave,” Unmother said, neat and tidy and not at all a question.

  Mira flicked a glance toward the hall. “There’s a guard.”

  “There’s always a guard,” Unmother said. “And there’s always a way around him.”

  Cade tensed, ready to run and back up Rennik.

  “Are you sure you want to delete my cover so soon?” Mira asked. “The captain of the ship loves me. The crew thinks I love them. The girl in charge sleeps in the bunk above mine and tells me more than she should.”

  Unmother laughed—a sweet laugh, rich with patience—and spelled things out for Mira like she was four years old. “Your cover isn’t necessary to the mission, and the mission is the only thing that matters.” She laid a hand over Mira’s. In the closet, Cade leaned toward the monitor, hand on her knife. “You did a fine job when you led us to the gathering. If you come back with me, what these people think of you won’t matter. Neither will how much you’ve been compromised.”

  There was no mistaking the outline of Mira’s body as it tightened.

  “You won’t feed me to the black?” she asked.

  Unmother made space for Mira on the bed, and she sat down beside the woman, as automatic as Cade’s hands sliding into place down the neck of a guitar. It didn’t matter how long she went without doing that—it would always come back. “You’re not that naïve,” Unmother said. “And I wouldn’t lie to you. Have I ever done that?”

  Mira shook her head. Cade checked the song again.

  No change.

  “You won’t live much longer,” Unmother said, patting Mira’s knee. “But this will be a good death.”

  Cade’s disgust with the Unmakers was complete. It was one thing to find Xan’s weaknesses, like bruises, and press on them until he gave. He’d been hurt by the universe, but he’d still had a choice.

  This girl had been raised to be disposable.

  Cade hit the hard bottom of the kinship she’d always felt with Mira. Beneath the green eyes and the loneliness, they were the same—brought up to be put to a purpose and then tossed aside. No matter what Mira had done in the name of the Unmakers, she could choose to undo it now. Cade would see that she lived to get the chance.

  Unmother was already looking at her like a piece of rotted fruit, like a cling of trash around her ankles.

  Rennik would run in at the first sign of trouble, but Unmother moved quietly, with a slithering grace. She could wrap a hand over Mira’s mouth and the girl would be dead before Rennik heard one wrong breath.

  “I don’t know if I can get us off Everlast,” Mira said.

  Unmother wove her fingers through Mira’s hair, forcing the girl’s head to rest on her shoulder. “There must be some way.”

  “If that was true, wouldn’t I have gotten back to you by now?”

  Unmother’s smile was short, like the clipping of a string, and it showed approval. Mira had given the right answer.

  “If we can’t return, there will be interrogations. I’ve seen several people outside who’d like a chance at my throat,” said Unmother, stretching back onto the bed. “I’d prefer you kill me,” she said. When Mira didn’t move, Unmother strained her neck up without moving the rest of her body. “I assume you have some sort of knife.”

  A rough surge of emotion gripped Mira’s small body. When Cade blinked, she heard Mira-song, but soured. It filled the room like twisting fingers, like fast-growing weeds.

  “Aren’t you going to do it?” Unmother asked, sweetly, baring her throat.

  Cade shifted in the arms of her seat. Mira kne
w that Cade wanted Unmother in that bedroom, alive. But to prove that she was still an Unmaker, Mira either had to let her escape or kill her.

  The girl fished up her knife, hands working in a broad range, from fumbling to sure. Mira ran the tip down Unmother’s throat and stopped at the white pool, shaded where her neck dipped down to her chest.

  She walked away.

  A soft chuckle rose from Unmother’s resting place. She had given Mira a test of her own, and the girl hadn’t passed.

  As soon as she cleared the room, Rennik checked in on Unmother. She smiled, and Cade noticed that she was as beautiful as the first time they had met. That was the second time Cade wanted her dead. Not just with the switched-on part of her brain that was supposed to want it. With her tensed muscles, with her tired heart. With every ruined part of her.

  Mira banged into the closet, letting in too much light from the hall. They were alone, in a little square that had been meant to hold maintenance tools, and not two sweating, exhausted nervebags.

  Mira knew Cade had been watching. There was no use in breaking down the scene with Unmother, unless she wanted to point out how wrong it had gone.

  “Remember, I left her there like you wanted,” Mira said. “That should count for something, right? So maybe when you do it, you can do it fast.”

  She scrunched her face, uncurled her palms. At first Cade had no idea what was happening. It snuck into her like a creeping-cold night. Mira was waiting to be killed. There was no putting a broken cover back together, and that meant no more intel for the fleet. Mira had outlived her usefulness as a spy.

  Which meant she could just be Mira.

  Cade rushed at her. “What’s this?” Mira asked from the muffled center of a hug.

  “Happy,” Cade winched Mira tighter, smoothing her hair with one hand. “Just happy.”

  Mira disentangled herself and looked Cade over from head to toe. “You don’t do happy like other people.”

  Cade dropped roughly into her seat with a laugh. “Neither do you.”