Unmade

by Amy Rose Capetta

  “Hate is a small matter,” Unmother said, gritting more than her teeth. She gritted her whole body. “It’s human. Weak.”

  “I agree,” Cade said. “And I can hear it leaking out of you.”

  Cade was braced for another speech about how superior the Unmakers were, but if Unmother still had plans to educate Cade, she dropped them, and launched herself across the room.

  Unmother’s knees and nails landed, extracting air, shredding skin. Cade pushed against her, but the woman moved so fast that it was impossible to get a good hold. She was wire and force, focus and speed.

  Cade could summon hate too. She thought about Xan, and Renna. Matteo dying on the floor outside. Lee and Rennik and Ayumi, who had lost too much of themselves. Mira, who had to fight to find a self. The people whose names she’d never learn because the Unmakers got to them first. Hate was easy.

  Cade used it against Unmother, and it was better than leverage, more intense than strength. She pushed and kicked her way up from the floor, pinning the woman under her. But when she got there, hate was knocked out of place.

  Cade fought to save the people she loved.

  “Is there anyone you want to say goodbye to?” she asked, working to pin Unmother’s lashing arms.

  “I don’t care,” Unmother said as she swiped at Cade’s eyes.

  Lee ran into the control room alone, frantic, and looked surprised to find Cade alive. Cade got an idea that she knew would make Unmother writhe. “Hey, Lee. Since she’s human now, what do you think her name should be?”

  “Something really terrible,” Lee said. “Like Roberta.”

  Unmother turned on Lee with a look that could have drowned a lesser girl. Lee pulled her gun and aimed it dead on.

  “I know it’s unfair to bring a gun to a fistfight,” Lee said. “But it was also unfair when you attacked my girlfriend in her sleep.” Lee waved Unmother up from the floor and Cade cuffed Unmother’s wrists with her hands.

  Unmother slapped Cade with a cold look. “You’re going to die.”

  “Someday,” Lee said. “But today is about starting over. A shiny new world. No you in it.”

  Lee cocked the gun.

  “Please. Go ahead,” Unmother said with one of her most infuriating smiles.

  Cade flung an arm out. “Wait.”

  Unmother’s smile hardened in place.

  Cade’s hands went to work, searching. She ran her hands over Unmother’s wire arms, down her strongly molded legs. She got the feeling that if Lee fired, she would be giving Unmother exactly what she wanted. Again.

  Cade stopped at a slight bulge against Unmother’s shirt, and when she ripped the material to the waist, she found plastic packed to Unmother’s skin—a thin band of high-quality explosives.

  Lee’s hand nodded, tipping the gun before she shored it up. A mask of sweat clapped onto Cade’s forehead.

  “Are you serious?” Lee asked.

  “It’s connected to a heartbeat monitor,” Unmother said with a slight giddiness, a new set of dimples breaking the surface of her pale face. Her happiness was the ugliest thing Cade had ever seen. “If the monitor stops, or someone tampers with it, well, you both have imaginations. You can guess what will happen.”

  The explosion wouldn’t just take out Cade and Lee and Matteo. It would grab a section of the hull when it went, breaching the integrity of Everlast.

  They would all go down.

  Cade gave Unmother’s arm a fresh twist, and pushed the small of her back to force a march. If she could get the woman to the airlocks, maybe she could flush her into space, clear her out before the explosives detonated.

  Matteo’s breath unraveled as Cade passed him, and it reminded Cade of the people in the bay who might be dying. It was a good thing Unmother couldn’t see her face. Lee was doing her best to look like a badass while walking backwards and keeping the gun trained. It was a long way to the airlocks.

  Cade mouthed over Unmother’s shoulder. “Get her talking.”

  “Uh, so, what do you think the future should look like?” Lee asked. “If you know so much about it?”

  “Well, there will be none of the defect that you suffer from, the one you call attitude.”

  Lee mouthed back at Cade.

  “Can I shoot her?”

  Unmother kept on about future glories, laying out the bricks for Cade and Lee. No weakness. No sickness. No imperfections, or personalities, or any of the things that make life interesting enough to live in the first place.

  Around the time that Unmother described her ideas for altering all thumbprints to look the same, and body odors to not smell so offensively personal, Cade steered her to the hall outside the airlocks and manuevered toward number one—because it was close to the door and she knew it was working.

  Lee kept backing up, and Cade wedged Unmother so she stood in the doorway to the airlock. Cade pushed the sharp knob of Unmother’s shoulder. “Go ahead.”

  “Or you’ll do what? Shoot?” Unmother scratched her way out of Cade’s grip. “You see, it was an illusion that you had any control. Best to give up on it.” She touched Cade’s wrist, tender now. “This can be a good death.”

  “I don’t believe in those,” Cade said.

  She opened her mind, sweeping music from the corners to the center, gathering force. It barreled at Unmother.

  Unmother bore down under the mental weight, tightening until Cade wouldn’t have been surprised to hear teeth crack. When Cade tried to knock her backwards, Unmother’s arms locked and her balance held.

  “It’s a nice trick,” Unmother said, “but you can’t expect it to work every time. People build up defenses, Cadence. At least, intelligent people do.” She pushed Cade off and brushed at her clothes, as if human nature might have left a stain.

  Cade sounded the bottom of her plans and came up clutching the last one, hoping it would convince Unmother to let the rest of these people survive.

  As Unmother moved, Lee bobbed the gun, but her arms were slung low at the elbow, tired. Cade turned to her, and the almost-tears that snuck into her eyes were like warnings not to make this harder.

  “I’m going with her,” Cade said.

  It was Lee’s job to make life bigger and better, not easy. “No. No. No you’re snugging not.”

  This wouldn’t be a good death. The thought opened up like a black hole with torn edges and no bright center. But if Cade had to leave, at least she wouldn’t be doing it for selfish reasons, like Xan. She had people worth living for, worth dying for.

  She closed her eyes and gathered her breath. In that dark space, she heard something, so pure and strong that she couldn’t ignore it. Music stitched out of old Earth-songs. The same music that Cade had followed across the universe, and it was moving in her direction.

  This had to be some kind of before-death hallucination. Her mother was in the spacesick bay, glassed-and-gone.

  Cade reached out and took Unmother’s hand. Neither of them was stupid enough to go first. They crossed the threshold and entered the airlock together.

  Lee tapped the glass with her gun to get Cade’s attention. “If you think I’m going to push that button,” she cried, “you’re insane! Every single flavor of insane.”

  “Do what you have to do, Lee.”

  When Cade blinked, the music she’d heard before was back, louder. She opened her eyes and found her mother in the door of the hall that lined the airlocks, gripping the frame with loose-skinned hands.

  Unmother took hold of that second and bashed Cade’s side with all of her strength. Cade slammed onto the floor, and took in the scene from a low, strange angle.

  “Cadence?”

  Her mother’s voice settled on the folds of the name, soft, but when she turned to Unmother, her face snarled as hard as a thorn. Cade had never seen that look anywhere, but she had felt it on her own face in the Andana days.

  Cade’s mother ran into the airlock and crashed into the other woman. They hurled backwards. Cade struggled to get up. On
the other side of the glass, Lee looked trapped, not sure whether to intervene.

  Cade’s mother landed on top of the small red-haired woman, and she used that to her advantage, pinning her. Though she was larger than Unmother, in any other moment she would have been weaker. But with Cade on the floor, hurt, she was supercharged.

  And she had a weapon, a slick, short knife she must have grabbed off a dead Unmaker. Quicker than a gasp, the blade disappeared into Unmother’s chest.

  “And who are you supposed to be?” Unmother asked, through the rising thickness of blood.

  Cade waited for her mother to answer, but instead she collapsed. Her head found the glass and the rest followed. She flickered in and out of spacesick like a radio, the signal too weak, uncatchable.

  “The explosives!” Lee cried. “Move!”

  Unmother’s life could be measured in blood. There had to be more sliding on the glass than there was left in her small body.

  Cade crawled to her mother’s side, curled into an unclosed circle, sinking into softness and warmth.

  Lee screamed. “I mean it, move!”

  Cade wouldn’t do it. She stuck fast, not caring that Lee stood over her now, pulling at her, face raw, volume rising.

  Her mother stared, lips drooping because the smile couldn’t hold. She turned to Lee. “Take her, please.”

  It was Firstbloom all over again, a variation of the first unbearable loss. Her mother would go and Cade would be left behind.

  “No,” Cade said. If she couldn’t save her mother, she would stay here with her.

  But Lee wasn’t having any of that. She wrestled and kicked at Cade to wake her back to fighting. And then Cade remembered that Lee wasn’t some faceless scientist. Cade’s mother wasn’t abandoning her.

  This time Cade would have to do the leaving.

  She picked herself up, dressed in Unmother’s blood. There was no more time for decisions. There was no such thing as goodbye.

  Cade sprinted.

  She stole one more look at her mother as the room burst into a crescendo of red.

  Chapter 31

  Cade’s screams were lost in the explosion. A closed door wasn’t enough to stop the force. Cade and Lee ran, and it tossed them. They picked each other up and ran again, slamming doors behind them.

  Warning lights flared red. The composition of the air changed. The good, breathable stuff was slipping away.

  “The hull,” Cade said.

  “We’re double snugged,” Lee said. “Back to the bay?”

  “That’s last-stand talk.” Cade wasn’t giving up after all of that, not after Xan and Renna and her mother.

  Her mother.

  Cade felt the loss, round and whole, for the first time in her life. It had always been there, waiting for her to feel it. But she had pushed it down, and now it would have to be put off one more time.

  “Can we put the ship on an auto-course?” Cade asked. “We’ll head for the surface and lock down the bay.”

  Lee shook her head. “I thought I told you to never—”

  “—land a ship on an auto-course? Well, I would tell you never to blow a hole in the side of the ship, but that would be a waste of oxygen.”

  Cade and Lee raced to the control room, keeping their breath as shallow as they dared. When they hit the panels, Earth stared at them through the window, empty-white. At best, Cade and her crew were going to crash-land and live out the rest of their short lives on the unfriendly surface.

  But it was no use thinking about that. Lee focused on coordinates, speeds, vectors. Cade stretched a finger onto the crumpled chart and picked a spot. It would have been a coast, back in the days when Earth boasted oceans. Now it would be a flat strip of land near a crater. Cade would deal with the deadness of Earth when she got there. For now, all she could do was set the course.

  The longer it took, the harder it got. Breathing turned from an auto-action into a chore.

  “All right.” Lee slammed a final button. “Let’s . . .”

  “Drain,” Cade said, and it took every wisp of air in her chest.

  Cade and Lee staggered out of the control room, in the direction of the bay. Moving and talking got easier as they went. There was more good air out here, but it wouldn’t last long. They would have to lock it in or lose it.

  “Umm, design flaw,” Lee said, clamping her lips. “Someone has to shut the door from the outside.”

  Cade’s answer came out fast. Pre-thought fast. “Not you.”

  “Don’t you snugging dare,” Lee said at the same time.

  There was only one other person caught on the wrong side of the lockdown. Cade closed her eyes and reached for Matteo’s song. It was fading. But he didn’t have to fill the universe with sound. He just had to push a button.

  Cade stumbled back toward the control room.

  “That’s the wrong way!” Lee cried. “As in, what the hell are you doing?”

  Cade didn’t stop, and Lee sighed and pounded after her. Once Lee saw Matteo, hand pressed to his wounds, face in the farthest reaches of pain, she seemed to understand. Cade kneeled at Matteo’s side and hauled him up.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, the words held together by ragged strings of breath. Cade and Lee carried him between them. They stumped, fast and awkward, toward the bay.

  “One more favor,” Cade said.

  “Short version?” Lee asked. “We need your help.”

  “There’s . . . something . . . wrong with Everlast,” he said. “Isn’t there.”

  Cade gave him a quick rundown without any gloss.

  “I’m a historian,” Matteo said with one last stab at a chuckle. “Remember? Going down with the ship is . . . not in the job description.”

  “You’re a captain,” Lee said as they reached the bay. “And a fine one.”

  Matteo looked from Cade to Lee and back again. “You girls are . . . something I’ve never seen.”

  They propped him against the wall, within reach of the control pad that would lock down the room.

  Cade and Lee saluted, then ran. The bay was sweat and chaos, lit by patches of white Earth-shine.

  The door sealed behind them.

  “Find Ayumi,” Cade said to Lee. “Make sure she’s safe.” For that, she got the best thank-you smile in the universe.

  Cade searched for Moon-White’s glow.

  She had a song to finish.

  Mira rushed Cade, the guitar strapped to her back.

  “What are you doing?” Cade asked, horrified to see her in the thick of the fight. She tried to cover the girl, but Mira ducked under her arm. She lashed out with her short knife, practiced and smart.

  “I know how to fight Unmakers,” she said, looking up at Cade with her best Are-you-stupid eyes. “Remember? I was one of them.”

  Cade fought to the front of the bay, Mira behind her. As soon as Rennik caught sight of them, he carved a path with the double blades. It stunned her how well he could fight even with so much worry on his face.

  “I thought you were—”

  “What? Ditching my own party?” Cade asked.

  An Unmaker dodged at them. Rennik clapped Cade to his side and fought one-handed. “Cadence, I thought . . .”

  She let the words settle. “Yeah, well, now you know how I felt every minute of the last three months.” She kicked an Unmaker away from Rennik’s heels as he fought off the one in front of his face. “How many minutes is that?”

  “Thirteen thousand or so.”

  Rennik swung, calm. For the first time since Renna had died, it didn’t feel like he was venting an unbearable heat. An Unmaker struck, and Rennik ticked the blade to the floor with ease.

  Rennik and Zuzu and Gori took down Unmakers as fast as they could, but it was easy to see the truth.

  “They’re winning,” Zuzu cried.

  “One more set,” Cade said.

  The guitar found its rightful place against her body. It wouldn’t be easy to fight her way back into the song as the battle
rang around her and the ship burned a path toward Earth.

  It was her mother’s death that scared Cade the most. She had started the song because of her mother, dreamed up most of it just for her. The music had always been strongest in the presence of her glass.

  What if her death was the end of the song?

  Cade tried to focus on her crew, her friends, but they were smothered in the thickest moments of battle.

  All she could do was stare.

  At Lee, forced to her knees by the battering of blows, and Ayumi behind her, a few bad strikes away from being undefended. At Mira, tossing herself into the path of Unmakers, close to fearless. At Gori, putting all of his old, violent skills to use even though the universe had told him not to. And Rennik, checking every few seconds to make sure Cade was safe, without breaking the swing of his blades.

  Cade kept looking for her mother.

  What she found instead were words.

  come back and know the shape

  of things

  come back and find

  the face you left

  behind

  The chorus.

  Cade was almost there. To the end of the song, the surface of the planet.

  Everywhere, spacesicks blinked clear. Unmakers went down, the plastic molds of their false bones cracking, their robes inking the floor. Some stopped fighting and clutched their heads. The music must have found its way in.

  Gori tried to catch Cade’s eyes across the room. His arms waved and his wrinkled lips stretched around words she couldn’t hear. He blazed forward, looking worried and certain at once. Gori’s self-imposed rules were being tossed so he could tell her something.

  Cade fumbled a note, regripped the guitar. She’d come this far. It didn’t matter what Gori thought the song was going to do. Cade trusted Ayumi and Moon-White. She trusted the music. She didn’t know where it was coming from, but she had to keep going.

  Her fingers sketched patterns. Her throat reached, raw.

  here is ground as good as skin

  underneath the staring sky

  a breeze for breath

  everywhere, hands