Their Fractured Light: A Starbound Novel

by Amie Kaufman

I’m tempted to tell her I have no idea. I was inside the LaRoux servers, and I’d just spotted some weird energy spikes I wanted to know more about, but I’d barely gotten started. Nothing I tripped should have brought out the bloodhounds like this. Some of my old hacks, when I was starting out, might have caused this kind of mayhem. But these days, unless you’re on my wrong side…Point is, nothing I did would’ve warranted the weapons fire we heard up there.

  We started twenty stories up—though that’s a relative figure, since the ground floor is certainly nowhere near the actual surface of Corinth—and by now we’ve got about three to go, so I save my breath for running.

  Then the door at ground level bursts open, and three security guards come hurrying in. We’ve both got too much momentum to stop right away, but I lunge in toward the wall to try and stay out of sight, and she grabs hold of my shirt to slow herself. She slams in beside me as we hold perfectly still, waiting to see if they’ve spotted us—waiting to see if they’re coming up the stairs.

  Of course they are. Has a single damn thing gone right for me today? There’s no way to get anywhere near an exit without being seen, so I shove the satchel holding my lapscreen behind my back, put my faith in my fake LaRoux Industries uniform, and step out into their view. My partner in crime stays behind me, no doubt hoping as hard as I am that they won’t be able to tell she’s not wearing a uniform.

  “Careful you don’t shoot me, guys,” I call, forcing myself to sound like I think that prospect’s actually funny. “I’m awful hard to replace.”

  Three weapons come up, then lower again as they spot my shirt, which does the job, at least from this distance. “What are you doing in the stairway?” one calls.

  Damn, good question. An LRI employee would know better than to evacuate this way.

  Then Dimples—Alexis—I really have to find out her real name—speaks up behind me. “They’re saying upstairs this might be a technical problem. There’s no smoke up there, and no fire, so we’re checking the alarms manually.” She’s quick on her feet, this one.

  “Maintenance,” I agree, injecting a little weariness into my tone. “Only way to check some of these is in person, which clearly somebody didn’t do, if this is a false alarm. Can we get you guys to step outside the stairwell again? Your movement could set something off.”

  Two of them buy it right away, but the guy who asked the question in the first place isn’t so sure—he gives me a good long stare before he turns to follow them, gun still in his hand.

  “Thanks, guys,” I call after them, cheerful as can be.

  She speaks behind me, keeping her voice low. “We can get out on the second floor—it opens onto the street. We can skip the lobby completely.”

  I nod, and we move together, both trying to keep me between her and the guards, who’re heading back down to the ground floor. I hope she knows I’m just hiding her lack of uniform, and not doing anything as stupid as shielding her with my body.

  “Wait a minute!” It’s the guy with all the questions—he’s halfway up the flight of stairs now, and he’s got one hand pressed against his ear, where no doubt an earbud is transmitting information about us. Alexis curses softly—for an instant it’s almost like she has an accent—and as one we lunge for the door.

  “Freeze!” All three of them are thundering up the stairs now, just meters away. They’re shouting threats, their voices echoing as loud as their footsteps, the alarm still wailing all around us.

  Ahead of me, she shoves on the push bar to open the door, sunlight abruptly cutting in to light up the stairwell. I propel her through the doorway with a hand between her shoulder blades, my satchel banging against my hip as I stumble after her. They don’t have a good shot, and I duck to try and throw their aim off.

  In the next instant I hear the high-pitched wail of a top-of-the-line laser pistol, and as I slam the door shut behind me, a wave of pain sets up shop in my upper arm, then sweeps up into my chest to set my nerves on fire.

  There are letters, and images, and songs, and every part of them captured and fed into the stillness. But each flash is so disparate, so solitary, that it is impossible to assemble them into a single whole.

  Individuals.

  The concept is new, the way the cold hard things flitting through the universe were new. Some of the bits and pieces that flood the stillness are beautiful and some are ugly and some are beyond understanding.

  How can we ever begin to understand them all?

  By understanding one.

  We watch, and wait, and learn.

  THE SHRIEK OF THE GUARD’S laser pistol splits the air, and for a brief, dizzying moment I’m home again, listening to the distant exchange of gunfire between the military and the Fianna. Then a second shot comes, glancing harmlessly off the doorframe, and my unlikely partner is shoving me through the door.

  We emerge at street level, glossy chrome-and-glass skyscrapers towering over us. The city spans nearly the entire planet on Corinth, divided into continents, and sectors, and quarters. There’s no artistic skyline here, for the city stretches on forever, new towers built on top of the old. You’d have to find an elevator down below the current street level to vanish into the slums beneath Corinth proper. We don’t have that kind of time, though, and I scan the streets looking for a quicker exit. Nearby a billboard blares its advertisement directly at me, triggered by my movement. “Don’t miss the stunning, moving tribute to one of the century’s greatest tragedies! Come to the Daedalus orbital museum, where all first-week proceeds go to benefit the families of those lost in the Icarus incident.”

  I grit my teeth, trying to block out the macabre message and focus on what our next move should be. The boy’s bending over the security pad by the door, doing something with the chip he keeps pulling out of his jacket pocket. When he’s done, the pad makes an irritated screeching sound and goes black. “Malfunctioning lock won’t hold them for long,” he grunts. “We gotta move.”

  “Taxi,” I gasp, as a hovercraft goes whizzing by with a pair of joyriding teens hanging out the back window.

  “They’ll track your palm pad charge,” he replies, voice clipped and short, like he can’t believe the idiocy that led me to suggest it.

  “Please.” I roll my eyes and take off for the edge of the platform, where traffic is speeding by. If he wants to follow me, fine. If not, he’s welcome to find his own way out. I rake my now-blue hair out of my eyes, sucking in a few quick breaths as I step out on one of the curbs. The first taxicraft I spot without passengers, I let by—female driver, and I’ve got to play the odds if I want this to work. The next looks promising, and I raise my arm and force a few more quick breaths, working myself up. By the time the driver slides in beside my curb, I’m gasping.

  “Please, sir,” I say breathlessly, leaning in toward the window as the driver hits a button and the window membrane vanishes. “Can you tell me how to get to East Central Heights from here? My brother and I are new to Corinth, and we’re supposed to be heading to our aunt’s apartment and I don’t know where we are, and my palm pad got stolen so we’ve been walking and—” I gulp, letting the run-on ramble of woes end in a choked gasp for air.

  The cabbie blinks at me, then glances askance toward the rear side window, where the hacker’s leaning against the side of the cab, looking bored. I could strangle him—the least he could do would be to try to play along with my distress. At least he has the good sense not to react at my exchanging “fiancé” for “brother.” This cab driver’s in his twenties or thirties, and his eyes flicker down when I lean over. Not my most elegant work, but it won’t take long for those security guards to start combing the sidewalks. No time for elegance, just the oldest play in the book. It worked on the soldiers back home, and it works on the city folk here.

  “You want the next level up,” the cabbie says slowly. He hesitates, and I try not to seize on that; I have to let him get there himself. “There’s a pedestrian bridge about a kilometer back that way,” he says, jerking his he
ad back the way he’d come.

  I sniff hard, letting the driver see me trying my level best to pull myself together. “Maybe you could draw me a map? I’m so lost without my palm pad. Everywhere we go they keep telling us we’re on the wrong level, and I just—I can’t walk anymore. I just want to go home, but I can’t even see the Regency Towers from here.” It’s one of the most expensive buildings in this sector of Corinth—if the damsel-in-distress act won’t sway him, maybe greed will.

  The driver’s eyes narrow a bit as he glances at his meter. His thumb drums against the control stick, and when his gaze comes back to me I’m waiting for him with big eyes and wet lashes. I just wish it hadn’t been so easy to find those tears; the blank-eyed people in the holosuite and our escape have left me more wobbly than I want to think about. I ought to be used to running by now, but my hands are starting to shake. I brace them against the door of the cab to hide it.

  The driver sighs. “Your aunt lives at the Regency Towers?” When I nod, he glances back toward the hacker, who’s still leaning on the cab—now, he’s not even watching what’s happening, his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance, jaw clenched and arms folded tightly across his chest. The most obvious belligerent body language there is. Thanks, asshole, for making this so easy. Finally, the cab driver tilts his head toward the back. “Get in. Your aunt’ll pay when we get there, yeah?”

  “Oh, really?” I gasp, as though the idea of him driving us hadn’t occurred to me. “Oh my God, you’re my absolute hero, thank you!” I dash for the door before he can change his mind, making the hacker stagger back as I haul open the door he was leaning on. “Come on, brother dear,” I add in a mutter, for his ears alone.

  He ducks inside without a word, sliding along the bank of seats to make room for me. The door slams closed after me as I settle myself on the faux leather. “Thank you so much, I’ll have my aunt give you an extra tip for being so kind.”

  The cabbie glances over his shoulder at me and grins as he eases the stick forward to start nudging the taxicraft back out into the flow of air traffic through the midlevel of the sector. He’s handsome, in his own way—he reminds me of the guy who does my fake IDs, except I’m pretty sure the cabbie doesn’t break your knuckles if you don’t pay. I sure hope not, anyway. “So where you from, originally?”

  His question catches me off guard; I’d been trying to catch my oh-so-useless partner’s eye, without success. I blink at the driver. “What?”

  “You said you were new to Corinth. Was wondering where you were from?” He’s facing forward again, but his eyes flick up to watch me in the rearview screen.

  “Oh. Babel,” I reply, giving the first planet that comes to mind that I’ve never been to.

  “Get out,” the cabbie exclaims, with a laugh. “I was born on Babel. What sector? You ever been to the gravball bar a couple of levels below Regency Towers? The Babel T-Wings’ home away from home. Huge turnout every home game, you should come sometime.”

  So sex appeal did work. I glance at my “brother” to see if he’ll maybe do something stereotypical and overprotective to forestall the driver’s questions—and freeze. The hacker’s looking down at his arm, where his hand’s been clamped this whole time. What I’d misread as insolent body language was something else altogether; when he lifts his hand away, it’s stained red.

  He catches me looking at him and slaps his hand back in place. The cab driver’s still talking, flashing me glances every now and then in the rearview screen, but his words have faded out to a distant buzz.

  I can’t tell how bad it is, but the blood’s seeping down despite his attempts to stanch its flow. I’ve patched up more than my fair share of wounds back on Avon, but I can’t stop to inspect it, and I can’t ask him if he’s okay. The second our driver realizes he’s got a gunshot victim in his backseat, he’ll pull over and dump us on the side of the road. No way to get that kind of injury where we were except from the authorities, and no amount of sex appeal is going to make a cabbie risk charges of aiding and abetting.

  This time, I really do have to fight to keep my voice from shaking. “How mad do you think Aunt will be at us for being so late?” I ask my “brother,” the cab driver’s voice trailing off as I interrupt him.

  The boy’s eyes flick up to mine and he grimaces. “Medium, I’d say.” He shifts his weight, wedging himself in so the inside of the door takes his weight. “She’ll probably get over it if we apologize fast.”

  I glance at the GPS screen on the taxicraft’s dash. If I were living somewhere else, we could still be hours from my place by mag-train without even leaving the sector, but I chose my digs because of their proximity to LaRoux Industries Headquarters. Well, proximity, and style. We’re only a few minutes from the Towers, and I can sneak him through the side street to my building and in the side door. Assuming he doesn’t lose too much blood by then to make it to the elevators, I can leave the driver here waiting for the aunt that doesn’t exist and we’ll be out.

  “You staying here on Corinth long?” the driver asks, resuming his line of questioning as though I’d never interrupted him to talk to the sandy-haired boy bleeding in his backseat. “Moving here, or just visiting?”

  “Visiting,” I reply, trying to hunt for the charm again, reaching past my concern. “Family, you know.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. Got any free time while you’re here?”

  “I…uh, I don’t think my brother would want me to hang out with strangers.” I glance at the boy next to me, whose brows lift with amused irony. After all, I don’t even know his name.

  The taxicraft slides smoothly to a stop at the curb platform outside the south building of the Regency Towers apartments. He twists, glancing from the boy to me. “C’mon, I’m not that shady, am I?”

  His smile is nice enough, and though he wasn’t exactly subtle about checking me out while I was begging for assistance, he did help us. Still, I can’t really spare much sympathy for him. You ask to get conned, and a con’s going to find you. I flash him a smile in return and shrug. “Maybe I can sneak out,” I whisper, as though for his ears only, and then turn for the door.

  “Hey, hey, wait.” The driver reaches for the auto-locks, and my door gives a telltale click. “You can wait here, send your brother up to grab your aunt’s palm pad to pay the fare.”

  Shit. I glance again at the boy beside me, whose lazy—if strained—grin has vanished. His door’s unlocked, but the second the driver sees me going for the door he’ll lock it down again. So much for hoping he was an idiot, as well as a sucker. I half expect the hacker to bolt—I probably would, in his position. He needs a medic, and quickly, and he’s seen by now that I can talk my way out of most things. He could leave me here without much guilt at all.

  But he doesn’t move, those hazel-green eyes grave for the first time since we met.

  “Brother?” I quip to the driver, flashing my brightest coquettish smile, learned from poring through holovid footage of the sparkling teens and twenty-somethings that occupy Corinth’s upper-level nightclubs. “You really are a sucker,” I say with a laugh. Better he thinks he just got stiffed a cab fare by a flirt than discover that he unwittingly helped two criminals escape from the most tightly secured compound in this hemisphere.

  Please, I find myself thinking hard at the guy with the gunshot wound, whoever you are…just play along one more time.

  I lean over, sprawling against his good shoulder and turning his face so I can kiss him. I can hear the driver’s quick breath out of surprise and confusion; though my lips are on the sandy-haired boy’s, my attention’s on the driver. He’s spluttering, indignant, exactly as I’d hoped he’d be. He’s not thinking about his fare, he’s not thinking about holding me hostage until he gets paid—and he’s not thinking, yet, about locking us in.

  I slide my other hand past the hacker’s lap, toward the door controls, the movement quick but smooth. The driver’s going to get over his confusion and outrage at some point, and I need to get the d
oor open so we can bolt. I’m about to palm the scanner when the boy’s lips curve under mine—he’s smiling, grinning—and it’s the only warning I get before he’s parting his lips and taking full advantage of my ploy by trying to stick his tongue down my throat.

  Asshole.

  The fabric grows thin, translucent. Just on the other side of it is a young man with dark hair and blue eyes, gazing at the fabric as though he can see through it. This is what we have waited for.

  “I wish I knew what the hell this is,” the young man mutters, in the language of the words and images and sounds that pierce the stillness.

  The thin spot pulses, and the young man takes a startled step back. He’s staring even harder at the translucent place in the fabric, but after some time he gives a nervous laugh. “I’m imagining things,” he tells himself. “It’s not like it can hear me.”

  The thin spot pulses again, more brightly this time.

  The young man’s face goes white. “Rose,” he calls, voice suddenly urgent. “Rose, come quick. I think…I think it’s sentient.”

  ALEXIS’S FINGERS FIND THE SCANNER on the door behind me, and I’m ready when it suddenly gives, breaking away from her to tumble out of the car with my make-out partner a beat behind me. Somehow I get my feet on the ground, and we dodge a gaggle of shoppers and a pair of electrobikes, the cab driver roaring behind us. For a moment we’re in perfect sync, and then she ruins it by swinging her arm sideways to whack me in the chest as we turn up an alleyway, sending a line of pain snaking down my injured arm.

  “Hey, what was that for?” I hiss.

  “You know,” she snaps, breath coming quickly.

  I’d love to think her breathlessness is from our moment of passion in the cab, but we’re running pretty fast. “You kissed me, Dimples. How was I supposed to know you didn’t want me joining in?”

  “My name’s Alexis!”

  “I’m really sure it’s not.”