Their Fractured Light: A Starbound Novel

by Amie Kaufman

  I’m close enough now that I can’t whisper commands to my headset to voice-activate it anymore, or I’ll risk being overheard. I huddle in the air vent above the holosuite, fingers silently swiping across my lapscreen. I’ve got my backpack pulled around to my front, my equipment tucked in against my chest to make more room for crawling through these too-small tunnels.

  Though they could hear me if I talked, I let their voices fade away as I steady my breath and focus completely on the screen in front of me, firing up the windows I’ll need. Then, a shouted curse—a man’s voice below me yanks my attention back from the place it always goes when I’m working.

  “It’s true.” Alexis is sobbing, head bowed. “I promise it’s true.”

  “You had your shot, sweetheart.” The man sounds pissed now, his earlier calm vanished. “If you’re going to tell us stories, we’ll do it the other way.”

  “But there was a hoverbike, I got the license plate, why won’t you listen to me?” She’s scrambling, voice high and raw, and I have a feeling that note in her voice is real desperation. The way the lights are directed, I can’t see much through the security feed. Instead I inch along until I’m over a vent opening and can peer through the grille to see if I can pull this off. They’ve got lights aimed at Alexis—and at the cameras, no wonder I couldn’t see—but that’s not what makes my heart start trying to hammer its way out through my chest. They’re powering up the rift, and while I still haven’t seen firsthand what that thing can do, Alexis has. And it was enough to make her go white with terror.

  Shit. I’m not ready. I don’t have time.…

  My fingers fly across the screen, my heart slamming against my rib cage. I need to even the playing field, take out those lights, but that’s a program that takes time, seconds I don’t have. Seconds Alexis doesn’t have. Any minute I know my concentration’s going to slip, my fingers will fumble, I’ll lose. And lose her.

  I can hear the gorillas talking, and Alexis’s voice as she tries to convince them she’s ready to sing like a canary. The rising hum of the rift overtakes the voices until the ventilation tunnel I’m in vibrates against my elbows and knees. I grit my teeth.

  I’m not going to make it.

  That truth explodes in my mind so abruptly that my fingers falter. This is it. They’re going to make a husk of her. A split second later, the rift machinery gives a shudder and a screech and whirs back down into silence again. The blue sparks that had begun to gather at its perimeter vanish.

  “Damn it.” The leader of this group, the one who took Alexis, stalks over to the machine, then lifts a hand to his ear. “No, sir, there’s been some kind of—Yes, I understand. She’s not going anywhere.” He drops his hand, then glares at the others in the room. “Get a team of techs in here, now. We’ve got a week, and if this hasn’t been fixed by then, I’m not going to be the one Monsieur LaRoux blames, you hear me?”

  I’m still frozen, heart stuttering. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I don’t even know who, or what, I’m thanking for the reprieve. Reminding myself to breathe, I run my fingers along the vent opening beneath me until I’m sure I know where the pressure points are. Then I study the screen, check my on-the-fly hack one more time, and breathe a silent prayer to the only person I know who might care to watch over me. Let’s not meet again today, bro. I’m not ready just yet.

  I tap the screen to execute the program, and the lights all over the building ripple out, plunging the holosuite into darkness.

  For a moment, no one moves. Then I punch down against the grille sealing the air vent. It clatters to the floor, and Alexis turns in the direction of the sound, leaping to her feet with incredible reflexes. A muzzle flash from one of the gorillas’ guns illuminates the room for an instant, and, like a perfectly still picture, I see their leader lunging for her, hands outstretched. No, no.

  He catches her shirt and they both go toppling to the floor, grappling in the dark, washed green from my vantage point in the ceiling. Her shriek cuts off when she hits the ground, the impact winding her, and her wild kick glances harmlessly off his arm. He flips her onto her back to prevent her scrambling away, his own breath ragged, and her foot flies out again—this time it connects with his crotch and he moans, backhanding her blindly as he folds in on himself, half pinning her to the ground.

  I yank my climbing rope out of my pack and clip it through my harness, throwing the looped end down into the room. I brace my feet on either side of the air vent’s opening as she struggles to wriggle free of her captor, movements jerky and desperate, washed in green by my night-eye goggles. “Here!” I hiss, knowing that in the dark, she’s completely blind. She kicks at the man’s grasping hand as he tries to grab her ankle, and scrambles to her feet. Three quick steps bring her across the room to collide with the rope—it takes her a few seconds to feel for its end, then slip her foot through. She’s a small girl and this should be easy, but I’ve got no leverage, and only the belay device on my harness to help me haul the rope back. It’s not until I feel the rope slacken a little that I see one of her hands grasping at the edge of the vent, and I can lean forward enough to reach for her.

  Our palms smack together, and I wrap my hands around hers in an iron grip, ignoring the pain in my shoulders as I shove myself back from the vent opening, pulling her after me. She scrabbles wildly for purchase with her feet as I ram myself backward, letting her go the second she’s on her hands and knees. I want to ask if she’s all right, but can’t find the breath to do so.

  “Go,” she gasps, staring at where she knows I must be in the dark, eyes wide and lungs heaving for air. I shove my lapscreen into my bag and push backward. She’s smaller than me, and she can crawl, but I’m stuck backing up on elbows and knees, forced to choose speed over silence as I scramble my way toward the intersection behind me. The laser of a gunshot punches through the vent behind her and she drops to the metal floor with perfect reflexes—experienced reflexes—eyes closing for an instant. Just past her body I can see a ray of light shining up through it. Someone’s got the light on their gun’s scope working.

  We hit the junction, and I turn so I can face forward, lowering my back now so it doesn’t connect with the roof. This is our best and only chance, and it’s not much of one at that—the vents snake all over the building, and if we can force ourselves to stay slow and silent, they won’t know which direction we’ve picked. Now is the time for stealth over speed.

  Alexis has no problem behind me—she’s small and light, and can keep her hands and knees along the edge of the tunnel, where the metal’s less likely to buckle with a telltale sound. Though she can’t see, the occasional hand on my ankle tracks where I am, and she follows. I’m too big for what we’re trying to do, and though my hindbrain is screaming at me to run, run, I make myself check every inch of the tunnel before I shift my weight. My headset throws up a projected image of the tunnel schematics in front of me, and with agonizing slowness, we retrace the path I took to get to her.

  Now that they know we’re here, the elevator shafts will be on automatic lockdown in the lobby, even the service elevator. We can’t get out that way. I’m trying to remember the layout of the buildings around us, especially the new one they’re constructing next door. Every now and then I hear a burst of comms static from somewhere below us, and I know we’re not going to be able to wait it out in here. They’re splitting up to find us. I’m going to need to make a new exit.

  I want to ask if Alexis is okay, but if I can hear the occasional noise from the searchers, I can’t risk even a whisper. Every joint hurts, my muscles and tendons on fire from being forced into such an unnaturally cramped position, and I can feel the sweat trickling down my sides.

  It’s nearly an hour before we reach the elevator shaft, and it’s only once I creep out onto the maintenance ledge that I finally take a normal breath. There’s a limited amount of light out here, cast by maintenance lamps every other floor. I turn back for Alexis, only to find her gripping the edge of the ventilati
on tunnel with white knuckles and closed eyes.

  “Hey,” I whisper, reaching out to lay my hand over hers. “It’s okay, we’re still ahead of them. But we’ve got to keep moving if we want to stay that way.”

  She gives a tight little shake of her head. “I can’t.” Her voice is clipped and tight. “I—I’m not good with heights.”

  I stare at her. “You live in a penthouse.”

  She glares back at me. “Yeah, with windows you couldn’t crack even if you threw a grand piano at them!” Her voice sharpens with irritation, and though there’s no reason to be pleased about it—it’s directed straight at me, and we’re standing here instead of climbing—I discover I kind of like it. This, like the one-dimpled, lopsided smile, is real. And most of the time I can’t tell what is, with this girl. “A penthouse view is different from—I can’t climb down there, Gideon!”

  Well, screw me sideways. This is going to make my exit strategy a lot harder to pull off. I let my breath out. “You’re in luck, because we’re not climbing down. We’re climbing up.”

  That has her opening her eyes, if only to shoot me a horrified look. “How is that any better?” she gasps.

  “Trust me, up is a lot easier than down. We’ve only got to get ten floors up, and there’s a skybridge to one of the other buildings.” I rummage in my bag until I find my spare micro-weave harness inside. “Come on out, the ledge is wide enough to stand on.”

  “Oh God,” she whispers, her movements jerky and slow as she starts easing first one leg, then the other out of the duct. She keeps her eyes closed, moving by touch—I make sure to be gentle as I reach out for her arm to steady her.

  “Doing good,” I whisper, wishing I knew better how to talk her through this kind of phobia—except it’s not really a phobia, because that implies irrationality. We’re twenty floors up, and that fall is plenty to fear for even the most logical of minds. The only upside is that if you did fall, you’d certainly be dead instantly on impact, no lying around in agony with broken bits. I don’t think Alexis would find that comforting, though.

  I walk her through putting on the harness—I know she’s freaked, because she doesn’t even blink when I test the bands running around each thigh.

  “You’re going to go first,” I tell her. “I’m going to have a rope attached to you, here.” I let her see me tying the lead to her harness. “Your job is to take these”—I hand her the bag of magnet grips—“and make us a path. You press them against the wall, like this, then do a ninety-degree twist, like this, to activate the magnet. Then you just slip the rope through the carabiner until it clicks—and always from this direction, so that if we fall, the rope can’t unclip itself.”

  I look up to find her staring at me like I’ve told her to shoot me in the face. “You’re joking.”

  I let my breath out slowly. “Not this time.”

  She swallows, pressing her back against the wall of the elevator shaft as though she could escape all of this by sheer willpower alone. Her hair’s a mess, and there’s a red, tender-looking spot at one temple that looks like soon enough it’ll be a magnificent bruise. Her mascara’s still tracked down her cheeks in smudged black lines, and there’s a trace of blood at her swollen lower lip, from when her interrogator backhanded her. I’m not expecting the ache somewhere inside, at the sight of her. Then she sniffs. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  My shoulders start aching again before we’ve gone a floor, in no small part due to the fact that with Alexis, the climb is taking twice as long. But despite the pain, it’s not all bad news. The view when I glance up to check on her progress is plenty of consolation. I keep that observation to myself. To her credit, she manages her task without complaint, though at one point I hear her breath shuddering as she inhales, and I realize she’s crying with each shaking movement upward.

  When we get to the thirtieth floor, she hauls herself up over the lip of the maintenance ledge and stays on her knees, pressed against the wall, shaking. I let her stay there and keep going, adding a few more holds with the magnet grips until I can get at the access panel by the top of the opening. Ideally I’d just hack the panel, but my chip is in its pocket, and my pocket is underneath my harness, and my harness is all that’s keeping me from dropping thirty floors to an admittedly very swift death. I’m going to have to do it mechanically, and that’s not my forte.

  I’ve pried off the cover and am tracing the wiring when a noise intrudes on my concentration.

  “Gideon…” Alexis is whispering my name. “Gideon!”

  “What?”

  “The elevator—is it supposed to be moving?”

  I stare at her for half a heartbeat, then look down to find the elevator car below us easing smoothly upward. Oh, hell. Though it’s slow at first, it’s gathering speed quickly. I meet Alexis’s eyes again for a fraction of a second, and then lean into the panel, cursing hard. My fingers falter—my breath hitches—my palms are sweating and I can’t get a grip on the wire and my nails are too short to dig through the coating on them, and Alexis’s shouting something beside me, and finally, finally I spark two of the wires together and the elevator doors at waist level creak open six inches.

  I reach out for Alexis, shouting at her to move, and this time she doesn’t hesitate—I guide one of her feet to my leg and half shove her upward, my body screaming at the extra weight, the grip in my other hand—the one clamping the belay device closed—starting to fail. She clambers up through the opening, her body scraping either side as she wriggles through—then I see her again, as she shoves her foot against one of the doors and forces it open a few more inches. Then she’s leaning down—God, what the hell are you doing, go!—and I realize she’s reaching for me.

  The elevator car’s rumbling beneath us like an oncoming train, and I know she’s shouting something at me because I can see her lips moving. Her hands grasp at my wrist and I give up on the belay device, letting the rope go slack and grabbing at the hold with my other hand. For one horrible moment I know I’m not going to make it, my muscles spasming—and then I’m moving, scrambling, feet kicking briefly at empty air before Alexis and I both go sprawling onto the floor, just as the car goes screeching by. Sparks spit from the open doors as the car shears my grips off the shaft walls like leaves being stripped from a stem.

  Gasping, coughing, tangled up together and sweating and shaking, Alexis and I sprawl on the floor. I press my face against the cold marble, gradually coming back to myself and the world around me. The windows at the far end of the hall tell me dawn’s arrived—the first hints of light are streaking through the sky and gilding the window frames. The exit to the skybridge is just around the corner, and once we’re in the neighboring building it’ll be the work of moments to hack that system and catch a ride down to street level. We’re safe.

  With that comes the realization that Alexis is lying on top of me—for a moment I’m tempted to stay still, to keep where I am as long as possible, because now that the threat of imminent splattage has passed, I could get used to this. But as we both sit up slowly, I realize she’s not pulling away because she’s shaking too violently to move.

  I wrap one arm around her, alarm coursing through me. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  She shakes her head mutely, and I can see the terror lingering in her tear-streaked face. She wasn’t joking about not being good with heights—if I’d known she was this phobic, I never would’ve made her climb. I would’ve…I don’t know, figured something out. How in all that’s holy did she manage that?

  My arm’s tightening around her before I register what I’m doing, tucking her in against my side. “You did it,” I murmur, turning my head to speak into her ear. “We’re okay. We’re almost out.”

  She holds still within the circle of my arm for a moment, and then abruptly she’s pressing in against me, arms wrapping around my rib cage, face hidden against my T-shirt. She’s still shaking, harsh breathing muffled against my skin, and I wrap my other arm around her to squeeze
her tight. This isn’t one of her acts. In this moment, she isn’t playing me, I’m sure of it.

  I’m sure of way too many things all of a sudden, and first among them is that I’m in a lot of trouble.

  “We should go. Once we get across the skybridge, we need to plan our next move while we’re still ahead.”

  It’s like my words are a signal, and she clears her throat, pulling away from me, turning her head long enough to give her eyes a quick wipe, which I pretend not to notice as we climb to our feet. “I have to get back to my apartment,” she says, her bone-deep weariness showing through in the way her voice cracks.

  “Dimples, you can’t go back there. You know you can’t go back there.”

  Her reddened eyes flick over to meet mine. “You don’t understand, I have—I have things there, things I need.”

  “You need your life more,” I whisper, my voice escaping as the realization starts to sweep over me. I know where we’re going to go.

  Her eyes fill, but she nods. “I know.” She swallows, then echoes, “I know. But where else can we go? I’ve got no money, not even my palm pad or any ID.”

  I know the answer, but even as the words rise up, I’m biting them down.

  I can’t. My den is sacred. Nobody gets in there but me. Nobody. That rule has kept me alive for the last five years. That rule has kept my identity a secret. I can’t break it for anyone, for any reason—I have too much left to do before they catch me.

  But I got her into this—it was me they wanted when they grabbed her—and as I climb slowly to my feet, searching in vain for any other answer that will keep her just as safe, I can feel something shifting in the air. I can feel the course I’ve set myself changing.

  “My place,” I hear myself say. “We’ll go to my place.”

  One more test, says the blue-eyed man. One more, and then you will go home.

  We will do as he asks. We will keep this new planet young and small, nudging this current and suppressing that growth. The ground will stay soft and the sky covered. When we sneak glimpses of the world through the eyes of those who live here, this place is always gray.