Their Fractured Light: A Starbound Novel

by Amie Kaufman

“Hey,” she replies, opening one eye. “Just because you found me living in a penthouse doesn’t mean I was born there.”

  “I have no idea where you were born,” I agree, though the gray marble that is Avon flashes through my mind. “But you asked me not to try and find out.” I find a bunch of energy bars and a couple of cans of stims. Cracking the seal on one, I hand it across to her, then open my own, taking a long swig.

  She sips and grimaces, then sips again. “You don’t need to know that, for us to work together.”

  “True,” I agree. “I can live with the mystery.”

  “You work for the Knave, Gideon.” Her lashes lift properly so she can peer at me. It’s not an apology, but it’s something related to it—an explanation she wants me to understand. “I know all the hearsay can’t be right, but if even a fraction of it is, he’s ruthless, impossible to pin down. He could be LaRoux for all anyone actually knows about him. You’re his lackey, at the end of the day. The less you know, the better.”

  “Lackey’s a little harsh.” I reach for a joke, but I can hear in my own voice that I don’t quite make it. “I prefer henchman.” She doesn’t smile, and I don’t either. “I’m my own man. You can trust me, I promise you that.”

  “I’m trying,” she replies, tired. “You came for me when you didn’t have to. But I don’t trust him.”

  “Who told you not to?” I can’t help myself. When this thing is done, I’m going to track down whoever’s been ruining my rep and devise a punishment to make future generations quail. A punishment that would make Commander Towers view the year of her life she’s spent on the run from me as a walk in the park.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she replies, grimacing as she sips from her can again, then setting it down beside the bed as her willingness to subject herself to it runs out. “But trust me, I know.”

  Silence settles over us, and though having someone in my den makes my skin feel twitchy, there’s something warmer about having her here, too. I’d be the last to admit it, but after what I’ve seen at LRI Headquarters, I don’t really want to be alone.

  “They’re never going to stop looking for us now,” Sofia murmurs. Our narrow escape is on her mind too.

  “At least not until LaRoux Industries carries out whatever it’s planning to do with that rift.”

  Sofia lifts her head, glancing at me with uncharacteristic hesitation. “Well, if you won’t say it, I will. Everyone’s heard the Avon Broadcast. That’s what Flynn—Flynn Cormac, the guy on that recording—that’s what he was talking about. Creatures that can affect minds.”

  It sounds insane. Beyond insane. And if I hadn’t seen what Tarver and Lilac went through, if I hadn’t been tracking the woman who helped LaRoux cover up the Avon conspiracy, I’d politely show this girl the door and get back to my screens. “Yeah,” I say instead, my voice sounding papery and thin even to my own ears. “‘Whispers,’ he called them. He said they were whispers from another universe.”

  “Surely there’s some way to just cut our universe off from theirs, so that LaRoux can’t use the whispers.”

  I’m quick to shake my head. “They come from hyperspace. If we shut the door on their universe, we’d be left without the ability to jump through their dimension from place to place. There’d be no faster-than-light travel, no hypernet communication between planets.”

  Sofia grimaces. “Okay, let’s not do that then. So how do you fight something that can get inside your mind, control your thoughts?”

  I wish I had an answer, but instead the silence draws in around us again, thick and smothering this time. I don’t know how to fight the whispers. It’s why I’m trying to fight LaRoux himself, to drag him into the light. Despite the short time I’ve known her, it’s strange to see Sofia at such a loss. I take a deep breath, and say something out loud I’ve never told anyone but Mae. “We fight him instead. His company.”

  Her eyes flick up from the floor again, brows lifted.

  I indicate my screens with a jerk of my chin. “There’s nothing we can do against beings that can reach inside your head, but we can stop what they’re being used to do. Whatever it is. Avon’s people managed to stand up to LaRoux, despite these creatures being there. And—” My words come up short, and I almost choke with the effort to halt my momentum. “And I think the Icarus survivors encountered them too,” I finish finally. I’m not ready for her to know about my connection with the youngest LaRoux.

  Sofia frowns. “How could you know that?”

  “It’s a long story,” I reply. “But I’ve been looking. For years now, I’ve been digging into LaRoux Industries. I told you I had my own reasons for wanting to take them down.”

  Sofia leans back, resting her shoulders against the wall next to the bed. She takes her time responding, and I can feel those gray eyes on me like a tangible weight. “I showed you mine,” she says softly. “You don’t think I should know why you’re in this? Why I should trust you?”

  In an instant, my brother’s face is there in front of me. I’m always looking up in my memory; he was older, though these days I’m taller than he was when he died. Freckled, grinning, he’s always laughing in my imagination, though I never remember the jokes. The sort of things brothers laugh about, stupid kid jokes that make no sense to anybody else. Grief wraps around my throat, tightening like a hand, making it hard to swallow. “Because the LaRoux family killed my brother.”

  Sofia’s silent for a time, but I can still feel her watching me. “I’m so sorry,” she says finally, and for now, that’s enough.

  I cough to clear my throat, straightening in my chair. “Well, we’re safe here for now. No one’s ever found this place and I’ve been here for years. We can regroup, figure out our next move. Wait a few weeks, see if the heat dies down.”

  “A few weeks…” Sofia echoes my words, suddenly not looking at me anymore, but rather gazing past me with a troubled look on her face.

  “What is it? I know it’s no penthouse, but it’s better than—”

  “No, no, this place is fine,” Sofia says dismissively. Now I know she’s distracted. “I’m remembering what one of those guys said, back at LRI Headquarters, right before you got there. Something about having a week to fix the rift and make sure it was working right.”

  “So…what’s happening in a week that’s so important to LaRoux?”

  Sofia’s eyebrows lift. “Seriously? You don’t know?” One side of her mouth lifts, drawing the faintest ghost of a dimple and banishing the lingering remnants of grief. “Do you ever come out of those screens?”

  “There are a lot of things happening in a week, Dimples. I probably know about more of them than you do.”

  “Maybe. But quality over quantity, my good man. Run a search on ‘Daedalus.’”

  The name sends a jolt through me. I don’t have to search the phrase—the entire galaxy knows about the Icarus’s sister ship. “Oh, holy shit, you’re right. The grand opening of the Daedalus museum is happening soon.”

  “And the opening-night gala is doubling as a welcome bash for all the planetary envoys visiting for the peace summit.” Her mouth twists in a way completely unrelated to a smile. “To discuss those pesky rebellions.”

  The ruling senators for every planet in the galaxy, all in the same room, all with their guards down. “Oh, hell.”

  “LaRoux wants power,” Sofia goes on. Her face, when she says that name, goes hard as granite. She may be a consummate actress, but she can’t hide her hatred. “If he could do to the senators what he did to the people on Avon, or the people at LRI Headquarters…”

  “He’d control the entire galaxy.” My mouth is dry, a deep chill in my gut making me want to shiver. Hard enough exposing LaRoux and his company without the authorities themselves under mind control. “Would he be able to move something as big as the rift we saw? And hide it from an entire ship full of staff and guests, not to mention the media outlets that’ll be swarming the gala?”

  Sofia hesitates, glancin
g at me, then at my screens, then away. “I have a contact,” she says finally, “within LRI. I only got a little from her—we were going to meet that day at the holosuite. But she told me that the technology LaRoux used to create the rifts is the same technology used in the new hyperspace engines, which makes sense given what you’ve just told me about where the whispers come from. My contact understands the rifts—I think she worked on the project, or at least on the new engines, like the one onboard the Icarus.”

  “And the one onboard the Daedalus.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where she’s heading, and I’m already itching to get a look at the ship’s blueprints. “There could be a rift there already, hiding in plain sight.”

  “And if we don’t get to him first, LaRoux’s going to use it to turn the entire Galactic Council into husks under his command.”

  “Oh, hell,” I repeat, shutting my eyes.

  “In a handbasket,” she agrees.

  “Bring her back!” The blue-eyed man is screaming at us through the thin spot on the gray world. “You brought the scientists on Elysium back, again and again. You drove them mad with it. All I ask is one life, one—” His words fail him.

  His face is haggard, the dark hair grown lighter with gray and white at temple and nape. His anguish is different from the anguish we have learned from the gray world. This anguish is special, individual, unique. He is teaching us pleasure. They have a word for it, this species. Revenge.

  “Please,” the blue-eyed man whispers. “If not for me, then for my little girl. She needs her mother.”

  We stay silent. Let him know loneliness. Let him understand. Let him be the one to watch, and wait, and learn. His lessons are bitter.

  And I will learn pleasure.

  I FIND MYSELF DRIFTING OFF to sleep as Gideon works at his screens, trying to figure out who we should contact to warn the Daedalus gala attendees about LaRoux’s plans. I know I should stay awake, but it’s the first time I’ve actually felt safe since I first saw the rift at LRI Headquarters, and exhaustion is catching up with me. Down here I have no idea what time it is, but it can’t be more than early afternoon and I feel ready to drop. I was thinking for a while about venturing out for some supplies. I cooked enough on Avon, and I learned about off-world ingredients when I spent a little time as Lucy, a waitress on Paradisa, but the prospect of moving seems to make my body even heavier. I wedge myself upright in the corner to keep myself from slumping, but despite my best efforts, it seems like only a few seconds have passed when I wake up to darkness.

  For a moment I’m disoriented, but then the cushion I’m leaning against moves and memory floods back. I’m not leaning on a cushion. It’s Gideon. He must have stopped working and decided to join me in my nap. For a moment, indignation flares through me as he shifts again, chest rising and falling under my cheek in a sigh—but as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I realize that I’m no longer in my corner. I’m the one who’s moved, to the other end of the bed, to lean on him.

  God, I’m even lonelier than I thought.

  I ought to pull away and creep back to my corner, and hope he was sleeping deeply enough not to have noticed me. I barely know him, except that he’s the closest thing I’ve had in a long time to someone I could trust. Even so, I remind myself sternly, he’s worked for the Knave. He’d probably try to stop you if he knew why you were after LaRoux. And you don’t know he’s telling the truth about anything.

  And yet I don’t move.

  A tiny sound rises above the gentle whir of Gideon’s various computers, and I open my eyes again. I listen hard, lifting my head so that Gideon’s heartbeat doesn’t drown it out. It’s a high-pitched whine, like the noise of far-off construction, only it doesn’t sound far-off. I’m unused to the sounds here in the undercity, so perhaps it’s nothing.

  It’s not until there’s a thud, muffled but clear enough for me to recognize that it’s close by, that I sit bolt upright. I grab for Gideon’s arm, no longer caring if he notices how close I crept while we were sleeping.

  He wakes quickly but groggily, barely a silhouette in the dark. “Mmph?” he asks, starting to sit up.

  “Does anyone else use this building?” I whisper.

  Gideon finds his voice, but thankfully keeps it low to match mine. “No, it’s just me.”

  “There’s someone outside. Listen.” For a few seconds there’s only silence, but then the high-pitched whirring starts up once more.

  Gideon’s forearm goes rigid under my hand. “It can’t be,” he murmurs. He waits one second more before scrambling abruptly out of bed, still in what he wore when he came to my rescue. He stumbles over to his screens, waving a hand at them to wake them up. There’s a soft chime, and a synthetic female voice speaks calmly. “Intruder alert. Security breach in process.”

  “Now you tell me?” he snaps. A few flicks of his fingers summon up the display from his security camera. “Oh, God.”

  I move off the bed and over to the screens, where the centermost one shows a trio of people, difficult to make out through the fuzziness of the footage. But I can see enough to tell one of them is crouched in front of the door, using some sort of device on Gideon’s locking mechanisms.

  My heart seizes, fear banishing the last vestiges of sleepiness and warmth from Gideon’s body. “What’re they—”

  “They’re drilling into the door.” Gideon’s voice is tight and cold, and without wasting another second he’s moving, throwing open cabinets to reveal banks of computer drives, shelves of equipment for breaking and entering, and a host of other things I can’t identify.

  “How did they find us?” I gasp—I don’t waste time asking who “they” are. This has to be LaRoux’s doing.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Gideon replies. “We’ve got to run. There’s a back exit. Here, take this and pack anything useful you see.” He tosses an empty bag at me, then grabs a bag himself, the same one he wore when he came into LaRoux Headquarters after me. He shoves in a couple of handfuls of electronics, then reaches for the bottom drawer of his desk to pull out an old, battered, antiquated paper book. He carefully, gingerly tucks it into his bag to nestle against his lapscreen. He takes a precious moment to seal the bag, then dumps it on the ground.

  I get to work, shoving gear and protein gel packets into the bag. Abruptly there’s a scream from outside the door, audible even through the layers of steel, and when my gaze flies up to the security screens, one of the fuzzy figures is lying on the ground.

  “Defense measures won’t hold them forever,” Gideon says tightly. “Gas should release in a minute, but if they’re smart they’ll have masks.” He grabs for a handheld device that, once he clicks it on, emits a drone so high-pitched it’s nearly silent, while at the same time making my jaw ache. He starts swiping it up and down the banks of drives—the screen showing the security feed flickers, striated by white and black lines, then goes blank. A paper clip lying on one of the drives zips over and clings to the device—an electromagnet. He’s erasing his tracks.

  “These here,” he commands, gesturing at a cabinet, and I dutifully empty a box of thumb drives into my pack. Then Gideon’s pressing tiny bricks of what looks like thick clay against the interior of the computer drive cabinet. I’m moving to add a bigger, heavier external drive to the others in my bag when he jerks to his feet and takes it from me. “No—that goes in here.” He slips the drive into his own bag, giving it an affectionate pat. “This one’s aluminized, keeps it from being wiped. That drive’s too important to risk.” As he speaks, he’s moving—a few steps and he’s at my side, stooping to grab at the edge of the faded rug on the floor and fling it aside.

  “Oh, for the love of—” For a moment I forget the people trying to break into our sanctuary, staring at the trapdoor that the rug had been hiding. “You’re like a villain out of an old movie. I should’ve known the only homey touch here was to hide your getaway.”

  “Can’t go wrong with the classics,” Gideon replies, and though the joke sounds li
ke him, his voice doesn’t. It’s still tight with distress, and I can see panic starting to seep into his gaze, despite what must be a well-rehearsed contingency plan.

  He’s not used to people finding him, I realize. He hasn’t lived the life I have over the past year, always only a step or two ahead of the Knave, always waiting for him to find me and drive me to move on again.

  “Let’s go,” I say, and he stops staring at the trapdoor and instead hauls it open. I start down the ladder it reveals, then pause. “We need to get the rug back over the trapdoor somehow, or they’ll just figure out where we went.”

  “They’ll have other things on their minds,” Gideon says grimly. “Hurry.”

  The ladder leads down into what must be an old, forgotten sewer from when the undercity of Corinth was the only city. Now it’s dry and empty and, when Gideon slams the trapdoor closed above us, utterly pitch-black. I freeze, trying to remember if I shoved a flashlight into the pack of gear on my back, but before I can start to look, a soft reddish glow illuminates the tunnel.

  I glance back to see Gideon clipping an LED lamp to his collar and tossing a second one to me. Smart—the red light is the part of the spectrum least likely to ruin our night vision. If we have to shut off the lamps and hide, we’ll still be able to see as well as anything else down here.

  “We have to keep moving,” says Gideon, his voice still strained, making my heart ache. I did this to him.

  “Gideon, I’m so sorry. I never meant—”

  “It’s not your fault,” he interrupts, before lifting his gaze to meet mine. The red light drains his face of any other color, leaching the sandy brown from his hair, the hazel from his eyes. He takes a breath, and when he speaks again, he sounds a little more like himself. “I can start over. We’re in this together.”

  I swallow, and while I wish I could think of something to say, there’s no time for that. Despite Gideon’s promise, I’m expecting those goons to pull open the trapdoor at any moment. I take off down the tunnel again, Gideon’s footsteps right behind me.