A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  We pause, almost at the end of the hallway, near the sorting room where we spent our first week of the internship just ahead. Right? Left? To our right is the Atrium, with only a few doors in between, and to our left is the longer hallway that will lead to yet more hallways and the observation rooms.

  “Left,” she whispers. “It’s the most logical.”

  I almost smile. Never have I heard her more displeased about something being logical.

  I start to widen the tunnel to listen for Adombukar when we hear voices.

  “Damn, damn, damn!” Alma whispers. Far at the other end of the hall, a group of three whitecoats has emerged from the Atrium. They look at one another, absorbed in conversation. They haven’t seen us yet.

  “In!” I breathe, shoving Alma toward the nearest door. I fumble to align my palm with the scanner, my eyes darting from it to the three whitecoats down the hall. The door whispers open, and Alma and I tumble through the doorway. When it closes, we’re sealed inside the stillness of a small examination room. We stand frozen in the corner until the silence convinces me that the whitecoats haven’t seen us.

  “What are they even doing in here?” Alma says. “It’s way past evening meal.”

  “My dad would be here all night sometimes.”

  Alma shakes her head. She glances back over her shoulder fearfully, as if she’s still in the hallway and is checking for observers. But her eyes fasten on something; rather than moving back to the door, she turns around fully to look. Watching her, I follow suit, my mind already buzzing.

  “What is it?” I say, afraid to see.

  I haven’t seen the animal on the table before. Pale violet in color, it has a slender snout nearly a foot long. Its whole body is slender, actually, though it’s hard to tell when it’s lying flat, restraints around its shoulders and its six limbs. Wait . . . six?

  “Six legs?”

  “A rahilla,” Alma breathes, taking a step toward the table. She stops herself, even though the animal appears to be tranquilized.

  “I don’t remember that one,” I say. Even now I want to pass some nonexistent test.

  “Mammal. Insectivore. Only one of a few species whose body seems to have adapted to resemble the bodies of its prey.”

  “You’d think I’d remember that.”

  She shoots me a look and a half smile.

  “You were probably messaging with Rondo.” Then she turns her eyes back to the rahilla. “It looks so peaceful.”

  I open the tunnel just a tiny bit wider. The rahilla’s consciousness materializes slowly on my mind’s horizon, a smudged illumination. It’s dim. It shouldn’t be dim.

  “I—I think he’s dying,” I say, the realization installing a sudden lump in my throat. The rahilla’s light is fading as his life flickers out. I can’t believe he’s being forced to die here on this table alone, tied down and helpless. I approach the table, ignoring Alma’s hiss of warning, and bury my fingers in the rahilla’s long lavender fur.

  The feeling is like an electric shock, traveling up my veins and into my head. I see the rahilla as it once was: his fur more vibrant, a deep, rich purple. He’s lost weight as well: his legs used to be thick with muscle. I sense that he’s lonely: only two of his species in the Zoo. He acknowledges my presence in his mind, but he’s too weak to close himself off. If he was in the jungle, this inability to guard his mind might make him prey to a dirixi or a gwabi. My hands tingle on his body: they feel hot and almost wet. I have to pull them away to examine them, the feeling is so convincing. But my hands are just my hands, and the rahilla lies where he is, his slender body rising and falling with his slow, shallow breaths.

  “Octavia, we need to go,” Alma says.

  I nod. But leaving him here feels wrong. I look around the room. On another platform against the wall is a variety of equipment, including the blue wand that Dr. Depp had used to wake the kunike from tranquilized slumber. I consider getting it, waking the rahilla. But that seems even crueler. There is no right thing to do here. Nothing is good enough. I carefully remove the straps that bind his body to the platform. He’s not going anywhere except to death, so he might as well be comfortable. Then I walk to the other platform, take the blue wand, and put it in my pocket. I look at Alma and nod.

  We peek out in the hallway to ensure no other whitecoats are making their way from the Atrium to the main dome. We don’t hear any voices, but that could change, so we slip out of the room and walk as quickly as we can without jogging down the hallway. The tunnel is open slightly: rather than things entering and finding their way to my mind, I keep the crack just wide enough to register other consciousnesses on my radar. We pass room after seemingly empty room; many of them hide animals behind their illusory doors, but none of the presences are Adombukar. We pass what I know is the containment room, not because I remember its blank door but because I feel the many life-forces held prisoner there glowing in my mind. Almost all of them are tranquilized. Their energy pricks dully in my direction as I pass. I gently block them out, feeling like a coward.

  “This is the hallway we took when we saw Dr. Albatur and Vasana 11,” Alma says in the same hushed tone. “Do you hear anything?”

  “I hear a lot,” I say, frustrated. “But not Adombukar.”

  “What if he’s . . .” She pauses, looking for a word other than dead. “Not listening?”

  I imagine Adombukar laid out on a table like the rahilla, his light fading into nothing. Would Rasimbukar know if her father died? Would she feel it? Would she bring the Faloii thundering out of the jungle to rid Faloiv of humans? I wouldn’t even blame her at this point.

  The wall to our right opens—not the door, but the wall: another hidden entrance—and the whitecoat that comes out of it walks straight into us, his head bent to his slate. The edge of the slate runs straight into my face, jutting hard against the corner of my lip, enough to draw the faint metallic taste of blood.

  “Oh!” I cry as much out of pain as surprise, slapping my hand to my mouth. Alma too gives a small shriek of shock, and the sound echoes down the long empty hallway. One moment it was just us, the only noise being the muted sound of our feet on the hard floor. Now a new sound joins us: Dr. Albatur.

  “What are you two doing back here?” he says, more surprised than angry.

  “We . . . uh . . .”

  “English?” he says. His skin is pale, but up close I see the flush under the surface: a faint spiderweb of skin cells reddened by whatever condition he has that makes his body reject Faloiv. His bushy white eyebrows crush toward each other like a fat caterpillar cut suddenly in half. “Does your father know you’re back here?”

  “No, sir,” I say before I can come up with a lie.

  His hand, its thick pink fingers extended, reaches for me. It settles on my shoulder faster than my reflexes can allow me to jerk away.

  “With your mother in the predicament she’s in, I would think you would be more careful about toeing the line,” he says.

  “Meaning?” I say, pulling back.

  He narrows his eyes at me and glances down the hall, as if he’s angry that I’m keeping him from getting somewhere. The hand tightens on my shoulder.

  “Miss English, I don’t have time for this presently. If you would like to have a discussion about your mother’s situation, I’m sure we can locate your father and he will be more than obliged to explain.”

  I shake him off. “I don’t need my dad to tell me what my mother’s situation is. I know her situation. And I know yours too,” I say.

  His hand slowly sinks down to his side, as if every inch it falls is challenged by its desire to grab me by the throat.

  “My situation?” he says. “What would you know of such things, Miss English? Anything your mother has told you is—”

  “My mother hasn’t told me anything,” I snap. “But I know what you and my father are working on. The . . . the Solossius. I know what you’re doing.”

  It’s a shot in the dark, a wild stab into shadows.
But as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know I’ve hit something. The smirk leaks from his eyes, leaving the expression as hard and shiny as the metal instruments he uses in his experiments.

  “You know very little,” he says in a low voice. His eyes dart over my shoulder, looking to see if anyone else is around. I hear my heartbeat in my ears as those eyes settle on mine again. “Do you want to live here forever? Do you want your children to live on this hot, vicious little planet? The key to our freedom is in their bones. If your mother is too shortsighted to see that, then we can—”

  “Are you threatening Octavia?” Alma pipes up, her voice shriller than I’ve ever heard it.

  “I have no need,” Dr. Albatur says. He reaches for me, but I duck away from him again. The idea of him touching me fills me with rage.

  “You will come with me, English,” he says, his eyes piercing blue under the white eyebrows, glinting like a broken star. “I look forward to escorting you to the Council.”

  “Get off me!” I yell, my voice bouncing off the walls. “I know what you’re doing back here! And when they find out . . .”

  The word “they” hangs between us, vibrating.

  His hand drops to his side, and the eyes that had before been metallic flecks are now wholly stone. Staring at those eyes staring back at me, I almost don’t notice the movement of his free hand, inching toward the waist of his lab coat. The fabric shifts, and there’s a tranq gun.

  “Alma, grab him!” I scream. I don’t give my body any command but still somehow find myself lunging at him in the empty white hallway. In my periphery, Alma has found a hold on his other arm. The slate he’d been holding tumbles to the hard floor, its screen shattering on impact.

  The three of us stand there, struggling awkwardly in the middle of the silent corridor. All I hear is our breathing and the rustling of our clothes against each other. He’s a heavy man: he throws his bulk against me, trying to force me toward the wall. I plant my feet as firmly as I can, using my legs to brace against his weight. Alma, on his other side, claws at his hands, trying to keep them from closing around the tranq gun.

  But he frees it from the folds of his lab coat. The weapon shines in the bright white light from the ceiling, and in the struggle its nose shifts toward Alma, whose teeth are bared in exertion.

  “No!” I yell, jutting my elbow into Albatur’s side, and there’s a short whuff of breath as my bone connects. I grapple with the tranq gun, can feel its cold metal against my fingertips . . .

  Zip!

  The gun fires. I don’t know who triggered it: all three of us have our hands on the tranq. Have I been hit? Has Alma? I feel numb. I must have been hit. I wait for the feeling of coldness to spread through my limbs, for my brain to slowly go fuzzy with sleep. It’s not until Albatur grunts and topples heavily to the floor that I realize the tranq dart is buried in his fleshy reddish neck.

  Alma and I stand, breathing heavily, staring down at his body. His chest rises and falls laboriously, a rattle rising from his open mouth. On his chest, the gold Council pin winks at us.

  “Damn . . . ,” Alma trails off, panting.

  “He’s fine,” I say, reassuring myself as much as Alma. “He’s fine, right? He’s just . . . asleep.”

  “He’s fine,” Alma repeats, her eyes wide. She bends down to pick up the tranq gun from where it clattered to the floor next to him. What have we done?

  “We need to find Adombukar,” she says without taking her eyes off Dr. Albatur’s body. “Before someone finds us.”

  There’s the sound of feet striking the hard artificial floor. I’ve stopped breathing. The steps are slow, unhurried. Voices accompany the footsteps, from the direction in which we came. Two whitecoats, slates in hand. They stare at us for a moment, and I know they’re looking from the body on the floor up to me and Alma, standing there holding a tranq gun. They say nothing. One slowly moves to a wall panel and keys in a code.

  My ears fill with the alarm’s wail.

  CHAPTER 28

  For a moment the four of us only stare at one another, the alarm shrieking in our ears, Albatur’s body lying still and white on the floor. Then one of the whitecoats takes a tentative step toward us, and Alma’s arm whips up to point the tranq gun in their direction. I don’t even have time to admonish her before the whitecoat stumbles backward, running into his colleague. They both stand there, Alma pointing the gun unwaveringly, then together they shuffle until they’re out of sight. Alma lowers the gun.

  “Alma!” I turn to her, my eyes huge.

  “We don’t have time for this!” she yells. “And the next people to come around that corner aren’t going to be so timid.”

  I force myself to focus on squeezing the muscle in my mind. It’s more difficult with the alarm blaring all around us: sifting through the noise to find the quiet place in the center of my brain is no easy task. But I find it, struggle to get a grip on it, and then slowly open the tunnel.

  The noise of the alarm seems to soften as my mind widens and what feels like light seeps in. This part of the lab is quieter in terms of activity in the tunnel: the rooms that line the walls here are actually empty, with a few exceptions. Dr. Albatur had come from a wall between two of the rooms: there are secrets in these hallways that my eyes can’t see, but I find myself trusting my inner ear to uncover them.

  “Anything?” Alma shouts, shifting her weight from foot to foot and looking over her shoulder where the whitecoats had disappeared.

  “Not much. Come on!”

  I jog down the hallway, deeper into the labs. We leave Dr. Albatur on the floor. I hope the bark of the alarm gives him terrible dreams. The horizon of my brain is dark and vacant: I reach out inside it, groping with an invisible hand, searching for anything. Alma jogs behind me, silent. We reach a fork in the hallway, one corridor continuing straight and another branching to our right: it’s long and blank, no doors, no observation windows.

  Pausing to look down the empty expanse, my consciousness immediately sparks. Something on the edge of my awareness, a flutter of blue. I stop jogging to focus on that smudge, and push the sound of the alarm out of my head. I reach out for the blue, try to wrap the fingers of my mind around it. It’s not an animal, I know. This is different. The buzzing spikes, the attention of the thing turns toward me, sensing me too now. It’s weak—tranquilized—but it feels me.

  “I feel something,” I shout, grabbing Alma’s arm and dragging her down the hallway to the right. I rush forward with Alma in tow, my grip on the blue presence in my mind growing stronger. Any part of these white walls could be an entrance in disguise. Help me find you, I say. I can’t find you.

  It tries to reach out: I sense the energy spike toward me. At first I think it’s too weak, but it glows brighter, pulses, and comes into the tunnel.

  “It’s him,” I whisper.

  I see him as if he’s standing before me: the spotted man. Adombukar. He’s nearby, and very weak, asking me to come. The glowing chain that links us feels brighter, and I walk quickly along it. I pass blank wall after blank wall, feeling their emptiness, looking for him. And then I reach one place on the featureless wall, as blank as the rest, but different somehow. Adombukar is there behind it, his presence in the tunnel flickering as he struggles to maintain the connection. I raise my palm to the wall, press my fingertips against it.

  “Enter, Dr. English.”

  The wall slides open to reveal a small, dim room, devoid of exam table or research equipment. The only things in the room are a desk, diagrams, and a cage. Adombukar is inside it.

  “Come on!” I shout, and pull Alma into the room. The door closes behind us. The alarm is quieter in here, muted by the wall.

  “Do you think they know where we are?” Alma says. Her eyes are glued to Adombukar in a mixture of wonder and fear. “What we came to do?”

  I don’t answer, instead moving quickly to the cell and shoving my hand through the bars. It’s made of the same white clay as everything else in the compound;
thick bars the width of my arm contain him. Adombukar lies inside, tranquilized, his large body on its side and curled slightly. My hand hovers hesitantly over him. Would he want me to touch him? I slowly lower my palm and rest it gently on his shoulder.

  He blazes through the tunnel into my mind, stronger with the physical contact. He only shows me one concept: Hurry.

  “He’s okay,” I say, yanking my hand away and out from between the bars. “But we have to move fast.”

  I reach into the pocket of my skinsuit and draw out the blue wand that I took from the room with the dying rahilla. How had Dr. Depp used it on the kunike? I remember him placing it against the animal’s neck. I examine the instrument, my hands shaking. I don’t see any levers or controls, so I push my hand through the bars again, angle the wand toward the side of Adombukar’s neck, and gently bring it into contact with his body.

  He stirs immediately.

  Adombukar, I tell him in my mind. Are you okay?

  Behind me, Alma has backed away to the wall. She says nothing, just watching.

  The cell is too small to permit him to stand, so Adombukar slowly rises into a crouch. He’s much bigger than Rasimbukar, but he has the same deep brown skin, the pattern of spots covering his body like circular patterns traced in soil. This close, I see they’re slightly raised. The spots on his forehead seem to wander, as if he’s trying to find his bearings.

  “We must go,” he says out loud. His voice is deep and resonates in his chest, with the same strange wooden timbre as Rasimbukar.

  “Yes,” I say. “We just have to figure out how to get you out of this cell. There’s no door that I can see.”

  “Oh, stars,” Alma murmurs from behind me, and I whip my head around at the quake in her voice, expecting to see a whitecoat appearing from thin air. But she’s staring at a screen on the wall above the desk: the light from it bathes her face in a white glow.