by Maura Milan
His face grew red, from the tips of his ears all the way to the dimple at the end of his chin. “Everyone here is going to find out Brinn Tarver is a Tawny. It’s our right to know—”
Nero’s holowatch dinged, interrupting his rant. She sat back and watched him, noticing a crease burrow into his brow.
He narrowed his eyes as he glanced up at her. “It’s a message from Tarver.”
“Oh really?” she said innocently.
Before she’d left for the common room that night, Ia had asked Brinn if she could connect to her holopad once again. She needed to give her something. A memory.
“Well, go on,” Ia continued. “Open it.”
Nero touched the message screen, enlarging the attachment onto another display. From where she was seated, Ia could make out the details of the image.
Nero’s jaw went slack. “Vetty…”
Ia got up from her seat, her eyes trained on the person in the photograph. His face was beautiful, with his thick brown hair tied back and eyes the color of sea-foam. His smile was never-ending, and he had Nero’s dimpled chin.
“Vetty was a part of my crew. We were pretty close. He talked a lot about his past.” Ia took a step toward Nero, so close he had to inch back. “I told Tarver all about him. She has her own copy of this too.”
Nero’s eyes snapped to hers. “You’re trying to blackmail me.”
“Think about the chaos your life would be thrown into once the public finds out a Sinoblancas is a Dead Spacer. Vetty’s father, your uncle, would lose his Council seat. Suspicion would fall on the whole family. The entire Sinoblancas empire would crumble. I’m pretty sure the universe would be a better place, but you wouldn’t want this to get out, would you?”
A stillness hung between them, and she watched Nero’s face twist and shrivel as he tried to figure out his next move.
The lights in the common room flickered on.
“What are you two doing in here?” Knives stood in the open doorway.
Neither of them answered. Ia’s eyes bore into Nero, and he hung back, unwilling to meet her stare. Perhaps he was realizing her threats were never the careless kind.
Knives walked into the room, surveying the two of them. “Sinoblancas,” he barked. “Back to your dorm.”
Nero rushed past the flight master. Ia made her way to follow him, her gaze set on the space where he had just exited. Knives’s hand rested on her shoulder, stopping her.
“What were you two doing?”
“Let go,” she snapped.
“Not until you tell me what you were fighting about.”
Her lips curled into a snarl. “He’s trying to expose a Tawny cadet in Aphelion.”
“Well, it looks like he’s too scared to do anything now.” Knives pressed his lips into a grim line. “Good work.”
Ia’s head snapped up. “What?”
His gaze rested upon hers. “Not all of us have the same beliefs as the Sinoblancas clan.”
Ia stood, speechless. It should have been easy to hate him, but he kept giving reasons not to.
There was an unspoken tension between them. She felt it even as he strode past her, throwing himself onto one of the couches. It emanated from her core and filled up her head, so that her cheeks felt numb. She knew the heat of anger very well, so it wasn’t that. It was a confusion. A curious confusion. Like solving a mystery. She didn’t want to stop until she got to the end, and even then, she wanted it to go on. To last forever.
He pulled down a control screen and started a new program on the central displays. Her chin tilted upward as an image faded up from black.
“Is this really why you’re here?”
His blue eyes twinkled at her, warmer this time. Again, she looked away.
“Out of all the places on campus, the First Year common room is the coziest.”
A flashy title sequence erupted onto the screen. “What movie is it?” she asked.
“The latest Kinna Downton one,” Knives answered. “Supposed to be scary.”
She noticed Knives hadn’t told her to leave or go back to her room. She glanced at him, and he scooted over, making room for her on the couch.
To her, he was the Bug who had her little silver orb, but she decided to forget that, at least for now.
CHAPTER 32
KNIVES
KNIVES GRABBED HIS PACK, throwing in everything he would need for the night. A bottle of archnol, two ripe oranges—which had been Marnie’s favorite snack—and a candle. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and combed his hair for the first time in a week. He wore civilian clothes, black insulated nylon pants and a gray long-sleeved thermal. It would be cold where he was going.
As he crossed his room to his door, Knives grabbed his brown leather bomber jacket from his table and slipped it on. He stepped out into the hallway and rushed down to the flight deck. When he got there, he passed underneath a line of jets hanging from the revolving track above, but instead of going to the Kaiken, he veered toward the storage bay, which was right next to the cargo lift.
As he crossed the tarmac, he spotted Ia throwing recharged fuel pods onto a cart. It had been a week since they watched the Kinna Downton stream together. He remembered every single moment of it, from the little gasps she made when the zombs invaded to how they’d bellowed in laughter at every over-the-top pun.
It was strange how fun that night had been.
“How many more of those do you have to do?” her guard Geoff asked.
She counted the empty pods littering the floor. “Maybe two more carts.”
“Is it possible you’ll be done before the Poddi game starts?”
Knives tiptoed away, knowing that if he interrupted, Ia would just draw him in. Even though he’d been enjoying her company lately, he didn’t have time for her tonight. He already had his own set of plans.
But as he was about to get out of earshot, she heard her call out. “Look who’s here.” She waved to the exit. “Geoff, go watch that Poddi game. The flight master can take over for the night.”
Knives stopped in his place. “What? You can’t just relieve your own guard of his duties.”
“And you can’t make him work overtime night after night. Isn’t that some violation of one of your labor codes? Right, Geoff?”
Geoff looked from one to the other as if he was unsure what to do.
“Right?” Ia asked again.
“Labor codes advise no longer than four hours of overtime per day, and I’ve been on the clock since five a.m.—”
Knives threw up his hands. “Fine. Geoff, you are free to go. And if you’re placing bets, just make sure you give me a cut if you win.”
Geoff grinned. “Thank you,” he exclaimed, and then rushed away.
With hands in his pockets, Knives turned back to Ia. She was wearing her flight suit, and her hair was pinned back, making her face look rounder, less harsh than it usually was.
“Well, I guess it’s just you and me,” Ia said as she waved him over. “Wanna give me a hand? I gotta do these or else I’ll fail another one of my classes.”
He glanced over at his watch. It was almost midnight, and he needed to get to the Nest before the end of the day.
“Leave those there. I’ll just give you the extra points,” he said.
She wiped the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead. “Really?”
“Let’s go.” He didn’t have time to explain, so he nodded for her to follow. “I have somewhere I need to be.”
The storage bay was dimly lit. He led Ia through the maze of freighters filled with supplies and piles of replacement parts for the training jets. He made sure to walk at her side so he could keep tabs on her. He had noticed her eyeing the cargo lift as they passed it, like she was trying to slice right through it with the power of her mind. A reminder that even though they had become more casual with each other over the past month, he still had to be careful.
He walked in silence, his footsteps retracing the exact path he and his sister used to take
whenever they wanted to steal away from class. He remembered the first time she took him here two years ago. Marnie had dragged him away after one of his drill practices, and they had run through the stacks of this same storage bay.
“Where are we going?” Ia asked him. Her eyes were everywhere, looking at the pipes, the crates, even the floor. Probably trying to figure out a way to escape.
He called her name, and she snapped back into focus, her head tilted in his direction.
“Can we make a deal tonight?” he pleaded.
Her eyes flashed. “Bargaining now, are we?”
He knew this was going to be a big ask, but he said it anyway. “Promise me you won’t try to escape tonight.”
She knit her brows together. “And why would I promise that?”
He swung his pack over and pulled the bottle of archnol out by its neck. “Do it, and this will all be yours.”
To be honest, he had brought that bottle for his own consumption, but he was willing to make a small sacrifice in order to have some peace of mind for the rest of the night.
She pressed her lips together and then smirked. “Knives, you got yourself a deal.”
He passed her the bottle, and her eyes brushed over the label. “Batical? That’s a real brewery. I usually get my archnol from the Dead Space Market. If you aren’t careful, you could drink too much and go blind.”
“Well, then, Cōcha, I guess this is your lucky day.” He remembered the long-lasting burn from the archnol he’d ordered from Myth, knowing how hard it was to get a good-quality batch so far from the Commonwealth city centers. The bottle in Ia’s hands was even more special. It had been stolen from Professor Jolinsky’s secret stash.
Knives turned the corner, passing a stack of spare wing parts, when he caught sight of a rusted metal door. It stood apart from the newer silver panels that had built the walls of Aphelion. He crossed over and pulled it open for Ia. “After you.”
She narrowed her eyes as she tried to look through the tunnel that lay beyond, and then glanced back over at Knives. “This night is only going to get more interesting, isn’t it?”
“Hurry up,” he said.
She clicked her tongue and went through. He followed behind her and watched the outline of her narrow shoulders disappear into the shadows. The air inside was frigid and dry.
Rocks skittered across the ground underneath their feet. The tunnel was drilled through the rock of the mountain, and metal beams supported the whole length from caving in. Ia’s footsteps were steady and wide at first, but then she slowed to smaller steps. He bumped into her back and grabbed her shoulders to steady her, feeling the heat of her body despite the surrounding cold.
“I can’t see anything,” she complained. “If I fall and break this bottle, the deal’s off.
He knew this path like the back of his hand; he was able to navigate it even in the pitch-dark.
“Just go forward,” he instructed, but he gently held her shoulders to guide her, and she allowed him. Through the thin nylon mesh of her flight suit, he felt her shiver. From the cold or from something else? Before he could think anymore of it, he saw a patch of green light streaming in from the opening ahead.
They stepped through the archway and into a narrow circular space. The walls were made of the same rusted metal as the door at the tunnel’s entrance, and they reached thirty meters high. The ceiling had a reinforced grated port with a window in the middle to let the light from outside spill through. From where they stood, they could see the green flashes of the geometric storm piercing through the atmosphere.
“Welcome to the Nest,” he said, sweeping his hand through the air. Out of all the places in Aphelion, the Nest reminded him of Marnie the most. This is where they came to drink, to make fun of the professors, and to complain about their father. No one else knew of this place except for the two of them. It was their secret.
And now someone else’s.
Ia stepped into the center and looked around, not realizing how precious this place was to him. He hoped it wasn’t a mistake bringing her here.
The walls, though rusty, were smooth so Knives knew there was no way for Ia to scale it, and even if she did get up there, there was a double lock system. One required a print signature, while the other needed a real physical key, as rusted as the metal inside this place. And he had no idea where that was—maybe lost and buried with a previous headmaster.
Ia’s gaze fixed on the port above, examining it, trying to figure it out.
“I know what you’re doing,” he pointed out. “We had a deal. No escaping.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“But you were planning how,” he said, pointing at her. “I can see it in your eyes.”
She batted at his finger. “Yeah, yeah. You know me so well.”
He sat down on a boulder hugging the wall opposite of the entrance. Ia walked around the space, then stopped at a sign by the entrance, a coat of grime and dust obscuring the text underneath. Her hand came up to pick at the edging of the sign, and he called out to her. “What are you doing?”
Her shoulders tensed, and then she turned around and held up the bottle of archnol. “Nothing. Just looking for something to open it with.”
He patted the boulder next to him. She crossed the space and took a seat. He grabbed the bottle and brushed his hand against the side of his boulder. His hands dipped into a familiar crevice denting the rock. He wedged the top of the bottle in the little nook just like Marnie had taught him and then twisted until he heard the lid pop open.
He handed the bottle back to her.
“Thanks,” Ia said, and she took a swig. Her face twisted as she swallowed, followed by a delighted sigh. He reached for the bottle, but she pulled it away. “No way. We had a deal. This bottle is all mine.”
“Fine,” he grunted, then pulled the orange from his pack and started peeling it.
Ia took another sip. “So what exactly is this place?” she asked.
“It’s the Origin Site,” he said, throwing the orange peel on the ground. “The exact place the builder borgs landed around five hundred years ago.”
“So did you boot the last inhabitants like you usually do?”
“There was no one else here except a giant herd of wultakus. They seem fine with coexisting.” Wultakus were the local wildlife, grazing animals who ate lichen that grew on the permafrost.
Knives took a slice of orange and popped it in his mouth. Beside him, Ia’s body shivered, and she hugged her arms close to her chest. Standing up, Knives took off his jacket and held it out for her.
She snatched it. As she threw it over her shoulders, Knives noticed her hands darting in and out of all the pockets.
“The heart tracker’s not in there,” he said. She was persistent; he would give her that.
“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she shrugged.
He checked his holowatch. It was 2355. Only five more minutes until midnight. Above them, the geometric storm cleared, rippling away to reveal the stars in the faraway sky. Ia balanced the bottle in between her legs and looked up, not examining anything like she usually did. Just looking.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
She smirked. “I’m thinking about the first time we met.”
He felt heat rise to his cheeks. “What about?”
Then she angled her head at him. “Do you really know someone who crossed the Harix Corridor in ten seconds?” Her tone grew serious. “It’s been bothering me ever since.”
He chuckled to himself and then nodded. “My sister, Marnie. She was grinning for weeks after it happened.”
“Of course,” Ia said. “When you find out you can fly that fast, you’re invincible.”
Invincible. He tiptoed around the word like it was a bomb. Is that how Marnie felt up until the end? Invincible? He couldn’t tell if it was a blessing or a curse.
“Is that how you feel when you fly?” Knives asked.
“It’s not something you feel;
it’s something you chase,” Ia explained. “And once you’re there, it lasts for one second. That’s it. And then you’re back at square one.”
“Then why do it?”
“Why not?” Her eyes flashed with a sense of danger, the same look he’d seen whenever Marnie returned from a drill. He felt it too whenever he was in his Kaiken, but ever since his sister’s death, he tried to push it away.
Knives came to the Nest to remember his sister, to dig up all the memories so he could bring her back to life, at least for one night. And here he was with a girl—a girl who was bold and smart, and who reminded him of Marnie in many, many ways.
“I think you should know by now that I have a big ego,” Ia said, standing up, raising the bottle to the air, swaying slightly from the effects of the archnol. “So I challenge your sister. A race through that same corridor!”
“I would have liked to see that, but it’s not possible,” he said, eyeing her to make sure she wouldn’t topple over.
“Sure it is. You can even lend me the Kaiken,” she pressed on.
“Well, if she were still alive, she would have schooled you. Kaiken or not.”
Ia lowered the bottle, taking a seat on the boulder right next to him. Her eyebrows rose, as if she had solved a great mystery. “So that’s why you dropped out of your campaign? Is she why you decided to stay at Aphelion?”
He nodded. And then he waited for the slew of advice that would surely come his way. You’re too talented to stay here, Bastian always said. Move on with your life, his father tried to tell him. Knowing how opinionated she was, he was sure Ia had something to say about it as well.
But instead, her hand fell softly on his shoulder. She sat with him in silence.
All this time, he had been quietly grieving, pleading that Marnie would return. He missed her. Everywhere he went, he missed her. And feeling Ia’s touch soothed him. It made him feel there was no shame in his grief.
Eyes stinging, he looked away.
His alarm rang, and he checked his watch. Midnight.
He stood up. Dropping to one knee, he pulled out the candle, placed it in the center of the room, and lit it. Slowly, the warm light of the candle’s amber flame reached high up the walls, like it was asking for the sky itself.