by Tessa Elwood
“M’lady?”
“Dad.” I sit back on my heels and brace my hands on the mattress’s edge. “Did you get Dad?”
“Yes, m’lady. Our visual communicator’s broken, so we channeled it to a flipcom.” A bony hand slips into my peripheral, lays a battered flipcom onto the bed. “I hope that’s all right.”
I snatch it up. “Yes, perfect, thank you.”
“Do you need anything else, m’lady?”
“No, thank you.” Go away.
Maybe the last wasn’t just in my head. Her footsteps speed across the carpet and the door clicks shut.
I press the com to my ear. “Dad?”
“You do not give my men orders under any circumstances,” says the speaker, spring-loaded and deadly soft. “But especially not in a state of emergency with the base under attack.”
Him. Wholly, absolutely. It’s all I can do not to cry. “Oh, Dad.”
“You restricted Casser’s ability to handle an emergency situation, and that is unacceptable.” Softer still and him.
I collapse into the bedside. “When will you be here? Wren won’t wake up.”
“I asked you a question, Asa.”
“I thought the specialist was here but she’s not, and nobody else knows how to fix her, and we don’t have enough fuel to go back planet-side and I thought she’d be safe here but she’s not and Dad I’m so sorry but you have to—”
“Asa!” explodes through the speakers. “You will never issue another thoughtless command I cannot easily repeal without undermining the authority of this House. Is that clear?”
Commands. Telling Casser not to retaliate. Ordering the pilot to fly Wren here. My fault.
Mine mine mine.
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“This doesn’t happen again.” Not quite an order, just almost.
“No, sir.”
“I have your word?”
“Yes, sir.”
Something pings on his end. A rustle of fabric, the click of buttons. He’s probably checking another communications screen.
“Good,” he says, and I don’t know if it’s for me or whoever else is there. “I’ll call again next week. If you need to reach me before then, I’ve given the outpost captain my direct line.”
I can almost feel him hanging up. “Dad, wait!”
“Yes?”
“When will you get us? When will you be here?”
“You can’t come home yet, Asa.”
I clutch the blanket for support. Which is stupid, because I’m already on the floor.
No, of course I can’t. He doesn’t need to take me, too.
“Wren,” I say. “Not me. When are you getting Wren?”
“No one leaves quarantine still contaminated.” Absolute, without recourse. “No one.”
“But there’s no equipment here or specialists and they can’t even scan her head to see what’s wrong and she hasn’t woken up, not once, and—”
“She’s fine, the medichip will keep her stabilized until Decontamination’s complete.”
He doesn’t know?
Right, because after removing an implanted, priceless biotech chip that’s supposed to heal anything up to and probably including death, the first thing Wren would do is tell Dad.
Especially after swearing to skin me if I ever opened my mouth.
I straighten. “No, Dad, Wren isn’t chipped.”
“What?”
“She took it out.”
“Took it out,” he repeats.
“When the base was running out of uleum. Really running out, Dad, not just low rations, and we didn’t have any food, either. All the nearby farms were Blighted and we had to ship food in from places it hadn’t reached yet. Except the only fuel we had was ecoflux, from the factories before you shut them down, and Wren thought if we could just get the old flightwings to run on the new energy, it’d solve everything.”
“Asa.”
“And she needed to take the medichip apart because, well, Wren could explain it, but it works by making the body think all the fake biotech cells are actual cell cells, because of some kind of signal they give off? She thought if she could just duplicate that—”
“Enough, Asa. Now is not the time. If you want to manipulate me, find a lie I cannot directly contradict,” he says with the special, controlled evisceration reserved for me alone.
“I’m not—” I try to sniff back the tears, but it just makes it worse. “Mom.”
“What?”
I’m not her.
Or maybe I am. I just killed Wren.
“Lying. I’m not lying.”
“That is not what you said.”
“Please. Dad.” I space the words, keep them even. “Wren isn’t chipped. There’s nobody here to help. I’ll stay here forever if it makes you happy, but you have to get Wren. It’s not her fault I brought her up here, Dad please.”
Silence.
“There’s too much at stake,” he says at last, “after Decontamination I will personally come pick you up. It’s not forever, you can survive a month.”
“Wren can’t.”
“Enough.”
“She’ll die.”
“Asa.”
“You have to—”
“No.” Final. Dad final.
“Then don’t come for us at all,” I say and disconnect.
I drop the com and scoot back along the carpet, away from the dull screen and mute speaker. The black hole sucking out Wren’s life and my soul.
I hung up on Dad.
No one hangs up on Dad.
“Wren?”
She doesn’t answer. The light festers over her gaunt cheeks. I run both of my hands through my hair.
Except I don’t have any.
I hold my breath until I’m light-headed and swaying, but I don’t cry.
I don’t.
“I’m here.” I move to the bed and slide my hand under hers. Our palms match, same size, same fingers—except hers always know what to do. “It’s okay, I swear it’s okay. I’ve got you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Wren? Wren, please. Wake up.”
LOSS
“ALL INNOVATIONS TAKE TIME.” DAD LEANS over the podium, his amplified voice bouncing off skytowers and the gathered crowd. Thousands. So many they’re almost a texture—packing the square, the streets of Malsa. Oval Park holds the capital’s heartbeat, the grassy eye amid a hurricane of towers, thoroughfares, and people.
So many people.
We stand on a round dais erected for the occasion, simple and high so we are visible from all directions. Dad and Emmie and me.
But not Wren.
It’s been six months and she hasn’t woken once.
“The best innovations take trial and error. Despite the setbacks of its initial manufacture, ecoflux is our best innovation.” Dad rechanneled the skytower ad-screens, and every last one reflects his face. “As terrifying as the Blight was, it has been contained and eliminated. Ecoflux itself was always safe. Now its manufacture will be as well.”
The screens switch from Dad to the rebuilt factories, surrounded by trees bursting with un-Blighted life. The factories’ rising gray cylinders are backed by blue sky and stamped with the ecoflux logo—a rectangular uleum ration token that dissipates into a bird’s wing. Flight and freedom and infinite resource. A new fuel that will never require rationing because we don’t have to extract it from a planet’s core.
Wren’s design.
Dad’s voice deepens, reverberates. “We have nothing to fear and everything to gain.”
The crowd shuffles uneasy feet.
It’s easy to gain everything when “everything” was lost. Urnath’s dead, the whole planet evacuated and abandoned. The Blighted areas on our other planets—ten total, infected by prequarantine travelers—are contained but forever unlivable. Choked, dusty landscapes where nothing grows.
We’ll never get them back.
Emmie bumps my shoulder. Daggers shoot from underneath her long lashes, her heels
high enough she doesn’t have to crane her neck to face me. Of the three of us, she’s the closest to Dad—short with his sharp angles and a heart-stopping smile. Wren took his undercurrents, his poise and motion. I only got his hands.
“Smile,” says Emmie. “This is not your deathbed.”
I straighten. Smile into upturned faces. Our dais afloat in a peopled sea.
Sunlight fractures off Dad’s signet ring as he waves to our left, at the one street lined with hoverbuses instead of people. The city’s new public transit system, neon and gleaming and powered by ecoflux.
“Starting today, production of all uleum fueled engines and power grids will discontinue to make way for the future. Our future. Free of blackouts and ration tokens, of monthly fuel allotments drawn from depleting reserves. Never again will you have to choose between heating your homes or powering your flightwings. Never again will we strip and gut a planet in our system for our uleum mines. We have lost Urnath, but how many planets have we intentionally wasted just to have another few decades of fuel?”
Four. Four unpopulated planets carefully stripped, mined, and rationed.
“Oh, well played, Dad,” Emmie says, long hair falling over her shoulder to brush silk against mine. “Nothing like a little guilt to grease the gears.”
His voice rises until the platform vibrates power. “Ecoflux is a stable, sustainable energy. This is the day history will talk about. This is the day we change our fate. And to honor that future, my youngest has requested a few words.”
Only if requested means ordered.
I bury my hands in my skirt.
Dad steps away from the podium, dragging a House-worth of stares to fixate on me—my hair. Or lack thereof. At least my scalp doesn’t show anymore. Mostly. My proof that I was there. Was evacuated, decontaminated, and processed like everyone else.
I am proof the House of Fane understands.
No one trusts the new energy, Dad had said. Make them.
Wren could. She’d look out with all Dad’s power and transform sunlight into stories—and then make them true. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, not from the crowd, not even from Dad.
But I did. Wren would be awake right now if I hadn’t. The medicenter specialist said as much. That each untreated day in Decontamination lessened her chances. Once we were home, Dad had Wren scanned for a medichip. Three times. And then he punched an empty wall.
“Sometime this year.” Emmie slips a hand behind my back and presses me forward. My palms find the podium’s sleek steel curves. Between them, the embedded prompt screen glows with everything I have to say. Dad’s words, his speech.
It’s short. All I have to do is read.
When Father told me about the new transit system, the text reads.
I can do this. I can.
“When Dad told—”
The screen flashes bright red and I freeze.
Father, blinks the text. Father.
Everyone’s watching. Our entire House.
“When Father said—”
The screen flashes.
“Told, when he told, when Father told me that—”
Red red red.
“That—about—”
“Asa,” mutters Dad, a three-letter oath.
“I’m not Wren,” I say under my breath, but the speaker doesn’t understand whispers. It throws mine everywhere.
Faces. Unrelenting silence and craning necks. Behind me, Emmie swears.
Dad has no expression at all.
Don’t cry. Absolutely do not cry.
“I’m not Wren.” I press both hands flat against the podium, cover the screen’s red punctuation. “And she would know what to say because she loved ecoflux. Helped Dad develop it. I mean, you remember, right? That big opening ceremony? How excited she was?” I scan the crowd for post shaved heads, the easiest Decontamination marker from far away. The colors blur, but there are two women in front of me, farther out, and an older man near the platform’s edge to my left. “Ecoflux is like—it’s like kinetic hope. The kind that lives outside your head. A touchable freedom. No more rations. We can go anywhere, power anything, which was what all this was for. It has to be worth it.” I point at the shiny new hoverbuses. “We make it worth it.”
I push away from the podium. Dad blocks the way to the stairs. I swing left, toward the man with the bone-tight cheeks, and crouch on the dais edge. “Help me down? I need to ride the bus.”
He reaches up without hesitation, and I’m on my feet on the ground before I can even push off to help. His forehead is a network of age and worry, his eyes an odd gray white that doesn’t match his skin.
Decontamination does that sometimes.
I tap the edge of my own eye. “Did your toenails fall off, too?”
His lips catch between a phrase or three, before breaking into a smile. “No, but my daughter’s did.”
He steps back and lets go, the crowd opening a little to give us room.
“Have hers grown back? Because Aston at the medicenter on South has this stuff that kind of works? Well, it hasn’t yet, but he promises—”
The hard thump of landing feet, and suddenly everyone in our tiny circle is five steps away, heads half-bowed.
Dad’s radiation scalds my neck.
The man backs up. “My Lord.”
Dad nods acknowledgment as his fingers dig into my back and march me forward. The crowd parts in waves.
I look over my shoulder. “Aston on South. Tell him I sent you.”
Dad’s arm tightens, but he nods to the man in confirmation. Wren or not, I’m a Daughter of Fane.
And everyone is watching.
WREN’S SCALP IS A PALE MASS OF STARBURSTS INSTEAD of angry rifts. They give her baby face a new dimension, a tough don’t-mess-with-me quality at odds with her round nose and mouth. We sit propped against the pillows like always, while her bedside monitor beeps through a mountainscape of multicolored lines. Birds jostle their bright window feeder with a tangle of chirps and wing beats. Sunlight catches the tips of their wings and the myriad skytowers beyond—all white and brown today. House Colors in celebration of the transit system. Tomorrow they’ll reprogram the colorbot siding and return the towers to the normal blue or green or gray.
“Think I could stay with you tonight? Or would Dad just send Emmie?”
The monitor beep beep beeps.
Wren’s equivalent for, he’d send Emmie. Or maybe she’s wondering why I’m reading old House archives on my digislate instead of the story I promised we’d finish together.
“I know.” I balance the slate on my knees. “But this one’s on medichips.”
If her old chip could have saved her, then a new one should wake her up.
Beep beep beep.
Medichips are a Westlet technology, and so far no one in our House has duplicated it. Dad got Wren’s chip forever ago, from a potential House alliance that fell through. I’d fly to Westlet and ask for another, but Dad closed our borders so we can’t communicate with other Houses in the Triplicate. Not Westlet or Galton. I’ve scanned Wren’s palm to access the higher-level military networks, but out-of-House information just doesn’t exist anymore. Dad disabled the communication satellites with the lockdown.
Wren says it used to be anybody who could access the House Triplicate newsfeeds. That people could log onto their digislates and read the gossip in Westlet. She says Mom used to gather her and me and Emmie on the big couch in our living room to watch feedshows from Galton.
I don’t remember, wasn’t old enough. Mom disappeared with the last of our uleum reserves and never looked back. If not for ecoflux, our whole House would have gone dark. No energy, no heat, no fuel.
Beepbeepbeep beep.
I refocus on my digislate. Plain text, no audio, and no new information on how to build a medichip. A muggy breeze rustles the curtains as Wren’s monitor maintains a rhythm. I lay a palm to her chest. It rises and falls, normal and steady like always.
That’s okay then.
I tap out of the database and load our latest book. “Let’s see, where were we . . . I don’t know what made me look up, but when the battle smoke cleared, there he stood, the Death Ghost himself—”
Beepbeepbeep beep beepbeepbeep beep.
“Wren?” I check the pulse in her neck. Regular, steady. Her color is good and the monitor’s blue brainwave line weaves, rises, and—
Spikes into the “normal” zone.
Beep beepbeepbeep beep.
Another blue mountain crests the control line. Drifts across the screen.
The room shrinks or the monitor grows until there’s only that towering spike amid a valley of hills. It reaches the screen’s edge and disappears.
“Wren?” I’m on my knees, leaning close, one hand on her heart. “Wren, can you hear me?”
Her lashes don’t flutter, but the mountain was there. More than one. I press the CALL button and yell for the floor medic. Aston barrels in, long white coat flapping.
“It spiked!” I point to the monitor. “The line, the blue one, it spiked.”
I SLAP MY PALM TO THE GLOWING SCANNER AND THE elevator kicks on automatically. Up forty-two floors to the very top of Axis Tower. Home. I bounce on my heels. The tower is made of offices and official House employees, but as soon as security registers me or my family, it shoots straight up to our suite.
If only it would move faster.
I tap my digislate on for the hundredth time. Aston loaded the monitor’s readout with its beautiful, spiking mountains.
Wren is waking up.
Not yet, but she could be. She’s improving. Dreaming a possibility she didn’t even dare before, because it never spiked.
When the elevator reaches our suite, I sprint toward the living room and kick off my shoes in the mini entrance hall.
“Emmie! Dad!”
Sunset sings through the windowed wall, showcasing the city in starbursts and our living room in dust mites. I bound over Emmie’s plushy armchair and through the arch into the study.
“No.” Emmie’s voice. Emmie’s shout. “No.”
I skid. Ahead lies the study, and the heavy white door to Dad’s office.