by Rich Larson
He felt a shudder go through the cocoon.
“Then I have caused another mutation,” Gloom said, sounding almost bitter. “I have corrupted these motes and pulled them away from their purpose. They should be aiding in the assault.”
Bo felt a stab of fear, wondering if Gloom might suddenly release them, might leave him adrift in vacuum again. “But they’re you now,” he said. “And you’re … you know. You’re a …”
“I am a saboteur,” Gloom said gravely. “Yes. You are right. Perhaps we should sabotage the machine as well.”
Wrapped in the blackness, Bo could hear nothing but his own lungs, his own heart, but he felt a change in pressure that made him think they were inside the ship. Heading toward the machine and toward Lia.
“Is there any way back?” Bo asked. “Is there any way me and Lia, me and the other host, can get back to our world?”
Gloom was silent for a long moment. “I do not know,” he said. “You call your key a parasite. Parasites alter their hosts, but hosts also alter their parasites.” He paused. “I can feel my other self. Dimly. Is he very different from me?”
“A day’s worth, I guess,” Bo said distractedly. “Not much.”
They bumped against something, then Gloom started to come apart, motes streaming in all directions. Bo felt his feet touch floor. Gloom reassembled to his human shape, hands at his sides. They were facing the machine, but it was still now. There were no arcs of light, no revolving parts or swelling bulbs.
“The key is inside that structure,” Gloom said, pointing to the same dark globe as he had an hour ago. “Shall I retrieve it?”
Bo inhaled. The air was thin, like he’d always imagined mountain air to be, not feeling like it filled his lungs all the way. He didn’t think he would have been able to breathe properly anyway. Not right now.
“I’ll come with you,” he said. “Just lead the way.”
“Very well,” Gloom said, with no guile, no guilt. He slipped over to the duct at the base of the machine and motioned inside. Bo reminded himself that this wasn’t the Gloom who’d left Lia behind, who’d made himself into a copy of her to fool him. It hadn’t even occurred to this Gloom yet.
Bo crawled inside the machine and followed Gloom’s lead, climbing then wriggling, sometimes pushing aside swatches of thick cable, once letting Gloom haul him up a sheer slippery surface. His heart was beating quicker and quicker and he had a strange floaty feeling all through his body. It didn’t feel like this could be real after he’d been so close so many times. Then suddenly he was inside the globe, stepping into the curve of it, and he saw her.
She wasn’t wired up, or full of tubes, or anything strange and horrible like he’d been dreading. Not even close. She had on the oversized fleece he’d handed to Wyatt so long ago. She was trying to walk, watching her feet, clinging with one hand to the circular black pad where she must have been laid out flat before.
Her head snapped up at his entrance. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. They were Lia’s eyes.
“Bo?” she asked, her voice faint and rasping. “Is that you for real?”
Bo was swaying on his feet. It didn’t feel like this could be real, after he’d imagined it so many times. “Hey,” he said. “Hey. Ina kwana?”
Lia frowned. “What?”
“You know,” Bo said, his heart pounding, thinking she had to remember or she wasn’t Lia at all, it was another trick, another copy. “How Mom used to say to us in the mornings. Ina kwana.”
“Oh.” Lia’s mouth twitched toward a smile. “Yeah. Lahiya lau.”
Then Bo was flinging his arms around her and she was hugging back, harder than she had any right to be. Bo was crying and laughing at the same time and he didn’t let her go until she wormed her finger under his rib and jabbed him where she’d left a bruise once. He yanked back.
“Hey!”
“You were crushing me.” Lia wiped the tracks of tears down her cheeks. She shook her head. “I have no idea what’s going on, Bo,” she said. “My legs are jello. My head is like, whoa. They drugged me, I think.” She plucked at the fabric of her fleece. “And left me this big-ass sweater, for some reason?”
Bo saw the Parasite undulating underneath and he remembered what came next. “I can tell you the whole story later,” he said. “We have to use our Parasites right now. To get back to Earth. Do you got anything left?”
In answer, he felt a crackling surge of static from her abdomen. She wasn’t looking at him, though. She was peering over his shoulder. “Who’s that?” she demanded.
“He’s a friend,” Bo said, as Gloom slunk closer. He turned his head. “Do we do it at the same time, then?” he asked. “The vanish?”
“Yes,” Gloom said, then he reached out with one long finger. His nail turned into a single black mote and dropped down onto Bo’s shoulder. “Do you know about quantum entanglement, Bo?” he asked. “I can feel my other self. Motes are always drawn to their own. It might help you through the door.”
The mote crawled down Bo’s chest, onto his stomach, heating up against his wriggling Parasite. “What’ll happen to you?” he asked.
“I have infected additional motes,” Gloom said heavily. “I will be destroyed.”
“Then you have to come with us,” Bo said, shooting a look at Lia. “You can meet the other you.”
“I will,” Gloom said, pointing to the single mote. “If you successfully pass back through the door, of course.” He paused, looking morose. “My other self succeeded in his mission, did he not?”
“Yeah,” Bo said. “He was great. You were great.”
Gloom was silent for a moment. “Good,” he finally said. “Goodbye, children.” He turned back into a mass of swirling motes and slid away before Bo could respond. He looked down at the single mote resting on his stomach. It was starting to spin.
“Have you vanished anything before?” Bo asked.
“A few times,” Lia said. “Before they took me out of the warehouse. Never a person.” She was sitting on the edge of the black pad now, holding her head. “Did that man really just dissolve? Was that real?”
“You’ll get to meet him again,” Bo said. “Maybe. Just focus on me. I’m going to focus on you. When the static is big, really big, we’re going to let it go. Then …” He shrugged. “Think about home, I guess.”
And if it didn’t work, what then? Would they stay right where they were? Would they be spat out into space again? Would they end up stuck inside the door, drifting forever with everything else that Bo had vanished? A small part of him wanted to just wait here, just for a few minutes longer, just in case whatever they did next killed them.
“Same time, right?” Lia asked. “Count down from three?” Her face was already screwed up in concentration. The static was building between them, swelling. She reached out and grabbed his hand; he grabbed her other. His own Parasite was crackling now. His hairs were standing up.
“And go on the zero?” Bo asked.
“On the zero,” Lia agreed. “But we don’t say the zero.”
Bo inhaled. Exhaled. His sister’s hands were warm and dry against his, nothing like the cold clammy skin Gloom had made for himself. The mote was spinning between them now, suspended in the field of static. Whatever happened, wherever they ended up, they would be there together. That counted for something.
“Three,” he said.
Violet was sitting on the jetty with Gloom standing beside her, hands at his sides, staring straight ahead in his unnerving way.
“You are a deviation,” he said in a low voice.
Violet gave him a distracted glance. “What?”
Most of the other kids had bled away, with Wyatt leading them. Violet figured that was how he wanted the rest of the world to find him. Wyatt the savior, and his flock of Lost Boys. But Jon was still there, and so was Alberto, and Gilly, hugging herself against the chill. They had told Violet about Saif, and about the little note he had scrawled for her and left on her bed in the theater,
the one in Arabic that nobody could read.
Up above them, dawn was streaking the sky with filaments of orange. But thinking about Saif, and about Bo, she couldn’t enjoy it.
“You are a deviation,” Gloom repeated. “You are not aligned with the animal binary of your people.”
“Yeah,” Violet said dryly. “I’m trying to get that fixed.”
She didn’t know where to watch. Didn’t know if Bo and his sister would reappear in the boat, or out in the harbor, or somewhere else entirely. Or if they would reappear at all. But she didn’t want to just leave, not yet.
“I am a deviation as well,” Gloom said. “I was cut away from the whole. I cannot create new motes to replace the ones I lose. Sometimes it is very lonely.”
Violet’s jaw clenched. She thought about her parents. Gilly had joined them late, bringing news, like the fact that some of the wasters were waking up. Maybe her parents were among them, and Violet knew she would have to go and check. Go and see them one last time before she left. But if they were awake, she would do it from a distance. She wasn’t going to let anything stop her from starting over.
“Yeah,” she said. “It is sometimes.”
“I would like to be friends,” Gloom said. “Whether Bo returns or not. I prefer you to the strategist. I find him off-putting.”
“Said the pot,” Violet muttered. She didn’t want to think about Wyatt. She didn’t want to think about Bo not coming back. She didn’t want to think at all.
“We are friends, then?” Gloom pressed.
She looked over at him again. His face was twisted up in one of his exaggerated frowns. Gloom needed to get out of the city too. It didn’t sound like he had a home to go back to, and if people found out about him, he would end up locked away in Area 51 or some such shit. Besides, he would be useful to have along for whatever she did next. Maybe the bowler hat would grow on her eventually.
“Sure,” she said. “Friends.”
Gloom’s gaunt face lit up in a smile, then turned suddenly serious. “I feel something,” he said.
“Don’t start crying,” Violet warned.
Gloom turned his face up toward the sky. A ripple ran through his motes. Violet followed his gaze. The sun was rising a fiery orange, like smelted glass, shooting color through a blue-purple sky. She realized she hadn’t seen a sunrise for months. But Gloom wasn’t looking at the sun. Violet squinted. Up among the clouds, a tiny speck was falling toward Earth.
“You can fly, right?” she demanded.
Gloom’s arms dissolved into thick black tendrils, swirled, re-formed into the giant moth wings Violet remembered from aboard the ship. He shot a worried glance at the sun. “The sunlight is not strong yet,” he said. “Do you know about photovores, Violet?”
The other Lost Boys had caught sight of the speck; they were scrambling to their feet, Alberto with a yelp of surprise.
“Try, or I won’t be your friend,” Violet said hoarsely. She didn’t take her eyes off the falling thing, or was it two things joined together? Her Parasite was starting to ripple. Gloom beat his wings once, twice, sending her hair whipping across her face.
By the time she’d raked it away from her eyes, he was airborne.
The door collapsed behind them and Bo and Lia were in free fall. His scream was ripped away but he could feel it in his chest; he tightened his grip on Lia’s hands reflexively. The wind circled them, buffeted them. They were upside down; Bo saw a flash of his sister’s open mouth, her eyes wide and terrified. They flipped again, falling on their stomachs, the ground hurtling up at them.
Through the chemical rush in his brain Bo recognized the downtown, maybe even the roof of the theater. They had made it back, but it didn’t mean anything because they were plunging toward a sea of concrete and—
A dark shape swooped up underneath them. They bounced, tumbled, sank into something that was cool and slithering. Bo heard a gleeful warbling noise in his ears. He hauled his head up. Lia was across from him on Gloom’s other wing, looking as shaken as Bo felt. The motes were clinging them in place.
Bo gave a yell that was triumph and elation and adrenaline all mixed. His hand was still locked tight to Lia’s, and she looked at him now, with a grin growing across her face. She shouted something that might have been Your friend? but Bo couldn’t quite hear it over the roaring in his ears. Gloom banked, then climbed higher.
The sky was clear. The ship, the ship that had loomed over his head for so many months, was gone forever. Pale purple clouds were rolling back in the far distance, and the sun was rising, hot and bright and clean. Gloom’s motes were dancing with it underneath him. He could feel the sunshine on his face, bathing his skin.
He looked down over Gloom’s shoulder and saw the ruined city in miniature, but with the sun lighting it, glimmering off all the smashed glass and water in the harbor, it was beautiful. The walls of fog that had kept them sealed off were gone, not even a wisp of them left. Bo could see a mass of tents set up outside the city, a whole camp of the people who he realized must have been watching, waiting, hoping for all those months. He could see a helicopter in the distance, humming across the harbor.
“The ship’s gone,” Lia shouted in his ear.
“You did that,” Bo shouted back. “Sort of.”
Lia raised her eyebrows, but she was still grinning. “You’re welcome.”
Gloom circled lower, and Bo felt the mote that had been clinging to his stomach melt away. A shudder went through the others. “Ah,” he said. “You retrieved one of my motes. That was very thoughtful, Bo.”
“What’ll you do now?” Bo asked. “Now that your mission’s over.”
“Stay,” Gloom said simply.
Bo was hit by a memory of the mote swarms tearing apart their enemy’s ships, by the image Gloom had painted in his head of them stretching through space, wrapping around stars and draining them dark. Through all his joy, he felt a tremor of fear.
“Your people,” he said. “Are they going to come here? Are they going to eat our sun?”
“Perhaps eventually,” Gloom said. “Perhaps in a thousand years. Ten thousand. There are many suns.” He paused. “But for now, things are well. Aren’t they?”
Gloom swooped lower yet again, and now Bo could see they were heading toward a jetty. He saw Violet standing down there, and the other Lost Boys too, or at least some of them. He didn’t see Wyatt’s lanky frame, and that was a relief in itself.
“Who’re they?” Lia asked, when they started to wave.
“You’ll like them,” Bo said. “They helped save the world.”
A moment later they skidded into a landing on the wet wood. Bo and Lia got to their feet while Gloom re-formed, straightening the brim of his hat. Jon reached them first, tears rolling down his face how they did in the night, and pulled Bo into a fierce hug. Then Alberto and Gilly crowded in, half sobbing, half laughing—Bo tried to do the introductions even though he was crying too.
Violet was last, hanging back a bit. There was a smile playing on her lips, but it was small, almost sad. Bo reached forward and grabbed her hand.
“Violet, this is Lia,” he said. “Lia, this is Violet.” He gave her a bleary grin through his tears. “She’s my other sister.”
Lia looked her up and down for a moment, then slowly smiled. “I guess that makes us related, huh?”
Violet seemed surprised for a second, then she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and gave a shaky laugh. “Guess so. Yeah.”
Bo hugged her hard as Jon and Alberto and Gilly crowded around again, everyone giddy from relief and exhaustion. He figured Gloom was right. For now, with Lia safe, with his family all around him, things were well.
For now, the sun was shining. Bo wasn’t going to waste it.
Acknowledgments
The whole team at Orbit Books, without whom Annex wouldn’t be the book it is today.
My sister, Heather Larson, who read each new scene as fast as I could write it and gave me feedback from start
to finish.
Fellow writers Anthony Bell, Michael Hernshaw, Christopher Ruz, and Jeff Hemenway, who critiqued the shit out of the complete first draft.
The late Kit Reed, who was a mentor to me in my writing and introduced me to a terrific agent.
John Silbersack, the aforementioned agent, who sold Annex to the publisher with the help of his excellent assistant, Caitlin Meuser.
Samantha Riedel, whose insights were essential.
Cody Biberdorf, who called dibs on an acknowledgment way back in our soccer days.
My mom, who has listened to me brainstorm out loud for hours on end and is still my biggest fan.
All the other friends and family members who have either read my work, inspired it, or done both throughout the years. Thank you for getting me here, and please stick around for whatever comes next.
extras
meet the author
Photo Credit: Micaela Cockburn
RICH LARSON was born in Galmi, Niger, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in the south of Spain, and now lives in Ottawa, Canada. Since he began writing in 2011, he’s sold over a hundred stories, the majority of them speculative fiction published in magazines such as Analog, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Lightspeed, and Tor.com.
His work also appears in numerous best-of-the-year anthologies and has been translated into Chinese, Vietnamese, Polish, Czech, and Italian. Tomorrow Factory, his debut collection, was released by Talos Press in October 2018. Besides writing, he enjoys traveling, learning languages, playing soccer, watching basketball, shooting pool, and dancing salsa and kizomba.
Find out more at richwlarson.tumblr.com and support his work via patreon.com/richlarson.
author interview
You’ve written short fiction for most of your career. What was it like transitioning to writing a full-length novel? Do you think your relationship with writing changes when writing short fiction versus a full-length novel?
Short stories provide that tight dopamine loop we all love so much: a little hit when you finish writing them, a bigger hit when you sell them, and successive hits when you get good reviews or reprint requests. Gratification comes fast and frequent, and the relative time commitment is small.