by TS Ward
I glanced over my shoulder, to the plume of smoke that rose from a fire at the camp. “I don’t have much time, I—I told them I was… going to try to stop the Lumen from following us.”
He pressed a hand to the sand next to him. “It’s pretty hot out here. Don’t you think?”
I stood in the cold shadow of the earth where the temperature dropped quickly but the air around my skin suddenly burned again, got warmer with each second that I remained standing there.
He always won like this, but he always forgot that the heat he created around him caused friction in the atoms of the air, and friction bore a shock. I only moved closer when he flinched.
“What happened on the plane?” He asked, and his hand grabbed mine, tugged me down into the sand beside him.
He didn’t let go. His palm pressed to mine and his fingers worked their way between mine. He squeezed the small bones in my hand tight under his.
“You don’t already know? Didn’t Pilot know what would happen?” I grumbled, but my voice wasn’t as casual as I tried to make it. My words were strained, words that got caught behind the lump in my throat.
James let go of my hand and pressed his to my back instead, and the temperature of the air around us dropped drastically. The beads of sweat on my skin cooled as he leaned close. “The soldiers. They knew.”
“Did my father tell them?” I asked. “They seemed just as startled as me.”
He shrugged and slipped his hand to my waist and I tensed at the touch. “You’ve found the fugitives. Should I call for back up, pull you out before they hurt you?”
My heart beat hard against my ribs. I was certain that he felt it through my back, through the veins and the creaking bones of a liar. Was it really lying? “If these people wanted to hurt me, I think they would have done it already. The soldiers are loyal. The others—you know who they are. Why the hell would they do anything against me? They seem pretty intent on being friends.”
“The soldiers are loyal? That one-eyed ginger is a felon. He’s a criminal. You know this is his punishment, right? Wearing the uniform, fighting his own kind. I’ve seen him curse the Beckett name, spit at the mention of your father, and if you heard the things some of the boys in our unit said about you—you want to tell me he’s loyal?” He shook his head and cursed under his breath. “You’re lucky I’m around to protect you from those animals.”
“He’s loyal to his nephew, at least,” I said, and looked to him and that smouldering ash of rage in the gray of his eyes.
He scoffed a laugh. “So you’re putting all your faith into him, then? That good for nothing farm boy? I should have been on that plane with you. I’d put him in his place.”
I narrowed my eyes. “No. I’m just working with what I have.”
He looked away, worked his jaw as he tried to come up with some response.
I twisted to face him fully. “What is this really about?”
The sky behind us was smothered in vibrant pinks and oranges that bled into the visible universe. It painted his hair and his shoulders with a similar light. He was dark, and the light only glanced off the edges.
His voice was dull. “The rebellion is being led by a man who was the first Sceptre in this generation of the program. Moon, though he goes by Rabbit, or Moon Rabbit. They operate out of a dead city. This place they call Warren.”
“He was Arden’s father,” I murmured.
He cast me a warning look. “Don’t go soft for him just because of that weak little Pluto girl. He won’t return the favour. It’ll just make you look stupid.”
“Quickly, James,” I told him. Irritation pricked at my skin.
“Intel said they planned to launch an attack on the Embassy, because some asshole found out information about a weapon, about you. They thought the Genesis was some kind of gun or bomb. The soldiers were ordered to transport you to Redbird, but clearly, they chose the wrong ones. The rebels had them take you and sent another group to destroy the Embassy, probably as a distraction from you, and right now that is what is happening. Not that any of them are going to make it out alive.”
“You’re just handing me over to them anyway. You’re letting people die and they’re still getting what they want, which seems like the most counter intuitive option you could have gone for. What does he want, my father? What does he think will happen here?” Did he expect me to lose control and accidentally kill them all, or was I just an excuse for our army to attack a dormant rebellion? They kidnapped the Duchess, we had to!
James shrugged. “I don’t know. You think he told me what his master plan is?”
“Why are you following us like this? Didn’t he tell you that?” I frowned. It didn’t seem like either of them to keep him in the dark.
“All I know is that you’re going to walk into Warren, and you’re going to walk out, and I’m going to swoop in and grab the target and leave without any issues.” He reached up and his too-warm hand caressed my cheek. I shuddered against it, but he mistook it for a shiver and made the air grow warmer.
“The target? You mean… the kid.”
His smile turned his eyes to fire. “You’ll have to talk to dear old dad yourself, Soren. But still, the more information you can gather from these dumbasses the better. Get to know them. Not too much. If that Talon touches you, I’ll break his hands.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I told him. “Just keep this Lumen out of sight.”
He reached to his side and pulled up a piece of rusted pipe. “I know, love.”
I grabbed it from him, and I left him sitting there in the sand as a smile curled his lips, as his eyes followed me. For a moment, I thought about taking the pipe to the back of his head and pulling that ring off his finger just so I could tell the robot to go self implode somewhere. I didn’t. I paused, looked back at him, but then I kept climbing up to the top of the dune.
The heat kept rising.
The robot still sat in the sand and as I swung the pipe toward the mirror polish of its hull, I caught the shine of a rifle scope out of the corner of my eye.
Something switched on inside the Lumen.
The soft sounds emanated as its mechanisms started to move. I dropped the pipe in the sand before it thought I was a threat and tried to murder me. Even though this one wasn’t equipped with weapons I was certain that its metal hands were enough to crush my throat. I was certain that a recognized threat would override my Sceptre title and Duchess.
“Ganymede,” his generated voice said pleasantly as it turned those electric Beckett blues to me. “Would you like to relay information regarding the current mission’s status to your superior officer, Mercury?”
I pressed a hand to my face. “Tell him to fuck off.”
Prometheus studied the message for a moment before it settled back into standby.
I turned my back on Mercury’s chuckle to face the glint of that rifle scope that peeked over the top of the next highest dune, and walked toward it like the guiding light of Polaris.
I felt like I walked on glass.
10
Stars were written across the sky in vast numbers I never imagined surrounding me in the dark room. I knew what the visible universe looked like, but there was something different seeing it for real and not on a screen, not in my mind. A lullaby for the eyes. That’s what it was. A sight so grand and peaceful that the entire world felt right even though it wasn’t.
I must have fallen asleep because I was wrapped in a desert-stained military coat that wasn’t there before. I must have closed my eyes for a second and opened them into an alternate reality where there was no such thing as Sceptre genetics and no such thing as the Empire or the rebellion against it and I was happy with this curly haired little boy and the people who thought I might still call them family.
The Sailer rested in the side of a sand dune, the sail tied around the mast with the rope in a careful knot.
It was tilted slightly, just enough that my spot in the narrow nose of the ship was more like a hamm
ock. The moon made the deck shine, smooth from the presumable years of sand running over its wooden boards, from the bottoms of boots that scuffed against it, from the cargo dragged to the hole just in front of the wheel where the trap door was propped open.
No one else was on board. The air was chilled, but somewhere off to the side warmth emanated from flickering orange light, a soft crackle under-toned by murmured chatter.
I looked at the name embroidered into the patch on the left side of the jacket. J Talon. He was only one rank below James, and I understood a little better why he was so aggressive toward the Talon soldier.
He felt threatened, and not just because he thought he might try something.
There were tears in the jacket, hastily stitched, and places where the dark fabric was just a little off, stains that could have been blood, and I had to wonder about the other side of that rifle.
How many bullets and how many targets were necessary to fall into my father’s favour?
Noise came from the side of the boat. The soldier’s head popped up over the railing, his arms hooked around it.
“Hey,” he said, “You’re awake.”
I nodded slowly and held his jacket out to him. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed.
He pulled himself up and climbed over the railing onto the boat, strolled across the deck, and took it back. As he slipped his arms through the sleeves and tugged it up onto his shoulders, he cast me a sideways glance. He started to turn, but stopped as he second guessed himself.
“Did you… do you mean the jacket, or just everything in general?”
“Both,” I told him.
The moon highlighted the edges of him while he stood there, arms held awkwardly at his sides as he stared off into the distance above my head and beyond the Sailer. He bit the inside of his cheek. Probably trying to come up with something to say that he thought would make everything better, but my head would still be screaming this is wrong, everything is wrong, put me back in the dark room—but he nodded.
He nodded, and he looked at me and whispered, “I know. I know. Can’t see why you would. Can’t see why anyone would, I mean you can never ask for a damn thing but it’s always one thing after another, always someone else asking for something or wanting something from you.”
My mind went blank. Guilt bit at my tongue and I choked back words, because I saw it in him the things that I felt.
It was plain in his face that was tired, but he never slept. He was too busy being the vigilant soldier, too busy hunting down a weapon for Moon Rabbit, too busy finding Roam’s daughter, too busy sailing a land boat for Pucks, too busy keeping his uncle in line, too busy running missions for my father. Too busy rebelling against the same goddamn Empire he was sworn to.
I didn’t know what to say except a soft, “Sorry.”
He smiled and offered a hand to help me up. “Never said I don’t like helping.”
“How selfless of you,” I muttered as I climbed to my feet on my own and left his hand hanging in the air. “Would you kidnap anyone, if someone said it would help?”
“That’s not what—that isn’t what’s going on here.”
He stepped away from me and paced the length of the Sailer. His fingers tore through his already messed up hair.
He shook his head as he let out a hissed breath, his words hushed. “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what I am anymore. I thought it was the right thing to do, to help a city of people like Warren, to get a girl back to her family.”
“Isn’t it? Returning people to their families?” I whispered.
I glanced over the side of the boat to the small campfire that glowed dull in the desert sand, orange on orange. Roam sat on the edge of a wooden crate, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and Percy curled up in her arms.
Jack laughed, and when I looked back at him he wasn’t smiling. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m glad you think that, but you also seem to think I would take you against your will.”
“Because you kind of did,” I said. “You’re against the Empire.”
“No. No, I—I told you, when they took you, that I would get you out. That I would bring you back, and that I would get you back to Percy, and all I did was keep that promise. If I knew you didn’t remember me, any of us, I would have asked. I would have asked first. But I didn’t know, so here we are. And I’m not against the Empire. I’m not a rebel. I’m not rogue. I’m on your side, and only your side.” He took a step closer and hushed his voice. “Now that you’re here, is it okay? Or do you really want to go back?”
I bit my tongue. That’s a difficult thing to answer. “It’s okay. But he’s in more danger for it, Jack.”
“I know. We’ll deal with that. I’m sorry.” He moved closer again. “Can you forgive me?”
I nodded and turned away to look back at the stars, the entirety of the black void spattered with the Milky Way and hundreds of constellations. It looked rich and sharp and cold and I wanted to drink it in as much as possible before the dawn came to hide it behind a veil of colour, before the fruit of the day started to grow and ripen like a peach.
“You didn’t say a word, after you spoke with that Lumen,” he said, an attempt to fill the silence left on this boat.
“I was angry,” I told him. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Why were you angry?” He asked.
His elbow brushed against mine as he closed his hands around the rail, looked to the sky for a moment, then turned his head to me for an answer.
I shrugged.
“I hate the Lumen,” I whispered, which was the truth.
But it was only half of the truth. The thing I was pissed about was James and the mission and me. There was more to this than getting me out of the Embassy, finding Rabbit, and the rebels and we both knew it when he said it.
Jack slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket and tilted his chin back to look straight up at the sky. His lips parted just a bit and I found myself watching the way the silver moonlight dripped over the planes and the edges of him and fell to shadows across his face and his neck.
He looked like he was made for the moon as he much as he was for the sun and the smile that pulled at the dimple in his cheek told me that he knew I was looking.
“What are you smiling about?” I growled as heat crept into my cheeks.
“You love the stars and you’re looking at me instead. What are you smiling about?” He said, and I had no idea how to respond.
I tried to frown, tried to tell him I’m not smiling, but then the hint of one fought my lips and won. I looked away and crossed my arms. “Stop that.”
“Alright,” he laughed.
He started to walk away, but I turned with him, and my hand shot out to catch his elbow. There was still something perched in my mind that I needed to say.
“Why did you tell me that? About not knowing what you are anymore? What do you get out of telling me something like that and… and why would you, why me?”
He shrugged and smiled. “I trust you, Sparky. That’s all.”
“But it’s—I feel…” I frowned and looked away. “I feel like I know you.”
“I think that’s a good thing, because you did. You do.”
11
“Soren?”
I hadn’t slept at all since I woke up on the Sailer. I hadn’t been tired enough yet.
“Soren!” Percy jumped around the side of the folding chair and grabbed my arm with a toothy grin that turned his cheeks round.
I couldn’t sleep, so I stole a chair from around the fire and sat it on top of the dune and watched the silver Lumen—Prometheus, I decided—until the sky tuned the pale colour of watered-down orange juice.
At some point in the dark, the Lumen stood up and disappeared behind the dune.
The kid picked up my arm and dropped it again. The smile slipped from his face until a frown replaced it. He reached out a hand and pressed a thumb to the space beneath my eye, soft as
a whisper. Soft as flower petals—yellow flower petals scattered across paving stones—he heaved out a sigh and dropped his shoulders with exaggerated flair.
“Did you sleep?” He asked, and pulled at his eyelids in a goofy expression.
The sun went down and the moon came up and then the moon hovered like a watchful eye and then the sun came back around and I did not sleep. It was day and it was night and it was day again. I did not sleep. I did not get tired.
“You have purple under your eyes,” he told me.
I was sure that it was a purple as rich as the smooth side of a plum.
“Ma gets purple under her eyes too,” he said, “She says it’s because she’s tired. When I don’t sleep, I don’t dream, so I always sleep because I get to dream about you but now that you’re here I haven’t dreamed about you. But I dreamed the scary man last night.”
The scary man. I didn’t want to take my eyes off the horizon, just in case, but I looked at him then. I expected to see the fear of a nightmare still sitting in those blue eyes. I didn’t see a hint of it. He just smiled.
“I dreamed that he sneaked into camp,” he whispered to me, making puppets out of his fingers to act it out for me. “Everyone was asleep, even Fitz, and he said he wouldn’t sleep, but everyone was asleep so the scary man came into our tent, all quiet. Ma was sleeping and didn’t wake up, but I woke up and I said go away! He said it’s okay, little bear, it’s just a dream, and he took my finger and poked it with a sharp thing and left again. And then I really woke up. It’s okay, Sorry, I was just dreaming.”
He called him little bear.
I pushed up from the chair, knocked it over behind me as I sank to the sand and grabbed him by the shoulders.
My hand searched for his as a sickness gripped my guts. “Show me. Show me where. Does it hurt? Does it sting?”
He folded his fingers down and left the index up, giggling because it’s just a dream. If it was a dream, why was there the tiniest spot of red in the center of his swirled fingerprint? If it was a dream, why did my heart race, why did my eyes frantically search every dune and every windblown bit of tent?