by Amie Kaufman
“Tyler?” it calls with her voice again.
I say nothing. Biting my lip.
“Ty?” it calls again.
“What do you want?” I finally shout.
“I want you to stay.”
I risk a glance out, see it standing in the corridor alone. It’s still clad neck to toe in GIA charcoal gray. But it’s taken off the mirrormask now, and its face, its nose, its lips—they’re all hers. All except the eyes, glowing soft and poisonous.
“Stay with us, Tyler,” the thing wearing Cat’s body replies. “Please.”
“You’re not Cat!” I shout. “Don’t pretend to be!”
“But I am,” it calls. “Don’t you understand? I’m more than I used to be, but I’m still in here! I’m still me!”
“You’re nothing like her! You’re orchestrating a war that billions of people could die in, and for what? Just so you can infect the rest of the galaxy?”
“I’m trying to save you, Tyler,” it pleads. “Don’t you get it?” I hear a crack in its voice. It sounds like it’s close to crying. And I risk another glance from behind cover and see it standing there, hands balled by its side, and my stomach twists up like a clenched fist as I see … it is crying. Tears shining in the glow of those flower-shaped pupils. The Kusanagi shakes beneath me, but it’s not the motion of the ship that almost brings me to my knees. It’s what this thing says next that guts me.
“I love you, Tyler.”
I close my eyes. I feel each of those words like bullets in my chest. A part of me knew how she felt about me. A part of me always knew it. But Cat never said those words aloud. Not even after the night we spent together. And to hear them now …
“I love you,” it says. “So the Ra’haam loves you, too.”
Cold dread washes over me. My worst fears confirmed.
“I knew it,” I breathe. “That’s where you’re taking us. That’s why we’re still Folding. You … you want to …”
“We want you in here with us,” it says, tears spilling down its cheeks as it takes one step forward. “We want you to stay.”
I look out into the corridor again. And I can see her there. The girl who always backed me when I needed her. The girl who sat beside me in that tattoo parlor on shore leave and laughed as she poured me another shot in the bar afterward, who sighed my name as she dragged my shirt up over my head and sank with me down onto the bed. I can see her.
I can see her.
“Cat?” I whisper.
“Yes,” she breathes.
“You can … hear me?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “It’s me, Ty. It’s me.”
I thought she was gone. I thought I’d never have another chance to speak to her. To tell her everything I should have told her when she was alive. I know nobody gets a second chance like this. I know I should tell her how I felt about her, how I’d do things differently if I could, how I always loved her and always will. I know she’d want to hear it. I know she’d want to know. And my stomach is a knot and my pulse is hammering and I can’t deny what my heart is telling me. She is in there. Looking out at me with those strange new eyes.
But in the end, that just makes it worse.
“I’m sorry I failed you, Cat.”
Because she is in there.
“All I can do is promise not to fail you again.”
But she’s not in there alone.
And I raise the disruptor rifle in my arms. And I see her face twist, and I get a sense of something vast, something ancient, something awful behind the glow of her eyes. And I pull the trigger, spending the last of the rifle’s power, and the shot strikes the thing that’s Cat and the thing that isn’t, sending it sailing back in a spray of gray blood. And then I’m up and moving, running across the corridor and diving through the escape pod hatch. Slamming it shut on its screams.
“Tyler!”
I’m sorry.
“TYLER, DON’T GO!”
I’m so sorry.
And I slap on my safety harness.
And I hit the Eject button.
And I blast out into the burning Fold.
40
SCARLETT
Zila flies like a demon, but she’s no Cat Brannock.
Everything around us is chaos. Ships of every shape and size, little one-man fighters all the way up to the biggest that TerraFleet and Betraskan battle command can throw. The whole solar system seems on fire. But crazy as it sounds, I find myself thinking of my bestie. My roomie. My girl. If Cat were behind the stick of this junker, she could’ve made it dance. There’s not a pilot alive who could touch her.
But now she’s gone.
Tyler too. And Kal. And Auri.
Fin, Zila, and me are the last ones together.
Three of seven.
The engines are howling, pushed into the redline as we tear across the black toward the Weapon. Zila had to swing out wide, finally throwing off the two TDF fighters on our tail, weaving through a burning storm of bullets and missiles and I don’t know what else. Her fingers blurred as she calculated our trajectory, aiming us toward one of the thinner support pillars holding those massive crystal lenses in place. We’re flying right into its face now. One last doomed charge to save our world.
And maybe the entire galaxy.
“Forty-five seconds to impact,” Zila reports.
Honestly, I have no idea if this has any chance of working. I have no idea if we’re doing the right thing. But the medallion around my neck glints as I look down at it, red alert lights playing on the diamond surface as the alarms around me scream.
Go with Plan B.
I was never a believer. Never bought into the idea of the Maker, or the United Faith. Ty and I used to fight about it all the time—how silly it seemed to me, how obvious it seemed to him. But in the end, he believed hard enough for the both of us. And I don’t know exactly how we’re going to pull this off, but Aurora Command told us we were on the right path.
Know that we believe in you. And you must believe in each other. We the Legion. We the light. Burning bright against the night.
And as we charge toward our deaths, I find myself looking around at the last few members of Aurora Legion Squad 312. And I realize it’s like Tyler says.
Sometimes you just gotta have faith.
“Thirty seconds,” Zila says.
I swallow hard. Heart thumping in my chest.
“You okay?” Finian asks softly.
I look at him beside me, the Weapon looming larger in front of us every second. I can tell he’s scared. I know what he wants to hear. That this is the right thing to do. That I’m sure. That even though I’m only eighteen years old and I still had my whole life ahead of me, it’s okay. Because this is for something bigger than we are. This is for something greater.
But that’s bullshit.
I’m scared to death.
“No,” I tell him.
I reach out and take his hand.
“But I’m glad you’re with me, Fin.”
And then it hits us. A missile. A pulse blast. I’ve got no idea. But we’re rocked hard, the impact like a fully loaded freighter, smashing me back into my chair and forward into my harness. Stars burst in my eyes. The displays in front of me spew sparks and die, alarms roaring, fire suppressors firing, filling the cockpit with chemical fog. I can taste blood in my mouth, my head is ringing, my—
“Scar, are you okay?” Fin shouts, unbuckling his harness.
“I’m … o-okay … ,” I manage.
He kneels at my side, checks me over. “Zila?”
Our pilot straightens behind her flickering, spitting control panels, dragging a thick curtain of black curls out of her face. For the first time, I realize she’s wearing the earrings that were waiting for her in that Dominion Repository vault. The little hawk charms someone left for her, knowing she’s never without her golden hoops.
I wonder if there’s any chance we’re going to live to find out who it was.
“I am alive,”
she declares.
“What h-hit us?” I demand.
“A stray railgun round, I believe.” She shakes her head, a stream of blood dripping from the split in her brow as she stabs at her controls. “Perhaps a fast-moving chunk of debris.”
“Damage report?” I cough, looking around the smoking cockpit.
“Engaging secondary guidance systems and auxiliary power. Control should be back online momentarily.” Her fingers dance on her consoles. “But the power coil is critically damaged. Engines are offline.”
The Weapon pulses again, the brightest it’s ever been. The impact hasn’t knocked us too far off course—we’re still staring down the barrel of those massive crystalline lenses. Still right in its firing line. But we’ve got no momentum.
We’re dead in the water.
Looking into the Weapon, I can see a collision of rainbow-colored energy coalescing like the eye of a storm. I know space is a vacuum, that sound doesn’t travel through it, but I swear, I swear I can hear a sound. Building slowly. Rushing past the edge of hearing now. Louder and louder.
And all of us know it.
“It’s going to fire,” Zila says, just a tremor in her voice.
“We’re not going to make it,” I whisper.
“Yes, we are,” Finian growls, dragging on a breather mask.
I raise an eyebrow. “Fin?”
“Engines offline sounds like a job for the best Gearhead in the whole damn Aurora Legion, if you ask me.”
“You can fix it?”
“One way to find out.” He flicks his wrist, and a multi-tool extends from the arm of his exosuit. All the fear I heard in his voice before has totally evaporated, replaced by his razor grin. “And let’s be honest, it’s been way too long since I did something incredibly dashing and heroic.”
“I’m coming with you,” I say, dragging off my harness.
“Be careful,” Zila tells us. “Be quick.”
Finian grabs my hand, slams open the cockpit door.
I drag the breather over my face.
And we run.
41
THREE ONE TWO
Aurora
Kal crumples to the ground, the familiar violet and gold of his mind overwhelmed by the dark, dried blood of his father’s. It’s only as darkness descends over him completely that I realize he was still touching my mind, right up to the last second, the lightest of connections.
One he couldn’t give up.
One I never completely burned away.
Deception and devotion. I sensed them both in him.
Only one is for you, he said.
The Waywalkers scream above me, their voices rising in a discordant wail.
And as his father leaves Kal lying there like he’s nothing, turning back toward me, I remember something else Kal told me.
Love is purpose, be’shmai.
Love is what drives us to great deeds, and greater sacrifices.
Without love, what is left?
Tyler
The Fold is on fire. Flames burning in black and white.
TDF fighter ships swarm through the dark, explosions lighting the night around me. The wreck of a Syldrathi Banshee hangs off the Kusanagi’s bow, lifeless and black. Another one is drifting, leaking fuel vapor and thin wisps of fire, spinning away in a slow spiral from the ongoing battle.
But the other two Banshees are cutting the Kusanagi to bits.
The tactics nerd in me is totally enthralled by the battle, but honestly, I’ve got bigger things to worry about than the free-for-all going on around me. Bigger things, even, than the war probably raging around Earth right now.
Problem is, these TDF escape pods are basically missiles, made to fly away from the ship you just ejected from as fast as their little engines will boost them. The Fold around me is full of debris—junked fighters, massive tumbling chunks of Banshee, arcs of burning plasma. And while this pod might look like a fish and move like a fish, it steers a lot like a cow.
I wrestle the controls, speaking into comms as I blast farther away from the slaughter.
“Saedii, this is Tyler, over?”
Finian
I grab wildly at the handrail, nearly falling down the companionway in my rush to reach the engines. Everything’s built just fractionally too big for me—those tall Syldrathi bastards.
I yelp as my foot slips off the step, and Scarlett grabs me from behind, somehow holding me by one arm until I regain my balance. I don’t waste breath on thanks—we make a barely controlled descent to the hallway and break into a run.
A part of me is aware I’m running to try and get my own death back on track, and that’s not something I ever saw coming.
But Scarlett hasn’t let go of my hand now that we’re on level ground. And that’s not nothing.
The engine room door is sealed, and I stretch out one hand for the touch panel—then yank it back at the last second, horrified at what I nearly did.
The warning light beside the panel is flashing red.
I lift up on my toes (tall bastards) and take a look through the viewport.
Oh.
“What’s happening in there?” Scarlett demands.
When I don’t answer, she shoulders me aside. And even though she’s not our strongest mechanical talent, Scar knows what stole my words away the second she sees it. Inside the engine room, gas and fluids are venting into space.
There’s a gaping hole in the side of this piece-of-chakk ship. Its ragged edges are bent inward, and I can see the battle still under way outside. I can see the stars. Whatever hit us punched straight through.
Our engines are in pieces.
I can’t fix this.
Zila
The Weapon ahead of us brightens, swirling with color, a thousand rainbows refracted back and forth.
Slowly, I take my hands off the controls. I let my mind rest. My thoughts quiet.
There are no further calculations required of me.
It is strangely peaceful.
I lean into my mic to speak to my squadmates.
“Finian, Scarlett. It has been a privilege to serve in Squad 312 alongside you.”
I am not feeling nothing.
Tyler
A Syldrathi Banshee streaks past me, silent as death, black and crescent-shaped. My proximity alarms are shrieking, my palms damp with sweat as I weave past the shattered hulk of a TDF fighter, barely missing a spinning chunk of Banshee hull.
“Unbroken vessels, this is Tyler Jones, do you read me, over?”
I stab at comms again. Wondering if something happened to Saedii. Wondering if her crew managed to scoop her up. Wondering if …
… if she’s decided to leave me here to die.
She wouldn’t do that, would she?
“Saedii, do you copy?”
“WE COPY YOU, TYLER.”
The reply rings down my emergency channel, making my pounding heart fall still. It’s iron cold. Edged with static. But even still, I know that voice.
I’ve known it since we were five years old.
“… Cat.”
Scarlett
I hope Tyler’s still alive out there somewhere.
I know he’ll understand I didn’t want to leave him.
I never imagined I’d go out heroically. More at the age of one hundred and fifty-seven, while scandalously making love to the pool boy, you know?
But … this is okay too.
I meet Fin’s eyes. They’re black all over, and the contacts should make it impossible to read his expression. But I’ve never found it hard.
I realize we’re still holding hands.
So I turn toward him and take his other hand in mine too.
Aurora
I stagger to my feet, every muscle screaming, my mind straining to hold back the Starslayer’s assaults. The Waywalkers’ psychic energy pours into him in a torrent now, and he’s so big I can’t even find his edges.
He laughs as I barely manage to bat him away, my vision darkening at the edg
es.
Kal lies still.
But I am on fire.
And I am burning
burning
burning.
Zila
I have always been agnostic. Faith is hard for me. I am not built for it.
But I wonder if my parents will be waiting for me.
We have failed, but I hope they will see how hard we tried.
Tyler
“WE’RE SORRY, TYLER,” Cat says.
I frown. “Sorry for what?”
An alert pings on the escape pod’s HUD, followed by a sawing alarm from the main computer.
“WARNING: MISSILE LOCK DETECTED.”
My stomach drops and rolls. Moments later, another alarm screams through the pod’s cockpit, lights flashing as a new dot appears on my HUD.
“WARNING: MISSILE INBOUND. REPEAT: MISSILE INBOUND.”
Headed right for me.
“Maker, help me,” I whisper.
Finian
I can’t look away from her.
She squeezes my hands with hers, and somehow, impossibly, she grins. Maker, but she’s luminous.
And somehow, impossibly, she pulls a grin from me in answer.
Scarlett
I’ve never seen him just smile before—no cynicism, no guard up.
He’s beautiful.
He bites his lip as we gaze at each other, and hey, it’s a matter of seconds until the Weapon fires, or a TDF ship blows us out of the sky.
So I use our joined hands to tug him in closer. He’s exactly my height.
All I have to do is tilt my head a little.
Finian
Thank you, Maker, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
I can’t help dropping my gaze a little—I’m about to close my eyes and go out in style, kissing Scarlett Isobel Jones.
I swear I’m not checking out her cleavage as my lashes lower, but my eyes land on her necklace.
Go with Plan B.
Plan B, my ass. It totally failed. And I never even found out what my pen was for.
But the hells with that. I’m going to …
… Wait a minute.
Scarlett
He drops my hands, reaching for my b—oh, my necklace.