And then she did.
Muskrat looked up at her when she laughed. The thump-thump-thump of the dog’s tail against the ground was reassuring. Without thinking, Teresa took another spoonful of chowder in her mouth, frowned, and sprinkled some salt over the bowl.
Her next bite was better.
The timing was bad, but it could have been worse. She left out the window as if she were sneaking out to see Timothy again. It felt familiar. Comforting. She knew it was the last time she’d see her room or her things. The last time she’d sleep in the bed that had been hers since she was a child. But her father had been dead for months, and it turned out she’d already done her mourning.
Muskrat whined as she slipped out, dancing from one paw to the other.
“You can’t come this time,” Teresa said. “I’m sorry.”
The dog whined, lifted graying eyebrows, and wagged hopefully. Teresa leaned back in and gave Muskrat one last long hug. Then she was out the window and gone before she lost her resolve.
The first step—the hard one, really—was getting to the cell. It was night. The snow was still falling lightly, but it wasn’t up past her shins. Getting out wouldn’t be the problem.
There were two guards watching over the cells, a man and a woman. They braced as she walked into the room.
“I wish to speak with the prisoner,” she said.
They looked at each other.
“I’m not sure—” the man said.
Teresa made an impatient sound. “Trejo has asked me to question him before. It’s about the assault. We don’t have time.”
The fear did it. The sense of an enemy almost at their gate, and the confidence that someone in power was taking care of it. Even if the voice of authority had just turned fifteen. They led her into the cell. She felt shaky with excitement. It was like being one of the adventurous women she’d watched on her screens, only it was real. She was doing it.
Holden sat up, blinking against the sudden light. His hair was standing at odd angles and his face had pink lines across it from the pillow. Teresa turned to the male guard.
“You stay,” she said. Then to the woman, “You have something to subdue him? An electrical prod?”
“Yes,” the woman said.
Teresa held out her hand, and the woman drew a black, shining weapon with a grip all along its length. It looked like an ear of burned corn. The female guard showed Teresa where the safety was and how to trigger it.
“That’s really not called for,” Holden said. “Whatever this is? I’m not going to fight it. You won’t need those.”
“I’ll decide that,” Teresa said. She nodded the female guard out. Then it was just the three of them: Teresa, Holden, and the male guard. It was the last chance to turn back. She could still change her mind…
Teresa flipped the safety clear.
Holden flinched, prepared for the pain and shock, and Teresa drove the weapon into the guard’s belly and pulled the trigger. He went down hard, not even trying to catch himself.
“Okay,” Holden said after a long, stunned moment. “That was weird.”
“We don’t have much time. Come with me.”
“Um… no? I mean, I think I’m going to need a little more explanation about what’s… ah…”
Teresa felt a burst of anger, but there wasn’t time for it. She started stripping the male guard’s uniform off, undoing zippers and buttons, tugging at his sleeves.
“Your people are coming. Your old ship. The whole invasion was a ruse get them close.”
“There’s an invasion?” Holden said. And then, “They don’t tell me much. But you’re saving me?”
“I’m using you. I need to leave. You’re my ticket onto those ships. Now hurry. We don’t have time.”
Holden pulled the uniform over his prisoner’s jumpsuit. Confinement had left him thin enough that the extra cloth just about filled out the difference. Teresa took the stunner from the fallen guard’s belt and his access key, and opened the door. They marched out together. The woman at the guard’s station had time to look confused before Teresa put her down.
“This is actually happening, right?” Holden said as she led him down the hall toward the forensics lab. “Because this is a very realistic dream if it’s not happening.”
“This is happening,” Teresa said. And she meant, I’m really doing this. “I have an implanted tracking device. They’re going to be after us as soon as we go.”
“Okay,” Holden said.
“Here,” Teresa said. The door was locked, but the access key opened it. She stepped into the dim room. Timothy’s belongings had been moved around in the weeks since she’d been there, but they hadn’t been taken away. She walked from table to table, her fingertips brushing each container they passed. It was here. Someplace. It was right here.
“Hey,” Holden said. “This is… the pocket nuke? The one Amos had?”
“Yes,” Teresa said.
“And I’m standing right here next to it.”
“You are.”
“And you’re comfortable with that,” he said. “This is a really weird night.”
She found what she was looking for. The screen glowed as it powered up. She felt the seconds slipping away. Somewhere far above the planet, the rebel ships were already coming close. Already engaging with planetary defense. The files came up, lockouts and protections broken weeks ago. She looked for the file for evacuation protocol and, without hesitating, shifted the call to active.
“What was that?” Holden asked.
“I called for evac,” Teresa said, liking how adult the word felt in her mouth. Not evacuation. Evac. “All we have to do is get to the pickup.”
“Sure,” Holden said. “Sounds easy.”
Chapter Forty-Six: Elvi
Going through Cortázar’s hidden files was the work of days. It was horrifying. Winston Duarte had believed in Cortázar’s ability, but more than that, he’d assumed that he had the man’s loyalty. And that the things Cortázar told him were true. The experiment to change Duarte’s body using the tamed protomolecule had been the worst kind of science—uncontrolled, unethical, speculative, and risky. He had overstated his certainty to Duarte, underplayed the risks, moved ahead on therapies based on best-guess understandings of Cara and Xan, and collected data obsessively. His notes and records read like a horror story.
As the unexpected changes had come—Duarte no longer needing sleep, developing new senses—Cortázar’s comments shifted. Elvi wasn’t sure the man himself would have seen it, but a plaintive quality started coming into them. A sense of jealousy about all the things he could only experience secondhand. A hunger was growing in Cortázar’s mind that he didn’t seem aware of.
Elvi tried to go though it all in more or less chronological order, but that was harder than it sounded. For one thing, the enemy fleet in Laconia system shook her concentration. Trejo was reassuring. No more antimatter was missing, and the mere nuclear warheads raining down on the planet were a trivial danger, easily avoided. Elvi started having nightmares about it, and her sleep suffered.
Also, chronology wasn’t how Cortázar had structured his work. Notes and results on the protomolecule-modified telomerases that had been one of the first steps were in the same files as preliminary scans and data on Teresa Duarte. NIR and magnetic scans of Cara and Xan from his initial research had annotations about Duarte’s blood protein structures from as recently as the day before Cortázar died.
There were some advantages. Bouncing back and forth in time, Elvi began to feel the shape not only of Cortázar’s obsession but also of the path he’d gone through. The change. His earliest notes on Teresa had been much like his plan for Duarte with some variations. His decision to instead kill her and give her to the repair drones hadn’t come until fairly recently.
It was almost out of character too. Everything she saw about Cortázar had been about pushing forward, trying things that were new. He was a discoverer at heart, and the choice to pull back an
d study something foundational more deeply was unlike him.
It was a long time before she figured out who had convinced him to change from his usual strategy.
When she did, she only told Fayez.
“Holden?” her husband said, incredulous. “James Holden put Cortázar up to killing Teresa?”
“I don’t know,” Elvi said. “I think so. Maybe.”
They were getting ready for Teresa’s birthday party. The dress Elvi had ordered up was a yellow that had looked good on the screen, but she wasn’t sure about it now. It was the first time she’d seen Fayez in days. She’d been going to the labs early and leaving them late. Would have done so again if Trejo weren’t insisting on keeping up appearances. Between Duarte’s conspicuous absence and the breaking news that the enemy had gutted a destroyer called the Mammatus, it was a harder and harder job.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he said, but the way he said it meant he believed her. “Why? Why would he do that?”
The note hadn’t been hidden. It was in with Teresa’s medical scans and blood data, as simple and open as a reminder to get fresh socks. Holden’s argument correct? Consider restarting protocol with additional subject. And every note after that, wherever it had been added, assumed that Teresa Duarte began the process already dead. Another note seemed to be a list of talking points for breaking the news to the high consul.
With your life span, she was going to die before you did anyway.
The important thing is that we learn as much as we can from her death sacrifice.
Children die in nature all the time. This is just like that.
But the one she kept returning to was Holden’s argument correct?
“She was …is heir to the empire,” Elvi said. “If Cortázar turned her into a lab rat, it might destabilize Laconia. Take away the clear line of succession?”
“That’s an awfully long game,” Fayez said, pulling on his shoes. “It explains how Holden knew. But then why did he warn us?”
“Couldn’t go through with it?” Elvi said. “Holden’s a decent person. Decent people have trouble with murdering children. Second thoughts. Doubts. I don’t know. I don’t understand anything anymore.”
“That’s the thing about alien biologies and transdimensional monsters,” Fayez sighed. “At least they’re not supposed to make sense.”
Elvi sighed in agreement and looked at herself in the mirror. Her leg was healed in that it didn’t hurt, but the gouge the aliens had left in it still showed. A lighter patch of skin with a puckered edge.
“Pass me the cane?” Fayez asked. And then, as she did, “Are you going to tell Trejo about it?”
“I don’t know. I’m not going to keep it from him, but… Cortázar’s dead and Holden’s under guard. There’s nothing for Trejo to do about it, and he’s juggling enough already. How do I look? Do I look like a wrapped candy? I feel like I’m dressed up as caramel chocolate.”
“You look beautiful,” Fayez said, rising to his feet. “You always do. Also, that you care at all what any of these people think is charming beyond words.”
“What makes you think I care about what they think?” she said. “I asked you.”
He laughed and stepped close to her. She put her arms around his chest, leaned her head against his shoulder, closed her eyes.
“I hate this,” she whispered. “I hate all of this so much. I’m so tired of being scared and overwhelmed.”
“I know. I’m a little adrenaline-sick myself. Maybe we should leave.”
She chuckled. “Tender my resignation? Say I’m exploring options elsewhere? Maybe go back to teaching.”
“I’m serious,” Fayez said. “You still have command codes for the Falcon, don’t you?”
She pulled back to look him in the eyes. He wasn’t joking. She knew all his smiles, and this was a serious one.
“There are two separate navies out there ready to shoot us down,” she said.
“Maybe. Or maybe we could defect. Or just run and take our chances. It couldn’t be worse. This place is made out of palace intrigue and fear as much as it is concrete. And that’s before it was the target of an ongoing rebellion looking to nuke it to glass. Say you’re going to look for residual transdimensional radioactive ectoplasm or something. They won’t know. With the shooting war going on, they’re not going to come after little old us. We could make a break for it.”
It was crazy, and worse, it was tempting. Elvi imagined waking up under some other sun. In a hut on a mountain on a world without a name.
“You’ve wanted out since you got here,” Fayez said. “You’ve put a brave face on it, and I have too. But this is killing you by centimeters.”
“Let me think,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
They walked to the ballroom together. For a quinceañera, there weren’t many teenagers. Even as large as the room was, Elvi felt like the air was close, stale, rebreathed. She got a glass of wine, hardly aware of who she’d gotten it from. Pulled by her exhaustion, trying to make sense of Holden, her fear of the fighting in the system, and the beautiful dream of leaving Laconia behind, she was in a fog.
“Is everything all right?”
Teresa Duarte was at her side. Elvi had been aware the girl was speaking, but she hadn’t listened. “Fine. Everything’s fine.”
Teresa smirked. “Well. Except.”
“Yes. Except.”
The dinner chime came, and Elvi tried to move away, but Teresa stayed at her side. The girl was working herself up to something. With a forced casualness, Teresa said, “I was wondering, Dr. Okoye. The Falcon.”
Elvi felt a chill of fear. “What about it?”
“I wondered how the repairs were going. With everything that’s going on…” The girl put on a smile that was meant to be calming. Innocuous. “I mean, it is built for sustained high burn. It has breathable liquid crash couches.”
“Those are unpleasant,” Fayez said, trying to move the subject away.
Teresa would not be turned aside. “But still. If the fighting got close? You’d be able to use it to get away?”
Elvi glanced at Fayez. His expression went blank. So he was wondering it too. They’d been in their private rooms, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be monitored. Was Trejo watching them? Was this a test?
“Unfortunately,” Elvi said, choosing her words carefully, “the Falcon was deeply, deeply compromised.”
Fayez followed suit. “I got a new foot, toenails and all, but that ship’s still in pieces.”
Teresa’s expression shifted, but Elvi wasn’t sure what it had shifted into. Elvi kept going, saying the things someone who had never thought of fleeing would say. “I really don’t think it’ll come to evacuation. None of those ships are even going to get close to the planet. And everything Admiral Trejo has at his disposal will be used to keep us all safe.”
“Maybe you should put a push on the repairs, then,” Teresa said, harshly. As if there is anything I would rather do, Elvi thought, and chuckled.
“Maybe I should,” she said as they entered the dining hall. Teresa finally had to go her own way. It felt like escaping something. Fayez put his arm around her waist and let himself be guided to their table.
“That was uncomfortable,” he said.
“Don’t read too much into it,” Elvi said as they found their chairs. “Also? Don’t forget it.”
The dinner proceeded, the conversations stayed on safe ground. Elvi put Holden and his role in Cortázar’s murder plot out of her mind. She didn’t think of it again for weeks, and by then things were already out of control.
“Holden escaped,” Ilich shouted. The speaker on her hand terminal overloaded a little, flattening his voice. She tried to bring herself back to consciousness. It was hard to believe she’d actually drifted off, but the dreams still had their claws in her.
“The attack,” she said.
“They’re here. They’re fighting right now, and Holden’s free.”
She sat up
on her bed. She was still wearing her uniform, though it was creased from sleep. She rubbed the back of her neck with an open palm. Holden was out of his cell at the same moment that the underground’s strike force was engaging with the defense grid. There was no way that could be coincidence. Somehow, he’d known it was coming. And he was getting out before the bombs hit the State Building.
Her gut clenched. The fear that had been growing since the enemy’s gambit became clear tightened her gut. I’m going to die. Fayez is going to die. We’re not going to see dawn.
“Tell Trejo,” she said. “You need to tell Trejo.”
“He’s busy commanding the defenses. Holden stunned the guards. They’re still unconscious.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “What do you want me to do about it?”
Ilich stammered for a few seconds. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Secure the pocket nuke that’s in the same facility, then get a security team and start looking for him,” Elvi said.
“Yes,” Ilich said. “Right.”
He dropped the connection. Fayez was sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes wide and alarmed.
“That man,” Elvi said, “is not great in a crisis. I’m starting to think he’s got the wrong job.”
“Elvi,” Fayez said. “Holden. Teresa.”
It only took a moment. “Shit.”
She went for the door, Fayez close behind her. The air was cold and wet and stinging. It numbed her face instantly. Flakes of snow swirled down from the sky like ashes from a huge fire. The distant ground-based rail guns made a constant rolling thunder, and the clouds flickered red and orange in the north as they fired. Far above the clouds, a battle was going on. Elvi put her head down and ran. Fayez came along just behind her, his footsteps falling in and out of sync with her own.
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