by Rebecca Rode
5
She waited until the village went quiet, then snuck out to the hollow where she always met Ambrose. He wasn’t there. She waited nearly two hours, until the air went chill and her teeth chattered, before going home. Eight nights she’d tried to meet him. What could possibly be holding him up? Didn’t he understand how desperate their situation was?
Her dreams that night were jumbled, peppered with space battles and hard-faced officers demanding their futures told. Each time she declined, they shot her and she crumpled to the floor, reaching out for Dai. But he was already dead, his body just out of reach.
“Please,” she found herself begging. “Let me help him.”
But every time she stood up, the men raised their weapons and insisted she read their futures.
She finally sat up in bed and looked around but saw only darkness. Her father’s breathing, slow and regular, sounded from the next room over. Just a nightmare.
As she was beginning to roll over again, she heard something—a scraping from outside her room, barely distinguishable above her father’s breathing.
Ember strained to hear it again, but there was nothing except the gentle clucking of the hens in the courtyard. Whatever this sound was, it was inside the house.
Sala probably got inside again, she assured herself. The hen was constantly hopping through their other window, low as it was and without glass. Best to return her to the courtyard before they woke Dai.
Something scraped again.
This time it sounded remarkably heavy. A boot, perhaps.
Panic rose within her, and adrenaline shot through her system as fear got the better of her. She was paralyzed, unable to move. It was too much like the night everything had gone wrong. The memory leaped back into her mind before she could block it.
* * *
Ember’s eyes flew open as a hand clamped over her mouth and nose. She gasped for air but got a terrible gritty taste instead. The smell of dirt overwhelmed her, filling her lungs, and she coughed and thrashed her arms about until the hand tore away. The two dark figures on either side of her bed scrambled to secure her.
Babik cursed softly in the darkness. “Hold her still already. There are two of you and one of her.” It was the chief’s son, the man whose offer of marriage she had rejected the day before.
“You hold her down, then,” someone else whispered. “Get your own teeth kicked in.”
She tried to scream as she thrashed, but a hand clamped over her mouth again before she could get a sound out.
Babik swore again. “There’s not enough rope.”
“Well, I’m not waiting an hour for you to get more,” the second man hissed. “Just claim her now, before someone comes.”
* * *
The scraping sound was closer now, coming every few seconds. Ember swallowed back the fear and slid off her bed, landing in a crouch. Surprise was the only weapon she had, and she intended to use it.
Well, there was one other weapon, but she would never use it again.
The intruder paused for a moment, then brushed through the divider cloth, breathing heavily, shakily, sounding almost afraid.
The dark figure made its way to the bed and slowly lowered an arm. There was something small and dark in the hand extended toward her.
Ember didn’t want to know what it was. She scrambled to her feet and bolted through the divider as the intruder gave a soft cry of surprise. She recognized the voice. Babik.
He was married now with a child on the way, but apparently that hadn’t stopped him from wanting to finish what he had started.
She raced for her father’s doorway, but a large figure moved to block her and she slammed into the man before she could stop, his arms enveloping her, crushing her until she could barely breathe.
“Running instead of fighting tonight?” the deep voice asked. Talpa, the chief and Babik’s father. It seemed he had decided to accompany his son this time. The man’s breath smelled heavily of alcohol. She bolted to the side, but he grabbed her hair and spun her backward against him, then wrapped one massive arm around her throat.
She tried to cry out, but the pressure on her windpipe increased even more until she thought it would fold right in half. Her head began to spin.
Talpa took several wide steps toward the front door, pulling her alongside him, like a child dragging a teddy bear.
Not enough air.
She fought and kicked and tried to turn her head, but the harder she fought, the tighter Talpa’s grip became. Blackness had begun to close in by the time they stepped outside, but the sharp coolness of the night air blasted her back to consciousness.
Rough hands fumbled with her wrists, but Talpa’s grip didn’t loosen.
“Tighter than that,” Talpa hissed, and a sharp pain sliced through her wrists. Only then did Talpa release her. She crumpled to her knees, gasping and sucking in precious oxygen.
Next to the Roma chief stood a man in black, surrounded by four guards. One guard was taller than the rest, but she couldn’t see their faces in the darkness.
“Is that sufficient, High Commander?” Talpa asked.
The man motioned to the taller guard, who raised a hand lantern to Ember’s eyes. Ember squinted against the painful brightness.
“That’s her, sir,” a female guard confirmed in a strangely deep voice.
“Very well,” the officer said. “I will make a note of your village’s homage in our records. But I will not be so kind when I return if you have neglected to pay what is due yet again.”
“Of course, High Commander,” Talpa said. “As you say. Whatever you’d like is my pleasure.”
The officer gave Babik a disdainful look. “You might consider sending your boys into the military rather than marrying them off young. Then your people might actually be worth something to the emperor.”
“I will . . . consider that, Commander.”
“Think long and hard.” The man turned to Ember. “I warned you to come as ordered, gypsy girl. Now we’re out of time for testing. To the ship.”
Ember, whose breaths came short and fast now, pushed to her feet and began to stumble toward the front door.
The tall guard whipped out her weapon with surprising speed. There was no sound, but an unbelievably strong force slammed into Ember’s chest. A scream ripped from her throat.
Then there was darkness.
6
Ember’s throat burned.
She forced her eyes open and lifted her head, her kinked neck protesting the sudden movement. She struggled to rub it but couldn’t move her arms. They were secured to the armrests of her chair.
Not a chair. A seat.
Ember took in the vibration of the floor at her feet, the hum of an engine outside. The windows spaced evenly apart. The dark figures draped in their seats around her. Someone was snoring.
She swung her head to peer out the window but saw only darkness and the faint golden glow of a thruster. The cabin, too, was dark except for the illuminated lines indicating an aisle to her left.
An aisle. Windows. Seats. A shuttle.
Her breaths came too fast now. The air circulating around her was stale and cold, and it made the deep pain in her throat worse. She tried to thrash around, but the bonds around her arms bit painfully into her skin. Her upper body and stomach were secured by a harness. She tried to raise her feet, but they were completely numb.
No, no, no. This can’t be real.
“Hold on,” a voice said from across the aisle. The man unlatched his harness and approached her. It was too dark to see his face, but his voice was familiar somehow. He knelt and fumbled with the bonds at her feet, and the tightness eased immediately. He rose and sat on the empty seat beside her. “Is that better?”
Ember recognized him now—that man from the market yesterday, the one whose future she’d read. Stefan. She was definitely on the Empire ship.
She looked around. Several more rows of seats lined the cabin, and by the sounds of breathing, they were
all occupied. “I shouldn’t be here.” She swung her legs up. They felt disconnected somehow. It would take awhile for the blood to flow correctly again. “Why am I here? How dare you tie me up like this.”
He put up a hand. “Whoa, there, future-teller. I had nothing to do with it. And keep your voice down, all right? Everyone’s asleep, and you don’t want this group mad at you. They’ve been staring at you all day, trying to figure out why Commander Kane ordered us to swing so far out of our way to get you.”
She choked. “All day?”
“You’ve been out almost twenty-four hours. The guards must have used a high-level stunner.” He sat back with a grunt, as if he didn’t approve.
Stunners. Guards. The memory slammed into her consciousness all at once, suddenly overwhelming her.
The officer and his guards. Talpa and his son betraying her. No—worse than that.
The chief had sold her as homage to the Empire.
She gave a strangled cry. Her father would have woken to an empty house, wondering where she was. He couldn’t get out of bed to prepare his food. And what about his medicine?
“I have to go home,” she hissed. “You have to tell them. If we turn around right now—”
“Shh,” Stefan whispered. “In the morning they’ll send someone to talk to you, to explain everything.”
She stared at him. “I don’t want them to explain. I want to go home. My father is sick—he needs me.”
“I already know that.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He paused, looking sheepish. “Most people have a natural shield, but it’s thinnest when you’re asleep. It makes it really easy for a flicker to break in.” He took a deep breath and went on in a rush. “I wasn’t looking, exactly. It’s just that most of us have practiced enough that we’re protected when we sleep. Yours was wide open. I swear I didn’t look very far. I just wanted to see what happened. After the reading, I mean.”
Ember stared at him. Wide open? See what happened? What was he talking about?
Flicker. The word was barely familiar, almost like a wisp of memory. She tried to remember where she’d heard it, then decided it didn’t matter. The only thing of importance was getting home.
Someone across the room mumbled in their sleep. It was a girl, her chin resting forward on her chest. It didn’t look very comfortable.
“Don’t worry,” Stefan continued. “I don’t think anyone else cared enough to probe you. But you’ll want to train in mental defenses as soon as we get to Avegard Station.”
She rested her head against the back of the seat, suddenly weary. The circulation was flowing in her feet now, sending pain all the way to her toes. “Don’t worry?” She gritted her teeth. “No, no. This is not okay. Tell your commander I want to talk to him right now.”
He chuckled. “You don’t make demands of a high commander, particularly Kane. It’s an honor just to be on the same ship.”
Commander Kane. Flicker. Of course—she’d read about it in the article hidden behind her family’s photograph. Something about her father winning an award and Kane saying he would take him to the top. And a sentence about a flicker breeding program.
But what did that have to do with her?
“What is a flicker?” she asked cautiously.
He watched her for a long moment. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Will you shut up?” someone whined from across the cabin. “Some of us are trying to sleep here.”
Stefan lowered his voice to a whisper. “A flicker can see things others can’t.”
Ember’s mother had trained her well in future-telling. She’d described it as a combination of card reading and people reading. But it had never been that way for Ember. To her, the ability was examining light, almost like sifting through memories. Visions, flashes of possibilities given her from the stars. “How does it work?”
“You already know. You gave quite the demonstration yesterday.”
She studied her hands. “Tell me anyway.”
He shrugged. “It manifests a little differently for everyone, but one thing is always the same. Each living being has an inner light, something religions call a spirit, or soul. Even scientists had to admit there was a part of a person that could be sensed but not seen. You know, that feeling of being watched, or a sense of dread when there’s danger. Some say a person’s light merges with their own consciousness as their soul passes on. That’s why the dying see their life pass before their eyes.”
Inner light. That was what she called it too. His words settled in her heart, sending a chill down her body. His description was exactly right. “Go on.”
“Scientists have tried for centuries, but they couldn’t re-create that light in machines or AI or anything else. It was a mystery—until the first flickers were born. They described the soul as a flickering light, something that held a person’s past and future, like DNA. I guess the name stuck.” He grinned, the shadows from the window crossing his face in a series of dark lines. “Now we’re the rarest, most sought-after beings in the universe.”
Anger flared up inside. He made it sound like such a pleasure to be here. She wasn’t a piece of gold to be mined, by Kane or anyone else. “And this ship is headed where?”
“Flicker testing. They didn’t tell you?”
“No,” she growled.
He grunted again and muttered something under his breath.
It had never occurred to her that there were others like her out there. Connecting with a person’s light to see their future was a beautiful gift, but she hadn’t considered the ramifications on a larger scale. This type of power in the Empire’s hands was a scary thing to contemplate.
“By the way,” Stefan continued, “I noticed that you closed your eyes when you read my future yesterday. You’ll want to get over that habit. It leaves you vulnerable to attack.”
Attack? Who would want to attack her? She wasn’t dangerous . . . was she? There it was again, that deep-rooted discomfort telling her something was very wrong. Whatever training they intended for her, she wanted no part of it.
“My father is ill,” she whispered. “I can’t leave him for training or anything else. You have to help me get home.”
He was quiet for a long moment. All she could hear was snoring and the low hum of the engines outside. “They shouldn’t have done this to you. It wasn’t right. And to think that I had a hand in it, however unintentional. I’m really sorry.”
It was a long, roundabout way of saying he couldn’t help her. Ember gritted her teeth. If only she’d been more careful. She should have known better than to tell a man’s future in front of an officer. There was only one thing going for her. Kane suspected she was a flicker, but he didn’t know for sure yet. That meant she could still convince him otherwise. “When do we arrive?”
“In the morning.” He leaned around the cabin. “Speaking of which, I should probably catch some sleep. Unlike certain people on this ship, I didn’t get to sleep the day through.”
“One last thing.”
“What’s that?”
“How much did you see of my memories?”
It took him a second to understand. “Oh, not much. You at a funeral. Your mom’s, I think. And your friend’s wedding. Really, all I wanted to know was how you were kidnapped. I swear I didn’t look deeper than that.”
She couldn’t read his face in this light. If he was lying, he hid it well. “Then promise me you’ll never, ever go poking around inside my mind without my permission again.”
Stefan grinned. “You have my word.” He stood and stepped over her, then returned to his seat across the aisle.
They’d reach a station in the morning. If she fooled Kane into thinking she wasn’t a flicker, she could be home in two days. Maybe it wouldn’t be too late.
Stars, she breathed, keep Dai safe until I return. Please.
She reached out into the wide expanse of space, searching for a single flickering light across the galaxy
. He was too far away, of course. She knew that.
But she didn’t stop reaching, continuing her search for hours, straining until sleep stole her once again.
7
Ember was stunned as she stood in the doorway upon their arrival. When Stefan had called their destination Avegard Station, Ember had pictured an oversized spaceship. But the city that spread before her was far beyond anything she could have imagined. If this was a station, it had to be the largest one in the universe.
The huge white city spanned as far as she could see, its buildings rising like mountains. Colorful laser ads appeared in the atmosphere overhead, spewing messages about body shaping technology and some entertainment competition. A dull hum rose from the city’s streets as its citizens moved about. The city seemed lit from above, although Ember couldn’t see a single source of light. It had to be artificial.
She took a deep breath, expecting fresh air like she was used to, but all that filled her lungs was the same stale air as on the ship. It made sense. This was a station, after all.
Stefan came up beside her, seeming pleased at her reaction. “It’s an entire planet. They keep the ships beneath the surface for protection.”
Ember frowned. “They protect the ships but leave the people exposed?”
He laughed. “You have a lot to learn about the Empire.”
That irritating girl, Eris, appeared at his side. She slid herself between Ember and Stefan, stretching her arms. “It feels so good to walk around. What a dreadful trip. And a whole four days longer than it should have been.” She didn’t glare at Ember, but her point was clear.
Ember moved aside so the other passengers could get by. Her legs were stiff, and the welts from her two-day-old bonds itched, as they’d only been removed this morning. As beautiful as the city was, stepping outside the ship felt like a betrayal. She wished she could march to the cockpit and demand the pilot take her straight home, but the cockpit door was locked. She’d already tested it.