For All Time

by Shanna Miles

  “My people have been warring with one another for a century. Sister against sister for one hundred years without resolution. It is a debate that cannot be settled. This timeline is no good. I know that now, but the commander, she still has faith. She still believes in the prophecy.”

  She holds up the stone. “This device is priceless. I say priceless because a Tilibine general was rumored to have stolen one and held an auction for it. He sold it to the Old Republic for the bargain sum of an entire planet.”

  “But Tiliba earned its independence after it was classified as a level-six planet. Their technology and state relations progressed so fast the five councils had to recognize their right to self-govern,” I say.

  Shulat laughs and turns the stone over in her hand. “Since you are fond of repeating your school lessons, consider this. When has anyone ever earned their independence? Freedom isn’t given; it’s snatched from your oppressors’ bloody fingers. The Republic gave up the planet for this. The first people called it the Goddess Star.”

  A puff of air escapes the table and Shulat sets the stone above it, where it begins to hover, suspended by the air flow.

  “What does it do?” I ask.

  The table starts to shift and grow, bleeding sap that hardens into petri dishes and cracking open to burp flames for vials that squeeze through the walls behind her. The ceiling still crawls with the budding vines, creating a constant swish-swish chorus of leaves rubbing upon leaves in the background.

  “We believe it resets time,” she says.

  “You don’t know?”

  She shakes her head and sniffs the air as one of the buds on the ceiling bursts, releasing a scent not unlike roasted corn. She nods her head and goes back to building what is beginning to look more and more like a wet-lab station. The kind used for examining specimens under a microscope. My nerves twitch.

  “Legend says it was created to correct grave mistakes, but manipulating time is dangerous business. Stop a flood and cause an avalanche. There is no way to know how our actions play into the goddess’s plans. Who can know the difference between fate and folly?”

  “It must be very rare,” I say, and scrutinize the ceiling. The vines might be an olfactory alarm system. Quiet and decipherable only by your own people. Genius-level tech. I tear my eyes away and fix them back on Shulat.

  “Not really. Stars are usually given to children at the time of their first bleeding so that they understand that their actions have great consequences.”

  “What happens to the people who use it?”

  “They disappear, never to be seen again.”

  “So for all you know it could really be a weapon and doesn’t correct anything at all.”

  “That’s a question of faith. Something you should discuss with your brother.”

  I bite my lip so I don’t confess that he isn’t my brother. Shulat’s eyes twinkle. She, too, knows the truth, but to what extent I don’t know.

  “He is a great man of faith. He would not have attempted something so foolish unless he truly believed in the legend. It is unfortunate that you do not share this belief. It would make what is going to happen easier for you to accept.” She pauses, probably waiting for me to ask some question about the legend or her, but there’s no need to talk anymore. I need to listen. From everything I’ve seen, these walls aren’t as solid as they seem. I’ve got to be smart, and smart people keep their mouths shut.

  She picks up the two syringes Lyn left on the table in one hand, palms the star in the other, and walks over to Fayard. My heart jumps to my throat.

  “Don’t!” I yelp, and she turns to me.

  “Don’t what?” she says, and looks at me curiously as she slips the stone into one of the pockets on his suit. “He risked his life for this,” she says, and wipes his face with the edge of her apron. “It’s easy to use. You slip on the ring and say the words, and then—poof—you’re gone. It only works once, though. You would have to be sure.”

  “Why are you telling me this? Why would you give it to him?”

  “Because he earned it. A kindness for a kindness. Besides, you’re going to need it. You’re not who my commander thinks you are. You’re not the fulfillment of some prophecy or proof of some grand cosmic love story. Her petition to stop the destruction of the planet will be denied because our people love war more than they love truth, much like you humans. Right or wrong. He’s just a thief and you’re just a soldier,” she says dreamily. Then, quick as wasp stings, she plunges the syringes in our thighs.

  39 FAYARD

  A TRUE ACOLYTE CAN WITHSTAND heat, cold, the lightest touch upon their exposed skin, and bones broken without flinching. They compartmentalize. After years of training, prayer, and meditation they learn how to separate their minds into distinct rooms. One room is for pain and sensation; one room is for dreams, another to sit and wait for the goddess. They can move from room to room and lock the door behind them; they leave the world outside and keep their reactions, and bodily functions, within. I am not a true acolyte.

  I know someone has stabbed me in my thigh, almost touching bone. I can’t feel it; that pain is locked behind a door I’ve lost the key to. I know someone has also cut my wrists free. I’m not a priest. I’m not a soldier. I’m a spy getting by on a little bit of faith and a year of religious training. Still, I did learn enough to build a few rooms. The problem is getting out of them.

  I hear Tamar’s voice—not screaming, pleading. It is muffled, yet all around me, not as if she is behind a door, more like the alarm system during a fire.

  “… Fayard.”

  “… Fayard!”

  She’s calling me. I need to get out of here, but here isn’t a real place. I need to wake up. I need to—

  “… MOVE!”

  My eyes spring open and sting with whatever she’s thrown over my head. I draw in a deep breath and cough, barely able to keep myself upright. She grabs my arm and hauls me to my feet with more strength than I would have ever given her credit for.

  “We gotta walk! Can you walk?”

  I hear the question and nod dumbly, trying to take in the chaos around me. She’s yelling, and through her I can hear the horns blaring in the distance—an alarm. The ground shakes.

  “What’s happening?”

  “We have to move,” she says. “There!” she says, and points to a carved-out shelving unit in the rock face. When she lets go of my arm to retrieve our bags, it feels like I’ve lost my limb. It takes every muscle to pull myself together and lean a hand against the wall for support, but I have to snatch it back because the vines start looping around my wrist.

  “Can we make it?” I ask.

  She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t answer, which is an answer in itself. We stumble out of the room and up a staircase. I blink hard, trying to get my eyes to start processing visual cues again. They slide uselessly from side to side, searching for outlines, colors, remembrance. I had to go deep to keep the drugs from tearing secrets from my throat. I have no sense of time when I’m closed off, no sense of anything. I can’t feel, see, or really hear inside the rooms, but when you come out, everything is triple its original brilliance—every light, sound, and touch is electrifying.

  Our heads pop out on the surface minutes later, just in time to see the ground split like the opaque glass of a snow globe, revealing the hidden capital city of Sueron underneath. Kilometers of buildings push through the ground, exposing stone apartments inlaid with mother-of-pearl domes, grand fountains bubbling over with rivers of water that flood the polished streets. Trees, so thick and sturdy their branches contain homes. A small laugh escapes me. They’ve hidden from the Republic all this time.

  “Let’s go!” Tamar shouts, and tries to lead the way across a field, but it starts to crumble so that we’re left stranded on a hill surrounded by a city that’s being abandoned. Pods, sleek and egg-shaped, are detaching from rooftops and tree branches by the hundreds and then disappearing before our eyes like soda bubbles.

&nbs
p; “They’re using their stars,” Tamar says with a panicked voice.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She dumps the contents of her go bag onto the ground in front of us, but there isn’t much in there.

  “The commander’s story about the allmother, us, they didn’t buy it. They’re abandoning the planet. This is an evacuation. They took my transmitter,” she says pitifully. “We can’t call for help, and we won’t be able to make it through the city to base in time. If there’s even a base to make it back to.”

  Her eyes are wild and wide with hysteria.

  “Try to stay calm. We’ll figure this out.”

  “ ‘We’? Is it ‘we’ now? You tried to steal from them. How do I know that thing in your pocket isn’t just a quick death for a criminal and his accomplice?”

  I slide my hand across my thigh and feel a bulge.

  “How did you?” I ask, barely able to get out the words.

  “Shulat gave it to you before she stabbed us both in the thigh with who knows what!”

  “It’s pheromones. It’ll allow us to use the star. I can’t believe she—”

  Realization cuts off my words and steals my excitement. There’s only one reason Shulat would have just given me what millions of seekers have lost their lives trying to find. She knew I’d never be able to trade it. I’d have to use it.

  “We’re not going to die here,” I say firmly, but my words are crushed by the sound of buildings exploding in the distance. Much closer to us, one of the tree houses collapses, flattening everything in its path and shaking the ground so hard, we tumble to our knees.

  Tamar’s fingers dig into the kinograss and her head shakes from side to side. Her shoulders shudder, and even though I can’t see her face, I know she’s holding back tears.

  “I—I don’t have a plan,” she says in an almost surprised voice. I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or if she’s admonishing herself.

  “No one expects you to,” I say, and another building cracks open and disintegrates nearby. A moment later the sky begins to blacken. The storm is coming. Tamar seems to regain her composure and points down into the city. There’s a pod on the roof of a building. The windows have been blown out and the street looks empty. No one has claimed it.

  “We can slide down this hill. It’s a little steep, but we could make it, then make a run for it,” she says as she looks at me for confirmation. I’m prepared to nod, but thunder begins to roll again and a shower of lightning erupts, setting fires all over the city in a matter of seconds. Even if we make it to the building, we’ll have to scale the sides to make it to the roof, and I don’t think I can do it with my leg. The only other option is to take our chances inside, but if some rogue Sueronese are still there, we might not survive the battle, and that’s if the building doesn’t just collapse on top of us.

  “We’re not going to die here,” I say again, more forcefully this time so even I believe it. I pull the stone from my pocket, letting my thumb rub across its etchings, becoming fully aware that none of this is coincidence.

  Tamar sucks in a disgusted breath of air. “I’m talking about strategy and you’re suggesting an untested alien technology that could be just a bedtime story.”

  “We are in a life-or-death situation. This isn’t a war game.”

  “That’s right, because in a war game there are rules; supernatural bullshit isn’t part of any training exercise I’m aware of. That back there was a brainwash attempt. I’m not falling for it, and you would have if I hadn’t gotten us out of there.”

  “None of it sounds plausible to you?” I ask.

  A pitying smile breaks out across her face. “You really are a zealot, a true believer, just like she said.”

  “I’m a thief.”

  “So she wasn’t lying,” she replied.

  “No. But it’s more than that. My mother forced me to join, and I am being trained in intelligence, but I am also on a mission for my colony. My home planet is starving, and the Republic has started drilling new mines that will poison what little water supply we have left. This could have saved the lives of millions of my people.”

  Tamar shakes her head, ash falling over her helmet like snow. “It’s a fairy tale.”

  I pull the stone from my pocket and roll onto my side to face her. It’s small and etched with several languages on its surface.

  “This stone is worth more than the GDP of my home planet times a thousand. It’s worth more than my life.”

  “It’s useless if we’re dead, and it’s a death sentence for underground trading if, by chance, we don’t die and you’re caught.”

  “That’s just it. They did catch me, Tamar, in a restricted area, with stolen dig equipment. I was being arrested when the sinkhole caved in. I ran. There’s no record of my arrest because all the servers are under a pile of rubble right now. I should be dead. That we’re here, still alive, with this, is fate!”

  She leans in, her eyes full of fire, about to say something, but suddenly the ground stops shaking long enough for us to stand. In a blink she’s sliding down the hill with me right behind her. I tumble a bit at the bottom, but I make it to my feet and fall into a jog, gritting my teeth as the pain in my thigh radiates like a fire bomb across my entire right side. We don’t talk. We just run until she skids to a halt and holds up her fist.

  A Sueronese family is loading into one of the last remaining pods, carrying a body. We wait and watch as the sky lights up with streaks of lighting, and ash and dirt begin to gather and swirl into mini cyclones along the lanes. The pod door closes, and within a minute they blink out of the sky. Then, as if they’ve cued it, the rain comes in hard gray sheets, turning dust into slick mud. We run again, but the downpour is so massive we can’t see two feet in front of us.

  “We’re not gonna make it!” I yell.

  “Only if we don’t try!” she yells back, and I tackle her. She didn’t see the tree falling right in front of her path. It hits the ground and seems to trigger something underneath the city: The buildings begin to crumble again; the streets start to buckle.

  “We’ve got to go!” I shout over the noise.

  She nods. “I know!” she shouts back, and tries to stand, only to be knocked back down by the quakes.

  “That’s not what I mean. You didn’t train for this! This isn’t a normal life-and-death situation and you know it.” The rain slows to a mist for a moment, clearing our line of sight, but the sky groans with thunder, and the internal skeletons of the buildings continue to shriek as they bend. Still, it’s a bit quieter than it was minutes before. A moment where she might listen. Our time is running out.

  “Do you dream of me?” I ask.

  Her shoulders straighten as she swipes mud from the face of her helmet in silence. I know before she says it that she does.

  “Hallucinogens. Biohacking—”

  “You want a scientific answer for a supernatural phenomenon and there isn’t one. You and I are meant to be on this planet. Right here. Right now. With this…” I dig in my pocket and pull out the stone again.

  Tamar opens her palm.

  “Give it to me. I’ll tell them I found it once they find us. They’ll put it in a vault somewhere or use it to negotiate with Sueronese on another planet or put it in a museum. I don’t care!” she says, her voice a fever pitch.

  “Tamar, you don’t get it. No one is coming. The Sueronese are destroying their own planet, and who knows where or when they’ll appear again.”

  We don’t have to die, I say over our link.

  Thunder rolls and the rain has frozen into a shower of foot-long, razor-sharp icicles. We duck into a building, knowing that we can’t run; we’ll surely be crushed if the building falls.

  Where will it take us? Tamar asks weakly, finally giving in.

  It’s not just a question of where, but when. It’s not a machine. It’s a tool of fate.

  The building across the street cracks down the middle like it’s been split by a giant ax and
moans like a dying animal as it begins to shatter. I turn the ring around the stone until it clicks and begins to glow.

  Tamar shakes her head. “Don’t do it. If it’s our time, then that’s it. It’s our time, Fay. What if we’re pulled back to the paleolithic age? What if we aren’t us?”

  “So we just give up?” I ask.

  “No, we take control. Why does fate get to decide?”

  “Fate says we die here in the next sixty seconds. We can decide not to die. We give ourselves a chance at life. Do you trust me?”

  “You’re a thief and a liar,” she says half-heartedly, and a manic kind of wispy smile appears on her face.

  I inch closer so that we’re just a hand’s width apart. That nervous feeling in my gut fires up, and I can only hope that she feels the same. In the corner of my helmet I can see my heart rate jump ten points as the butterflies in my stomach amplify through our telepathic connection. We’re both vibrating. Eye to eye we’re beat and rhythm, electricity and feeling.

  “You’ve met me before. You’ve grown to know me in your dreams, in all those other lives you’ve watched play out in your mind your whole life. I know you have because I’ve seen them too. We’re together. Always. You trusted me then. Do you trust me now?”

  Her fists clench as she tries to deny what’s between us. “I don’t know you,” she wails, uncertainty in her eyes. Tamar does science and facts, a hard fist and bombs. Not myths and fate.

  “You know me in here,” I plead, pressing my palm to her heart. “Trust me.”

  Something above us cracks, and the door to the building slides closed. There’s a deafening roar from the sky, and a shift in the ground knocks me to my knees. The lights in our helmets click on, and it takes all my strength to crawl the few feet so I’m next to Tamar. I grab both her hands and drop the star into her right palm.