Arachne's Web

by Elizabeth Corrigan

  “Well, of course Gavin beat me this time,” his friend said. “That’s because I’m saving everything for the finals.” Archon gave the camera a big wink and smile, so all the viewers across the system would know he was jesting.

  “Well, there you have it, folks! The champions from Calliope!” The interviewer focused on the camera, making it clear that Archon was dismissed.

  Archon was making his way through the crowd, presumably heading toward his parents, when Gavin’s father stopped him. “A fine performance you made in the games,” he said. “You certainly gave my son a run for his money.”

  Gavin’s friend stopped and saluted. “Thank you, General. Your son has been an inspiration to me for many years, and I look forward to serving with him in the years to come.”

  After Gavin’s father returned the salute and gestured to dismiss him, Archon continued through the crowd. His father looked as though he wanted to talk to Gavin, but Gavin turned to Windla.

  “Go to Chora,” he said. “You’ll always regret it if you don’t. If we’re meant to be together, we’ll find a way.”

  “That sounds like crazy mystical talk. No one believes in that kind of stuff anymore.” Windla smiled, her eyes brimming with tears. She understood she needed to go.

  And Gavin understood that he needed to compete in the accursed final—and if he ever wanted to please his father, he needed to win.

  Chapter 4

  Present Day

  “So is everything in Chora made of light and glory?”

  Bliss Bhanushali looked around her utilitarian dorm room, which was half the size of the room she’d had to herself at home, then turned back to Roslyn’s face on the viewscreen and laughed. “Hardly. From what I’ve seen, I can’t tell why anyone would live on Orpheus. The entire planet is one big, dirty city. They must have brought giant fans to clear the smoke from the campus commons in the publicity shots. I would rather be on Ariadne.”

  “Most people can’t afford to live on Ariadne, and most of the people who live here are servers. No one wants to be a server.”

  “Don’t say that!” Bliss hated when Roslyn acted like being a server was some kind of huge oppression. She’d always thought of Roslyn as a sister, not her server, and she felt a pang inside every time Roslyn treated her as her oppressor.

  Roslyn sighed. “Fine. I’ll just think it.”

  Twisting a lock of her wavy black hair around her finger, Bliss asked, “So how did the visit with the therapist go?”

  “Apparently, I’m not crazy, just overexcitable and unhappy… or something.”

  Bliss raised her eyebrows at Roslyn and blinked a few times.

  Roslyn groaned. “Okay, fine. I need to keep telling myself my dreams aren’t real and remind myself how awesome my life is. Then we can figure out what my dreams really mean.”

  Nodding, Bliss said, “Good plan.”

  “Though I don’t see why past lives are considered mumbo-jumbo, but it’s completely believable for my dreams to have secret meanings.”

  Bliss bit her lip. She didn’t want to believe Roslyn had cheated on her university entrance exams, but she couldn’t see any other alternative and hoped seeing the therapist would help Roslyn see how fortunate she was.

  With a bang, the door to Bliss’s room opened and slammed against the wall, and a dark-skinned girl in a bright-pink top burst into the room. She took one look at Bliss’s frilly white blouse and made straight for Bliss’s closet. “You are not wearing that to the party tonight.”

  “What’s going on over there?” Roslyn asked.

  “My roommate, Lexi.”

  “She sounds like a piece of work.”

  Bliss felt heat rise to her face as she looked up to see if Lexi had heard the comment. Her roommate, however, seemed oblivious, though she did toss Bliss’s favorite gray pencil skirt into the trash.

  “She’s all right, really.”

  “You think everyone is ‘all right, really.’”

  Even you, Bliss thought then chastised herself for being uncharitable.

  Lexi held up the orange beaded halter top Bliss’s aunt Ruby had given her for her birthday then tossed it on her own bed.

  “I’ve got to go,” Bliss said to Roslyn. “My wardrobe needs my help.”

  “It’s fine. I’ve got to take Her Royal Dogginess out for a walk, anyway.”

  “Aw! Tell Snookems I said hi!”

  “I will never forgive you for giving the name Snookems to a dog I have to introduce to people.” Roslyn pushed a button on her datapad, and Bliss’s screen went black.

  Bliss rolled onto her back and propped herself up on her elbows. “What are you doing, Lexi? That shirt’s mine. And what’s this about a party?”

  “It’ll look better on me than you. Your skin’s too light.”

  Bliss looked down at her brown hands. She had never thought of herself as light-skinned before, but she supposed compared to Lexi, she was.

  Lexi shoved a sparkly blue top and a lacy white skirt at Bliss. “Here, put that on. I got us invited to a party the engineers are throwing. They’re total nerds, but rumor has it they serve the best booze on campus. They make it themselves.”

  “I’m not going to a party full of…” Bliss paused, searching for the right word. “Moonshine the day before classes start.”

  Lexi pulled her shirt off. She didn’t have a bra on, so Bliss looked away, missing, she was sure, her putting on the orange halter. “What’s moonshine?”

  “An Old Earth word for homemade liquor.” Bliss tapped her finger on her datapad. She couldn’t remember where she’d heard the word before.

  “Well, aren’t you quaint.” Lexi looked herself over in the mirror and gave her reflection a wicked grin. “And you are going to this party, because I’m not going alone.”

  I suppose the halter does look better on her, Bliss thought, though she would never have chosen to wear it with bright-blue slacks, as Lexi had done.

  “You won’t be alone. If the booze really is the best on campus, hundreds, if not thousands, of people will be there.”

  Bliss cringed at the thought. Funneling every student from a planet and its three moons into one university had its virtues, but it also made for unmanageable crowds.

  Lexi tossed a pair of blue-beaded platform sandals at Bliss and hit her leg hard enough to leave a mark. “Get dressed. You’re going.”

  An hour later, Bliss was ready to go home. Her head was throbbing in time with the pounding dance music no one was dancing to, and her mouth still held the taste of what she was never again going to describe as moonshine. The glows of Orpheus’s moons—green Ariadne, red Daedalus, and brown Bellerophon—were all beautiful in their own ways, and the bitter-and-sour concoction Bliss had drunk resembled none of them.

  Lexi had ditched Bliss before they even walked in the door, at which point Bliss had considered leaving. But she figured since she was already at the party, she might as well try to have a good time. When she failed, she decided she should inform Lexi of her departure. If the police raided the party or the side-room fire-and-chemical entertainment exploded, Bliss didn’t want Lexi to worry. Though after spending only two days in Lexi’s company, she suspected Lexi took care of herself and expected everyone else to do the same.

  Bliss did her best to walk around the globs of congregated people locked in drunken conversation. She scanned each group, looking for her roommate’s beaded braids, and the second time someone pinched her butt, she was ready to give up the situation as hopeless. Then she spotted them.

  The room fell away as Bliss looked at the man Lexi was talking to. He’s beautiful. He had dark-brown hair and eyes that she could tell even from that distance were a piercing gray. His frame was thin but muscular, and the pleats in his pants were a few years out of style.

  Bliss trusted her instincts when it came to people. Even
at three years old, she had felt drawn to Roslyn, and when she’d met Lexi, she had felt the same tug. The feeling she got as she approached the man was less of a gentle pull and more of a full-on yank. Then he looked at Lexi with an expression of pure adoration, and Bliss remembered she was in the middle of a party she didn’t want to attend.

  She hoped none of the partygoers had noticed her gawking, and a quick glance around indicated that no one cared what she did. Bliss made her way across the room, knowing that even in her platforms, she moved with a grace Roslyn envied. She kept hoping beyond hope that the man would look at her, but his gaze remained focused on Lexi.

  Lexi gave Bliss an irritated look when she reached her roommate’s side. “Where have you been? I wanted to introduce you to people, but you disappeared.”

  Bliss recalled her walking away, saying, “Catch you later,” as soon as they had arrived, but she’d obviously misunderstood.

  “I was just telling Will here about my music career.” Lexi gestured to the man, who tore his gaze away from her long enough to smile at Bliss.

  “Don’t you mean your future music career?” Bliss instantly regretted the catty words. “I mean, you have to be accomplished to be admitted to Chora to study music, but surely you’ve still got a lot to learn.”

  Lexi bared her teeth in a feral grin. “My fame is inevitable. I’ve got the talent, the courage, and the grit, and I’ve got the willingness to fight dirty. I’m going to be a household name soon. Just you wait and see.”

  Will laughed. “Don’t you think it would be more rewarding to have a small following of people you knew personally?” he asked.

  Lexi snorted, and if Bliss hoped the undignified noise would lessen the adoration in Will’s eyes, she was disappointed.

  “Do you want to write articles only five people read?” Lexi asked.

  “Actually, I think working for a small-town vidcast would be quite rewarding,” he answered. “Or some fringe network that investigated things that are really going on, rather than the watered-down news you get from the megacorps.”

  “Megacorp news is not watered-down,” Bliss said. “Just last week, IlmerComm released the entire schedule of the Bellerophon Games, and that’s supposed to be classified.”

  Will raised his eyebrows. “A megacorp defender, I see.” Bliss had expected him to sound disappointed, but she could better describe his tone as puzzled.

  “How could I not be?” she asked, certain her face was mirroring his wrinkled brow and pursed lips. “Megacorps provide a livelihood for most people in the system! That’s food, shelter, medical treatment, and everything else!”

  “Megacorps make sure everyone is so dependent on them that they don’t even notice all they’re doing is making more money for the richest people in the galaxy!” Will’s passion for the subject manifested in the quiver of his hands and the glint in his eyes.

  “Those rich people take care of everyone who works for them!”

  “Because of heavy regulation! Do you really think if there were no laws requiring stipulations to workers, the corporations would give anything to their employees? Take a good look at the human history of laissez-faire politics.”

  “I suppose you’re one of those believers in the virtue of small businesses, then? You know small businesses can’t take care of their employees the way megacorps can. They can’t afford to.”

  “It’s capitalism that’s the problem.” He slammed the heel of his hand against his other palm. “The megacorp CEOs think they’re better than us, living in their fancy houses on Ariadne, with servers waiting on them hand and—”

  “Servers’ lives are a lot better than the lives of the poor on Daedalus. If they would rather have that life, they’re welcome to leave!”

  Will’s gray eyes stared right through her as she found herself out of breath. “You know better, Bliss.”

  Bliss’s heart skipped a beat. Did he just call me by my name? She was sure she hadn’t introduced herself. “What did you say?”

  He laughed. “I said, ‘You know better.’ But maybe you don’t.”

  Bliss exhaled. She must have imagined it. He couldn’t know her name. They’d never met.

  “I know all I want to know.” She held out her hand. “I’m Bliss Bhanushali. My father is CFO of ZimmerCorp. I’m studying business with the hopes of following in his footsteps.”

  “I’m Will.” As he shook her hand, he looked straight into her eyes for the first time. Again, she felt that jolt of something between recognition and destiny. “Journalism student. My father is long dead, but I suspect he wouldn’t be pleased to have a conspiracy-nut son.”

  Lexi stomped her foot. “Ugh, this party blows!”

  Bliss had forgotten about Lexi in her fervor, but Will clearly hadn’t. He immediately held out his hand to her. “Wanna dance?” he asked. “I bet if we start, other people will join in.”

  A smile lit up Lexi’s face. “Why, yes, I do.”

  Will took her hand and led her toward the center of the room without a by-your-leave. Lexi turned back to Bliss with a smug expression.

  “I bet you’re a great dancer.” Bliss could barely hear Will’s voice over the din.

  “You’d better believe it.” Lexi’s words, on the other hand, seemed directed at Bliss.

  Bliss turned her head away. She didn’t really want to watch Lexi and Will all over each other, but she couldn’t pinpoint why she should feel that way. The man was clearly an anarchist. Her father would not approve. She did not approve. So what if she felt some kind of unnatural connection to him in the pit of her stomach? Her stomach was stupid. She didn’t believe in destiny, and she was going home.

  Chapter 5

  Present Day

  Blip.

  Detrick jumped.

  I shouldn’t jump. It’s stupid to jump. It goes off fifty times a day. He had set it up to ping every time a story that might involve one of his targets appeared in the classified or unclassified datasphere. That was a lot of stories. He got dozens of hits every day. But he jumped every time.

  Detrick pressed a few keys to bring up the triggering case. It was a vid. He hated vids because he couldn’t skim them and had to watch the whole stupid thing.

  He pushed Play. A newscast from Bellerophon appeared on his screen—Calliope, judging from the yellow haze in the air. He hoped it wasn’t a true hit. Tegan would kill him if he sent her to Bellerophon. Well, not actually kill him—probably. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t come back. But she would be angry and maybe refuse to bring him that LaserForce 985 he needed, the one she could only get from the arms dealers at Eurydice. He didn’t want to have to go get the LaserForce himself. The arms dealers made him nervous. They were the only people he knew who had more guns than he did.

  Besides, he would have to leave the apartment. He hated leaving the apartment. Everything was right there—his computers, his bed, his food. Outside was a ton of stuff he didn’t need, like dogs, like guns that weren’t his, and like people who weren’t him or Tegan.

  Or Will or Bliss. But he wasn’t supposed to think that. Will and Bliss weren’t his friends anymore. Tegan had said so.

  Besides, his apartment was so nice. It smelled like the disinfectant he used to clean every surface. His bed was made so well he could bounce a rock on the white sheets. His kitchen and refrigerator were clean of the food that plagued so many other people’s living spaces. And behind the white panels of his walls and ceiling were his guns. He loved his guns more than just about anything, possibly more than Tegan.

  The newscaster on the vid was blathering on about the Bellerophon Games. He hadn’t caught the reporter’s name. It must have flashed on the bottom of the screen, but he had missed it. He hated missing things. He considered rewinding to find out the name but decided against it. Not knowing was his punishment for not paying attention.

  He had almost reconciled hi
mself to his ignorance when Gavin Ibori walked onto the screen.

  Maybe it’s not really him. Maybe it’s someone who looks like him. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him.

  The name “Gavin Ibori” flashed across the bottom of the screen.

  “Shit.”

  Tegan was going to kill him. He pulled up her contact information on his datapad and, after a few deep breaths, pushed the button to call her.

  His datapad buzzed as it tried to reach her. The sound always made him envision a cloud of insects in the datasphere. Sometimes when he slept, he dreamt of a swarm of yellow jackets coming out of his datapad and stinging him to death. Insects were another reason not to leave the apartment. Sometimes an insect got into the apartment. It never ended well for the insect.

  A clean-cut blond woman with sharp features appeared on the screen. “Hi, this is Tegan. I’m not available right now, but leave a message, or just some heavy breathing if you’re Detrick, and I’ll get back to you.”

  Detrick’s breath came faster. He never knew what to do at such times. He was supposed to leave a message, but messages were permanent. He might say the wrong thing. After a moment, the datapad beeped three times, and Tegan disappeared.

  Blip.

  Detrick jumped. Another trigger? They didn’t usually come so close together.

  It wasn’t a video that time, and it wasn’t on Bellerophon. That boded well. He skipped the transcript of the conversation between ZimmerCorp employees. Someone had robbed a crate of diamonds they were shipping from Daedalus to Ariadne. Detrick only knew two people with the technical know-how to pull off a heist that big. Not that it couldn’t be someone I don’t know.

  He pulled up the passenger manifest for the train in question and scrolled to the bottom.

  Zhao, Cobalt.

  Zhao, Jack.

  Again, he pulled up Tegan’s contact information on his scanpad and pressed the button. Her face appeared more quickly that time.