Arachne's Web

by Elizabeth Corrigan

  “What is it, Detrick? I’m a little busy, you know. I told you I would be there in two days with your stupid gun.”

  “I found them.”

  Tegan blanched. “What? All of them? Even Will?”

  Detrick shook his head once. “No. Not all. Jack. Cobalt. Gavin.”

  Tegan nodded. “They’re not all together, are they?”

  “Cobalt and Jack are. They’re on a train bound for Ariadne. They stole some diamonds. I’ll send you the information.”

  “Great. Where’s Gavin?”

  Detrick mumbled an answer.

  “Speak up.”

  “Calliope. Bellerophon.”

  “Fabulous.”

  Detrick breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good. I thought you would be mad.”

  “I am mad, you idiot. I was being sarcastic.”

  Detrick didn’t say anything.

  “Look, I’m going after Jack and Cobalt first. They committed a crime, so it should be easy enough to get them transferred to my custody. We’ll worry about Gavin later.”

  “I’m not going to get my gun in two days, am I?”

  “You don’t need another gun, anyway. Where would you even put it?”

  “I have a spot—”

  “Focus on finding Bliss. She always ends up near the others. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find Lexi.”

  “I thought you wanted me to find Bliss.”

  “Find Bliss, and you’ll find Lexi. Find Lexi, and you’ll find Will. This is basic transitive-property stuff. I thought you were some kind of math genius.”

  Detrick had always excelled at mathematics, but everything got more complicated when someone threw people into the equation. “Bliss equals Lexi equals Will. Got it.”

  Tegan rolled her eyes. “Close enough. Get on it.” Her face disappeared.

  Detrick pulled up his search program and started retooling it to focus on Bliss. You would think I could get a break now. He had no idea what he would do with a break, but it was something he was supposed to want. After all, I found three of them. And Tegan’s said over and over she only needs blood from three bodies. Shrugging, he returned to the code. He liked having something to focus on, anyway.

  Chapter 6

  Twenty Years Ago

  The sounds of murmuring voices and clinking crystal met Roslyn’s ear, and the lingering tang of champagne rested on her tongue. She looked down at the pale-gold liquid in the quarter-filled flute in her hand then at the red heels on her feet, which matched her dress so well they must have been custom-made.

  I must be dreaming. She didn’t have anything so nice in her real life. Also, either this dress is itchy, or Old Roslyn is as allergic to rich people as I am.

  What? Old Roslyn? New Roslyn? I’m just Roslyn, one-time archaeologist, now minor peddler of antiques to the few people rich enough to afford them.

  As she moved through the gathering of elegantly dressed individuals, Roslyn kept the small smile affixed to her face. She suspected Senator Gillis’s wife’s dress, a beautiful Grecian number draped over her generous form, itched less than hers did, but she couldn’t bring herself to envy Lady Gillis. The senator cheated on his wife with any woman who caught his eye, yet they looked down on Roslyn. They didn’t know how much more Roslyn could be if she really wanted, if she didn’t care about the rules governing the Transients.

  “You hate it here,” someone at Roslyn’s side said, and she turned to see a tall, dark-skinned man with kind brown eyes and a fashionable hat over his close-shaven head.

  “Don’t you? This party is for you, the celebrated surgeon Gavin Ibori, who saved the life of the ZimmerCorp CEO’s infant son. Yet you’d rather be in the slums of Daedalus or the battlefields of Bellerophon.”

  Gavin smiled, his white teeth a glorious contrast to his dark lips. “You would hate either of those places even more than Ariadne.”

  “Well, there’s not much work for an antiquities dealer in either place. But you’re getting too famous here. We need to leave. Maybe we should compromise and move to Orpheus. It’s more cosmopolitan. I could set up a shop there, and you could still help the underprivileged.” Or else you could just leave me.

  “Oh, no.” Gavin’s smile fell, and he shook his head. “I know that look. I’m not leaving you.”

  “I don’t understand why. You know I don’t deserve you.”

  Gavin’s warm hand came up to cup her cheek. “Deserve has nothing to do with it. I love you, Roslyn. I want to be with you for as long as I can.”

  Roslyn leaned into his hand and closed her eyes. That’s what I want too, she told herself, though she knew it wasn’t true. She didn’t want to stay and be a shopkeeper anywhere. She wanted exploration and adventure.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw someone in her peripheral vision. It can’t be. It can’t. She focused her attention back on Gavin. “We’ll go to Orpheus. We can start planning tomorrow. It’ll be an adventure.”

  It wouldn’t be an adventure. She’d been to Orpheus when the planet had just been discovered, and that had been exciting, and she had been on the original scouting team for each of the moons as well.

  Now that humanity’s happily settled here, there’s no adventure left. Once upon a time, the government had considered reinvesting in the discovery of new worlds, for when they destroyed Orpheus as surely as they had destroyed Earth. With the conservatives in power, that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon, though. If the closest Roslyn could get to adventure was exploring a new city, she was going to do it.

  As she forced a smile, a bell rang, and the master of ceremonies announced dinner. Roslyn took Gavin’s arm and walked with him to the seat of honor next to Gerald and Elaine Zimmer. Course after delectable course of peppered greens, roasted quail, and chocolate cake with the most exquisite ganache appeared in front of her. She savored every bite, knowing she would not eat such delicacies again for a long time.

  The Zimmers were delightful conversationalists, asking about Roslyn’s business and Gavin’s practice without the slightest hint of disdain in their tones. Nonetheless, Roslyn couldn’t help but feel their regard was as fleeting as the sorbet that cleansed her palate between courses. For the moment, Gavin was the hero who had saved their son’s life. The next day, they would be beneath recognition once again.

  If she had said as much to Gavin, he would say she was being unfair, that the Zimmers valued their son’s life above material possessions, and they would likely bear some gratitude toward him for the rest of their days. As for her, well, Roslyn had seen the looks the Zimmers exchanged when she and Gavin admitted they were not even engaged, and she couldn’t help but think they had dismissed her as Gavin’s woman of the hour.

  After the toasts—quite lengthy, Roslyn thought, considering the people had never met Gavin—Roslyn went outside for a breath of fresh air. Rain earlier in the day had forced the party inside, and Roslyn appreciated the opportunity to walk the grounds alone.

  The air was almost fluid, smelling of wet dirt and autumn leaves. She moved slowly along the cobblestone walkway, careful not to turn her heel or slip on the foliage covering the rocks, but she had wandered only a few yards away from the party when she questioned the wisdom of her sojourn.

  As she reconciled herself to a few more hours of boring small talk, the tree above her shook, spilling droplets of water on her silk dress. She looked up, and her eyes followed a figure as he dropped from the tree and landed on the ground without a care for the slippery surface.

  A man with honey-colored skin, black hair, and almond-shaped brown eyes smiled at her. “Hi, Rosie.”

  “Jack!” Roslyn’s one word held a plethora of emotion—surprise, anger, fear, and delight—and she was hard-pressed to say which sprang most readily to the surface.

  “Miss me?” His grin widened as he stepped closer.

  “No,” she lied.
She had missed the way he laughed at her stupid jokes, the way he always smelled like gunpowder and adventure, and the way his arms felt around her.

  But she wasn’t going back to him, not again. She was tired of him ditching her when he got bored with her or, worse yet, when he was happy to have her stay as long as she didn’t mind the parade of women she had to share him with.

  “Liar.” He took another step closer, and she caught that gunpowder smell that should have been unpleasant but somehow ignited her blood as if it were made of the same stuff.

  She intended to take a step back, put some distance between them, and tell him to go away. Instead, her heel slipped on a leaf, and Jack had to reach out and yank her closer to prevent her fall. He pulled her hands against his chest, and she could feel his heartbeat. Or maybe it was her heartbeat, or maybe both of theirs, beating in unison. She stared into his brown eyes and knew that if she didn’t do something quickly, she would stand in his arms until he saw fit to let her go. And he always does let me go.

  “I’m with Gavin.” Her voice sounded breathy, so she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and repeated herself. “I’m with Gavin.”

  Roslyn pulled her hands out of Jack’s, and he let her go. She backed away more slowly that time, making sure of her footing before each step. “I’m with Gavin. He loves me, and we have a whole life together. We’re happy.”

  “You’re not happy.” Jack dismissed her statement with his tone and a wave of his hand. “You’re never happy with Gavin. You don’t love him.”

  You love me, he didn’t say, and Roslyn wasn’t sure if she was saddened or relieved by the omission. He spoke about her feelings with such certainty and accuracy, which made her all the angrier. She hated that he knew her emotions so well, because he never acted like he cared about them.

  “I do love Gavin, in a way.” And either way, I am not having this conversation with you, of all people. “Anyway, he knows how I feel. I told you. We’re happy.”

  Roslyn expected Jack to argue, and part of her—the stupid part—was disappointed when he didn’t. She turned to walk back inside.

  “They found a new moon,” Jack said.

  She froze. A new moon? She spun back around, by some miracle not falling flat on her face. “Who did? The government?” Are they starting up the space exploration program again?

  “Naw, some drunk guy taking a joyride around the system in his space yacht. He nearly crashed into this moon that wasn’t on anyone’s records. He wanted to make it his own private moon, but his wife convinced him to report it to the OSA. I happened to see their records—”

  “You hacked into their system, you mean.”

  Jack shrugged. “To-may-to, to-mah-to. Either way, the planet Orpheus has a for-real moon that no one has explored before. And I could perhaps use my… let’s call them ‘unique skills’ to get anyone I wanted on the first exploration team.”

  Roslyn stopped breathing, and a tingle ran its way from her toes to her scalp. It was the adventure she had been waiting for, an entire new moon to explore, at the behest of the Orpheus Space Agency. And I could be with Jack again. The trip was what she wanted more than anything in the system.

  She took a deep breath. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, I’m not going with you to this new moon.”

  “They named it Arachne.”

  “Fine. I’m not going with you to Arachne. Take Blueboy with you.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Of course Cobalt’s coming. Who would fix my stuff if I didn’t have him? But you’re coming too.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m going to Orpheus. Gavin and I are going to Orpheus.” Maybe they would go to the underwater city of Triton. They hadn’t been there in at least a few hundred years.

  Jack took a step closer. “Rosie, of course you’re coming. No way would you miss this.”

  She made the mistake of meeting his eyes. They held that same glow and passion for adventure that drove her, and they reminded her why she loved him.

  I promised myself I was never going to fall into his trap again, no matter what. Gavin deserves better than that.

  You didn’t know there would be a new moon.

  No. Matter. What.

  “I am going to miss it. I’m staying here. Or going to Orpheus. One of those. I have a nice, stable life.” I hate nice. I hate stable. “I’m not giving that up for some empty rock.”

  Jack grinned again, and Roslyn tried very hard not to let the dimple in his left cheek be her undoing. “I didn’t tell you everything yet. It’s not just some empty rock. They found symbols—symbols that look like this.”

  He held up his datapad for her to see. Depicted there was a black rock with curved symbols. They resembled an ancient pictograph language, but no primitive cultures could make their sigils glow blue like that.

  Roslyn gasped. “Jack! Those are Demitrius’s symbols!”

  “I thought you’d like that.” Jack’s smirk said, I know you better than anyone, Rosie. Don’t pretend I don’t. “This moon might hold the secrets of where we came from, and since Demitrius has told you more than he’s told anyone else about them, I can’t think of anyone more qualified to figure them out.”

  A mysterious new moon. A language that might be our native tongue. In a big-enough quantity that I could learn it. Jack.

  She tried to take a deep breath, but it came out ragged. She wanted to go—more than anything.

  No matter what.

  “I’m sorry, Jack. I know we would all like to know where we came from, but you’ll have to do it without me. If you figure it out, let me know.” She turned and walked back into the party.

  Present Day

  Roslyn shot up straight in bed. Her heart pounded as she replayed the scene she had witnessed.

  Witnessed? Or experienced? She got up and went to the bathroom for a glass of water, waiting for the dream to fade. Even five minutes later, the vision was as crystal clear as the cool liquid she was drinking.

  Gavin and Jack. She felt like she knew them, and she found herself as drawn to the Jack character as the Roslyn in her dream. But Dream Roslyn walked away from him. How could she do that? She loves him.

  Roslyn put the glass down and rubbed her eyes. I really am losing my mind. “She loves him” sounded suspiciously like “I love him,” and Roslyn had no intention of falling in love with some guy she had met in a dream, especially one who didn’t seem to return Dream Roslyn’s affection. She shook her head then went back to her room and grabbed her dream journal off her nightstand.

  Chapter 7

  Present Day

  Cobalt shook Jack. For someone so full of energy, his brother sure could sleep like the dead. Cobalt was annoyed enough to wish that the nonexistent girl Jack was always yammering on about would show up right then, just so she could see the line of drool coming out of Jack’s mouth. That would be sure to end any relationship before it started.

  “Come on. Get up. We’re at Ariadne.”

  “Five more minutes.”

  “Nope. Now.” Cobalt grabbed Jack’s hands and pulled him into a sitting position. When Jack started to slink back down, he grabbed him under the arms and pulled him up. “We do not want to be the last people on this train.”

  Jack mumbled something under his breath, but he did seem to be more awake. “All right, all right. You win. But I’ve told you over and over—we have nothing to worry about, unless you made a mistake on your end that you didn’t tell me about.”

  Cobalt hefted his bag—lighter than before since it didn’t contain his coolant suit—onto his shoulder. “I don’t make mistakes. Now, come on.”

  He waited as Jack searched his bench for his datapad, though how he could have lost something half the size of his pillow was beyond Cobalt. Jack eventually found it under the seat and shoved it into his rucksack. Cobalt eyed Jack’s pillow and b
lanket, left in disarray on the cushion, then looked at his own neatly folded set. He considered chastising his brother, but he really did want to get off the train. The train personnel would probably have to unfold them to wash them, anyway, and chastising Jack got him nothing but a headache.

  Despite being asleep only moments before, Jack had a spring in his step as they made their way off the train. Cobalt’s steps, on the other hand, made heavy thuds on the metallic floor, every step in time with the throbbing in his head. He had slept terribly, both because he missed his own bed and because odds were good he would be sleeping on even less comfortable surfaces than a train bench for years to come.

  They stepped off the air-conditioned car and into the Ariadne summer air, and Cobalt’s skin soaked up the heat like a proverbial sponge, though he hadn’t even realized he was cold until he felt the glorious warmth on his arms. He loved that feeling of traveling from one temperature extreme to another.

  The train station was bustling with people. A man in a business suit hustled toward a train about to depart for Orpheus, jostling Jack’s elbow on the way. Outside the same train, a dark-skinned set of parents had tears in their eyes as they sent a girl who was likely their daughter off to university for the first time.

  But those weren’t the people who concerned Cobalt. He kept glancing at the line of uniformed police officers who filled the station. They made a beeline for one of the coaches, and Cobalt did the math to determine it was the diamond-storage coach.

  “They know what we did.” Cobalt kept his voice at a low rumble, loud enough for only Jack to hear.

  His brother glowered at him anyway. “But they don’t know we did it. And they won’t know if you keep quiet and look anywhere else.”

  Jack’s right. Focus on the task at hand. Cobalt had arranged for them to work for a small repair shop in the Atropos region while they waited for the heist to cool down, so he studied the vid screens showing the departure times for shuttles to different parts of Ariadne.