Star's End

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  “Still need to secure the perimeter,” the first soldier said. The others crept around the woods, light rifles out. The first soldier, though, walked toward Esme and Will. His gun wasn’t pointed at them, but Esme still couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  These were the six soldiers who had been inside the Radiance’s dimension when the boundaries were sealed up, securing the breach to keep the people of Ekkeko and the rest of the Four Sisters safe. But they hadn’t died, Will had told her, sitting on his sofa, keeping his voice soft and soothing as she listened to him with a growing sense of horror and excitement. They had forged an alliance with the Radiance—except he called them the Divested, the way Isabel had—and found a way out of the Radiance’s dimension. Five years ago, during the first round of security breaches. It hadn’t been the Radiance trying to take over at all, just aftereffects that the Coromina Group misread. This latest round of security breaches had been more of the same—nothing sinister, just these six original R-Troops staying in contact with the Radiance.

  No wonder Sergeant Woods had told her to speak to the Radiance herself. She was starting to see that she and the company did not understand them at all.

  The soldiers there weren’t exactly rebels hoping to take the company down. But their loyalties lay with the Radiance. Just as Isabel’s had.

  And just as Will’s did, he’d confessed, his head bowed down, not looking her in the eye. “I just wanted to keep them safe,” he said. “I didn’t want to let the company hurt them. But I wasn’t going to let them hurt anyone on the worlds, either.” He peered up at her. “I wouldn’t let them hurt you.”

  Esme had looked away, her cheeks burning. All these years, he’d been playing his own game, trying to make his own changes from within the company, same as her. He fought for the Radiance, she for her citizen-employees. And the winner was still the upper echelons of the Coromina Group. It always had been.

  But not anymore. For the first time, she saw something like the truth: if her Coromina Group wasn’t going to exploit its people, then it couldn’t exploit the Radiance anymore, either. They would have to become like Will. Protecting all their citizen-employees, and all the other denizens of the Four Sisters, too. The first soldier stopped a few feet away from Esme. He looked her up and down. His hair was long, pulled back in a ponytail, and a shadow of a beard had grown in. It was like looking at another version of Will.

  “So, this is the new CEO,” he said.

  Will didn’t say anything, at least not out loud. Esme took a deep breath and held out her hand. “I’m Esme,” she said.

  The soldier stared down at her hand. Esme didn’t drop it, didn’t let herself think she had made some kind of mistake.

  Then he laughed. “Esme, I’m Aiden.” He grabbed her hand and shook.

  “Aiden,” she said, trying to remember if that had been a name given to him by Flor and the rest of Radiance Project team, or if it was one he had chosen for himself. Then she realized it didn’t matter.

  “I hear you’re setting us free,” he said, taking a step back.

  “Sector three clear!” one of the other soldiers shouted.

  “I’m changing the focus of the company.” Esme drew herself up. “No more weapons manufacture.”

  “So, you won’t be making any more of us,” Aiden said.

  Esme shook her head. “No more human products.”

  Aiden tilted his head at her. A few strands of dark hair loosed themselves and stuck to his cheek. “We aren’t human.”

  “Sector four clear!” called out another soldier.

  “We’re both,” Will said. Esme glanced at him; his expression was hard, his eyes glinting, and she knew he’d told the truth, when he said he wanted to protect the citizen-employees of the Four Sisters, too.

  Aiden grinned. “Fine. We’re both.”

  “Sector one clear!”

  “It seems Will was telling the truth,” Aiden said, turning back to Esme. “You didn’t bring any CG goons with you.”

  Esme shook her head.

  “Good.” He jerked his head back toward the rubble. “Let’s talk. Will says you need a favor.”

  “Sector five clear!” And then, layered over it, the last “Sector two clear!” The other soldiers started moving toward them.

  “We’re not, of course, in the practice of giving favors to the CEO of the Coromina Group,” Aiden said as he led her toward the ruins.

  “We’ll make an exchange.” Esme kept her gaze fixed on the ruins. It’s not Star’s End, she told herself. Memories kept flashing through her head. Adrienne and Daphne as toddlers, chasing each other through the garden as Isabel, their mother, watched on, draped lazily in a chair. Sneaking through the woods so she could go to parties on the beach. Finding Isabel that day in the rain. Her whole life, burned up and left to the devices of the forest.

  Aiden glanced at Will. “You told her, didn’t you? That we can still speak with the Divested?” He didn’t sound angry. More—amused, almost.

  “I had to,” Will said. “It’s part of the exchange.”

  They were talking about the security breaches. Esme closed her eyes. All those interviews. That investigation she had called upon Eleanora Dixon. And she still hadn’t come close to the source of the breach. It had been these lost soldiers living in the wreckage of her home. They had been opening the channels, communicating with the Radiance. Communicating, she knew, with their family.

  Aiden led Esme and Will up to the wreckage of the house. The two of them walked on, but Esme had to stop. She gazed at the wall, unrecognizable up close. She tried to connect this burned, crumbling, vine-covered structure with the home she had known as a child.

  “Are you coming, CEO?” Aiden called out. Esme jerked herself out of her reverie and stepped in among the rubble. Grass had grown up in the ruins, dragging them down into the dirt.

  Aiden and Will stood beneath the half-roof, and when Esme stepped into the shadow with them, she realized, with a jolt, that she was standing in her father’s library. The stones and vials of sand had disappeared, and the ground sparkled with the shards of broken memory glass squares. The glass in the windows was gone; the curtains lay in a moldy pile on the ground. Esme felt tears prickle at her the edges of her eyes, and for a half a second, she saw the library as it had been—always so dark, from the curtains, always full of shadows.

  A hand pressed against the flat of her back. “We need to make the arrangement,” Will said, his breath brushing across her ear. “We need to find Isabel.”

  Esme nodded, wiped at her eyes. Aiden just watched her. He was sitting in one of the old wooden chairs, his rifle leaned up against his knee. Esme breathed in deep. She walked toward him. Her tears were still there, right on the verge of falling, but she wouldn’t let them.

  She had to find Isabel.

  “Please,” Aiden said. “Have a seat.” He gestured at another chair, metal and simple. Had this been somewhere in the house? It didn’t seem familiar. Esme slid into it, keeping her back straight. She heard Will’s footsteps as he came to stand behind her. The other soldiers waited outside the ruins—she could see one, his hair shorn to the scalp, standing out on the grass.

  “Will told me the situation,” Aiden said. “About your sister.”

  “Isabel,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, Isabel.” Aiden squinted off at something in the corner. Esme didn’t dare take her eyes off of him. “I remember her, you know. She talked to us that night. The night this happened.” He gestured out at the house.

  Esme’s heart clenched up. “She talked to you?” She leaned forward, greedy for knowledge. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. Small talk.” Aiden turned back to her. His eyes were dark and piercing. They weren’t Will’s eyes at all. “I’m going to be frank with you. I have no fucking idea where your sister is.”

  Disappointment swallowed Esme whole. And then it was replaced, quickly enough, with a vast flood of fear. She jerked around to look at Will, suddenly afraid s
he had misread him completely, that this whole thing was a set up to have her assassinated.

  Aiden laughed. Will looked at her and said, “He’s playing with you.”

  “What?” She looked back at Aiden. Curled her hands into fists. “What the hell are you saying?”

  “Apparently, Will didn’t tell you everything.” Aiden leaned back in his seat. He was enjoying this, Esme realized. Enjoyed watching her squirm. “We don’t know where your sister is, but the Divested do.”

  Esme’s heart pounded so fast she could hear it echo inside her head. She stared at Aiden and gripped the armrests of her chair. “You’re not going to ask them for me, are you?” She already knew the answer.

  “Of course not. You want your sister, you can go in there and ask them yourself.”

  Esme whipped her head around at Will. “Did you know this?” she demanded. “You didn’t warn me—”

  “I said it would be hard for you.” His voice so quiet, it was like the breeze.

  “We’ll take you over to their world,” Aiden said. “We’ll offer some measure of protection. Not that you’ll probably need it—after what happened with your sister, they aren’t keen on wiping humans off the planets anymore.”

  “What?” Esme whispered.

  Aiden shrugged. “She refuses to live with them. If they try anything, it could kill her. Us, too. So, they won’t try anything.” He paused. “If we help you, though, you’ve got to do something for us. Will said this was an exchange.”

  Esme took a deep breath. Isabel. Isabel. Isabel. As long as she repeated her sister’s name, she wasn’t afraid. This wasn’t about her father anymore, and she had never given a damn about ensuring her inheritance. Her sisters weren’t going to take over the company. All she wanted was to see Isabel one more time. All she wanted was to apologize. “I can grant you amnesty,” she said, watching Aiden as she spoke. “You aren’t supposed to be living here. I could have you arrested. Deported.”

  Aiden said nothing.

  “But if you help me, I’ll give you amnesty, and the chance to make our world safe for humans and the Rad—the Divested.”

  Aiden’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”

  Esme took a deep breath. She glanced at Will, who gave her an encouraging smile. “I want to work with the Divested. I want to find a way to share our world. But I need help communicating with them.” She nodded at Aiden. “I’m willing to give you amnesty for your help, no strings attached. But I also want to create a position for you, to help broker an arrangement. You’ll work alongside Will. You would be full citizen-employees, of course, with all the benefits that entails.”

  “You want us to be your soldiers again?” Aiden leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Esme shook her head quickly. “No, not at all. I want you to be—to be diplomats. Liaisons.”

  Aiden studied her. Then he closed his eyes. Dropped his head back against the chair. The sounds of the forest echoed around them. Insects chirping, birds screaming. Esme felt utterly alone in the world.

  Aiden’s eyes snapped open. “The others agree to your terms,” he said. “But if you show any sign of exploiting us or the Divested—”

  “I won’t,” Esme interrupted. “I’m not my father. If they can change, so can the company.”

  “You’ll never see us again.” Aiden’s eyes glinted. “Let’s hope you’re not your father. Come with me.” He stood up. Esme did too, although her legs were shaking. She thought he’d lead her into the woods, but instead he led her deeper into the ruins of the house. She stared at the grimy, vine-covered walls and recognized vestiges of her childhood.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Will said, suddenly appearing at her side. He put a hand on her arm.

  “Yes, I do.” Up ahead, Aiden pushed aside a rotting brocade curtain, a curtain she remembered because it had hung in the sitting room, always pushed open to let in the view of the garden. “You know that.”

  Will didn’t answer.

  Aiden turned toward her, holding the curtain open. “Here,” he said. “This’ll take you into their world.”

  Esme’s heart thudded. “They live in the house now.”

  “No.” Aiden’s eyes narrowed. “They live in the dimension you and your people trapped them in. We opened the connection when we came back seven years ago. The boundaries have always been thin here.” His mouth stretched into a grin. “Because of your sister.”

  Esme took a deep breath. She glanced over at Will, and he nodded once. She wondered what he saw, what he heard, in that connected head of his. If there was a danger he wasn’t telling her about. Not to betray her, but because he knew she would fight him on it.

  “They’re waiting,” Aiden said.

  Esme walked up to the entrance. Past the curtain, everything was dark.

  Isabel, she thought.

  And then she stepped through.

  It happened as instantaneously as it had thirteen years ago, when she had stepped through the boundary in the woods. She was not in the ruins of her childhood home anymore. She was in that space she remembered from the day Star’s End burned. Shining stone floors, floating cubes of white light. An enormous, cavernous space. Another world.

  It wasn’t empty.

  She felt them more than she saw them. They flickered in and out of the edge of her vision, shadows shuddering so that when she turned her head, they appeared to be nothing. But she could feel them regarding her. The back of her neck tingled.

  “Hello?” she called out. Her voiced echoed timorously and rang out, just for a second, like a bell. But then a noise started, off to her side, a shh shh shh that reminded her of ocean waves. It rose up around her, a wall of sound. She was too petrified to move.

  Up ahead, the air glimmered.

  “Hello?” Esme whispered, and then she swallowed, hard, and raised her voice. “Hello? I’m here about my sister. About Isabel.”

  The glimmer in the air darkened, solidified. Esme knew what she would see in the seconds before it appeared.

  The creature on the beach.

  It unfurled itself before her, glossy black feathers cascading down its back. Its limbs were too long, its body too thin. It had a face that didn’t look human enough, and its teeth were long, jagged knives. For one second, Esme fell backward through time, and she was standing on that escape ship, the engines pouring hot air, as the soldier fell beneath the Radiance’s claws.

  “Issssssssabel,” the Radiance said, its mouth stretching wide to reveal its teeth.

  “Yes.” Esme’s voice shook. Her knees buckled but she didn’t fall. At least the Radiance did not come any closer. “Isabel. She’s my sister, and she’s missing. I want to find her.”

  “Ssssiiiissssssster,” the Radiance said, drawing the word out into a long hiss. It had not occurred to Esme until now that she might not even be able to communicate with them. But perhaps those R-Troop defectors had taught them Corominan.

  Or perhaps Isabel had.

  “I’m trying to find her,” Esme said again, speaking slowly. To her side, those flickers in her vision grew stronger, and she caught glimpses of other aliens crowding together around her. She dug her nails into her palm to keep herself steady. “She went away. A long time ago. And I need to find her again.”

  The Radiance took a step toward Esme, and Esme did not let herself recoil. It bent down. Studying her? Its eyes looked like galaxies, empty space filled with a million tiny lights, and Esme didn’t know what it saw when it looked at her.

  “Why?” The word scraped in the Radiance’s voice, harsh and unfamiliar.

  Esme stuttered. “W—why do I need to find her? Or why did she leave?”

  “Why sssshe left.”

  “She was angry with me,” Esme said. “Angry about what I had let happen to her, and what I had done—” She looked off to her left, to her right, at both groups of Radiance pressing together. Their faces loomed out of the darkness, their bodies half-invisible. “What I had done to you,” she sa
id.

  The main Radiance, the queen Radiance, lifted one too-long arm. “Cooome,” it said.

  “What?” Esme trembled.

  “Come,” it said. “Let me Sssssseee you.”

  Esme thought of Isabel saying that, using See like it meant something else to her. Esme had decided, in the months after Isabel left, that it was her way of talking about the telepathy she shared with the R-Troops. With these creatures.

  “Please,” Esme said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Hurt,” the Radiance said, all in one voice. “We have hurt already.”

  “I know.” Esme drew herself up. She pictured Isabel’s face clearly in her mind. “And I’m sorry. I’m deeply, truly sorry. I didn’t understand everything that was happening, but that was no excuse.” She took a deep breath. “I want to make things right. Aiden told me how you’ve stopped trying to attack our world because of Isabel. I want to do the same for you. I have an arrangement with him and the others—we want to create a way for all of us to live together. For everyone to be safe.”

  “Aideeennn,” the queen Radiance said softly. “Like Issssabel. Wouldn’t stay heeeere. With ussssss.”

  Esme choked back a gasp. “Please,” she said, her voice stuttering. “Please, I want to work with you. I want to make things better.” She wondered if she could explain about her father, about inheritances, if these creatures would understand.

  But then the queen Radiance said, “Come.” Was that an urgency in its voice, an insistence? Or was Esme only imagining it?

  “Do you think that’s fair?” Esme asked. “For us to work together?”

  “Perhapssssss.” The Radiance still held out its arm, its long hand turned palm up. The arm, the hand, were all covered in something like snake scales. “Now let us Seeeeee. To find Isssssabel.”

  Esme was numb with fear, but for a moment, it blinked away. “You’re going to help me find her?” she whispered.

  The queen Radiance said nothing, only continued to hold out its hand.