United

by Melissa Landers

  Troy released an angry huff. “I don’t need time.”

  “Well, I do. And I’m not going to make another snap decision, not for something this important.” Cara dug in her pocket and pulled out a brass key, which she handed to Elle. “Now’s a good time to move David’s body. You know how to fly the shuttle, right?”

  “I can manage.”

  “Take my brother and Larish with you. Syrine, too. She should see that his remains are safe. Then we’ll meet back here and put it to a vote.”

  “Come on,” Elle said, extending one hand to a teary-eyed Syrine. “You can prop up your ankle on the backseat.”

  Troy made a noise of disgust and left the room. His combat boots clunked loudly toward the front of the house, and then a door slammed hard enough to rattle the windows. Cara chewed her bottom lip and watched the empty doorway, but she didn’t follow her brother.

  Aelyx remained in bed while Cara walked the others to the shuttle. After the engine whirred and faded into the distance, she returned to the living room and paused in the doorway. For a while, neither of them spoke. A wall of complete silence stood between them, not even the faint hum of a refrigerator filling the background. Aelyx couldn’t read her face in the near darkness, and he didn’t know what to say, or if he should speak at all.

  “How do you feel?” she finally asked.

  “Okay,” he said. But that wasn’t fully true, so he added, “Physically.”

  “And emotionally?”

  He extended a hand to her. “Why don’t you come sit down?”

  She left the doorway and settled beside him on the mattress, close enough for him to smell the smoke and citrus on her hair, but not touching him. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands, so he took one of them and held it between both of his. She responded by scooting over until their legs met through the sheet.

  “Today was scary,” she whispered, looking down. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  He squeezed her hand and tried to lighten the mood. “It would take more than death for you to lose me. I meant it when I said I’ll always find my way back.” When that didn’t help, he tipped her chin until their eyes met. I’m sorry about before. I was wrong about Syrine. I should have listened—

  It doesn’t matter who was wrong, she interrupted. But in contrast to her words, a jumble of emotions and memories from the day’s events leaked from her mind into his.

  Aelyx felt a pang of shame when he understood how deeply his actions had hurt her. But at the same time, he was glad the argument had affected her as deeply as it had him. Oddly, that left him feeling even more ashamed because he shouldn’t be grateful for her pain, and he realized how right his sister had been. In some ways, he was still unprepared to experience love.

  The connection closed with Cara’s eyes. “No matter how hard I try, sometimes it feels like I can’t do anything right. Your opinion matters the most to me, so when you brought up my mistakes on the colony, it really stung.”

  “I shouldn’t have done that.” He could see how unfair he’d been. He had accused her of projecting her anger onto the wrong person, but he’d done nearly the same. “Sometimes your position in The Way makes me feel like we’re not partners. I should’ve admitted that instead of criticizing you.”

  “We are partners. I can’t do this alone.”

  “It would help if you included me more. I know we won’t always agree on what to do, but I can respect that if we talk about it first.” He offered her an encouraging smile. “I like the way you handled the issue with Syrine. The old Cara might have made that decision on her own.”

  She returned the grin, though shyly. “So we’re okay?”

  “Only okay?” he teased. “Haven’t we already proven we’re highly gifted?”

  Her grin gave way to a small laugh, and then she leaned over his pillow to kiss him. Their lips had barely met when their com-spheres buzzed. Aelyx didn’t know where his sphere was, so he waited for Cara to answer hers.

  Larish’s image barely had time to form before he blurted in a rush, “Quick! Find Syrine’s old clothes and get them out of the house.”

  “What?” Cara asked. “Why?”

  “Because I think I know how Jaxen did it,” Larish said. “And if I’m right, he could be on his way there now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Cara bolted into the night, her shoes slapping the pavement as she sprinted down the middle of the street with Syrine’s clothes balled under one arm. She tried to keep her pace steady while activating the electron tracker she’d grabbed on her way out the door. The device beeped as soon as she passed it over Syrine’s tunic, telling her Larish had been right. Aisly had planted a beacon on Syrine during the struggle in the stairwell. That’s how Jaxen had found them.

  Cara heard the churn of rushing water and glanced to her right, where runoff from the street poured into an open sewer grate. She slowed to a jog and considered shoving the tunic into the sewer, but after thinking it through, she changed her mind. Jaxen had every reason to believe he’d killed half the group. If she put the tracker in the right place, he might keep believing it. So she ran on until she reached an old church bordered by a sprawling graveyard.

  Perfect.

  She used a rock to break the sod between two headstones and dug a shallow hole. She’d just finished burying the clothes when Larish contacted her again.

  “Jaxen and Aisly were spotted in Europe,” he said. “So no need to panic.”

  Cara sat back on her heels, wiping a hand across her forehead. “Now you tell me.”

  “We’re done relocating David’s remains.”

  “All right. Meet you back at the house.”

  An hour later, everyone reconvened around Aelyx’s mattress in the living room to plan their next move. Midnight was approaching, bringing an end to the longest day of Cara’s life. She couldn’t believe just that morning she’d shuttled Aelyx to the transport to fake his departure. It felt like a week had passed since then.

  She fought back a yawn and glanced at the others by the light of a single candle resting on the floor. “All right, then. The vote carries four to one. Syrine can stay.”

  “This is a mistake,” Troy said, not caring that Syrine sat a few feet away. “War is risky enough when everyone’s on the same side. Any commander would tell you—”

  “But we’re not the Marines and she isn’t a soldier,” Cara reminded him. “She made a mistake any one of us could’ve made. She knows it was wrong to let Aisly go, and she’s sorry. Now we have to put it behind us so we can regroup. Jaxen thinks he won. This could be our last chance to catch him off guard.” She turned to Larish. “Where is he now?”

  Larish used his sphere to project a map of Europe into the air above the candle. He’d already marked a variety of sites on the map with pulsating red dots. “There’s been an interesting change in the pattern. After destroying two manufacturing plants in Canada and another two in Europe, the hybrids began targeting phosphorus mines.”

  “Phosphorus mines?” Cara scrunched her forehead. “Why?”

  “Aside from their role in nourishing plant growth, I can’t say. But whatever the reason, it was urgent enough for them to kill the security personnel at each site.”

  Cara looked at her brother. “This seals it. I don’t know why the hybrids are blowing up fertilizer plants, but it has nothing to do with cutting off our food supply.”

  Troy merely sucked his teeth in silence.

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Larish said. “And there’s one mine they haven’t destroyed—the largest remaining. It’s in the western Sahara.”

  Cara groaned. “Great, another desert.”

  “And nowhere near here,” Aelyx pointed out. He glanced at the wall, where his sister sat with Syrine’s head resting on her lap. “How soon can we travel?”

  Elle pursed her lips in consideration while stroking Syrine’s hair. Cara’s heart ached at the sight. It was hard to hold a grudge against Syrine when she lay curled on h
er side, crying without sound. In a way she’d lost David all over again. Aisly had committed some heinous crimes in her lifetime, but giving Syrine false hope might’ve been the cruelest thing she’d ever done.

  “It’s not the travel that concerns me,” Elle said. “It’s the exertion once we arrive. Bones heal quickly, but for internal injuries the accelerant needs twelve hours to restore organs to peak condition.”

  Larish shut down the map and rolled his sphere between two fingers. “It makes the most sense to leave now and rest once we’re there.”

  “Then let me fly,” Aelyx said. He pushed into a sitting position and threw off the top sheet, revealing the faded jeans and tank top Cara had brought him. “I’ve had more sleep than the rest of you combined.”

  “You were unconscious,” Cara argued. “Not sure that counts.”

  Troy grumbled from the doorway. “How about we quit wasting time and do our talking in the shuttle? Unless you’d like to override me on that, too.”

  Cara shot her brother a withering look. He wasn’t helping.

  “Aelyx is safe to pilot the craft,” Elle said. “His concussion should’ve healed by now.”

  With that decided, Troy spun on his boot and exited the room, leaving the rest of them to gather their things, which didn’t amount to much—one half-empty medical kit, a satchel of protein packets, half a bag of pork rinds, and a duffel filled with David’s possessions.

  Syrine’s fractured ankle had healed well enough to allow her to limp independently, but she leaned against Elle as they crossed the floor. Cara slung a bag over each shoulder and supported Syrine from the other side. Syrine turned to her with a watery grin, and for the first time in months, she opened her thoughts to Cara.

  No words were exchanged, but in that brief moment, Syrine shared more than either of their languages could express—sorrow and shame for her perceived weakness, determination to make up for her mistakes, and rising above it all, gratitude for a second chance. She considered Cara a friend, nearly as dear to her as Aelyx, and she’d hated herself for driving a wedge between them.

  The connection closed before Cara could apologize for judging Syrine so harshly, or say how touched she was to be ranked among her closest friends. She hadn’t known Syrine thought of her that way, and it cast their relationship in a new light.

  When everyone was seated in the shuttle and the miles passed beneath them in a dark blur, Cara chewed on her thumbnail and tried to figure out the reason for the new heaviness in her chest. It took a while, but by the time they’d chased the setting sun to the northeastern tip of Africa, she realized the cause of her unease.

  The Aribol hadn’t simply threatened her race and her future with Aelyx. They wanted to rip her away from Syrine, Elle, and Larish, too—three people she’d come to care for during the last few trying days together. The time they’d spent on Earth, both good and bad, had shown her what was at stake. She didn’t want to lose any of them, but she would if they failed to find a solution before the deadline.

  Suddenly, the shuttle came to an abrupt midair halt, flinging her against her harness straps. She turned to Aelyx in the pilot’s seat, but before she could ask him what was wrong, he pointed out the front shield. “Look. They’re here.”

  At first glance, all Cara noticed was the mine—an enormous canyon at least three hundred feet deep and a quarter of a mile wide, scooped out of the middle of the desert. The quarry walls were striped in alternating layers of golden sand and powdery white phosphorus. All around the cliffs at ground level sat mountainous heaps of discarded earth. The setting sun cast shade behind the dirt mounds, and there, half concealed by the nearest shadows were two unmistakable spacecraft, neither of them cloaked. The first was a shuttle slightly smaller than their own, and the second was a midsize cruiser, perfect for interstellar travel. The hybrids were nowhere in sight, but that didn’t stop Cara’s heart from leaping with joy.

  They’d done it. They’d found Jaxen’s ship.

  Aelyx held his position, well outside detection. “It’s an X-class vessel, a L’eihr craft. I can’t fly it, but I can access its log.”

  “And disable it?” asked Troy from the backseat.

  Aelyx smiled. “Easily. The shuttle, too.”

  “Then do it now, and let’s deal with the hybrids later,” Troy said. “Jaxen can wave his staff all he wants, but it won’t fly him out of this desert.”

  Cara squinted through the front shield, wishing she could spot Jaxen and see if he had his staff with him. Tinkering with an engine wouldn’t reopen Aelyx’s wounds, but being knocked ten yards across the sand would. “How close can we get without tipping them off?”

  “Depends on where they are,” Aelyx said.

  “I assume they’re inside the mine,” Larish told them. “In order to collapse it, they’ll first need to drill deep into the cliff walls and place explosives within the holes. The fact that they’re not in view leads me to believe they’re not ready to detonate.”

  “How about this,” Cara suggested. “We’ll drop off Aelyx and Larish at the ships. Then while they’re pulling the coordinates from the flight log and disabling the engines, I’ll fly the rest of us over the quarry to get a visual on Jaxen and Aisly.”

  Syrine finally spoke. “Who has the iphal?”

  “It’s gone,” Aelyx said. “I lost it in the blast.”

  Troy removed his rifle clip and inspected it. “I’ve still got twenty rounds.” He snapped the clip back into place. “That’s eighteen more than I need.”

  Syrine shook her head. “I still think we should take them alive.”

  “Of course you would say that,” Troy muttered under his breath.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Elle demanded.

  “It means her loyalty’s divided, just like I said before.”

  Aelyx landed the shuttle purposefully hard on the sand, jarring them into silence. “This chance may never come again, so let’s make the most of it.” He stepped out the side door, and Cara scooted into the pilot’s seat while Larish exited through the back.

  “Careful,” she whispered to Aelyx. “Be kind to your spleen.”

  He patted his abdomen. “Promise.”

  After agreeing to use their spheres to check in, they shared a quick kiss, and Cara left him to his work. She lifted off gradually, so as not to sandblast Aelyx and Larish with the thrusters. When she reached the top of the dirt mound, she engaged the cloaking mode and accelerated past the cliff ledge to the valley beyond.

  The low angle of the sun cast the mine in darkness, making it difficult to pick out anything except gargantuan dump trucks and towering piles of white powder. But then something shimmered in her periphery, and she glanced at the opposite end of the gorge to find sunlight glinting off the metallic edge of Jaxen’s hovercraft, which was rising slowly from the depths of the mine.

  Jaxen stood in between Rune and Aisly on the skateboard-style craft. Each girl clung to his waist while he wrapped an arm around their shoulders, making him the cream filling in the world’s most bizarre cookie sandwich. Even from this distance, Cara could see the Nova Staff tucked beneath one of his arms.

  She used her sphere to send Aelyx and Larish a message. “They must’ve set the explosives, because they’re on their way up.”

  “I need more time,” Aelyx said.

  Troy scooted up from the backseat. “I have three words for you, Sis: hit and run.”

  Cara couldn’t help smiling. “Knock them out of the sky?”

  “Problem solved.”

  But she would have to be delicate about it. She agreed with Syrine. The hybrids were more useful alive. So she waited until the hovercraft had cleared the cliff ledge, where the drop wouldn’t kill them. Then she gripped the wheel and warned, “Hold on. I’ve never run over anyone before.”

  She punched the accelerator and zoomed across the canyon toward the hovercraft, prepared to bump it with her starboard wing. She approached so quickly Jaxen didn’t have time to react. His h
ead snapped in her direction, his eyes wide. But too late, Cara realized she’d left the cloaking mode engaged. Without a visual of the wing, she could easily chop Jaxen in half instead of knocking him to the ground. She swerved around the craft and disabled the cloaking device, then came around for another pass.

  This time Jaxen was ready. He raised his staff while Aisly and the clone crouched low to give him more freedom of movement. The staff headpiece glowed alive, and Jaxen aimed it at the shuttle. Cara dodged the invisible force with a sharp right, and then came at him again. She was closer now, close enough to see the fear etched onto her clone’s face. Rune had changed visibly since their last encounter. She’d lost weight, making her cheekbones more pronounced and her jaw sharp. She must’ve known what was coming, because she released Jaxen and jumped to the ground. Cara was only a few yards from connecting with the hovercraft when Jaxen raised his staff and struck out again.

  There was a loud buzz, and instantly, the shuttle engine died.

  As her stomach dipped in a freefall, Cara tipped the shuttle aside, just enough to tap the hovercraft with her port wing. It connected with a resounding thunk that tossed Jaxen and Aisly overboard.

  Cara barely had time to brace for impact. The shuttle sailed toward the sand, where it hit with a bone-rattling jolt and skidded on its belly until it met the resistance of a dirt mound and jerked to a stop. Cara’s neck snapped forward and back. She opened her eyes to find the shuttle nose embedded in the landfill. The controls were silent, the whole system dead, but a quick glance in the backseat revealed everyone alive.

  Troy had already started unfastening his harness, reminding Cara to do the same. She rubbed her aching neck with one hand while using the other to free herself. Elle and Syrine followed suit, and soon they all filed outside into the sweltering desert.

  Dusk had fallen, the sun a mere glow on the horizon, but it was enough for Cara to make out Rune in the distance, hurt and limping toward Jaxen and Aisly, who were near the cliff ledge, struggling to stand up.