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by Imogen Howson

  Cadan’s face had gone, if anything, even grimmer. “And that’s how it started? With the pain coming from what they were doing to her?”

  Elissa sipped sweet hot coffee and nodded.

  “How often did it happen?”

  “Two or three times a week, usually.”

  Cadan muttered a swear word that Elissa thought it would be polite to pretend not to hear. “And what they were doing—plugging stuff into the back of her skull—that’s what you felt? All along, that’s what it was?”

  “Yes.” She frowned at him. “But you know that. I told you earlier today—yesterday.” She shook her head. “Whenever. I already told you. And back then, you must have known? Not what was doing it, but that I was sick and stuff. I mean, everyone knew.”

  “Bruce said you got headaches,” said Cadan.

  “Well, it was difficult to know what to call them. I guess they were sort of headaches—” Then his tone, the look on his face, hit her. “Wait, what? You mean—Bruce said I got just headaches?”

  Cadan’s eyes met hers. There was still anger in them, but now there was shame as well. “Pretty much. A few times he said they were migraines, but he— I never got the impression they were any worse than that. And definitely not even as often as once a week.”

  “Bruce said . . .” She couldn’t take it in. Bruce had known how bad the symptoms were. He’d seen the bruises, had seen her when she was so sick with pain that she couldn’t sit up or stand. And he’d told Cadan they were headaches?

  “Yeah.” Cadan was watching her. “I should have known there was more to it than that. Bruce . . . he doesn’t like things he can’t define, give reasons for. I guess saying your symptoms were just headaches, it didn’t embarrass him like having to admit—”

  “What did he have to be embarrassed about? It was me it was happening to!”

  “I’m not defending him. I just—that’s the way he is.”

  Elissa let out a long breath, trying to let her shock and anger ebb. “I guess so. My mother’s pretty much the same. She kept insisting it was just hormones or something until it was so way beyond obvious that it wasn’t. Which is crazy, because I know she knew—I guess she just kept refusing to believe it.”

  She sipped coffee, trying to calm down, trying to put it behind her. What did it matter, how her mother and Bruce had tried to deal with what had been happening to her? What did the opinion of anyone back on Sekoia mean anymore?

  Then a thought struck her, and she had to force her fingers not to clench on the cup and make coffee spill. “You believed him.”

  Cadan flushed. “I didn’t think not to. If I’d thought about it more . . . but we were in the middle of training, and I just—”

  She put the coffee down on the shelf next to the nutri-machine. “So was that why? All that freaking advice you kept giving me, about making the most of my opportunities at school? The jabs about me not excelling in class? You thought all I had was headaches? You thought I was lazy?”

  “Not lazy.”

  “Then what?”

  “Look, I just thought you were in the position of not having to work for what you wanted. I thought you took it all for granted. Bruce kept mentioning that you were having time off school, that you’d dropped your swimming club and weren’t taking driving lessons. And . . .” He sighed. “Okay. I thought you were using the headaches as an excuse. And I thought you were doing a bit of attention seeking.”

  Attention seeking? Anger swept through her, so strong she felt her face heat. She could only stare at him, hands clenched.

  Cadan looked alarmed. “It’s not that bad, Lissa. Look, you’re a teenage girl—that’s the sort of thing they do—”

  “Oh my God. Tell me you did not just say that.”

  Cadan’s flush deepened. “Okay, look—”

  “You don’t get to make big huge statements about teenage girls and assume they apply to me! You don’t do that!”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He put his hands up, a gesture of capitulation and defense. “I said it the wrong way. God knows I did my own attention seeking when I was in my teens.”

  “Please. You’re twenty-one. Like you’re so far out of your teens now.”

  “Point taken. And”—he grinned a little, ruefully—“it’s not like I’m immune to seeking some attention now, either. I had the wrong information, and I drew the wrong conclusions. I’m sorry. Really.”

  “I cared what you thought,” she said before she could catch the words back. “I wanted you to approve. I thought you were awesome when I was little.”

  Cadan’s mouth twisted into a wry look. “You hid it pretty well when you were a bit older, though.”

  “Of course I did! You with your career advice and your ‘Oh, Lissa’s not up on current affairs,’ despising me and making fun of me. Of course I wasn’t going to show you I—” She stumbled, suddenly scared of what she might end up saying if she kept talking.

  Cadan’s eyes were intent on hers. “I didn’t despise you,” he said. “I never despised you.”

  “Well, then, you hid it pretty well,” she shot back at him.

  “I guess I must have.”

  The words hung between them, seeming to gather meaning like static electricity. Elissa’s heart was suddenly beating up in her throat. He always thought of me as a little girl. Bruce’s baby sister. That’s all I was to him. Wasn’t it?

  Cadan opened his mouth, then shut it again. Then folded his arms. “Look. I was pretty pleased with myself when I was a little younger, when I was training. I know I must have been all kinds of irritating. And I made some pretty harsh judgments of you. But I did not despise you.”

  “Okay.” She wouldn’t ask him what he had thought about her. She’d put herself out there enough already—she couldn’t do it anymore.

  She shifted her position instead, took a gulp of coffee. “I didn’t have to work for what I wanted,” she said suddenly. “Before the symptoms started. You were right about that. So if you thought I was kind of spoiled, well, I guess you weren’t totally wrong.”

  “Yeah, I did, a bit,” said Cadan carefully. “But only kind of.”

  Elissa lifted a shoulder. “I guess that’s fair.”

  Cadan had been glancing at the screens at intervals while they talked. Now he moved back to take his seat at the controls again. “You’ve changed, though,” he said, eyes intent on the screens. “Since you’ve been on the ship. Seeing everything you’ve had to do—everything you’ve given up for Lin . . .”

  Elissa sat down two seats away from him. She wasn’t going to ask. It was enough to know that he hadn’t despised her; it was enough that he knew she hadn’t been faking the symptoms.

  “So I’m not so spoiled now?”

  Cadan glanced at her. “Not at all spoiled.” Their eyes met, and held, and once again the words hung in the air, gathering electricity that hummed and sparked between them. Cadan took one hand off the controls. “Lissa . . .”

  Behind them someone tapped on the glass. Elissa jumped and turned around, and Cadan hit the button to open the door.

  Lin came in, yawning, hair sticking up all over the place, and walked straight to the nutri-machine to dial a hot chocolate and chocograin bar. “How far are we now?”

  “No more than eight hours away now,” Cadan said. He glanced back at the screens, and Elissa noticed his color seemed a little higher than it had before. What had he been about to say, before Lin came in? And will he get another chance to say it?

  He didn’t look as if that were on his mind now, though. “Lin,” he said as she came over to take a seat next to Elissa, “when you were in the facility, did you have any idea what purpose it was for? Why they were doing it?”

  Lin had turned toward him as he’d said her name, but at his words her eyes went blank, as if she were looking not at but through him. “No,” she said, and the word was like a barrier clamping down.

  Cadan paused a moment, looking at her. “No idea at all? After three
years?”

  “No.”

  As Cadan opened his mouth again, Elissa put a hand out to stop him, an automatic impulse. Couldn’t he see that Lin didn’t want to answer? That he was pushing some button that needed to be left alone?

  But either he didn’t see her gesture or he chose to ignore it. “Lin, I’m not asking for fun. I’m asking because it might be useful information.”

  “It’s not useful information. I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” said Cadan, in a voice of deliberate patience. “Then I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking instead.” He moved a hand over the controls, opened up another window to check something, then glanced back at Lin. “Lissa said it had to do with your greater telepathic ability. And probably your electrokinetic ability too. Like I said, about the only thing I know about that is that it takes up a lot of energy. But I’ve seen what you eat, and, in terms of calories, I don’t think you’re taking in anything like the amount of energy you can give out.”

  “So?” said Lin.

  “So I’m thinking what they were doing was using you like some kind of energy amplifier. Drawing energy through you—”

  Every part of Lin’s body seemed to flinch. For a moment she looked as if she’d actually shrunk. Elissa flung out a hand toward Cadan. “Stop. Stop it. Can’t you see she can’t handle you talking about it?”

  Cadan’s eyebrows twitched together. “Look, I know it’s not pleasant, but—”

  “Not pleasant?” All the former understanding she thought they’d reached exploded into dust. “What’s wrong with you? You know what happened to her!”

  “Yes, I do know,” Cadan snapped. “And I’m trying to find ammunition to ensure it doesn’t happen again! The more information I have, the more of a case I can present to the IPL.”

  “You said we’d get refugee status anyway.” Elissa couldn’t help the accusing tone that came into her voice.

  “You will. But do you want to live as nothing more than refugees forever? With Lin never being recognized as a legal human? Right now all we can get these people on is contravention of the Humane Treatment Act. If we can find out they’ve broken other laws, if we can get you compensation, if we can get Lin legal human status, it’ll make things a hell of a lot better for you both. So please, both of you, stop treating me like the enemy!”

  His eyes held Elissa’s, and after a second she looked away.

  “I know one thing,” said Lin abruptly. “People—Spares—once the procedures started, they didn’t last long.”

  Elissa’s stomach clenched. Once again she heard what Lin had said that first day: Some of the other Spares . . . they burned out. Elissa had tried not to think about it. It was over for Lin, and she, Elissa, couldn’t do anything about the Spares still left there. But sometimes the words came back, and so did images, of Lin burning out, used up, gone.

  Lin was watching her. “Lissa, no, that’s not what I’m talking about. Some of us”—she glanced at Cadan—“couldn’t cope with the procedure. It burned out something in their brains. But some of us got taken away.” She hesitated. “At least, that’s what I guessed. I mean, there weren’t any corpses. They could have died and been removed without us knowing. But we all thought . . . The rumors were that they were taken away alive.” She swallowed. “And it was always people a bit older than me. A year, two at the most.”

  “People reaching the end of puberty,” said Cadan. “At the height of their powers, maybe?”

  Lin shrugged, her face shutting down again, as if, having given the information she could, she was once again blocking it out of her brain.

  “Okay.” Cadan reached to unlock the hyperdrive, ready to take yet another hop. “Thank you.”

  He was still frowning, thinking, while he engaged the hyperdrive.

  The familiar whine filled Elissa’s ears.

  As they made the hop, the ship lurched in a way that was also becoming familiar. Warning lights lit up, and when the display screen for the hyperdrive came back on, it was flashing red text. Elissa’s eyes went straight to it, and the message on-screen made her go ice cold. Error. Error. Error.

  “No,” said Cadan. “Damn it, not now.” He flicked open a panel below the screen, tapped in a code, and waited. The error message flickered, blinked slowly, and then was replaced by a page of gibberish code. The warning lights went off.

  “It’s going wrong, isn’t it?” said Lin.

  “No, it can’t be!” Elissa’s voice jumped with nerves. “Cadan, it’s working again now, isn’t it? It could have been just a glitch? A display problem? You said the hyperdrive lasts five years.”

  Cadan clicked the panel back into place, his fingers moving slowly, carefully. “I wish I thought it was just a glitch. I think . . .” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I think it’s malfunctioning.” A pause. “Damn!” He flung his hand down, thumped the edge of the control panel. “We can’t afford this now! Our only chance of getting there without detection—” He broke off, hand clenched, visibly getting himself back under control, then opened up the communications channel. “Markus, can you come to the bridge? Thanks.”

  He looked at Elissa and Lin. “We’re going to have to fly straight for a while. I’m setting up the widest enviro-scan I can manage running. We’ll see if anyone’s coming.” His face tightened, a grim look. “That is, if they’re using normal flight. If they track us precisely enough to hop here . . .”

  He opened the door for Markus and turned briefly in his seat to summon him to the control panel, then gestured to the hyperdrive screen. “Markus, can you make sense of this? I don’t even recognize what it’s saying. God, I always thought they should give us training in maintaining the damn thing. I have to use it again, I have to, but if I just knew what it might do, what strain it’ll put the ship under if the whole thing breaks down halfway—”

  But Markus was shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know any more than you. It’s not meant to break down at all. The only thing they ever told us was that if it malfunctioned—and they were very firm that it wouldn’t—we were authorized to call for the emergency maintenance crew.” He and Cadan shared a look of frustration.

  “If we’re attacked now, and I have to deal with that when I don’t know if I can safely use the hyperdrive . . .” Cadan’s hand was still clenched. For a moment he rested his forehead on his fist, staring at the screens. Then he straightened. “Okay. Markus, we have to get into the hyperdrive chamber. If there’s any chance at all we can find out what’s happening with it, we have to do it.”

  “It means breaking government seals.”

  “Does it look like my big concern is not breaking government seals?”

  Despite everything, Markus laughed, a sudden bark of laughter. “Mine neither. They’re tricky, that’s all.”

  “Can you do it?”

  Markus shrugged. “I can certainly try.”

  Cadan engaged the autopilot and stood. “Try.”

  The two of them went down the steps to the sealed door Stewart had shown Elissa and Lin when he’d first brought them to the flight deck. Elissa remembered his cheerful, humorous voice rattling out the penalties for attempting to gain entrance to the hyperdrive chamber.

  After a couple of seconds’ hesitation, she and Lin followed Markus and Cadan off the bridge and stood a distance behind them while they bent to inspect the door.

  “It’s fingerprint-locked,” Markus said. “Laserproof, of course. And I can’t unscrew the hinges. The heads of the screws—look, they’re unique. We don’t have any tools that’d fit them.” He ran his finger down the edge. “I’d suggest crowbars, but look at this thing. It’s sealed so damn tight—I’m not going to be able to get anything in to pry the edges apart.”

  “How about pushing the door in?”

  “If we can do it without damaging the hyperdrive,” said Markus. “I don’t know where it is in relation to the door. I’d consider a controlled explosion if I knew what the risk was, but as it is . . .”

&nbs
p; “Okay,” said Cadan. “If we can push it in just enough to open up a space at the edge, we can get a crowbar in.” He straightened, scrubbing his face with both hands. “What have we got that’ll do that?”

  “I can do it,” said Lin behind him.

  He snapped a look at her. “You can?”

  “Yes.”

  Relief swept over his face. “Okay, then.” He stepped back to make room for her. Markus grinned, looking at her with approval and respect.

  Lin went forward. She’d just bent to touch the door when the attack came.

  From the first second it was as if the other attacks had been nothing but rehearsals. There was no warning at all. Just, all at once, other ships exploded out of hyperspace around them, blasts hitting on every side. Flames shot over the glass nose of the ship, licking fast across the glass walls before they winked out of existence.

  The impact rocked the Phoenix sideways—almost ninety degrees, too powerful for her stability drive to withstand and too fast for the internal auto-cushioning to keep up. Elissa was thrown right off her feet and halfway across the flight deck. She landed hard, pain cracking from her shoulder down her arm.

  Lin fell forward, hitting her head against the door of the hyperdrive chamber so hard, it made a hollow clang. She went boneless, a rag doll on the floor.

  “Lin! Lin!”

  Cadan had been knocked off his feet too. Now he shoved himself upright again, grabbing for the stair rail and leaping up the steps to get to the control panel.

  Another blast came as he jumped onto the bridge. Elissa went sprawling again. Lin, still limp, slid across the floor to end up against the glass wall of the flight deck. For a heart-stopping moment Elissa’s brain played a trick on her, made her think the glass wasn’t there, that Lin was going to slide right over the edge to fall and fall and fall . . .