WHEN HEROES FALL

by Abby J. Reed

  The screen in the corner kept flashing news stories. ASTEROID DISAPPEARS FROM LOCAL PLANET’S ORBIT. SCIENTISTS MYSTIFIED. LOCAL WAR BREAKS OUT. LINE HACKING—MYTH OR REALITY? THE QUEEN MOTHER IS DEAD! WILL PRINCESS SCORPIA LIVE UP TO THE TASK? RUMORS OF DARK MATTER SWIRLING. CAN WE TRUST THE HERO OF SALVADE? WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?

  The only real-time footage had been taken from people’s lines on the ships. There was no footage of what happened on the ground. Even as ships circled around the Gemelos System, a blockade prevented them from entering orbit.

  What a headache.

  I’d chomped on a piece of flavored ice. Pineapple they called the sweet sunshine taste. “Can I have a break?” I’d already been through a cup of mango and juniper berry, both sharp flavors in different ways. And I was growing sick of the same stories being shown.

  The nurse on duty unhooked the machines from my wings and let me free. “Be back in half an hora.” She glanced at my half-empty ice cup. “I’ll bring you some more.”

  I licked the pineapple ice from my spoon and wandered the halls, looking for others who were awake. Raelyn and Levi shared what happened to them before had they’d left. Between their words and the flashing stories, I had a pretty good pic of what had happened. I stopped a nurse with a hovering bot. “Can you tell me where Tahnya is?”

  “Last name?”

  “Uh.” I didn’t know her mom’s name. “Try Malvyndaught? Daughter of Malvyn?”

  “Hm. Not in here. Line ID?”

  “She doesn’t have one.”

  The nurse clicked his tongue. “Oh, blood color? We have all you Scarlattians separated by blood for ease.”

  I looked around, double checking there was no one else nearby. “Blue.”

  He gave me the directions toward the Elik section. I had finished the pineapple ice by the time I reached her room.

  I knocked on the doorframe as I went in. “Hello?”

  “Malani!” Tahnya sat up in bed. Somehow, even while hooked up to machines, she wore her thin indigo covering like a glittering gown. Even if Raelyn and Levi told me it was true, she didn’t look as though she’d been found surrounded by buckets of blood. She reached out for a hug. “Oh stars, I’m so so so happy to see you. I wasn’t sure I would ever again. Wait.” She eyed me, suspicious. “You . . . knew where to find me?”

  I hugged her back, keeping my arm straight to prevent spilling the leftover liquid from my cup. “I figured it out earlier.”

  She sagged. “I figured you might.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve helped.”

  She grew teary and tugged a pillow into her lap. “I didn’t want to risk anything. I didn’t want you to hate me because for so long you only wanted to be Elik and here I was—”

  “Oh, Astook.” I sat and tried to lean back in the seat, but my wings made it too uncomfortable. “I would’ve been happy for you. We’ll always be friends. Look.” I pushed the pineapple cup toward her. “You can even have the dredges of my ice.”

  She laughed. “I’m all right. Thanks. You know, Luka came by earlier.”

  “He knows?”

  “Our friends do.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “All he said was, Glad we’re not killing each other anymore.”

  “Guess that’s good. Have you seen the other Elik yet?”

  Tahnya poked at her blanket. “One. We couldn’t even talk, you know, the whole language thing. I’m not ready though. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”

  “They know you’re royal?”

  “No. And I know what you’re gonna say next. My biological parents are dead. I don’t know how I feel about it yet. I only know it makes me not want to meet the others even more.”

  I glanced behind me. Jupe sat in a corner, draped over the armrest, sleeping. Everyone seemed to be sleeping right now.

  Tahnya waved his presence away. “The nurse slipped him a sedative so he’d sleep. His legs were getting so antsy he couldn’t sit still long enough to drift off and it was driving me insane.”

  “Good.” I set my cup to the side on a table. “Cause your parents weren’t where I was going before.”

  “Oh?” Her tone was mysteriously light. She looked everywhere except at me.

  “I know what you did.”

  She leaned back against her mountain of pillows and stared at her hands. At the blue blood pulsing in her veins. She was silent.

  “I know what you did to that asteroid. I know it was you. Knew as soon as I heard you were found in your own blood.”

  “It wasn’t just me,” she said. “I was about to walk out when I heard your song. We did it together.” Her eyes turned round as moons. “Don’t tell anyone. Jupe knows. I told him. But, no one else. Please.”

  “Why?”

  She watched Jupe breathe. Her gaze was as soft as feathers. “Have you seen the news? An asteroid doesn’t randomly choose to leave its orbit. Everyone wants to know what happened on Scarlatti. They want to know how the Queen died. The factions can’t tell if they’d been used by Jupe or actually helped stop a tyrant. There’s even a story about how the Queen didn’t really die at all and just underwent treatment to pass herself off as a younger version to rule again. Scorpia’s trying to suck Jupe into it. Then there’s her coronation, which some people are protesting. Now it’s gonna come out there’s two other blood colors in the galaxy? On top of this whole dark matter business? I got a glimpse of politics from my father—I mean Malvyn. Not, not the Elik King—and an even better look when the Queen had us in her prison. It’s chaos, Malani. Chaos. And then you want to add me to it? What I can do?” She shook her head. “No. I’m not . . . I’m not going to do that. To Jupe. To everyone else. It’s too much.”

  My lips twisted. I was overwhelmed just from listening and here she was having to live some of it. “I understand. I won’t tell. It’s enough that we both know the truth.” I reached for her hand. “Have you decided what you’re going to do next?”

  “Not sure. I don’t want to go back to Scarlatti if that’s what you’re asking. I want to grow things while all this chaos wrings itself out. Dig my hands in damp soil. They found Malvyn’s body, you know. I told Cal they could burn it. Use it for, I dunno, fertilizer. At least that way something good would’ve come from his life.”

  “It’d probably poison whatever tried to grow.”

  She chuckled. “True.” She patted my hand. “What about you?”

  “First, get more ice. That tasted ingrith. Then . . . I’m not sure either. I want to stay with Breaker. But I have a feeling he might want to go back to Scarlatti. I don’t want to do that.”

  “What do you want?”

  I glanced over my shoulder, at the sky and the three suns beyond. I was a girl out of time, out of place. I’d journeyed so far. Yet I still had so far to go. The trick was . . . I could go. Scarlatti had given me the truth about myself. I no longer had to be shadowed by history. It happened. I knew it. I could move on, anywhere I wished. “I want to be unlimited.”

  She held my hand tight. The only sound was Jupe’s heavy breathing and the soft whirring of the air circ system as we looked out at the horizon together.

  “Everything’s going to change now, isn’t it?” Her tone was braver, more steady now. I glanced at her. Her jaw was set, ready for whatever came next.

  As was mine.

  “I think it already has.”

  Chapter 61

  BREAKER

  Outside, the blobs slowly formed into bubbles, growing until they burst with a colorful pop. I spent horas watching the process. When Dr. Carson finally gave me permission to leave the room, bubbles had imprinted themselves in my mind’s eye. Circuit was too damaged to use, but the old spare crutches they lent me were nova and made up for his absence. The left on
e snapped to my forearm, so I didn’t need a hand to maneuver. The material absorbed kinetic energy, sending it back into my body with every step.

  No way was I gonna return them.

  I checked on Malani first. She was still doing tests, and I was promptly kicked out after too many questions. I knocked on Tahnya’s door, but since she was still sleeping I’d barely gotten a Thanks for watching Brody in before Jupe kicked my ass out.

  Cal’s room was next. Waiting outside was Luka, dressed in the same cobalt patient uniform as the rest of us. A good quarter of his hair had turned white, but he’d shaved it so you couldn’t really tell. If I’d been told a cycle ago that I’d actually look forward to seeing him, I would’ve thrown you out of the workshop. But now, I was glad to see him and his familiar hulk. The only unfamiliar thing about him was the way he cooed at the bundle in his arms. Correction, cooed at the giant burgundy bow that was half the size of the bundle.

  “You on babysitting duty?” I said.

  He snapped from his relaxed position and transferred LuLu to the crook of his arm as though he weren’t just making sneaky baby faces at her. His one deltoid was wrapped and his calves shone with patches of bioSkin. “Yana and Mateo wanted to go for a walk outside and asked me to watch her.” He shuffled LuLu again.

  I got the feeling he had volunteered quite willingly and had pushed them to go on a walk. “You the last off Scarlatti?”

  “Of those willing to leave for this med station. Cal wanted me to tie up loose ends. I did. He put someone he trusted in charge while we were off-planet. Some Elik he bonded with while we were gone. Never thought I’d see the dia.” LuLu made a sound and Luka’s head snapped to her. His muscles stopped tensing when he realized she only made a sound because she had started sucking on the end of the bow. “You know, I’m ready to start anytime.”

  “Start what?”

  “Your flying lessons.”

  Even my cap made a surprise ripple. “My what?”

  “Your flying lessons. If you want to pilot your own—”

  “Why would I need flying lessons?”

  “I know what Scorpia’s offered you. Everyone does. If you’re gonna save the galaxy, they’re gonna have to come up with a better name than Hero of Salvade for Jupe to keep him in the number one spot.”

  “There’s a thousand things wrong with that. One: I told Scorpia I’d think about it. Two: She wasn’t gonna make it public. Three: Hope’s dead.”

  Luka stopped poking at LuLu. “They were busy dragging that crushed bucket off Scarlatti when I left. I asked around and it’s gonna be overhauled. Should be near done by now.”

  I grabbed the hair at the back of my neck and twisted. My crutch banged against my stump. Scorpia was fixing my ship for me. “I’m not flying anywhere.”

  He gave me an incredulous look. “You believe that?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  He shrugged. “When you want your lessons, let me know.” He poked again at the bundle. “She doesn’t do much besides sleep and cry right now. And I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

  I shook off his words and pushed past him into Cal’s room. Cal was hooked up to several machines—I’d already opened one with my cap when the doctors weren’t looking. A bag of fluid traveled into his veins. He looked like a completely different Cal than before. For one, his eyes weren’t gonna drop from his skull. Another, he almost seemed content.

  “You look ready to get back to work,” I said.

  Cal gestured for me to sit on the bed and adjusted a gel-like pillow behind his back. “Don’t tell anybody. They were ready to release me yesterdia, but I insisted otherwise. Every time I slip outside, I’m accosted.”

  “By Scarlattians or Scorpia?”

  “Both.” Cal studied his hands. They were cleaner than I’d seen in ages. “I don’t know how to do this, man. I heal people. I help them. I’ve studied my whole life to be right there on the other side of the bed, not leading people.”

  “Luka’s not helping out?”

  “You kidding me? Soon as there weren’t any more Extrats to hunt in the valley, he quit.”

  “And now you’re the chief.”

  “And now I’m the banging chief.”

  “You’ll make a good one.”

  He looked up at me. “You think?”

  “I do. There’s no one else I’d rather have in charge of Scarlatti.”

  He shook his head. “I dunno. Scorpia’s sunny about it, but the Elik are prickly over the metal, and trying to get them in the same room as Scorpia and the Herons is a nightmare. It’s like the war isn’t even over in some ways.”

  “It might not ever be.”

  He grunted. “I’m gonna make a ton of mistakes, man.”

  “You’re looking at a mistake pro.”

  He laughed. He held out his palm, where his dark matter bonded. The tiny shard extended, making a tiny point. “How do you get used to this?”

  I held out my own cap. “Don’t ask me. We’re still figuring ‘stroids out.”

  He stared at the point a while until it flattened back against his hand. His grin weakened. “I heard what Scorpia asked of you.”

  “Apparently so did everybody else.”

  “So, she’s using the social pressure technique.”

  I averted my gaze to stare out the window. There was another bubble growing, forming a lopsided head. “Won’t work.”

  “When do you have to decide by?”

  “Tomorrow at the coronation.”

  “You should go.”

  I glanced to him. “I wasn’t there, you said it yourself. I wasn’t there when the compound went to hell.”

  “We both know I was angry when I said that. You should still go.”

  “Even though there’s a chance I might never return? I won’t be dead, but I might as well be from this side of the ring portal.”

  Cal reached over to the nightstand and waved in front of the drawer. It opened and he retrieved a packet. “Here.”

  I unwrapped the fabric. My throat grew tight. In the middle of the red-stained scrap lay a pupal seed.

  “I found it on Lewis,” Cal said. “He was holding it. Found it when I first checked over him after he died. I was too, well, angry before to tell you. I think he meant to give it to you.”

  I remembered what he said when he gave me the first seed: You’d have more luck making all the stars fall to the bottom of the universe than finding our ancestral home.

  “You speak to Brody yet?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “You should.”

  I pressed the packet to my chest. “I’ll come back before they let you out,” I croaked.

  “Not too soon, man. Everyone will think I’m ready to listen to their problems.”

  I looked back at Cal, toward my life-long best friend. He stared outside at the bubble, which was finally on the verge of popping, breathing in time to the pulsating gas underneath. The guy who fought for a home he believed in. The guy who always did his best for those around him. He wouldn’t stop being those things anytime soon. He really would make a great chief.

  Brody’s room was on another floor. My parents lay slumped on some cots, snoring loud. But Brody was awake. His face didn’t look quite like itself yet. Instead of eyes, his sockets looked as though someone had pressed their fingers into his skull. An eyeball had started to grow, like an ultrasound of a fetus. His nose was little more than a ball with slits, and his mouth protruded like a bud. He no longer had the air tube. Guess that meant he could breathe again.

  If I were being honest, it was right gross.

  I sat next to him, pushing away the shame of my initial reaction. “Hey, Brody. You awake?”

  Something inside his mouth moved. The beginning of a tongu
e? He nodded.

  “They treating you all right?”

  Another nod.

  “They’re treating me all right, too. Everything is going to change now, you know? Cal is chief. Scarlatti has the potential to be rich. With GUs. Not with better goods to trade. I know, it’s still a weird concept. I think Scorpia might even put some guards around Scarlatti in case word gets out about the leftover dark matter before everyone is ready.”

  Brody took my wrist above my cap and squeezed.

  “I dunno what I’ll do. I guess someone needs to run Lewis’s workshop.” I paused. “Breaker’s workshop.” The name sounded funny in my mouth. “Maybe after I take on an apprentice I can find some work on another planet or something. Malani will hate it. But I dunno what else to do.”

  I brought out the pupal seed and ran my finger over it.

  “Go,” a wispy breath said.

  I looked at Brody. His mouth bud had split open, just wide enough to get out a breath. “Go where?”

  “Hole.”

  My lips tightened. “I’m not going to the singularity. I’m not going to leave you again. I banged everything up. Going after a stupid dream again could only bring more damage.”

  “No. Go.”

  Frustration billowed in my chest. “How do I know I’m not making the same mistake again? What if I go through and bang it all up? What if I go through and can’t find our ancestors and it all turns out to be a cosmic joke? How do I know, Brody?” The words built inside me, pouring out. “How am I supposed to live without fear if no matter where I turn, consequences will always be waiting? Brody, I’m afraid.”

  And there it was. The little truth nugget I’d been carrying for most of my life.

  I could fix my mistakes all I wanted. But deep down, I was still afraid. Afraid to move, afraid to act, afraid to dream again. Malani said I could either walk in fear or walk in love. I could live in the future. Or I could live in the now.

  Brody reached with his other hand, grabbing on to my cap. “Love. You. Go.”