When Stars Burn Out (Europa Book 1)

by Anna Vera

  “At least now we know why Onyx is treating it like a damn suicide mission,” Cyb adds gravely.

  Lios turns to me. “What else do you know?”

  “Nothing.” For now, I add mentally. For now, until I’ve had a chance to squeeze Nova for every drop of information she’s worth.

  I think of her last words to me. Have you ever wondered . . .

  She knows something.

  When I look up, Lios is staring at me. It’s like he can see straight through my skin, the way only family can. He looks as though he’s standing on some kind of emotional precipice he’s been pushed to the edge of, and is at risk of falling.

  Then he says, “I wish you were coming with us.”

  I could cry.

  I’ve been feeling so derailed, so lost.

  I’m feeling just like Huckleberry said I would, like I’ve been left behind to wonder, forever, if I could’ve helped them if only somehow I’d been there.

  Looking Lios dead in the eye, I say, “I will see you again.”

  Merope laces her fingers through mine, squeezing my hand tightly in hers. “Meet us tomorrow in the assembly area?”

  I lean sideways, into her. “What time?”

  “Evening.”

  “The assembly room it is, then. For dinner,” I say.

  Suddenly Lios is pulling me into a hug. Merope leans in and a second later, Cyb’s off the bed, joining the rest of us. We stay that way for a while.

  And then they leave.

  Lios swipes a handful of fingers playfully through my hair before pulling me into another hug. He whispers in my ear, “See ya tomorrow, kid.”

  I press my face into his chest. “See ya.”

  Cyb pinches my cheek. That’s all she offers me—and for her, that’s actually a lot. She trails behind Lios, linking hands, going to the same pod, the same bed.

  “Their last night together,” Merope mutters. “In private.”

  “I wonder what they plan on doing?”

  “I’ve got a few ideas.”

  “I know,” I say, walking her to the door. I point an index finger jokingly to my dimple. “I was being sarcastic.”

  “Oh, of course you were.” Merope’s eyes drift not to the exit of my pod, where I’m waiting for her to leave. Through my pod’s window, a star falls, dragging along a glittering trail.

  The moon looms beside our ship. It’s swollen, entirely black except for a fingernail-clipping of white. We can see every dip, every pit and pulverized crater. And even farther beyond, we can see Earth hanging in the distance—lying low, lying in wait.

  “Lios has always loved Cyb, huh?” Merope whispers, eyes peering distantly. “Cyb’s always loved him back. What kind of magic happens to procure that kind of mutual satisfaction?”

  “You can’t be talking about love at first sight.”

  “Maybe I am.” Merope turns, eyes lifted. Her face is pale as the moon itself, hair like spilled ink. “If it exists, they definitely have it together, don’t they?”

  “I guess.” I shrug. “Do you think you’ll ever . . . ?”

  “Nah.” Merope’s answer surprises me. “You’re the closest thing I’ve got to a soul mate.”

  We pause, and I can practically feel our final moments drift and fly and fall away—and when I try to grab for more, there’s nothing but air.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do without you, E.”

  “You’ll be okay, M.”

  “What if I die?” Merope’s question catches me completely off guard, and I realize her violet eyes are shining. “What if I die and I’m never able to say goodbye?”

  “You know I hate goodbyes,” I say casually, but an image, sharp and refined as glass, takes hold of me like the unshakeable grip of a nightmare: Merope attacked and lying alone on the side of a road. A sky of blinking stars. A bed of rocks and pine needles, softened only by the bloom of her own syrupy blood rolling out from under her.

  And absolutely nobody there to rock her in their arms and tell her the only lie we, as people, want to be told:

  Shh . . . It’ll be okay.

  5

  The next morning in the arena, I’m assigned the task of hole digging. Seriously. I dig holes all day and, afterward, another poor fool is bequeathed the job of watering down the soil, taking three-seed bunches and planting them in the holes I’ve dug.

  This is now my life.

  So after a particularly excruciating day, I decide I’ll indulge in a shower before meeting my league in the assembly area later this evening. But first: Nova.

  I wait for her at the lockers, watching the clock tick by, fast and unrelenting. I fold a fresh uniform and unfold it again, trying to kill time and find a reason to stick around.

  Where is she?

  Eventually the other technicians come in, rising from the black bowels of the spaceship. Two—Libra and Gemini—stop by my locker, flanking my sides like an ambush.

  “Can I help you?” I ask indelicately.

  “What’ve you done to Nova?” It’s Libra speaking, a girl who’s one of Jupiter’s post-deploy specimens. She was once a front line soldier for his league, but after losing her left eye, she was rendered “unfit” for going back to battle. Now she has a leather patch there, framed by spirals of strawberry-blond hair.

  I glance askance at her cohort. Gemini was also mentored, at one point years ago, by Jupiter. Why, exactly, he’s been deemed unqualified to fight, I’m not sure.

  And don’t particularly care.

  I clear my throat. “What have I done with her, you ask?”

  They both stare daggers. The other technicians detect the twang of tension in the air, finding reasons to change quickly and leave the locker room altogether.

  “I haven’t done anything with her.”

  “You two talk a lot,” Gemini states accusatorily.

  “Yes, sometimes. Today we were hoping to meet for dinner to vent about the tedium of our futures,” I lie. “She was supposed to meet me. Where is she?”

  Libra shoots Gemini a fast glance. They make some kind of a strange, silent exchange. Then Libra says, “She’s gone missing.”

  This does, admittedly, chill my blood a little.

  “Missing?” I echo.

  “Hasn’t been seen since last night.”

  “And why,” I investigate, feeling suddenly nervous, “did you jump to the conclusion of my involvement?”

  If anybody overheard us . . .

  If anybody has any reason to believe that I’m involved, that I know too much . . .

  When neither Libra nor Gemini reply, I slam my locker door hard enough to startle them. Libra blinks slowly, squeezing her eye shut in exasperation, before saying, “Rumors.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “Her brother Ares said she’d spoken with you.”

  “Yes, in passing.”

  “So . . . you don’t know where she is?” Gemini asks, his brows as thick as caterpillars.

  “No, I don’t. And if I did, I would’ve said so already.”

  They eye me suspiciously.

  “My shift is over,” I proceed brusquely, shouldering my way through them, clearing my path. “If Nova isn’t coming, then I’ll get on with my day.”

  “You really don’t care?” Gemini bemoans in my wake.

  “I don’t have to.” I turn, brandishing the pair with a glare so steely, they both flinch. “We’re on a ship. In space. It is literally impossible for her to be anywhere else except here.”

  Again, I turn my back on them. “My recommendation is you stop interrogating me and start looking for her. What do you think about that?”

  I turn the corner, leaving them gaping in my wake.

  i traipse up the spiraling staircase and am spat out in front of the assembly area: a large, domed room remin
iscent of the inside of a hollowed egg.

  Inside, a throng of specimens churns like an undercurrent.

  I walk in, heading to the bathrooms, my mind still poised on the cusp of the unanswered question: What now?

  What. Do I do. Now?

  The bathrooms are empty—a small mercy.

  I strip the lanyard I have dangling at my neck—with keys to all the places I work—and my clothes off, and find my favorite stall at the far end of the room. I twist on the hot water, which sputters initially before settling into a steady stream, leaving my skin a sensitive, sunburned pink.

  After a few minutes of intense ruminating, it becomes clear that I’ve got one option: I’ve got to find Nova, even if it makes me look suspicious, and even if it affiliates me with her further.

  Caution be damned. What I need are answers, and if she’s the only one who can give them to me, then I’ve got no choice but to take a few personal risks. If I can’t fight side by side with my league, the least I can do is fight here to figure this out.

  I turn off the water just as voices erupt in echoes leaping off the tiled all-white bathroom walls. I freeze, listening to the rattle of lockers opening and closing, of voices becoming clearer.

  “We should’ve deployed an hour ago!”

  Again, I freeze. Pavo’s group hasn’t deployed yet?

  I glimpse through the gap in my shower curtain to identify the owner of the voice: Calypso Mar, one of Pavo’s specimens.

  Calypso’s pale, lightly freckled body strolls into view. She’s stark naked. My eyes leap back inside my stall where I proceed to stand silently, dripping cold and wet.

  Another voice replies, “Well, I’m glad of it.”

  “Castor, stop. You’re being terrible.”

  “Because I delight in spending extra time with you?”

  “No, of course not,” Calypso adds, a smile warping the tone of her words. “I just—I feel bad, I guess. Ares’s sister is missing.”

  “Nova, right?”

  “Yeah . . . Ares won’t deploy until she’s found.”

  “So that’s why Pavo dismissed everybody for an hour?”

  “Basically.”

  “How many minutes,” Castor asks, speaking in a coquettish, purr of a voice, “of that hour do we have left?”

  “Forty-five,” Calypso replies just as flirtatiously.

  Oh god. What if they do something stupid and have sex in the showers, and all the while I’m forced to bear witness?

  No. That’s it.

  I’m going to reveal my cover and leave.

  Just as I rake aside the curtains, I hear “. . . but you’ve heard the rumors . . .”

  Luckily their voices carry just loudly enough to drown out the sound of my ruffling shower-curtains. I duck back in. Fast.

  Rumors, Calypso, did you say?

  Please. Go on.

  This I’m willing to listen to.

  In my haste, I miss the muttered reply from Castor, only catching the tail end. “. . . my skillset’s capable of answering all these questions, you know.”

  After pausing for thought, comprehension dawns.

  Castor’s skillset is the ability to foretell the future in a series of glimpses—by degrees, and with variables, but still. It’s helpful and advantageous, and not to mention hailed by the mentors.

  I lean a fraction out of the shower, watching. Castor extends a hand to Calypso. With a single moment of physical touch, she will be able to foresee Calypso’s future.

  Calypso hesitates. “We said we’d never do this.”

  “Everything is different now, Cal,” Castor cajoles. “What if there’s a bomb? I could foresee it. We could save everybody. We could change everything.”

  “I don’t know if I want to see what’s coming.”

  “Please, Cal. Let me help you.”

  “What if what you see is unstoppable?”

  “We will figure it out,” Castor assures, trailing a fingertip from Calypso’s temple to her freckled chin. She speaks so sadly, so affectionately, I almost look away.

  I hear Calypso sigh in resignation and hold out a shaking hand for her girlfriend to take.

  Castor accepts it delicately, engaging her skillset. “We’ll just take a quick peek,” she says casually.

  There’s an extended pause. I stand dripping wet and trying not to shiver. I dip my head through the gap, eyes locked on the pair as they stand rigidly, side by side.

  Castor drops her girlfriend’s hand, her face stiff as stone.

  “What?” Calypso demands.

  “The missing leagues,” she says robotically. “You find them.”

  “We find their bodies, you mean?”

  “No. You find them.” Castor looks like she’s just had the life sucked out of her—face as pallid as death, fingers quivering. She is even blinking back tears.

  Calypso keeps her head slightly bowed, peering up through her pale, pinched eyebrows. “Their microchips indicated they all died of total system—”

  “I know.”

  “That means they are dead, Castor.”

  “That means only that their microchips say they are dead.”

  “What?” Calypso breathes, panic-stricken, before pitching forward to take her girlfriend’s hands in her own. “Tell me what you saw, Cas. Tell me everything.”

  Castor pulls away from Calypso’s touch, flinching. A beat of silence follows, utterly tragic—even for me. “I saw your future.”

  “And?”

  “I can’t protect you.”

  “Why not?” Calypso asks, verging on tears.

  “I could stop a bomb. I could stop a Mute’s attack. I could even change the situation’s circumstances.” Castor looks up at her girlfriend with misery. “But I cannot save you from yourself.”

  Calypso’s lip trembles. “Save me from . . .” She shakes her head slowly, loosing the pool of tears perched on her eyelids. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  “You deploy tonight,” Castor says, slogging on pants and a graying shirt. “Your league will disappear, like all the ones that deployed before you, but you won’t die or be held hostage, or—”

  “Why in the hell do we stay, then?” Calypso cries.

  “You will stay willingly.”

  “Willingly?” Total silence. I choke back a gasp, my thoughts swirling wild as a cyclone. “But . . . but we’d be traitors.”

  Castor’s eyes meet her girlfriend’s dazedly, as though she’s just awoken from a painful nightmare.

  “Yes,” Castor whispers. “Yes, you would be.”

  I practically SPRINT down the hallway, hair dripping wet.

  What the hell have I just accidentally learned?

  If Castor’s right, specimens aren’t being killed upon landing on Earth’s surface—they are choosing to stay, willingly, on their own accord. But why?

  What could possibly be so tempting?

  Specimens aren’t born so much as bred, specifically to grow up and fulfill their Purpose. To betray it is unfathomable. I can’t think of a single reason I’d betray it, myself.

  I pick up my pace, shouldering my way through a heard of specimens migrating from the assembly area into the hallway, my thoughts buzzing and flickering like a half-screwed in light bulb, when a jolt of recollection strikes. Microchip removal.

  That is the answer.

  Castor specified that the other leagues weren’t dead as much as they were made to appear dead.

  By the abrupt removal of their microchips.

  Without a pulse to monitor, of course the chips will relay total system failure to CORE’s radar systems!

  I feel my muscles tighten, joints locking up.

  It’s not a matter of what awaits specimens on Earth, it’s a matter of who. And because microchip removal is prac
tically an art form, taught only to specialists, whoever is awaiting leagues on Earth is definitely a full-fledged, security-breaching traitor.

  A traitor persuading others to become traitors.

  But with what argument?

  And why?

  I wiggle my way into the assembly area. It’s nearly dinner, so naturally the place is packed with specimens of all servitudes and ranks, intermingling with one another. The moist odor of overcooked vegetables and chewy, unthawed meat is as rife in the air as the twang of spreading gossip.

  “Move!” I grunt in exasperation to Juno, a nearby specimen with hair shaved down to her scalp. She eyes me aggressively as I pass by, unfazed.

  I’ve got to get to my league. Now.

  A beat later, and they’re in sight, sitting together at a table lodged in a cubby-like corner. It’s where we always sit.

  Merope has already caught my eye, forewarned by her ability to sense me Empathetically. The others follow her gaze, faces splitting into smiles, which fade abruptly at Merope’s calling.

  “Something is wrong,” she says, inaudibly, but I’m able to read her lips and am preparing to reply when the loud, shrill wail of an alarm rips through all conversation.

  The whole assembly room stops, pivoting in unison to see where the commotion is issuing from. The entryway is a clot of frantic specimens, all raising their feet up as though trying not to step in something.

  Water.

  The area has been flooded.

  A few moments later, accompanying the fire alarm, a series of sprinklers go off—probably activated by a trigger pulled from a lower level in the ship.

  The alarm sounds shrilly, an agonizing, repetitive scream.

  Somebody shouts, “Fire! There’s a fire!”

  But there isn’t a trace of smoke in the air. And given how well-protected the Ora is in regards to preventing fires, the idea of one starting is difficult to believe.

  I hear Jupiter, the third mentor and Tertiary Counselor of our branch, step up and attempt to take control of the situation.

  “Specimens!” he shouts. “Return to your pods. The ship isn’t on fire. There is nothing to worry about. An alarm near the arena has been triggered by accident.”