When Stars Burn Out (Europa Book 1)

by Anna Vera

  Her eyes flash to the seat in front of me, at Apollo.

  Then, before I can reply, she grabs the wing-like door of the podcraft and slams it shut. My league and I are plunged in a muted kind of quiet, the engine roaring loudly outside, but softened behind the armor of steel enveloping us.

  We begin to move.

  Cyb yelps as we lurch forward. Lios, sitting beside me, gives my hand a squeeze. I look to the front seat and see my best friend sitting bravely, her eyes fixed on a small rectangular window at the front of the podcraft.

  Through it we see where we’re going: a large set of steel doors that open horizontally, like jaws. The podcraft lifts up its rear, tilting us forward, as it perches for takeoff. The jaw-doors grind open, emitting us to a departure chamber.

  The podcraft floats inward. The feeling of flying, even just a few feet in the air, is like a finger tickling my stomach. I hear the jaw-doors grind closed behind us, and suddenly there’s a cloud of white gas exploding in plumes all around us; it fades, and before us stands another set of doors.

  But we don’t hear them grind open. We see it happening, but hear absolutely nothing, because the doors are opening up to outer space—an endless sweep of total obscurity, freckled with flaming, brilliant white stars.

  And for the first time ever in my life, I truly realize—with a gasping, suffocated feeling of awe—how small, how totally and completely insignificant we all are in the scheme of the universe.

  Space is anything but empty.

  The podcraft glides out of the open doors, subjecting us to the chilling sensation of being surrounded by absolutely nothing and everything all at once. I feel the push of the engine as it flares back to life, inaudible in the suction of soundless space propelling us forward as fast as a rocket.

  So fast I barely have time to register it, we’re skimming the planet’s atmosphere. Sparks fly, exploding at the tipped nose of our podcraft. We trip into the unyielding force of gravity and are suddenly plummeting wildly to Earth.

  In unison, we’re thrown back in our seats. My chest feels as though it is the foundation for a castle built out of bricks—heavy and pressed breathless. I chance a look sideways at Lios and see he’s glistening with beads of sweat. His face is pale; he’s blinking and wheezing as though he’s on the verge of blacking out.

  I take his hand in mine. “Almost there,” I say, but my voice is swallowed up in the racket of our podcraft shedding an outer-layer of itself, which has suddenly caught fire.

  Breathe, breathe, breathe . . .

  We bank left and squish into each other, absorbing the force of the turn, and our podcraft steadies. We’ve made it through the chaos of the atmosphere. I could cry.

  The planet ripens before our eyes, abstract blotches of color becoming identifiable: dark oceans and pockets of valleys, forests of deep green, and snow-tipped periwinkle mountains. It’s all stitched together in a lovely, quilted landscape—and for totally different reasons than before, I’ve lost my breath.

  We dive, plunging into a white cloud. Everything changes.

  The sky is dark—so dark, it must be dusk.

  The world outside is blocked by heavy clouds, pumped full of ready-to-fall snow, and I realize we’re almost there.

  We’re so close.

  After eighteen years, I’m almost there.

  Our podcraft steadies itself in a graceful glide. We’re still moving quickly, but it doesn’t feel like it. For a few seconds, we are entranced blissfully in the views of Earth’s surface rolling out like a rug beneath us.

  I swallow, chewing a lip. It won’t be long until we spot one of the Muted: their shadowed, sinewy bodies, lurking and clawing and shrieking loudly. The new apex predator.

  Cyb sighs with relief as the podcraft beeps in a steady, inviting way. We’re free to ready ourselves for the swift disembarking that is minutes away.

  Everybody begins digging wordlessly through their supply bags and weaponry. I sheath a knife in my boot and keep a pistol tucked in a holster strapped to my leg, a loaded magazine waiting in my left pocket.

  Lios, surprisingly, stuffs a granola bar in his face, as though he hasn’t eaten in days. I sip from a water bottle, but that’s about as much as I can do. Eating now feels impossible.

  When the sound of ruffled backpacks—zippers being zipped and unzipped—and supplies fades, there’s only one sound left to fill the podcraft: the sound of rapid breathing, panicked and as uneven as a nightmare’s spur.

  The podcraft dips lower, descending into a cluster of trees, their branches drooping under the weight of thick slabs of freshly fallen snow. We hover midair, then descend vertically through a copse of wilted trees, and land.

  Nobody speaks.

  Up front, I see Merope click something on her dainty left wrist that lights up: a stopwatch.

  The podcraft’s door whooshes open, and a gust of snow-flecked winter wind floods in. It’s quiet, the world’s noises stifled by a curtain of snowfall, but the noise inside roars as loudly as a storm gathering along a nearby horizon.

  My heart is cannon fire.

  This is Earth.

  8

  The forest around us is boundless.

  It sprawls in all directions, the horizon composed of black treetops as jagged as teeth, silhouetted against the bright silver sky arched overhead. Snowflakes fall in an onslaught of slow, sleepy spirals, clinging to my eyelashes.

  Everything is half stooped under the weight of snowfall, so burdened as to wilt. I inch farther into the clearing our podcraft has landed itself in, positioned at the center of it.

  The others spill out of the podcraft, silent as ghosts, and fan out in my wake. I hear the racking of slides and the subtle whine of stretched leather boots, but that’s it. The world is silenced by the influx of snowfall, falling as heavy and thick as a set of velvet drapes, dulling the sharp edges of sound.

  My focus settles on the dark recesses of the woods—on the gaps between trees, the shadows under low-hanging branches, and the uncannily finger-like, skeletal limbs of foliage sleeping its way through winter.

  We’re alone.

  Everything is totally, utterly calm.

  I give a sharp exhale, casting a glance over my shoulder at my league positioned behind me. Apollo’s at one end, Lios at the other, the pair separated by Merope and Cyb.

  Merope’s eyes snag mine. I ask her, “Are we clear?”

  She gives a soundless nod in reply.

  With her skillset being what it is, she’s capable of tapping into the emotional frequencies of any living thing, be it a squirrel or a human being or a Mute.

  Or a handful of specimens that went rogue.

  Cyb tags Merope with an accusatory glare. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive,” she retorts curtly, though I notice she returns her eyes to the woods, as though she’s struggling just as much to trust herself as everybody else is.

  Her stopwatch beeps wildly, and she clicks it off.

  Lios’s asks, “How long?”

  “That was the one minute marker,” she says, her eyes like coal in the dusky darkness. “Looks like we’ve surpassed all the other leagues, already.”

  “She’s still dealing with the last league.” Apollo walks up, his glossy pistol raised, ready. Snow speckles the mop of black hair on his head.

  Cyb eyes him wearily. “I can’t see a single sign of them.”

  I step farther into the silent clearing. “Cyb’s right. It looks like every sign of them is gone.”

  “Snowed over?”

  “Obviously, but if they struggled,” I add distantly, passing a hand over the bark of a tree, “there would be other signs. Broken twigs, chipped bark . . . dropped belongings.”

  “Blood.” Cyb’s face is gaunt.

  “Blood,” I agree grimly. “It’s as though they filed out of the podcra
ft and walked, in an orderly fashion—” I stop, feeling all of a sudden like I’ve been doused in ice water.

  Merope’s lips go white. “What’s wrong?”

  We are so stupid.

  We are so utterly, utterly stupid.

  “Her . . . Her skillset,” I groan. “We never asked . . .”

  “We—” Cyb looks frantically back and forth between the rest of us, her gun dropped to her side. “Did anybody ask?”

  “No, you’re joking!” Apollo sniggers, his lips elevated in a broad, wolfish smirk. “You’re telling me everybody here forgot to ask about Mabel’s skillset except for me?”

  I sigh in relief. “You asked?”

  Apollo’s face shifts, then stiffens. “Mabel’s skillset is the ability to transfer information. So, for example, if she witnesses something first hand, she can transfer that memory—”

  “We know,” Cyb snaps. “Onyx has the same skillset.”

  “Well, she can’t control anybody, then,” I say, mulling over the possibilities. “But it looks like she’s gathered an arsenal of at least five other leagues—and who knows what skillsets they have to offer, which she may be exploiting.”

  Just then, a chilling echo drifts over the landscape. Not the echo of wolves howling or the whistle of wind, but the distinctive high-pitched, ragged shrieking of the Muted.

  I swallow hard, readjusting my grip on my gun.

  “Let’s get going,” I say.

  We begin walking away from the clearing and sink deeper in the folds of the woods. Cyb decides it’s the perfect time to give us all an abrasive, unnecessary reminder. “If anybody sees a traitor, they are to be shot on sight.”

  Apollo snorts, whirling so he’s walking backwards, facing us all with those dark eyes. “Who says we have to kill anybody?”

  “The Project,” Cyb offers rigidly.

  “The Project isn’t supervising us. It’s too busy living in total harmony on Fortuna while the rest of us fight.” At Apollo’s bold treason, our postures stiffen. “I get they are traitors, but they are still specimens like us.”

  Lios pins Apollo with a lethal glare. “Enough.”

  “All I’m saying,” Apollo goes on, holding his palms up in a gesture of surrender, “is if we saw a traitor and decided to turn a blind eye, the Project wouldn’t ever know otherwi—”

  Lios lunges for Apollo.

  “What you’re suggesting could get us terminated,” he relays darkly, grabbing Apollo’s collar. “Say another word that may put us all in unnecessary danger, and I’ll kill you now and blame it on a damned Mute.”

  Lios drops Apollo, who is still smiling. “Fair enough.”

  But Apollo has already made his point—because none of us really want to kill a fellow specimen. What if we stumbled upon any of Pavo’s specimens: Ares or Calypso?

  Could I kill them?

  I grit my teeth, unable to shake the feeling that Apollo has planted a seed inside me—inside all of us. But why?

  What are his real intentions?

  i have always thought that days on Earth would fade slowly, drizzling from a gray-blue dawn to a buttery day, to a golden dusk and a starry, black night.

  I’m not sure if that’s ever the case, but I know it’s not today.

  Darkness falls so fast, it’s as though the sun has been snuffed out completely. Less than forty-five minutes ago, the forest was lit up in gray, ignited by whatever light filtered through the thick clouds overhead. But now it’s dark. Really dark.

  We haven’t encountered a single Mute—thankfully, though also anti-climactically. I long ago holstered my gun and haven’t seen reason to take it back out since.

  For hours, we traipse through shin-deep snow, our breath expelled in vaporous fumes. The midnight cold is so intense, it feels almost like being wet—as though you’re walking in sodden clothes, a kind of frigidity that digs so deep it hits marrow.

  Eventually, Lios cracks. “Enough is enough,” he says as he drops his backpack and begins digging through it with clumsy, numb fingers.

  “Ah.” He sighs, extracting a torch. “Thank god.”

  “Why not use a flashlight?” Cyb asks haughtily as she drops to his side, kneeling. “Are you against modern technology, Lios?”

  Lios sniffs indignantly, taking out a flashlight and holding it up alongside the torch as he asks, “Which of these gives off both light and heat?”

  Cyb’s eyes flash. “You don’t have to get sassy.”

  “I’m not getting sassy.”

  “You kind of are.”

  “Is this,” he asks, taking her fingers in his and holding them to the newly-ignited torch, “getting sassy?”

  Cyb grins, relishing the small amount of heat released by the torch’s fire. We follow her lead. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough.

  Apollo finds the wherewithal to retract his hands, pulling out a glistening brass compass.

  “We’re five miles off,” he says, a huff of his breath clouding the compass’s glass. We’ve been heading due north all this time in the effort of tracking down the quarantine. “We’re going in the right direction, but with all this snow, we aren’t going to get there for a while.”

  Cyb groans noisily. “Five miles still?”

  “If only we’d deployed during the summer—we could run that distance in an hour, tops,” Merope, the fastest runner of our whole league, laments.

  I give her a narrowed, sidelong glance. “No running.”

  “Let’s just keep up the pace,” Apollo concludes, his black eyes desolate in the torch’s dim, flickering light. “Eos,” he adds, noticing me looking. “Help me, will you?”

  “Help you with what?”

  “Navigating.” Apollo throws the compass, and I catch it just before it hits the snowy ground. “Merope and Cyb, keep your eyes open for the Muted. Lios, why don’t you lead the way?”

  Cyb snorts, as though to say, Who made you boss? But what he’s suggesting makes sense: divide tasks, keep constant vigilance, and work together. That’s the purpose of a league, isn’t it?

  So we don’t argue.

  Lios trudges forward, leading the way. Cyb stations herself at the end of the line, looking behind us. Merope wanders back and forth between the pair, keeping communication consistent, while Apollo and I remain squished in the middle.

  He nods at the compass. “We’re heading north.” Pointing a finger at the compass’s large N marker, he adds, “Make sure the arrow stays here—”

  “Do you take me for a fool?” I snap, glaring. My fist drops to my side, taking the compass with it. “I’m well aware of how a compass works, Apollo, and given its simplicity, I really struggle to understand why you’d consider it a two-person job?”

  “Maybe I just wanted to talk to you.”

  I elevate my chin. “Start talking, then.”

  His gaze burns at my periphery—only now do I realize how much taller he is. Aged twenty-three, he’s a man. Aged eighteen, and barely so, I’m just a girl.

  “What’s your favorite color?”

  “You’re joking,” I scoff.

  “I bet Lios doesn’t know Cyb’s favorite color,” he remarks coolly, keeping his voice low. “My favorite is red—if you’re at all interested in knowing.”

  I am not. Not really. I heave the strap of my backpack over my shoulder again, the bulk of it crippling. “Why are you really talking to me, Apollo?”

  He analyzes me for a few tedious seconds, his gaze like a slow, steady burn. I wet my lips nervously, crumbling under his scrutiny—the strange effect it has, like a paralyzing superpower.

  And then I realize: “I don’t know your skillset.”

  “Did you think Onyx kept me hidden away from all of you just for fun or something?” He reaches down, cupping my hand in his, and lifts it up, looking at it like a palm reader. “My sk
illset is kind of . . . a secret.”

  “Well, I kind of like secrets,” I say, playing along. We stop walking suddenly. He tugs my glove off, finger by finger, until he’s holding my bare hand in his, my palm collecting snowflakes.

  Black eyes on mine, he says, “But can you keep a secret?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “Sure,” I say. I smile despite myself. He takes off one of his own gloves after that and runs a fingertip down the center of my palm in a straight line.

  Instantly, I gasp: a sharp, intense intake of breath that’s not prompted by pain, but rather out of pleasure.

  There’s a flash.

  My mind’s eye runs wild and I’m somewhere else: not in the forest with Apollo’s hands holding mine, but in a place where there are trees and sloping hills, and rows of rundown, patched rooftops sprouting brick chimneys.

  I catch a glimpse of a sign:

  ROSEMARY MEDICAL CENTER

  Another flash, and I’m looking through Apollo’s eyes.

  He’s sitting in a medical chair. Arm outstretched as a cold, damp cotton swab is dabbed at the crook of his elbow. His jaw tightens hard at the needle’s insertion. He doesn’t like giving blood samples, but he’s done it before. He’s done it many times before, even as a child . . .

  With every image, my heart races faster.

  More, it begs.

  They are looking for something. Apollo is different and they are trying to find out why. Blood tests. Medical exams. These experiences take up the majority of his childhood.

  He hates the doctors. Hates.

  I feel the hatred like it’s my own—teeth gritted, fury like a tongue of fire licking my core—and all of a sudden I feel myself gather air into my lungs, ready to scream.

  But Apollo pulls his fingertip away from my palm and it all fades away instantly.

  That one simple touch. That one insignificant gesture.