by Laura Lam
Ariadne nodded and keyed the code into the scrambler. She had designed it to help seal the ship off from its comrades and prevent the Oracle from counteracting any commands she made.
“What are you doing?” Rhea asked, coming up behind her.
“For now, making sure there are no mistakes in the coding. If I did it correctly, I should have complete control over the system and the ship’s surveillance in the storage bay. Which means I can also access the Tholosian mainframe to locate the weapon.”
Ariadne had looked at the code from all angles, testing for any flaw, any way the Oracle would be able to slither through. If she failed, the rest of the crew would know the moment Rhea and Ariadne boarded. They would be caught, imprisoned, and probably executed.
It’ll hold, she told herself. But she wasn’t like the Oracle; she didn’t have the infinite energy of an artificial intelligence to sort out lines of code. She grew tired. She required sustenance.
They were human needs the Oracle considered obsolete.
“If?” Rhea hissed.
“I didn’t exactly have time to perfect it, Rhea. I barely slept, okay?”
Rhea nodded. “Right. I’m sorry.”
Ariadne drew up one of the wall panels, scrolling through the ship’s information. According to the manifest, there were five other soldiers in the storage bay. A skeleton staff simply keeping watch on supplies.
“Can you handle that many?” Ariadne asked Rhea.
“I’ve never tried. Let’s hope I can.”
Rhea shut her eyes, her body going entirely still. Ariadne was spared the full effect, but even so, she began to feel sleepy. At least the exhaustion helped with the fear.
Rhea pulled her abilities back and rocked on her feet. “Done.”
“Are you—”
“I’m fine.” She was breathing hard. “It’s more difficult through metal. Hurry now.”
When they entered Eleuther’s storage bay, the other five soldiers were asleep. Rhea and Ariadne tied them up and took their seats in front of the vid-screens. They kept low; if any soldier out guarding the other ships noticed them through the window . . .
The mainframe, Ari, she reminded herself.
So far, the screens on the walls had stayed idle. Ariadne felt no presence of the Oracle. Not that she should—One was an AI, a program. Only . . . when Ariadne wove her way through the wires of her surroundings, she could swear she felt One, like a shadow or a ghost.
Watching.
Waiting.
The fear spiraled again, taking away her breath. Her skin was cool and clammy, her nerves electrified. Rhea reached out to clasp her arm, drawing Ariadne back from the brink. It helped, but it wasn’t enough. Too many memories. Plain foods and so much hunger. Old vids and her shelves of Named Things for comfort. The wall of succulents and plants and rocks that she had given monikers—all collected from places she had never seen, ordered by a computer program that didn’t understand a child’s needs.
But the Temple hadn’t been a home; it had been a prison.
“Ari,” Rhea said. “There isn’t much time.”
“I know. I know.” She took another deep breath, squared her soldiers. She could do this. She was strong. The Oracle did not have sway over her anymore.
She keyed in the code, and patched herself into the mainframe.
It was bad news: The blaster had been on this ship, as Kyla had suspected, but had already been offloaded. The notes only had random acronyms she didn’t recognize. She stared at them, hard, as if they’d assemble themselves into words that made sense from the power of her glare.
“The weapon isn’t here anymore,” Ariadne told Rhea. “I’m going to keep searching and track it down.”
Rhea nodded and placed a soft hand between Ariadne’s shoulder blades. Calm muffled her anxiety, but not completely.
“I’m going to drink during our dance party,” Ariadne said, striving for a brightness she didn’t feel. “I’ve always wanted to try wine. Do you think I’ll like it?”
She kept up a steady babble as she continued to work, describing silly things to Rhea. Digging just a little deeper, searching for signs that the blaster had linked up with the mainframe. As she ran her search, she distracted herself by describing decorations and music, the drinks they would serve. Silly little details that helped calm her down, that helped her think of a future beyond these screens.
Rhea hummed and agreed when she needed to, keeping a sharp eye out the window of the storage hull. Ariadne noticed Rhea’s shoulders slumping. Rhea looked. . . . exhausted.
“Ari,” Rhea breathed, shaking her head as if to clear it. “Hurry.”
Oh. Ohhh. Ariadne felt so foolish. While she was describing her dance party and trying to locate the weapon, Rhea had been using her abilities to influence soldiers to ignore the ship.
Ariadne typed faster. Just a little longer now. Just a little—
“Ari,” Rhea said, swaying on her feet slightly. She looked nauseated. “We need to go.”
“But I haven’t found the—”
Rhea grasped her shoulder, her strange eyes fevered. “I am so close to losing my grip on those guards outside. We have to go, or we won’t make it out of here.”
While half of Ariadne yearned for the safety of their own ship, the guilt was a pang. She hadn’t found her weapon. She couldn’t fail. Not tonight. “Just give me a second. Please.”
Rhea shut her eyes. “Hurry.” Her voice was a desperate plea.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. One last command.
Ariadne keyed it in; her fingers felt so slow, so clumsy. Her eyes scanned the code, praying to all the gods of death and war and the others she wished were real: goddesses of hope, light and love.
Yes! Tracking coordinates. Where did they point to? Where—
Silence seemed to echo through the ship.
And like One’s voice, the Oracle’s face was identical to Ariadne’s own.
The lights within the ship extinguished, leaving them in the gloom.
51.
CLO
Present day
Clo and Kyla made their way to the exterior of the grand ballroom. They used the crush of a queuing crowd to dart into an empty hallway when guards weren’t looking.
Clo turned on the pendant Ariadne had designed, a device that sent out a pulse as they moved through the building to create a digital map. It wasn’t to scale, but Ariadne had given it to Clo just in case the Evoli hid something in the blueprints. Clo would know where the cameras and sentries were, and all sorts of secrets hidden behind the walls.
“This little baby is lovely,” Clo murmured. “I don’t think I’m giving this back to Ari.”
Kyla rolled her eyes. “Thieving again, wee slumrat?”
“Only in my spare time, Commander.”
With the pendant’s help, they found an empty room. Kyla planted one of Ariadne’s scramblers on the wall panel, which would keep the footage of the abandoned hallway on a loop. Ariadne could have been beyond filthy rich if she’d decided to go into the black market instead of the resistance.
Quickly, Clo took out the bits of her toolkit that Rhea had cleverly sewn into her shirt. Clo and Kyla peeled off their finery to reveal dark jumpsuits. The clothes folded down to small cubes they attached to their belt.
Everything in the palace was made by the Evoli, who had different design aesthetics from the Tholosians. There were no ornate carvings to provide discreet handholds—the Evoli preferred their walls smooth and opalescent, as if they’d been built with finely crushed pearls. Beautiful, yes, but that complicated Clo’s plan. On the ceiling were the thin slats of a vent,
but Clo couldn’t see a way to access it or how to pry it off the wall so they could get inside and burrow into the belly of the building.
Kyla clicked her tongue against her teeth as she considered their ascent into the vents. “No hope for it. We’re going to have to leave evidence behind.”
She reached down to her shoes and peeled off the outer layer of their soles to reveal the rough, sticky under layer. Similarly treated gloves from the bag at her waist that contained the smoke orbs followed. Clo did the same, wincing as her skin pinched against her prosthetic. She wished she’d had these when she and Ariadne had crawled through the dusty vents of the palace on Macella.
Kyla hadn’t asked about Clo’s leg—the commander didn’t know how much it could hurt sometimes. When Clo had sent her report on crawling through Macella’s vents and jumping off a damn building, she had made it seem fully functional, a minor inconvenience at most. Clo hoped it wouldn’t betray her.
With impressive aim, Kyla sent up a small grappling hook by the vent, wedged into the cornices of the ceiling. Then they began to climb.
Immediately, Clo wished the Evoli weren’t so fond of high ceilings and open spaces. The cables helped take some of the pressure off, and the soles and gloves held their weight, but everything hurt. Every footprint and handprint showed on the walls after them, leaving a clear trail of where they were going, like the salamanders that had crawled along the walls of the slums of Myndalia.
They set off through the vents. Every fifteen seconds, the pendant against Clo’s chest buzzed, mapping another section of the palace as she moved.
Clo tried to reach Ariadne to make sure the building was mapping correctly. No response.
“Is something wrong with my Pathos?” Clo whispered to Kyla. “I can’t get through.”
A pause. “No luck for me, either.” Another pause. “The building might be blocking the signal.” But Kyla didn’t sound convinced. A Pathos’s signal could reach the ground from a ship in orbit.
Clo followed the map on her pendant until they reached the ballroom. The slats were wide enough to peer below. The ballroom was a riot of color: gold brocade, iridescent blues and greens. Clo couldn’t help but watch as people milled around the ballroom in their fine gowns and suits. They held flutes of sparkling wine, or cocktails with winged insects that fanned on the brim of the glass. Normally, Clo would have scoffed at such a display of extravagance, but she had work to do.
“I don’t see Sher,” she whispered to Kyla as she felt for the orbs at her belt. She lined them neatly below the vent. They’d chosen ones in reds, yellows, oranges, and blacks. A distraction that resembled firesmoke.
“Then we wait,” Kyla said simply. She stared intently at the revelers below. “Make sure your filters are secure. He’ll give us the signal if he needs us.”
More people arrived in a steady stream; from up there, Clo could feel the heat of bodies close together. If that contagion were released, everyone in this damn ballroom was a goner.
God of Survival, Salutem, don’t let me die, she thought.
Clo and Kyla camped out. Clo’s bad leg ached, but she’d rather be up in the vents than down in the ballroom rubbing shoulders with the top dipwells of the Empire, smiling at them and pretending they were in any way on the same side.
The dais, where the Archon and the Ascendant would sign the treaty, was still empty. The thrones for the leaders were raised high enough to look down on their combined people.
In the ballroom, the Evoli kept a physical distance from Tholosians, and the two sides didn’t speak or mingle more than they had to. In contrast to the music, the decorations, and the grandeur, these were enemies who had been fighting bitterly for hundreds of years. Generals from both sides—all present—had ordered countless deaths.
Beneath the glitter and perfume was the memory of smoke and blood, the sound of battle hidden behind the fake smiles and gentle laughter. Hands kept straying to where weapons would be. A hip, the small of the back.
Clo shifted, grunting softly with effort. Her knee was holding up as well as could be expected, but the skin was rubbing badly. If she wasn’t careful, she’d have to keep the prosthetic off the next few days while her sores healed. But she’d take that over the alternative.
The music grew into a proper fanfare. The Tholosian royals and higher-ups of the Empire and the Evoli Ascended and Oversouls made their way to the dais.
Where the Tholosians sparkled and glimmered over every inch of their bodies, the Evoli were sleeker. They wore billowing robes in pastels, belted tight about their waists. Yet while their garb was simple, the Oversouls wore ornate, elaborate headpieces that resembled woven antlers, encrusted with jewels and delicate chains of precious metals. They were taller than the Archon’s crown, which must have salted him off no end.
“Oh, gods,” Kyla breathed. “Eris.”
Clo peered down, her nose pressed to the grate of the vent, but she couldn’t see the small, dark-haired infuriating woman that had gotten herself kidnapped. Kyla’s hand lay heavy on Clo’s shoulder. “Behind Damocles.”
A jolt went through Clo. They’d changed Eris’s face back to Discordia’s: the pale blond hair, her golden eyes almost luminous beneath the lights. Small, doll-like features that gave the false impression of being delicate, vulnerable. Her headdress was an echo of the Evoli’s but darker, flaming opals glittering along the wicked points.
Clo had seen those features broadcast on icons all over the galaxy. It was the face that had stared down at Clo the night she lost her leg. It was the face of a woman Eris had left behind years before. And Damocles had forced Eris to wear that woman’s face.
Clo was fucking furious.
“I’m going to kill him,” Clo hissed.
Kyla waved a hand. “Shhh.”
The music was so loud, they could only catch parts of what Damocles said. They each picked up a smoke orb and put on goggles to protect their eyes from the stinging.
“Now?” Clo asked.
“Not until Sher gives the signal,” Kyla said, but she sounded uncertain.
Clo checked as Damocles gestured to the crowd below him, his acting skills far too good. What was he saying? Clo could barely concentrate on anything but Eris’s face: the vacant stare, skin that appeared ashen beneath the face powder. Gods, what had Damocles done to her? What the flames had he done?
Then Eris opened her mouth to reveal an empty, dark maw.
Clo stifled a gasp. Oh gods. Oh gods.
Kyla shook with rage. Clo felt horror curl through every part of her. What scared her more than the missing tongue was Eris’s body language.
She looked . . . defeated.
The Novan commander shook herself, breathing hard. “They’re giving each other their votive gifts. Where the hell is Sher?” Kyla asked, almost to herself. “He should be in place by now.”
The Evoli inclined their heads gravely at the Tholosians. The Archon looked ancient in his throne, for all his attempts to appear younger. It was strange to actually see the man who had led the Tholosian Empire for so long. The man who knew the horrible conditions of the slums in Myndalia and didn’t give a damn. So many deaths under his rule.
Clo wanted to throttle him with the expensive tassels dangling from his coat. Then she’d go for Damocles. Doing that would throw everything into disarray and chaos, but she didn’t care.
Nothing.
Silt.
Clo clutched the cold metal of the orb tighter as the Archon gave the Evoli their gifts: elaborate, glittering opals that resembled those in Eris’s oversized headdress.
They were about to sign the truce. Clo squinted at the faces, still desper
ately searching for Sher in the face of his stolen Delegate.
“Fuck it,” Kyla said, ready to twist the orb. “We’ll have to do it and hope Cato and Nyx can get her. Ready?”
Clo started to nod and then froze as something cold as the end of a Mors blaster pressed into the back of her head.
“Stop,” said a voice she knew far too well.
52.
RHEA
Present day
The Oracle blinked at them both, One’s face a mirror image of Ariadne’s own visage—but a soulless rendition of it. Perhaps if Rhea hadn’t known Ariadne, she would have been impressed by the lifelike image, but all she saw was a poor imitation of her friend.
The Oracle possessed none of the spark that made Ariadne her.
Rhea recoiled, shifting closer to Ariadne. The girl was stiff, terrified. How would any of them feel if they were confronted with the face of their abuser? Especially when that face was a darkened mirror to her own? A nightmare made into a projected ghost that could be anywhere. Anywhere at all.
This was but a small splinter of the Oracle. One would be spread out through all the Tholosian ships docked on Laguna, in the many still circling the planet. One was back on Tholos, in the Temple where Ariadne had been kept prisoner.
One was on every planet in the Empire, watching the many citizens and servants, pretending benevolence when the system was rotten to the core.
So many places to torment anyone the Oracle chose. Like Ariadne. One’s little Engineer.
“One had wondered where One’s child had gone,” the Oracle said in Ariadne’s voice, the pitch an attempt at Ariadne’s singsong inflections.
Rhea winced. It was too saccharine. All wrong.
The holographic cameras within the storage bay turned on, shining pinpoints of light into the space in front of Rhea and Ariadne. The Oracle emerged from the screen, taller, so much taller than either of them. The Oracle was so lifelike, almost tangible. If not for the slight transparency to the projection, Rhea might have been fooled into thinking One had a body of One’s own.
