by Maura Milan
Ia fell, her knees cracking hard against the metal grating.
“Pick yourself up,” Eve said. Normally, Eve’s thick, dark eyebrows followed an elegant arch, but at this particular moment, they tipped downward with a mix of frustration and annoyance.
Eve had wheeled her off on an old mechanic’s dolly to a closed section of the space station—the chapel. It was sanctioned off for good reason. The paneling was falling apart. Chunks of ceiling hung down and squeaked on old rusted hinges, threatening at any instant to fall on their heads as they passed underneath. But the bronze statue of Deus was still there, with beautiful thick hair almost as long as her robes, her one palm held against her heart, and the other holding a sword to the ground.
Only older space stations had chapels for worship, and Myth was no exception. Ia thought of all the prayers that were said in this space, the sins that were confided, and the favors that were asked. Perhaps a few pairs had even sought their bonding here. There used to be so much dignity in this room, and now it was empty, the pews unscrewed from the floor panels and pushed to the sides.
Here, the air was stale. The stillness stuck to Ia’s skin, burrowing into every curve and sharp line on her face. But it didn’t matter how the air felt. It was the oxygen that mattered, and thankfully she could breathe just fine.
She was hunched over on the ground, her legs and limbs so weak she thought she’d crumble at any moment. Luckily, Eve had scrounged up a muscle-assist exo suit for Ia to wear. It was from her old days on the mining rigs, Eve explained. The suit reinforced the joints, and in Ia’s case, it helped stabilize her. Without it, she knew she’d topple to the floor in the least graceful fashion. She was happy her crew wasn’t here to see this. She had been someone to fear for so long, and now look at her. Helpless. She didn’t even want to think about how she’d be able to fly, given the way she moved now.
“Stop it,” Eve said. “I know you’re wallowing.”
Ia glared at her, eyes narrowed.
“You’re thinking,” Eve cleared her throat, adjusting her pitch higher. “‘I was the Blood Wolf of the Skies, and now I’m on the floor crawling around like a pathetic little insect.’”
How funny. It was only a month ago that Ia was training Brinn. Now the roles were switched, and she was the one getting picked apart for her lack of resolve.
“Is that really how I sound?”
Eve nodded and then sat down right next to her, her ankles crossed, one over the other. “Look, there’s no shame in this.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Ia said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, but you need to hear it.” Eve glanced at the dirt underneath her nails. “Maybe if that kid was here—that Bug of yours—he could say it a bit more sweetly. But he’s not. Right now, you got me.”
Knives had been gone for over two weeks, leaving Eve in charge of Ia’s care—physical therapy, bringing her food and water, helping her with personal hygiene tasks like washing her face and going to the bathroom. That was embarrassing enough. But the worst part was the conversation.
“Just leave me alone already,” Ia asked. “I can’t walk right now.”
“That’s a lie, and you know it,” Eve said. “That suit can help anyone. Yes, the steps will be weird and clunky, but one step in front of the other still qualifies.”
Eve was right. These suits had been used to aid people with limited mobility and in all types of grav situations, but Ia had already learned that it wasn’t the walking that was the problem. It was her endurance. Every step took so much energy; it drained her where there wasn’t even anything left. She gazed at the exposed pipes in the ceiling. There was a time when her body would have been able to swing from one end of the room to the next with ease.
“Yep, that’s the face of a wallower,” Eve’s voice said, breaking through Ia’s thoughts.
Eve crossed over to the far end of the room where her pouch lay. She kneeled down and pulled out something from inside. Ia’s helmet. Eve dusted the dirt from the top and placed it on the ground in front of her.
Ia’s eyes widened at the sight of it. She’d thought it was gone, that they had sawed it right off her, like her eye mod and her vocal enhancer. Everything that had become so much a part of her, a part of the Blood Wolf of the Skies.
It could be a replica, she thought, but even from this distance, she could tell. It was hers. It wasn’t the feather that gave it away; it was the mold of the helmet itself. The way the panels assembled and melded together as if it was one piece. Not many makers could achieve that. Her helmet was one of a kind, made by an old armor smith from the Meridian system, using techniques that had been passed down from generation to generation. The smith was the only one left in his family, so the knowledge died along with him when the Commonwealth invaded and wiped out his entire planet.
Eve nodded down to the helmet on the floor, going so far as to rest her foot on its crest. It made Ia cringe, but then, for a terrifying second, she saw it: the phantom figure watching her from the shadows, its horns so sharp that they would make her bleed. The terror seeped back into her. She had no armor. Nothing to shield her. If she put her helmet on, if she became the Blood Wolf, she would have to face it. She would have to face her own death. Again.
“Here’s the thing,” Eve said. “Do you want this or not?”
Ia stared at the helmet lying across the room, the Blood Wolf’s feather bold against the black. Every scuff and scratch told a story of her life. It gave her courage. It gave her hope. And she always wore it proudly. She never cowered behind that visor. Never.
She pulled herself up and clambered to her helmet. Plucking it off the floor, she crossed back to the other side of the room and placed it right next to the statue of Deus, where day by day it would gather dust and eventually be forgotten.
CHAPTER 32
BRINN
IT WAS LATE in the evening, and Einn had ordered Brinn to her quarters to get some rest since it was something she often forgot to do. As she lay on her cot, she undid the latch of her holowatch, now linked to a Dead Space private network to mask her location from anyone who was searching for her. But with her family and Ia dead, she didn’t know who would be. Besides, she didn’t need to be connected to do what she wanted to do.
She dragged her finger against the touch screen. The watch illuminated in the surrounding darkness. She opened her photos folder, quickly selecting the one she wanted. A holodisplay flickered in the space before her, like an apparition appearing on its regular haunting hour.
The photo was over a year old by now. It was the one they took the day of the Provenance Day parade, the same day Ia was captured. In the image, Brinn’s eyes were bright with wonder, and Faren was looking at her, his lips upturned, caught in the middle of a laugh.
It was painful to see her brother’s face, but it hurt even more to see her own. So she set her eyes on Faren, the one person she missed the most in this universe. Brinn always had so much to tell him. So much.
“Hey, Fare,” she said. But those were all the words she could manage now.
She left the rest of her words in the tight confines of her throat, swallowed them, so they crowded up all the space in her chest. No matter what she’d tell him about why she was doing what she was doing, she knew what he’d say.
She got out of bed, leaving her brother to haunt her space without her.
Nirvana’s residence halls were different than the dormitories at Aphelion. For one, they were a lot darker. Einn certainly had the infrastructure to install lighting grids everywhere, but the darkness was his choice. Instead of overhead lights flooding every crack and corner, LEDs were embedded along the walking path to guide the way. As Brinn walked down the hallway, all of the doors looked the same, but she knew which one to stop at.
Brinn stared at a red metal door. She knocked three times. No answer.
She tried once more, but the door remained closed.
Liam must be gone.
Strange. It was a
lready late, and most people’s activities were done for the day, though a few people preferred to do their lurking at night.
Ever since Liam had arrived back from the mission on Nova Grae, it had been hard to find the time to see him. Brinn was too preoccupied with work. She didn’t have room for other things. Or people.
It was easy to shut everything out when she had already settled on a certain truth. That the world was broken. That the hope that remained was quickly slipping through all the giant cracks, taking her along with it.
To stop from completely disappearing, she had to remind herself that there was more. That there was still something out there for her. It felt like the only thing that could fill that void was Penance. But even she knew that it was merely a distraction, a way for her to numb herself and forget.
She didn’t know if Penance would suddenly change everything, but she did know that it was the only thing she could control right now. The only thing that she could fix. One thing was certain: she would open a bridge to another universe. There was no telling what would be on the other side. It could better the world. Or it could destroy it. Brinn couldn’t be bothered with those details. All that mattered was that she succeeded.
As she turned away from Liam’s door, her forehead knocked into something flat and hard. She glanced up but all she saw was the length of an empty hallway.
She waved her hand in front of her, and her palm brushed up against something. An invisible obstacle to her path, tough and textured underneath her fingertips. Like metallic fabric. The hard sleeve of a suit that someone was wearing.
Immediately, Brinn stepped backward and glared at the empty space. “I don’t know why you always have to walk around like this.”
“Like what?” the air whispered back at her.
She rolled her eyes, having absolutely no desire to continue with the conversation. She knew it would be frustrating and filled with useless questions.
“Do you know where my friend Liam is?” she asked.
Eyes the shade of ghostly lavender appeared before her, followed by the sharp, white lines along the jaw and chin, completing the outline of the skull on his face. She had seen it a few times already, but it still was unsettling when it appeared out of nowhere like that.
“Why are you asking me this?”
Brinn crossed her arms. “Because you always know where everyone is. Isn’t that your specialty? Sneaking around and spying on people?”
“No,” Goner said. “My specialty is destroying things.”
“Well, this place is still standing.”
He blinked his eyes slowly as if he was trying to ignore every single word she had said. Then he turned away from her and started walking back to where he had come from. Before he rounded the corner, he looked back at her, his white cheekbone cutting hard against the dark.
“I thought you said you wanted to know where he is.”
Goner led her down paths and hallways she had never seen before. From what she could tell, he was bringing her deeper and deeper underground.
They stopped before a pair of tall doors. Thick metal sheets with intricate carvings etched into the surface. The carvings took the shape of circles, layered on top of one another. Some concentric, some intersecting. Like ripples across water.
No, like the tears in space itself.
Her eyes traced the outline of the doorframe, looking for the glowing square sensor that would open the doors before her.
“They’re not that kind of door,” Goner said. He pointed out the circular brass doorknobs on each of them.
Brinn reached out, grabbing a doorknob. It twisted easily, but getting the door to inch open was another story. Brinn wedged her shoulder against the thick metal, every muscle straining as she pushed with all her strength.
Goner leaned back lazily against the wall, watching her as she struggled. “If you can’t muscle your way through, maybe you don’t even deserve to see what’s behind it.”
Brinn glared at him, then heard the rumblings of noise beyond. She pressed her ear up against the cold metal, the jagged carvings scratching against her cheek. Shouts, followed by the crunch of heavy impact.
Her eyes narrowed on Goner. “What the mif is going on in there?”
He smiled, as if savoring the fear on her face, and then he placed a broad palm on the door and pushed.
The door gave way easily for him, as though he was a child brushing away sand in the sandbox.
Was she really that weak? she wondered. Or was he really that strong?
He waved a hand for her to make her way inside. “Personally, I don’t think you’re ready to see this, but that’s why it’s so much fun.”
The door opened to a dark, spacious arena. Crystal spires hung low from the craggy ceiling. The walls were made of rock, bare of metal beams or paneling. The place was a natural cavern deep within the subsurface of the floating planetoid.
A grated walkway lined the perimeter of the cavern. It was crudely made, with no safety railing to keep people from falling off the edge into the pit below.
The noises she heard through the metal doors grew louder as she made her way along the perimeter. From outside, it sounded like a light scuffle, one with bruising and gashes involved, but inside, the danger was thicker than she’d thought and more apparent. She was walking into a battlefield.
Brinn stayed close to the rock wall. Behind her, Goner had disappeared. His vanishing acts were starting to aggravate her, but there could be a reason why he didn’t want to be seen in a place like this.
Shouts came from down in the pit. She froze midstep, a rush of fear crawling up her spine. She could go to the edge and investigate, but she stayed stuck in place.
And then she saw it. A glimmer of light rippling above. The light stretched and tore beyond all natural order until a gash appeared, revealing another view through its center. Just then, a figure tumbled through, followed by another.
Brinn’s eyes grew wide.
She recognized the dark silhouette, his sleek black flight suit topped with the horned helmet. It was Einn, but that wasn’t what made her freeze in terror. It was the boy he had dragged through that wormhole with him.
Liam. Punching and clawing, not to get away from Einn, but to escape gravity’s clutches. Because if he didn’t, he’d hit ground. And he’d be dead.
She had seen this moment before, when Einn had dropped Ia from a similar height.
Ia was a clever and resourceful fighter, but there was no way to fight gravity. The sound of the impact had been terrifying. Brinn had expected it to be filled with the crunch of bones, the splatter of blood all across the pavement. In actuality, it sounded clean. A quick crack against the cement. But that was what had made her pause, that something so quick and clean would take down the strongest person she knew.
All Brinn could do at that moment was watch her fall. It served as a reminder. People weren’t equipped to go against nature. They needed tools, wind packs, starjets, eye mods. They were feeble creatures. Nature could wipe them out in seconds, if it wanted to.
So that was why it was terrifying to watch Einn defy the forces like this. In a way, he had placed himself above the order of the universe. And he truly was.
Liam tried to anchor onto him, but Einn had already twisted away. Einn weaved a pattern with his fingers, opening up another spatial tear. He dove through, leaving Liam to fall.
Brinn ran to the edge, watching her memories repeat themselves. But instead of Ia, it was Liam.
And that was when she felt it, this more she was searching for. There were threads that still held her to this world, to this life. He was one of them.
Was there still good in the universe? Yes, if she could feel this way, then yes.
“Liam!” she yelled, and his gaze met hers. Perhaps it was the shock of terror, but his eyes remained surprisingly calm.
Snapping back into focus, his body spiraled so he faced the ground. He reached to a device strapped around his waist and tapped on the center
button. Another wormhole appeared directly in front of him, and he flipped his body right through.
And the other end—where was it? Her eyes flew up and then down, locking on to a small cylindrical tear hovering near the ground. It was perpendicular to the other wormhole, and only a few meters away.
Liam’s feet appeared, along with the rest of his body. He landed in a crouch, his back curved, chest heaving up and down from the adrenaline.
Einn, who had landed moments earlier, walked over to him and offered him a hand.
When he stood, Liam’s eyes went to hers. There were others gathered next to him, young soldiers dressed in combat gear, and they all had the same device. Einn had more plans than Penance, she realized. And more weapons for war.
Brinn followed Liam into a room lined with lockers for the soldiers in training. Some of them were in the middle of changing out of their gear, but she didn’t care about the flash of skin.
She stared at Liam’s broad back, her anger firing. He could have killed himself today. If he landed wrong, he could have severed his nervous system. Liam would end up paralyzed, just like his father.
“Give me that device,” she demanded. “Do you know how dangerous that is?”
But he kept walking. She grabbed him by the crook of his elbow, but he shrugged away from her.
“I’m prepared for all this. To fight. To die. I’m a soldier,” he said, and his glare cut through her. His words stung with the acid of truth. “I’m not your brother, Brinn.”
She tried to bite down whatever sadness had welled up inside her. She hadn’t realize it before, but perhaps he was right. Was this how she was dealing with her brother’s death?
“Give me that device, Liam,” she said softly.
Grumbling, he passed it to her, and she turned it around in her hand, examining the delicate wiring, the shoddy frame, powered by a microcanister of uranium. Whenever it was activated, a wave of radiation would be unleashed upon its immediate surroundings. And on the user himself. It was dangerous. A weapon. If she wanted to, she could break it apart with a quick twist of her wrists. Then it’d be just a tangle of circuits and wires.
