by Maura Milan
Knives stood at their appearance, his eyes narrowed—not at her, but at Vetty standing beside her. There was obvious tension between them, and not all of it seemed like it was because of her.
As Vetty helped Ia into her seat, Knives turned to her, his eyes softening. He offered her a plate of food. “You look better.”
Her eyes turned to the floor. Perhaps she looked better, but she didn’t feel it.
“Of course she does,” Eve said. “I’ve been whipping her back into shape.”
Knives craned his head at Eve with obvious judgment.
“What? She needs to do something if she’s going to stop Einn.”
“Eve…” Knives warned.
“Stop,” Ia said, banging her fist on the tabletop. The action was weak, but it still had an effect. “All this talk about me going after my brother. None of it makes sense. Look at the state that I’m in. I’m not even at 100 with an assist suit on.”
She didn’t want to tell them about the nightmares, about the ghost that haunted her in her sleep. And sometimes even when she was awake. His horns were slick with her blood. If the visor was lifted, would it even be her brother under there? Or a monster smiling back at her, excited to finally devour her?
“Fine,” Vetty said, grabbing a protein cube from her plate. “I’ll go after him.” It was a Vetty thing to do, to rush headfirst into anything that smelled of danger.
“No, Vetty,” she warned. “He’s different now. He’s stronger.” He’s the devil himself, she thought, but she didn’t say it.
“Well, it’s not like I haven’t been training while we were apart.”
“It’s not that,” she said. It was so hard to explain what Einn could do, because she didn’t quite know what it was herself. “He has abilities.”
Vetty leaned in, along with the others.
“I don’t know if it’s tech or what, but he can jump.”
“Anyone can do that,” Eve said. “I mean maybe not you, in the state you’re in.”
Ia narrowed her eyes. “Not that type of jump.”
Knives’s shoulders tensed. “She’s right. I’ve seen Einn do it before in Fugue. It was like he opened his own personal interstellar gate, but on a smaller scale.”
Ia’s heartbeat quickened inside her chest as the images flew back at her. She saw them so clearly, the small tears that Einn ripped through space so that he could leave her to fall. She had no idea how he had acquired such unnatural power, but then his words echoed through the folds of her memories. Why would I ever want to kill the man that gave me so many gifts? She didn’t know exactly how, but it was linked to their father.
Eve unscrewed her vapor stick and refilled the fluid. “I think we need more intel. Maybe we can get someone from his camp to tell us something. Do we know anyone who’s over there?”
“Brinn,” Knives suggested.
Ia scraped her fingernail against the warped metal surface. Her voice grated against her throat. “She’s on his side now.”
The air hung heavy with silence. It had been a while since she had spoken about Brinn Tarver, but there wasn’t a day when Ia hadn’t thought of her. She wondered how her brother was treating her, and most of all, she wondered why Brinn had switched sides.
Was it her fault? Of course it was. Of course it was.
Eve tapped her vapor stick to settle the fluids, then glanced at the clock on a nearby holoscreen. “It’s almost time to open up shop.”
Across the table, Knives stood, presumably to help Ia up, but Vetty had beat him to it, already at her side, one arm around her shoulder.
“I’ll bring Ia back to her quarters,” Vetty said. “There’s still something I need to show her.”
She cast her eyes from one to the other, watching them ramp their glares up to maximum aggression. Knives turned and made his way to the storage room behind the bar.
As Vetty helped her pass the awning into the residential wing, she tried to catch a look at Knives, but he had disappeared.
“I gotta tell you,” Vetty said. “You’re keeping interesting company these days.”
“What did you do to him?” Ia asked.
“Nothing.” Vetty shrugged. “I just beat him in a race.”
“Of course you beat him. You were in your Yari.”
“Hey,” Vetty said. “I also learned from the best.”
She smiled at him. It was nice that they could talk to each other like they used to, that even after all this time, they could still feel at ease. He was a link to her past, to those glorious days when she was at her peak. When people called her the Sovereign. But she didn’t want to think about those days. The past was called the past for a reason. It would never come again.
“I’ve been seeing signs of your brother around,” Vetty said. “I know he’s building something big. Whatever it is, I thought perhaps you’d be in on it with him.”
“This one is all him. I think he wants to finally make a name for himself, and he’ll do it if he rips a hole in the universe. It’ll be a signature for everyone to see.”
Vetty was on a lot of missions that Einn had orchestrated, using the feather of the Blood Wolf to strike fear into everyone’s hearts, but when Ia had started to reclaim that feather as her own, taking on jobs that helped refugee groups, even formulating attack strategies for the resistance, Einn wasn’t exactly pleased. Usually, Einn pulled his strings in the shadows, but now he seemed to be racing to the finale, like a puppet master ready to step out and receive his applause.
“There’s another thing. You know how the crowd at Harix talks,” Vetty said. “They say the White Hearts are on the search.”
“For what?”
“Not what,” Vetty said. “It’s whom. Einn’s been sending his people to find the Half-Man.”
Ia cocked an eyebrow. “The Half-Man? But that’s just a nursery rhyme.”
Everyone knew the song. Even her mother had sung it to her when Ia was young, when she was alive. The tune itself was catchy and upbeat, but the lyrics recited on their own were quite the opposite. Watch out. Watch out for the Half-Man. He lives neither here nor there. The Half-Man comes from nowhere. He’ll take you and break you. Watch out, watch out. Before you disappear. It was the type of song that scared kids rather than put them to sleep.
But everyone knew that it was just as it was—a nursery rhyme. Yet all this time, Einn thought it was true?
She could have laughed at her brother’s foolishness, but Einn always had a knack for being right.
“Hey,” Vetty said. “Before we turn in, there’s something you need to see.”
Vetty helped her slowly to the flight deck. To the right, she saw two starjets parked side by side.
Vetty’s Yari and…
“Orca,” Ia breathed. It was her jet. The same jet that had outmaneuvered Captain Nema and led the ambush at the battle of K-5 Neptune. The same beast that had torn through the Harix Corridor. After she had separated from her crew to keep a low profile while the Commonwealth was after her, she stashed Orca in a large fissure of an asteroid near the Gipia moon. There was a part of her that thought she’d never see her beloved jet again, but here she was now.
This jet was a part of her, a lost limb that magically had returned.
She should have felt complete, but instead, she felt a thread of fear and anxiety stretch through her. Orca was a beast made of metal, and even if she crashed, there was still a good chance the ship would be fixed, with the right mechanic and all the right parts. But what about her? Her body was slow. Her muscles were weak. Those were things that couldn’t be replaced. And a ship was nothing without its pilot.
“You don’t look happy to see her,” Vetty said.
Ia took a deep breath. She didn’t want to admit it, but with Orca there before her, perhaps it was time. “I don’t think I’ll be able to fly.”
The tears were hot as they streamed down her face. But she let them flow. What was the point in stopping them?
“You’re the best pilot I k
now,” Vetty said. “I’ll keep telling you that until you believe it yourself. It’ll be annoying. I promise you that.”
She couldn’t help but laugh, even through the tears.
Vetty took her hand. “You have to let us be there for you.” Ia looked down at her feet. She had never been on this side of it all. On this side, she wasn’t the Blood Wolf. She wasn’t the Sovereign. She was just Ia. Ia, who needed help.
She looked at Vetty and nodded.
CHAPTER 35
BRINN
BRINN STARED at the screen, looking at the scans she’d taken of Einn’s vitals in an effort to apply whatever it was he could do to their own technology. No matter how she looked at it, the results, while shocking, were clear as day. Parts of his body were made of a different kind of matter.
There had always been questionable constants in the universe. Dark matter and antimatter were a few of them. Usually, these new types of matter were categorized to fill in the holes that appeared within people’s knowledge of how the universe worked. There were always things that couldn’t be explained.
The matter in Einn’s body was unlike anything Brinn had seen. At least not in this universe. It had more mass and was much denser than the matter she knew. On a scale, Einn weighed three times more than a normal man his size and age, but gravity didn’t affect the excess grams that were on his body. He could move and jump just fine, almost better than anyone else. More importantly, this matter was how he could create those wormholes.
“Are there more like you?” Brinn asked.
“There was my father, yes. But I believe there were more in the past. That beings from other universes have traveled into our own. Those with an array of abilities. Some like me. Some maybe even more powerful,” he said. “You call them gods. This Deus you all talk about is one example.”
“You think she’s real,” Brinn said slowly.
Einn nodded, and his words came out sure and certain. “All legends come from something that was once true.”
Brinn sat back in her chair, trying to piece together her thoughts. The origins of Deus had never been explained in such a way. Anyone could have heard Einn’s theory and dismissed it as a result of having one too many OPiodes that day, but she knew what he could do. And she had seen what he was inside.
“Then Ia was like you,” she said.
A tight line cinched along his jaw. “Perhaps. But she’s dead now.” There was glee in his response, as well as a slight hint of relief. Maybe because he would never find out if it were true.
Einn strolled through the aisles, angling his head at the machines on each workstation, each unit at different levels of completion. He stopped at one specific prototype. “Is the new tech ready?”
He picked up the unit, turning the tiny metal orbs in his hand. It was her new invention. It created mini black holes using the same uranium charge units that were attached to the wormhole devices she had seen Liam and the soldiers practicing with.
“Yes, but they only work for seconds at a time.”
Einn tossed it up in the air, as if it was a toy. But Brinn knew it was more dangerous than that. “That’s all we need. Finish this batch, and load them up.”
“What for?”
Einn turned to her with a smile, a light in the dark. “We’re going out with them.”
That only meant one thing: they were preparing for a mission. And if he was considering putting her new invention in play, it would be a dangerous one.
Brinn could reason it out for hours in her head. That this research would benefit their understanding of black holes and thus their understanding of the universe. But in reality, she knew what these things were. They were bombs. And she was the one who had created them.
CHAPTER 36
IA
THEY SPENT A FEW DAYS going over all the basic moves. Ia felt like a child again, relearning everything that had taken her years to perfect. Walking, running, climbing, fighting. But she had to admit, the assist suit helped.
Every night, when Eve helped her take it off, Ia collapsed into the hard foam mattress of her bed. Well, Eve’s bed.
The movement was all there. Ia just felt weak and uncoordinated. Which meant she’d be easy to take down in a fight.
Vetty took over her sparring sessions. Out of everyone, he was most familiar with Einn’s fighting style.
As she went through all of her movements, she understood how Brinn must have felt during their training exercises. Ia was angry at her body for not doing what she wanted. Still, she repeated each pose, reteaching her body the precision it needed to deflect any attacks. Uppercuts, a right hook, a fist to the center of the chest. It wasn’t just that; it was also speed. If she wasn’t fast enough to block a punch to her sternum, her rib cage could shatter. And that would be it. End of the fight. And thus, the end of the universe.
That day, Vetty had convinced her to train without the assist suit, which meant there wouldn’t be much power to her attacks, and her balance would be thrown off easily.
She focused her attention on the details of Vetty’s stance. One angled arm in front, palm upward to either attack or block. His other fist was already tightly recoiled near his chest, ready to dart out at the next opportunity.
She took a deep breath, trying to center her breathing, bringing her weight and balance lower into her stance.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Her brother wouldn’t ask her if she was ready. He wouldn’t even give her a hint of an attack. But she nodded at Vetty anyway, grateful for the warning.
His upper hand, already curled in a fist, flew toward her face, and thankfully, she was able to sidestep in time without straight up falling on her backside. Vetty shifted, moving in quick arcs toward her, his feet trying to trip hers, but she wobbled away.
“Take him down, Ia,” Eve hooted from the sidelines, cheering her on.
It was a surprising turn of events. She was actually able to keep up. Maybe she could do this. Maybe she could win.
Suddenly, instead of Vetty’s face, she saw a black helmet and two sharp horns. Her muscles froze, stuck in a mess of eternal sludge. A palm struck hard in the center of her chest. She staggered backward, her eyes catching the first milliseconds of Vetty’s next attack.
But she couldn’t twist her body in time. His fist landed hard on her shoulder, knocking her completely off-balance. Her feet wobbled underneath her. She fell hard on her hip, the pain knocking through the inside of her body, so sharp it felt it would rip through her skin.
She looked up, and the phantom image of Einn was gone. Instead, Vetty stared down at her, eyes wide with concern. He rushed over to her, offering his hand.
Instead of slipping her hand into his, she burst out, a torrent of uncontrollable emotion pouring out of her. She was crying, she was laughing, she was about to vomit. Everything rumbled out of her throat in a force, her sharp cackling bouncing off the thin and rusting metal walls.
“Are you okay?” Vetty asked, then looked back to Eve, who was also staring over in shock. “Is she okay?”
Ia waved her hand as if it was nothing. “Yeah.” She roared with even more laughter. “We’re all going to die, but I’m fine. And the universe as we know it will be completely gone—but the universe is overrated anyway.”
“I think she’s losing it,” Eve said.
“The universe isn’t overrated,” Vetty said, trying to reason with her. “What about kitpups? And seeing the aurorealis of the Jinoran skies?”
Ia rolled her eyes at him.
“What about chocofluff?” a voice called out, and she turned to the figure standing in the doorway.
Knives stepped into the training room, his golden hair a mess and his chin dark with stubble. He was more unkempt than ever, but he stood tall and unshaken, his eyes always defiant. It was something that she wanted desperately to see in herself yet again.
Somehow, a smile reappeared on Ia’s face. “For that, maybe I’d reconsider.”
Knives turned to Vett
y, disdain searing in his eyes whenever they were in the same room. “I’ll take over.”
Vetty ignored him, stepping back into his stance. “I can keep going. I’m not even breaking a sweat.” He looked over at Ia, and his expression softened. “Sorry.”
She shrugged her shoulders, knowing it was true.
Eve pushed away from the walls and crossed the room. She grabbed Vetty by the elbow. “Come on. You can help me dredge up the new batch of archnol brew. I’ll even give you first sip. It goes down the smoothest.”
Vetty relented and let Eve drag him off.
They were gone, and it was just the two of them left with the smell of sweat and rubber in the air.
“I guess we should keep going.” Ia rolled over to get herself up when Knives crouched beside her.
“Just sit with me for a second,” he said.
“But I have to get ready. I don’t have time to just sit. Look at me, I’m not even strong enough to kill a bug.” She stared at him, realizing that she was staring at another type of Bug.
He settled down into a sitting position, legs akimbo. His knees were so close that they grazed against hers. “You were the one who showed me that I should watch out for fighters like you. You’re small, and you aren’t strong.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to keep herself from yelling at him, and instead settled into her usual glare.
“But none of that matters,” he continued, “when you’re fast and agile.”
Knives was right. These moves were meant to overtake even the largest opponents. That was something she had been trying to dig into Tarver’s mind all those times they trained.
Ia was so hard on Brinn back then, but look at her now, giving up so easily because her body had forgotten. The fear had always been there, she knew. Somehow she had managed it, stuffed it down and trusted that her mind and body wouldn’t give up the fight. But now, after facing death and coming back, the fear was paralyzing.
“There’s more to it, isn’t there?” Knives asked as his eyes studied her. By the way he said it, she knew that he had already figured it out.
