This so-called Morgana’s eyes sharpened. “Yes, you do look too well rested. It’s only fair to give you a taste of what you missed.” She rushed forward faster than light, startling Ari into dropping the sword in the ashy gravel. Morgana placed a single, semi-translucent finger against Merlin’s temple. He slumped to the ground, writhing.
“No! No!” Merlin yelled before dissolving into the stifled screams of someone with a knife in their belly. Morgana hovered beside him, and Ari ran halfway down the alley before she stopped. She didn’t want to run; she wanted to know what the hell was happening, and she wanted that gods damn sword—and that weird guy’s ability to give the Mercer associates the slip.
Ari walked back toward them, keeping her distance from the ethereal woman, and stooped quickly to pick up the sword. “What are you doing to him?”
Morgana looked at her as though she was surprised by Ari’s presence. “You should be running. That’s what all the others did the first time they saw me.”
“Are you killing him?”
Morgana laughed. “I’m letting him experience what I saw when I was that miserable oak. Catching him up on the latest Manifest Destiny fever, although I do not envy the headrush.”
“You were the oak?” Ari felt the logic click—the odd moment that came after freeing the sword and the familiarity she’d felt when she saw Morgana. Merlin’s screams turned to pealing groans. “What did you see on Earth? What’s he seeing now?”
“The latest corrosion of mankind. The death of the planet. The exodus of the privileged classes in generation ships.” She cocked her head at Ari, taking in her skin and hair. “Your people, the Arabs, were the first to leave, to turn their back on all that humanity had done to the earth. Not that I blamed them. Their lot on that planet was perpetual war and grief.”
“My people are from Ketch.”
“Revision.” Her smile twitched. “One of the finest tools the human brain possesses.”
Merlin’s groans turned to whimpers, staining the entire alley with his pain.
Morgana watched with ferocious intensity. “I imagine he thinks he’s past the worst. The ruthless wars for the last of the fossil fuels. The collapse of western civilization. The plagues. You’d think that would be enough, wouldn’t you? But while the rich immigrated to galaxies beyond comprehension, the poor stayed behind, their bodies as diseased as the soil and air.”
Merlin’s eyes were furiously shut, his hands in tight fists pinned over his heart while his whimpers melted into silent tears.
Morgana’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They never died as fast as I hoped. They’d live long enough to stumble through hormones. To feel like they’d invented love. To have babies. And then the babies tried to raise themselves. To live on nothing.” Morgana dragged her fingernails down her own arms, making Ari’s skin sting. “They tried so hard.”
Ari didn’t know how to respond.
The woman slid her eyes over Ari’s entire body. “I’ve longed for a female Arthur,” she said, her voice like silt. “But you appear as foolhardy as the others. It will be your undoing.” Morgana stepped closer, even more translucent in the streetlamp than she was in the shadows. “I’m here to set you free. We will find your death this time, Arthur. I promise.”
“No more Arthur crap!” Ari raised the sword with one hand. If it had imprisoned this unnerving woman once, perhaps it could be done again. Morgana backed up with a snarl, and Ari used her free hand to haul the sobbing, skinny boy to his feet and secured his arm over her shoulder. He clung to her, and she felt a surge of protective feelings for this red-haired weirdo.
Morgana bared her white teeth, her eyes a fiery black. “You will listen to me this time. You will not fall for his chivalrous nonsense. I will make you listen!”
Merlin shuddered from Ari’s side, his face pressed into her neck. “Ashes, ashes,” he sang softly, “we all fall down.”
He pointed a finger upward. A bolt of lightning crackled forth, fracturing the dome.
Morgana shrieked and evaporated. Ari stared at the searing white lines high above. If the thermal shade broke, they had seconds before they were boiled in their skin. She ran, dragging Merlin. The evacuation alarms wailed, and Ari didn’t have to worry about Mercer because the streets filled with the chaos of a few thousand lives on the brink of obliteration.
Error’s cargo door opened with a mechanical gasp, and Ari dropped the still-faintish magician unceremoniously in the cabin. She placed the sword on the table and ran toward the cockpit.
“Kay! Time to get the hell out of Dodge!”
“You think?” Kay was already slamming controls, jarring them out of the lunar docks. Ordinarily, they’d have to request to leave the spaceport and receive a set time, but right now the entire colony was stuffed in tiny spaceships, bottlenecking the exit.
Although that wasn’t what froze Ari in her tracks. “Lamarack?” she asked, her voice unsteady. Kay’s childhood best friend twisted around in Ari’s command chair, even more stunning than the last time she’d seen them, all magnificent cheekbones and perfect dreadlocks.
They gave her a small wink, flashing golden mauve eyeshadow. “Hey, kid.”
She flung herself into a rather embarrassing back hug, not caring a bit, even when Lam chuckled. “What’s going on? How are you here? Are you all right?” Ari’s questions fought one another. Ari and Kay hadn’t made contact with their friends since their parents’ arrest; Mercer was always watching. “Is Val okay? What’s happening?”
“Lock your boots, Ari. We’re busting out of here,” Kay hollered.
Ari’s buzz of good feelings at seeing one of her favorite people turned to suspicion. She hit the lock on the ankle of her magboots, holding on to the emergency bar above her head. “Kay, what the hell are you up to?”
“Evacuations first, explanations second!” her brother yelled. Kay used Error’s odd canister-like shape to wedge them into the mass exodus, and a ship screeched into them from the left, and the right—and the top—as their little spaceship passed through several thrown-open gates and finally through a pinhole opening in the thermal shades.
“Error, my sweet girl, is the heat skin holding?” Kay asked.
“YES, KAY THE BEARDLESS WONDER,” the ship said in a stilted voice.
Lam laughed, and Kay turned at Ari, looking more affronted than furious. “When did you have time to reprogram my baby?”
“You sleep more than I do,” Ari said with a shrug, eyes on the commotion out the starboard window. The largest dome on the colony gave way to its Merlin-inspired fractures. Human paraphernalia expanded in a rush, only to tumble lazily in the vacuum—a slow-motion explosion.
“What now?” Lam asked, their voice as soothing as Ari remembered. Lyrical, sweet. It almost made up for whatever treachery Kay was peddling. Why hadn’t he told her he was meeting one of their only friends in the cosmos?
“We hide in the pack of evacuees for now,” Kay said. “We’ll drop you off, and then Ari and I will head into the void.”
Ari bit back rising anger, waiting for the right moment—and failing as usual. “The void? So we finally find out our parents are alive and you want to disappear into dead space?”
Kay swung around. “You want to know why Lam’s here, Ari? Because I called them from Earth. I asked them to meet us. To bring us a few supplies and the latest Mercer chatter. Do you want to know what that might be?”
Kay was glaring so hard Ari was having a hard time not punching him in the face.
“That they’re looking for me?”
“Looking? Oh, no, they’re beyond looking. They’ve put out a bulletin about Error. Anyone who spots this ship can report it and collect a reward. We have to get out of Mercer territory now, or we’re going to end up just like my moms.”
My moms. He did that sometimes. Ari knew it was not a purposeful exclusion of her from their family, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Kay knew he’d hurt her, too, but instead of gearing down, he revved up. �
��Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with that mess back there.”
Ari folded her arms over her chest. “Don’t say anything,” Mom used to tell her. “If you can’t lie and you don’t know what else to do, just… say nothing.”
“Ari!”
“A little help, friends?” a voice called out from the main cabin.
Kay’s face blanched to a gray that matched his hair. “You brought someone with you?”
He rushed out of the cockpit and Lamarack stood, giving Ari a one-armed hug. “Never boring with you two, is it?”
Ari smiled back but then hustled into the main cabin. Without magboots, Merlin was floating in the air, spinning slowly toward an upside-down position that would give them an unfortunate view of whatever he was—or wasn’t—wearing under that bathrobe.
“Who is this?” Kay asked, incredulous.
“I found him in a nightclub.”
“What were you doing in a nightclub?”
“You said to go somewhere Mercer wouldn’t expect to find me. Who goes dancing when the largest corporation in the universe is after them?”
Kay growled and grabbed Merlin’s leg, stuffing him into a chair and strapping him in.
“Greetings, latest Kay,” Merlin said.
“He says he knows us,” Ari added.
Kay stood back, studying him. “I don’t know you. I would remember… you.”
“I’m Merlin the magician, and I come to you now at the turn of the tides.” Kay stared openmouthed at this attempt at dramatic grandeur. “Well, that’s Gandalf’s line, but I had to try it at least once.”
Kay’s face puckered with annoyance. “Is this because I made you wear the smelly rubber knight costume and hide in the Arthur exhibit? You find some wacko to pretend to be Merlin to taunt me?”
Ari remembered the miserable old figure listed as Merlin. “No, but that would have been a great idea. He’s the reason the dome broke. I was merely a witness.”
Kay swiveled at his sister. “He broke the dome and you brought him on my ship?”
“He can do magic, Kay.”
Kay scoffed and spun at Merlin. “Right, sure, do some magic, then. Go ahead.”
Merlin puckered a frown. “I’m a bit tired. Being tortured will do that.”
“The fuck!” Kay’s eyes had found Ari’s newest love. Excalibur should have been floating along with Merlin, but somehow it was stabbed through the center of the crew table, rather majestically, Ari felt like adding.
“Huh. I didn’t do that. I dropped it on the table. Promise.”
“Do I look stupid?” Kay asked.
Oh, what a trap. Ari stared at Kay’s livid expression, his shoulders hunched to match his eyebrows. Lam chuckled from the corner. “Not any more than usual.”
Kay spun on Merlin. “So, you did that?”
“Not in the slightest,” Merlin said unhelpfully. “Excalibur has its own ideas.”
Kay yanked on the sword, first with one hand, and then with both. His face grew red and puffy, and Ari could tell he was about to bust something. “Excalibur only responds to the touch of King Arthur.” Merlin looked at Ari knowingly, and she felt distinctly uncomfortable.
“Don’t get your unders in a twist,” she told Kay. “It’s only a sword.” She pushed him out of the way and lifted the sword with ease.
“I loosened it for you,” Kay said, breathing heavily. “Everyone saw me loosen it.”
“Told you,” Merlin sang, a few sparks flicking from his fingers.
“Did you see that?” Ari said, shaking Kay’s shoulder. “He duped the Mercer associates. Tricked them right out of seeing us like we were invisible. What if he could help us find our moms? What if he could help us save them?”
Ari stopped herself from the last piece, the unspoken, rushing desire beneath her muscles, hidden in her blood. The desire she’d only admitted to Captain Mom once—and yet it was so powerful it had cost her moms their freedom. What if he could get me through the barrier, back to Ketch?
“Ari, that’s impossible.” Kay placed a hand on her arm, highlighting how furiously she’d been talking. Her feelings toward her brother were tight and twisted. Ari refused to give up, and Kay had given up so long ago she was starting to hate him.
“Lam, tell him we can—” Ari cut herself off. Lam was leaning in the doorway of the cockpit, wearing a long leather coat and matching breeches. Their arms hung at their sides, one of them significantly abridged. Their left hand was missing. How had she not noticed it before? “What happened to your hand?”
Lam looked to Kay, who shook his head and nodded toward the crew quarters. Lam left obediently. “Lam had an accident a few years back. They don’t want to talk about it.”
Ari bit back a shout. She was going to kick the crap out of her brother. They hadn’t had a full-on fistfight in years, but it was coming. And this time she had a sword.
“Lam,” Merlin said, interrupting. “Oh! Lamarack! He’s an excellent knight.”
“Dude!” Kay said. “Lam is fluid. They.”
“Oh, apologies.” Merlin’s face blotched with red. “I, um, come from a society with a history of gender assumptions based on physical markers, aesthetics… et cetera.”
“Ew,” Ari said.
“That’s wicked sad,” Kay added.
Merlin, at least, looked deeply ashamed. “You’ve no idea.”
“But Kay…” Ari faced her brother, only for him to duck into the cockpit and lock the door. Ari dug through the supply closet and found Captain Mom’s old magboots. She brought them to Merlin, still strapped in the chair.
He lifted his head like a puppy while she shoved his feet into them. “Oh, space shoes!”
“They’re magboots. They were my mom’s,” Ari said. “Our parents were arrested three years ago. For harboring me, a highly unwelcome Ketchan, in Mercer territory. Kay and I barely escaped.” Merlin was staring at where her shirt buckled from her skin, revealing circular scars across her entire body like a constellation of old pain. She sat up, fixed her collar. “First you mess up Lam’s pronouns, now you stare at someone’s scars? We’ve got to work on you, Merlin the magician.”
“Those are quite a lot of scars.” His voice was so sad that Ari hated it.
“I know. I was there when I got them.”
“Were you tortured?”
Ari allowed this question because she’d just seen this scrawny guy crumbled to his knees by that wisp of a nightmare. “It was a kind of torture. Tell me, will that woman come back for you?”
“Oh, not for some time. Most likely.”
Ari unstrapped his chest, and Merlin stood up, eye-to-eye. “Until then you’re going to help me find our parents and get them away from Mercer. That’s why I brought you on this ship.”
“Sounds like a quest,” Merlin said hopefully. “I did see this Mercer on the moon. Very imperial in my rough estimation. With a heaping of corporate slime.”
“There’s more going on here, but according to my brother, I’m not strong enough to handle it.” She stopped pacing. “I need to know what Lamarack and Kay are hiding.”
“I can help with that!” Merlin said. The magician had an almost embarrassing need to prove that he was useful—something Ari still doubted, no matter what she’d told Kay. His stomach growled loudly enough for them both to glance at it. “I’m much more magical when I’m not so hungry. Can I have something to eat?”
“We’re on strict rations,” Ari said. “The pantry only opens to Kay’s iris scan. He’s pretty protective of his food.”
“Fine. I’ll work on an empty stomach, but don’t blame me if your first bit of training is subpar.” He stared into the air, as if speaking to the molecules. “Arthurs usually delight in being turned into birds, fish, some variety of small furry mammal. Although none of that is conducive to spying on a spaceship. You need to blend in…” Merlin hummed a bit of an old song and spun his hands around in whirligigs. “Lamarack will tell Kay what they know.”
“
Of course Lam will tell Kay, but how am I supposed to find out when I’ve got all these butt-nosed protectors up in my busi…” Ari’s voice disappeared as she looked at her hands.
Or rather, Kay’s hands. She stared down at herself in the shiny tabletop, Kay’s blue eyes bulging. She clutched herself across Kay’s stomach. “This does not feel right.”
When she looked up, she gasped. Merlin had turned himself into Kay as well. “Hey!”
Merlin nodded solemnly, a weird look on Kay’s face. “Before I let you go, you must promise you will use this visage for no other purpose than speaking to Lamarack.”
“What else would I want to do as Kay?” Ari asked, her own voice bubbling out of his thick throat. “Scare people with my breath?”
Merlin glared. Ari got the feeling that this little exchange wasn’t really about her.
“Okay. I promise.”
Merlin nodded and resumed his perkiness, heading to the pantry and scanning his borrowed eyeball. “Off you go,” he said. “This body will wear out in about thirty-three minutes, so do hurry.”
Ari was Kay. Well, no. She was wearing his clothes… and his body. His whole body? It took her a few moments to gather the courage, but she poked the front of her pants and yelped. “Gross!”
She shot into the bunk room and went straight for the hammock pod that carried the wide shoulders and long frame of Lamarack. “Lam,” she said, before remembering to drop her voice.
Lamarack unzipped the hammock and swung their legs out. “Did you find a place to drop me off?”
“We need to talk.” God, she sounded foolish when she growled like Kay, but Lam didn’t seem to notice. “Without Ari around, you know?”
Lam rubbed their face with their remaining hand. “She’s damn curious, and oh, my heavens, that girl has grown up in three years. Not a kid anymore, huh? She’s dynamite.”
Ari let herself take that one in for a moment. Her childhood crush had just called her dynamite. She tried to lean back casually, but Kay’s body was all bulkiness, and she knocked into three hammocks in the process.
Lam eyed her warily. “We can’t keep her in the dark, Kay. No matter what your moms made you promise.”
Once & Future Page 4
