Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

  None of that now.

  This was it. The moment they’d rushed to.

  There was a shudder, Far clearing his throat. “Back in Vegas, when we were at Café Gelato, I was on edge because I knew Eliot was playing us for something. The sparkler was burning down, and you and Gram and Imogen were singing, and as I looked around that table, all I wanted… all I wished for was a happy ending.”

  Priya shut her eyes. According to the rules of ancient birthday lore, Far was only telling her because he didn’t believe it would come true. If only the Fade were a force that could be bargained with…

  “Lux grilled me pretty good before he offered me this job. He asked me what my biggest fear was. Dying without living, I told him. I had no idea the living part could be stripped away, too.” Far’s arm shifted, so he was no longer holding Priya together, but gathering her in. “For all of its faults, I want to remember this life. I want to remember you.”

  When they kissed, the water on their cheeks mingled, salt into salt. Priya thought she’d been wrung dry, that there was nothing deeper to feel, but Far’s lips were proving otherwise. This couldn’t be what good-bye felt like: his hands on her hips while her breath grazed his ear and more than tears began to meet. Neither of them held anything back.

  This was all.

  This was I love you, through and through and through.

  It was dark when Priya woke. She lay in her bunk, memorizing every point where Far’s body met hers: kneecap to thigh, hand to waist, nose to neck. Sounds of the sea poured through her BeatBix, and for one sweet moment, Priya forgot that she was going to forget. But dehydration buzzed against her skull, a reminder that she’d cried herself out.

  There was no point in checking the time to see how long she’d slept, but she felt rested, and it’d be wise to check the Invictus’s fuel rods to make sure they had enough juice to jump back. The air cooled a few degrees as she pulled away from Far, into a clean pair of scrubs. She stumbled over her purse on the way to the door. The thing was so pedestrian compared to Eliot’s pocket universe—overlarge and yet far too small. How much easier would life as a thief-patcher be with an entire hospital’s worth of medicine stored around her wrist?

  Have been, Priya corrected herself. Not be. Existence had changed tenses.

  The common area was empty, not to mention in shambles. The pan of tiramisu was scraped clean, thanks to the ladyfinger-laced paw prints that skipped up the couch. Floor panels were sharp with Rubik’s Cube corners and mug shards, sticky with tea. Normally, Priya would’ve cleared a path before anyone else needed stitches. Now she just stared at the clutter. Her eyes landed on the Code of Conduct, pages splayed so the stick figure was out of sight. Their paper crinkled and torn and not made to last.

  Everything was still. Everything was urgent.

  Far’s snores drifted from the bunk alongside ocean sounds. Priya grit her teeth and thought of the Fade, not as she’d seen it from the hatch of the Invictus, but through Eliot’s eyes. She could almost feel it rolling over the waves, obliterating an entire seascape, DESTROYER OF WORLDS so hungry, tugging every one of her hairs to itself as her hands locked around the railing, but what was the point of holding on? It was strange to think that she herself had never stood on the Titanic’s deck. The chip made everything feel so real, as if she herself had lived it….

  Priya regarded the room again—five full cups of subpar tea, red panda tail poking through bare pipes, Empra’s profile shining from the infirmary. The gape in her chest grew a thousand-fold as her fingers furled into fists. This was the life she’d chosen. There had to be a way to save it.

  She wanted, she wanted, and this time, when she rallied, it wasn’t to walk away, but forward, to the table where the velvet box sat. It felt lighter than when she’d first plucked it from the pocket universe, silver hinges soundless when she opened it. The chip within—with its see-through circuits, its nano- dimensions—was a marvel.

  Seven worlds should weigh more.

  Is there room for another one?

  Priya snapped the box shut and knocked on Eliot’s door.

  36

  FINALLY

  INVICTUS SHIP’S LOG—ENTRY 5

  CURRENT DATE: AUGUST 23, 2371. WHICH STILL EXISTS! YAY!

  CURRENT LOCATION: OVER THE MEDITERRANEAN. EN ROUTE BACK TO WHERE WE CAME FROM.

  OBJECT TO ACQUIRE: A PIECE OF AUNT EMPRA’S PAST, WHICH IS OH-SO-INCONVENIENTLY STORED IN THE CORPS OF CENTRAL TIME TRAVELERS’ MOST SECURE SERVERS.

  IMOGEN’S HAIR COLOR: HIGHLIGHTER YELLOW. EVEN IF THE FUTURE ISN’T BRIGHT DOESN’T MEAN ONE’S HAIR CAN’T BE.

  GRAM’S TETRIS SCORE: 0

  CURRENT SONG ON PRIYA’S SHIPWIDE PLAYLIST: OCEAN SOUNDS? METHINKS?

  FARWAY’S EGO: SURPRISINGLY CENTERED, AND NOT IN A SELFISH WAY, DESPITE BEING THE LITERAL CENTER OF SEVERAL UNIVERSES. CHARACTER GROWTH? PERHAPS SO.

  ELIOT’S SECRET EYEBROW MESSA—

  “WHAT ARE YOU TYPING?”

  The tap on Imogen’s shoulder made her jolt—skin-out, fresh yellow hair whipping back. It wasn’t like her to be so jumpy, but she figured her nerves had the right to be high-strung, with assured destruction threatening to pop up any second and all. There was no cloud with the munchies behind her, however, just her cousin. Clarification: cousin several universes removed.

  This was all so incredibly weird.

  “Hiya, Eliot. I’ve tried to make a habit of writing ship’s logs. To keep track of dates and quirks and stuff. I haven’t really decided what your quirk should be. Eyebrow messages?”

  Said eyebrows went all wiggly. There was definitely a message hidden in them—Imogen spied an and a beneath the Saffron-induced welts. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about….”

  “Eyebrows?”

  “No.” Eliot shook her head. “The ship’s logs. Do you keep datastreams of the Invictus’s missions?”

  “Sure do. Every one of them’s saved under the label ‘You Rat You Burn.’ It’s our insurance policy against Lux.” As if any of that mattered now. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.”

  “You’re lying.” Imogen’s eyes narrowed. Like Farway, Eliot had a penchant for swallowing too much when she fibbed. Their similarities were easy to spot, now that the truth was out. Maybe this was why she and Eliot got along so well, before. Eliot’s Farway traits cross-wiring and connecting with Imogen’s Solara-isms—she must’ve had them, if her MB+178587977FLT6 alternate threw gelato-centric surprise parties.

  “You’re right,” Eliot said. “I just—I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

  “I don’t think there’s anywhere else for our hope to go, considering.”

  The other girl offered a smile, wry as the day’s flavor. “If it happens, you’ll know.”

  “Hmm.” Imogen spied an etched , a scripted . There was an exclamation point, too. “So what do your eyebrows say today?”

  “Eliot, would you take a look at this coding? Whenever you get a sec?” Gram sat at his console, where he’d been typing for the past half hour. Imogen had spent that entire time avoiding eye contact, trying to ignore the fact that he’d heard every one of her confessions to Eliot: a chinchilla named Dusty, sexy math. Crux, where did she think of this stuff? Was it too much to hope that those heartfelt rants had gotten lost in all the doom and destruction bits?

  When it came to Gram? Yes. The Engineer caught everything.

  She’d told him without telling him and nothing had changed, except her blood sugar.

  “Sorry, Im. I didn’t mean to interrupt—”

  “Your thing’s more urgent,” she told him. “Code away, my friends.”

  Gram grinned. Imogen swore not to analyze the expression as she clutched her twirly chair and failed immediately.

  Back to the ship’s log. There wasn’t much more to say, so she just watched the cursor blink. Into existence, out again. Her heart flickered at the same pace: Tell him, tell him before your world ends, what do you have to lose?r />
  “My composure,” she mumbled.

  You’re talking to yourself in a room full of people who watched you single-handedly inhale a quarter pan of tiramisu to cope with doomsday, her heart pointed out.

  “Touché.”

  “Battling something?” Her original cousin this time, sidling next to Bartleby, squinting through his fray of curls at her screen. “You’re working on the ship’s logs?”

  The why of Farway’s question was missing, and there all the same. Imogen looked back at the letters she’d typed and the emptiness beyond the cursor—so much unwritten. She became a speck where she sat. Itty-bitty, infinitesimal. Yellow-haired pollen dot drifting through galaxies. There were too many battles to fight: Aunt Empra’s unmaking, the Fade, world in the balance. Little wonder she opted for an angst that made her feel life-sized, focusing on boy problems when existence as they knew it was about to croak.

  “I’m about to go through the wardrobe again and map out more decaying dates. Everything else on the Historian end is sorted. Eliot’s going to wear one of her old Corps uniforms.” A disguise that wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny. The sleeve’s badge had the same infinity hourglass symbol, but an alternate universe meant an alternate motto. Spes in Posterum in Praeteritis Latet was replaced by Temporem Ullum Homo Non Manet.

  Translation: “Man Waits for No Time.” New twist on an old phrase, far cleverer than their Corps’ “Future’s Hope Is in the Past” maxim.

  “We’re set up on the comm front.” Eliot’s datastream was already linked to the Invictus, and when Imogen pulled up the feed, she could see herself seeing herself: lemon-bright hair, killer denim jumpsuit. Dressed to go out with a bang. “Gram’s connection is all we’re waiting for.”

  “Oh?” Farway’s head cocked, a reminder that he, too, had seen Blubbering Heart à la Imogen.

  “Don’t you have some jitters to exercise out or something?”

  Her cousin’s eyebrow waggled. “Depends on how long that connection will take.”

  Oh really.

  “It’s going to be a few more minutes—” Gram was immersed in his work, fingers glued to keys. It was hard to tell if the light honing his face was from the screen or within. “I want to make sure we do this right.”

  This was the puzzle of a lifetime, everything Gram never knew he’d been looking for. Life had gone so far outside his imagined possibilities: multiple universes, teleportation, the entropy of universal constants… Eliot had disassembled his Rubik’s Cube knowledge, shown him he didn’t just have to twist along the axis.

  Brain = unleashed.

  Slipping through the Corps’ security system’s firewalls was a hack of epic proportions, even with Eliot’s coded shortcuts. Corps techheads were among this world’s best, and their digital fortress was chock-full of defenses. Such stakes should’ve coiled around Gram’s throat, but the fact that everything was going to Hades in a bluebox regardless took the pressure off. Things he used to fret about—complications, probability, everything in its place—were inconsequential.

  He understood now why Eliot had gambled so manically at the Fortuna Pool’s blackjack tables. Shuffled cards and some dollars couldn’t crack the immutability threshold, but what did it matter when everything was breaking anyway? Chaos was inevitable.

  Might as well roll with it.

  He was knee-deep in code, covering his tracks with Eliot’s program, grafting her forged credentials into the system as seamlessly as possible. Door badge scans, facial ID, mission records. The profile wouldn’t fool a full-on manual read, but it was enough to keep the alarms at bay while Eliot accessed the server. Speaking of—

  “Did we keep that networking cable Far used during the 2318 heist?”

  “I think so. Let me check.” The question was directed at anyone, but Imogen caught it. She flounced off to the common area, too colorful not to look at. Her hair was the same yellow as on the evening they’d met. Gram wondered if she chose the pigment on purpose, if she knew it reminded him of dissolved sunlight, laughter, and birthday sparklers, and all the shine his life had taken on with her in it.

  1.2191 meters was too far.

  Especially when she felt the same way.

  Especially when the world was ending. That made things much less complicated.

  It was so unlike Gram, to jump from his seat and into the moment, go with the flow, climb onto the ash-strewn couch where Imogen was reaching above the pipes for the cable he’d asked for, close enough to note that her hair smelled of lemons.

  “Imogen, there’s something I want to—”

  “Ilikeyou.” She blurted this out as one word. Gram didn’t have time to dissect the syllables before she went on. “There. I said it. I like you, Gram Wright, and I meant everything I said about math and chinchillas and—”

  “I know,” Gram broke in.

  “Well, then.” Her face fell. “Don’t mind me.”

  “No, I mean, I like you, too.”

  Imogen stared at Gram. Gram stared at Imogen.

  Her eyes were galactic—green swirling with stars. Her laugh soared. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “FINALLY,” Far called through the open door of his bunk.

  They had an audience, Gram realized. Priya’s hands clasped together over her heart as she peered from the infirmary. Eliot sat by Gram’s console, grin strung ear to ear. Even Saffron stirred from sugar-induced dreams: pink yawn, paws stretching over wardrobe hangers.

  Their captain set down the kettlebell weights he’d been lifting. The look on his face could only be described as impish. “This is the part where you kiss.”

  Kissing? Gram hadn’t thought that far ahead. Kissing Imogen would be the next logical step in this series of events, but there were so many things to consider. Eyes open or—closed, definitely closed. Was he the one who was supposed to lean in? What if they bumped noses or, worse, teeth?

  It turned out kisses didn’t have to be planned. Imogen’s citrus hair tickled his face as their lips found each other. He was surprised by how well she fit. Steps A, B, C melted away, and Gram found himself on a Mediterranean beach, bottle of sparkling water in hand, watching the sun drip orange against evening clouds. Pebbles—still hot from summer’s languorous day—kneaded the arches of his bare feet. Wind whispered secrets down the shoreline. Horizon turned to neon dream. It felt like one of his favorite memories, but he wasn’t even sure it was a memory at all. Just a summation of feelings—glow, fizz, fresh, warmth, rest.

  Just Imogen.

  “Crux,” she swore when the kiss ended. “I mean, definitely the good kind of Crux. But Crux!”

  Gram couldn’t agree more. His dopamine levels surged as if he’d hit the highest possible Tetris score. How had it taken this long to find her?

  “A chinchilla, huh? I’m more partial to sugar gliders. Or a quokka.”

  Imogen smiled. “Then we’ll get one of each.”

  “I refuse to let any more fuzzies onto this ship!” Far hopped from his bunk, glaring into the pipes where the red panda was crouched. “That ginger devil is enough of a handful.”

  “Saffron saved your life, thank you very much!” Imogen reminded her cousin. “He’s the unsung hero of an unborn world!”

  “Imagine those ballads! What creature of flaming fur is this, which hath scratched back the apocalypse—” Far’s laugh was slain where he stood. He kept staring upward, his expression fogged. “Then again I suppose we’ll all be unsung after this.”

  “What is it?” Priya stepped in close, following his gaze. “What’s wrong?”

  Far pointed to one of the hangers, where a jacket hung. Its black leather was roughed up at the elbows, as if it’d had a run-in with some road. “What mission did I wear that jacket for?”

  The Invictus’s long-term crew stared at the item of clothing. Had it always been hanging there? Gram couldn’t recall a time when it wasn’t. Then again he’d never paid much attention to clothes.

  “I picked it up from Before an
d Beyond. We were planning for a trip to 1950s America,” Imogen recalled. “You said it made Bartleby look like a gang member from a musical when I was briefing you. We flew to Kansas City and then…”

  Then what? Based on the state of the jacket they must have jumped, and Gram did have some memory of the equation. Numbers, numbers all blending together, now bled from this world’s gaping wound.

  “Another time bites the dust!” Imogen plucked the garment from its hanger, tossed it into the growing pile. “Let’s see… that’s one mission in the twenty-third century, two in the twenty-first, three in the twentieth, one in the nineteenth, two in the eighteenth, two in the seventeenth, a BC blip.”

  There’d be more, Gram knew, and soon. To have this many lost hours in their log, this many clothes crumpled on the floor… Eliot was right. The Fade’s decay was accelerating, which meant their window for a reboot was closing. Imaginary chinchilla children and second kisses would have to wait.

  “I’m going to need that networking cable,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Imogen nodded, breathless. “It’s up here somewhere. Maybe you can reach it.”

  After fumbling through fur tufts and something…sticky?… Gram found the hardware, a cord connected to a wireless transmitter. It would work for Eliot’s on-site hack, assuming the Corps hadn’t rehauled their servers in the past few months.

  “Once you plug this into archive 12-A11B you should be able to access the server’s data through your interface,” he explained, handing it off to her. “I’m expecting there will be other security protocols, but those should be a cakewalk after what you showed me.”

  Eliot tucked the cable inside her pocket universe. Though Gram knew a rational explanation lay in interdimensional mechanics, the sight of hardware sliding straight into the girl’s pale wrist twisted his insides. So much was weird and wondrous and bent.