He looked up, spotting the journal SC’s mother had given him for lessons, the pen still in a package on top of it. Of course, he’d never used it for classes; they had never been worth his time. He started reaching up for it, then stopped, laughing to himself.
He was Lucio, the master of memories. He didn’t need a journal to remember the archives for him. No, he could manage that himself. So he started that night, spending a full hour developing a plot line, eliminating any issues he could spot with care.
Creating ammunition for his army of memories.
Chapter 74
SC
The book that Cane had given SC left him riddled with questions.
SC considered himself relatively intelligent, but not so much in the mathematics or science areas. He was decent, most likely average—but certainly nothing like Ennia, or for that matter, Arial. He understood that an electrical charge would shock him from an experimental standpoint, but as to why, that part was a bit more blurry. And everything in this book was theory, more complicated than anything he had ever read.
There were pages of things called integrals and derivations, formulas that seemed twist around upon themselves, even eat themselves at times. He could typically follow the steps one or two pages into a chapter, but after that, it was gone. So beyond even the most general of concepts, he lost himself in the numbers.
But besides the complexity, something else pulled at his attention.
The last time he and Arial had parted was after his speech, when they spoke of winning and losing. Ariel, he knew, was the type of person that found a ninety-five percent on a test to be unacceptable. Whose parents forced her to strive for perfection, for zero flaws. A feat impossible with her power in her father’s eyes. For her, she built a mold for success and she never let it change over time. She refused to alter boundaries as he would with new circumstances. And by those standards, she had failed.
And that failure weighed heavy upon her.
But he didn't know how to help—he couldn't simply claim Francesca’s death was of little consequence. He knew its significance and felt the guilt of it too. But since he didn’t directly cause it, the emotion was lesser. Unlike Larissa, who he had directly harmed with his power, he’d been trying to save Francesca.
He’d offered to walk Arial home after the speech, or rather fly with her home then walk back the several miles on his own. They needed the time together, to talk, to understand how to move forwards. Above the subway as she prepared to pull them in the air, she’d clasped his hands in the darkness, pulling him close. He’d kissed her then, feeling the adrenaline as their lips met, their secret in the shadows. The excitement a celebration, which after the events and deaths of the last few hours, felt wrong.
Arial was the first to pull away, breaking off the kiss, and they stood there silently for a moment. Uncertain as he saw the worry in her eyes, her body moving away, but her grip on his hands tightening.
“I think it’s time for me to leave,” she whispered into the night air, and he readied himself to lift off with her. But she shook her head, continuing to speak. “Alone, I think. I need some time, SC.”
A shiver ran through him as he remembered the exact sentiment he had expressed to Francesca, when he was trying to escape her. And he wondered if that was what Arial had in mind.
“You're going to be okay?” he asked, voice hoarse, refusing to allow the worry to carry into it.
“Yes,” she said, squeezing his hands tighter before letting go. “I’ll be fine, SC. I just, I just need to think.”
Then she started rising, slow, not her normal rocketing away from the ground, the words falling down upon him like rain. “I think we need to understand what this is all about.”
She kept eye contact with him as she ascended, then was gone, swallowed into the night sky. He felt chills as he stood below, his thoughts racing, his ears burning.
Wondering what her words were about. Did she mean understanding them? Or did she mean Rome?
Now back in this room, every time he tried to focus on the formulas, the letters rearranged to write the name Arial. As he wondered if he had messed up or done something wrong. Maybe she’d come to realize, with her family, a relationship could never work between them. That her father would never accept him. Or that she couldn’t live the life he led, oscillating between adventure and living in the subway.
He shook his head, forcing himself to focus and clear his mind. He knew Cane would only have given him the book if it was important. That others like him, Gravitals, had existed before. And that, despite his comprehension dropping with each passing page, the book might bear some answers. No matter how strong his distractions, he had to find them.
Maybe deep in the library he could find some answers of the past Gravitals. Or maybe he should just focus on the name on the front of the textbook, the professor, Kwan Thomson. Perhaps, instead of just seeking answers about the Instructors, it was time for him to find some answers about himself.
Chapter 75
Arial
The best part of flying high was that one could listen to her screams.
Now a half a mile city above the city, Arial let her emotions loose, feeling the cathartic release as she unleashed her lungs in the clouds. It was so much better than yelling into a pillow, so much more releasing. She could be as loud as her vocal chords allowed, she could say anything she wanted until her throat burned, and no one would ever hear. She could explode.
She wondered if this was what it was like to be a Titan. To feel so much emotional energy bundled within her, so much without resolution. To let it escape, to surrender to it.
And just as quickly as it had begun, the screaming ended, and she dropped a few feet slowly, her breath coming heavy. She shuddered, her mind turning back to Rome, then pushing it away. As the tears came, she wondered if any below would feel them, would expect rain but only see clear sky.
She knew the others were right. She knew she held herself to too high a standard. But she also knew she couldn’t live to see others die when she could have saved them, when she could analyze a million other ways after the fact that it could have been prevented. What if she had alerted SC of the Litious sooner? What if she had exposed Divi? Or the most obvious one, when she had seen Matteo walking towards Francesca, knife in hand, but had done nothing under the influence of the calming Silver Tongue song. She had simply waved at him as if she condoned his behavior, watching him sink the knife into Francesca’s back as if it were a normal occurrence.
Arial could have pushed him off the edge easily. Or she could have cut the cord as he hung below the blimp, letting him fall to his death. But she’d held on to the idea that he might be converted, that his ideas, while extreme, were not unwarranted. That they could use his passion for change and channel it into something useful. Instead, he had taken it too far.
Divi was different, so consumed by his beliefs, covered in them like his tattoos. Had it been him below the blimp, she would have let him fall immediately.
But Francesca was just one death. Now she knew they were up against Titans—not just people, but forces of nature. They hadn’t even been able to defeat one on their own, and there were supposed to be at least a dozen. What would she feel more guilty about, fighting them and watching her friends and hundreds others die or simply hearing about the deceased on the news?
After thirty minutes, she glided down to her house, sneaking into her room through her window. Her father and mother would be furious when they awoke, but there would still be several hours until that happened. Her father would know immediately that she was home, of course—his power would let him sense that her flight had recently been used nearby. But that would be a problem for tomorrow, as she’d already had enough for today. And she knew as well as they did, if they took it too hard on her, she could just fly away, far enough away that her father could never find her, this time never to come back.
As a Flier, she could earn a wage enough to live on her own. Even at h
er age, as an accelerated delivery person, companies would pay high dollar for her services. What would take a driver thirty minutes, she could deliver in two, and the compensation enough to own an apparent and feed her, even without a degree. Of course, there were other options—the military was known to seek Fliers as scouts, a position that would infuriate her father to the point of a mental breakdown. Now, that no longer seemed to matter.
That was if she left SC and his friends behind, if she abandoned their plans, if she started completely anew. And she wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted.
But if she were to stay, she’d have to be stronger to prevent their inevitable failure. And there was no way to do that.
Except one.
On her desk, she kept an electric water boiler, one used to make coffee on the days her father was in one of his particularly awful moods and she avoided the kitchen entirely. The caffeine helped at those times too, helped her focus on something else, find confidence in herself when she knew he had none.
Now she turned the boiler on, and within a minute, steam came out the top of the pitcher. Unlike a kettle, it was silent, with no risk to wake her parents. She carried it to the bathroom sink, extending a pinky over the drain, clenching her teeth together as she started to pour and the heated liquid met skin.
The scream built in her throat as steam swirled upwards, the skin immediately burning. But she refused to pull away, instead embracing the pain as Matteo had taught her. In a flash of anger, fighting it, rebelling against it. Overcoming it.
Deep inside herself, something started to shatter, to split as she felt pieces of herself pulling apart for a single moment.
It was like lifting a sticker off a surface—pull too quickly, and the sticker would rip, something akin to Fractonis Essentia. But pull slowly, at just the right speed, and the adhesive would gradually give way. That was how it felt.
After treating the burn with a bandage, she succumbed to sleep in an effort to forget the events of the day.
And after she awoke, it was a full week before her parents let her leave the house. Even then, her mother insisted on accompanying her, to Arial’s one request.
To Burners, her favorite coffee shop, where the Special barista could roast the beans in his own hands for the perfect fresh blend.
As she and her mother sat at the counter, she could sense the anger and concern radiating off her. She’d refused to let her parents know her whereabouts, something they couldn’t accept, yet would have to.
They ordered, and the barista behind the counter swept up the raw beans from a bag with one hand and held a water beaker in another. As he chatted with her mother, the beans crackled in his hands, and he dropped them into the grinder while starting to heat the water. But the beaker was only a foot away from Arial’s outstretched hand on the countertop, laid out to look like she was relaxing.
Instead, she was focusing with her entire being, reaching down deep within her as she drew in her power. She could feel it there, on either edge of her essence. On one side was her flight abilities, but on the other side, something else had grown. Something dark, hard for her to explain. Similar to the shadows that had danced around Matteo and Divi in when she had meditated with them in the cellar bar, the same construct.
She took that darkness, balling it up, then forced it outwards towards the barista’s fist where the water heated. His actions were so practiced, he failed to notice the lack of steam streaming out of the beaker, instead pouring the water over the grounds, then serving cups to her and her mother.
Arial watched as her mother brought the cup to her lips, taking her first sip, her face wrinkling as she spit it back into the cup. As her mother called the barista, a surge of resolve flooded through Arial.
The water was cold.
END OF BOOK 3
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If you liked Star Child, be sure to check out Leonard’s other series, The Bridge, while you are waiting on the next book in the series. Book two is coming soon and the first five chapters of book 1 are below.
Part 1: Horatius
A starship is struck by an asteroid on its way to colonize a distant planet. Now, hundreds of years later, the inhabitants must learn to survive deep space without technology or perish.
Chapter 1
The asteroid was called the Hand of God when it hit.
Not that we know much about God, of course. There are plenty of books that survived the destruction, though the readers far more sparse. And those that could spouted nonsense after a few pages, about things called suns and moons being created, about talking beings called “animals,” about oceans. About legends of old, myths, wishful thinking. But what I do know about God is, if his hand caused the damage to the ship, I don’t want to know much more.
The stories say that the ship used to be one before it hit. That the asteroid split the ship right down the center, making the way to the other side dangerous, impossible. But we can still see it, entangled in cord and moving alongside us, and we can see in their windows. We can see the faces far more gaunt than our own, the cheeks near bone, the eyes hollow and staring hungrily back at us. And we can see them fighting, using knives stashed from the kitchen along with strange flashing devices, and though we cannot hear, we know they scream.
There is a third part of the ship as well, this one with no faces in the windows, all dark and barely held to the main two parts. But no one has ever seen movement there, and it is far smaller than the halves.
There are one thousand of us on our side, a census conducted each year by scratching marks into the cold wall, making sure we have enough to eat. Any number over eleven hundred has led to shortages of food, and more importantly, water. As one of the gardeners, I know this too well, planning out the ship’s rations and crops, utilizing the few rooms remaining with glowing ceilings. Deciding if I plant only those seeds specified for meals, or if we could splurge on space for the herbs demanded by our doctors or the spices requested by our cooks.
We worked together on the ship, each of us with our task for survival, none of us expendable. At ten, a child was assigned their task, from chief to scourer, based upon the skills they possessed. That first year, they were evaluated, deciding if a change was necessary, and I had been applying for the coveted historian. For keeping the tales and the knowledge from long before, from where the recovered books on ship census marked twenty-five thousand.
In the stories of old, it is said that God could speak even if he couldn’t be seen. That he could be heard as a voice alone, sending commandments down to his people.
And today, of the year 984, I, Horatius, heard him.
“Systems rebooting,” said the voice, jolting me out of my duty of watering the plants. “Ship damage assessed. Reuniting the two halves of the ship and restoring airlock, approximately twenty-four hours until complete.”
Staring out the window, I saw the cables holding the halves of the ships tighten. I saw the eyes of the hungry faces widen as they were dragged closer.
And I wondered if the hand of God was striking again.
Chapter 2
At age four, I started schooling.
Out of the thousand inhabitants of the ship, one hundred and fifty attended schooling, going to one of the three locations near the center of the ship. There was Hippoc, the school for doctors and chefs due to the similarities in their trades, the mixing and application of plant herbs, of which approximately twenty students attended, their parents typically from those positions. Next
was Empri, where students were taught to read, their futures as the historians, leaders, and other educated members of the ship and admissions set for a maximum of ten total seats. For the rest of us, a hundred and thirty in all, there was Vertae, the school for gardeners, porters, and the occasional chief guard or assistant.
I still remember the year before my first day, when my father held my hand and whispered bedtime stories to me.
“Once,” he would say, as I resisted sleep with wide-open eyes. “Once, it is said that the ship was so large that you could walk for days without touching a wall. That the potatoes you see me farming used to grow as tall as me, perhaps even taller, and had stems as thick as my arm. Instead of the glow lights above, there was only one glow light, and somehow it split into the many that we have today. And in the floor of the ship, there were rushes of water, hallways so to speak, that entire men could float down.”
“Float down water?” I asked, at three, even back then my brows crossed in confusion, “They must have been very rich, to have that much water.”
“Indeed, they must have been. But these are only stories, Horatius, stories that my father told me, and his father told him.”
“But where from?” I asked. “Where did the stories come from?”
“The historians, of course,” my father answered. “They have all sorts of stories, some so ridiculous it makes me think that they are crazy, not full of common sense like ourselves.”
“The historians,” I had repeated, the cogs in my young mind spinning. “I want more stories, Papa. I want to be a historian.”
A frown creased my father’s face, and he sighed, “Well, Horatius, I don’t know – ”
Titan Song Page 27
