Unravel

by Imogen Howson

  “There’s more to being a pilot than flying,” Markus said mildly. “Lin? Are you checking that code for me?”

  “Yes. It’s fine.”

  Markus’s eyes went to the screen. He waited. After a second Lin followed the direction of his gaze. “What are you doing? I— Oh.”

  From where Elissa stood she couldn’t see which bit they were looking at, nor could she understand the code that Lin had picked up so easily, but the arrested tone in Lin’s voice told her all she needed to know.

  Markus tapped out a correction. Lin scrolled through it, slowly, then back. “It’s fine,” she said again, her voice filled with resentment.

  “Thank you.” Markus activated the sequences, and around them the Phoenix seemed to come alive, humming awake as the shields—the enhanced force fields that, in space, protected them from meteorites and other space debris as well as from attack—built themselves around the ship.

  Markus leaned away from the controls, angling screens to get the best view of outside. His voice kept exactly the same quiet tone as he said, “And that’s why you’re not ready to fly a ship.”

  Elissa saw Lin’s head snap back as if he’d hit her. “That’s not fair. You did that on purpose—”

  “And you didn’t pick it up. Because you were angry, and you let it distract you.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like Cadan never gets angry.” There was that tone in her voice again, an edge like the edge of an electro-whip. Not just anger, but something more like resentment.

  “But he doesn’t let it interfere with how he flies the Phoenix.”

  Lin didn’t answer. She got up with an irritated, jerky movement and went over to grab a chocograin bar from the little nutri-machine set on the back wall of the cabin. Markus turned enough in his seat to meet Elissa’s eyes. He gave her the merest flicker of a smile.

  She was smiling back before she knew it, grateful that he’d had the argument with Lin so Elissa didn’t have to. Then guilt needled her. It’s not fair. She only wants to help—and she has so much ability, so much power, it must be driving her crazy not being able to do anything with it.

  Outside the Phoenix, it had felt like they were on the very brink of being attacked. Even now that they were safe, tension seemed to hang, buzzing in the air, and Elissa, all nerves, chewed the edge of her thumbnail until it was sore. But when the first twenty minutes had passed and nothing happened, the atmosphere relaxed a little.

  Over the next twenty minutes, outside the ship, the sun dropped lower, sinking toward the horizon, staining the sand red. Inside the ship, they waited.

  There was no reason, really, why at least some of them couldn’t leave the cabin to go find something to do in another part of the ship, but, as if none of them wanted to leave the view of the base afforded by the cabin windscreen, no one made a move.

  Lin ate a second chocograin bar leaning against the wall next to the windscreen, looking up and out at the empty sky. At the controls, Ivan, sitting sideways on the copilot’s seat, told Markus the best ways to thicken soup, and Markus at least appeared to listen, and Felicia lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the floor and reached both arms over her head in what Elissa recognized as the start of one of her many yoga routines.

  Elissa sat still, clasping her knees, her gaze on the darkening sky. She’d taken her thumbnail away from her mouth and tucked her thumb safely inside her folded hand, but her insides remained knotted. Her thoughts knotted too. Back on Sanctuary, everything had seemed so clear. But now, within hours of landing on Sekoia, she was swamped with anxieties and fears.

  People were still referring to Spares as clones. Oh, she could see why. Before Spares had become public knowledge, most people on Sekoia hadn’t known it was even possible for them to exist. The birth of identical babies, born from a single fertilized egg, had ceased thousands of years ago—even the term twin, an archaic word meaning “double,” had fallen out of existence. She remembered Lin explaining it to her, saying that some kind of spontaneous mutation had caused the phenomenon to re-emerge forty or so years ago.

  That’s impossible, Elissa had said at the time. She’d known, of course, that sometimes a pregnancy produced two babies—it was the only way couples ended up with a second child without applying for a license—but she’d known, or thought she’d known, that it only happened when two eggs were simultaneously fertilized, and that the babies might be alike, in the way siblings often were, but they wouldn’t be identical.

  When she’d first met Lin, one of the first things she’d thought of was cloning; she couldn’t blame other people for initially thinking the same, even though science had not yet developed a full-body clone. But they’ve been told now. They know what she is, they know she’s her own person, not just a copy of me. If they still keep insisting that she’s a clone, how are they ever going to let her fit into society, lead a normal life?

  Except—everything Miguel had told them came back into her mind, overwhelming her—was life on Sekoia ever going to be normal again? And was Lin—oh God please no—going to get killed before they even had a chance to find out?

  And now Cadan’s out there, putting himself in danger. And it’s selfish to even be thinking it, but I’m still scared he thinks more of Lin than he does of me. And our identity isn’t anywhere near as safe as we thought it was going to be. And . . .

  Elissa let her forehead drop onto her knees.

  Lin pushed away from the windscreen. “Nothing’s happening. There isn’t any attack. We don’t even need to be here. We could be at the city already, actually doing something useful.”

  “Cool your jets, would you?” Ivan interrupted what he was saying about bread crumbs and glanced over at her. “You’ll get there. Dig deep. Find some patience.”

  “But why can’t we go there now? We have room for lots of those people. It would only take a few trips to take them to somewhere else on Sekoia. There must be other places they could use. And then we could stop worrying about the base being attacked, and we could stop hanging around here.”

  Felicia had finished her exercises. Now she lay, stretched and supine, on the floor, her eyes shut and her breathing relaxed.

  “Where would you take them?” she said. “This is their home—the only home left to them. If they don’t defend it, what will they end up with?”

  Lin narrowed her eyes at Felicia. “We took weeks just getting back to Sekoia. I want to do something—”

  She broke off. Her eyes went suddenly blank, as if she were looking at something not physically in front of her. “There are engines,” she said. “Two . . . three . . . coming really fast.”

  Elissa jerked her head up to scan the sky she could see through the windscreen. Empty. She couldn’t hear anything either. Aside from the gentle hum of the instruments on the control panel, the far-off buzz of the shields, the world seemed to lie silent, waiting.

  “Lin, are you sure?” Lin’s ability to understand the ship’s controls was one of the most impressive things Elissa had ever seen, and before, she’d seemed to pick up when the hyperdrive was malfunctioning. But Elissa had thought that was mostly to do with sensing the imprisoned Spare powering it—did Lin really sense electronics? And had her abilities developed to such a point that she could pick up approaching aircraft?

  Lin gave a tiny, half-distracted nod.

  “Then where are they coming from? Which direction?” Elissa looked back and forth, checking the empty sky for any signs of movement, for the glints that would be the last light of the setting sun reflecting from metal wings.

  “I don’t . . . I can’t tell. Above us . . .” Lin shook her head as if trying to clear water from her ears.

  Markus, hand already on the communications unit, looked past Lin to Elissa. “Is she right?”

  Elissa stared at him.

  “Lissa. I’m running a scan, but if she’s right, I’ll alert Cadan now—”

  “I don’t know.” Harassed, she looked at her sister. Lin’s hand had gone to her head,
cupping her temple as if trying to shut something out. She turned her head to meet Elissa’s eyes, and her own were wide with panic.

  “Lissa, I can’t tell where they’re coming from. They’re so fast, and if they don’t slow down they’ll—”

  Elissa scrambled to her feet, hurried across to clasp her twin’s hands. They curled around hers, a tight, desperate grip. “It’s okay. We’re safe. We’re safe here.”

  “Lissa,” said Markus, behind her.

  She didn’t turn her head, all at once sure beyond all doubt. “Yes, she’s right. Call him. Lin, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

  Lin dropped Elissa’s fingers and clamped both hands over her head. “They’re here. They’re here. I feel them—”

  And as she cowered, shaking, the sky was torn apart.

  Flyers exploded out of nowhere, screaming down over the desert, hurtling so low over the Phoenix that the roar of their engines killed every sound. Three of them, sleek silver craft flashing the color of fire in the dying light.

  Then real fire, as flames spat from their engines, as they whipped around to come screaming down again. And then the sound of gunfire, pounding onto the desert floor in clouds of dust, sweeping across the roofs of the base, spitting sparks and chips of broken masonry.

  Bullets thundered across the Phoenix’s shields in a glittering rain, then a blast of fire came, sliding like water off the impenetrable surface of the force field. Elissa’s hands shot to her ears. They’d weathered other attacks in the Phoenix, but that had been in space. Nothing had prepared her for the noise of an on-planet attack: the shrieking rattling roar of engines and weapons that seemed to get inside her brain, vibrating in her bones, thumping nausea into the pit of her stomach.

  Outside, shots screamed through the air, up rather than down. Flames burst against the shields of the attacking ships. Then, almost faster than her eyes could see, faster than her brain could register, flyers shot up from the base. They looked tiny against the attacking ships, a little swarm of two-man crafts. Cadan and Bruce had trained in ships like them. Cadan was in one now. That one, racing up to what seemed like the zenith of the sky, boosters flaring? Or that one, diving between two of the attack ships, blasting them as it went? Or one of the ones that shot straight over to the Phoenix?

  Cadan. Fighting to keep her and Lin safe. Risking his life. And both things not for the first time.

  Something shrieked overhead, so loud that the sound stabbed Elissa’s ears. She shrank, hands pressing harder against her ears, wanting to shut her eyes but not being able to, not while Cadan was out there, not while if she stopped looking, if she lost concentration, somehow he might lose concentration too, make the mistake that would send him plummeting out of the sky, craft in flames, escape hatch fused shut, trapped and—

  Oh God. Bullets sprayed across one of the little ships. If it had possessed a shield at all, it was gone now, blown to nothing by the relentless onslaught. Elissa saw the dark holes pierced all over its flank, saw the attacking ship rake it with another blast, saw the flames swell, a fireburst of igniting fuel. It fell, tumbling from the sky, tracing a fiery trail in the dark air behind it, over and over, out of control, a fireball falling to earth.

  Cadan! Then, as her mind refused to accept it: No. It’s not Cadan. It must be someone else, it must be.

  It was a terrible thing to think. She didn’t care. As long as it’s not Cadan, as long as I don’t lose him.

  Beside her, Lin lifted her head. “They’re going to win.” Her voice was raised to a shriek to battle with the noise, but it had gone from outright panic to nothing more than indignation.

  “No. Don’t say that. We have more ships. They can’t win. They can’t.” Thoughts jumbled in her head. And win what? Who are they? What do they want? To wipe out the whole camp? Because they think we’re in there? How can people be like this?

  And then, again, shot with terror, with a feeling like the bottom falling out of the world: Cadan. He can’t be dead. He can’t.

  “Their weapons are way better,” shouted Lin over the noise pounding against the ship. “Those little ships—their shields are no good against this! Cadan should have used the Phoenix.”

  All at once that was worse than anything, that Lin should criticize Cadan—again—when it might have been him in that—No, I won’t think it. I won’t.

  “He can’t,” she shouted back. “You know he can’t. It won’t maneuver fast enough. He explained that to you weeks ago—”

  “But she has tons of firepower.” All the fear had cleared from Lin’s face. Her eyes were bright with a look Elissa had come to dread. “Lissa, I could use her.”

  “You can’t fly! Cadan said you’re nowhere near ready!”

  “I don’t need to fly! All I need is to get her high enough to use the weapons. Cadan should have done it himself—”

  “No. No. You can’t do takeoff by yourself. You’ve never done that. If you were ready to try Cadan would have told you. You’ll get everyone killed! And you don’t know what you’re talking about—if Cadan had thought that would work, he’d have done it. You can’t—”

  “Then what am I going to do?” Lin flung a hand up toward the Armageddon of fire above them. “Because your boyfriend says I’m not ready, I just wait here and let them all die? Is that what we came back to Sekoia for?”

  The words hit Elissa as hard as the rain of bullets against the ship’s shields. She felt herself recoil, body tightening as if that would protect her from what Lin was saying. “Stop it. Don’t. If there was anything you could do, you know I’d—”

  She broke off. Lin was all at once not even listening. The bright look had spread all over her face. It was hard, blazing with sudden triumphant realization. “There is.” She grinned. “I should have thought of it hours ago. I can. I can.”

  She tilted her face toward the curve of glass above them, her teeth clenching so hard Elissa saw her jaw lock.

  Fear swept Elissa. She’d seen that look on her sister’s face before. Back when she’d been terrified she was helping a sociopath escape, someone who needed to be shut away, imprisoned. She hadn’t thought she’d see it again.

  “Lin, what are you—”

  Lin didn’t answer. Her eyes widened, dark and blank.

  “Lin.”

  “What’s going on over here?” Ivan was on his feet, striding toward them. “What’s she doing?”

  “She says she’s helping. I don’t know. I don’t know.” Elissa flung a frantic look at the control panel, watching for more lights to jump awake, for the throttle to move by itself. If Lin really did decide to take them into the air, it was too late to stop her, too late to do anything.

  “Lin.” Ivan put a hand out. “You do something weird, you’re going to hinder, not help. If you distract the pilots defending the—”

  In the sky above them, with an ear-shattering thunder-crash, something exploded. Fire rained down all over the Phoenix, enveloping the ship momentarily in sheets of flame. Elissa felt her throat open in a scream she couldn’t hear, saw Ivan duck, arms instinctively going up to protect his head.

  The flames cleared, sliding down the shields. But smoke followed, smoke everywhere, oily and black, swirling and thick with sparks. Elissa couldn’t see beyond the walls of the Phoenix, couldn’t see what had happened, whether any craft were left in the sky, whether anyone was still alive out there.

  Lin’s mouth moved, saying something. There was no chance of hearing her—Elissa’s ears had gone dead—but after a few seconds she managed to make sense of the movement of her sister’s lips. One down.

  The attacking ships. Lin had used her electrokinetic power—the ability to control electrical currents—to explode one of the attacking ships.

  She’d threatened to do something like that once before, when they were on the run from Sekoia’s security forces, but it had just been a threat to get Elissa moving—she hadn’t actually intended to do it.

  This time—this time she had.

  It was as
if Elissa’s mind, as well as her ears, had stopped functioning. She couldn’t think further than the realization of what Lin had done, couldn’t produce a reaction to it.

  Around the Phoenix, the smoke thinned enough to reveal the continuing battle outside. Another of the defending crafts was down, burning in blackened wreckage on the desert floor. It was impossible to tell if the pilot had managed to escape, or if there’d been no time. Impossible, too, to tell if Cadan . . .

  Way above them, one of the attacking craft seemed to judder, its trajectory checked for a half second. As if a connection had ceased momentarily to work—

  Lin.

  Elissa’s head whipped back toward her twin. Lin’s hands and teeth had clenched again. Her eyes were screwed shut, and her whole body was shaking as if she were under a weight too heavy to bear. One down, she’d said. Two to go?

  But she can’t. The power it must have taken to do that to one ship—she can’t do it to all of them.

  As if she’d had the same thought at the exact same time, Lin’s eyes shot open. Her gaze went straight to Elissa. She put out a hand.

  She can’t do it by herself. It’s too much. But linked, we moved a spaceship. If I help her, if I do what we did before, we can do this, too.

  All she needed to do was take Lin’s hand, let the physical touch strengthen the link that was always there between them, give herself—as she had before—to act as combined anchor and catalyst for Lin’s electrokinetic power.

  She didn’t move. The explosion sounded again in her head, flames filled her vision. What Lin had just done wasn’t just moving a spaceship, it wasn’t just getting them out of danger. Whoever had been in that craft—Lin had killed them.

  They came here to kill us. They’ve shot down two of the pilots already. They wouldn’t hesitate to shoot Cadan down too, or kill me and Lin, or take us both away for experiments that are no better than torture.

  She should reach out to take Lin’s hand. She could help save them all. Could help save Cadan, and the other pilots, and maybe all the refugees.