Unravel

by Imogen Howson

  As well, they might have gotten the whole thing wrong. If most of the twins didn’t have a link with their Spares—and if even Samuel and Jay’s link was so much weaker than hers and Lin’s—then maybe there was no use even thinking about them voluntarily powering hyperdrives.

  She’d spoken so quickly, so unthinkingly, though, that she hadn’t considered her own words carefully enough, and the next moment she realized that.

  “An SFI spaceship?” said Sofia. “The one you escaped on in the first place? But what use is that? It was on the newscasts—the hyperdrive—the Spare—” She hugged herself, suppressing a shudder.

  “It’s still a working ship,” said Samuel.

  Sofia lifted a shoulder. “Yeah, but Sekoia’s got a million working ships. Remember, that IPL guy explained? They could pack us all onto ships if they just wanted to get us off-planet, but without hyperspeed they’d be making us even more vulnerable than we are here. So they’re having to do it all slow and stealthily so we’re not supereasy to track.” She looked at Elissa and Lin. “I get why you’d want to come back to get people from your crew’s families. But I don’t get why you’re here. I mean, your family’s safe already. And why would you think your ship is going to help with transport?”

  But we do have hyperspeed. When Lin and I link, we can power the hyperdrive. But she didn’t want to say that yet. It was too soon, all these Spares and their twins were too different. And I don’t know how to say it in a way that’s not horrifying. They know what they were intended for, what they’ve been saved from—I don’t know how to say we want anybody to try doing it voluntarily.

  “It’s still a working ship,” she said, borrowing Samuel’s words in the absence of a better explanation, hoping they’d do.

  “Okay.” Sofia leaned back against the wall, the movement conveying flat disappointment. She’d been hoping for something more, Elissa realized, and like an echo she heard Ady’s words: Hey, Zee, come meet some heroes. It had been said jokingly, but maybe it hadn’t been just a joke. Maybe they really were hoping for heroes.

  Oh God, and even with what we can do, we’re not that. We’re not heroes. She looked away, feeling horribly inadequate, and once again caught Zee watching her.

  His eyes were such a light gray they looked colorless, like a sky so filled with high white clouds it seems to have been bleached into nonexistence.

  “That’s not true, is it?” he said.

  Guilt, both hot and cold, flared in Elissa’s chest. “What?”

  “Zee!” said Sofia. “You can’t say that to people—”

  Zee’s eyes didn’t move from Elissa’s. “I’m right, though. What she’s saying—it’s not true. There’s something else.”

  The impact of that colorless stare, the guilt burning inside her, fused into a flash of defensive anger. “I don’t know what you mean,” Elissa said, her voice coming out high and indignant. “I—”

  “Not true.” Something sparked in Zee’s gaze, something familiar. The heat in Elissa’s chest fell away, leaving only the cold. She’d seen that spark before, in Lin’s eyes. In her memory, metal shrieked, balls of fire exploded against a dark sky.

  “Spares are taken for their psychic potential,” Zee said, his eyes still on her. “You know that—we all know that. But did you know there are different types of psychic power—Spares don’t all develop the same way?”

  Elissa swallowed. “I . . . I could have guessed it, I suppose. But I don’t see—”

  “Shut up. Shut up with the lying!”

  “Zee!” said Sofia, at the same moment as Lin, fury leaping into her voice, said, “No, you shut up,” and as Samuel said, “Zee, chill, okay?” and as behind Elissa, the conversation across the room stopped dead.

  But Ady’s face was suddenly as rigid as Zee’s. “He’s right,” he said. “Our link—our telepathy—died off. But his psychic abilities didn’t. He’s empathic. He told me. Aren’t you, Zee? Go on, tell us, what is it?”

  When Zee spoke, his voice was starting to quiver. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. I just know she’s lying, she’s lying, and it’s something bad, it’s something she doesn’t want to say because it’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad—” The quiver became a shake, and his voice rose at the same time, shaking so badly it seemed as if he were shaking too, as if he would break apart. There were tears in his eyes, a shine over their colorlessness, not falling only because he hadn’t blinked all the time he’d been talking. He was just staring at Elissa, poised right on the edge of panic, sensing everything she hadn’t said, everything she’d wanted to keep for a better time, for a time when they knew her well enough to not freak out at what she was going to suggest.

  It was too late for that. Whatever the reaction of the Spares and their twins would be, she couldn’t control that now. She had to tell them the truth before Zee’s panic caught them all. Four Spares, all with psychic powers I don’t know about, freaking out about something I’m not telling them . . .

  She leaned forward, looking into Zee’s face, and spoke as clearly as she could. “I was lying. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you the truth. I’m sorry.”

  With a leftover edge of her attention, she was aware that Sofia’s and Samuel’s eyes had widened in a look of hurt and betrayal. Oh God, I’ve done this all so badly. I thought they were going to be my friends, and I’ve screwed it up. . . .

  “We can make the hyperdrive on the ship work,” she said to Zee, her eyes steady on his. “Lin’s electrokinetic power—when she and I link up, she can plug into the hyperdrive. It doesn’t hurt her. It doesn’t. So we thought . . . some of the other Spares and their twins, if they still have their links . . . the other spaceships . . . we thought—”

  She didn’t get to finish. Cutting across, drowning out even the faintest sound of the last word she’d said, Zee began to scream.

  ZEE’S SCREAM cut like a blade across Elissa’s words—across her voice, too, drying her throat so instantly that she couldn’t have formed another sentence even if she’d been able to think of one.

  Everything stopped, everyone shocked cold like Elissa was shocked cold. For a long instant there was nothing but the cold, fizzing on her skin, dragging up every hair on her scalp, freezing her eyeballs wide open. The cold, and Zee screaming.

  Then movement. The grown-ups and Cadan striding around the end of the couch, Zee’s hands flying up to ward them off, Ady shooting to his feet, arms out. “Leave him! I’ll handle it! Zee, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

  “He needs to stop that screaming,” said Mr. Greythorn, his voice stern. “Now, or he’s going to have to be sedated. Do you hear me, Zee?”

  Ady was holding his twin’s upper arms by now. “He’s not hysterical—he’s just freaked out. Give him a minute—”

  “We don’t have a minute. Listen to me—the neighbors can hear you, Zee. You have to stop now.”

  Zee stopped. He was cheese-pale, still shaking, his hands clenched at his sides. Ady kept hold of him, staring into his eyes, their two faces, so similar, fixed in such different expressions, close together. “We’ll get out, okay? Okay, Zee? We’ll get out.”

  “Not outside the apartment,” Mr. Greythorn said immediately.

  Ady gave him a look filled with so much impatience it looked like dislike. “I know. Jeez, we’re just going into another room, okay?” Arm on his twin’s shoulders, he turned them both, steered Zee across the room and out through the door on the far side.

  As if strings had slackened, Elissa slumped back onto the couch. “Oh God.” The words came out as not much more than a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I messed that up so much.” The apology was for everyone, but she found herself looking at Cadan’s father—and at his mother, standing farther back.

  “Not to worry,” said Mr. Greythorn, but his voice was curt, and he was already turning to the door that led out to the entrance corridor. “Excuse me. I have to go do some damage control. What the hell anyone would have thought if they heard that screaming . . .”

/>   Across the room, Ivan said, “Comes with the territory, doesn’t it?”

  Cadan’s father gave him an irritated, baffled glance. “What?”

  “If you’re going to house a bunch of traumatized children in a residential block, I mean. Do you even know what psychic powers they’ve got between them? And what’s your plan for if it goes wrong—you going to drug them all?”

  Elissa jerked a quick, surprised look at him. There was disapproval—almost condemnation—in Ivan’s voice. When most of the crew of the Phoenix had left the ship, he’d stayed. She remembered Lin asking him why. She remembered his answer. He had daughters. They were grown up now, but she and Lin reminded Ivan of them. That had been all his answer—all his reason for staying when most of the crew had fled.

  When Cadan’s father answered, his tone was clipped, deliberately controlled. “You assume we’ve had any time to plan at all,” he said, and disappeared into the corridor.

  Ivan moved back against the wall, folding his long gorilla arms, his face unreadable.

  Cadan leaned over the back of the couch. “Lissa, are you okay?”

  “Me? I’m fine.” She’d glanced up at him when he spoke. Now she put her hands to her face. “It’s Zee who’s not. Oh, I messed that up so badly.”

  “Yeah,” said Cadan. His tone wasn’t condemning, but all the same the word felt like a slap. She looked up at him, not wanting to take down the shield of her hands. He was smiling at her, faintly, and his eyes were sympathetic. “But he’s in a bad state, you can see it. I think anyone would find it easy to mess up talking to him right now.”

  “It depends what they say.” Sofia’s voice was sharp, and when Elissa looked up her stomach clenched under the impact of the other girl’s chilly gaze. “What’s wrong with you? You think you can come here, among a whole bunch of Spares, and start talking about asking them to go into SFI’s freaking torture chambers?”

  “I’m not asking,” said Elissa. “I’m just saying it’s possible. We did it, Lin and I, and it saved our lives—”

  “Fine, yeah! For all I know Zee could do it if it was to save his life. But you’re asking him to do it for—why? As useful transport? As some kind of convenience?”

  “No,” said Elissa.

  “Then what?”

  Elissa opened her hands, feeling helpless, feeling unable to explain well enough, but before she could try, Lin broke in.

  “Stop making such a fuss,” she said. “You don’t have a link with your Spare anymore. It wouldn’t be you trying it anyway.”

  “That’s right.” Samuel sounded more unfriendly than Elissa could have imagined. “It wouldn’t be Sofia and El. It would be me and Jay. Like he hasn’t gone through enough?”

  Lin rolled her eyes. “Like you know what he’s gone through.”

  “I know as well as I can!”

  “As well as I do?” Lin shot at him. “Look at you—both of you—you’re speaking for the Spares. You haven’t even stopped to see how Jay feels. I did this, I did it voluntarily, and I survived—”

  “So what? Like your sister said, that was to save your life!”

  “Yes,” said Lin. “And this would be to save our world!”

  Her words fell into the room, and silence followed, creating a space for them to swirl and echo.

  After a long moment filled with nothing but that echo, Lin said, “Sekoia can’t survive without its space force. If we don’t do something, it’s not going to exist as a proper society anymore. We’ll all get relocated, and we’ll be refugees forever.”

  “But,” said Sofia, her voice blank rather than angry, “why do you care? Our world—our ‘proper society’—did terrible things to you. Why do you want to save it?”

  Lin looked at her as if she were almost too stupid to bother answering. “Because Lissa wants to.”

  Elissa felt herself flush. Not for the first time, she thought, I shouldn’t matter that much to her. No one should matter that much to someone. And then, with a pang of guilt, After the fight at the base, I should have forgiven her right away. I shouldn’t have made her wait, not even for a minute. I should have forgiven her right away.

  Sofia had sent one look across to her twin. El was sitting quiet on her beanbag. She didn’t say anything, nor did she meet Sofia’s eyes.

  Sofia looked back at Lin. “But . . . Okay, I get that, I guess. But being refugees . . . does it matter? You’re—okay, look, I’m not trying to be rude, but you—all the Spares—aren’t you all basically refugees already? You’ve all been declared Sekoian citizens, but you’ve never been let out in the real Sekoia—it surely doesn’t seem any more like home than . . . well, than Philomel will. Does it?”

  El looked up. “Yes,” she said. And from her seat over by the window, Cassiopeia said, “Yes,” as well.

  As if of one accord, everyone turned to look at Jay. He shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Why?” asked Sofia.

  “Because of the memories,” Jay said. “Okay, so I’ve never lived out here, but at least I have memories of Sam doing it.”

  El nodded, a silent agreement.

  On the windowsill, Cassiopeia brought one knee up, hugged it to her chest, and stared over it. “I don’t have memories,” she said before anyone could ask her. “But I’d rather live in a society where everyone feels bad about what they did to me than one that feels good about itself for taking me in.”

  Huh, thought Elissa, that’s something I didn’t think about. It made sense, though, she guessed. Unbidden, her gaze moved to where Felicia stood at the far side of the room. Native of the dead planet Freya, which had suffered from postcompletion terraforming failure, Felicia had been a refugee half her life. Not legally a refugee, of course: All Freyan citizens had been given interplanetary citizenship, which was supposed to give them a right to settle on any planet in the star system. In practice, so Felicia had explained to Elissa and Lin, it didn’t work out that way, and Felicia’s whole working life had been spent proving that she was equal to any native-born Sekoian.

  As if Lin had had the same thought, she, too, glanced at Felicia, then away.

  Sofia was biting her lip. “You—all of you, then, you’d rather stay on Sekoia? And you—if you could—you’d be willing to try what they’re saying they’ve done? To get the space force working again?” She shook her head, her face troubled and incredulous. “Jay? Sam? You’d actually try that? And the other twins who are still linked, the ones who might be able to do it too, you’d be okay with asking them as well?”

  Before she’d finished, Jay was nodding, followed by El and Cassiopeia. Lin grinned, looking so pleased with herself that the word “smug” came to Elissa’s mind. “You see,” she said to Sofia, “you didn’t ask them what they wanted.”

  Oh Lin, for goodness’ sake . . . but, thankfully, annoyance flashed for only a moment into Sofia’s expression. “Okay,” she said, with only a trace of thanks, I got that already in her voice.

  Lin, of course, didn’t pick up on even that trace. “See?” she said, cheerful and exuberant. “If they feel like that, then there’ll be more of us who feel like that too.” She turned to Elissa. “Shall I go explain it to Ady and Zee now?”

  But whatever had been on Zee’s face, whatever hideous memory had surfaced to cause those terrified—terrifying—screams, Elissa was sure it wasn’t something that could be fixed by talking, like the others had been talking just now.

  She got up, not wanting to put herself in the firing line, not knowing how she could expect anyone else to do it. “It was me who made Zee react like that. Can I go try to explain myself to Ady first—explain exactly what I meant and how I—I’d never—I mean, even if he and Ady were still linked, I’d never ask Zee—or anybody—to do something he can’t cope with. Is that”—she found herself looking up at Cadan’s father, who’d come quietly back into the room in the last couple of minutes—“is that okay? Can I try?”

  Mr. Greythorn opened his hands a little, tipping them up. “We can’t afford th
at kind of reaction too often, Elissa. I meant what I said—if he puts us all in danger by doing that, we’ll have to sedate him.”

  “No, I know. I just want to try talking to Ady, that’s all.”

  “All right.” Then, as she hesitated, not sure if that was permission, “Yes, go on, then. They’re sharing a room, though, just to let you know. It’s the third door.”

  “Thank you.” She opened the sitting room door and slipped out into another corridor, almost identical to the one into which the front door opened, but from the look of the doors, with fewer rooms standing off it.

  She tapped lightly on the third door down. From inside came a murmur of voices, then one voice, closer. “What?”

  “It’s me,” she said. “Elissa. I’ve come to try to explain. I made it sound so much worse than I meant to. I—”

  The door slid open. Ady stood inside, his arms out, preventing her from seeing farther into the room. Tension showed in the tightness around his eyes and mouth.

  “You can’t talk to Zee. Not yet.”

  Elissa dropped her gaze. “That’s okay. I understand. I don’t need to. If I can just explain to you . . .”

  “Hang on,” said Ady, and hit the button to close the door. As the bland white surface slid across in front of him, she heard the murmur of his voice again, directed away into the room. A minute crawled by. With every few seconds Elissa’s insides seemed to tighten a little more.

  The door opened again and Ady stepped out, shutting it behind him as soon as he’d crossed the threshold. His face showed none of the earlier friendliness or good humor. “Okay, go on.”

  “We’re not working with anyone.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. “It’s just me and Lin and the four Phoenix crew members. We’re not working with IPL. We’re definitely not working with anyone to do with SFI. We just came back, honestly, to try to help.”