The nutri-machine hissed steam, and the smell of chocolate rolled out into the room. Ivan twirled the cup he was holding, forcing the foaming stream of hot chocolate to make a curly shape on the surface of the drink.
When he brought it over to Lin, Elissa saw the shape he’d made was a looped L. Lin put her hands around it, her shoulders still shaking with sobs, bending her head as if to breathe in the steam and heat and scent of the sugar-laden chocolate. Her hair swung forward so Elissa couldn’t see her face.
Ivan handed the next cup to Felicia, and the third to Elissa. Elissa’s had another L drawn in the foam. She was an E really, of course, but she’d been Lissa to everyone on the ship for nearly as long as she’d been on board. Had been Lissa to friends and family most of her life, too. It was the name Lin had known her by, the name Lin had based her own name on, back when all she had was a numerical code. She’d called herself “Lissa’s twin.” As if that in itself were a name. As if she only existed as a real person through her connection to Elissa.
Then, when she’d escaped, she’d come to find Elissa. Not asking for anything, not even expecting to be allowed to stay with her. Just wanting to see her, the twin sister whose existence had formed so much of her life.
Elissa had lifted the cup to her lips, but not yet taken a sip. Which was just as well, because as the thoughts came to her, her throat closed too tight to let her swallow.
She looked at Lin through the wisps of steam. “I do trust you not to hurt me.”
Lin’s head came up. Her face was tear smudged and muddy-pale, her eyes looking bruised. Really? Her lips formed the word, but Elissa wasn’t sure if she actually said it or if, once again, she heard it through their link.
“Yes. Like Ivan said, it’s not like I can lie to you even if I wanted to.”
Lin’s bruised eyes fixed on hers—and for an unnerving flicker of a moment Elissa was reminded of Zee’s blank, blind stare. “I wouldn’t ever hurt you.”
“I know. I know. It’s okay.”
“You had to think about it.” Her fingers tightened, bloodless, on her cup. “You shouldn’t have had to think about it. You’re supposed to know.”
“I do know. I wasn’t thinking about it, not really. I was just . . .” She shook her head. “God, Lin, it’s just so much to deal with, you know?”
Over at the machine, Ivan turned a knob to clean the drinks nozzle, and steam hissed. Elissa found herself staring kind of blankly at what he was doing, tiredly glad of something to focus on that wasn’t words and emotions and the impossible, heartbreaking complexities of a relationship that mattered more than anything and yet that she couldn’t seem to see how to handle.
“But when you did think about it, you did know?” Lin’s voice sounded as tight and bloodless as her fingers had looked, drained of everything but the need for reassurance.
Elissa reached out and put her hand over her twin’s. “Yes. Of course I knew. Of course I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”
Lin’s hand turned, and her fingers curled around Elissa’s. “And you don’t . . . hate me?”
“I don’t hate you.” Her eyes met Lin’s. “I swear.” She swallowed, afraid to hurt her again, needing to say it all the same. “But that doesn’t mean everything’s okay. You deciding that people don’t matter—that’s not okay with me. Letting those people die, not helping me when I asked you—that’s not okay either.”
Lin’s face went tight again. “I can’t change. You’re not fair to expect me to. Those people—” A sudden shudder went through her. “If it had been me in danger, they’d have let me die. If they’d seen me, back when I was in the facility, they wouldn’t have cared what was being done to me—”
Elissa felt the shudder, not just through Lin’s hand into hers, but through her mind. The memory of pain was showing in Lin’s face, in the tense lines of her body, but as that mental shudder echoed through Elissa’s brain, she remembered something she’d once read about the experience of abuse survivors, and she realized something she hadn’t realized before.
It wasn’t just memory. Lin wasn’t just remembering those years of SFI-sponsored torture; some part of her was reliving them.
Horror tipped Elissa’s stomach over. Oh God, she’s so right. I haven’t been fair. The Phoenix—it was a little safe haven for the past few weeks. Of course Lin seemed to be recovering while she was on it. Of course she seemed normal.
Then, an underneath thought: It was a haven for me and Cadan, too. This is the real world now. If we can’t survive the real world, then what we had was never real to start with.
But this, right now, wasn’t about her and Cadan. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind. “I’m sorry,” she said to Lin. “I was wrong. I know you can’t change.”
“But you said—”
“Yeah, I know. Listen, Lin. I said it wasn’t okay with me, and it’s still not okay. People—they need to care about other people. They—they just need to. And one day you’ll need to as well. But you can’t do it now. And that is okay. It’s not your fault and I don’t blame you, and I don’t think that it means you’ll end up hurting me, or Cadan, or any of the people you do care about.”
Lin nodded, slowly, biting her thumbnail. “But one day . . .”
“One day you’ll need to care. Just because”—she fumbled to put into words what she felt so clearly but had never had to articulate—“because that’s what people are supposed to do.”
“They don’t all do it,” said Lin.
“No, I know. But that’s because there’s something wrong with them—or because they’ve chosen to let there be something wrong with them.” Without planning it, without realizing it was going to happen, her voice became suddenly definite—both definite and defiant. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Lin, and we’re not going to let anything be wrong with you.”
This time Lin’s nod was less uncertain. A faint flush had come back to her cheeks, making her eyes look less bruised. “Okay.”
“Okay,” said Elissa, and, suddenly worn out, took a sip of her hot chocolate. The underneath thoughts returned. I have to talk to Cadan. If we’re going to make this work, we have to talk. Her shoulders slumped. It’s not like I’d want us to be telepathic too, but with not knowing what his parents have said to him, not knowing exactly what he’s thinking . . . I don’t want telepathy with him, I really don’t, but . . . But this was her first real relationship ever, and although she didn’t want telepathy, she would like a cheat sheet.
“You have to talk to Cadan,” said Lin.
“Yeah.” Elissa took another sip of the hot chocolate, too tired to feel resentment that Lin had picked up another of her thoughts that she hadn’t intended to share, one that was supposed to be private. “I . . .” Her shoulders slumped farther. The idea of that talk seemed too daunting to even attempt. And if he really does think I’m not good enough for him . . . God, he’s probably right.
“He’s not.”
Elissa gave a little laugh. “It’s nice that you still think so.”
Lin shook her head. “No. I don’t mean he’s not right. I mean he doesn’t think that.”
Alarm went through Elissa like a snap of electricity. Surely Lin hadn’t started reading Cadan’s thoughts? “How can you know?”
Lin smiled a tiny bit, responding either to the alarm on Elissa’s face or the shock waves reverberating from her mind. “Not that, I swear. I can’t read anyone else’s thoughts—I can’t read his. It’s . . . It’s just that, God, Lissa, haven’t you seen the way he looks at you?”
From her chair, Felicia held her cup up to Ivan. He gave her a look, but took it all the same, then went back to the nutri-machine to refill it, moving quietly.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Elissa said. “I mean, obviously I see his face when he’s looking at me. . . .”
“But you haven’t noticed how he looks?”
Felicia had her face turned toward Ivan, and Ivan’s attention seemed to be solely on the cup he was refilling.
All the same, Elissa found herself flushing. She picked up the stirrer that came clipped to the side of the cup and poked it into the froth on her drink. When she pulled it back out, the froth was stuck to its handle in tiny chocolate-ringed bubbles. “I don’t know. I . . . How does he look?”
“Like nothing else exists,” said Lin. Her voice, uninflected and unemotional, seemed to give the words more impact than if anyone else had said them. “Like someone’s turned all the lights off and you’re the only thing that’s left lit up.”
Oh. Elissa’s lips parted, but when no words came out, she closed them again. Like nothing else exists. Cadan looks at me like that?
“His mother notices too,” said Lin. “She keeps looking at him looking at you. I don’t think she likes it.”
“She . . . talked to me. Earlier.”
“I know.”
“Oh, right.” That feeling of being invaded, taken over, resurged within Elissa. “So I guess you know what she said?”
Lin shook her head. “I was talking to Cassiopeia and Jay and Samuel. I didn’t pay attention until I felt you get upset . . . and then it was all blurred and I couldn’t hear what she’d said to you.” Her eyes met Elissa’s. “It was ’cause you were upset that I listened in to you talking to Cadan. I was . . . scared.”
That’s not okay either. I’m going to have to make her see she can’t do that, no matter the reason, she just can’t.
But right now the need to tell someone about Cadan’s mother took over her still-present resentment of Lin’s invasion of her mind.
“She’s said stuff to him,” Elissa said. “She said we have nothing in common. She—both of them, probably—they don’t think I’m right for him. They . . .” When she articulated it for the first time, the bitterness she’d been trying to suppress flooded the words. “They don’t think it’s going to last. He doesn’t think it’s going to last. Like I’m too young to have genuine feelings or something. Like it only happened ’cause we were on the ship together, and if we hadn’t been—if life had just stayed normal—he’d never have noticed me.”
Lin was shaking her head, confused. “Which?” she said. “I mean, which one are you upset about?”
“All of it! They think I’m too young, and it’s not serious, and it’s just some temporary thing, and I’m not good enough and I’m just distracting him from what he’s supposed to be doing—”
“Balls,” said Ivan.
Elissa jerked a look at him, shocked into momentary silence. “What?”
“Balls. Garbage. Nonsense.”
“It’s not. His mother, she said—”
“Yeah, his mother said. But if you’re telling us Cadan said those things to you, then he’s not the man I thought him.”
A flush rose uncomfortably into Elissa’s face. “I . . . No, he didn’t say them. . . .”
“Then I’m betting you he doesn’t think them.”
Irritation threaded through Elissa’s embarrassment. “He does,” she said stubbornly. “He said so—he does think it might not have happened if we hadn’t been thrown together—”
Ivan laughed. “Not really the same thing, is it?”
“I—” She broke off. “It—it is. If he thinks it wouldn’t have happened, then it’s because he thinks I’m too . . .” She trailed off this time, trying to think what Cadan had said, and what he’d sort of said, and what had gotten mixed up in her mind with what his mother had said. . . .
“That’s a bit of an assumption there,” said Ivan. “You sure he thinks you’re too . . . ?”
“All right,” Elissa snapped, frustrated. “But he did say he didn’t know if it would have happened if—”
Ivan shrugged. “Well, how can he? How can you? How do you know what would have happened if things had been different? Why does it matter?”
All at once, Elissa knew she was about to burst into tears. “It does matter!” she said, hearing her voice go humiliatingly shrill, out of control. “It does! If it wouldn’t have happened anyway, how do I know it’s going to last? How do I know he’s not going to get bored of me?”
“Why would he get bored of you?” Felicia’s voice was quietly curious.
Elissa swiped furiously at her eyes. “Because—” Because I’m not superpowered or highly skilled or trained or clever. Because for years I was just Bruce’s little sister. Because . . . “Because I’m just me!” she burst out. “And he—he’s Cadan.”
Lin thrust a handful of tissues at her. Elissa pulled one from her sister’s fingers and blew her nose, then grabbed another two to mop her eyes, feeling her face scorch, knowing she’d betrayed all sorts of things she’d been trying to keep hidden, wishing it wasn’t so obvious, hoping that maybe they hadn’t worked it out.
But, of course, because Lin was there, and because Lin had no social filters . . .
“It’s not Cadan who doesn’t think you’re good enough,” she said, in a voice of pleased discovery. “It’s you.”
Elissa grabbed another tissue and blew her nose again to avoid answering. Or looking up. Or even having to acknowledge that she was still in the room.
“You should definitely talk to him,” said Lin.
An unexpected laugh got mixed up with Elissa’s nose blowing, and she kind of snorted into the tissue. “You think?”
“She’s right, though,” said Felicia. “And, you know, Lissa? Cadan—he likes things to be . . . clear, exact. He’s learned to deal with shades of gray, but he’s not any more comfortable with them than you are. If you haven’t told him how you feel, then”—she shrugged her unhurt shoulder—“well, it might be helpful.”
“Oh jeez, he knows how I feel.”
Felicia looked at her.
“No, honestly. He must know. I mean . . .”
“Guys aren’t always all that secure either,” said Ivan. There was a glint of mockery in his eyes.
“I know that. I’ve read stuff. I . . . just . . . this is Cadan.”
Ivan smiled at her, and the mockery had gone. “Yeah, we know,” he said. “But trust me, honey. Tell him, all the same.”
THE FIRST time Elissa had walked up the long spiral of the main corridor leading through the center of the Phoenix and up to the flight deck in the nose of the ship, she’d been a fugitive, on the ship because she and Lin had nowhere else to go. And she’d been tense all over, unwilling to see Cadan and sure he would be anything but pleased to see her invading the captain’s space.
A million things had changed since then, but still, here she was once more, butterflies in her belly, nervous sweat prickling the palms of her hands. It had been easier—maybe—when she was sure she knew exactly what he thought of her, and when she’d at least been able to pretend she didn’t care.
She wasn’t even sure what to say to him. I’m sorry would be a start, she knew—she shouldn’t have walked out on him in the hospital lobby—but oh, it all felt so much more complicated than the sort of ordinary fight she remembered having with friends, or the brother-sister bickering she and Bruce had done. And telling him what I feel, what I want . . . opening up to him the way Ivan and Felicia said I should . . . She didn’t just feel nervous. She felt kind of sick.
The overhead door to the flight deck came into view at the end of the corridor, set into the ceiling at the top of a short flight of stairs. Cadan had kissed her here once—the first time he’d ever kissed her, the first time he’d said he loved her. The ship had been under fire, the shields deteriorating moment by moment, and for a few seconds it hadn’t even mattered.
The corners of her mouth twitched suddenly downward, and the back of her eyes stung. For God’s sake, Lissa. At the point she was thinking about, she and Cadan—and Lin and the crew as well—had been this close to being killed. It was stupid to remember those few moments with longing.
She blinked until the stinging in her eyes dissolved, gritted her teeth, and touched the doorpad that would open the door and let her through onto the flight deck.
The door snapped open, l
ike the iris of a silver eye widening to nothing but a thin, gleaming rim. Above Elissa, star-filled space showed through the glass walls and ceiling of the flight deck, providing the giant eye with a pupil like a bottomless well full of dark, silver-glinting water.
She climbed up. Her head emerged, and the first vertiginous moment of feeling that if she let go she would fall and fall into that endless sky gave way to the correct perspective as the flight deck spread out around her. The bridge stood in front of her on its shoulder-high platform: the platform that was the exterior of the chamber that housed the now-defunct hyperdrive—and had imprisoned the tortured, dying Spare who had powered it.
A glass barrier rose to the ceiling all the way around the bridge. Treated to eliminate reflections, it was almost as invisible as a force field. A short flight of steps led to a security-locked door in it. Elissa climbed the steps, butterflies flipping and flapping inside her, and pressed the buzzer to get Cadan’s attention.
He and Markus were sitting at the wide control panel, on the other side of the safety rail that ran along the back of the row of seats. It was Cadan who turned to see who their visitor was, and the moment he saw Elissa he pushed the button to let her in.
Some of the butterflies seemed to leave Elissa’s body on an involuntary sigh of relief. She’d half thought he might tell her to go away—he was, after all, busy flying the ship.
There was some reticence in his eyes as they met hers, a slight stiffness about his mouth, but he smiled all the same. “Hey.” He turned to Markus. “You could take a break now. Lissa can keep me company.”
Unlike Ivan would have, Markus didn’t offer any comment. He grinned at Elissa as he got up and came around the end of the safety rail. “The others are still in the lounge?”
Unravel Page 28
