Bruce had faced trial on Philomel, but by the time he did there’d been a million factors the court had been forced to consider—all of them more important than sentencing him according to the usual laws. Those factors had expedited his trial, but by the time it came, a month after the crime he was being tried for, he was already one of the public faces of the recently convened Sekoia Recovery Group.
Even Elissa, who’d guilt-tripped him into that first press interview out of desperation and sudden instinctive conviction, hadn’t anticipated its results.
Bruce, tall, good-looking, speaking from the shattered background of a glittering career, talking, with genuine misery in his eyes, about how he’d realized, too late, what he’d done to his sister—both his sisters—because he hadn’t been able to see Spares as human, had caught the consciousness—and conscience—of Sekoia’s scattered, fractured population.
That first interview had sparked an instant clamor of demands from Sekoian citizens to actually see the Spares—not in distant shots of shell-shocked victims being led out of facilities, but as real people. And that had led to Elissa and Lin—plus a bunch of other twins and the Phoenix crew and Cadan’s parents and what felt like half the psychologists on Philomel—being summoned to a whole flurry of behind-the-scenes discussion in order to find the Spares who had acclimatized the quickest, who would be able to come across in interviews as the most “normal.”
In the end, Jay was one of those chosen. From a room on Philomel, and with Samuel sitting next to him, he’d handled the initial five-minute interview a whole lot better than Elissa would have thought. He and a handful of other Spares had done so well, in fact, that the demand to see them had turned into demands for them to return to Sekoia, to return home.
And as public opinion changed, as Sekoia’s attitude toward Spares turned from one of suspicion, revulsion, and fear to one of sympathetic interest, there was less unrest, fewer riots. Sekoian citizens began to step forward to offer volunteer policing, transport, donations of previously hoarded food. IPL forces revoked the curfews and dialed back on the rationing.
Not everyone on Sekoia had exactly been converted to acceptance both of Spares and of the continued governance by IPL forces. IPL still got reports of terrorist activity, of the existence of “covert groups,” and the apartments where Spares and twins lived were still given a certain amount of protection as standard. But those first interviews, with Bruce and Jay and other Spares, marked the point at which the tide of public opinion had made its initial, most significant, change of course.
One more key thing had helped with both that and with Sekoia’s recovery.
Elissa watched now as Bruce turned to hold out a hand to the girl climbing out after him—and then to the next, identical, figure.
Even the colorless spaceport lights couldn’t wash out the flame of color from the second girl’s hair. It was El—Ella, now. Like Jay, who now called himself Jason, she’d chosen to turn the code name she’d had as a captive Spare into a real name.
And she, as well as a hundred other Spares and their twins, had volunteered to work with Sekoia’s reformed space force, working out ways to power the ships’ hyperdrives without endangering themselves.
Bruce, Sofia, and Ella had just returned from their third flight—and, judging from the triumphant spring to Bruce’s movements, their third successful attempt at achieving hyperspeed. None of the Spares was using the sockets SFI had drilled into their skulls—volunteer scientists, most of them from non-SFI-affiliated institutions, had developed what they were calling a noninvasive interface, which Spares had only to touch with one hand, leaving the other free to maintain contact with their twin.
It only worked with those twins who were linked, of course. Which was yet another miracle. Sofia and Ella had returned to Sekoia with no telepathic connection, but then, as they spent more time together, the link that must once have existed had slowly begun to re-establish itself. They had nothing like the link Elissa and Lin had once had, or that of Jay—Jason—and Samuel. But it was enough to power a hyperdrive.
It was enough, too, to keep Sofia safe from what had happened to Ady. The weekly brain scans that were now routine for every Spare showed that as the link between Ella and Sofia strengthened, the abnormal activity in Ella’s brain had begun to diminish.
She wasn’t the only one either. Across Sekoia, Spares and their twins were demonstrating what Cadan had once said to Elissa, what she had repeated to Lin, that the brain repairs itself.
The repair—the dwindling of the abnormal activity—happened fastest with those who had never lost their telepathic connection, but it also happened with those whose link was slowly being re-established, and even with those who still had no link at all.
For a while there’d been a whole bunch of different theories as to why. When Elissa talked to her dad, on a long-distance call from Philomel, he’d shared his theory that the trip switch naturally degraded, that no matter how deeply an unnatural pathology was imposed on the brain, it would eventually reject it of its own accord.
“Have you said that to Mother?” she’d asked, then immediately regretted it when her father gave a breath of a pause before shaking his head. “Your mother doesn’t talk about Spares,” he’d said, and Elissa hadn’t asked any more.
She’d let Lin take over the conversation instead, telling Mr. Ivory about the life skills classes she and the other Spares were being given. She was proving excellent at computer use—of course—and ridiculously, unreasonably hopeless at food preparation and hygiene.
Elissa had sat quiet, watching the play of emotion on her sister’s face, noticing her father doing the same.
Eventually the scientists and doctors had come down on the side of one particular theory: the idea that, while contact with a twin did set off the process that led to psychosis, over time—and if that psychosis could be prevented from being fully triggered—the humanizing effect of the same contact worked to eventually counteract the time bomb built into the Spare’s brain.
Elissa still remembered Lin saying, through tears and despair, I don’t know how to be human without it. Without you, and herself answering, You still have me. The link’s gone, but I’m still here.
And now, across the whole of their world, Spares and their twins were demonstrating that although a telepathic connection with their twin was the best safeguard against the time bombs, even a normal sibling relationship would, in time, have a similar effect.
Only the Spares—like Cassie, who’d once named herself Cassiopeia—who still had no contact with their twins showed any trace of the abnormal activity that indicated potential psychosis. The authorities were continuing to monitor them, although not anything like as invasively as they’d had to do back on Philomel, during the horrible aftermath of the first attacks.
During that first month of scans and tests and one discarded hypothesis after another, the scientists had discovered that there was a measurable chemical change in the body as switch after switch tripped to bring the Spare closer to the final descent into psychosis. They’d devised bracelets that, locked onto each Spare’s wrist, would measure the chemical levels, alerting security and medical staff the moment the likelihood of an attack increased.
To start with they’d only been able to prevent attacks, but as they refined the bracelets, they’d been able to track and predict the fugue states, too. And the latest version of the bracelets could not only predict the final state of psychosis with a safe ten-minute margin, it could inject an instant, precisely measured dose of an antipsychotic drug, enough to prevent the state from occurring at all.
Out on the spaceport plateau, Bruce turned toward the central buildings. Something about his posture, as he swung behind Ella to walk beside Sofia, his body a little angled toward hers, snagged Elissa’s attention. Sofia? Really? For a moment, a smile tugged at her lips.
Being able to fly again had done a lot to restore Bruce to the familiar, confident brother she remembered. But the guilt, the tortur
ed conscience, although a useful part of his persona in his role as one of SRG’s spokespeople, were real as well. Elissa and Lin were not the only ones who’d left Philomel with scars.
But as Elissa thought that, swiftly on the heels of her pleasure at noticing Bruce’s happiness, a flood rose to drown her, grief and pain and deep, cold fury. Compared to our scars, Bruce’s are nothing! He doesn’t deserve to coast into a role as planetary hero, a new career, a relationship with a cute blond girlfriend.
As the links between Spares and twins repaired themselves, as brain scans revealed the disappearance of the abnormal activity indicating the presence of SFI’s time bombs, more and more Spares had been freed from the necessity of wearing the bracelets.
Ella didn’t have to wear hers anymore, nor Jason, nor three-quarters of the other Spares in the residential block where Elissa and Lin lived.
But Lin still did.
The unfairness of it boiled up in Elissa’s throat. Not only did she and Lin no longer have their link—the link that’s repairing itself for so many other people—Lin was still being treated as if she were dangerous.
The abnormal activity in Lin’s brain had been gone the moment she, Elissa, and Cadan returned from the terrorist base Lin had intended to burn. The scientists and doctors who’d examined her had been convinced their equipment had stopped working, had brought in a whole new set from halfway across the continent. Which had shown exactly the same thing.
During those minutes where Elissa and Lin had faced each other, something had reset itself in Lin’s brain. Just as Elissa’s brain no longer showed any trace of the telepathic link, Lin’s brain no longer showed any trace of the time bomb SFI had built into it. Not because it had been removed, and not because it had slowly diminished, but because Lin’s own brain had—somehow—rejected it by itself.
Privately, a belief shared only with Lin and Cadan, Elissa was sure she knew the moment it had happened. She remembered how Lin’s voice had changed, remembered the tears that had suddenly flooded her eyes. It happened when she knew I loved her, when she was convinced—finally, forever—that I’d always love her, whatever she did.
She was sure, too, that from that point Lin would have been safe without the bracelet. That, of all the Spares, she was the one who had never needed it at all. But the authorities had felt a whole lot more cautious about it. Partly because it hadn’t followed the pattern established by the other Spares, partly because so far Lin was the Spare with the most powerful—the most frightening—electrokinetic power.
Elissa had known their reasoning was fair. She still knew it, really. But . . .
It’s been three months. Three months of having to come to the spaceport hospital, assessment after assessment, and every time they say they’re not willing to take it off, say she needs to keep wearing it for a bit longer. Treating her like she’s dangerous, keeping her shackled like a criminal, when everyone else, everyone whose time bombs disappeared later, gets their bracelets taken off, gets told they can just go, be normal.
It was the last visible sign that someone was a Spare, that silver gleam on their right wrist. You couldn’t tell otherwise. And I don’t want people to be able to tell. I want them to see her as no different from me.
Elissa screwed her eyes shut, closing out the sight of the returning heroes, trying to focus on other—entirely positive—things.
Cadan.
Cadan was out on a test flight too, but he was due back any time now. And he and Elissa had a date planned for this evening. The first couple of months after their return to Sekoia had been nearly as crazy as the weeks before, and they’d only been able to snatch time here and there, in between consultations with the SRG and extensive brain scans (Elissa) and rescue flights back and forth across the continent (Cadan) and the therapy that Elissa had furiously resisted but that she’d found—eventually—kind of helpful.
His parents had remained silently cautious about their relationship. But, as the weeks went by—and as Cadan’s older sister distracted them by announcing that she and her husband were expecting their first child—Elissa thought they were easing toward a bit more of an acceptance.
And—honestly, now—she didn’t even really care. Cadan took every scrap of time he had to be with her, he lost track of half of what he was saying when she came into a room—Ivan and Bruce both got a lot of amusement out of that—and this evening they were going out on their first real date, to the recently reopened Starlit Park.
He was going to pick her up from the apartment she and Lin shared with Felicia’s family, and they were going for dinner—actual, real, grown-up dinner—at the first restaurant to reopen at the park. Elissa had a new dress, borrowed from Sofia, that Sofia and Ella and Lin all agreed was going to make him forget practically everything he was saying.
The sound of soft footsteps in the corridor outside brought Elissa’s attention back to the present. She swung around from the window, trying not to betray any tension. The scans made them both anxious—the time when they’d only been allowed to talk through a screen wasn’t that long ago—but it wasn’t fair to make Lin deal with Elissa’s nerves as well as her own. Especially when it was Lin, not Elissa, who had to submit to the regular hour-long assessment.
The door slid open. Lin came in. Her hair, cut short now, had mostly returned to its natural shade, and it clung, dark brown, in soft curls around her face. The black pants and low-cut flame-colored T-shirt she was wearing showed off curves she hadn’t had three months ago, and she’d taken to outlining her eyes in dramatic streaks of black. But Elissa was used to that now, and her gaze went immediately past clothes and hair and eyeliner to her twin’s right wrist.
The bracelet was still there.
“Oh Lin, it’s okay,” Elissa said instantly. “It’s a precaution, that’s all, you know that. It’s their job to be supercautious, even when they completely don’t need to be.”
Lin came farther into the room, letting the door slide shut behind her. She hadn’t spoken.
“It’s okay,” said Elissa again. “Lin, you know it’s just a precaution.”
Lin grinned, wide and bright, her seeing-the-stars smile. “Yeah,” she said, “I know.” She turned her wrist over and used the fingers of her left hand to twist something on it. The bracelet dropped open, fell into Lin’s palm.
Lin lifted it up, her smile lighting her whole face, her eyes bright.
Elissa stared, at her twin’s face, at the bracelet lying open on her hand. “They— Seriously, they unlocked it? They’re comfortable with declaring you safe?”
“Yeah.”
“But then why are you wearing it? You came in here and I thought—”
Lin slid her wrist back into the bracelet, pushed its sides up until it clicked and locked. “It’s just a precaution. It still works even though it’s unlocked—I asked.”
“But if they’ve unlocked it, if they’re saying you don’t need to wear it anymore . . .”
Lin came across to the window. For a moment the floodlights from outside rinsed all color from her face, making her look as pale, as vulnerable, as the runaway Spare she’d been months ago. She looked at Elissa. “It’s my precaution, not theirs. I don’t want to risk it. I don’t want to risk hurting anyone.”
“Lin, you’re not going to hurt anyone.”
Lin shrugged. “I might, though. I . . .” Her eyes went to the spaceport outside, rose to the sweep of darkening sky. “I’m not a monster, I know that. But I am dangerous. I can hurt people. I could have hurt you. They’re sure I’m safe now, but . . .” She shrugged again. “I don’t want to risk it, that’s all.”
Outside, another ship was coming in to land. For a second, its shadow passed by the window, drifted, like smoke, over Lin’s face. Elissa put her hand out, felt her sister’s fingers clasp it.
She understood what Lin was doing. It made sense, and it spoke of an aspect to Lin’s character that, some months ago, hadn’t existed. That’s good. I should be glad—I am glad.
&
nbsp; Just as she’d promised, during those horrible moments three months ago, the loss of the link hadn’t meant the loss of everything. She and Lin were still sisters, still twins. As Sekoia recovered, they’d begun to think again about college, and there wasn’t any question but that they’d go to the same one.
But . . .
But it’s not fair. The link is remaking itself for everyone else. For people who never remembered losing it, for people who didn’t care that it had died. While ours . . .
For her and Lin, despite what Cadan had said, despite what Elissa, from reading up on brain damage, knew to be true, her brain wasn’t repairing itself. She and Lin no longer shared thoughts. When Lin entered a room, Elissa didn’t immediately, instinctively know it was her twin.
Every time Elissa spoke to her father, she was reminded of exactly how much she and Lin hadn’t lost. They still had each other, they could still share a room, still talk, still reach out for comfort. Elissa wasn’t crippled, left like half a person, the way her father had been.
But, still, every day she felt the loss of the link, the link she’d taken for granted, resented, feared. The link whose importance she hadn’t fully understood—until it was gone for good.
“It’s Cadan,” said Lin, putting her hand up against the window in order to cut out reflections and see better. “Look, he’s back, and you’re not even a bit dressed up.”
Elissa leaned forward to peer through the window next to her. Cadan had jumped down from the ship, and the twins—two boys Elissa knew only slightly—were climbing out. They moved toward the main building, the angle of their heads indicating animated conversation.
Elissa spread her fingers on the glass, watching him, the bleak thoughts receding, warmth tingling in her fingers and toes. His flight must have gone well too. He’d be making his way to the pilots’ quarters now, showering and shaving, getting ready for their night out. Dinner, and then . . .
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