Blood of a Thousand Stars

by Rhoda Belleza

  But before either of those happened, Nero would have to die. She thought again of Nero’s warning: Would you really kill me, if you knew it would risk the lives of countless innocents? Would you risk the very fabric of consciousness itself just to see me die?

  She ran her hands over the silk of her dress to keep them from shaking. She didn’t like what her answer had become. But short of a means to destroy the overwriter itself, they had to destroy the man. Really, the overwriter and the man were inseparable—they were one and the same.

  Kara hardly heard the officiant’s words as they initiated the vows: something about duty and permanence and honor. Ma’tan sarili, she remembered as if in a dream. She had forgotten hers. Instead, she thought of Aly.

  Fear started to freeze her from the inside out. Were they in position? Her mind reeled. Maybe this had been a terrible idea. Was she really prepared to confront Nero so boldly? To kill him?

  “Now repeat after me,” the officiant said. “I will serve my planet . . .”

  “I will serve my planet . . .” Kara began, but then stopped when she heard a high-pitched whizzing grow louder around them.

  A metal anchor, then another and another, four in total, clanked onto the roof. Ziplines. Kara turned to see a blur of dark shadows launching off the roof of the clock tower. Then Yendit grabbed her, pinning her arms to her sides, and held a stunner to her neck.

  A second later, Rhiannon climbed onto the ledge of the roof and dropped down soundlessly, her hair whipped back by the wind, her eyes dark and filled with fury.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  KARA

  RHIANNON was a tornado of precise rage: jabbing, kicking, whirling.

  She got my message, Kara thought as Rhiannon’s crew followed behind her, all of them scaling the roof seconds after Rhee had: a petite Fontisian girl who fired arrows so quickly at the rush of attacking Tasinn that Kara lost track of the blur of her hands; Julian, the Lancer’s son from Nau Fruma, who spun and punched almost as quickly as Rhiannon. The last fighter she recognized as Aly’s friend Jethezar—slow to arrive but a force of power that plowed through an entire row of Tasinn in one tackle.

  Yendit had Kara’s hands behind her back, and she struggled uselessly. Now he was trying to force her to the edge of the roof. As she got closer, she could see more and more of the crowd surging beneath them, the waves of people in the central square reacting to the scene the daisies were still recording and transmitting across their cubes even now.

  “It’s a shame you’ll have to say hello and goodbye, all in one breath,” Yendit said, nodding in Rhee’s direction. Except his inflection was all wrong, his accent, his words.

  Nero was speaking through Yendit.

  Rhiannon looked up.

  “You should’ve killed me when you had the chance,” he taunted. Kara didn’t know what he meant. But Rhee locked eyes with her for a moment, just before Rhee took down another guard with the heel of her palm straight to his Adam’s apple. She sprinted for Kara.

  “Watch out!” Kara screamed.

  But it was too late. Rhiannon was so focused on Kara that she missed the way Nero launched himself toward her, tackling her to the ground. Where was everyone?

  Kara tried to surge forward, out of Yendit’s grip—but he only jabbed the stunner into her neck roughly, and choked the breath out of her chest with his forearm. He cut off her air bit by bit, while she gulped whatever she could, forcing it down into her burning lungs. Her eyes were closing, her tongue felt thick, nothing made sense anymore, and for a split second she forgot where she was, who she was.

  Then Yendit let off. She gasped for breath, desperate, feeling the cool air coat her insides—the consciousness creeping back into her brain. She knew who she was. She was the Empress.

  Yendit lifted her off her feet and dragged her while she kicked, her feet just skimming the ground. Clawing at his arm, biting at it when she managed.

  Adrenaline spiked through her and she fought harder, but he swung her around and dangled her over the five-story drop—his arms hooked onto her shoulders from behind. Her terror crystallized when she looked down at the public square and saw the Tasinn like a swarm of dark ants, moving together, perfectly in sync . . .

  Moving as one . . .

  She knew then: Nero was once again using the overwriter to control them all.

  “Please,” she choked out. She arched her back, digging her heels into the side of the palace, scrambling for any kind of purchase on the vertical drop. Her stomach seesawed wildly, and her heartbeat thrummed in her ears. But it was clear Yendit didn’t plan to drop her, not right away at least. His grip was strong but his attention wavered; he was looking in Rhee’s direction, hoping to bait her.

  Kara had to calm down. Struggling might make him drop her. Taking a deep breath, she kept her back straight and brought her knees up to her chest—as high as they could go. She just barely caught her heel on the ledge of the roof, and then the other, and on the quick count of three she dug her heels in and launched herself backward. Both Yendit and Kara fell back onto the roof just near the parapet edge. Another Tasinn came rushing toward them, hand on his stunner.

  “I’ll take care of this.” The Tasinn’s uniform was stained with blood and ripped at the shoulder. His hat was pulled low over his eyes. Kara crabwalked backward away from both of them. “Nero wants her alive,” he snapped at Yendit.

  Kara could hear the way Yendit smiled—she could hear the saliva cracking in his gums, the rapid pattern of his breathing. “I am Nero, you fool,” he said, in a voice that made her skin crawl. “We all are.”

  “Even better.” Without warning, the soldier pulled his stunner out and brought it to Yendit’s cube in one fluid motion. Nero’s right-hand man seized, the electrocution traveling into his cube and through his heart. His limbs flailed.

  The guard pushed back his hat.

  “Alyosha,” she said. He was panting, his face bruised. He looked like he’d gone through hell. They locked eyes for a second before Kara’s attention was pulled to her left.

  Nero and Rhiannon were still sparring, tumbling over one another, landing sideswipes and hard blows. Dahlen and Issa, also dressed as Tasinn, were successfully confusing the guards, and the roof was pooling with blood, littered with bodies.

  Kara started to move toward Rhiannon, but Aly held her back.

  “It looks like she has it handled,” he said, in a low voice. “She wants this.”

  It was probably true that Rhee had been waiting years for this moment, but looking like she had it handled didn’t stop the pounding in Kara’s chest, the way her skin felt cold. Rhiannon seemed to be less a human than a mass of concentrated fury, a blinding oscillation of coiled rage and grief. She spun and whipped and flipped and kicked. And strangely, she seemed only to be getting faster, stronger, more powerful. It was as if the fight was fueling her, strengthening her—while Nero looked to be tiring.

  Kara didn’t know if Nero was nearly as capable a fighter as Rhee, but she imagined he was weakened from using the overwriter. His attention was too dispersed. His mind too diffuse. And even if every hit he landed made Kara’s heart drop, Rhiannon seemed barely fazed, blocking his hits and landing three more.

  Rhee drove him backward, toward the edge of the roof. “Say you surrender,” she said. But Nero’s response was a sardonic smile.

  Finally, the waist-high ledge was at Nero’s back; he was cornered.

  But Rhee kept attacking, bobbing and jabbing, his face raw and bloody, his body near collapse. She wouldn’t stop until he surrendered, and Kara didn’t know if he could. Rhiannon needed this battle, and she knew Nero needed to be stopped, but it was too much to bear. Aly squeezed Kara’s shoulder; she wanted to look away but refused—she wanted to see the moment Nero collapsed.

  But he swatted Rhee, and she couldn’t block it in time. She fell backward. Kara nearly stumbled forward to go
to her, but Rhee lunged back up and dropkicked him. He slammed against the ledge, the upper half of his body limp over the ledge. It would take only one more attack . . .

  Kara knew there would be nothing but empty space and a fall.

  “No!” Kara called out of instinct, thinking of the crowd below. Would you really kill me, if you knew it would risk the lives of countless innocents?

  Rhiannon looked over, and Kara regretted her mistake. Using the moment as a distraction, Nero regained his balance and lunged at Rhiannon.

  Kara ran forward. But her sister was faster. She dropped into a ball, clipping Nero at the knees and cutting his legs out from under him. He crashed down onto the roof, scrabbling wildly, even as the weight of his lower body carried him backward. His nails splintered on the stone.

  And then, at the last second, Rhee lunged, pinning his wrists in place, keeping him from dropping. Kara came up from behind.

  “Rhiannon, don’t . . .” There were too many people at stake.

  “Listen to her . . .” he gasped out. “The sisters together again. Together we could be powerful, unstoppable.”

  Rhiannon leaned forward. She spoke so quietly, Kara nearly missed what she said. “This is for our parents.”

  Then she let go.

  No. Kara moved around Rhiannon and clutched at the ledge, watching Nero flail as he plummeted to the ground. This would be the end of them all: Anyone whom Nero controlled, anyone with the update. Millions of souls. It fell on her shoulders. This was her fault, and she would have to live with her decision.

  But she didn’t look away, not even when she heard the heart-sickening crunch of the impact of his body on concrete. And blood—there was so much of it.

  An odd silence fell over the crowd below, as if everyone was holding their breath at once. They had scrambled away as Nero fell, but now, they formed a wary circle around his body. All was still. Whatever Kara was waiting for, it didn’t happen. She scanned the crowd.

  “Does that mean he was bluffing about the overwriter being connected to countless others?” Issa asked, her voice small and breathless. She’d slid next to Kara on the roof.

  Kara exhaled a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “I think so,” she said.

  She turned toward her sister. Rhee met her eyes but remained still—but once they moved, they did so in sync, rushing into the other, falling into each other’s arms. They collapsed on the ground in a heap.

  “You got my message.” Kara hadn’t realized she was crying until tears were streaming down her face. She clutched her sister even tighter to her chest, Rhee’s head tucked perfectly under her chin. “I didn’t mean any of it, you know that, right?”

  “I know,” Rhee said, her voice muffled in their hug. They were together. Finally.

  Kara realized she’d been clutching her coin this whole time. “Do you know what this means?”

  Her sister pulled away and saw the coin in Kara’s hand. Her eyes brightened, one brown and the other hazel with specks of green. Just like hers.

  Rhiannon rooted around in her pocket and produced a nearly identical coin. It had a groove down the middle. “Our father brought them back from a diplomatic trip in the Bazorl.” She pressed hers to Kara’s; the metal strip down the center fit into the grove of Rhiannon’s coin.

  It seemed funny, how a piece of metal once contained value—that entire civilizations exchanged the things they needed for something so arbitrary. But Kara understood now what value it could hold. She understood, too, what Lydia had said.

  This binds you to your family.

  A tall figure flitted out of Kara’s peripheral view. Dahlen.

  When she saw him, Rhiannon’s eyes brightened. She looked to Kara, who brought her palm to Rhee’s cheek and nodded for her to go.

  Rhee turned to face the Fontisian, even as her lips curled in an expression of distaste at the sight of his uniform.

  “What are you wearing that for?” Rhee asked.

  “That’s not the greeting I’d expected for saving your life.” He didn’t smile, exactly, but everything about him seemed to soften.

  “Actually, I believe I’m the one who killed Nero.”

  Kara let go of her sister’s hand, nestling the two coins in the palm of her own. She turned away to search for Aly—and found him only a few paces away. He knelt over a body.

  It was Jeth’s, his head at an awkward angle against the ledge of the roof. Aly adjusted Jeth’s arms and head so he looked more comfortable. Quietly, Kara approached the ritual, watching as Aly put his index fingers to his own eyes before touching Jeth’s. Issa knelt beside him, and placed a hand on Aly’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Aly,” Issa said.

  “Uh-oh,” Lahna said, looking down at the square.

  They moved in silence to the edge of the roof. Down below, a hundred UniForce soldiers looked up in unison—and moved swiftly, together, toward the palace doors.

  Instinctively, Kara searched for Nero’s body to make sure he had not survived. It lay in the same pool of blood, still broken and unmoving, but . . . “Nero’s still controlling them. They’re still after us.”

  “How?” Rhee said. “How can he control them if he’s dead?” She looked desperately between them. Julian shook his head in disbelief, his mouth partly open, at a loss for words. Lahna’s eyes were wide, her irises lit up like fire. But Dahlen’s face betrayed a secret. His lips were pressed into a straight line. He looked up to the sky as if Vodhan might guide him.

  “Dahlen?” Rhee pressed.

  “It doesn’t matter if he’s dead,” Dahlen said. “He’s uploaded his consciousness using the overwriter, and it lives on in the people whose minds he was controlling . . .”

  “Even after his death,” Rhee said in a near-whisper.

  Now Kara understood the true and infinite power of the overwriter, and why Nero had wanted it so badly. It was, in essence, a kind of immortality.

  “We’re not safe here,” Dahlen said. “There are more Tasinn in the building. If they trap us on the roof we will not survive.”

  “Let’s move, then,” Aly said.

  Together, they ran down three flights of stairs. The Tasinn were already coming to intercept them. Kara heard the strange, syncopated thud of their footsteps.

  “This way,” Rhee panted out, and hauled them down a corridor. The Tai from earlier appeared at the end of the hallway, and Rhee called out to her, happiness and relief and fear mixed in her voice.

  “No,” Kara said, grabbing her. “She’s one of them.”

  Rhee’s eyes went wide, but her mouth formed a tight line as she led them to the left, down another corridor, and into a room that Kara thought was hers. It tickled a dim memory, especially the heavy engraved door, which they swung shut and locked behind them.

  “What are we going to do?” Issa sounded uncharacteristically young—and unusually afraid.

  And then Kara knew: It was time. She realized only now how scared she was, how desperately she’d wanted to avoid this very moment. The risk of losing herself was real. All this time, she had wanted to get rid of the whole world’s memory of Josselyn so that she could be free to be herself—whoever that was. But now, the answer seemed so obvious. What she needed was the willingness to be anyone for the right cause.

  “The only thing left to do,” Kara said at last. She took a deep breath and felt for Nero’s cube, buried in the tissue of her neck, next to her own. She could feel her pulse beating frantically, as if trying to expel the foreign object.

  “Kara,” Aly said.

  “Don’t,” she replied back. She put her finger to her cube. “He must have known how to stop this. It’s our last chance.”

  “What are you doing?” she heard Rhee say just as she powered on.

  The onslaught of someone else’s memories was overwhelming, sickening. It made her so dizzy s
he collapsed. The pounding of her head exploded into new realms, vicious, growing beyond her into a gaping hole that would swallow her whole. She was vaguely aware of the people standing over her, people she loved, people who loved her—strangers whom she would know to love, if they survived.

  Slowly, she managed to find her way into a place of calm, of attention in the mind. And then, as she concentrated, she began to move through the memories, train her mind to read and remember them as though they were her own.

  At first, it was nearly impossible just to get through all the compliments, the flattery, memories that felt to her like massive cobwebs, sticky, grafting along the surface of her skin.

  Buried deeper were the unarchived memories, the organic ones that Nero hadn’t deemed worthy of recalling on purpose but which had been auto-stored nonetheless. Once, Kara had read that to remember your dreams you needed to grab for them, imagining a rope that you could tug so that the details would come back to you—navigating someone else’s cube couldn’t be so different.

  She closed her eyes and, after a time, she found Nero as a boy, looking at himself in the mirror, scrawny, with big blue eyes that looked perpetually sad. He’d practiced smiling for hours; there were memories of this from every year of his life, and Kara saw how it began to transition, how it started to look like that smile might be real as soon as he grew into his face, as soon as he became conventionally handsome.

  Then she found his family life, and a new-waver father complaining of the Ta’ans. They hadn’t done right by the lower classes. They’d made things hard. They didn’t understand. Meetings in dim places where they complained loyalists were out of touch, complained of hunger, complained that there was no work. Imported food and fewer farms meant fewer jobs and less capital, less security, and even fewer people who knew how to make things. Nero’s own obsession with beautiful things came from the craftsmen he’d grown up among.

  Nerol Nerolllll, his classmates taunted over the years, in whiny voices. It was the reason he’d changed his name and dropped the “l.” Hunger at home, bullying at school.