“That thought is all that keeps me going sometimes,” she said with a shaky breath. “It’s why I keep talking even when nobody answers.” She sniffed, let her head fall forward. "And maybe that’s selfish. I should be doing it for all the thousands of people who need help.”
“Thousands?” Shiloh said a little faintly. Somehow xie hadn’t quite put together the sheer number, but nothing else made sense. “That’s how many people you talk to every day?”
“Not anymore. Not if I can’t get through.”
“Sorry, I’m just…” Xie shook xir head, mind boggling. “Thousands. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.”
Kari shrugged one shoulder. “Everybody needs a lifeline.”
“Yeah, but nobody needs that kind of pressure.”
She shrugged again, smaller this time. “It’s what I do.”
“You do pretty well from what I’ve heard. They don’t call you Radio Angel for nothing.”
“I didn’t pick that name. People just started calling me that. It stuck.” Kari let out a long, deep sigh that came from her very core. Her round shoulders sagged, head dropped, pink pigtails drooping. “She was wrong. I’m not a hero, or an angel. I’m a girl who can talk. I’m just trying to say things people need to hear. But no one can hear me now, so why does it even matter?” She curled her pink toes, pulled her scarred legs up on the chair to cross them gingerly underneath her.
“You said ‘she’ was wrong,” Shiloh realized slowly. “You didn’t pick the name Radio Angel. Celeste did. Didn’t she?”
Kari’s eyes filled with tears. “I just thought if I could make my voice loud enough, if I had a megaphone so big that I could talk to the whole world, then maybe she’d hear me! Maybe if I just kept talking, someday she’d talk back! And that’s selfish, and wrong, because there are so many other people who need help, and they’re going to die if we don’t help them—and all I can think about is her!”
“That’s not…” Shiloh’s head spun. For the first time xie felt the full weight of responsibility and tension that filled this small room. The pressure. “Come on, nobody’s going to die because you don’t…”
“Yes, they will,” Kari filled in, remarkably calmly. Her blue-green eyes looked very old and very young at the same time. Shiloh wondered if anyone listening to her voice on the radio ever guessed. “My channels are so important to Parole’s survival. And Parole’s in the middle of its worst crisis ever. And I’m not there.”
“You can’t be there,” Shiloh said firmly, pleased to find xie believed the words entirely. But it was always easier saying them to someone else. “Not right now. There’s nothing you can do about it—anyone, really. But we’ll be back soon and then you can keep doing your job and helping people. And you’ll get an answer.”
“You sound pretty sure.” She didn’t sound sure herself but when she looked up at Shiloh it was with faint hope instead of tears.
“I just have to believe you will,” xie said simply. “Like how I have to believe I’ll see my parents again. Or at least hear their voices on a radio. They…” Shiloh stopped, feeling xir own eyes begin to sting. “I thought they’d be here at the end of the stream. They’re not. And every time I think we’re close, the light stream says we have to keep looking. But they’re somewhere. And I gotta believe we’ll be together again, because if I don’t…”
“Then you can’t keep going.” Kari picked up where xie left off. “And the only way you’ll find them again is if you keep going.”
“Exactly. So let’s just keep believing we’ll find everyone we love, because if we stop, we definitely won’t. I can come back tomorrow and we can do this again—somebody has to hear us eventually. Maybe Celeste, maybe my parents. Maybe Parole.”
“Thank you, Shiloh.” Kari sounded tired, but nowhere near as sad as she’d been. “I wish you could power everything up like that, and make it better, brighter, stronger. The whole ship. Parole. The people in it…”
“That would be pretty great.” Xie didn’t even want to think too hard about that; it only led to disappointment and feeling useless. But now that the idea existed, Shiloh could tell it would stay in xir head like a too-catchy song. “I don’t think my power really works like that, but you never know, I guess.”
“Still glad you’re here,” Kari said, looking a little less hopeless with every word
“Yeah. Me too.” Shiloh had to smile back, because for the first time xie realized this was entirely true.
Stefanos took a deep breath, metallic hum accompanying the inhale, and held it. He held a small blowtorch in his flesh-and-blood hand, the flame at its tip a bright violet instead of blue. Similar to the frequency that repelled ghosts, flames with certain chemical additives worked well at dissolving Tartarus toxins. Most people just didn’t use the fire on their own bodies. Small sparks flew as he applied it to the black, rust-like corrosion built up in his mechanized hand and arm’s deceptively delicate working parts.
“Need a hand?” Jay asked from where he lounged across the room, waving.
“Awful pun,” he replied, shooting Jay a glance with unusually bright golden eyes. He’d turned on the high-beams to focus on his task, and Jay laughed, throwing up one arm to block out the flash of light. “Just awful.”
“Ahh! All right, point taken.” Once Stefanos’s eyes shifted away, Jay opened his own. He watched Stefanos work for a second, looking thoughtful and unaccustomedly serious. “Seriously, how’s it looking?”
“It’d be a lot better if you’d quit worrying,” Stefanos said through the side of his mouth, focusing on the slow progression of the violet flame. The poisonous buildup fizzled and dissipated without damaging his prosthetic arm, or the rest of him. The smoke it gave off wasn’t toxic but it sure could smell better. “Both of you.”
He didn’t turn around, but gave a nod to where Rowan stood behind him, carefully inspecting a row of clear, reinforced jars. Each one held an organ suspended in slightly greenish liquid, and their number now included the recently-returned pancreas. Rowan was absorbed in their work and didn’t react. They stared at the lungs specifically, seeming entranced by the continuous inflate-and-deflate rhythm, as if it were the most important thing in the world. Maybe the only thing.
Jay watched them for a moment with a look of clear concern and started to say something but seemed to think better of it. Instead, he shook his head and turned back to Stefanos. “What’s our next step?”
“Well, there’s two possibilities,” Stefanos said, flexing his newly-repaired hand. “Option one, we light the beacons and lock up Tartarus, according to plan.”
“Or option-the-second,” Jay continued, tone light and almost convincingly casual. “We head straight back to Parole and do damage control there.”
“Couple problems there.” Stefanos shut off the blowtorch’s flame. “We’re only halfway around the beacon ring. And if we don’t finish what we started Tartarus keeps expanding. And everything goes up in smoke.”
Jay watched as Stefanos gave his clean hand another experimental flex. “How long before you need a total overhaul?”
“Arm and leg? A week. Two if I push it,” Stefanos said as he inspected his repaired joints with a satisfied nod.
“You always push it. How about internal?” Jay almost sounded afraid of the answer. “Lungs. Eyes. Heart.”
“Built to last.” Stefanos’s metal fingertip tapped against one gold eye with a soft clink. “Danae does good work. So we have two weeks. After that, exterior workings will lock up pretty good and I don’t know if I’ll be able to unlock them with what we have on hand.”
“Great.” Jay smiled but it was nervous and faded fast. “That’s just great.”
“Hey.” Stefanos’s voice softened as he looked up at Jay again, this time without the eye-beams. “This isn’t self-sacrificing heroics. Just practicality.”
“Not very practical if your limbs get wrecked when they don’t have to. Or, you know. You.”
“Exactly,�
� he said levelly. “I’m not going to die so someone else can live. Not even a thousand, not if I can avoid it. I’m a lot more useful alive than dead.”
“I don’t care about your usefulness.” Jay folded his arms and tucked his chin down, but didn’t look away. “I care about you.”
“And I intend to survive.”
“Glad to hear it. ‘Cause Rowan’s a doctor, not an engineer. And neither am I.” Jay snorted. “Not for robot arms and legs. I do keyboards, not wrenches.”
“And nobody does them better.” Stefanos smiled.
Jay didn’t seem to hear, however, muttering his next words primarily to himself. “I can kind of keep cybernetic implants and prosthetics functioning—if they’re already working. If there’s something actually wrong with them, and there is…”
“We need Danae.”
“Of course we do.” Jay sighed and tipped his head back to lean it against the wall. “Except… I’m not saying she…”
“Except she disappeared along with half of Parole.” Stefanos started rolling one pants leg up, revealing his synthetic leg and the corrosion clinging to its intricate workings. It wasn’t as severely gummed up as his arm, but the residue was still significant. “But that’s the one thing I’m not worried about. She’s survived so much worse. When we get home, my sister will be holding the place together.”
“Well, maybe we compromise,” Jay tried. “We drop you off in Parole and you find Danae. We ship back out and finish the job. Shouldn’t delay us more than a couple days.”
“We've been over this.” Stefanos shook his head. “We can’t split up, you need my metal bits to maintain the ship and fight off the ghosts—and the human monsters wandering around out here. We need Aliyah’s wings, your tech, Rowan’s hooves, my everything else. No spare parts here.”
“Fine. Fine, whatever.” Jay held up his hands. “You’re right, we can’t go dropping anyone else off, especially now that…” He shut his mouth, eyes flicking up to Rowan, then away just as quickly. “But okay, all that aside, our job is to get Maureen’s disk to Parole as soon as possible. That’s what Annie risked her life for. And Shiloh. And Maureen, for that matter.”
He didn’t mention the other life risked and lost. He didn’t have to.
“And we’ve all got unfinished business back home,” Stefanos conceded. “Maybe you most of all.”
Jay opened his mouth to reply, then stopped. He shifted to a more comfortable position, ending up resting his chin on his fist and half-glaring back. “That’s not why I brought it up.”
“Wasn’t a judgment,” Stefanos said with a half-shrug. “You’ve got your priorities, that’s all. And we’ll focus on your mission—and my repairs—as soon as we finish this one. First, ring around the beacons. Then, home.”
“We can’t go home yet,” Rowan said quietly, looking up for the first time.
“Why is that?” Stefanos looked up, seeming encouraged at first to hear Rowan joining the conversation, but his smile faded when he saw the rigid tension in their shoulders and the grim look on their soft face.
“Because—!” Rowan’s answer was unexpectedly loud, apparently surprising even themself, because they shut their mouth quickly and dropped their head. Their hands had closed into fists, which they slowly opened, forcing themself to relax with a slow breath. But when they spoke again, their voice had lost none of its intensity. “I know we need to go home soon, the collapse was devastating, thousands must be dead and thousands more need help. And Jay needs to get back to his search and you need actual repairs. This is just a stopgap, even I know that. For us, and Parole.”
“But…?” Stefanos pressed gently.
“But we can’t go home unless we all go home together.”
Jay and Stefanos waited for an explanation, but it didn’t come. Rowan wasn’t looking at either of them anymore; they’d gone back to staring at the row of jars. Their breathing matched the rhythm of Zilch’s lungs, which was at least slow and regular.
Eventually Stefanos filled the silence, voice low and gentle. “Tartarus took your brother. You think it’s going to take more people you love. That about the size of it?”
“It wasn’t Tartarus.” Rowan spoke through clenched teeth. “It was Sharpe.”
“Ash died protecting Annie,” Jay said, voice dry. He cleared his throat before going on. “So she could live. I mean, that’s something, right?”
“Yes.” Rowan shut their eyes briefly. This seemed to help them regain some calm. “It’s everything.”
“So try to focus on that.” Stefanos picked up where Jay left off. “She’s alive and safe. And Ash would want you to be—”
“I’m grateful she’s still here,” Rowan said, but their voice was flat. “More than words. But Sharpe’s still here too. That…is unacceptable.”
“He’s not here,” Jay said a little more firmly. “And he’s not coming back, that’s not how he operates. He wouldn’t attack a whole ship. Annie’s safe. We all are.”
“No,” Rowan’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “We’re not.”
“What are you talking about?” Jay sounded equal parts wary of an answer he knew he wouldn’t like and resigned to the fact that he already knew it.
“Blood in the water.”
Jay suppressed a groan, but had to look away anyway. “I should never have said anything.”
“Sharpe has to die.” Rowan’s voice wasn’t panicked, or angry. They didn’t even seem upset, but this wasn’t their tightly controlled crisis-face either. It seemed much more like a moment of perfect clarity. “He killed Ash. There, I said it.”
“Yeah you did.” Jay was staring at them now, concerned for a different reason. “Didn’t expect to hear you say that. Not Ash—the other part.”
“Sharpe,” Rowan said again, as if once they’d said the name, they found it hard to stop. Each time reinforced their certainty. “Sharpe needing to die.”
“Yeah. Never heard you talk like that before.”
“I’ve never lost a brother before.” In yet another first, Rowan’s voice was more bitter than Jay or Stefanos knew it could be. “Or a partner. Both of them at once.”
“They’re not lost,” Stefanos maintained. “We’ll find Regan, and Zilch, and all their missing pieces. Don’t write them off now.”
“I’m not. Sharpe is.” Rowan’s voice rose slightly, but lost none of its unaccustomed edge. “Ash is dead. Annie was almost dead. If Sharpe has Zilch’s heart, they’re dead, even if they’re still breathing.” They paused, eyes landing on the lungs still in motion in their jar. Then Rowan forced themself to look away and move on. “And he’s going after Regan next. That’s the only thing his message could mean.”
“Even if he is,” Jay started slowly. “And I’m not saying he is…”
“Well, I am,” Rowan said, folding their arms; instead of a challenge it looked more like they were trying to hold themself together. “Of course Sharpe’s after Regan. That’s all he’s ever done—why would he stop now?”
“We can’t go after Sharpe,” Jay said flatly. “That’s the opposite of what we should do. The only way we’re going to make it out of this alive—”
“Is with Sharpe dead. And we can’t go home until he is.”
“All right, just take a deep breath.” Jay held up his hands. “Let’s take a time out for now, we can talk about this when you’re—”
“I won’t be able to breathe, not until we’re all back together safe. And that will never happen while Sharpe is breathing.” With that, they turned and walked out the door, sounds of their hooves receding on the metal floor.
After they were alone, Jay and Stefanos looked at each other again, exhausted in several ways. Stefanos sunk down to sit on the ground, leaning his back against the wall.
Then Jay sighed and flopped down beside him much faster, laying his arms across his knees and letting his forehead drop onto them. “I hate this. We never used to fight like this. Now it’s all we do.”
“We�
�re all stretched to our limits. Eventually we’re bound to snap.” Stefanos gave a tired nod. “Wouldn’t really call it a fight, though.”
“Fight, drama, breakdown, blue screen, system malfunction. What the hell happened to us?”
“Parole. The collapse. Tartarus. Ash. Regan. Zilch. Sharpe.” He counted off on his metal hand, extending a corkscrew and switchblade when he ran out of fingers.
“Okay, so there’ve been a few… developments. But you know, back before all this started? I dunno, I thought we were heading some direction. A good one. We get hitched,” he bumped Stefanos with one elbow without looking up. “And for a while everything just seemed—good? Like, actually good, not just Parole good.”
“I know what you mean.”
“And there was me and Regan, obviously,” Jay continued. “Him and Rowan and Zilch, also obviously. And you and me, and—it’s like everyone was just clicking. Rowan and us, even. Especially leading up to everything.”
“But then ‘everything’ happened,” Stefanos said gently, firmly, simply.
Jay was quiet for a second. “We were going to be something. All of us, in different ways. I don’t even know what, but something good. I was just starting to think we had a chance.”
“So was I. Even a month ago, I would have agreed. I know Rowan would’ve.”
“I hate it when Parole lets you think you have a chance.”
“We might again. But now’s not the time.”
“It’ll never be the right time.” Jay looked up, eyes haunted and fatigued. “Not while it feels like we’re running out of it. Never mind. You okay to move?”
“No, gimme a minute. Or thirty.” Stefanos shut his eyes for a moment and took in another deep, whirring breath. They rested together for a few moments. The only thing rarer than loud outbursts was uninterrupted quiet.
Jay wasn’t good at keeping quiet for long. Soon he couldn’t stand it. “We’re a mess.”
“Grief doesn’t make sense,” Stefanos said quietly. “You see how close to the edge we all are. Everywhere you look is a worst-case scenario. A sign of another hit coming. But if anyone can find a way out, it’s you, CyborJ.”
The Lifeline Signal Page 28
