“Well, shit,” Indra sighed. “Every time I hope it’ll be different. Really wish I knew why we kept having this dream, maybe then we’d stop having it.”
“I don’t know. But there we go again,” Shiloh said, nodding to a sight they all knew, one that never got any easier to watch, or on some level, believe. “Mom kept saying don’t look back, we keep running and don’t look back…but how do you not look back at something like that?”
“You can’t,” Annie said just above a mumble. “People always look back, no matter what you’re running from. You have to.”
Ten years hadn’t changed Dr. Maureen Cole a great deal, aside from the white Radiance uniform she wore now, along with a look of mingled fear and determination. She still carried Shiloh, a small, chubby-cheeked nine-year-old, who buried xir face in her shoulder as panicked crowds rushed past. Just as predicted, they and many others turned to face the barrier they’d just barely escaped, the city left behind. Shiloh slipped down out of her arms and stood on xir own but kept hold of her hand. Xie squinted at the much-too-bright energy dome without dark glasses—then xir eyes opened wide in shock.
Breaking away from xir mother’s hand, Shiloh sprinted back the way they’d come. Directly toward Parole, the barrier, and two other small shapes beyond it.
“Here we go,” xie said now, in the present, resigned to watching the scene unfold. “I always kinda wish this would be different too.”
Shiloh’s hands had been much smaller ten years ago too. Now their little palms slammed directly against the barrier without hesitation, pressing against the crackling energetic surface as easily as if it were a harmless plane of glass.
“We should have been dead from that thing.” Indra almost smiled as his and Annie’s younger selves cautiously reached up to touch the barrier between them and Shiloh’s hands. “Or about a million other things. We really shouldn’t even be alive by now, you guys know that, right?”
“No, we shouldn’t.” Annie stared at the wonder on her own decade-younger face. She had eyebrows then, and a head full of long hair that reached down to the small of her back. “This night. Every night since then in Parole. And then the collapse. Why did I… why did we survive when so many other people didn’t?”
“I don’t know,” Shiloh-in-the-present said, as Maureen-in-the-past scrambled up to the strange scene a split-second later— but stopped herself from grabbing her child’s small shoulders, as if afraid touching Shiloh while xie was in contact with the barrier might somehow cause xir pain. “And I don’t know why this dream keeps coming back. But I think this is how they started.”
“What, instead of killing us, this thing connected us?” Annie almost sounded angry at the thought, tearing her eyes away from the bright light of the barrier and the slowly building red glow behind it. Parole was catching fire and this time she wouldn’t watch.
“I always figured my power was something like… siphoning,” Shiloh said slowly, words difficult to find even in dreams where meaning came fast and easily. “Absorbing, releasing it in other forms, that’s what I did here. I knew the barrier wouldn’t hurt me. And I just wanted to get back to you so bad. But I didn’t know it would link our heads together too.”
“That’s because you didn’t,” said another voice from behind them. They turned to see a boy with sad, dark eyes, floating a few inches off the ground. “I did.”
“I knew it.” Indra grinned up at Gabriel but his smile soon faded. He was even more transparent than the night of the collapse. Stars shone right through his face, as if he wasn’t entirely solid, semi-opaque as the barrier but nowhere near as deadly. “What’s—”
“Shiloh was right,” Gabriel said before he could ask the obvious question, looking over at xir quickly. He seemed almost embarrassed by his transparent appearance or at least had more to say first. “Xie saved everyone’s lives ten years ago. But xie couldn’t have joined them. I made a—a chain linking us all together. And back here.”
“Yeah,” Indra conceded with a sigh, looking back at Parole and its intensifying red-orange light. The fire was growing stronger below. “I would definitely say we’re chained here.”
“Gabriel, what’s happening?” Shiloh immediately felt foolish for how tentative xie suddenly felt, somehow not wanting to alarm him about the fact that he was increasingly transparent. Surely he was aware of it. “It looks like you’re fading away.”
“It’s getting harder to come here.” Gabriel’s brow was slightly furrowed, as if it was indeed an effort just to stay present as he was. “And I can’t stay long.”
“Is that why we haven’t seen you in a while?” Annie spoke fast, urgency making her voice sharp. “Where have you been?”
“It’s—hard to explain.” Gabriel seemed to struggle with a complex or troubling subject, shrugging and shaking his head. “Just listen. I’ll be here as much as I can but I might have to disappear again. But I’ll come back and… even if I’m—different? I’m still me. I might look different but it’s still me, remember that.”
“Okay, we’ll remember,” Shiloh agreed, though xie had to wonder exactly how much a boy who hadn’t aged in ten years, and apparently no longer had a physical body, could possibly change. “No matter what changes, we’ll believe you and we’ll know it’s still you.”
Gabriel seemed to struggle to find the right words again, or maybe whether or not to tell them something. He ended up saying nothing, simply looking frustrated and a little scared.
“We’ll still be your friends,” Shiloh assured him. That part at least xie had an easy time believing. “That hasn’t changed.”
“But you did,” Gabriel said at last, looking down sadly into a small, red-glowing crack in the ground. With every next word he spoke, he became a little bit fainter, fading away before their eyes like stars after sunrise. “You all grew up and I didn’t. I fell. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was a ghost. But not a Tartarus ghost. Just a dead one.”
“You’re not just a ghost!” Shiloh almost surprised xirself with the strength of xir words. Almost. “And we could never forget you. Dreams or no dreams.”
“You’ve been helping us all this time, you brought us together in the first place—you warned me about the collapse!” Annie almost shouted, every bit as sure as Shiloh with even more conviction. “If I hadn’t run when you told me, I’d be dead!”
“You kept us alive, so we’ll find a way to keep you alive,” Indra promised. “It’s okay, Gabriel, no matter what you look like when you come back, it’ll be you, and…”
He was gone before Indra finished speaking, but his smile was the last thing to go.
* ☆ *
Indra woke from the dream and lurched upright, but stayed half-asleep long enough to wonder if he was still dreaming. He didn’t recognize the room or the far-off engine noise. He didn’t know why the floor and walls were metal or where he’d been before this. He’d woken up in enough unfamiliar rooms on his search for Parole that this wasn’t entirely unusual. But it would never stop being disorienting. At least he was alone this time; nobody for him to embarrass himself in front of, ‘centaur’ or otherwise. And his arm was healed. He was safe. He’d gotten to the ship… called the FireRunner.
Once everything came back, Indra flopped down and tried to go back to sleep. But it was no use; lucid dreams with Annie and Shiloh (who might still be hanging out without him) left him drained and wired at the same time. Sleep wasn’t happening. So he climbed out of bed and left his room without even putting on shoes.
The FireRunner was dark and quiet this late at night; it had to be around three A.M. and Indra seemed to be the only one awake. He wandered through the empty corridors, not sure if he wanted to run into someone or just needed some alone time. He did manage to make a circuit of the level without getting lost, an improvement from the past few days.
When he passed the stairwell leading deeper down into the ship and up onto the bridge, he decided to take it. He’d only gotten a glimpse of the bridge o
n Annie’s brief tour and it might be fun to get a closer look at all the buttons and levers. Without touching, of course.
But when he reached the bridge, he stopped, staying half-hidden in the darkened stairwell entrance. The bridge wasn’t empty.
Someone stood motionless on the far side, facing the large window. Jay, Indra realized. He didn’t have to see his face to know. He’d seen the back of Jay’s head often enough as he ran away. But he wasn’t running now; he seemed deep in thought as he stared out at the starry night sky. Indra held very still, trying to decide whether to back away or take a step forward, say something, see if Shiloh’s uncle would frantically avoid him even now.
“Can’t sleep?” Stefanos’s voice, deep but soft, came from the opposite stairwell on the other side of the bridge before Indra could say a word, or move. Indra froze. He didn’t want to eavesdrop on a conversation but if he stepped away, he was sure someone would see him—and think he had been anyway. So he tried not to move or breathe too loudly.
“The lockbox is open,” Jay said without turning around. “And it wasn’t me.”
“Really?” It came out a little louder and a lot more excited than his previous soft question. He didn’t bother trying to stay quiet as he strode across the bridge. “What was on it? And what do you mean, it wasn’t you?”
Jay turned; his face was drawn with exhaustion, and the circles under his eyes were deep and dark, but he was smiling. Now, Stefanos and Indra could both see that he held a cat in his arms.
“Seven!” Stefanos exclaimed, sounding as happy as he was surprised. “Where’d she come from?”
“Celeste. Beamed her right over with one of her little teleport thingies.” Jay scratched behind Seven’s ears, which seemed to relax both of them. “And she did exactly what I kept saying—opened that thing in two seconds. Like it was nothing. I spent days on that thing and got zip. If you were human,” his voice shifted up a little as he directed the next words to his cat. “I’d be so cheesed off at you, showing me up like that. But you’re not, you’re the best cat in the universe! You’re—” he stopped, looking back up at Stefanos with something almost nobody ever saw on his face: embarrassment. He cleared his throat and spoke in his normal voice. “Sorry. It’s been a while.”
“Don’t stop on my account,” Stefanos chuckled. “Sure has been a while, way too long since I’ve seen you smile like that. You deserve it.”
“I dunno.” Jay shrugged, turning his attention and scratching fingers toward Seven’s chin. “But I gotta say, it feels good.”
Stefanos watched them for a moment, golden eyes fond. He seemed reluctant to break up their reunion and his voice was gentle when he spoke. “So, let’s have it. This big important data we’re all risking our lives for.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Jay said, sounding awed. “The plans on that thing.”
“Plans?” Stefanos raised his eyebrows, golden eyes flickering as he focused in closer on Jay’s face.
“Yeah.” Jay hesitated, looking troubled.
“Whatever it is doesn’t leave this room,” Stefanos reassured him.
“It’s big. Powerful.” Jay paused, eyes wide. My sister wasn’t wasting all this time, I’ll give her that.”
“A weapon?”
“No. Not her style. Too many of those in Parole anyway.”
“Then what is it?”
“I…” Jay looked distinctly nervous for the first time since Seven had reappeared from thin air. “I’m not sure. Exactly. Maureen’s designs—she was always on another level, okay? Like a whole different nerd-tier, different language from me, like, except for the occasional shiny gadget, I work with stuff that already exists, I navigate established rules and how to get around them, but she's all about inventing stuff that doesn’t exist yet, probably shouldn’t even work but does, and…”
“You can’t tell what it is at all?” Stefanos prodded gently after a couple seconds.
“Like I said, it’s big,” Jay said with certainty. “Like a huge tower. Almost looks like a beacon, but not. It’s definitely gonna do something. And whatever that is, Parole must need it or everybody wouldn’t be making such a big deal about this thing.”
“All right,” Stefanos said, voice a steady anchor for Jay to hold onto while everything else shifted and spun. “Then only one thing matters. Is it worth it?”
“It better be. No,” Jay amended, eyes narrowing into a look of unwavering determination. “Maureen spent years on this. Shiloh came a thousand miles to get it here. Annie risked her life—and Ash gave his life for this. I’ll make it worth it.”
“There it is.” Stefanos smiled at the fire in Jay’s eyes. “That’s the look that belongs on your face. I missed that. Probably as much as you missed Seven.”
“Yeah…” Worry replaced Jay’s conviction, as if he’d just remembered something he wished he hadn’t. “This is great. This is fine, major victory here. Big win for the good guys.”
“But?” Stefanos said, fixing him with gaze now that was studying, curious, instead of hopeless.
“It wasn’t just Maureen’s plans on the disk.” Jay didn’t sound excited anymore. Or determined. Or even hungry, eager to chase a new lead. He just sounded tired. “There was something for me too.”
Stefanos’s eyes were tinged green as they studied him, slipping into momentary, unconscious scanning mode. “The smoking gun?”
“No.” He stared down at his cat for a few seconds. Her synthetic eyes didn’t look back; Seven had closed them and gone into sleep mode in Jay’s arms. “I was so sure when Celeste contacted me again, she’d have the most obvious, flashing neon sign—here, good buddy, let me just do you one big solid, take a load off—but…”
“But she didn’t.”
“No,” Jay said again, looking up at Stefanos. He seemed calm, but in a way that suggested this was so overwhelming he had no idea how to react. “Regan did.”
“Regan?” Stefanos’s golden eyes widened and their delicate rotating parts started to move and whir, a clear sign he was surprised and thinking fast. “He’s here too?”
Jay didn’t say ‘no’ this time, just shook his head and let it drop slightly. “He sent a message. In what he probably thought was a secret code. He said…” Jay took a slow breath, in and out. “‘The water’s clear now.’”
“No blood?”
“No blood.” But Jay didn’t look very hopeful. “But he can’t come back yet, because he’s looking for something. And I think it’s… what I thought Celeste was going to send me.”
“Proof.” Stefanos folded his arms, still in deep-thought rapid-eye mode. “Solid dirt on Turret? For Tartarus, Mihir, everything?”
Jay gnawed his lower lip. “He said he’d find my ‘answers.’ Well, there’s only one answer I really want. He knows what I want, it’s what we were trying to find for eight years.”
“So that’s where he’s going. Back to Parole, after escaping?” Stefanos shook his head with a faint smile. “Regan always did do things a little differently.”
“I’m not getting my hopes up,” Jay said, sounding more sure of this than anything he’d said yet. “I can’t. Why would he be able to find anything now, when we never could before? And that’s if he gets there—he’s been out in Tartarus this whole time? He might never make it back to Parole. The message might not even be from him. Could be a fake.”
“You don’t actually believe that.”
Jay shut his eyes briefly. “No, I don’t. He said ‘there is enough air.’”
“It’s really him…” Stefanos’s voice was so quiet it barely carried across the bridge. “Regan’s alive. He met up with Celeste and now he’s going home. And he never stopped thinking about you, Jay, we can see that now. Everything he’s doing is somehow for us.”
“Sure seems that way.”
“This is another major victory right here,” Stefanos said, then seemed to realize Jay didn’t share his optimism. “But it’s not what you were hoping for. Was it?”<
br />
“Those great big plans will save Parole. Everybody wins. CyborJ’s brilliant, and delivered us all from certain death once again, and everybody’s happy. Or maybe I don’t have to save everyone, because Regan says—basically, under the cryptic bullshit—that he’s got it covered. Or something. And I’m supposed to just trust this.” He stared down at the floor, eyes out of focus. Finally, he shut them. “I’m tired.”
Stefanos placed two warm fingers under Jay’s chin, tipping his face back up to look at him. When he opened his eyes, they looked at each other for a moment. Jay shrugged, shook his head a little, and said nothing. Stefanos held his gaze and held his cheek in the palm of his hand.
“I messed up,” Jay whispered at last. “I did what I always tell everybody not to do. I got my hopes up. I should’ve known better. I do know better. And I did it anyway.”
Stefanos paused. Then, as if he were making the most important decision of any of their lives, he leaned down and kissed Jay fully and fiercely on the mouth. The smaller man gave only the shortest of surprised noises before relaxing automatically into his arms. Like all their motions around each other, the kiss was natural from long years of practice. As they held each other, they seemed to believe just for a moment that nothing terrible haunted their dreams or made their waking lives a nightmare. When they finally moved apart, it wasn’t fast, or far.
“I don’t know how, or when,” Stefanos rumbled, still gently holding the side of Jay’s face. “But justice has a way of finding what it’s looking for sooner or later. Just like you. Turret can run on for a long time, but his time will run out. Don’t give up, Jay. We’re not giving up on you—what’s so funny?”
“You. A lot of things.” Jay was smiling and it was still in a different way than Stefanos expected to see. “Uh, none of this ended up how I expected. But I also have Shiloh back. I can give xir some important answers. Which is more than I’ve given in years. And I have you.”
“Yes you do,” Stefanos promised. “You always have me.”
The Lifeline Signal Page 30
