by Tessa Elwood
I feel it, the water, the trails. Taste the salt.
“Why you?” I ask under my breath, in my blood. “Dad I get, and Dee, and maybe even Greg, but you? Did this have to be a game? Did you have to—”
“It wasn’t.” His hot fingers find my cheeks. Smudge my tears between our skin. “Not in that way, not like you think.”
It’s too much. Whole worlds too much. He has no right to kiss me, and I have no damn sanity kissing him.
“Go to hell,” I say.
He’s as still as I am, but thrumming tension. It bleeds through his eyes and down his fingertips, which he pulls from my face. “Goodbye, Kit.”
He swings into the streethover and has it in motion before his door slams. Rear orange lights burning streaks through the yawning door into the street. Disappear.
I’m alone.
All I’d have had to do was kick him, and I’d be half across the city by now. But no, I kissed him back.
That was probably the idea.
I gasp—laugh, sob?—hands cupped to my mouth. My ribs crack and I can’t breathe. I can’t—
“There’s a limit,” I whisper, or maybe just think—Gilken’s words the only ones in my head that don’t hurt. “‘History records, but stories ground us. Prove that these limitless terrors have a limit, that our universe holds something greater than darkness and stronger than fear.’”
He was wrong. There’s nothing here but fear and dark, the limits only on us—our souls—and nothing else. The terrors run rampant.
Though maybe not here. The Prime doesn’t materialize in the offing, the Brinkers don’t appear with a sparkblade to Dad’s throat, and the one person more terrifying than them all just jumped into a hover and drove off.
Bastard.
My lungs calm, stop trying to eat themselves. I am quiet in a dark that may be greater than me but hasn’t killed me yet.
Though not for lack of trying.
Except . . . it doesn’t try. The shadows don’t scamper. No Enactors sidle in to haul me away. Someone should have, by now.
I hold my breath, listening.
Nothing. No movement or sound.
If you could do anything, go anywhere, had no ties, what would you do?
Niles had grabbed a bag while getting out of the hover. His hands were empty when he left.
I crouch, fingers scanning the pavement. Rough stone, powdered dirt . . . stiff fabric, rounded and limp. A satchel? I find a flap, flip it over, and dig inside.
There’s next to nothing. Some flat rectangles with round edges, a small box with hinges, and a fatter rectangle with buttons and rippled glass at one end.
A pocket light. I hit the button. Cool white blazes hot enough to blind. I bury it in the bag, and it glows through the fabric. I blink my eyes back to normalcy and ease the bag open.
A transaction card with 500 reds.
A pale ID card, its thin digitech screen looping through text. Please scan print now, Jenna Flesk, setup not complete, please scan . . .
A darker keypass with a miniature flightwing in the corner. I tap the emblem. Across the warehouse, blue running lights flair into the outline of a wing. Crest its smooth nose and flow into its tail. Black and small, and worth more than my suite and Mrs. Divs’s inter-House communicator combined.
If you could do anything . . .
Oh, the idiot.
I dump the cards in my pocket, grab the bag, and almost throw it across the floor.
The Prime will know. Niles will show up empty-handed with no excuse, and the Prime will know. He doesn’t seem the forgiving type. Niles will pay for this. He could have let me steal the hover, or I could have hit him over the head, or—or something. But no, he dumps me with my ticket out and drives off.
The boy isn’t stupid; he’ll have planned an excuse.
The Prime isn’t stupid, either.
I kick the floor, but it’s not thick enough or satisfactory and Niles doesn’t feel any of it. So I walk to the wing instead. It grows bigger the closer I get, looms sleek impossibility.
Does he think I know how to fly? And I’d have learned that skill where? Because obviously I had one of these in my back pocket growing up. Hell, I’ve never even been in a private flightwing.
Autopilot, idiot, my brain snaps. It’s not data science.
The low wings slope forward, barely clear my head as I walk under. I tap the keypass’s emblem again, because that’s what they do on the feedshows.
It works. A tall panel in the wing’s side slides into itself. A compact metal ladder slides out below and uncurls. I half expect some uniformed orderly to jump out and bow with a reverent “my lady.”
Somebody will notice this missing, probably the Prime, and the first person he’ll look to will be the last one in my company.
Stupid, so stupid. The boy will get himself killed.
I climb the ladder. It retreats in on itself, the door closing without any help from me. I’m in a brushed silver hall, narrow and packed with sliding doors on each side, labeled in digiscreens. Restroom, storage, bunk, icer. I follow the hall right, step through the open arch to the cockpit. Two seats, and a wide console with three data-filled screens and shiny lights.
Double shit.
I take a chair and say, as all the feedshow flyers do, “Engine on.”
The wing hums to life, dim lights rising. The data in the central screen disappears, replaced by a pretty woman in a purple flight cap.
“Welcome to the Greypiper 400. I am Pali, the lead connector to your interface.” Her nod is almost a bow, dark curls brushing her ears. “Shall I perform a preflight check before we get under way?”
“Uh, sure?”
The screen freezes a beat, Pali caught open-mouthed, then she blinks and smiles. “Preflight check initiated. Estimated completion time, fifteen minutes.”
Well, that was easy.
I dig through Niles’s pack for the box. It’s light, fits in my palm with room to spare, old wood with old hinges. I pop the lid.
Inside beats Yonni’s heart.
Snug in a bed of cushioned black. Probably Decker’s doing. Beside it lies a cheap audio note tag, small and square with Listen! emblazoned on one side. We used them all the time at work, to identify lockers or belongings. I press my thumb to the letters and hold until the note plays.
“I found this with the bracelet.” Niles. Clipped, rushed. “I hope it’s the right one. The pendant? Your grandmother’s? I didn’t realize you meant a heart heart. If you’re listening to this, Dad has you now, or had you, so you know about me. And the bracelet. I had to give him something. You were becoming too interesting to him, he needed a—” He hesitates and grinds out the words, “a different toy. I’ll have everything ready. Reds, ID, a wing—you have to leave the city. You cannot stay on-planet. Dad will find you, and I can’t get you out a second time. No one fools Dad twice. Not even me.” Silence. Seconds of it, tinny and static, building under my skin. “Not that I wouldn’t try. I would. Be safe, Kit,” he says, and the message clicks off.
Safe? Safe? As if he wasn’t my safety. The only thing that felt real in this whole week of hell.
I bite my lip, but I still feel him. Everywhere. The memory, the lack. The Prime’s son who’s playing martyr to save my life.
Or else just playing.
I am not a toy. The Prime never looked at me like a person.
It’s a damn dangerous game. Assuming Niles’s dad doesn’t suss him out, the Brinkers will. And with me gone and not mapped, the Brinkers will have a field day with my family. Hell, with me gone, the Prime might jump on that, too—map Dad and Dee just for the hell of it.
The countdown on the central console screen reaches ten.
Don’t think I don’t know what her digivirus is doing, the Prime had said. Why she chose the Archive.
The
Archive held the central data structure of our House, the core network all other networks fed into. A virus begun in the Archive could leech into every data feed House-wide. Networks, public feed stations, secure databases, personal and corporate information stores. Everything.
Mom’s smiling face in the pet shop window, red lips blowing into cupped hands. The question is a matter of heart.
I didn’t realize you meant a heart heart, Niles had said.
I lift Yonni’s pendant out of the box. It dangles from my fingers, pulses soft between its vines as I twist it back and forth. It’s seamless but for the soft glow of the circuits. No buttons to push or spring to pop.
You’re a smart girl, it’s not hard.
“Mom?” I ask. “Millie Oen?”
Nothing.
“If you think I’m busting the last of Yonni open for you, you are so wrong.”
The glow doesn’t rise or the pulse skip. It is as it always was, and suddenly I know.
“But I don’t have to, do I?”
Scent maps require air-freshener sticks, so I steal some. Pali flew me to the closest store, and breaking in wasn’t an issue with the power-out.
After, we head into North 8th—which is to East 5th what East 5th is to Low South, only less populated. A day’s walk that takes us all of ten minutes. I tell Pali to power down her lights flying in, and she docks us in an empty public lot. At least, the map on the screen says it’s a public lot. I can’t see shit.
Hopefully, with the flightwing being black, no one will see us.
I enter the hall and seal off the cockpit so no light will leak. Then I sit on the cold floor and lay out the heart, the pocket light, and the freshener sticks. I could sniff my way through the box, but the names are straightforward, so I start there.
Metallic Seafron, Sweet Nightsnip, Burnt Ash.
I flip the switches in the base of their tall cylinders, and wait.
Nightsnip kicks in first. Too sweet, almost sticky. I swap it for Pale Pretty, which promises sweet floral undertones. The Seafron’s spot-on, though, and the Ash. Pale Pretty kicks in, and the hall smells like nothing so much as blood.
Yonni’s heart lifts, literally lifts out of its little box. Rises until it reaches chest level, where it hovers and glows red.
Then Mom sits crossed-legged before me, heart hanging from her neck. “There you are.”
She is concentrated light and scan lines. Almost solid, but breaking into dots as she moves. Her hair is still swept high, but little ribbons have fallen over her ears and face. Her purple blouse is open at the neck, her bright eyes tired and a little red.
This recording must have come after the others. She looks human. Normal.
I trail my fingers through her digital cheek and feel nothing.
“Mom.”
She smiles. “I’m assuming you followed the clues. Sorry for the protracted trail. It is surprisingly difficult to leave a secret message for one person alone. I miss the days when we could simply hide things in trees. Hollowed, of course.” The corner of her mouth bunches, bitten, a little wistful. “You never had the experience, did you? I never took you to the woods to play. Or anywhere really, did I? Not that you will ever know my woods. Those are long, long since gone.”
The words trail, tired. She looks tired and old.
I cross my arms. “What do you want?”
The scan lines of her face bounce, blink, her body freezing a beat too long before the humanity kicks in. She doesn’t move or answer but is still somehow present—eyes distant, lips pressed, not glitched but silent.
“The question is, what do you want?” she says at last. “I don’t know, so you’ll have to tell me. You can do that through precision.”
“That makes no sense,” I say.
The scan lines fuzz again, and this time Mom shifts position between one blink and the next—back straighter, hands in her lap. “I made this program on the fly, in between my central project, so there will be glitches. Also, I haven’t the time for a full-voice map structure with a broad response range. I will try to answer the most pressing questions, and have recorded some nonrelevant material, but I am not a computer or digital intelligence who can respond to all words and phrasing. This is me, Kit. Just me. You have to be precise.” Her smile slips through the exhaustion. “You’re smart enough.”
Games and more games.
“Really?” I cross my arms, nails digging sharp. “How you figure?”
Fuzzed lines, blinked light, Mom. “I made this program on the fly, in between—”
“No, stop,” I say.
She does, frozen between frames.
We face each other, both crossed-legged, knees almost touching. Yonni would sit on the floor with me, just like this. She’d do my makeup or braid my hair or tell me secrets.
Mom and I never swapped secrets. We aren’t now. Info from a light-scanned cutout doesn’t count.
“Precise.” I rub my temples, fingers stiff, head aching. “Right. And what precisely was your goal with this?”
“Simple,” says Mom. “Retribution. Annihilate the House of Galton as we have been annihilated. Gut them from the inside out. And what better way than through their centralized digital core.”
The assurance, the smugness, the self-righteous undercurrent of every clipped syllable—
There’s lead in my stomach and gauze in my throat. “The power’s gone for good, isn’t it? Not just here, but House-wide. That’s what the virus was about. You’ve somehow managed to burn the whole system.”
Mom smiles, a truly beautiful thing. “That’s my girl. Though, there’s more than one virus, and more to it than power—of the electronic kind. Remember, be precise.”
I almost throw Niles’s satchel at her. “Quit with the games, already! This isn’t funny. Do you care at all what’s at stake? Who’s at stake?”
Fuzz, blink. I brace for the lecture in map structures and response ranges.
“The question is, what do you want? I don’t know, so you’ll have to tell me. You can do that through precision.”
She’ll tell me what I want to know, only if I know to ask.
“I hate you,” I say.
“I know.” Quiet, absolute, and real. Entirely too real. She could be flesh and bone, with her offer of secrets.
I am not going to cry. I’m going to think.
“So there’s a second virus?” I ask.
“Yes.”
No elaboration. Of course not.
“And it’s not about power?”
Fuzz, blink. “I made this program—”
“Stop!”
She does.
I’m going to kill her.
She’s already dead.
My chest twists too many stupid ways, and I press my fists to the floor.
Precision, Kit.
“And the second virus isn’t about power?” I clip the words, space them out.
“Oh no,” says Mom. “It is all about power, but not all power is energy.” There it is, the assurance again, the self-righteous traces. She’s elegant and sleek and full of the power she describes.
Just like the Prime.
He said he knew why she destroyed the Archive, that her real project was never about destroying the grid.
And Mom had said something, in one of the dreams. Not destroying, but “rewriting.”
The Archive controls information, the repository of the House complete with histories on everyone—us, the lordlings, even bloodlings—our heritage, our line.
Mrs. Divs said something about my line, that I looked like it and Dad sullied it.
Mrs. Divs was an Accountant, like Mom.
“Who are you?” I ask, but that isn’t right. “Who were you, before your planet fell? Who were you on Casendellyn?”
Mom fazes out, dotted lines reme
rging into a new position. She sits on her heels, back straight, hands in her lap. “I am Millisant Evantell Runellen, granddaughter of the High Lord Amanant Fenshia Runellen, ruler of Casendellyn—oldest of the Independents. Our line predates the Galton and Westlet, rivaled only by the House of Fane. You are Kreslyn Amanant Runellen, Heir to the Casendellyn court.” She hesitates, smile slipping in and out. “I haven’t said that aloud since the gutting. Oen was my mother’s middle name.”
Oh . . . shit.
Have you ever seen the future, Kit? Mom had said in that dream. Have you ever had a moment where, without any evidence whatsoever, you just knew?
And I do.
“You’re turning me into a bloodling,” I say. “You destroyed the Archive to get rid of any physical DNA backups, because it’s the only place in the House where they keep it, and you’re using the second virus to rewrite the digital bloodling files. You’re turning me into the next Heir.”
Mom closes her eyes and exhales a sigh so deep her body nearly collapses with it. “That’s my girl.”
It’s perfect, simple. Galton gutted her planet, but Casendellyn was only one planet. Galton has one hundred and nine. How then to return the favor?
Why, annihilate their data structure and hijack the Lordship.
Mom, years ago, at the kitchen table. The Accounting. I’ve cracked it.
Her digital image blurs out and a space scene takes her place. A three-dimensional planet, twined in clouds and black slender flight stations. The same fuel extraction vid the Brinkers showed me.
“This is, was, home,” Mom voices over, as the stations start to spin. “Galton invaded when I was seven. Most of our population was on-planet when the extraction began. For thirty years, Galton has powered its cities with our blood. No longer. They will be held to Account.”
My chest is a void, the narrow hall a hell of ghosts and history. I can’t watch, can’t look.
“Was I—” I stop. Precision. “Was making me a bloodling always part of the plan?”
