Last of Her Name

by Jessica Khoury

  “That was close,” says Natalya, climbing the stairs to the bridge.

  Then she stops, staring at the hand I have planted on the control board. From my fingertips and up my arm, triangles of light burn beneath my skin, tingling faintly.

  “Um.” She points at my hand. “You’re glowing.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Got that.” I grit my teeth and concentrate on directing the ship, guiding it through the palace’s framework, narrowly dodging the struts that connect the various buildings. All I do is think of the direction I want to go, and the Valentina’s computer adjusts course accordingly. But the effort is making me dizzy, and I lean against the board and struggle to blink away the spots in my eyes.

  “Do you mind giving me an explanation now?” asks Natalya, in a barbed tone that implies if I don’t talk, she’s going to make me.

  “I’m Stacia,” I say. “I mean, Anya. Stars, I don’t even know anymore.”

  “The princess,” she murmurs. Then she presses her hands to her head. “Ugh! Why I can’t I remember anything clearly?”

  “You were brainjacked, but that’s over now. You can trust me, Natalya. I’m a friend of Riyan’s. He’s been looking for you.”

  “Is Riyan all right? Where is he?”

  “There.” The prison is directly ahead. I’m angling for it hard, sacrificing finesse for the sake of speed. But controlling the entire ship is pushing me to my limit. Now I know how Riyan felt when he was trying to navigate us through the Diamin Wall. I feel blood starting to run from my nose, but I can’t let up yet.

  “Let me fly!” Natalya says. “Whatever you’re doing, it looks like it’s killing you.”

  “I’m fine,” I gasp. “I need you to get the prison doors open.”

  “The doors?” She shakes her head. “Think bigger, princess.”

  I hold on just long enough to see her begin to tessellate, her hands spread before her. Then, with a mangled groan, I release the control board and collapse into my seat, wiping blood from my nose. The glowing lights under my skin fade. Engines whining, the Valentina hovers in place as Natalya focuses on the prison.

  “Here we go,” she mutters.

  I drag myself from my seat to watch, leaning heavily on the board. The entire wall of the prison begins to crumble, not falling away but folding in on itself. Natalya crumples it like a sheet of paper. Plaster and metal crunch into fragmented triangles, collapsing into smaller and smaller bits. The sound must be terrible, but I can’t hear anything inside the ship. In moments, Natalya has peeled away the entire wall and reduced it to a single cube of condensed matter no bigger than my head, exposing the cells behind it like a split honeycomb. Startled prisoners stare at us.

  I spot Pol at once.

  He can’t possibly see me through the tinted glass of the cockpit, but he has to recognize the Valentina and put two and two together. He vanishes for a moment, then returns with Riyan and Mara. They’re still dressed in red prison jumpsuits. I can only imagine the chaos inside the prison as the inmates take to the halls. No guards appear to stop us from pulling alongside the exposed cells and opening the lower hatch. Cool, breathable air filters in from the outside and rushes through the air lock.

  Natalya sits down, looking exhausted from tessellating the wall. Her face is masked in black. When I ask if she’s all right, she only shakes her head and waves me away.

  “Go get my brother,” she gasps.

  I make my way to the back of the ship, where the hatch has opened and the entry ramp lowered, nearly scraping the edge of the prison. Wiping the blood from my nose onto my shoulder, I hang on to the struts and hold out a hand. Pol jumps aboard, grabbing on to me, and the other two follow.

  “Stacia! What in the blazing stars—”

  “No time! We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “I’m fine. Mara!” She’s the last aboard, and Riyan helps her into the air lock. “Can you fly us out of here?”

  “On it.”

  “Pol, pull up some schematics of this system and find a place we can lose any pursuers.”

  He nods and climbs up into the main cabin.

  As the hatch rises and locks into place, I finally turn to Riyan. He looks angry, and his hands lift, finger flexing.

  “Nat’s here, isn’t she?” he says. “Did she hurt you?”

  “No, Pol. She’s fine, I—”

  “Get down!” he shouts, and before I can react, he pushes me aside while his other hand rises defensively at his sister. She stands at the bridge balcony, looking down at us.

  “Riyan, it’s me!” Natalya puts her hands behind her, the tensor version of indicating she’s unarmed. “I swear, I’m myself again.”

  He flinches, still wary. I rise with a grunt and put a hand on his arm, pulling it down.

  “She’s better now,” I say. “Riyan. She’s your sister again. I deactivated the brain jack.”

  He stares at her, and his eyes begin to water. His chest heaves as he tries to hold back his emotion; it’s like he can’t make himself believe it’s her, and is waiting for her to disappear into the air.

  “Little brother, it’s me,” Natalya murmurs again.

  As Mara turns the ship away from the prison, Natalya walks slowly down the steps from the command deck, her eyes uncertain. She’s nervous, watching her brother as if he might still attack her. I wonder if she’s starting to remember more. Is she recalling the things Alexei Volkov made her do while she was under his control? Maybe she fears Riyan won’t forgive her for running away in the first place.

  Instead, Riyan pulls her into his arms. He presses her to his chest, his eyes squeezing shut. “I found you,” he says, his voice breaking. “Oh, Nat.”

  “More like I found you,” Natalya laughs. There are tears on her cheeks as she traces the new red tattoo on his forehead.

  Feeling my own eyes water, I leave them to their reunion and climb up to the control deck, where Pol is hunched over the computer and Mara is navigating us out of the palace. I watch them for a moment, my fingernails digging into my palms. They’re haggard and hollow-cheeked, with the metal collars still clamped around their necks. Beneath the bands, their skin is raw. Anger roils in my stomach and buzzes in my ears. I could tear Volkov apart for what he’s done to my friends.

  “Are you all right?” Pol asks, glancing up at me.

  “I will be once we’re far away from here.”

  “Enemy incoming,” Mara warns. Multiple vityaze destroyers pop up on the scanner, blinking like deadly fireflies. “They’re closing in fast. And the palace shield is still up. That’s a problem.”

  “Not for me.” Leaning between them, I shut my eyes and press my hands to one of the screens, diving into the flow of Prismic energy.

  It pulses all around me, a vast golden network of streams and rivers, unseen by physical eyes but bright as sunlight to my new sixth sense. I can make out the vague outlines of buildings and ships just by the concentration of energy they hold, like looking at a planet at night and seeing continents’ outlines marked out by their cities’ glow.

  It’s all connected.

  Every wire and circuit and control board, every tabletka tucked into someone’s pocket, every computer, every light, every screen broadcasting sports and news: Prismic energy flows through it all as one vast, living system. Just like Riyan said, the Prisms are connected to one another. Touch one, and you can touch them all. And now I know that this pulsing energy flows back to one source: the Prismata, somewhere in the depths of space. What I sense around me is an organism, a being of pure energy, stretched over the whole of a galaxy. It flows around billions and billions of people going about their lives, never knowing that each and every day they’re interacting with an alien consciousness, using it to power their ships and refrigerators and cameras.

  They have no idea what their world is built on.

  Only the Leonovs ever knew. Only they could see the golden threads that I’m seeing. And only they could reach out
and pluck them, sending vibrations across the whole of the galaxy.

  But I’m getting distracted, overwhelmed by the immensity of it all. I need to focus on getting us out of the palace, and I need to do it fast.

  Surrounded by the shining Prismic map, it takes me a moment to orient myself and find what I’m looking for: the great energy shield that spreads over the palace. That much energy cast over such a wide area isn’t hard to find. To my mind’s eye, it looks like a spherical, geometric net, composed of billions of brightly burning dots joined by golden lines. It’s beautiful, but there’s no time to stop and admire.

  “Go,” I murmur. “Now!”

  Opening my eyes, I see my entire body is alight with residual Prismic glow. I look like I’ve tattooed myself with phosphorescent ink, and now it burns beneath my skin. Mara and Pol are both staring.

  “That’s incredible,” Pol murmurs.

  “Go!” I repeat, gesturing at the controls.

  Mara raises her eyebrows but accelerates. Moments from impact, I send a mental command shooting through the Prismic network. The shield flickers and parts just enough for us to shoot through it and into space beyond, then it reseals behind us. The rear cameras show the vityaze ships either veering away or crashing into the barrier, where they pop like firecrackers. I try not to think about the pilots inside. I tell myself they’re probably equipped to their elbows with emergency foam.

  That, or I just toasted half a dozen human beings.

  “More trouble,” Mara announces, and then she curses. “They’ve got a missile lock on us! It’s a Prismic warhead—we can’t dodge that!”

  It might be one of the very same missiles Volkov wanted me to fire at Afka. I’ve seen videos of those things detonating—they could take out an entire astronika. We’re helpless against something that size. Riyan and Natalya rush onto the deck.

  “Can we warp?” Riyan asks, watching the blip on the defense screen, which shows an angry red bullet streaking toward us. We’re pushing through space at full thrust, all the boosters hot, but we’ll never outrun that missile—it’s charged by probably a dozen or more Prisms.

  Mara shakes her head. “The engine’s not cool enough. It needs forty minutes.”

  “We’ll be dead in forty seconds!” says Pol.

  I clutch the control board, cold horror rushing through me. There’s nothing we can do. The Valentina isn’t built for battle. We have no defenses, no way of dodging or diverting the missile. Alarms scream all across the board, lights strobing in warning. IMPACT IMMINENT flashes on every screen. In desperation, I try to find the missile through the Prism network, but either I’m too blocked by panic or I’ve already pushed myself beyond my limits, because when I close my eyes, all I can make out are sharp bursts of gold light, like fireworks behind my eyelids. They send splinters of pain through my skull. With a hiss, I blink and turn to the tensors.

  “Riyan! What do we do?”

  We stare at each other, and for a terrible heartbeat, I know we will die. That these are the last breaths I will take. That the last thing I will see will be Riyan’s dark eyes filled with panic.

  Then Natalya puts her hand on her brother’s arm. “I’m still too weak, Ri, especially after breaking open that prison. But you can do this.”

  He looks at her. “Nat. No.”

  She puts her hands on his shoulders; they’re of a height, but still, at that moment it’s clear she’s the older sibling, her eyes steady on his. The red emergency lights strobe across their faces. “Riyan. I know how much respect you have for tensor law, but right now, I need you to break free. I need you to lose control.”

  Pol, Mara, and I stare at them helplessly as the missile closes in.

  Thirty seconds to impact.

  For a heartbeat, Riyan’s eyes are torn. Then he turns and spreads his arms.

  “Step back,” he says through gritted teeth, and even before we’ve complied, he begins to tessellate. Natalya watches him with glinting eyes, her hands in fists at her sides, as if she’s willing him strength.

  “Turn the ships around,” she says to Mara. “Fast. We need to face it.”

  Mara looks skeptical but does as Natalya says. My stomach tumbles as she engages all the starboard thrusters, slowing and turning as the same time. It’s an impressive bit of flying.

  “He can turn the missile away?” I ask Natalya.

  “No. It’s moving too fast. But he can do this.”

  Bewildered, I turn and peer through the diamantglass screen that curves around the control deck. Alexandrine fills nearly the whole width of the view, with the palace like a bright silver toy suspended in orbit. I can’t see the missile yet, and know I likely won’t get the chance—by the time it’s close enough to be seen, it will be too late.

  The ship sensors warn of impact in twelve seconds.

  A pained cry slips from Riyan. Alarmed, I glance up and see his face is masked in black lines, and his irises glint like silver plates. His teeth are ground together, lips peeled back, his arms roped with veins and tendons straining.

  The space in front of the Valentina ripples.

  I grab hold of a chair as a shock wave rocks the ship, my heart in my throat. I can’t take my eyes off the spreading dark knot in front of us, a writhing, snapping black storm cloud shot through with bursts of light.

  This looks nothing like his usual stress fields.

  Most terrifying of all are Riyan’s eyes, which shine silver from end to end, even the whites obscured. He looks alien, devoid of emotion and thought, less human than cosmic force bound by gleaming dark skin and ragged robes.

  This is Riyan out of control.

  He has the same look as when he attacked Pol and nearly killed him, as if some other force has possessed him. It is terrifying and entrancing all at once. And I remember all too well what he said could happen when a tensor loses control.

  The missile is five seconds away.

  My grip on the chair tightens until the blood leeches from my fingers. Mara lets out a frightened sob.

  Three seconds.

  Riyan’s head ticks slightly, the smallest mechanical tilt to the left, and in front of the ship, the gravity storm changes.

  It happens so fast I almost miss it: the teeming darkness parts and forms a perfect circle, a round, terrible, and almighty black hole the size of the Valentina. Riyan has gone beyond a stress field and instead ripped open space-time itself, opening a portal so strange and powerful that the Valentina begins to shudder. Mara yelps as the ship lunges out of her control and starts to slide toward the hole. I feel the strength of it in my teeth—a merciless hungry strength that pulls at my every atom. It sucks us in, and Riyan lets out a deep, guttural cry as he fights to keep it open.

  Then a bright flash of light bursts on the edge of the black hole; it must be the missile intended to blow us to pieces. Instead, it vanishes into the darkness, and with a final cry, Riyan releases his hands. The hole snaps shut and vanishes, so quickly I almost believed I imagine the whole thing.

  Riyan collapses. Natalya catches him before he hits the floor, her cheeks damp with tears. She murmurs and strokes his face, kisses his forehead. “Good work, little brother.”

  A moment passes in which none of us can speak or breathe. We’re all still staring at the spot where Riyan opened the black hole and sent the missile hurtling into stars know where—another dimension? A limitless void? My mind can’t even begin to make sense of what I just saw, but I do know this: I’ve never been so grateful to have Riyan on our side.

  “Mara,” I say quietly, “get us out of here. Someplace we can hide until we’re ready to warp.”

  “I’ve got coordinates,” says Pol, and he keys them in.

  I sink into the chair between Pol and Mara, locking my harness in place and trying to ignore the queasiness in my gut. Natalya helps Riyan to the lower deck. He’s conscious, barely, but doesn’t look like he’ll be doing any more tessellating for a while.

  Mara angles us away from the planet and throws
the Valentina into full speed. We fall into our seats and strap in, the ship rattling hard from the stress of acceleration.

  Finally, Mara lets autopilot take over. She pushes back her hair, letting out a long breath of relief.

  “Well, that was fun.” She turns and looks at me. “Now what?”

  The Valentina hums as it idles in the shadow of an uninhabited gas giant adjacent to Alexandrine. It took us five hours to reach the spot, dodging vityaze patrols all the while. The ships thinned the farther we got, and now the massive planet’s emissions hide us from their scanners.

  Riyan, Pol, Mara, and I stand in a huddle on the control deck. Natalya is below, having fallen asleep after complaining of a headache. No wonder. She’s had the roughest day of all of us, after I basically fried a circuit implanted in her brain. Riyan keeps glancing at her worriedly, but she seems stable. In fact, he looks worse than she does. Opening the black hole left him gaunt and wreathed in shadow. I don’t know how much of it is the effect of his mighty exertion and how much is guilt from his shattering the tensors’ most rigid law, the one he’s upheld every moment of his life till now. But he says nothing of it, only focuses on what’s ahead.

  They tell me the short and bitter story of their half-cocked, and ultimately failed, mission to rescue me from the Committee. They had to flee Diamin quickly, Mara and Pol smuggling Riyan out before he could be stripped of his ability to tessellate, while the tensors were distracted by the Committee ships. I guess their first thought was to come after me, even though they knew it would probably end terribly.

  When they’re done, they listen as I relay the events in the palace, both before and after they were nearly executed by Volkov. The only thing I don’t mention is Clio. I skip over the part where I searched for her in the prison, the awful night when I realized the truth about her, and the part of Danica’s message that connected Clio with the Prismata.

  I’m having trouble looking at Pol. I know he must be aware that I’ve learned the truth about her; he’s been side-eyeing me ever since we escaped the Palace, like he’s itching to ask me about it but isn’t sure how. And I haven’t been ready for that particular conversation, but I know I can’t put it off much longer.