Entangled

by Amy Rose Capetta

  He didn’t come.

  Cade squirmed on the inside when Xan didn’t tune in to her transmission. It brought up Unmaker-shaped worries, and now those had been sharpened on the edge of Lee’s words.

  Cade heard the grind of metal against the dock. It sank into her like teeth. The hailing codes had worked, and fast—Rennik had found someone to pick her up and slam her on a new surface. Planetbound.

  But as the docking eased into smooth clicks and sighs, Cade recalibrated her thoughts. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing. Lee could kick her into the starry cold; she could null and void Cade’s plan with one perfect lie. But no one could stop her from aiming for Hades.

  Maybe it was time for a new ride.

  Cade grabbed Moon-White and chased the sounds of the incoming ship. She didn’t think anyone would show up to send her off—but there they all were, in a ragged line facing the dock. Rennik, Gori, Lee, with her jaw set to one side and her hair pressed back into its knots.

  “It’s not a party,” Cade muttered. She didn’t trust Lee. In light of their willingness to toss her off the ship, Cade didn’t trust any of them—and she didn’t have to. Cade had never needed a band to back her up with wilt-wristed drumming and uninspired bass. She went on solo.

  Rennik stepped forward and dropped a hand on Cade’s shoulder. Nailed the role of the nervous friend. “I want to meet this girl.”

  “Yeah,” Lee said darkly. “Me too.”

  “I intend to watch that one leave the ship,” Gori said, pointing a shriveled excuse for a finger at Cade. “I have no interest in the girl.”

  “Girl?” Cade asked. “Who is this girl?”

  “I spoke with her briefly through the transmitter,” Rennik said. “She’s a human pilot, traveling alone on a long-distance mission. Everything sounded in order. This is just a precaution.”

  Cade deadened her eyes. “So you do care if the pilot you dump me on is a murderer. That’s nice.”

  Cade meant the words to sting, but Rennik had a severe allergic reaction. His face swelled. His already-long neck stiffened into strings.

  “Hey,” Cade said. “Are you all right?”

  Lee set a hand on Rennik’s arm, curling her fingers around the muscle and leaving Cade with nothing to do but drain out.

  The door on the other side of the dock swirled open.

  The girl who crossed the threshold had the sort of hectic-busy hands and shy feet that Cade had seen only in small children at the market. But she was older than Cade, and more advanced, in obvious areas. Her broad frame burst with curvature. None of the scrappiness Cade was used to—this girl looked like she’d grown up on a planet that boasted better nutrition than cactus milk and rodent stew. She looked like she’d grown up on a planet with hamburgers. She had amberish skin, and dark curls, and her brown eyes were bright—but that could have been a side effect of the curiosity that flew out of her, like sparks.

  Cade waited for her to start things.

  She tossed out a hand, a flare into darkness. “Ayumi.”

  “I’m Cade.”

  “Interesting,” Ayumi said, still shaking her hand. “I’ve never come across that name, attached to a living person or a history. Do you know its origins?”

  Firstbloom. It rose in Cade, drenched in white and antiseptic.

  “No.”

  Ten seconds in, and she was already not-telling truths. But Ayumi was too taken with her surroundings to notice. She met the wonders of the main cabin with more eye-sparks and fireworking fingers. When she reached the line of shipmates, she nodded and shook hands, vigorously, collecting the rest of their names.

  Ayumi was ankle-deep in a conversation about Hatchum genetics when Cade heard her own voice.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Go?” Ayumi asked, half turning. “But this is a fascinating ship. And I’d like to speak with all the passengers before we leave. Human ones, in particular. And . . .”

  She caught sight of the latest Human Express haul in the cargo hold. Things were out of their crates, which didn’t surprise Cade—Lee only seemed to care about inventories when she was mad.

  Ayumi ran, her fingers outstretched. “What is this?”

  “Those are mine,” Lee said. She rushed to the crates and started loading her arms with blankets and papers and books.

  “They’re human-made.” Ayumi touched the items with painstaking care. “Yes. I would stake my ship on it.”

  “They’re little trinkets,” Lee said. “Just things I pick up.”

  Ayumi’s eyes could have set the hold on fire. “They’re artifacts.”

  Rennik caught up to them and tried to regain control of the conversation. “Where are you headed?” he asked.

  “Headed?” Ayumi said. “Nowhere. Or rather, right here.”

  Lines stamped the skin around Rennik’s lips. “You’re floating around the universe . . . untethered?”

  Ayumi blinked a few too many times, and then said, “No, no, that’s not it at all. I’m here for Cade. She needs me and I, as it happens, need her.”

  Cade cocked an eyebrow.

  “I’m from Rembra,” Ayumi said. “You’ve heard of it?”

  Rennik, Lee, and Cade shook their heads.

  Gori closed his eyes and puffed slightly, all over. “No,” he said. “But I can feel its presence.”

  A clear battle clashed on Ayumi’s face—whether to stop and ask Gori a thousand questions, or push on.

  “It’s one of the last self-sustaining human colonies,” she said. “Everyone there has a purpose. Mine is to find, collect, catalog, and understand things related to Earth. And all humans have a relationship to Earth, no matter how old and rickety.”

  Cade didn’t know if she liked the idea of being part of someone’s little project. It sounded demanding. She’d hoped they could make it to Hades in silence. Punctuated by Xan. Still, it wasn’t a bad trade, considering she needed a ride to the darkest brink of space.

  “Should we . . . ?” Cade asked, pointing toward the dock, all readiness.

  Ayumi looked universe-bent on staying where she was.

  “I can’t help but notice certain clues as to what you’re doing here.” She focused on Lee and blushed molten-red. “This is the Human Express, isn’t it? You’re carriers.”

  “I’m a carrier,” Lee corrected.

  Ayumi turned, unleashing her blush on the rest of them. “And this is your faithful crew.”

  “Yeah. Well. Minus one.”

  Lee’s stare lodged in Cade—but if Ayumi noticed, she chose to ignore it.

  “This is the best hailing,” she said, running her fingers through the piles. “I usually pick up stowaways being flushed from various craft because the crews are too soft-hearted or weak-stomached to toss them out of the airlock. Or they don’t have an airlock. Or their cultures don’t permit murder. But that’s about all I get these days—space-rats and traitors.”

  Lee’s stare didn’t budge.

  “It’s time for us to go,” Cade said.

  She cut through the main cabin and waited at the dock. Ayumi looked confused, but followed. Lee nabbed the girl’s arm. Ayumi stared down at Lee’s fingers like they were words in another language.

  “Look,” Lee said. “You seem like a decent person.”

  “That’s a nice, if somewhat hasty and unfounded, opinion.”

  “Fine. Maybe you’re a snugging cannibal. Either way, don’t let this one talk you into a suicide run.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Hades.” Lee crossed her arms. “If she brings it up, do the iron-stomached thing. Toss her out the airlock.”

  Cade cracked her knuckles. She would have to do this, again, in front of everyone. And this time she wouldn’t stop Xan from helping. It was bigger than a grudge now. It was a matter of getting to Xan before he got hurt. Cade couldn’t let one knot-haired scrap of a girl stand in the way.

  As a bonus, people would come out of this with the truth. What they did with it would be up to
them.

  Cade threw the first punch.

  Rennik was between them, fast, and her fist met the wrong body, square on his rib cage. It didn’t shake him.

  He turned to Lee. “What is this about?”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Lee said. “I’m doing you a favor.” Rennik circled his arms around Lee, but she crashed hard against him. Started to cry. “You have to trust me. Why doesn’t anyone here trust me? Why doesn’t anyone tell me things I need to know or trust me when I tell them—”

  “You lied.” But it didn’t come out like the swell of triumph Cade thought it would. It sounded small. A technicality.

  Lee sank to the floor, and Rennik went with her. She was all broken-down parts and steam. “I’m the honest one here. You want more true things? You want me to tell you all of it?” she babbled, running her hands over and over each other like water.

  Cade closed her eyes. Braced herself for something so bad it had melted Lee down to this.

  “I had a sister,” she said. “The Unmakers killed her.”

  “Well, this is first-class embarrassing.”

  Rennik had installed Lee in the narrow bed in his own cabin and then disappeared. Lee looked small, with the covers pulled up to her chin. Cade had followed her in and hadn’t gotten herself kicked out. So far.

  “What’s your pilot doing?” Lee asked.

  “Waiting in the mess. Studying our dietary habits.”

  Lee coughed up a weak-throated chuckle. Cade couldn’t even smile back.

  “I never wanted to tell you,” Lee said. “Or anyone. But I think you need to hear this.”

  She nodded at the end of the bed, and Cade sat down near the white hills of Lee’s feet.

  “I used to make runs with my family,” Lee said. “Did you know that?”

  Cade shook her head. “You never told me.”

  “I guess we both left a lot of blanks.”

  Cade didn’t know how to answer that, so she let the silence do the work. It had a weight that warped the air around unsaid things.

  “Two fathers and a sister,” Lee said. “She was five years older than me. So much prettier.” Lee’s face turned into a dense grid of emotion. “Moira was the sort of perfect where you don’t even hate her for it.

  “On a run to Wex 12, one of our dads was picked up. Local force. They detained him for forty-two hours in a sonically padded holding cell. Released him for lack of evidence.” Her laugh came out strong, but Cade didn’t take that as a good sign. “We were on a planet where they still cared about evidence, even when it came to humans. Our other dad had been fighting off spacesick for years, but the glass was starting to come right and regular.

  “That was when our parents decided the Express had gotten too dangerous. They wanted me and Moira to join them in retirement on some subtropical disaster of a planet. But we were in love with the Express—addicted to it. We weren’t going to spend the best stretch of our careers peeling coconuts and sleeping under somebody else’s stars.”

  Lee stopped talking, and Cade wanted time to stop with her. Ayumi and her ship could wait. Even Xan could wait. Cade had never been patient for someone before, and she wanted to be patient for Lee.

  “Moira and I made promises to both retire when I hit twenty. We hugged our parents under the palm trees. Filled our sacks. Left.

  “Moira wanted new routes. She said we needed to branch out. There were more people who needed us to carry, and it was our job to find them. She was always like that. Caring too much about people we’d never met, and even more about the ones we had. Well . . . I didn’t like the looks of the pilot who picked us up on Sligh, no matter how human he was, no matter how many stories he slung about his nieces back home. He didn’t look like he made friends with little girls.”

  Cade’s lungs sent up a sharp knock. She wasn’t breathing.

  “We got out past the Tirith Belt when we saw the lights. Yellow lights. Boarding. It happens all the time. It was a class of ship we’d never seen before. But there are thousands of models. We had no real reason to be worried. Moira looked at me . . . we had the same eyes, Cade. It’s something, to look in your own eyes and face down that much fear.”

  Cade could see it. Two sets of dark moons. And the Unmakers’ ship, coming fast. Lee’s words were so strong that Cade could almost climb inside the story and live the rest.

  “They didn’t ask, and didn’t listen. They did terrible things to her. I heard them say . . . she deserved it. Because that’s what humans did, hurt each other. Hurt everything they put their hands on. She’d been pretending to be better than that, but she was human, so she couldn’t be. So this was the right and honest way to end her. The Unmakers killed Moira before she could say a word. But that doesn’t mean they did it fast. It was more like . . . they twisted her out of herself . . . one twist at a time.

  “Moira was brave. She wouldn’t have begged. The pilot, though, he did. That’s how I knew he’d sold our lives. But the Unmakers killed him, all the same. Just a little too fast for him to mention where I was hiding.”

  Lee put her head down. Pushed out all the breath she hadn’t used.

  Cade didn’t know if she should put an arm around Lee or leave her alone for the rest of time.

  “She would have taken you,” Lee said. “Back on Andana, when you asked, Moira would have said yes. So that’s what I did, too.”

  Cade wondered if there was more to it, though. She thought back to the story she’d told in the market—about her soon-to-be-killed brother. Lee’s face had changed; she had studied Cade so carefully before she said yes. In that moment, Lee had decided she and Cade had something in common.

  Then the Unmakers showed up, and it turned out they had too much in common.

  Lee sank down in the blankets. “Don’t get that weird cadet of a pilot killed, okay?” She looked at the square of fabric under her hands. Spoke to the stitches. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

  Lee’s face went into shutdown, and sleep couldn’t be far behind. So that was it. The end of what Lee had to say to her. Cade stood to go, but something stuck her to the door handle.

  “Why did you tell me?” She thought Lee had reached the limit of her caring a good while ago.

  Lee shrugged.

  “It’s a fate I wouldn’t wish on enemies, Cade. And you’re not that.” She closed her eyes and spoke the last words in a once-upon-a-time whisper. “You’re no Moira, but we did make a brass team.”

  Ayumi had made herself at home in the mess. She had also found a way to clatter every dish at the same time.

  “What are you doing?” Cade asked, taking in the lit flame on the stove, the stack of dry goods on the table, the clusters of pots on the floor. Ayumi pressed a steaming cup under her nose.

  “Old Earth recipe,” she said. “Well, as close as I could get it.”

  A fresh green smell folded around them.

  “It’s like . . .”

  “Grass,” Ayumi said. “I made it for your friend. It should do her good.” She ran for the door, turned back with a tea-slosh. “I’ll meet you here. We’ll leave as soon as she’s drained the cup. Even though I’d rather make a full study of this ship and its cargo. We’ll go. We’ll go. I promise.”

  Ayumi rushed across the main cabin, dripping tea as she went.

  She passed Rennik, who had climbed down the chute and was headed toward the mess. Headed toward Cade. She had never noticed how good he was at moving around the ship, how even in the false-grav he knew how to carve out space. She hadn’t spent time with the fact that his eyes made her think of autumn—a season that lasted for all of three days on Andana.

  She’d been too busy for that.

  But now her minutes on the ship were numbered. She would have to do all of her noticing. Fast.

  “I’m sorry,” Cade said. The words slipped out this time. Easier than they had with Lee, but they still sounded wrong.

  “For what?” he asked.

  Choosing Rennik’s ship. Getting him a
lmost-killed. Not caring because she had someone else to care about more.

  “I punched you.”

  He looked down at his chest, absently.

  “Oh,” he said. “I suppose you did.”

  Rennik sat down in the chair at her side, leaving a slice of space between him and the door, a slice of space between him and Cade. He looked straight ahead, hands twisting over each other, fingers hooking and unhooking, the patterns so close to regular that she could turn them into a beat, anticipate.

  Cade kept trying to do that. Make a song out of his hands.

  “Look . . .” she said.

  Rennik surprised her by having something that he needed to say so much, he cut through her still forming words.

  “I don’t like the idea of passing you off.” He snarled a hand through his hair. Broke his perfect finger-patterns. “It’s not right. Once you’re a member of this crew, it’s final. Renna feels that as much as I do . . . if not more. We don’t make these decisions lightly.”

  We. That one little word hit Cade with asteroid force. Rennik thought of himself as part of a we—and ever since Cade had left Andana, she did, too. Which meant Rennik was like her, in a way she’d thought no one was.

  She didn’t know what to do with that information. So she pushed at a pile of tea leaves on the table.

  “You’re free to come and go, of course,” Rennik said. “But those creatures are after you, Cade. I don’t want you on another ship.”

  Her body blared hot, like it did when the lights at the club hit her all at once, branding their reds and yellows.

  “It’s not safe,” Rennik added.

  “Right.”

  “Of course, you weren’t safe here, either,” he said, all of the air vacuumed out of the words. “We could have taken better precautions.” Rennik was still hurting over something he thought was his fault.

  But the boarding was pure Cade. She had crashed into their lives, trailing Unmakers behind her. And now she wanted to do the same thing to Ayumi—draw a line from here to more trouble.