Entangled

by Amy Rose Capetta

  “You did what you could.” Cade wanted to thank him for the calm he’d shown in the face of the Unmakers. For his unwavering Rennik-ness. Even if that same Rennik-ness did sometimes make her want to set things on fire.

  Cade looked for words to hold all of that, but she couldn’t find them.

  Her fingers dropped to Rennik’s wrist, before she could remind them how much she didn’t like touching.

  Rennik didn’t shake her off. But maybe he should have.

  “You shouldn’t let me do that if I’m spacesick, right?”

  “I shouldn’t be sitting so close to you, either,” he said in those unreadable tones Cade knew so well.

  The stage lights were back. Brighter. Cade felt as alive and ready as she had in any of those preshow moments. But she was just sitting in the mess. She willed her body not to pump so much red, to wash down to a cool blue.

  Rennik’s eyes were patient and told her nothing. She didn’t know if he was protecting himself from her or not—but he should be.

  Cade snatched her hand back. Blamed the drawn-out nature of the whole thing on inertia. Stood up.

  That was how Cade could say she was sorry. She could leave, and never hurt them again.

  Ayumi came back to the door with an empty cup and restless fingers.

  “Shall we?”

  It was time to leave. But Cade couldn’t leave. And she couldn’t stay. The things Lee had told her, Moira’s fate—she couldn’t be the reason that happened, not to anyone.

  Now Cade was the one who trailed Ayumi across the main cabin, toward the dock.

  “Where to?” Ayumi asked.

  “Nearest habitable surface,” Cade said. “I need to get planetbound.”

  CHAPTER 12

  ESCAPING AN ATTRACTOR: When a particle has excess momentum, it is possible for it to fling itself out into undifferentiated space

  Ayumi’s ship was like nothing Cade had ever laid her space-sore eyes on.

  They passed through a whirring engine room, into a half-lit hold. It brimmed on every surface with more of what Ayumi called artifacts—anything and everything that related to Earth. Books that had lost their pages. Pages that had abandoned their books. Tacked-up photographs of an ocean. An old map of somewhere called New Jersey, worn through in places and curled over at the edge.

  Ayumi trailed her fingers over the objects and smiled at them like old friends. She led Cade through a low door, into the main room. It held a pilot’s chair, a navigator’s chair, and two passenger seats, their backs high, fabric slicked down by time and bodies. There was a row of colored buttons and stubby switches, and over that, a central span of glass.

  All of it looked standard-issue. But the walls sang out, strange.

  Paint covered them, bleeding indigo into purple, purple into black. The colors of night sky and space, an echo of what sat outside the window. But more than that, too. There were planets and moons, small craft careening from one colorful blip to another. Broken white lines trailed the spaceships, forming sharp-angled patterns, like constellations. One whole stretch of the right-hand wall was marbled in blue-green.

  “What is this?” Cade asked.

  “History,” Ayumi said. “Specifically, the end of Earth history and its effects. The artistic merit is questionable.” She squinted at an awkward nebula. “The artistic merit is questionable at best.”

  “But it’s part of your project?” Cade asked.

  Ayumi’s face seared with heat. “It’s not a project. It’s a purpose. And yes.”

  By the time they settled into the chairs, and Cade struggled her arms through the straps, Ayumi had traded in her crisped pride for a shy smile. “Would you like to learn?”

  “Maybe later.” Cade needed to put some distance between herself and a ship full of souring memories.

  Ayumi nodded. Tried—and failed—to pretend she didn’t want to tell Cade all about the end of Earth history and its effects. Then she turned to face the blackness in the window, and her disappointment wiped clean. Ayumi’s brown eyes took in space views like fresh water after a drought.

  The little ship lifted off with a lurch and a knock—like crashing into nothing. Cade pulled her straps tighter, set her teeth against each other, and gritted out the ride. Minute after bumpy minute. She had gotten used to Renna’s easy flightstyle.

  “I set an auto-course for Hymnia,” Ayumi said. “It’s the nearest planet with a human settlement, one that isn’t basically a prison camp or a work colony. It even has a fountain in the square that sometimes has water in it! And fish! But people tend to spear the fish and eat them. I would take you back to Rembra, but it’s a months-long flight in the other direction, and—”

  “No,” Cade said.

  “—you seem to be in a bit of a hurry,” Ayumi finished.

  Cade fidgeted with the stub of a switch, until she remembered it might be wired to something important.

  “I’m not really spacesick.”

  Ayumi’s face, which so far had been as readable as fresh ink, changed. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Is that part of your . . . purpose . . . too?” Cade asked.

  “No,” Ayumi said, with a tight little smile. “I have an eye for these things.”

  Cade sat forward in the navigator’s chair. Renna was long-gone, but Cade still whipped fast when she caught something roundish in the corner of her eye.

  “I’m just glad you didn’t need the ride to Hades,” Ayumi said. “All of those black holes.” She shuddered against the chair straps. “I’m not a bad pilot, mind you, but I do have . . . limitations.”

  Ayumi looked like she was about to say more, but Cade let her eyes drift closed. She hadn’t slept in days. And if she was headed for the crust of some new nowhere-planet, there was no point in getting-to-know-you games.

  Cade kept her eyes closed and pretended to sleep, but really she was spending some quality time with her new plan.

  Once she reached Hymnia, she would need a ride. One that didn’t put any good people in danger. She could stow away, or commandeer a ship. If she did stow away, it would mean less chance of the Unmakers finding her—but it also meant she’d never make it to Xan unless she commandeered the ship at the last second. And how would that end? She would tell the pilot what to do, and instead he would take her out to the nearest patch of pitch black and make short work of her.

  The one sure way to get to Hades was to learn how to fly, and then find a ship, or steal one. But that would take months.

  Xan would be dead before she got to him.

  Which left Cade with bottom-of-the-barrel questions. Could she find a new life on Hymnia and forget about him? How many layers of toughness would she need to lacquer on before she didn’t feel him anymore? Would she know what happened to him if she never made it to Hades? Would the connection cut if—no, when—he died?

  Was it time to give up?

  Soon it was the only question left. Until the words were a stereo-echo, bouncing in her head.

  giveup giveup giveup

  And then Xan came for her and her own smile hit her like the rush of space at liftoff and she gasped.

  She fell into his room. Fit into his headspace. Cozied up to his emotions.

  The fear that she’d grown so used to—the skittering boy-sweat fear—was gone, replaced with a calm. A warm stone at his center, working its warmth outward, filtering through all parts of him.

  This was what Xan’s confidence felt like.

  He stood and stretched until he almost filled the small room. He crossed to the sheet of mirror.

  Xan stared at himself. No, his gray eyes were too sharp for that. He stared into himself. His skin was still colored like clouds, but the puffs and folds of childhood were gone, thinned down to muscle.

  After the threats from Gori, the fight with Lee, the flickers of hesitation when she sat too close to Rennik—this was relief. When she looked at Xan, the things she felt were strong and painful-obvious. He was a strong beat, driven into her in four-
four time. Cade needed to feel him, the way first-row spacesicks needed to feel guitar-buzz on their skin. Cade wanted him, like this but closer. Without entanglement and mirrors in the way.

  Xan stared out, bruises underlining his eyes. Cade’s fingers rose to touch the soft, broken skin, even though it was still so far away. She watched him gather his mouth, all of the muscles tight around the acute slant of his lips. He readied himself to speak to her, out loud, for the first time.

  “Cadence.”

  She had forgotten she wasn’t the only one in the universe who knew that name.

  It left a little patch of cloud on the mirror, and the cloud grew as he said, “Please.”

  That one word reached into Cade.

  And she snapped back onto the ship. She thrashed, the straps scoring her chest, her arms, her breath down to drowning gasps.

  “Are you all right?” Ayumi asked. “Cade?”

  “Cadence.”

  “Cadence.” Ayumi closed her eyes and said it again. “Pretty. Do you know its—”

  “Origins? No.”

  Cade just needed to say it. That was her name. Who she really was. She’d gotten to the point where giving up on Xan felt as good as giving up on herself. Her body staged a revolt against the decision to change course. Her mind only agreed with itself half of the time.

  “Tell me about that,” Cade said, nodding at the paint on the walls. “Earth history. Effects.” She was desperate to hear something besides the coming-apart strain inside of her.

  “Sure,” Ayumi said. “Sure.”

  She turned from the controls, and Cade almost leapt to grab them. Then she remembered the auto-course.

  “You haven’t heard, I would guess, of the caves at Lascaux?” Ayumi asked.

  Cade searched her thinning-out thoughts. “Is that a planet in the Mann system?”

  “No,” Ayumi said. “It was a place in a country called France. On Earth. The caves at Lascaux kept a record of human life. I wanted to do the same thing. The story starts here.” She pointed one strong finger at the swirled blue-green, that unmistakable sphere. “I’m sure you know the beginning.”

  “Earth was blinked out,” Cade said. “An asteroid.” Her breath leveled. Finally. It was easier to talk about the destruction of her home planet than to think about the end of her entanglement.

  “That’s right,” Ayumi said. “But do you know why?”

  Human history wasn’t the subject of much small talk on Andana.

  “No.”

  “On Earth,” Ayumi said, “at the end, humans were more plentiful than we are now. A million times over. And technology kept them ever-so-connected. Across the planet, in an instant, they could transfer voices, thoughts, images.”

  It sounded like what Cade could do. Maybe not as intense or particle-based as what Cade could do. A primitive form.

  And, of course, thinking about that led her back to thinking about Xan.

  “So?” Cade asked through a fresh round of pain. “What happened?”

  “Everyone knew the asteroid was coming. People had seen it in their telescopes and done the calculations. They frittered away decades, not-finding a way to save themselves. There was no lack of time, or money, or the resources needed.”

  Cade reached her hand and touched the blue-green. It should have been warm and firm; it should have grounded her. But under the skin of paint, it was just a wall.

  “What happened then?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Cade held herself quiet, sure there was more. She must be missing a note that would tie the song together, make it make sense.

  “Some ships were built,” Ayumi said, pointing at a line of little gray dabs on the wall. “But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Fighting broke out over who should use them. Corrupt lotteries were drawn. Some of the ships were launched into space close to empty.”

  Cade followed the lines as they left the safe rings of atmos-phere—the harbor of a home planet—and pressed out into space. The distances between them grew and grew.

  “A million humans,” Ayumi said. “That’s the top estimate. Instead of banding together, they fought. And then came the Scattering.” Even Cade, on her concrete island in an endless sea of sand, had heard about the Scattering. “Small groups of humans headed into the wide universe, alone.”

  “And that’s how they stayed,” Cade said.

  “For a thousand years,” Ayumi finished.

  Until the entangled.

  Cade and Xan weren’t alone—not like the other humans living in space. Their connection stretched across light-years. A bridge to span the impossible distances.

  Mr. Niven had made it clear that Xan had to be saved because entanglement was important. When Cade went after him, she did it for her own reasons—but there were all of these other reasons, lurking behind hers. Would she keep turning away from what entanglement could mean—to the scattered and the spacesick, to the people she’d wanted to call her friends—all because some old hologram brought it up first?

  And then there was Xan. Still sitting in a cell in Hades. Still beating a question through her bloodstream.

  Asking her not to give up.

  The dark in front of the little ship was pushed up and up by the wide rim of a new planet. Its atmosphere spun thick with strands of dark and storm-ridden clouds. The surface showed underneath, pale.

  “There she is,” Ayumi said. “Hymnia. Now, before we get any farther, there’s something you sh—”

  But she didn’t finish. Ayumi stared out into white—and white came back to frost her eyes.

  She was glassed-and-gone.

  CHAPTER 13

  CRITICAL FLUCTUATIONS: A marked increase in variability just before a phase transition

  “You’re spacesick?”

  Nothing came from Ayumi’s wilted lips—which was all the answer Cade needed.

  “Dregs.”

  This time, she did leap and grab the controls. The fact that they were on an auto-course didn’t make her feel safer.

  The planet swirled its storm clouds at her. The ship blinked its buttons. Cade flashed one hand in front of Ayumi’s face, raised and dropped her arms to test muscle slackness.

  The pilot was in a state of complete disconnect. It gave Cade the perfect reason to turn around—and no way to do it.

  “Ayumi,” she whispered. “Ayumi, come on.”

  The glass shined on another coat. If Cade was going to redirect the ship, she would have to do it herself.

  She searched the buttons and switches for a hailing signal. Nothing looked the same as it did in Renna’s control room. And she got no help from the ship—no warm flash or small rumble—to let her know that she was getting close.

  At the far end of the panel, Cade found a black-hatched circle that reminded her of a microphone. Next to it was a finger-worn number pad and a red button. She tested the button and heard static.

  Static was a start.

  But she needed Renna’s hailing code. She fluttered through every loose scrap of paper, slammed through every binder, hoping Ayumi had scribbled it down somewhere.

  At the same time, she reached out for Xan.

  The hailing code, she thought. I need the hailing code of the ship the Unmakers boarded. The hailing code. The hailing code.

  Cade didn’t know how Xan would be able to get it. She knew that however he did, it would be dangerous. But that’s what she had figured out, in the second when Ayumi glassed and left her for some star-flecked inner void.

  Trust was a dangerous thing.

  Cade had thought it would be safe to trust a ride from the girl slumped against the pilot’s chair. She’d thought it would be safe not to tell Lee that the Unmakers were following her. It was never safe. It wasn’t even a question of safe. It was how much you knew, and how much you were willing to risk.

  Cade had played the whole thing wrong. And she had lost her best—her only—real chance of getting to Hades.

  Her fingers jumped against the
number pad. She had the digits punched in before her mind processed them.

  340426.

  She didn’t have time to ask Xan how he’d gotten that number so fast. She felt a single drip of worry, like a bead of sweat.

  Cade pushed the red button.

  “Ayumi?” Rennik’s voice crackled and split, but it was his. “Come in, Ayumi.”

  “It’s Cadence,” she said. “Cade. Look, I need to get back to you.”

  She waited for the well-reasoned, perfectly worded Rennik-style argument, but he didn’t make one.

  “I’m on an auto-course for Hymnia,” she said.

  The planet loomed larger and whiter as Cade shed important minutes. They peeled off behind the ship, dark and too fast.

  “What happened to—”

  “Later!” Cade said. “Right now, I need to end up not fried to atmosphere or crash-landed on an ice cube.”

  She pulled out maps and charts. Numbers blurred, lines wavered. Cade wasn’t even sure if she was holding the pages the right way.

  “I don’t know our coordinates . . .” Xan was there with her, trying to read the charts, but he didn’t know how to do it, either.

  Rennik’s words were calm and certain. “I have a lock on you.”

  “How did you do that so fast?”

  “I had to be sure the Unmakers didn’t follow when you broke off from us.”

  A hard sigh dropped out of Cade.

  “First-class.”

  Cade flattened the charts to one side and set her hands against the alien geography of the controls.

  “Here’s the other problem. I don’t know how to fly.”

  “At all?”

  She wondered if Rennik could hear the shutting of her sudden-dried throat, the failed swallow.

  “Uh . . .”

  Another crackle.

  “Pulling up specs on the ship model,” Lee said. “What did you get yourself into this time?”

  Cade glanced at Ayumi’s low-swung head, a thin trail of spit running from her lips to her shirt.

  “A minor catastrophe.”

  “You need to find a square of four lit buttons,” Lee said, “and push all but the top right one. That should turn off the auto-course.”