Entangled

by Amy Rose Capetta

  “I have friends,” Cade said.

  Xan stared at her with a blankness that could have been cut from the black outside the window.

  “I don’t want to leave them.”

  Xan moved around the rim of the chair and positioned himself in front of the hatch. Settled his helmet on. Cade rushed after him and ripped it off.

  “These people, Xan, all you have to do is meet them—”

  “I have.”

  He flashed a look at her temple. Of course. Xan had seen parts of the trip to Hades as they had unfolded in her head.

  His face crumpled under terrible pain and his voice turned into one long scrape, like Cade was ripping the words out of his throat, one by one. Like she was forcing him to tell her the terrible-but-true.

  “The one with the pale spots on her face betrayed you. The other girl is weak. The Hatchum will never be the human you want him to be. The Darkrider tried to kill you. And the ship . . . is a ship.”

  Cade would have punched him square in the face if he were anyone else in the universe.

  Xan twisted and stared out the window-stripe at the blot of Renna, almost gone.

  “Those friends will leave you,” he said. “They’ll let you down.”

  Maybe, Cade thought.

  But that didn’t make them less worth connecting to. Rennik, Renna, Ayumi, Lee, Gori. And Cade’s mother. Even if she was dead, or glassed-and-gone. Even if Cade scoured the known planets and never found her. There was a connection to be made—with her memories, with the woman her mother used to be. Cade already felt stronger for it.

  If she had wanted to close herself off, shut it all down, she would have stayed on Andana.

  Xan’s eyes darkened in the oncoming rush of black, to a deep, cold, empty blue. He’d never had a home. Not even a makeshift home, or one that sailed through space. But Cade could change that.

  “Please,” she said, setting her hand to his face. “Turn the ship around. Let me show you.”

  He pointed to the panic-red of the control panel. Said, without a trace of regret, “It’s too late.”

  Xan turned Cade to him, squared their shoulders, drummed up one more smile.

  “I know it feels important, not to die.”

  Cade didn’t smile. Deep inside of her, things snapped together. The words the scientists had given her. The meaning she would fill them with.

  The purpose.

  “We can do more than survive,” Cade said.

  Xan’s smile flashed wide.

  “Right.”

  Cade felt acceleration in the hole-suck. The event horizon loomed close. The sad part was that Xan would fall in thinking they understood each other perfectly.

  But Cade couldn’t spend her last breath on him. Before she crossed the line, she reached out to Renna and her friends onboard and anyone who might be able to listen—in ships, on planets, strangers, her mother, anyone—and sent one wild, simple thought.

  Help.

  Cade reached so far, so hard, that she found all of her friends in a single burst of thought, their songs all working at once, separate from each other and at the same time sliding into harmony. But it didn’t stop there. Beyond them, she felt other minds, thousands, far off but bright, a waiting sea of stars.

  The line between space-black and hole-black rushed to meet the ship. Cade tamped her helmet down just as Xan opened the hatch. He grabbed her hand and leapt them into the dark.

  Cade flew through sheets and sheets of black, the perfect black of sleeping. Before-birth, after-death black, and just as she was starting to loosen to it she felt a new miracle and—slammed into the light.

  Gold.

  That’s what it was inside.

  Gold and warmth and closeness.

  Things were falling to a perfect point in the distance. Light, ships, bits of stars. And motes of cosmic dust, billions of them, fired to brilliance by the light. Falling, slow and fast at the same time. Like Cade imagined snowflakes—plummeting from a winter-pure sky and then swirling on drafts. Never seeming to touch ground.

  Cade swam at the edge of it all. Looked down and saw her outline doused in gold. It was hard for her to understand herself as the same girl who had left a seedy club on Andana.

  She looked at Xan. He floated at her side, holding her hand. Soon she wouldn’t have a hand to hold but he would be there, always there. He sent her the most beautiful thoughts—thoughts like music, thoughts that moved and flowed through her, with meaning that no words could contain.

  But the best thought of all belonged to Cade.

  Now we’ll never be alone.

  So when the darkness crept in, like an ink stain, pooled and reaching, Cade almost swam away from it. Toward the center of the black hole. She almost forgot that she didn’t want to be in this golden place.

  The universe curled its dark fingers toward her.

  Cade didn’t understand. Now that she was in the black hole she was in it for good. Nothing could cross that line and leave. Even her thoughts could move faster than the speed of light only if they were entangled thoughts, meant for Xan.

  Still, the blackness inched.

  What’s happening? Xan looked at her, leaking concern. Cade wanted to tell him that she had no idea, but it wasn’t true. Because now she remembered.

  This was what she’d asked for. Help.

  Specifically, Gori.

  Cade must have touched his mind. There hadn’t been time to be careful—to wait for an invitation. She had breached his thoughts, but this time Gori hadn’t tried to kill her. This time, he’d done the opposite. He had aligned himself with dark energy, used his influence to expand the universe in the right direction at the right rate to nudge the event horizon. He had crafted this moment, so she could live.

  Cade fell farther into gold, but the darkness swelled just behind it. It came for her, and this time she answered its difficult call. She reached for it with one gravity-crushed hand and tugged on Xan’s fingers with the other. He tugged back.

  It’s beautiful here, she thought, but we have work to do.

  Cade sent him strength.

  Come with me.

  She sent him all of her sureness.

  It’s the right thing. Don’t make me go without you.

  Xan’s eyes were wild, the whites tinted gold.

  If Cade left him and went on her own, the Noise might stream into her head and take his place. She could be trapped with it forever, a truly broken radio. The one frequency she needed—gone.

  Even if the Noise left her alone, that’s what she might be for the rest of her life without him. Alone. Cade had never been able to connect before Xan. What if she couldn’t do it without him there? To understand her complicated snarls of feeling? To fill her on the empty nights?

  But the worst part of leaving Xan would be the one she couldn’t fit into words. It tore through Cade, ruthless and complete as a final chorus.

  How much she would miss him.

  She looked over at Xan as he plummeted. He was falling, even though he seemed to float, and he wore a smile as he went down. Stretched his arms wide, pressed his eyes open to take in as much of this dense, black-shelled paradise as he could. In the whole time she had been entangled with him, she’d never felt something like this radiating from Xan. An emotion that wasn’t tinged with fear, doubt, disappointment, or pain. He was the same person, transposed into a different key. He was all major chords here. All beaming and bright.

  The darkness came again and reached for Cade.

  Stay.

  Xan asked with his thoughts, and with his light-drenched eyes. The word carried her from the edge of the black hole back to him. The tide of darkness washed in weaker each time. Soon it would ebb too far and Cade would be left to the gold, and an endless future with the boy she had promised to save.

  Stay, Xan asked.

  And she almost said yes.

  But her mind stretched back, toward the others she had left behind. The ones on the ship. The ones scattered on planets, wa
iting. Xan couldn’t fill all of those spaces now that Cade had opened them.

  The darkness made one last, feeble push. Gori could only change the universe for her so much. Cade fought to still herself against the pull of the black hole. When the black rushed up again, she was ready.

  Xan’s fingers eased out of hers. His thoughts faded. He kept falling into the gold.

  Cade let him go.

  The rest of it was rush and blur—the blink from light to dark, like a full-body switch had been flipped. Gravity tried to screech Cade back into the black hole; it wouldn’t give her up without a fight. The event horizon slid away from her body with wrenching slowness. It was minutes-that-felt-like-millennia before Renna inched close and sent Cade a lifeline.

  Then she was onboard.

  With the sound of familiar voices all around her. First Lee, then Rennik and Ayumi, then all of them in a round.

  Is she all right?

  Is she breathing?

  Cadence, say something.

  The whole universe pinched to sound, because her eyes couldn’t focus. Someone carried her into the small hidden bedroom and it beat like Cade’s heart, only slower, until she fell asleep.

  Cade woke up with faces over her.

  “You!” Lee attack-hugged her and Cade felt all of her organs, one at a time.

  “Yeah,” Cade said. “It’s me.”

  Except that it felt like only half of her.

  Lee pulled back and Cade looked up at the grouping of Rennik, Ayumi, and Gori around the bunk. She settled on Gori, who was staring.

  “Thank you.”

  He sent Cade a blast of cosmic thought—the rush of starlight and sphere-music so sudden and brilliant that it popped her ears.

  Ayumi sat at the foot of Cade’s bed, crowding her toes. “You look wonderful for someone who’s come out of a black hole. Not that I’ve seen someone come out of a black hole. I wasn’t even sure a human could, to be honest in a painful sort of way.” She pulled a notebook—the tiniest one Cade had seen yet—out of one of her pockets. “Which reminds me, do you think I could ask you—”

  “—a few questions?” Cade finished. “Yeah. But maybe later.”

  Rennik, looking at least a foot too tall for the room, stooped down and set a plate of still steaming breakfast on her lap. She looked up at him. The words were a scrape of vocal cords.

  “Egg dish?”

  Rennik cut a glance at Lee. “Someone told me it was your favorite.”

  Lee did her best to look innocent while Cade laughed.

  Rennik bent in and smoothed a wrinkle on her pillow. “I’m glad you made it back, Cadence.” She listened close, and thought she heard more under the polite skin of those words, but she couldn’t be sure. For now, it was enough that Rennik had said I instead of we.

  Cade had more she wanted to tell Rennik, Lee, all of them. But it hurt to talk—not just because her body was recovering from exposure to an absurd amount of gravity.

  Each sentence was another step away from Xan.

  She could still feel him, faint, sending his thoughts as he fell. Gold and perfect. Which meant Cade could feel what she’d given up in order to come back to the harshness of space, so she could wake up in the mornings—or what she pretended were mornings—and keep fighting.

  The gold thoughts were pain and perfection together on a long, slow fade. Cade had no idea how long this doubled consciousness would last—at any point Xan could reach the center of the black hole. The light might dwindle to nothing, or she might have to live with it forever.

  At least it wasn’t the Noise.

  The bedroom lost some of its clamor as Rennik and Lee drained out to argue with each other about the new course. Ayumi sat on the low bunk opposite Cade. Her smile was a small, lopsided offering. A real smile—not the thin-stretched emptiness of space rapture.

  “Lee said I could stay on and help with the Human Express. And talk to the people she collects from, as long as I don’t talk and talk and talk . . .” Ayumi looked at the place where Lee had just been standing, and smiled wider. “She thinks my ship will be useful on planets that don’t have real ports.”

  Cade nodded. Even bobbing her chin up and down wasn’t a pain-free process.

  “I’d like to stay,” Ayumi said. “For as long as you think I can.”

  Her eyes flickered to Moon-White, propped in the corner. Cade wasn’t ready to play, but she would be soon. She could feel the phantom strain in her hands that came before a good session.

  “Hey,” Cade said. “Thanks.”

  Ayumi winced, her mind no doubt cutting back to what had happened in Hades. “I’m not sure I did anything thank-able.”

  “You did.”

  Cade couldn’t speak it—not yet—but a purpose had been forming in her mind, swirling like space-dust until it took on its own roundness, its own gravity. It had collected around the core of Ayumi’s words.

  What you can do.

  Connect. Cade knew how to do that better than any human, because entanglement had changed her.

  What you choose to do.

  That was her music. The rawness of notes and the hard-caring crowds, the finger-sting of guitars. It was the one thing her mother had left her, and the first thing Cade had chosen for herself.

  What needs to be done.

  This was stranger, and bigger, and it terrified Cade. There were humans to un-scatter from all over space. There was glass to clear from spacedrunk eyes. And the rest of humanity—she couldn’t change all of those lives. But she could do her best to bring them together.

  Another flash from the black hole sliced into Cade’s thoughts. It was Xan, still confused about where she’d gone. How would she be able to help anyone when she hadn’t saved the one person she set out to?

  Ayumi sat near Cade’s feet, patient, while she worked it out.

  Lee came and checked on Cade fourteen times in an hour. Rennik brought her three different lunches, and she ate them all. Renna pulsed her happiness at seeing Cade again, little triplet beats that bubbled underneath Cade’s fingertips.

  The Unmakers would be after them all soon enough. But for a little while, there would be days like this.

  And time. Cade knew what she had to start doing as soon as she was strong enough. But the idea of connecting with someone other than Xan was pure pain. The absolute wrong note.

  Still. It would have to be struck.

  Cade reached out, and it was like small steps into cold water. So terrible, her teeth rattled. But she found a simple string of notes, and sent it to the people on the ship. Lee, with her loose-fiddled melodies, and Rennik, who didn’t sound hushed anymore. Ayumi’s mind was laid bare, and it reminded Cade to be brave. Like she had on the verge of the black hole, she reached hard and it was all there, waiting. Bright and clear. The number of minds and their need to be heard overwhelmed her. Then Cade sent out the first notes she’d ever heard her mother play, because she wanted them to be part of the song—and from somewhere, impossibly far, she was sure she heard an echo. And for a moment Cade forgot about the pain. Not because it was gone, but because there was something else to listen to. The people on the ship. And the ones somewhere beyond it—in the wide sea of space, on far planets.

  She cracked herself open, and let their music in.

  Acknowledgments

  This novel and I owe debts of gratitude, time, support, and affection to so many. Here are just a few:

  Dad, who meant it when he said I could be anything, and Mom, who always believed I would be a writer. Christine and Allyson, who were there for my first stories. Grandma and Grandpa, who gave me encouragement—and articles—for all of those years. Mrs. Petruny, who set me on this path. Julia: best friend, favorite scientist, co-inhabitant of my brain. Stephen. The sweetest, on this or any planet.

  You wouldn’t be holding a book right now if I hadn’t been lucky enough to attend Vermont College of Fine Arts. Thanks to the students, staff, alumni, and faculty. To Ellen Howard, Julie Larios, Margaret Bec
hard, and the Keepers of the Dancing Stars. Special thanks to Shelley Tanaka—the first to meet Cade and help her on her way.

  This book had first-class readers. Thanks to Vanessa Lee, for her clear eyes and pitch-perfect questions. Anna Drury, for seeing the story’s heart—and for the happy dances. Cori McCarthy, for every margin note, moment of belief, and ounce of Michigan Cherry. Other early friends of Entangled include Katie Bayerl, Varian Johnson, Maggie Lehrman, Caroline Carlson, Sara Kocek, Mary Pleiss, TOOCF, Nerdbait, and the S3Q2 Retreat. My love to the Austin kidlit community, especially the wonder-hearted Bethany Hegedus and the incandescent Cynthia Leitich Smith.

  An endless, edgeless thanks to my agent, Sara Crowe. To the Houghton Mifflin team, not just for making this happen, but for making it happen dream-come-true style. And to my editor, Kate O’Sullivan, who brought all of her brilliance and brass to this novel, and gave it a home in that great starry night sky of stories.

  Universe keep you all.

  Coming in Fall 2014

  Unmade

  Once, there were two entangled beings in the universe: Cade and Xan were drawn together by the genetically engineered quantum connection they shared. Xan sacrificed himself to a black hole and winked out. Cade was lucky and escaped them both. But there are many songs left in the universe. Cade hears them all. Rennik’s, a tune she wants to carry forever. Her mother’s, which grows fainter by the hour. Cade is in a race against time and space to save her family and friends from the Unmakers, who are tracking the last vestiges of humanity across the galaxy. But in the final battle for the human race, Cade learns that letting people in also means letting them go. The world spins out of control, and Cade alone must face the music.

  About the Author

  AMY ROSE CAPETTA holds an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has a particle-level love of mind-bending science and all sorts of music. She adores her small patch of universe, but also looks intently at the stars. Entangled is her first book.