Steal the Stars

by Mac Rogers

  You didn’t appear in any way perturbed by the Harp making noise. What the fuck?

  “I’m going outside to wait,” you said. “I hope you’ll join me. If you trigger the Harp, you’ll take me down with them.”

  If I trigger the Harp—?! Is he not hearing it?

  You turned and walked quietly toward the open back of the truck. You stood there, your back to me, waiting for something. The humming got louder. Some distant part of my brain was scrambling—neither of us was reacting to the Harp the way we should! We needed to protect ourselves!

  “Goodbye, Dak,” you said quietly—somehow I could still hear you.

  I should have let you go.

  It was your life. I should have just let you walk away.

  The hum grew louder. I should have let it have its way with you.

  Instead I picked up the Harp, which was as light as could be.

  * * *

  YOU KNOW what happened next. It would be your last memory. The final, fatal point of the knife that we’d been sharpening together. The culmination of everything I have been replaying in my mind as I sit here in the back of this truck next to your body.

  * * *

  I’D BEEN making the noise in the back of my throat.

  I hadn’t been aware I was doing it. I was so used to there being a low, steady, growing noise whenever we handled the Harp that I just took for granted where it was coming from.

  But it hadn’t been the Harp. It was me. And when it eventually culminated, when it broke through its insensible barrier, it didn’t spread through the room and kill all the power. But it did echo through the back of the truck. And something did die.

  I picked up the Harp, and it was me humming, moaning, it was me, and I bashed you over the head with it again and again. You did your best to avoid, to counterattack. At one point you swung a fist at my face but I ducked out of the way. I knew the rules for fighting someone bigger than me.

  I brought the Harp sideways against your skull. You fell to the floor of the truck, onto where Moss was propped up against the wall.

  You were saying my name. You were calm—none of these were death blows, of course; the Harp remained as formidable as balsa—but you needed to cool me down, to get me to stop damaging our payload.

  The humming in my throat grew louder, a sustained howl.

  “Do you know what I did?! Do you know everything I did?!” I heard myself shout over the noise. I thought of Lloyd, of Harrison, of Lauren, of Patty and how her face fell reading the letter from Haydon. I thought of Grant, tearing through his chest. That was what I was doing now: gouging out my own heart.

  I hit you again and again and their faces flashed with every blow. Soon there was a splintering noise.

  “Dak, careful, I think it’s breaking!”

  I hit you again and the Harp snapped in two.

  * * *

  HERE’S WHAT I was able to re-create from my memory.

  The frame of the Harp shattered into two halves. The strings went limp and sagged, flopping over my wrist. There was a noise, a tremendous noise, an incomprehensible noise, like the sound of a piano dropping onto a bagpipe, and something bottled up, something pressurized, exploded outward. The air inside the truck rippled, like air over the highway on the very hottest day of summer. You and I were thrown backward. The last things I saw were you slamming into Moss and the Harp’s ripple streaming out of the truck and rolling out into the desert beyond.

  Then my head slammed into the back of my helmet and I was knocked unconscious.

  * * *

  I NEVER thought of myself as a violent person. I always thought of myself as someone who did what had to be done and tried her best to avoid unnecessary suffering.

  * * *

  I CAME to sometime later, slouched awkwardly inside my bulky suit. It was the second time that day I had the horrible feeling of waking up mid-operation, not knowing how much time I’d lost, or what I was supposed to be d—

  You were lying in Moss’s lap.

  I might not have known I was speaking were it not for the muffled, hot feeling of my voice inside the helmet. Distantly, my hands unsealed the helmet, the suit (like someone else is doing it), and I tossed them to the side as I scrambled to you.

  You were breathing, slowly, shallowly. Your eyes—those sweet, mind-obliterating eyes—stared up blankly. You were clammy; everything about you screamed bleeding out, but there was no wound to be found.

  I begged. I pleaded. I sobbed. Nothing undid it. Nothing turned those eyes back to me.

  You gave a soft, wet gasp, almost a polite clearing of the throat, and it was the sound of my heart.

  My heart.

  My everything.

  Please.

  I was so sorry.

  I am so sorry.

  Please.

  But there was only silence.

  Even my sobs, my wails, were silent. The echo-killing ambience of the ship had found us once again, only this time it squeezed off every noise. There was no need. The back of this truck became a tiny little world, and the world was as dead as the space beyond.

  * * *

  A MONTH ago I thought I knew what it meant to die. I thought I knew what it meant to become a ghost. But the thing about nothingness is you can’t know it. Once you find it—once it finds you—knowing is no longer an option.

  And that’s how this story ends: with me sitting here next to you, next to Moss, reliving every moment I can, knowing nothing.

  At some point later, there are sounds outside, far off in the dead of space: the sound of cars approaching. And a new story begins.

  PART SIX

  YOU

  NOW

  YOU DIDN’T know him at all, I think.

  You can never know anyone, I think.

  You get what you deserve, I think.

  * * *

  A VOICE shouts through a megaphone, distant, pixilated, and rough: “Dakota Prentiss! Matt Salem!”

  I look up, mildly interested. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, just another body.

  “Dakota Prentiss! Matt Salem! Exit the vehicle and wait for us on your knees with your hands behind your head! We’ll be there in minutes!”

  I walk to the rearmost edge of the truck and look out. One car in front, closing in; six pairs of headlights far off behind it; most likely even more beyond that. The full swarm will be here within two minutes at most.

  “Do not attempt to leave! Wait outside the vehicle on your knees with your hands behind your head!” The voice gets clearer and closer as they approach.

  “They found us first,” I whisper hoarsely to no one. All that screaming has destroyed my voice.

  “I repeat: wait outside the vehicle on your knees with your hands behind your head!”

  I slide down the back loading door and lock it. I’m not entirely sure why—for cover? To hide? What is there to hide from? What if they have a medic with them who could save you? What if our contacts from the Chinese show up?

  I know nothing. And now it’s completely dark. During our scuffle we must have turned off the interior light, maybe even broken it. I feel around in the dark for the switch.

  I’m floating in space again, and this time I’m completely alone.

  That’s funny, though, because it sounds like something is moving in here with me. A creaking, straining noise, like ancient tendons flexing for the first time in millennia.

  The universe is expanding, I think, and that also strikes me as kind of funny.

  But … a noise is there, isn’t it? In the dark, in space, where there’s not supposed to be any noise.

  “It’s a vacuum,” my hoarse voice croaks. “There’s no sound in a vacuum.”

  I stand still. Maybe the noise was just me again. After all, I’ve surprised myself quite a bit today.

  It’s quiet for a moment. That’s when I hear … an exhalation.

  Not a breath. More like a great squeezing of something filled with air. It’s followed by an equally intens
e inhalation.

  “Matt? Baby?” I squeak. Maybe you made your way out into space to find me! I desperately look for the switch.

  “You…”

  The voice stops me cold.

  It’s—

  “You,” the voice says again, unmistakable.

  I call your name. For an excruciating moment there’s no answer. “Don’t try to move, baby,” I beg, “lemme find the light, lemme—”

  “You saved us…”

  I find the light switch, turn it on, and gasp.

  * * *

  AT FIRST I think you’re sitting up. But you’re not. You’re not sitting up.

  “You saved us…”

  You’re being propped up, held up, by—

  “… we almost died…”

  —by long, green strands of—

  “… we were at the very edge of death but you saved us…”

  —moss. It’s coming out of the mouth of the long, thin, gray-white alien and feeding, creaking, into yours.

  “Matt?” I ask. My voice is barely recognizable to me now.

  “No.”

  “Who are you?”

  “WE ARE THE MOSS,” the voice coming from your mouth intones. It’s the sound of your voice, but it’s not you, it’s … it’s as if someone carefully traced your signature, or surgically peeled your face off and wore it. An essential element is missing, however untraceable. “We’ve been dying, underground, in that Hangar, in indescribable pain, for eleven years.”

  I’m dimly aware of a megaphonic voice outside, shouting: “Exit the vehicle and get on your knees.”

  Your body convulses. I see ripples under your skin as the strands hungrily worm into you.

  Your/its voice continues.

  “We subsisted on the Ensign as long as we could. Held him at the very edge of life until we could hold him no longer. Another day, another hour, and there would’ve been nothing left, and our extinction would be complete.”

  “The Ensign?”

  As if it’s answering my question, the last of the green tendrils go into you and out of the thing we once so cavalierly named Moss. How wrong we were, I’m already realizing. The Ensign flops down onto the floor with a thick, dead thud.

  “The warmth,” I begin.

  “Was us. Our colony. Hiding in his tissue, his cells, working together, rationing, trying to stay alive.”

  “‘Rationing’ … like … eating him?”

  “If we don’t eat, we’ll die. Like you. We never wanted to eat all the Ensigns. But if we didn’t eat some of them…”

  Outside, it sounds like an army of vehicles is pulling up around us.

  “Exit the vehicle immediately! We will open fire!”

  “‘Ensign’ is the closest word we can find in Matt Salem’s mind. Our prey. Our predators. Our exterminators. They built these Harps to kill us, to trap and starve us, keeping us from doing the one thing we need to do to thrive.”

  “Exit the vehicle immediately!”

  “What’s that?” I ask you/it.

  “Add bodies to our colony. Our nutrient chain. Every time we grew strong enough to escape, to try to Add one of your human bodies at Quill Marine, the Harp sensed it and attacked. And every time we recovered enough to try again—roughly every hundred hours—the Harp attacked again, imprisoning us inside our Ensign. The insulation protects the Ensigns but it doesn’t protect us. They killed our colonies by the billions.”

  “We will open fire if you do not exit the vehicle!”

  I actually laugh. It sounds like a dying chew toy. “We thought the Harp was an engine.”

  “No. It’s a weapon.” Your arm jerks up, points at Moss’s (the Ensign’s!) body on the floor. “This Ensign became part of our nutrient chain. Our colony. His fellows saw that we included him, along with several others, and they cut our colony apart. Each body was put in a separate escape pod, with the insulation doors left open. They meant to kill us by killing them. The other pods were likely dragged into a star, a fate we expected to share. Instead…”

  “… you landed here.”

  I have a momentary flash of the video Lloyd showed us. We had thought that the flourishing amount of moss on his skinny, gray body meant he was at his healthiest—in fact, it had been him at his most overrun.

  “Yes. And we were taken to your vault to starve to death a strand at a time. Until you saved us.”

  “We’re gonna count to ten, and if you do not exit that vehicle we will open fire!”

  There’s the squawk of feedback and multiple voices, as if someone is struggling for the megaphone. Then another familiar voice is blaring from outside.

  “—sus Christ, you morons, the Harp’s in there!” It’s our old friend, Trip Haydon. “Dakota? Handsome Dak, I’m pretty sure you can hear me.”

  Your head jerks at the sound of his voice. It’s an unnatural move.

  “These are the people who rule the Hangar? The place where they kept us?”

  “Yeah,” I croak.

  “You’ve obviously cured your boyfriend of his bout of basic common sense, so lemme give you a rundown of what’s happening out here. We’re all wearing Lloyd Suits. Even I’m wearing a goddamn Lloyd fucking Suit. You know what that means? The Harp can’t hurt us. Now, believe me, there’s nothing I’d love more than to open fire ’til there’s more holes than truck, but the bitch of it is you’ve got my toys in there with you. So, I’m gonna reluctantly settle for my second choice: cutting our way in and scooping you out like fucking clams. Now, if you come out first? You get the deal. If we get in first? You get hell on earth. So, y’know, talk amongst yourselves. You’ve got exactly as long as it takes for an acetylene blowtorch to draw a rectangle.”

  You—or whatever is inside of you—are listening intently, an ear cocked.

  “Is…” I cleared my throat, but it was no use, my voice was torn to shreds. “Is Matt still alive?”

  You looked back at me with shining, dumb eyes. His eyes. Your eyes.

  What do these words even mean anymore?

  “We don’t know how you define that. But he has been Added.”

  “Added…” I rolled the word in my mouth.

  Somewhere outside the door, a hissing sound, then sparks begin to spit and sputter into the truck. Someone’s using a torch to cut through the door.

  I look back at you and you’re moving your shoulders and arms up and down.

  “Your bodies are extraordinary,” you say. “Maybe fifty times as fertile as the Ensigns’. You can’t imagine how … how … strong we feel right now. And we owe all of it to you.”

  To you.

  That word.

  So much in that word.

  So much power.

  So much sadness.

  So much distance.

  You—I can’t handle it—the separation. I never realized what a gulf it was before. Our entire relationship. It was always “you,” never “we,” never “us.” Two separate worlds, hands straining over a chasm. And now it never will be—

  “Stop,” I beg in my broken voice. “I didn’t do anything for, for you!”

  “But you did. We were right there listening as you told Matt the whole story. The story of your love. The love that crossed the continent. The love that made bargains with Grant, with Lisa, with Zhang, with Haydon. The love that made you hurt people you didn’t wish to, the love that hurt Lauren, Harrison, Lloyd, Patty. The love that brought you to this barren place, the love that would have cast you across the sea to a strange land, that love that brought you all this way brought us, as well. And even as that love curdled, spoiled, caused you to strike him to death.” I’m groaning again, keening. The hiss from the torch outside gives me harmony. “Even in the act of striking him down, you broke our chains. We’re free because of you, we’re alive because of you, no one has ever loved us this much.”

  “But it wasn’t for you! All that love, that wasn’t for you!” I warble in paper-thin protest.

  Your/its head tilts to the side. “We still r
eceived it. We still benefitted from it. Our duty is still clear. We are yours. Forever.”

  I try to laugh. It comes out more like a cough. “Great! Enjoy it, then! Enjoy ‘forever’ while it fucking lasts.’”

  Behind us, the torch continues hissing.

  Haydon comes back on over his megaphone. “Hey! Is this seriously your plan? You’re just gonna wait for it? You know what’s gonna happen to you when we get in there?”

  I look behind me, still cough-laughing. They’ve cut half of a rectangle in the wall. Maybe a couple minutes more. A few hundred seconds.

  “You’re right, Dak,” you say as if reading my thoughts. “If they get in now, Dak, they’ll destroy us. We can’t stop them. We’re not quite strong enough.” I look up, curious, and you/it reaches out with an almost stunning gentleness, takes my hand, turns it over, and touches one finger to the inside of my wrist. “We need one more body.”

  “You want … you want…” I hardly have breath enough to exhale the words.

  The torch hisses.

  “Both our fates are at your command. You can let them enter and destroy us both. Or you can accept what we have to offer. All our strength. All our life. A love equal to yours. A love as colossal and all-consuming. A love that is truly deserving of your own. If you want these things, we lay them down before you.”

  “How would you give me that?”

  “We’d join you to our chain. Our colony. And we would hand power over to you. Utterly. Permanently. A new arrangement for both of us.”

  A marriage, I almost say, and feel like crying for the briefest of moments.

  “They’re coming in. I can’t stop them,” I say dumbly.

  Your head jerks again, looking at the back wall with most of a yellow-red rectangle blazing into it.

  “But we can. Together.”

  * * *

  IN SCHOOL there was this boy I liked. I didn’t know what to do, so I punched him. Once every day I went up and punched him on the arm. And that’s everything that ever happened with us.

  * * *

  “HOW WOULD we…?” But I already have an idea. I’ve already seen how the moss moved from the Ensign to your body. “Would it work if we … if we kissed?”

  And my rational brain knows you’re not looking at me with love, that you’re not, in that paltry human sense of the word, touched by my request. But I imagine I see it in your eyes anyway. You nod your (his) head and I whisper, “Please kiss me.”