Their Fractured Light: A Starbound Novel

by Amie Kaufman

  For a wild moment, I want nothing more than to reach out and wrap my hand around his, but I bury the impulse. Even if he’s testing my theory, it doesn’t mean he wants my comfort.

  Mae’s standing still in the archway. It takes just a fraction of a second too long for her to turn around, and then the too-casual way she leans against the doorframe must be obvious, even to Gideon. “Don’t worry about that,” she says, smiling. “You both look exhausted. Just send a text, tell your contact you’ll swing by tonight, or tomorrow. You need rest more than you need one more bit of info.”

  Gideon leans forward, placing the bowl on the coffee table and rising. “I wish we could, Mae, really. But this might give us some proof of what LaRoux’s up to, which we’ll need even if the police stop what’s going down on the Daedalus.”

  Mae straightens a little, eyes darting to the side—where the time display was in the kitchen—and then back. “I’ll wave XFactor or one of the undercity admins, they can go to the drop for you.”

  Gideon’s casual air melts away, his shoulders dropping. “Mae,” he whispers. “What did you do?”

  A ripple runs through Mae’s features, and as her smile crumples, my heart constricts. I was right. I wish I could feel vindicated—instead my lungs ache. Betrayal is the hardest wound to recover from.

  “They’ve got my kids,” she replies, voice tight with withheld tears. “I had no choice.”

  Gideon’s voice bursts out with a curse, and he starts shoving things back into his pack. “What do they know? How’d they know to take the kids?”

  Mae shakes her head. “I don’t know, but it was Mattie on the phone.” Her voice is shaking. “They took them from school. He told me I had to keep you guys here until—”

  “Shit, shit, shit.” Gideon shoves his lapscreen into the pack, then looks up, eyes meeting mine. There’s something like apology there, amidst all the other emotions tangling in his features.

  “LRI must have people within the police force.” My thoughts are spinning, weariness making it hard to understand what’s happening. “People who intercepted the threat before…but how could they have traced it back here?”

  Gideon shakes his head, eyes wild. “I don’t know. They shouldn’t have been able to. I must have made a mistake, slipped up somewhere.” He’s only had a few hours sleep since before he left to rescue me from LRI—suddenly, I don’t know how we didn’t see a stumble like this coming. His jaw’s clenched, and I know he’s panicking as much for Mae’s children as for our own safety.

  I want to cry, to throw myself down on the floor and give up. Mae’s house is just the latest in a slew of safe havens that LaRoux’s been ripping away from us. If his people intercepted our threat, then we haven’t stopped him at all—haven’t even slowed him down. He’ll still bring the rift to the Daedalus, and the Council delegations will still fall to his whispers’ mind-altering abilities, and our universe will still become something unrecognizable—they’ll do whatever he wants, and there’ll be no way to stop them. Every ounce of the tension I’d been carrying up until we sent that bomb threat comes crashing back down on me, a weight made all the more impossible to bear by the fact that I’d actually begun to believe we were free.

  I stay standing with a monumental effort, rooting my feet to the floor. Take it one step at a time, I tell myself. “How long do we have?” I ask Mae, trying to keep recrimination out of my voice. It’s done, no amount of guilt can change it now.

  “I don’t know. They must’ve tracked your message back here—or they know I’m a known associate of—”

  “Mae,” Gideon interrupts. “Do you know where your kids are being held?”

  She shakes her head, then leans heavily against the doorframe before sinking slowly to the ground. “God, I can’t believe this is happening. This can’t be happening.”

  Gideon stands there, clearly torn, body language showing his desire to go to Mae’s side warring with the desire to run.

  “Gideon,” I say quietly. “We’ve got to go. Mae, toss some things around, make it look like you fought.”

  She gulps a breath but stoops without hesitation, overturning the coffee table, sending the vase atop it smashing to the ground.

  Gideon takes a step, then pauses. “We’re going to figure this out,” he tells Mae, his voice tight with urgency. “Tell them you did all you could, that they only just missed us. Tell them…” He hesitates, and when I glance his way, I see his indecision written clearly across his features.

  For a brief moment I can almost feel his thoughts like they’re my own. The more Mae gives LRI on Gideon, the more she’ll be seen as cooperating, and the better chance she’ll have of getting her kids back. But every bit of information she gives them strips away a layer of Gideon’s anonymity, leaves him that much more open and vulnerable. I can understand that.

  His hesitation lasts only the briefest of moments. “Tell them everything you know about me.”

  Mae’s face is already white, but her eyes widen just a fraction more. “Everything? You mean—”

  Gideon cuts her off mid-sentence with a slice of his hand. “Yes, I mean. Either we’re going to beat LaRoux or we’re not, and either way…” He swallows. “Either way I won’t need the—my online identity anymore.” His voice softens. “Cooperate with them, Mae, and they’ll let the kids go.”

  He doesn’t want me to know what his online identity is, and while part of me resents the fact that this woman gets to know more about him than I do, I can’t blame him for keeping his secrets. I’ve kept mine, after all.

  Mae’s crying, tossing aside a throw pillow from the couch as she creates the aftermath of a struggle, her hand bloodied by one of the shards of the vase, but she nods. Gideon hefts his pack, then glances at me. I take his cue and head for the door. “They know who I am. They’ve got both our faces on multiple security feeds by now. All my secrecy’s worthless, except as currency to prove you’re cooperating, and to get your kids back. Just tell them whatever they want to know.”

  Mae nods silently, and Gideon turns to join me, touching my elbow as I palm the keypad by the door to send it whooshing open. But then I hear her choke, then clear her throat, and we both pause. “Gideon—Alice—” She’s watching us. “I’m sorry.”

  Gideon’s hand on my elbow tightens. “So am I.” Then he’s ushering me through the door, and as the laugh track on the movie echoes in the background, the door shuts behind us again.

  He doesn’t move, and I stand there, feeling his fingers hot against my elbow, wishing I knew what to say.

  To hell with it. I can figure out a safe distance again later.

  I step forward so I can turn and wrap my arms around his waist, pulling myself in close. “I’m sorry.”

  Gideon lets out a little sound, then ducks so his forehead touches my shoulder, arms going around me. I’m still in the same clothes I was wearing when I was taken from my apartment, and I must smell terrible, but his arms just tighten. His voice is a mumble against my shoulder when he speaks. “I just—Mae—”

  I take a slow breath. “She’s family,” I reply. “And LaRoux’s taken her too.”

  I can feel Gideon’s fingers curling against my back, tightening into fists around the fabric of my sweater.

  I turn my head, so that my voice will carry through his chest. “Let’s not let him take anything else.”

  A test, then.

  We will watch them. We will follow them, through the thin spots and through the images and words that stream through our world and in the brief moments we can escape the confines of the blue-eyed man’s cages.

  If we are to decide whether to become individuals ourselves, we must understand what it is to be human. We must know them, every atom of them, every spark of what makes them who they are. We must narrow our focus, find a chosen few whose lives contain pain and joy together. A chosen few who could become anything—who could fall into darkness and hatred and vengeance, or who could use that pain to become something greater.


  We will start with the little peach-haired girl whose eyes are so like those of our keeper. She laughed once, and showed us love.

  MY HEART’S TRYING TO FORCE its way up through my throat as we run together down the street. My legs feel like they’re weighted down, and I’m half stumbling as my breath turns ragged. There’s no point in trying for stealth—we’re in the family-friendly suburbs, and there’s no crowd to hide us, no alleyway to slip down. We’re exposed, in every possible way. I always told Mae that made it dangerous up here. She laughed, and told me it suited the kids.

  The kids.

  My mind spirals down after that thought as my feet hit the pavement, distress turning to rage, seizing on something easier than the hurt. Who holds children hostage? If it was just me, I’d have traded myself for them, but Sofia and I are all that stand between LaRoux and the horrors that rift could bring about. The thought of Mae standing there behind us, utterly alone, sends a jagged bolt of pain through me, and my breath turns strained, like someone’s got a grip around my throat.

  Sofia yanks on my hand as we hit an intersection with a larger street, and finally there are a few people, a few hovercars, a chance at blending in. Our fingers are twined together, and though I know I should let her go, I can’t find it in me to give a damn. She’s all I’ve got now.

  Just Sofia, and the purpose that’s burning inside me, hotter than ever.

  LaRoux did this—he took my home, he took Mae—and he’s not taking anything else from me. Not from anyone. Not one thing more.

  We need to get as many levels down as we can, as quick as we can. We need to find somewhere nobody knows to look, a place we can disappear. A forgotten place.

  Sofia squeezes my hand as we turn together for the nearest elevator, and I squeeze hers back tight, a tangle of fear and anger, pain and hurt. We’re in this together now, and I’m not losing her.

  So we run.

  Down.

  Down.

  Down.

  To hide in the dark.

  The boy, the one on the gray world with the sister full of fire. She has made her choices, and we can see her future, where all her paths will lead—to a life cut short. Too short for us to read, to understand.

  But the boy’s future is still dark, as hazy as the clouds that shroud this planet. We cannot see where he will go, what he will become. His sister’s death will change him forever, plant the seeds of vengeance and forgiveness together deep in his soul—but which he will choose, we cannot say.

  We will watch him too, this green-eyed boy, this child of the water and the reeds and the infinite gray sky.

  WE CROUCH TOGETHER, SHIELDED FROM the street by the bulk of a disposal unit, in an alley a few kilometers from where Gideon’s den was. Down here it’s impossible to say how much time has passed, but my body says it has to have been hours—dusk would be approaching, up above. Gideon still hasn’t let go of my hand, and I haven’t tried to free it. Despite the sounds of the undercity moving and breathing all around us, the silence is tight and hot and unrelenting. I close my eyes.

  “We have to go there ourselves.” Gideon breaks the silence after an interminable wait.

  I lift my head, focusing on his profile with some difficulty. “Where?”

  “To the Daedalus.” His fingers shift, tightening slightly around mine. “Going to the authorities got us nothing but more heat. We have to stop him ourselves. Destroy the rift or disable it somehow, prevent him from taking over the senators on the Council.”

  Everything in my nature screams against doing just that—shining a light on LaRoux means shining a light on myself, on Gideon, on my past. And even if we win, even if we stop whatever’s about to happen, LaRoux will never really pay, not truly.

  But he will be there, himself, aboard that ship.…

  A part of me wants to confess to Gideon, to tell him that stopping LaRoux’s plan is all well and good, but all I really want is for LaRoux to pay for what he did to my father. To me. I swallow. “It’s a huge ship. If he’s hiding the rift from the guests, how are we supposed to find it?”

  “I can handle that,” Gideon replies, finally turning to look at me out of the corner of his eye. “The rift uses up a huge amount of energy—the day we met at LRI Headquarters I was starting to look at some weird energy spikes. I didn’t know the rift was in the same room as us, but I’m sure that’s what it was. If I could just get aboard, I could track the ship’s power usage. But they’ll have eight different layers of security—I’d never be able to sneak us in.”

  My thoughts are shifting already to my contacts, separating out those least likely to have been compromised already, which ones I can still use. “I can get us to the ship,” I whisper.

  “Sofia,” he murmurs, after a moment’s hesitation, “I know it’s—this isn’t what we do, either of us. But I don’t know who else will stop him.”

  I speak carefully, trying as hard as I can not to let him hear the weight in what I’m about to say. “I wish someone would just…put an end to it. To him.” My heart pounds in the silence that follows those words. It’s the closest I’ve come to telling Gideon what my ultimate goal is, and I can’t be sure whether he’d be with me or revile me for even thinking of revenge.

  Gideon sighs again and leans his head back against the imitation brick of the building at our backs. “That wouldn’t solve anything. There’d be half a dozen lieutenants in his company to take his place and pick up right where he left off. It’s the company, not the man, we need to stop.” His grip around my hand finally eases a little, like he might pull away.

  I let my eyes close again. I think of the gun still on the floor of my apartment—I think of my father’s face, his blank eyes, right before he walked into that barracks—I think of Flynn the last time I saw him, the boy I once knew so utterly destroyed by all LaRoux had done to him, and to our home. What does the company matter, if the man behind it all never pays for what he’s done?

  “You’re right,” I say hollowly, trying to ignore the way the lie cuts me. I can’t afford to let it. So instead, I tighten my hand, making it seem like I don’t want him to let go.

  And the worst part is, I don’t.

  We can’t risk staying in any legal lodging house, not when LRI’s bound to have surveillance looking for us in every corner of the sector. But it’s getting late, and both of us are beyond exhausted, and we need to find a place to sleep. Gideon has an idea of where we can hide for the next few days and swears it’s completely off the grid, no cameras, no people—which, down here, should be next to impossible. But he knows this place better than I do, and all the contacts I had here are long gone. I’ve got no choice but to trust him.

  While Gideon heads into a secondhand store for some blankets and a few supplies, I start setting a few things in motion. Using one of his prepaid burner palm pads, I get one of my contacts to source invitations for us to the Daedalus gala, another to find us something to wear so we’ll fit in. By the time Gideon reemerges, I’m ready to dump the palm pad into the nearest trash bin.

  Night in the undercity is not so very different from day as far as sunlight is concerned—not much makes it through the streets and parks and avenues of the middle and upper layers even on the sunniest days. Nightfall is merely a subtle tightening of the gloom, a shift in the light from dingy gray to true darkness.

  But night in the undercity, where the people are concerned, is when the streets come alive.

  Gideon leads me across streets and through alleys strung with lanterns of every kind and color—paper and fabric, so they can be easily replaced when the pollution discolors them—and bright like fire. The food vendors have tripled, and the smells of garlic and oil, coffee and allspice and yeast, fill the air and finally overpower the pollution. Somewhere in the distance I can hear music, with a thick rawness to the sound that tells me they’re playing live in the street. A fiddle and an erhu are dueling against the backdrop of a pair of cajóns, and for a moment I forget LaRoux, the Daedalus, the gun I l
eft in my apartment. For a wild moment, all I can think of is how much I wish I could drop it all and just go dance to that music with Gideon.

  A truck rumbles along the street and Gideon grabs for my hand, jerking my attention back to him. “Come on, let’s hitch a lift.”

  “Wait, I don’t—”

  But he’s not waiting, breaking into a jog and keeping hold of my hand so I have to jog as well or else be dragged along behind him. The truck’s not moving fast—it’s impossible to drive quickly through the clogged undercity streets—and as it passes us, Gideon reaches out to grab the bar beside the loading door and hauls me up after him.

  Another day, I would make some cutting comment about him showing off, or using this as an excuse to keep an arm wrapped around me, pressing both of us close against the back of the truck. Another day, I’d have fought to keep my feet on the ground. But it’s not any other day, and once we make it to that gala everything could change—if I get the opportunity I’m hoping for on the Daedalus. When I get the opportunity.

  So I let Gideon tighten his arm around my waist, and I tilt my head back. The lanterns go whizzing by overhead, shooting past us like meteors in the thick dark night. I’d forgotten, in the months since I exchanged my squalid walk-up for a penthouse suite, how beautiful it could be down here.

  The truck stops at a light and Gideon gives my arm a squeeze before hopping down off the back of the truck. He keeps hold of my hand as he helps me down after him, but then releases me as soon as I’m on my feet.

  “This way.” He tips his head toward a particularly dark side street, this one lacking entirely in lanterns.

  I let him pull me along, staying behind him just close enough that I can make out his silhouette. I pull another of the burner palm pads he loaned me out of my pocket and click it on, using the faint blue-white glow of its display to light my path. Gideon heads a few meters farther into the darkness, then stops at a boarded-up door. I expect a growl of disappointment—obviously this isn’t where we were supposed to end up, a closed-up, abandoned building—but instead he starts feeling around the edge of the boards. I can’t see what he finds, but after a few moments the whole panel of boards swings outward, and the door with it.