Their Fractured Light: A Starbound Novel

by Amie Kaufman

  I grab for Gideon’s arm as he starts to move past me, and his gaze snaps over. Off to the side, near one of the plush leather-lined booths, are Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen.

  Gideon and I draw back into the shadows, waiting for some sign that they noticed us. But the soldier’s arms are around her, and her face is buried in his shoulder, and neither of them is looking our way. I was so busy making sure Gideon and I weren’t spotted as we slipped away that I must not have noticed when these two did the same. As we watch, Lilac LaRoux lifts her head. Her face is white beneath her makeup, the red of her lipstick standing out and highlighting the tight set of her mouth. She wears a black dress, as if she’s in mourning for everything around them. Now that I look closer, I can see that the soldier’s eyes are red-rimmed.

  The soldier murmurs something I can’t hear, and in reply, the girl whispers, “Like ghosts, you and I.”

  For a moment, I can almost feel sorry for them. Whatever else they’ve done, whoever they’re connected to, they’re the only two surviving people in the universe who were here, who knew the people modeled in the holograms, all dead now, who might have even been inside the first-class salon before the Icarus went down.

  I’ve seen that look on the LaRoux girl’s face a dozen times on Avon. Like everything of her has been stripped away, leaving behind only the skeleton of who she was. If it weren’t for the hair, the dress, the rich surroundings, she could almost be one of the war orphans, waiting for the scars of trauma to fade. I could save her the time and tell her that they never do.

  She reaches one hand out suddenly, grabbing the edge of the booth’s table to straighten herself, grimacing, and the soldier’s arms are around her, lightning-quick. His voice rises in alarm, and his words are clear. “You’re here, you’re with me, Lilac.”

  “I can feel them,” she whispers, jaw clenched, lips barely moving, the tendons in her neck visible for an instant. Then it’s over, and she’s letting out a slow breath, straightening once more.

  Gideon and I exchange glances, and he mouths, Them who? at me, but I don’t have the answer. The ghosts of her past, I assume, asking why she’s complicit in the plans of a man so evil as her father.

  The soldier speaks again, the lower timbre of his voice making his words harder to decipher now, and the girl nods. He dips his head to kiss her temple, and when he pulls away, she’s Lilac LaRoux again. Smile bright, spine straight, all signs of what I thought I saw erased.

  “There’s my girl,” the soldier says with a grin, and all shreds of sympathy flee. I wish I could dismiss tragedy so blithely.

  I glance at Gideon, about to tilt my head and suggest we move on—we don’t need to know what these two are doing, we just need to keep out of their way—only to find him watching the pair as intently as I was. Blinking, I realize that his hands are clenched so tightly at his sides his knuckles are white, and that the salon lights reflected in his eyes are glimmering, his eyes wet. He looks at them the way I look at the picture of my father; like the man with his arms around Lilac LaRoux is the last scrap of some part of himself he lost long ago.

  I hesitate, then touch my fingertips to his sleeve. He breathes in sharply through his nose, then turns away, not looking at me. Without another word, we continue on past, leaving the Icarus survivors to haunt the halls of the Daedalus alone.

  The elevators Gideon wants to use are located in a wing of the exhibit on the crash itself, in a hall displaying about two dozen fragments of wreckage. Holographic text explaining each piece leaps out at us as we walk by, our movement triggering the displays to try to pull our attention away. But Gideon only has eyes for the ornate doors at the end of the room, making his way up to them in silence.

  We step inside, and I’m still searching my mind for the words I need. As we silently glide past the floors on the way to engineering, I can feel LaRoux getting farther away. But what’s my next move? Gideon, I know we’ve got a lot of…of things going on. This isn’t the time or place to talk. But maybe—maybe when it’s all over, once we’ve gotten the info we need, we can… Yes, something like that. With a bit of don’t you need to cut the security fields everywhere, just to be sure there’s nothing hidden? mixed in.

  I draw in a careful breath.

  “Okay, I cut the alarm,” Gideon says, before I can speak, his eyes on his lapscreen. “I managed to isolate just the engineering floor—if we shut down the whole ship, all hell will break loose.”

  Damn it.

  I’m still searching for a response when the doors slide open to reveal the engineering department, and I’m forced to follow him out into the hallway. Perhaps, if we follow Gideon’s plan and disable the rift, it’ll draw LaRoux away from the fully secured ballroom and give me the opportunity I need. Part of me sickens at how easy it is to smile at Gideon and pretend everything’s fine again. But I can’t ever forget that it’s the Knave walking beside me now—he’ll never be just Gideon again.

  This floor lacks the ornate trappings of those above—it’s purely functional, scaffolding running up the walls to our left, a metal gantry leading away toward the center of the department. I know from the plans I studied that this whole level is open, several floors high. It’s like a huge stadium, set up around the hyperspace engines in the center, with workstations clinging to the walls like metallic nests, linked by a complex series of staircases so the engine can be viewed and accessed from dozens of angles.

  Gideon’s moving quickly, and I’m grateful my shoes are hanging from one hand so I can keep up, hurrying along the hallway after him in my bare feet, the metal grille of the floor biting into my skin. Perhaps this will be quick—perhaps we’ll find the rift quickly, disable it, return to the party. There’s still time for my shot. I can fix my hair, fix my makeup, blend back in—I’m so busy mentally reassembling myself that the breath goes out of me with an undignified squeak when I suddenly run into Gideon’s broad back.

  “What the hell?” He whispers the words, but his body’s blocking my view.

  It’s only when I step to the side that I can take in the scene before us. Our hallway ends in a balcony fixed to the wall, opening up onto the huge engine space, several floors in height. Staircases lead in both directions, part of the giant metal spiderweb of scaffolding and gantries…but that’s not what stopped him in his tracks.

  In the huge void where the hyperspace engine should be—where the rift should be—there’s nothing. The massive metal claws that should hold the engine in place simply grasp at empty air. For a moment, I’m struck with the same confusion as Gideon—we’d been so sure that LaRoux’s plan with the rift was being executed here, tonight. Then I’m fighting my instinct to turn on my heel and march back into the ballroom, security field or no security field, so I can take my shot at LaRoux.

  “I’ll get into the system,” he says, mobilizing abruptly before I can speak, striding along our little balcony to the stairs at the end of it. He continues speaking as he clatters down them, and I race after him. “The rift at Headquarters caused enormous energy fluctuations. It must be somewhere else on the ship. I’ll track the energy readings and work out where. It has to be somewhere.” There’s a note of desperation in the back of his voice, though, an uncertainty he’s not ready to face. There aren’t many places on a ship like this that could hide something as massive as the rift we saw at LRI Headquarters.

  “We don’t have long,” I warn him, as we reach the base of the towering installation. It’s a long row of consoles, mostly dormant, display monitors layered above command trackpads. “Not if we’re going to head to a second location on the ship.”

  Gideon doesn’t even answer, his attention riveted on his work. Before, I almost enjoyed watching him do his thing—the utter concentration there, more focused than anyone I’ve ever seen. I probably could have stripped naked and laid down on his desk and he would’ve just moved his monitor so he could see over me. There was something fascinating about that, something appealing in the way he’d just vanish into the
task.

  Now…now I can imagine him tracking me that way. Following me with that single-minded attention.

  I watch over his shoulder as a blueprint of the ship leaps to life on his lapscreen. My mind circles back again, relentlessly, to my plan. If our route takes us back past the ballroom, there’s a chance I could slip away from him, look for an opportunity with Monsieur LaRoux. I could—

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up on end, instinct warning me before my brain interprets the sound my ears are reporting: the faint hum of the elevator doors opening. “Someone’s coming,” I hiss, grabbing Gideon’s arm to get his attention.

  His head snaps up, and he yanks the leads out of his lapscreen, ducking in underneath the console—there’s no time to make a dash for the other side. I slide in after him on my knees, grabbing at handfuls of my layered skirts, shoving them into the free space around me to keep them out of sight. It’s like the dress has a life of its own, fighting me, trying to slither free. My heart thumps in time with the footsteps hurrying down the same metal stairs we took from the elevator.

  “Son of a…” It’s a girl’s voice, rough and irritated. Her boots are visible as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, and then she’s in view. She’s tall, with dark skin and eyes, only a few years older than me.

  She’s in a security uniform, and though her stance is casual, her right arm is just inches from a holster on her thigh containing some sort of weapon. It’s not an LRI uniform—she’s one of the security officers with the visiting planetary delegations. The very ambassadors we came here to protect. Or at least, that Gideon came here to protect. She turns before I can see the crest on her jacket, looking back at the stairs, where her companion must still be.

  “It’s not here,” she calls over her shoulder. “There’s nothing. You’d better call them and say it’s safe for her to come down here. They need to see this.”

  My mind’s racing, confusion tangling with excuses. Is she here for the rift? For the engine? Will that matter, if she hauls us out from underneath the console? Already my instincts are kicking in, stringing together a story. My hair is mussed, Gideon’s askew. I can say we snuck away from the party. I can say engines do it for me, and I wanted an adventure in engineering.

  “Done, I just buzzed him.” The guy up on the stairs speaks, and his voice goes straight through me, electrifying. I know that voice. Instantly, it summons a pair of laughing green eyes, a tumble of dark curls. That voice is home.

  My body takes over without even an instant for me to think better of it, and I go scrambling out from underneath the console, tangled for a moment in my dress, bursting to my feet. “Flynn!”

  He’s standing on the staircase, his mouth open, still as a statue—in his black suit, he couldn’t be further from the boy I grew up with, but at the same time, nothing about him has changed at all.

  A click to my left snaps me out of it, and I realize the girl beside me has drawn her weapon.

  That sound jerks Flynn out of his shock and sends him scrambling down the stairs. “No, no, don’t touch her!” He opens his arms and I throw myself into them, closing my eyes as he wraps me up tight. To my horror, I feel my eyes starting to burn with tears. This is what trust feels like—I’d thought I’d begun to find it with Gideon, but now that bond, battered and broken by his lies and mine, pales in comparison to this.

  The girl speaks again, her tone dry. “I guess you’re sure, then.”

  “I’m sure, a ghrá,” he tells her as he releases me. “This is Sofia. She’s the one who hid me, in town, when…” He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. She knows. I can see it in her eyes—who I am, my place in their story on Avon. My father.

  “I had no idea you were here with the Avon delegation,” I say, fully aware that I’m babbling. “Oh God, Flynn, I can’t believe—you have no idea how much I—” I ease away from him to see the girl standing and watching the pair of us. Gideon’s crawled out from under the console—he doesn’t look pleased to see me in Flynn’s arms. Whereas Flynn’s girlfriend doesn’t look even remotely threatened.

  Because that’s who she is. Though I left Avon before we had an official flag, I recognize the crest on her jacket: a Celtic knot around a single star. And now that I have context—not to mention Flynn beside me calling her my love—I recognize who she is. Captain Lee Chase, scourge of Avon. Protector of Avon, if you listen to Flynn’s version of it.

  Flynn’s shaking his head. “I thought they were taking you to Paradisa. What the hell are you doing here?”

  My breath tangles in my throat. I’m here to end Roderick LaRoux, my thoughts scream. But Flynn’s never been one for violence, and Gideon would try to stop me if he knew I still wanted LaRoux dead. So I swallow the tangle of emotions and say, instead, “I’m guessing we’re here for the same reason you are.”

  Flynn’s gaze flickers over toward Gideon, brows lifting. “Who’s your friend?”

  To anyone else, the rapid subject change would be a non sequitur. But I know why Flynn’s asking. “Someone with reason to believe the Avon Broadcast was true,” I say carefully.

  “You trust him?” Flynn’s eyes go back to meet mine.

  I have no answer for him. No, I don’t trust him. No, he’s the monster who terrorized me for the last year. No, and you can shove him out the nearest airlock. No, but he’s my only ally.

  “We’re here together,” Gideon says, when my continued silence begins to stretch uncomfortably.

  “We had reason to think LaRoux was planning something tonight for the gala.” I brush past the issue of trust, trying to ignore the way Flynn’s eyebrows shoot up at the word together. I glance at the girl—Chase—who’s still looking wary, though her hand’s no longer hovering over her gun. “Something to do with…uh…”

  “With the rift.” Flynn finishes the sentence for me, earning him a sharp look from Jubilee and a startled one from Gideon. “Might as well acknowledge the elephant in the room. Or not in the room, as the case may be.” He tips his head toward the empty spot where the hyperspace engine—or the rift—would have been.

  “If you’re from Avon,” says Chase, stepping toward us, “then you’ll understand. We have to make sure what happened there doesn’t happen anywhere else.”

  Flynn puffs out a breath. “Look, in a minute, the rest of our team will be here. I sent them a signal when we found the rift was missing. And you’re going to have a hard time believing this, but—”

  He trails off. He can see from our faces that we’re looking past him now, taking in the staircase. At its head stands Tarver Merendsen in his impeccable evening suit, and beside him Lilac LaRoux, in all her perfectly coiffed glory.

  How is this possible? I can feel my pulse pounding at my temple. The rest of our team, Flynn said, but this is Roderick LaRoux’s family, standing and staring down at us.

  How could these four people be in this place? And together?

  And then I find myself remembering Gideon’s words back when we first met: that he was certain the Icarus survivors had encountered the same creatures that had terrorized Avon last year—whispers, Flynn called them in his broadcast.

  I’m still gaping up at them, every last play from my hard-earned book emptying out of my head, when I realize Lilac LaRoux is staring straight past me. I glance over my shoulder to find Gideon standing there. My heart kicks up another impossible notch as I see his face. Grave, unsmiling, rigid; and when I look back again, Lilac LaRoux’s face has gone absolutely white.

  Her mouth opens, lips working the shape of a word I can’t identify. It takes her long seconds to put breath enough behind it to speak, and when she does, it’s in a thin, frightened whisper.

  “Simon?”

  Our keeper’s daughter; the green-eyed boy of the gray world; the girl whose father will die and leave her broken; the poet with steel and beauty in his soul; the orphan whose dreams hold such hope…

  They will all soon shatter because of the man with the blue eyes, and when they do, we s
hall see what they become. For if they fall as we are falling, we will turn away from this universe forever and leave it to its darkness.

  Tracing their paths, their possible futures, we see a dimness where the lines intersect. A nudge this way or that and they will go their own ways, never meeting, never showing us what humanity can be.

  But there…a sixth path. Add him to the others and the dimness clears. It is not so very hard, for his path lies close to that of our keeper’s daughter already.

  Six lives, six threads. We shall see what fabric they weave.

  TARVER MERENDSEN’S GAZE SNAPS FROM my face to Lilac’s, his own expression tightening with surprise. “Simon?” he echoes—the name means something to him. “Simon, the boy who…”

  “Who she was supposed to be with,” I finish for him, when Lilac makes no move to answer. “Simon who died for her, Simon who she forgot the second he was shipped out to the front lines.” I don’t want to look at Lilac’s face, but I can’t help it. She’s staring at me like I’ve risen from the dead—she’s staring at me like I’m simply one more ghost, one ghost too many.

  Tarver has to take her elbow as they make their way down the stairs—she’s not looking where she puts her feet, and she nearly stumbles. “What the hell is going on?” he demands, all but ignoring Sofia now. Sofia, who’s standing just a few feet away, silent, expressionless. Sofia, hearing me reveal yet one more lie—I hadn’t realized just how much of what I’d given her was false. But now, seeing the lies lined up one after another…and I’d thought I couldn’t trust her?

  “Simon—” Lilac’s voice is barely a breath, but her brow is furrowing, the initial shock of seeing me starting to wear off. What’s more surreal than anything about this moment is that neither she nor Tarver seems to think it’s impossible that I could be Simon, even though he’s been dead for years.