by JA Huss
"What's she doing?"
I look over and see Arel and Annun, looking at me and down at the valley, respectively. I sigh in the general direction of my brother, although my eyes never find his face, and shrug. "I'm not sure, Arel."
"Was this part of the plan?"
"Not our plan."
"Gideon?"
Sometimes Arel can really piss me off with his questions. It's like he's got no internal filter. Just spews out words without thinking. "Do I look like I know Gideon's plan?" I hiss at him.
He ignores my mood, as per usual, and just lets out a long whistle. "This is about to get interesting."
It's hard to upset Arel. Even with the existence of our entire race on the line, he can shrug it off. "Interesting?" I scoff. "That's one way to put it."
Annun spits on the ground and comes around to the other side of me. "You think she knows what she's doing?"
I want to rip his fucking head off and my hands are even reaching for his throat when I stop. Annun just spits again and pretends it never happened. I think he's been spending too much time with Arel.
"I mean," he continues, "she's typically got a handle on stuff, right? Even when you think she's fucked and lost her mind, she pulls through, right?"
He’s right. On most days Junco pulls through. She’s tough. She’s powerful. She’s a force.
"She's Junco, for fuck's sake," Annun continues, more to himself than any of us.
But today is not most days. Today was her day. The day she’s been waiting for.
Lucan appears by my side and we let out a collective sigh as her body begins to glow, then Inanna's follows suit. Seconds later they are gone.
"Well, that's pretty much it, then." Arel flips open his tablet and begins punching in data.
I wait, not looking at, nor acknowledging, Lucan. Because if I want to be truthful, Lucan’s the one I want to rip apart, not Annun. I want to blame him. Just fucking once, I want to make it all his fault, tell him off, push back and walk away. Just once I want to lose control instead of standing by his side.
"Ten meters per second and slowing." Arel slaps the tablet shut, like that's the end of it. "This one is not on track for completion, initiation is delayed by one point five minutes for every minute completion fails." He looks up to me and shrugs. "We're stuck until she finishes whatever she's doing in there. I'm assuming she's slicing her mother to bits? But maybe not. They could be having a fucking picnic for all I know."
He disappears, leaving Annun behind.
Annun barely notices, just spits one more time and picks up where he left off. "Take the Deliverance fight for instance. She went into that with no clue. None. So, I think this time, they maybe have a plan." He looks over to Lucan. "What do ya think, Luc?"
Lucan growls at the nickname and I don't blame him. Annun pushes buttons on purpose, not like Arel who's just being good-natured. Annun is a mean motherfucker and to be honest, he's very lucky I'm tired of constantly kicking his ass, or I really would throttle his throat right now. "Get to fucking work or I'll send ya back to Amelia to babysit."
"He can come with me," Lucan states matter-of-factly. "I'm going back soon to wait it out with her, anyway. She's unhappy. And afraid."
Annun shrugs. "I'll go, sure. Why not."
"Annun," I growl, "your ass is supposed to be scouring the Stag for that child."
"Tier, I like to delegate, right? I have a team down there—"
"What fucking team?"
"Merkar, Pike and Tessen. And I gave each of them a legion of their own. If the kid's down there, we'll find her."
The heat from my eyes tells me they are red. I direct the glow towards Annun.
He disappears.
Lucan turns to me then, but I don't look at him. I've had enough and he knows it. "What's that look?" he asks. "Sadness?"
"Don’t, Lucan. I’m at the end here. I asked you for one thing and that was to keep her safe and you go and tell her to do it her way.” I stop to look him in the eye. “This is her way, Lucan. Congratulations, she did exactly what you told her to do.”
"You have very little faith in her, Raubtier. I find it quite disturbing. She always has so much faith in herself, it's a shame you can't see what she's capable of. Besides, Sera is with her, correct? You said she mentioned that."
"Have you talked to Sera?" His expression is unreadable.
"No, not in several weeks, actually. But Junco said—"
"Junco is fucking sick, Lucan. Sick." I wait to see if he's got anything to say to that, but if he does, he holds it in.
The cold air is heavy with the silence, and once again I notice that the wind is making my face chapped and raw.
"She's sick. She told me she's got a condition. Some mental disorder that makes her want to count things, or tap things. Some condition that makes her want to count stars and never stop. A compulsion to embrace insanity. Does this make any sense to you?"
A loud boom shakes the mountains and an explosion of light erupts from the top of the Pillar. The ground shakes and snow begins to slide down a nearby mountain where it's gotten too deep from the early fall snow.
"Fuck!" I look over at Lucan. "What the fuck was that?" I call Arel to come back via vision screen and watch Lucan's surprised face as he studies the sky. It looks like a fireworks display—particles shooting out of the top of the Pillar and up into space.
Arel appears and his fingers are in mid-slide across his tablet. I wait as they fly across the screen and then he looks up at me and shakes his head. "Dissipation particles. That crazy little sparrow fucking dissipated her ass!" He barks out a laugh and looks up at the light show in the sky. "She fucking dissipated Inanna!"
I look up as well, a slight wave of relief washing through my heart when Arel's voice interrupts my almost celebration. "Wait. There's two sets of particles, not one—"
He doesn't finish his sentence. He doesn't have to because this can only mean one thing.
They scattered each other.
I enter the timeshift before my anger can manifest as knives and fangs.
Chapter Two
I've never been to New Peak City and I only went to the old one a few times when I was here watching Juncs. But my body finds the Circus like I've been there every day of my life. I even exit sitting on the side of the fountain, my face in my hands. Lost.
The people around me begin to panic and the screaming starts. I'm not the most popular guy on the planet right now. Something to do with millions dying in the floods I've unleashed with the Pillars. Why they're still here, I have no idea. Technically, if all went well, the Pillar eruption should've been well on its way to demolishing New Peak City in a massive earthquake, just like Subjack blew up the old one with a nuclear bomb.
I raise my head for a moment to take in the bedlam, then let it sink back into my hands.
I knew this moment with Junco was coming. I mean, she was one hundred percent honest about the way she saw her future when we were out on the red rock. She told me exactly how she’d meet her destiny, I just never suspected it would be in the Pillar. I never suspected she’d even consider taking Inanna in there because I counted on her finishing the job. It’s not like her really, to leave her job unfinished. And after all those words to Irin about the mission keeping her sane, I figured I had time to change her mind. To tell her I’ll be there—that I will find a way to be there.
I scrub my face with my hands and allow the grief to wash over me. My whole chest hurts. Like hands are crushing me to death. Twisting up my heart and making every breath a struggle. I have no frame of reference for this feeling. It is dread. Overpowering dread, and hopelessness and sadness. I feel like a part of me is gone. And this is nothing like the moment when we all realized Inanna had taken Junco for the morph or even those years she was in the tank. Because I knew where she was and I knew she’d be back. No matter what, I knew that one day she’d be back.
But this time I can’t count on that.
I’ve failed her.
Again.
It’s not Lucan’s fault for handing her his trust. It’s my fault for not hearing her last cry for help.
I'd rather float in the nothingness and drift away for eternity than get a stay of execution on my unhappy ending, Tier. I'm tired and I just want it to be over.
How much clearer could she have made it?
I heard what I wanted to hear. A hypothetical. Not the promise she was making.
When the shooting starts I begin to get annoyed, but it takes rapid fire and plasmas to make me give a shit. I put up a shield and don't even bother to watch the feeble attempts of the New Peak City security to kill me, I just continue to hold my head in my hands.
As if it were that fucking easy to kill me now, anyway.
"Why are you here, Beast?"
I force myself to look up and find a small child standing inside my shield perimeter with a pretty severe scowl on her face. She's got shoulder-length brown hair, hazel eyes, a pink shirt, pink flipflops, and some scraggly denim shorts.
"I said—"
"I heard, ya, girl. I'm looking for HOUSE. Junco sent me."
Her whole demeanor changes in an instant. "She did? Where is she? Is she OK? Is she in there?" Her little finger points up to the sky where the light Pillar is still shining up towards the heavens.
I nod. "She's in there. But she wanted me to take ya out of here, so go get your stuff and I'll wait for ya." I look back at the Pillar of light and drop my face in my hands one more time, suddenly exhausted.
And then I feel her fingertips pry one hand off my cheek. "She's dead, isn't she?"
I study her face. The face of Junco at about age eight. I know this because I've seen all her photo albums. I looked at them endlessly over the last two years. At first I'd just sit in her room and look. But eventually I moved all her personal things into my own room to keep them close. I almost moved into her room instead, but she was never there long enough to put any sort of mark on it and besides, Kadian was always spying. "She's not capable of dying, HOUSE. So, no. She's not dead. Now go get your stuff."
She stands there pouting. "I have no stuff."
"No? Well, OK then. Can you leave here? Junco didn't seem to be too sure about that."
“I can leave, I just wanted to take New Peak City for myself. My house was so small in comparison and besides, they made a place for an AI here but she hadn’t moved in yet. How could I resist?"
It fucking figures.
It's entirely appropriate that Junco's HOUSE turns out to be a conniving, sneaky little look-a-like who's dead set on getting her way about things. I scoop her up in my arms and we go back into the timeshift together and exit on Gideon's Sargassum terrace.
She squirms in my embrace and I loosen my grip and allow her to slide down. "Wow! Where are we?" She runs to the edge of the terrace, climbs the bottom railing, and leans over. Far over.
My heart thumps a little as I watch her begin to step up on the second railing. "Hey, get the hell off that thing! Put yer feet on the ground, right now!"
She makes no move to obey and I'm crossing the terrace to yank her down when she turns, smiling. "It's far, isn't it? Wow, is this where you live?"
"Very far," I say, grabbing her arm and pulling her off the railing. "And no, this isn't my house, it's Gideon's. I'm looking for him."
She's already run off, squealing her way into the living room yelling something about automated shopping and bathing suits.
It's my turn to lean over the railing. I look down at the black rocks Junco was sitting on when I came here the night of her birthday. I turn my gaze down the beach looking for people, but it's empty. Totally evacuated. They weren't sure what I had planned and since Sargassum is nothing but a floating man-made archipelago, they took the conservative approach and got everyone off the resort before I had a chance to wipe it out with tsunami waves.
I walk back towards the terrace doors and when I reach them, I turn and pace back the other way. I continue this for a while. Just pacing. Thinking. Part of me wants Annun to come back and tell me how Junco's always got a plan. How together she is on the inside. How sneaky she is. That she can pull it off just because she's Junco and she finds a way to pull everything off.
But the rational part sees nothing but the dissipation particles shooting up into the sky like those fountains they have in Vegas.
She's not coming back from this one, Tier. Face it. She's not coming back.
But I've had that thought so often it's becoming cliché. How many times have we sat around and discussed rumors of Junco's demise?
Pretty much once a week since we located her more than four years ago.
She's been dead and gone and then revived and reborn in my mind so many times, I'm not sure what her actual life status is any more.
I look up.
But there's no Halo circling the earth. There's no defense system to protect us. I have no Junco, I have no future that I can see. I have no hope.
There's no hope.
We are fucked.
Chapter Three
"Stop! There!" I bark at Ashur. "See that?" My finger points to the scattered particles of dust that are being ejected from the pillar on screen. "That's it, right there."
Ashur squints his eyes a little, a habit I've despised since we were boys. "Tier, man, I sure hope that's not her. I mean, she's done if it is. She's so fucking screwed up, there's no way she'll pull herself back together. It's never gonna happen. And forget the fact that Inanna can't complete the Halo without Junco, we can't complete the Halo without Junco. We gotta move on to Plan B already. The ships are beyond capacity, and after three weeks in space people are getting restless."
"No. Not yet."
Lucan appears and leans in. "What are we looking at?"
"Junco," Ashur snorts.
My fist crashes against his face and we go down brawling. "I'm sorry, shit!" he laughs.
Lucan pulls us apart like we're kids again. "Enough."
"Ashur, I swear—"
"Sorry. It's a bad joke, I get it."
"I'm hun-gry!"
Ash and I wince together as we help each other up off the floor.
"Who is that?" Lucan asks.
"Junco's HOUSE."
"Hmmm. She does not look like a house, Ashur."
"I'm a girl!" she squeals. That little voice—incessantly asking for things like food, and drinks, and trips to the beach—is really grating on my nerves.
"What are you doing with her, Raubtier?"
"Babysitting for Junco," Ashur answers.
"Would you shut the fuck up? I've had enough of you. I made a promise to get her out of Peaks before the earthquakes."
"What earthquakes?"
"Exactly," Ash answers.
"I'm hun-gry!"
Lucan walks over to her and bends down. "You are not hungry, you're an AI. I'm quite versed in AI engineering and maintenance, and they do not require food. So, why don't you keep quiet over here and watch something stupid on the screen so we don't have to listen to your mouth as it flaps up and down and spews things we do not care about?"
Ash smiles at me. "He's got a way with kids, right? Brings back all those awesome memories of being little in Lucan's house."
"Was he an asshole?" the little voice says.
I turn on my heel, fuming and pointing. "I already warned ya once, girl!"
"Junco never cared if I said asshole."
"Say it again," I growl down at her. "I dare ya."
She thinks about this and makes a face just as Lucan walks back over to us. "If there's nothing new here I'll be leaving. When you ditch the child let me know, I'll come back."
And then he's gone.
"Yeah, well, I'm gonna take off, too," Ash says. "I heard Annun say he heard some warrior in South America say someone saw Gideon on a beach in Australia. I'm gonna go check it out later."
"And Sera?"
He shakes out a no. "Nothing on Sera. She's been missing for, shit… since Junco ported out of your ro
om, I think."
"Yeah. I might've been wrong about that, which means I fed Junco some bunk intel and never got to make it right."
He just shrugs. "Ya said she didn't believe you anyway, so fuck it. She's the most powerful thing in this system, Tier, she can handle herself."
I change the subject because that might be true from our perspective, but not from Junco’s. She was damaged and desperate when she walked into that Pillar. "Where ya going now?"
"Selia." He says it with some hesitation, like he's trying not to hurt my feelings—his girlfriend is hurt, but recovering. While my—whatever she is—is simply gone.
"She better?"
"Yeah, pretty much. She's not allowed out of medical yet, Layla's orders. But I can visit now and she's walking."
I let out a breath. "That's great, Ash. I'm happy for ya." I ask the obvious, since Caleb was the one who brought her in, mostly healed already. "Has she been… marked?"
He nods. "Yeah, but I don't care, really. It just confirms that she's a good person, ya know? She deserves it. It would be beyond selfish to be angry about something like that."
"Yer a good guy, Ashur. Truly, I'm sorry she got hurt."
"I know. And—" He claps me on the back and then pulls me into a hug. "I take it all back, brother. Junco's diabolical, not crazy. She's got to have a plan, so I'm fine with waiting it out, OK?"
I don't even have a chance to nod before he's gone.
"I'm hun—"
"OK!" I bark, cutting off her annoying whine. "I heard ya the first time, girl. What do ya eat, then?"
"I have a name."
I walk over to her and stand there, towering above her. "HOUSE is not a name, it's a thing. So I'm going to call you girl, because that's a thing too, but at least it describes what ya look like right now."
"It is so a name!" The girl actually stomps a foot in defiance.
"Don't." I poke my finger on her forehead several times as I talk. "I'm in a bad mood. What do ya eat, girl?"
She takes her time to consider this and I'm about to lose any extra patience I might have for Junco's stupid HOUSE when she finally answers. "Peanut butter and jelly. That's what I eat."
