Darken the Stars

by Amy A. Bartol

  “Take a nap,” he calls back. “You’re still exhausted.”

  The shutters close over all the glass walls and windows, leaving me in total darkness inside. “Oh, no he did not just lock me in here and tell me to take a nap! What a total knob knocker!” I try to cross the room, stumble into a chair, bruise my knee, walk a step farther, bump into a small table, flail my arms, and stub my toe. “Oww!” I lift my foot and rub it. “Oscil!” I yell in frustration.

  “May I be of assistance?” The fem-bot voice asks from above.

  “I need some light.” Every single light in the place turns on at once. “Let me out of here,” I order.

  “You are not authorized for a change in command mode.”

  “Oh, he’s such a wacker!” I fume. “Oscil, open shutters.”

  “You are not authorized for that command.”

  “Override setting three!”

  “You are not authorized for that command.”

  “What can I do?” I growl.

  “You may utilize the commissary functions. May I suggest a cup of kafcan?”

  “No. What other functions are available to me?” I cross my arms.

  “You have access to climate control.”

  I look around the room. “Do I have access to the fireplace?”

  “Yes,” Oscil responds. “Do you require a fire?”

  I smile. “Why, yes, Oscil. I do require a fire.”

  The fake logs stacked in the fireplace ignite from a gas starter. A pleasant fire snaps in the hearth. Going to a chair, I pull off one of the fluffy moss-colored throw pillows. Taking it to the fire, I shove it in the flames until it catches. Pulling it out, I toss the pillow onto the chair. In moments, the elegant seat is a raging, burning ball of revenge with black smoke curling from it.

  “Fire detected, fire detected,” Oscil repeats the statement in a mantra.

  “Oh, no. Help,” I say in a bored tone. “I must get out. Open the door.”

  “You are not authorized for that command,” Oscil states.

  Adrenaline courses through me as I feel a moment of panic. It’s short-lived, however, because in the next moment, the sprinklers overhead turn on and douse the sitting area with a high-powered spray of water. It doesn’t take more than a few moments for the fire to go out and for me to be completely soaked.

  “Dammit!” I mutter. The smoke cycles out of the small room through an air-filtration system. Cleaner-bots emerge from small slots in a wall. A robot trundles around, sucking up the puddles of water on the floor. Another one hovers over the furniture, sucking the water from the upholstery. A third bot strips away the burned material from the elegant frame of the chair and laboriously begins the task of reupholstering it. “You have got to be kidding me!” I fume in disgust at the efficiency of the place. I look up at the ceiling, but it’s not thatched on the inside—it’s solid wood.

  I strip off my wet shirt and wrap skirt, balling them up, intending to shove them in the trash in anger until I look at how pretty they are. Instead, I shake them both out and lay each of them on a chair by the commissary to dry. In my black, two-piece bathing suit, I walk out of that room in frustration and move into the bedroom. I find a closet and look inside. It has a couple of wetsuits and some male beach attire—a few shirts. I choose a sky-blue shirt that was definitely made for Kyon, because when I put it on, it looks like a dress on me. I don’t care, though. It’s soft and perfect at the moment.

  Closing the closet, I go to the huge bed. It has a white silk coverlet. I climb onto the bed and wrap the blanket around me. I pull one of the fluffy pillows into my arms and hug it for comfort. I close my eyes. I’m exhausted, but I can’t let myself sleep now. I need to plan my escape—our escape—Trey’s and mine. Squandering this time alone would be stupid. I try to concentrate on the future. I just need to go a few minutes ahead of now, but it’s not just “the when” that I need to control, it’s also “the where” and “the what” I want to see that’s important. I need to control the randomness of my gift. Getting lost in time is not going to help me, so I focus on “the who.” Trey.

  My body temperature drops, bringing with it an icy exhale of breath. I lie still on the bed and the conscious part of me lifts out of my body.

  Instead of resisting the force being exerted on me, I obey the sky as it pulls me up into it. Flashing forward over a blur of terrain, I’m not at all surprised when Amster materializes before me. I’m outside of the governor’s mansion once more. The massive statues of brawny warriors tower above me. Matchstick men are converging here—something major is happening for them to amass this many soldiers in Amster.

  I ghost-move up the stairs to their headquarters. The entire first floor is packed with men. They crowd around in one of the cavernous rooms. The Gothic architecture is at odds with the sophisticated graphics and imaging set up to display a small section of a city—one that I’ve never been to before.

  It’s extremely quiet in the room, except for the deep voice of a tall soldier with short, auburn hair and brown eyes. He addresses the crowd of soldiers, pointing out buildings in an unfamiliar three-dimensional cityscape grid. “The optimal positioning is to place the charges here . . . here . . . and here.” He uses his laser pointer to indicate the places he’s discussing on the holographic model. My attention wanes from him—I’m not interested in what they’re planning. I’m only interested in finding Trey. I pass through the bodies of soldiers who are packed close together.

  Someone asks, “How do you propose we get the packages to those positions? Their security is impossible to breach. We’ve been studying it for a few specks and we haven’t found a way in.” A low murmur of discussion passes through the crowd.

  A voice I recognize responds, “You don’t need a way in. In fact, you don’t have to be there at all before it happens.”

  I feel like I might melt into the floor. Trey’s voice has the same effect on me as playing my favorite song: I want to turn it up, get closer, and feel the vibration of it.

  “Who said that?” the redheaded soldier asks as he scans the crowd. The crowd parts and if I had a real heart, it would stop beating.

  Trey comes into view. He doesn’t look good—I mean, he’s still incredibly handsome, but he looks as if he might fall down at any moment. Dark circles haunt his eyes. He still has deep bruises on his left temple and jaw.

  “Trey Allairis,” Trey introduces himself.

  “Rossi Latener,” the redhead replies. “You’re Rafian.”

  “I am,” Trey replies.

  “Welcome. You were saying?”

  “You can deliver the packages with drones.”

  The room erupts in laughter. Wayra pushes soldiers aside to stand next to Trey. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a few days, either. His expression is murderous as his violet-colored eyes glare at the laughing faces of the Amster soldiers. “You hear something funny?” he fumes. The soldiers closest to him stop laughing. It’s probably because he’s huge and menacing, towering over them like an avenging angel. The dark warrior tattoo on his neck makes him look scarier than he really is, or maybe he is scary and I just forgot that because we’re friends.

  Rossi tries to be somewhat diplomatic as he says, “We were just discussing Kalafin’s heightened security. We haven’t been able to get our men past their interlocking matrix here or here”—he points to places on the three-dimensional hologram with a laser pointer—“let alone our drones.”

  “I’m not suggesting you get your men or your drones past their security matrix. I’m saying you won’t need to because we’ll use their drones.”

  Jax comes to stand on the other side of Trey. “Gennet Trey has been hacking into Alameeda drones and taking control of them since the war started. He can infiltrate any mother ship and get you as many of her baby drones as you require.”

  Wayra gets nose to nose with the Amster soldier next to him as he sneers, “Are we funny now?” As the soldier backs away from him, the room explodes with a rumble of voices.


  Trey waits for them to quiet a little before he raises his voice and says, “We’re talking about fully armed drones.” The room falls silent. “The kind of arms that can erase a city from Ethar.”

  Rossi glances to his right. I look in that direction too, and see a dark-haired soldier leaning against the ledge of the console that houses a hologram. He’s so familiar, and yet I can’t remember where I might have met him until he asks, “How soon can you get us those drones?”

  The resonance of his voice cleaves me in two. My whole world shifts on its axis. Right is left and left is wrong. Trey recognizes him too. “You’re Pan Hollowell.”

  “Yes, I am,” my father says. He’s the tallest person in the room. He doesn’t have a single gray hair—he looks as young as Trey does. In fact, they’re strikingly similar. Short dark hair, violet-colored eyes, a military bearing. Although the tattoos on their throats are different shapes, Trey’s are interlocking swirls and Pan’s resemble concentric triangles; they’re both inky-black and intimidating. Pan looks amazingly well for someone who has been dead since I was five.

  Trey straightens to his full height, ignoring the obvious ache it causes to do so. “I can get you the drones as soon as you provide us with a ship and some weapons so we can get your daughter back.”

  “You know my daughter well?”

  “Yes. I love your daughter.”

  “Then you should have left her where I hid her.”

  Cringing, my vision blurs. There’s an aching pull within me to return to my body. I try with all my might to resist it. I don’t want to leave Trey; I want to be his shadow, but something is very wrong. Have I been gone from my body too long today? I wonder.

  Trey explains, “When I found her, Chicago had become a hostile environment for her—she was hunted.”

  Pan crosses his arms over his chest. “We had eyes on the Alameeda in Chicago—Kyon, Forester, Lecto—they wouldn’t have gotten off Earth alive with her. We didn’t anticipate you. Once we put together what happened—your abduction of Kricket—we nearly had you at Naren Falls. If it weren’t for the Comantre Syndics there, you would’ve been in Amster sooner than now.”

  “You had eyes on her on Earth? Whose eyes?”

  Pan looks in my direction. “Giffen has been Kricket’s keeper since her last keeper was killed. How long has it been, Giffen?”

  From behind me, Giffen says, “Almost six floans.” I turn around. Giffen’s eyes are rooted on me—on the spot that I occupy. He knows I’m here. He can sense me.

  Trey glowers at Pan. “How could you leave Kricket behind on Earth? She was a child. She was defenseless. Your keepers were worthless—none of them sheltered her.”

  “They were ordered not to shelter her. She’s stronger for it. Kricket has a destiny. What she learned on Earth will determine how she acts here. Now.”

  “Do you realize that she didn’t even know that she had a sister? She thought Astrid was a doll or toy that she lost when her parents died—when you died, Pan! It didn’t stop her from looking for Astrid. She just didn’t know what she was looking for.”

  Pan glances away, unsettled by the information. “The nepenthe assured us that all of her memories of Astrid would be expunged.”

  “The nepenthe?” Trey asks in confusion.

  “Sanham. He’s the first Alameeda male offspring with the EVS819 gene that I rescued from being exterminated. After I met Arissa, Kricket’s mother, we began our mission to find and shelter as many enhanced males that we could smuggle out of Alameeda alive. Sanham’s gift is instilling forgetfulness. He wipes away memories. He attempted to make Kricket forget us. Unlike with most Etharians, it didn’t work very well on her. She repelled it. She’s always been exceptional.”

  “Why would you do that to her? Why would you try to make her forget everyone she loved?”

  A part of me hopes that he’ll say that he didn’t want me to suffer with my memories of them. “I have two daughters,” Pan says. “I had to protect Astrid in case Kricket was discovered and interrogated. Sanham’s gift worked well enough. She forgot Astrid and Astrid was safe.”

  I feel as if I’ve been stabbed. His betrayal is almost more than I can take.

  Trey’s expression turns ugly. “Do you care about her at all?” he asks with resentment in his voice.

  “Do you?” Pan tosses the question back at him.

  “More than anything,” Trey replies without having to think about it.

  “Then help us deliver the packages to Kalafin. That might help her. The Brotherhood has to have a reason to keep her alive. They have to need her.”

  Darkness is caressing me. My vision is tunneling and I’m losing everything on the periphery. I’m overwhelmed by it—fighting myself to remain. Everything about me wants to return to my body, but my will—my will wants desperately to stay. The only people I care about now are my Cavars: Trey, Jax, and Wayra. Everyone else here can rot for all I care. I need to stay long enough to figure out how to communicate with Trey. I need to make him see me.

  “Time for you to go, fighter,” Giffen whispers to me, as if he doesn’t want anyone else to know that I’m here. “Go back and run with the wolves. Don’t lose. I’m counting on you.” Whatever it is that he can do with the energy of his gift—his telekinesis—he uses it on me. The instant he pushes it in my direction, I’m banished from their presence.

  Returning to my body in this time, I cannot move right away. I’m paralyzed. I breathe in shallow breaths; the first of which are characterized by icy air from my lungs. My skin is a bluish tone and frigid.

  Something explodes outside on the beach. The cottage rattles. Decorative green glass bottles containing sand and shells clatter and fall off the teak shelves. Broken shards and sand settle on the wide-plank teak floors. It grows silent. Kyon is fighting the Strikers already. I haven’t been gone that long, but it must already be dark here. I must’ve come back to a later time. Staying away too long has cost me time.

  Jerking my limbs, I crawl to the side of the bed, but I can’t rise from it. I slip to the floor and crawl on my belly to the bathroom, dragging my legs. Beside the shower, there’s an enormous bathtub made of dark wood that resembles a huge salad bowl. I crawl past it to a vanity made of the same dark wood. Looking up, I pull myself up against the countertop. Using my fingers, I scratch them over the surface. A group of small shelves rise from the teak surface. Among the bottles of lotions, oils and perfumes, combs and brushes, I find what I need. I grasp a pair of tortoiseshell-handled scissors in my fist.

  Sinking down to the floor once more, I roll over on my back, hearing a familiar sound. It’s coming from outside. It sounds like gunfire—the automatic kind. I gather my hair in my fist and put the scissors to it. I cut off huge, blond chunks of it, and it grows back instantly. The circulation returns to my useless legs, my knees no longer ache as much, and I’m able to get to my feet. Panting, I place my hands on the surface of the vanity and gaze at my pale reflection in the round mirror. One thing is clear, if I’d stayed away from my body for much longer, I wouldn’t have survived it.

  A horrendously loud, garbage-can-lid-banging noise pierces the air beside me. I let out an involuntary scream, jumping and shying away from it. Something car-fender-big rams against the storm shutter. Each time it crashes into the metal, I jump. As I back away, another hard jolt pummels the shutter, this time shattering the glass too. Shards of it spew all over the floor.

  Reacting out of fear, I stab the air with the scissors, cutting nothing. Fear bleeds in watercolors through my veins. In the bathroom, someone outside yanks on the metal storm shutter, rattling it like it’s a vending machine that refuses to spit out chips. “Oscil!” I hiss. “Kill intruders!”

  “You are not authorized for that command,” Oscil replies.

  My teeth clench and I growl. I try to weigh my options. If I leap into the future now, I’ll leave my body too vulnerable to whoever is breaking in. I dash to the front room, looking for a place to hide, but another
shriek tumbles from me when some kind of explosion fractures the metal and glass in the front of the hut.

  I turn to run back to the bedroom, but an Alameeda Striker is standing in the doorway to it. His nightmare-blue eyes roam over me. I wish that I had more on than a bathing suit and Kyon’s T-shirt. Another soldier joins him in the bedroom doorway. He’s in a sealskin black aquatic combat uniform. It looks like its made more for swimming than for protection. The soldier who just arrived nudges the first one hard from behind with his shoulder. “She’s not going to hurt you, Valko. Didn’t you read her bio? The only gift she has is a fortune-teller stare.”

  “You go first then, Cree,” Valko offers.

  Cree punches his friend playfully before he strides toward me. Grabbing me by the throat, he picks me up off my feet and raises me up with beastlike strength. He smirks, “See, she’s weak and—”

  I plunge my scissors into his eye. Cree drops me and starts screaming. Blood gushes everywhere as he wrenches the scissors from his head.

  I dash toward the lavare, but Valko lifts me and throws me against the commissary bar. I fall against the countertop. “You’re not weak, are you?” Valko snarls.

  “Oscil! Kafcan!”

  A pot of kafcan rises from the hole in the countertop near me. I grab the urn and smash it into the side of Valko’s head hard enough to knock his brain sideways. Wax-melting-hot, coffee-colored kafcan scalds his skin. Valko groans as his flesh turns bright red. Straightening, he takes a step in my direction. Kyon comes up behind him, clasps his hand to Valko’s forehead, and twists. Valko’s neck breaks in one smooth jerk.

  As the Striker’s body falls on the floor, Kyon moves on to Cree, who won’t stop screaming, and slits his throat. Cree makes a gurgling sound and then falls silent.

  Kyon isn’t breathing hard at all, while I can’t seem to catch mine. He picks up the scissors that I used on Cree. My knees weaken. I can’t move. Trembling with full-body quakes, I watch numbly as Kyon goes to the sink beside me. He runs the scissors under water, washing away the blood. Drying them off, he brings them back to me. I take them from his palm. Clutching them in my fist, I hold them to me.