Their Fractured Light

by Amie Kaufman

  “We’ll keep you safe,” I say quietly. “I promise. Trust me with this.” I just need her to stick with me, and I can work this out. Maybe, when all of this is over, I won’t need the Knave anymore. But before I let him fade away, I’ll find whoever hurt her, and I’ll hurt them more.

  Sofia steadies herself with a slow breath, turning her hand under mine until it’s palm-up, and she can twine our fingers together. A little more controlled, now. “It’s been a really, really long time since I wasn’t alone,” she whispers, and when I look across, our eyes meet. “I’ve missed that feeling.”

  Her gaze goes straight to my heart. I’ve missed it too. And there’s something about this girl—so utterly strong, so vulnerable, so implacable in her purpose, but so alone—she brings all my best intentions undone.

  She keeps her gaze on me as I set aside my meal, then take hers and her bottle, setting them aside as well. She swallows as I lean in to press my forehead to hers, curving my hand around the back of her neck, fingertips finding bare skin.

  Everything between us—the ones we love who died, the way our hands linked together as we ran from Mae’s betrayal, the mad flight from LaRoux Headquarters, the taxi driver shouting after us, the tortured climb up the elevator shaft, that one perfect waltz—all those moments whirl through my head and coalesce into one instant of pure instinct.

  All the things I should say—I’m the Knave, you don’t know who my allies are, I’m falling for you—are swept aside.

  Her breath catches, and mine sticks in my throat, and then we’re surging together, rising to our knees so she can reach up to twine her arms around my neck, and I can duck my head to find her mouth, and I lose myself in her.

  It’s hours later when Sofia stirs and murmurs in her sleep—that’s what wakes me. Our nest is lit only by the dim glow of my screen nearby, and I carefully ease up onto one elbow to check the time. Still a few hours until dawn.

  When I look back, she’s curled up in a ball, her forehead lined, some dream causing her to push out a hand as though to defend herself. I’ve seen it over and over the last few days, but it strikes me anew. Even in her sleep, she doesn’t feel safe.

  Carefully I lift the blanket, pulling it up over her where she’s pushed it off. It’s enough to settle her most times, and it works this time, too. “You’re going to wake up looking like a question mark,” I murmur, and she tucks herself up into a smaller ball, breath slowing. “A small, surprisingly beautiful que—I sound like an idiot. And I’m talking to myself.”

  I’m smiling, too—also like an idiot. I have to get it together before she wakes up and sees me like this.

  I’m easing down to lie beside her once more, and let her skin warm mine, when I see it.

  Her outflung arm is bare, and where there’s always been perfect skin before, now there’s smudged makeup concealing a hint of some design below showing through. Is it a tattoo? Or—wait. It’s a genetag. I looked for one of these on her arm that first night in Kristina’s apartment, when I realized Sofia must be from Avon. I didn’t see it then, and now I can tell why. She’s done a good job hiding it. I haven’t seen one on an actual person before—they’re used by colonies that don’t have planetary status yet, taking the place of a proper government ID. And most people from those planets never have the money to travel anywhere I’d meet them. Or anywhere at all. There’s a booming black market for selling the genetag sequences to fully fledged citizens who want to operate under the radar—I’ve got half a dozen of them myself. They’re the kinds of IDs people like Towers use when trying to disappear. But this one’s actually hers—actually tattooed into her skin.

  I pull in the screen so I can see better by its dim glow, and reach out without thinking, gently brushing at the smudge with my thumb. A prickling up and down the back of my neck tells me I shouldn’t be doing this, but I can’t resist the chance to find out something about this girl who’s taken over my life. The chance, perhaps, to know who she is—to know why someone might be running her down, using my name. The digital world is mine, not hers.

  If I understand who I’m defending her from, I know it’s a fight I can win.

  I repeat it to myself, as if that’ll help me believe it’s the only reason I’m doing this.

  The tattoo’s in a spiral design, the concealer blocking out the twist of the black lines. The number running along their curve slowly becomes visible as I drag the pad of my thumb along it. My breath stops, chest squeezed tight as the numbers register.

  I’ve seen these numbers before.

  Oh, no.

  I roll onto my front to prop up on my elbows, bringing my lapscreen properly to life. I pull up my Towers subprogram, and there it is. My mystery ID. The war orphan who left Avon—the person whose ID Commander Towers used to make her escape. The one who can’t possibly exist, who was too unlikely. The one I…

  Sofia’s voice comes back to me. He’s hunting me. For almost a year now he’s been following me.…Every time I think I’m safe, every time I think I’ve lost him this time, there he is.

  There I am.

  My hands are shaking. A few keystrokes bring her story to life, files and pictures filling my screen. I could have seen this all along. I could have looked and found her there, a real girl. But I was so damn arrogant, so sure Towers deserved to suffer, so sure that I was smart enough to track down LaRoux’s dirty secrets—so determined to do it at any price.

  At any price. As though no price could be too high.

  Every time I imagined Towers running, scrambling for safety, every time I smirked in the dark at tipping her out of another hiding place, sending her heart racing…it was this girl sleeping beside me with her lips still curved to a faint smile. It was this girl I’m crazy about. Running scared, her life destroyed by the shadow of the Knave coming after her, for reasons she couldn’t understand. Towers was probably on her quiet farm all this time, never the LaRoux conspirator I imagined, and Sofia was sacrificed in her place. I was her monster all along, and she’s run straight into my arms.

  I can’t pinpoint the moment when I became this thing, and I don’t know how I managed to blind myself so completely. LaRoux killed my brother, and he set me on a path I told myself was noble. That it was all right to hurt the ones that deserved it, as long as I was a good guy the rest of the time. That it was okay to be the hound, as long as I only chased deserving quarry.

  How can I convince Sofia I was never hunting her, never meant to hurt her? Will she believe me, when I say all her fear was for nothing?

  Will she forgive me?

  How can I even tell her?

  I push the screen away, easing down beside her once more as a sliver of fear shoots up my spine. I can’t wake her up yet. Not until I know what to say. Not until I know how to say it. I’ll find the words to make her understand I never meant to hurt her, never meant to scare her. I’ll show her I only ever chased her because I was looking for something that might hurt LaRoux Industries, not her. I was chasing down a woman I believed did deserve it, who held secrets—except if Antje Towers never used Sofia’s ID to run, then she did what she promised all along. She waited for her discharge and went to live out her life in quiet, in peace, away from technology. Away from the kind of world that holds LaRoux…and people like me.

  I lie there beside Sofia in the dark, turning over explanations in my head, planning speeches, honing my words so the first few will stop her long enough to hear me out. She has to hear me—even if she never forgives me, she has to believe that the Knave isn’t coming for her anymore. She has to know that she’s safe from me, if nothing else. My thoughts run in tighter and tighter circles, until I fall into a restless sleep.

  When I wake, the blankets beside me are cold, and Sofia’s gone. I scramble upright, my heart rate accelerating as I swing around to look for her, clambering to my knees.

  She stands nearby, and she’s dressed, and she’s holding my lapscreen.

  I forgot to close it down before I fell asleep.

&nb
sp; Lit ghostly pale by its light, she’s letting it dangle from one hand, so I can see the dossier I pulled up using her genetag number. I see her ID picture, her real ID picture. I see the folder of files on her father; criminal records, medical reports, employment records. Autopsy.

  My heart clenches, mind shutting down. I have to find an excuse, tell her the truth, say something. But I just freeze.

  Then her gaze drops, and I see what lies at her feet. My book. My ancient, priceless copy of Alice in Wonderland. My lucky charm, my token from the life I used to live. It lies open, and there, sitting on top of it, is the final nail in my coffin. A single playing card, from the old-fashioned deck my brother and I used to use.

  My heart’s hammering. My mouth is dry.

  It’s the jack of hearts.

  The knave.

  “Was all this just a game?” I expected coldness, emptiness—instead Sofia’s voice is bright and hot with fear, with betrayal. In this moment she can’t put up a front. “Was any of it real?”

  My thoughts are still stuck, the torrent of everything I should say building up like water behind a dam. “Sofia—” I stammer.

  With that, she’s moving, dropping the lapscreen, backing away from me toward the door.

  I want to reach out and grab her, make her stay, make her listen. If I could just make her listen. But I can’t force her to stay. I can’t chase her, after all of this. Not anymore. “Please wait,” I manage instead. “Please—let me—”

  She pauses in the doorway just long enough to glance back at me. “You come looking for me again,” she says tightly, “and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  I stare at her from where I kneel, my words lost.

  And then she’s gone.

  Their words fly through our world like waves, and we learn to catch hold of them and ride the messages they send to one another. The casualty letters from their wars are easiest to follow, leading us to grief and anger, emotions so strong we can cling to them and experience their world just a breath longer, the strength of their feelings tangible through the invisible walls between our universe and theirs.

  There is nothing remarkable about the one that leads us to a little cottage surrounded by flowers. There is no reason to linger, nothing that should make us pause. These humans’ grief is no different from that of any other we have tasted.

  And yet we find we can stay, drawn inward, pulled through the fields and up the hilltops and to a tree in whose branches huddles a little boy, clutching a notebook to his chest. He keeps his words on paper, so we cannot read them through their hypernet, but for just an instant we can feel them in his soul.

  Then the poetry fades away, and we’re left waiting for the next wave of words to carry us closer to understanding.

  JUST KEEP MOVING.

  The words echo over and over in my mind, drowning out my other thoughts, keeping time with my footsteps. The background patchwork of noise from street vendors and traffic fades into a dull, throbbing hum beneath the roaring in my ears. I want to run, to put as much distance between me and the Knave of Hearts as I can—but running draws too much attention. I can’t look over my shoulder, I can’t duck low. I have to walk like I belong here. Pilfer a hat from this newsstand, a pair of smog glasses from that one, hide my face from any cameras LRI might be monitoring with facial recognition. I have to look like I haven’t a care in the world. If it weren’t for the steady staccato of words marching through my head like a drumbeat, I’m not sure I could.

  First I need to get to my old apartment before he does. Get the gun, get my father’s picture. If I don’t get them now, I can never risk it again. I can’t think past today to the Daedalus—there is no Daedalus anymore, not with Gideon—but I have to get my things. It’s all I know. And after that, to my ID guy in the southern district for a new name, a new ident chip. Gideon—the Knave—knows Alexis. And he knows Bianca Reine—the White Queen. God, he gave me that name. I’m an idiot.

  And, worst of all, he knows Sofia.

  I let him kiss me. I let him touch me. I let him—my eyes burn, behind the protective sheen of my smog glasses. I let myself think that maybe I wasn’t alone after all, that maybe I didn’t have to stay alone. That maybe my life wasn’t just going to be hatred and grief and revenge. And as a result, I let myself run straight into the arms of the person who turned the last year of my life into a nightmare. Heartbreak and sorrow and hatred tangle as they sweep across my body, making me shudder, making me want to find a shower, a real shower with water like they don’t have down here, and stand there for hours, for days, until I’ve washed away every skin cell that ever touched the Knave of Hearts.

  Even by the time I reach the elevator to the other levels of the city, my skin hasn’t stopped crawling. The smog fades, gives way to sunlight, to clarity, and I barely notice. I remain on foot, remembering how easily the Knave tracked me when I was in LaRoux’s custody. My lungs ache—no, my heart aches.

  Just keep moving.

  My mind grabs only snapshots of the minutes, the hours, that follow. I know I have to focus, I know I can’t fall apart. Not yet. But the only fragments that stick with me are the ones that hurt, the ones that penetrate the thickening fog of panic. My fingernails catching on the loose brick in the alley where I keep my emergency glove, the key to Kristina’s apartment. My legs aching and heavy as I sneak past the doorman in my old building while his head’s turned. My hands shaking so much that I almost can’t use the key-coded glove to send the elevator to the penthouse suite. My eyes blurring and stinging as I scramble through the bedroom in search of the gun, praying LaRoux’s heavies didn’t return for it. The surging of my heart in my throat when I find it hidden beneath the duvet I pulled off the bed during my struggle. The line of fire along my index finger as I smash the glass of the picture frame concealing the drawing of my father. The sick nausea in my belly as I ransack Kristina’s jewelry box, grabbing the strings of diamonds and pearls I never touched in the three months I lived here. The stabbing of my heart as I wait for the elevator back down, dread rising with each beat that when the doors open, Gideon’s face will be there on the other side.

  This time when I stumble back across the lobby I don’t bother to look at the doorman. I’m never coming back here again. It doesn’t matter if I look like I’m falling apart.

  The sunlight feels like knives when the revolving doors spit me back out onto the street. My eyes are burning still, and when I bump into a couple as I head for the sidewalk, they take one look at me and draw away in a hurry. I glance at the glass-fronted doors and see red-rimmed eyes, a streak of crimson where I must have rubbed my bleeding hand across my face, hair wild. I have to get off the upper level—I can’t fit in here right now. I shove my stolen hat back onto my head, scrubbing my hand against my shirt.

  I start retracing my steps toward the elevator but change my mind and head for the one in the opposite direction. It’s farther away, but it’s too much of a risk to use the one I used before, the one I took with Gideon. Too late I remember the burner palm pad he gave me, still in my pocket. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Even I could track someone on a GPS-enabled device like this. I’m not thinking. I need to think.

  A messenger’s waiting for the crossing signal at the end of the sidewalk, checking his own palm pad, his electrobike humming underneath him. I force my shaking hands to still long enough for me to slip the burner phone into the side pocket of the bag slung round his body.

  Let Gideon—the Knave—track the messenger all around the city while I run. While I disappear.

  When the heat and smog of the undercity wrap around me again, it’s like the comforting arms of a friend welcoming me home. Suddenly I remember why I hid here my first month or two on Corinth. It wasn’t just lack of funds. Here, despite the blood on my face, the panic in my movements, nobody looks twice at me.

  It’ll be getting dark up above, and down here the lanterns are being lit. It’s getting harder to keep moving. I have to find a place to stop.

&nb
sp; I can’t pay for a room somewhere without accessing my accounts, which he’s got to be tracking—using the stolen jewelry to buy my way in would throw up red flags in a respectable place and paint a target on my back in the rest. There are a number of free hostels and shelters here that don’t require ident verification or retinal scans to access, but Gideon will be searching those. He’ll know I’m too smart to use either the Alexis ident chip or Bianca’s, and he’ll assume I’ll go somewhere I can be anonymous. So I head for one of the police-monitored stations. It’d be mad to go to a place where the identities of all residents and tenants immediately go into the government system—even more easily accessed by a skilled hacker than the privately owned hostel systems.

  Normally I’d hang around until I found a likely target to sneak me in—someone just desperate enough to be taken in by big eyes and a smile—but I can’t remember how to do it, how to gauge people. The faces that I pass are alien, their expressions written in a language I don’t know how to read anymore. So instead I head around back and wait until the fire exit opens a crack—a girl with a shaved head and fluorescent yellow earrings ducks out of it to smoke, wedging a platform boot in the doorway to keep herself from getting locked out.

  I abandon everything and just shove a string of pearls into her hand. “I need to get in,” I rasp. “Quietly.” She stares at the pearls, then at me. She doesn’t know if they’re real. Any second she’s going to tell me to go screw myself and slam the door in my face.

  But instead she licks the tip of the joint to extinguish it and stuffs both it and the pearls down the front of her shirt, then kicks the door open. She doesn’t say anything, though her eyes stick to me as I move past her. When I look over my shoulder, she’s already gone, shoulders hunched as she half jogs up the alley to vanish into the crowds beyond.

  Inside, the gloom is as thick as in the alley outside. Steel-framed bunk beds line the room, topped by bare mattresses. A few heads lift when I come in, but if anyone notices I’m not the girl who left, they say nothing. That’s why I chose this place. Half of these people are felons checking in for parole, and the other half are headed that way in a few years. They don’t care who they sleep next to. The occupancy scans that sweep by every half hour or so don’t check IDs, as long as the number of people in the rooms matches the number of people who went through check-in.