Their Fractured Light

by Amie Kaufman

  I suck in a slow breath, let it out. “Kumiko, it’s me—”

  “You got a name, me?” she snaps, hefting her gun. She does something that makes a clicking sound, and I’m pretty sure it’s the safety coming off.

  Oh, hell. “The Knave,” I say, arms twitching with the urge to drop them, protect myself. “The Knave of Hearts.”

  Her mouth falls open. “Password,” she snaps, recovering, and for a moment I’m lost. Password? My mind scrambles, flailing for some memory to attach that word to, and just as I’m starting to panic, there it is. When I set up the forum I host for her troop, we chose a password together that would allow either of us to crash it, in the event they were about to be discovered. I mostly thought I was catering to her paranoia, back then. “Trodaire,” I stammer.

  Slowly, she lowers her weapon. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “That’s an incredibly long story,” I start. “I’m here with…” I pause, not sure what to say. Friends? That’s a stretch.

  But she’s not listening. In fact, she’s staring past me at the doorway of the shuttle. “Captain?” Kumiko’s voice has dropped, uncertain, softer now. “Captain Chase?” She reaches up to pull her kerchief down, revealing the lower half of her face.

  Jubilee Chase walks slowly down the steps to stand by my side, her gun lowering. I hold still, silently willing Kumiko not to freak out and start firing.

  But it turns out I don’t need to worry, because Kumiko’s just staring at Jubilee like she’s seen a ghost, shaking her head slowly.

  And Jubilee just stares right back. “Corporal Mori? What the hell are you doing here?”

  We watch them grow. The three of us are alone, and we do not know if the others can see what we see, but we press on with our mission, seek the answer to our question.

  The girl whose dreams so fascinated us is a soldier now, and though she is younger than the others and smaller, she trains harder than any of them. Already she’s showing the steel that will draw her so to the poet. A change of a few symbols on a military document flying through our universe sends her to serve with him.

  They will become friends. She will learn what she needs from him, but his path is not with her. She will stay here, with us, on the gray world.

  And we will protect her.

  I WAKE FROM DREAMS OF fire and pain, lurching upright with a strangled noise, heart pounding. Someone’s there immediately, a warm hand on my shoulder, a voice in my ear, quiet, urging me to lie back down.

  “Gideon?” I croak, trying to blink away dreams and sleep.

  “He’s fine, he’s with Mori and Jubilee.” I blink again and suddenly Flynn’s face swims into focus. “Stay put, Sof, you’re going to be groggy for a while still.”

  I let him push me back down onto what seems to be a military cot, and take a shaking breath. I can’t feel my hand, and after a stab of fear I look down—it’s still there, just swathed in a cocoon of bandages and numb from the shoulder down. We’re in a large, dim room, the light casting oddly against bare cement walls. There are a few people here and there, whose faces I don’t recognize; they’re huddled together, expressions drawn and fearful, some faces tearstained, some wooden. A couple of them are hunched over a palm pad, trying—and failing, it seems from their frustration—to find a signal.

  “Where are we?” I whisper.

  “Mori’s base. Kumiko Mori. Gideon’s friend. She also happened to serve on Avon with Jubilee.”

  I stare at him, trying to make my mind work through the thick, impenetrable fog cocooning my thoughts. “Just happened to…?”

  “She’s a Fury soldier,” he replies, voice quiet. “She and the others here are all soldiers who were once on Avon and reassigned after the whispers there made them snap. From what she tells me, they’ve been gathering here, doing exactly what we’ve been doing—trying to figure out how to take LaRoux down.”

  None of the overhead lights are on—all I can see are a couple LED flashlights and an emergency lantern.

  “Why…What’s with all the…” But I can’t remember the words I need, can’t make my lips shape them.

  Flynn follows my gaze to the emergency lantern on a packing crate next to my cot. His eyes flick back toward mine. “How much do you remember? We had to put you under to treat your hand. We didn’t have a choice, you kept—” He swallows, his face grim and eyes a little wild. “We had to knock you out.”

  I swallow, my voice raw and shredded like I’ve been shouting. Or screaming. I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath. “I remember the Daedalus.”

  Flynn finds the fingers of my good hand and wraps his around them, squeezing. “The impact knocked out power for kilometers, at least. Communications are down, HV networks, everything. Gideon can’t even get to the hypernet, though that’s what he and Mori are trying to do now.”

  “What about…” But my voice sticks when my memory conjures up the image of the LaRoux heiress, smiling at us with those black eyes. I can’t even make myself say her name. “L-L-LaRoux? What about LaRoux?”

  “We don’t know. We don’t know much of anything yet.”

  I suck in another breath and then try to sit up again, pushing Flynn’s arm away when he moves to stop me. “Flynn, I tried to—” My voice cracks. “LaRoux was standing right there. I couldn’t let him live. I couldn’t—”

  “Shh, I know.” Flynn looks older, more than he should after only one year. The green eyes are the same, and the dark wavy hair. And yet, he seems somehow more real than he was before, solid, warm—and the pain in his gaze, the sympathy, is as deep as it ever was. “I know, Sof.”

  “This is my fault,” I whisper, too numb and too groggy to cry. “If I hadn’t—”

  “None of that,” Flynn interjects. “From what we got out of Tarver, this has been a long time coming. That whisper’s been trying to reach Lilac ever since she and Tarver were stranded on that planet together. I think the pain just interrupted her concentration—it would’ve gotten her eventually anyway.”

  But it wouldn’t have been onboard the Daedalus. The thousands of people, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands by now—they would be alive if I hadn’t tried to murder Roderick LaRoux.

  “I want to see Gideon,” I hear myself saying, to my surprise. “Is he…”

  But before I can finish the question, Jubilee’s striding in through one of the doorways, with Gideon and a woman with short black hair and a kerchief around her neck. Kumiko, my brain supplies. Corporal Mori. The trodaire who shot Garret O’Reilly in the street and broke the ceasefire. But then, my father killed far more than one man because of LaRoux’s Fury, and his explosion started a war. My thoughts are so tangled with anger and grief that I don’t know what to think, looking at the ex-soldier next to Captain Chase.

  Gideon veers off from their path, his feet curving toward my cot before he lifts his head and sees me sitting up—his steps falter for a second, then quicken as he jogs over. Flynn glances at me, the corner of his mouth quirking as he pulls back, making room for Gideon to crouch down beside me.

  “Hey, Dimples.” There’s visible relief in his eyes, in his voice—and yet, still, something reserved, held back. There’s a war going on behind the look he gives me, his hand twitching as though he’d like to reach for me but can’t. This isn’t you, he’d said, while I pointed a gun at LaRoux. I know you.

  “Hey,” I whisper back. You never knew me.

  I didn’t think I’d ever have to face him after he found out I was never working with him to expose LRI, that I was only ever trying to kill Roderick LaRoux. I thought I’d be dead.

  And for the tiniest moment, I wish I was.

  Jubilee, standing by Kumiko some distance away, clears her throat. “We’ve got a net connection,” she announces gently, breaking the silence between Gideon and me. “Flynn—you should come see this.”

  “I’m coming too,” I say, before anyone has a chance to leave me in the cot.

  Gideon glances at Flynn, who no doubt
has a lot more experience with field medicine than he does—and Flynn just shakes his head. “I gave up telling her what to do when we were kids,” he says, stepping back toward me and offering me a hand.

  Gideon backs up a step, glancing from me to him, then turns to rejoin Jubilee and Mori as they head into the room next door. Whatever they used to knock me out is still with me—my steps feel rubbery and slow, my muscles not responding right to the commands from my brain. Flynn’s forced to duck down so I can put an arm around his shoulder as we move next door.

  “Luckily, Mori’s been siphoning off surplus military supplies,” he murmurs as we walk. “She’s got a dermal regenerator. Your hand should be fine in a day or two—probably won’t even have scars.”

  I hate myself for the tang of relief that surges through me—I should bear the pain, the scars, as reminders of what I tried to do. Of what I did do. Of the hundreds of thousands of people in this city dead now, because of me.

  “Whoops, hey…” Flynn’s arms tighten around me as I sag, the medication threatening to rob me of consciousness.

  “I’m fine,” I reply though gritted teeth, getting my feet back under me. As much as I try to focus, somewhere at the back of my mind, I keep seeing Lilac cry out and fall, keep seeing the blood on her arm, keep seeing the inky darkness bleed into her gaze as she lay on the floor.

  The doorway leads to a smaller room, maybe intended to be an individual’s office, with windows on two of the walls. Though they look out only at the buildings next door, the air is hazy and the light a vivid red-orange that makes my heart constrict. I’ve seen too many things on fire not to know what this is. Corinth is burning.

  There’s only one other person in the room, and as the glow lights his face, my heart shrivels the rest of the way. It’s Tarver, sunken into a folding chair, eyes fixed out the window. He doesn’t look over when we enter.

  Flynn finds a chair for me, hastily depositing me into it and then heading for Jubilee. He glances from her to the ex-soldier by the window. “Is he…”

  Jubilee’s expression flickers, and I’m surprised by the depth of emotion I see there, in this face that was always so stony, so implacable, on Avon. “He won’t talk to me,” she murmurs back. “He’s—” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Flynn doesn’t answer, instead reaching out to take Jubilee’s hand and draw her close, pressing his forehead to hers. I find myself staring at them as her fingers twine through his, the unlikely sight of Flynn embracing the most notorious soldier we’ve ever had on our part of Avon striking me all but senseless. I knew he had feelings for her, but…

  “I can’t help him.” Her voice is barely audible.

  “One step at a time,” Flynn replies, with the same patient determination that saw him through the years after his sister was killed.

  My gaze slides sideways, finding Gideon—but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are on Tarver, by the window. And far from showing the same bitter dislike I’d seen onboard the Daedalus, when he spoke of Tarver having replaced his brother, his face holds only grief now. As though he shares some of what’s rendered Tarver Merendsen all but catatonic.

  As I watch, he sucks in a deep breath, visibly pulling himself together. “We’ve got a signal,” he says, voice bracing as he pulls out a palm pad and crosses to a battered table not far from the window. “Most of the news sites haven’t posted anything local since before the crash, and we’ve got to assume that those headquarters that weren’t hit are still trying to find power.”

  “But some have?” Flynn lifts his head, eyes tracking Gideon as he sets the palm pad down on the table, setting up the holo-projection interface.

  Gideon nods, not answering until after the palm pad’s screen pops up to life, hovering just above the table where we can all see it. “Pictures of the destruction, a couple of the crash itself from people whose devices synced with the cloud before they—” He stops, lips twisting, and doesn’t finish the sentence. “I think this site’s got a live feed running.”

  He makes a few gestures, navigating through a few different sites until he finds a streaming video. The images spring to life, accompanied by the tinny audio from the palm pad’s speakers.

  “…from the different reports we’re getting, but we can confirm that the estimated death toll has now increased to a hundred and fifty thousand—that’s a hundred and fifty thousand estimated casualties of the crash.” The image shifts from an aerial view of smoke and flames to a woman’s face, drawn and white underneath her makeup. “If you’re just joining us, this is breaking news coverage reporting that the Daedalus orbital museum, in the middle of its opening night gala, has fallen from its orbit and crashed into the surface of Corinth. The ship and pieces of wreckage have caused massive damage to at least three city sectors, and it’s unknown whether there are any…”

  She trails off, eyes going distant as she presses a hand to her ear. “Okay,” she says, voice shaking. “Okay, I’m getting reports now that several diplomatic shuttles—four or maybe five—were seen leaving the Daedalus before it hit the atmosphere. We’re hearing that President Muñoz was evacuated and taken to an undisclosed location as a security measure, where she will remain until the extent of the threat is established. It’s unclear who’s making calls within the government at this time. We do not have confirmation as to who was onboard any of the other shuttles, or whether the ship’s creator, tech magnate Roderick LaRoux, was among the survivors.”

  I glance over at Tarver, but I can’t tell if he’s even listening to the report. He hasn’t taken his eyes off the window.

  The reporter takes a breath and then continues, clearly fighting to keep her calm and do her job. “Roderick LaRoux, founder and CEO of LaRoux Industries, is confirmed to have been aboard the Daedalus shortly before the crash, along with daughter Lilac LaRoux and future son-in-law Major Tarver Merendsen. It’s unknown whether the Icarus survivors have—” The reporter stops, her haunted eyes staring at the camera for a moment. “Their current whereabouts and conditions are unknown.”

  The image flashes back to that aerial shot, a slowly shifting panorama of destruction—billowing clouds of smoke obscure much of the sector, those buildings not leveled by the shock wave still on fire despite the hordes of firefighting drones swarming the scene. The reporter starts summarizing events again, and with a jerk of his wrist, Gideon mutes the feed and then drops his head into his hands.

  Jubilee’s eyes are rimmed in red as she watches the footage, her face as haunted as the reporter’s had been—it’s like she’s watching a memory, a ghost. Flynn’s arm tightens around her, and she clears her throat. “We have to assume she survived, and that she’s not done.” Her gaze starts to swivel toward Tarver, by the window, but she stops herself with a visible effort. “Which means we have to stop her.”

  “She tore the Daedalus out of the sky with a single thought.” Gideon lifts his head from his hands, numbness creeping in to buffer the shock of the past few hours. “How do you fight something like that?”

  Jubilee’s eyes go to Flynn’s. “The same way we’ve been fighting the impossible all along. Bit by bit. All of us, together.”

  Something about the footage grabs my eye, and I rise on wobbly legs from my chair so I can look more closely. Flynn takes a step toward me but I wave him off, wishing I could peel back the layers of smoke and haze concealing the city in the projection. Then a sliver of green shows through, and I know what it is—a crescent-shaped courtyard.

  “That’s LaRoux Industries,” I whisper, staring at the footage.

  “What?” Flynn’s voice is sharp.

  “These images, they’re from LRI Headquarters—or where it used to be. See, there—that block, that’s where the Applied Sciences division was.” It’s only rubble now, but as the smoke shifts, we get a glimpse of something that should be impossible—at least one structure still standing, amid the pieces of wreckage from ship and building alike. I know the area by heart, after a year spent resea
rching ways to infiltrate it, and I know it even on fire. My mind’s scrambling, trying to understand. “She crashed the Daedalus into LaRoux Industries Headquarters.”

  The feed cuts back to a shot of the reporter, whose wild-eyed gaze—from someone used to being stoic in the face of galaxy-rocking news—makes me want to run and hide. “Breaking news—our reporter on the ground has located a pocket of survivors at the heart of the crash site, including LaRoux Industries CEO Roderick LaRoux and his daughter, Lilac LaRoux. There is no sign of her fiancé. We’ll go now to the scene.”

  The feed cuts to two-dimensional footage, projected flat like a screen from the palm pad. The shot is shaky, like it’s being filmed from a handheld device, probably not too different from the one Gideon’s using to show us the feed. It’s dark, the scene lit only by generator-powered floodlights. But despite the nausea-inducing sway of the camera, despite the throngs of people milling here and there, despite the bloodied injuries in the background, all of us are staring at what’s in the foreground.

  It’s Monsieur LaRoux, without a scratch, and at his side, her arm through his, leaning close as though taking comfort from her father’s presence, is Lilac.

  And her eyes are blue.

  Jubilee gasps aloud, leaning closer as though she might magnify the image. “She’s—she’s herself? Look at her eyes.”

  “She couldn’t be—she’d be trying to find Tarver.…” Flynn’s always been good at debate, and though he sounds certain, his eyes are troubled. “There’s no way she stands by that man if she’s not being controlled.”

  We all start talking at once, even Mori, trying to figure out what’s going on.