by Tessa Elwood
“I know.” Blood bright and lost between tears I can’t stop. “I’m sorry.”
Eagle doesn’t move.
I press my fisted hands to my forehead, and order my eyes clear. When I finally look up, Eagle is still there.
He holds out his hand.
And I take it.
EAGLE WON’T LISTEN. WE COMB THE BASE FOR FUEL-FILLED, nonchipped wings that don’t exist, and he still won’t listen. He keeps pointing out how the flightwings blew up.
Like he gets to decide.
He sprawls across the bed, hasn’t moved his head since it hit the pillow. Bare feet dangling, arm brushing the dipped sheets where I was when he laid down.
Where I won’t be when he wakes up.
I lean over the mattress on tiptoe, lay his digislate near his head. A note will pop up as soon as he turns it on, saying that I’m with Wren and he should go home.
Wren’s wing should still fly. It’s not big enough to haul supplies, and she only took it out twice, postchipping. It’ll get me to Malsa. It’s not far, only a couple planets over.
I slip his jacket off the hook and slide it over my shoulders. With the hood up, no one will know me.
With the hood up, I can close my eyes and breathe him in.
BLOOD
I’M A GHOST. I FLOAT UNCHALLENGED PAST THE HARRIED flight coordinator who isn’t Casser and doesn’t know my voice. Coast into the medicenter’s docking bay, despite the myriad flashing gauges. Don’t crash. Drift into the stormy gray of the coma ward. Nara rushes by checking her digislate, Gregor pushes his cart between rooms, and Kelie argues into central reception’s deskcom.
I approach Wren’s door by stages, wait for an unwatched moment, then scan my hand and slip inside. Gently close it behind me. Lean my forehead against the door.
Eagle’s probably up by now. Reading the note. Flying home.
I exhale everything in me. “Hey, Wren.”
“Asa.”
My heart hits the ceiling as my feet leave the floor.
Dad. Messy, actually messy with bunched sleeves and dark circles under his eyes, like the universe disappeared and left him behind.
And took Wren with it.
“No!” I run to the bed, hood falling back as I grab her slack fingers with one hand and press the other to her heart. “No, please, no. Dad? Is she?”
But her chest rises. The monitor beeps. Her limp fingers aren’t frozen or soulless, just chilled from being too long above the blankets.
My head drops as my arms stretch, locked over her hand and heart.
“Okay. It’s okay. You have to stick with me,” I say for her or Dad or both. “I’ve been looking up specialists in Westlet, and you have to stick with me until I can figure it out.”
Dad fixates on my blonde head, but says only, “Give me your hand.”
I reach out automatically. He turns it palm up and pushes up my sleeve. Places a flat black circle on my wrist. It feels like metal. And writhes. I jerk, but Dad holds fast as the disc morphs into two expanding bands that snap around my wrist.
I’ve never seen a retrieval wristlet up close, though the Enforcers on base always carried them. A tracker for those awaiting judgment, it incapacitates if tampered with or if the timer runs out before removal.
The embedded digiscreen flashes once, twice, then projects a small holorecord onto my palm.
The countdown.
The numbers fuzz at the edges. “A retrieval wristlet?” I ask.
“I’ve guaranteed your appearance. The wristlet shows when and where. I’ll send a transport. Until then, you can stay here.”
It takes forever to lift my head. To meet Dad’s eyes.
He knew I’d come. That’s why he’s here.
“You said I couldn’t be tested.”
“I said I would handle it, and now I have no options.” He cuts himself off, then adds a careful, “Apparently, your mother fears for your life. Due to your disappearance, it is only natural that I intend to slit your throat and incinerate your body so the treaty can never be disproved.”
“That’s—nobody would believe that!”
“It’s your mother.” He moves around the bed, toward the door. “Where do you think you get your ‘stories’ from?”
Not harsh or grated or even disappointed. Only fact.
I wind my fingers through Wren’s. She doesn’t grip back. Behind me, the door opens.
“I wouldn’t worry over much, Dad,” I say, just loud enough to hear. “You never believe mine.”
Only the monitor answers. Four beeps, five.
And the door clicks shut behind him.
“HOW COULD YOU BE SO STUPID?” EMMIE’S BOOTED heels pound out periods beyond Wren’s bed. Dad must have told her I was here because she came soon after he left. “And what is up with your hair?”
I lean against the bed rails, which are cool and level and don’t rise to the bait. “I dyed it.”
“I can see that.” Emmie is red lipstick and poise, backed by white walls that seem to shy away from her. “Did you even consider the rest of us? What would happen if you disappeared?”
“Did I think Genevieve would say Dad murdered me? No! I didn’t!”
“Then you should have.”
I push off hard enough that the bed scrapes. I rush to check Wren’s monitor and pulse. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” says Emmie.
“That wasn’t for you.”
“No, of course not.” Emmie kicks at the wall, cheeks bright, and I can’t tell if it’s her or her makeup. “It never is.”
“You stole the schematics!”
“And you stole the alliance.”
Outside, the birds scatter and I want to fly off with them.
“I’m sorry.” I straighten the bed, smooth the covers, and add, “Emmie,” in case she doesn’t know.
She stares out the window. “You know Wren won’t wake up.”
“Don’t say that.” I lean close to Wren. “Don’t listen, she doesn’t mean it.”
“I’ve had them run all the tests. Again.”
“That was you?” I move around the bed to the window, where the sky bleeds orange. “What did they say?”
“What they always say—that she’s not waking up.” Emmie jams her hair behind her ear. “You’re going to have to face it sooner or later, preferably not at the expense of our House.”
“But those are our scans.”
She droops forward, bumps her head against the glass.
I scoot closer. “No, listen. Westlet has this advanced treatment that I really think—”
“Of course, you do.” She takes my shoulders. “Asa, you really, really have to get it together. I know you miss her, but this?” Her head jerks at the bed. “This is no life. It’s not fair, but nothing is.”
“I know.”
Every raw thing inside me knows, and saps my strength away.
But it can’t. I have to fix the treaty and get Wren to Westlet and—
And.
Emmie pulls me into a hug. Wraps me in gingernut and confidence until my eyes ache. “Don’t get soggy on me. I’m going to handle everything.”
“You can’t. It’s not your fault.” I bury my face in her hair.
She rubs my back. “I’ve already shown Dad the tests, and I’m thinking we can pull her next week. You don’t even have to be here—”
“What?” I yank away, step back and back again. “What?”
“You knew this was coming! I wanted to have it done and over before you came back so you wouldn’t have to deal with it.”
And I would have lost my chance to say goodbye.
“Out.” I point at the door, arm thrumming. “Out.”
“Seriously? Come on—”
“No.” I march close and push her across the room, her boots slide-clacking with her protests. I open the door and slam it locked behind her.
“Asa!” Muffled with her pounding fist. “Asa, what are you doing?”
&nbs
p; I slide to the floor, wrap my arms around my legs and bawl.
THE MEDICHIP DANGLES WIRES AND DUST. A FLAT rectangle as long as my smallest nail, but not so wide. Fragile and almost impossible to find, even with Wren’s notes. After cleaning myself up, I spliced it out of the console. Her flightwing is officially dead now.
Not that it wasn’t anyway.
The medichip shouldn’t dangle anything. It didn’t when Wren took it out, and doesn’t in the initial diagrams on her slate. She built schematics based in biotech first, detailing the masking in the original environment. Then once it worked in program, she translated it into fuel and engines.
I sit cross-legged on the bed and tie Wren’s blood signature into the final bio-based schematic. When I asked Aston for another signature, he retrieved it with no more than a, yes, m’lady.
All the medics get like that after Dad visits.
I hold the slate up for Wren to see. Wren, who could have been dead right now.
No, stop. Medichip first.
“What do you think?”
Nothing, not even mountains.
“That’s not helpful,” I say.
Which isn’t fair. Dad revoked my End-Level network access, but not Wren’s. Or at least, not her all-levels-cleared digislate with palm print access. All I had to do to find the stabilized ecoflux schematic was place her hand on the screen.
Maybe she figures that’s help enough.
The embedded wall-com near her monitor flashes blue. I tap the screen. “Yeah?”
“A visitor, m’lady,” says Nara through the speaker. “One of our Lady’s soldiers, I think.”
From Urnath. They still visit sometimes, mostly if they’re being transferred or moving away. When they don’t plan on coming back.
I trace my palm’s tiny, marching numbers.
“Should I send him on his way, m’lady?” Nara asks.
Yes.
Except he’s probably flying out tonight.
“No. She’ll see him.” I stow Wren’s chip and slate in the small stand by the bed. Cross the room and open the door.
Eagle.
Hoodless in a smudged gray shirt and glaring fire.
“You’re here!” I spring forward, throw my arms around his neck. “Why are you here? You’re supposed to be home.”
He glances down the hall, slips inside and kicks the door closed. Then he takes my shoulders, more vibration than shake. “You can’t do that, Asa. You can’t.”
Oh. Right.
I step back, hug his jacket instead of him.
Except it just pushes the splinters deeper.
“Yeah. I know. I didn’t mean—” But I did. It takes everything I have not to reach out again. I hold up my wrist instead. “Dad put a tracker on me. There’s no running now. Go home.”
He snatches my hand and examines it between both of his. Tests the wristlet and rubs the countdown with his thumb, holo sliding over his skin as he fingerprints my being. “You’re his daughter.”
“You need to go home. Please.”
His hold tightens. “You weren’t there. I woke up and you weren’t there.”
“I have to fix it.”
“Without me?”
“Not if you’d listen.” I mean to let go, but my stupid fingers squeeze instead. “You don’t know Wren, but I do. Even her worst prototypes since we were little—all of them worked even when they broke. Dad couldn’t get ecoflux off the ground until Wren started messing with it. This will work, too.”
“It will kill you.”
“It won’t.”
“If. It. Does?”
“Then that’s my chance and my choice.” I tug my hand free. “You don’t get to say.”
He fills the gap. “We’re blood bonded. I get a say.”
“You don’t even want me to hug you!” The words fill almost as much space as he does. There’s no way to take them back. To erase the surprised shift of his expression, the shock I can almost taste.
“Never mind. Forget it. Go home.” I step back.
He steps with me. Hands catching my cheeks, closing in until the room disappears and I taste him. Wide lips and lost places. Tangled forests of pine nuts and rivers and the way the air sings before the sun rises. His fingers chase dawn into my hair. I rise up on my toes, and my heart speeds so fast through the branches I’d swear I’m lost, except I feel it. Every beat. Against his chest.
“I’m not leaving,” he whispers.
I burrow into him and bury my face in his shirt. “Then trust me.”
His arms wrap tight but he doesn’t say anything, not even no.
I look up, but he stares across the room. At Wren.
“We’ll need a chip implanter,” he says.
EAGLE LOCKS ALL HIS WING’S DOORS, SEALS OFF THE cockpit, then blazes the lights. The docking bay is tied to the medicenter, which is where the wristlet will say I am.
I scroll through the menu screen of the medi-implanter—not chip specific, but workable. It worked for Wren. Blue and red with a slotted mouth on one end and a handle on the other, a full color digiscreen between. It also works as a scanner, so I can program depth and location. The implanter will beep until it’s in the right spot.
I borrowed it from the tech lab. Hopefully Nara won’t need it tonight.
Wren’s slate glows numbers and I plug them all in. Double-check everything. “Okay,” I say, looking up. “I just need the chip and—”
He’s half-naked. Face and arms lost in the shirt he is pulling over his head. White and yellow light battle warm undertones over his deep brown skin—rivulets and oceans drifting down his chest. Then his shirt hits the floor and he’s staring back.
“What are you doing?” I ask. Don’t squeak. Mostly.
He swipes Wren’s chip from the table and stuffs it in the wall garbage chute.
“No!” I shoot forward, but he slams the empty button. The chute shudders, wheezes. Shredding our Houses, the treaty.
Me.
And Eagle reaches for his jacket like it’s of no consequence at all.
I grab Wren’s slate and head to the door.
“Asa.”
“You said you trusted me.” I jab at the door’s security panel. “You said.”
Except he hadn’t. Not specifically. I’d just assumed, because—
Because.
I unlock the door, and then Eagle’s hand is there, holding it shut.
“We use mine,” he says.
“You have a medichip lying around and didn’t tell me?”
Eagle hefts his jacket and empties its pockets on the table. Gauze, disinfectant packets, tweezers.
Surgical knives. Two. Shiny, sterile, and clattering. In my ears, under my skin.
My hand slips from the panel. “No.”
“Chips have to acclimate,” he says. “Mine can handle a transfer and wasn’t wired for an engine.”
“No.”
“It’s safe. Safer.”
I carefully lay Wren’s digislate on the table, as far from the knives as possible. “Shredded. You said his shoulder was shredded.”
“Mine won’t be,” Eagle says like there’s no question.
“Yes. It will.”
He steps close, too bare and too stark. “It won’t.”
“Eagle, no.”
He skims rough palms over my shoulders, like I’m the one about to be hacked to pieces. “Trust me.”
“I’ll hit something vital.”
“In my shoulder?”
“It’ll scar.”
“Not an issue.”
“Eagle—”
His breath warms my nose and lips. “Asa.”
And everything there is to say, he says with my name.
We’re the treaty. Us. Just us. Our responsibility. My responsibility.
We’ve started, now we stick.
Eagle moves a chair around the table and sits with his back to me. Rubs his left shoulder. “This one.”
On this side, the skin’s smooth, seamless, no
thing to say where the chip is or isn’t. But it shouldn’t be deep. Wren’s wasn’t. It’ll be small, tiny, like a splinter. I used to dig out splinters for the soldiers on base with a stitching needle. It wasn’t so bad. They didn’t flinch.
Much.
I grab the implanter, find the SCAN option and move it back and forth above his shoulder. It doesn’t blink green or beep. It doesn’t register anything.
Of course not. He said it didn’t scan. And this implanter probably wouldn’t recognize chips anyway.
Eagle half turns toward me.
“Do you remember?” I ask. “Where they chipped you?”
His right hand drifts over his shoulder until his fingertips slide past his armpit to the section between his side and spine. “In here. I think.”
Pure, unbroken skin.
I search the area, pressing hard and circling out. He’s warm, almost hot.
“You won’t feel it.” His voice lacks the tension I can feel in his skin. “The medics didn’t.”
“Right.” I grab a swab packet from the table and disinfect his skin. “You didn’t grab pain pills or anything? Like a numbing agent?”
He shakes his head.
I’m going to be sick.
Fane doesn’t get sick.
I return the packet, take the smallest knife—razor-edged with a plain white handle. “Ready?”
“Shoot.” Fraying. A little, enough.
I’m taking too long, and making it worse.
My hands shake, but there isn’t time for that or anything else. I push everything out of my head. Keep the knife steady.
Focus.
The blade bites.
He tenses, blood wells, hurricanes scream in my ears but not my hands because I need to be steady and smooth. One slice down, another across. His skin gives like putty, dripping red lines down his back.
Eagle doesn’t make a sound.
I’m not sick, can’t be, won’t.
I carefully lay the knife on the table—or mean to, but I let go too quickly and it clatters down, scattering blood. Eagle jumps. I grab the tweezers.
This needs to be over. Now, fast, yesterday.
I HAVE TO DIG.
The first cuts are not deep enough and in the wrong spots and blood fills the widening gaps and muddles everything and his knuckles glow on the chair and my cheeks are as soaked as my red, red fingers and his breath’s heavy and mine hiccups and beyond that neither of us makes a sound.
