“Where’s Constance?” Ivan asked, reaching up with one hand to jerk sharply at Mattie’s jacket when Mattie did not respond immediately, ostensibly focused on half carrying Ivan out of the door to the white room for the last time.
The door shut behind them and left the white room empty and silent, with Domitian still slumped and dead over the stained steel table.
“Mattie,” said Ivan. “Where’s Constance?”
“Not here,” Mattie said, the words bitten off, and Ivan looked taken aback.
Mattie relented a few more feet up the hallway. “I don’t know where she is. She’s with Milla—with your mother. They think you’re dead. I told them it didn’t matter and I was going to find you anyway, and Constance gave me a ship so that I could waste my time, not hers.”
Ivan said nothing, looking down at the ground before him as Mattie dragged him up it.
“They’re sure you’re dead,” Mattie said. “They were so sure, I almost thought—but they wouldn’t even look for you. They’re too busy running their revolution.”
“I want to find her, Mattie,” Ivan said.
“I arranged a rendezvous,” said Mattie, sounding unhappy about it. “I don’t know if she’ll come.”
Ananke saw Ivan’s jaw flex, but he said nothing.
“And it’s chaos out there,” Mattie said. “Complete and utter chaos. Even if she decided to go, she might not be able to make it.”
“But we’ll go,” said Ivan.
Mattie sighed.
“We’ll go,” he said.
They were nearly at the end of Ananke’s spine, nearly at the docking bay.
Ananke did not know whether she should warn them.
—
Althea waited at the doors to the docking bay with her gun in her hand. She heard Mattie and Ivan before she saw them but did not speak and did not let her hands waver.
All her fear, all her anger, all her confusion, had burned away something inside her, had hollowed her out and left her with nothing but this, standing between Ivan and escape.
“Stop,” she said, and Mattie looked up and saw her. He stopped abruptly, hauling Ivan up when he continued for another step and nearly fell, turning the two of them so that Ivan was twisted slightly behind him, his free hand reaching and drawing his gun so swiftly that it was instinct, not deliberation. Althea brought her other arm up so that she was clasping her gun in both hands to steady her aim. The two men watched her, breathing hard.
Mattie said, “Ivan, is this the bitch who shot you?”
Ivan, leaning heavily on him, looked at Althea and said, “Yes.”
“Is he dead?” she asked, and knew that Ivan would know who she meant.
“Domitian’s dead,” Ivan said. He did not sound afraid or full of hate. He only sounded tired.
For an instant Althea faltered. Domitian, dead. Domitian, who was strong and reliable and safe; Domitian, who had in the end not been quite who she’d thought he was; Domitian, who was dead.
Gagnon’s death and everything about Ananke had hollowed her out; Althea no longer had the energy to mourn, not even for Domitian. And more importantly, right now she did not have the time. Her gun had dipped; she lifted it back up those scant centimeters to keep it centered on Matthew Gale’s chest. “Give me one good reason,” she said, “for me not to shoot you both.”
“How about because if you do, I will fucking shoot you back?” Mattie said.
It was curious how when she looked at him, all she saw was the parts that Ananke had taken from him: the color of his hair and the way it seemed always on the edge of falling into his eyes, his height, the deftness of his long fingers, now curled around the gun he had aimed at Althea. She had created Ananke with this man whom she hardly knew, and now they were each waiting to kill the other.
All up and down the hallway the holographic terminals had started to glow red.
“What’s the point?” Ivan asked, and Althea dared to take her attention from Mattie to glance over at him. He looked exhausted, on the verge of collapse, and it was clear that Mattie was the only thing holding him up, but she saw sympathy in his face—sympathy for her.
“Althea,” he said, his voice nearly gentle. “The System is gone. The crew is dead. We’re the only ones left. You, me, and Ananke. Ananke wants you to let us go. There’s no more System to obey and no more crew to be loyal to.”
She did not lower the gun, but she listened. Ivan lied, and Ivan manipulated. She knew it was true. But she, too, was very tired.
“I know you weren’t aiming for my heart before,” Ivan said. “You only grazed me on purpose.”
Mattie had not said a word. Althea knew that that was another sign of a con, that Mattie was waiting for his partner to do his work, not interfering. Or perhaps this wasn’t a con at all and Mattie’s silence was respect for Ivan, who knew Althea better than he did.
For a moment Althea weighed things, on one side loyalty to the System, revenge for Domitian and Gagnon and Ida Stays, and all the things Althea had lost, and on the other no more corpses on the Ananke, and no more blood on her hands, and Ivan, somewhere, safe and alive.
Althea lowered her gun.
“What do I do now?” she asked. She did not care that she sounded lost, because she was.
“You have to stay with Ananke,” Ivan said, and Mattie glanced sharply at him but did not say anything. “Ananke needs someone with her. Someone to guide her.”
“Someone that isn’t you,” Althea said with bitterness, but Ivan accepted it.
Althea looked up into Ananke’s camera. She could not help it, nor could she stop the sudden surge of fear.
Ananke was her creation. She should not be afraid of her own creature. She should love Ananke. And she did. And Ananke could not be left alone.
“Of course,” Althea said, and prayed to whatever god could hear that Ananke would not hear the fear in her tone. “I’ll stay with Ananke.”
Ivan knew what she feared, of that much Althea was certain. She could see it in his face.
Mattie had put his gun away. He shrugged Ivan’s arm up higher on his shoulder, and when it became clear that neither Althea nor Ivan had anything more to say, he started forward with a muttered “Come on.”
Althea pressed herself against the wall to let them pass and stood at the door to the docking bay to watch as Mattie guided Ivan past the disemboweled and dead Annwn and into his ship. She stood in the hall and watched them go, watched them through the doors of the docking bay as their ship lifted off and out of Ananke, stood and watched until they were gone.
The holographic projectors had all been turned on, and when Althea turned around, she saw that Ananke had placed one image of herself in each one of them, the mixed features of Althea and Mattie with Ivan’s eyes standing at even intervals up and down the hall, all facing Althea.
Ida’s body was rotting in her quarters, Domitian’s body still bled in the white room, the thin shredded remains of Gagnon still appeared to circle Ananke’s black heart, and Althea stood in the ship’s spine all alone, standing with Ananke’s thousand deified eyes all trained on her.
She took a deep breath and made her voice even.
“It’s just us now,” said Althea, and Ananke said,
YES.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank everyone who offered me support and friendship while I was writing this novel, whether because they knew what I was doing or because they simply accepted that I did things like lock myself up alone in a room for hours at a time and this was probably normal. This gratitude especially extends to my family and my college housemates, Margaret, Lorraine, Jack, Kaitlin, and Fiona, who have a much-appreciated and very healthy respect for my shut door.
Thanks to everyone who helped me in the creation of the book: my sisters and my parents, especially my mother, who taught me so much about writing; Ryan, Shanelle, and Naomi, who let me talk at them about what fresh terrible things I was going to do to imaginary people; Sarah, who is s
mart and talented and absolutely not standing behind me with a gun to my head as I type this; my agent, Hannah; and my editor, Tricia.
Thanks also to the professor of my thermodynamics class in sophomore year. Without the confusion and crippling existential despair I felt during this class, Ananke would not exist. (Which is to say, professor, that I enjoyed your class a lot.)
And lastly, I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to the government organizations monitoring my Internet usage for not arresting me for extensively Googling “how many nuclear bombs would it take to make the Earth uninhabitable,” “death by cut throat,” and “psychology of early childhood development” all in one very ambitious afternoon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C. A. HIGGINS writes novels and short stories. She was a runner-up for the 2013 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing and has a B.A. in physics from Cornell University. She currently lives in New Jersey.
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