Quicksilver

  I made a scoffing noise. “You think he’s going to keep that promise? Your so-called best friend who left you stranded for years on an alien planet? The same guy who threatened to kill Alison if you didn’t—”

  “It was my fault.” Sebastian sounded tired. “I should have remembered Mathis had access to the station’s security system from his room—that he’d heard us talking about Alison’s sensitivity to exotic matter, and the effect that the wormhole and the relay had on her synesthesia. He didn’t threaten to kill her, Tori. He threatened to drive her insane.”

  There was a long silence. Beyond the vinyl-strip curtain in the doorway, a shadow moved and then went still.

  “Oh, I see,” I said. “So Mathis isn’t a murderer, just a sadist? That makes me feel so much better.”

  “Tori—”

  “Stop calling me that.” I stalked around him, deliberately not looking at the line of power tools ranged along the countertop. “I don’t want to know what lies Mathis told you or whatever excuses you made to yourself before you sold me out. I know I’m just a mongrel alien freak who was never meant to live on this planet in the first place, but there are at least two people in this world who love me and don’t want me to go. I’ve got a couple of amazing friends willing to put everything on the line for me, and even Barry has been working hard all day to help me out. If you’re too scared or squeamish to get your hands dirty, that’s your decision. But you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life.”

  He didn’t reply. I set my jaw and marched toward the door—

  “Wait.”

  Thank God. For a minute, I’d thought I’d lost him.

  “Why me?” Sebastian asked unevenly. “Why trust me with something this important, after all I’ve done?”

  Because I understood him now, better than I ever had before. In a way, I even felt sorry for him. But I wasn’t about to say so; that would be too much like letting him off the hook.

  “Because you care enough to want to help me,” I said, “but not enough to let the fear of hurting me hold you back. And because you’d do anything to redeem yourself, if you only believed that you could.”

  Sebastian gave a broken-sounding laugh. “This isn’t redemption,” he said. “It’s more like retribution.”

  I shrugged, though inside I was anything but indifferent. “Call it whatever you want. But you may as well do it, because you’re going to hate yourself either way.”

  Please, I added silently. For both our sakes.

  For one last moment Sebastian stood without moving. Then he walked toward me, his dark blue eyes like bruises in the whiteness of his face. He said, “Do you forgive me, lady?”

  I knew a little Elizabethan history too. Or at least I’d seen the movie. “It’s my arm we’re talking about, not my head,” I said, speaking tartly to hide my relief. “But if you want to be all melodramatic about it, then yes. I do.”

  One corner of Sebastian’s long mouth turned up. Then, before I realized what he was doing, he put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug.

  “Just one thing,” I told him, squirming out of his grip. “You have to swear to me that you’ll carry through with this, whatever happens. And that you won’t try to talk me out of my plan—any part of it—again.”

  “I promise,” he said, sounding surprised. I glared at him, and he amended, “I swear.”

  “Good,” I said, as I swept the vinyl strips aside and strode out into the lounge. Sebastian followed—and stopped, dismay dawning on his face. Because that was when he saw who’d been standing by the door all this time.

  It hadn’t been Barry—he was down the other end of the hallway. It hadn’t been Milo, who was sitting on the sofa. It was a tall, slim girl with reddish hair spilling over her shoulders, and rain-grey eyes that looked too full of sadness to ever be happy again.

  “Hello, Faraday,” said Alison quietly.

  Three

  I’d been anticipating this reunion for a long time. In fact, before I’d left the Parks’ house on Sunday morning, I’d asked Milo if he’d be willing to pick up Alison from the bus station while Sebastian and I were gone and bring her to meet the two of us when we returned. I’d envisioned the look on Sebastian’s face when he saw her, the guilt and shame he’d feel, and at the time it had seemed like a fair punishment for the way he’d treated her.

  But that was before I’d remembered that Sebastian had a very good reason to stay away from Alison, at least while he still had the relay on him. And definitely before I’d figured out that Mathis had forced him to choose between the freedom of an alien girl he barely knew and the sanity of the human girl he loved.

  “Y-you…” I’d never heard Sebastian stammer before, and only once had I seen him this angry. “You brought Alison here on purpose? She’s your relay detector?”

  “It’s not her fault,” said Alison, with a tiny grimace as though she’d tasted something unpleasant. “I wanted to come. And didn’t you just promise Tori you wouldn’t argue?”

  What it was costing her to stay calm with Sebastian right in front of her, I couldn’t imagine. But though she looked tired and strained, she carried herself with a quiet dignity that made her seem older than the rest of us put together. She moved forward, holding out her arms to me, and before I knew it I was clinging to her and struggling not to ugly-cry all over her shirt. I hadn’t realized until this moment how much I’d missed her.

  “Is the relay close?” I choked, when I could speak. “Can you feel it?”

  Alison pressed her lips together, visibly steeling herself. Then she said, “Show me your arm.”

  I unzipped my hoodie and struggled out of it, baring the T-shirt underneath. Then I held out my forearm, so she could see where the quicksilver had gone in.

  Her face contorted and she flinched away from me, the same way she’d reacted to me the first day we were in school together. But back then I’d thought she was being rude and judgmental, and now I knew better. It was the chip that was bothering her, needling painfully at her senses in colors only she could hear.

  “It’s close,” she said. She turned, her gaze following an invisible line from my arm to the corner of the ceiling. “There.”

  “What?” Milo jumped up from the sofa. “Where? I don’t see it.”

  “That’s because it’s camouflaged,” said Sebastian. “It must have found Niki the same night I put the chip in her arm, and it’s been following her ever since.”

  Of course it had. How could I have ever believed otherwise? That was what the relay had been doing for most of my life—bobbing invisibly after me, or floating above my head, or lurking behind the nearest wall. Monitoring my vital signs through the chip, watching for any illness or injury that might compromise the experiment. Ready to beam me back to Mathis the moment my life was in danger.

  And yet I knew now that my guardian devil had a weakness, one I fully intended to exploit. Because this morning when I’d laid my neck across the railroad track, my heart slamming in my chest and every muscle in my body rigid with terror, the relay hadn’t done a thing. Mathis hadn’t programmed it to care about my mental state, and he hadn’t known enough about this planet’s various threats and dangers to teach the relay to anticipate them. So it could only register any life-threatening injuries after the fact.

  Which meant I didn’t have to wait until Mathis told the relay to fetch me, or rather, until the time difference between the two ends of the wormhole sorted itself out and allowed the order he’d already given to come through. I could trigger the relay myself at a time of my own choosing and maybe—just maybe—shut down the whole experiment for good.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Let it stay there for now. I’ve got an EMP bomb to finish, and the other guys from the makerspace are going to show up any minute.”

  Sebastian gave me a sharp look. “Are they? How much do they know?”

  “Barry knows half of the plan,” I said. “The technical half. The others, nothing.”


  “Then leave them to me,” Sebastian said. He swung his laptop bag over his shoulder and headed out into the corridor, carefully not looking at Alison as he passed.

  Not that Alison noticed. She was massaging her temples, her eyes squeezed shut in pain. “The Noise,” she murmured. “It’s so loud.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But it’s going to be another forty minutes at least before I’m done here. Milo, could you take Alison out for coffee? I’ll text you when I’m ready.” Without waiting for an answer, I ran up the ramp and sat down at the workbench. I was reaching for my wire stripper when I felt Milo’s hand on my shoulder.

  “I’ve got the stuff you wanted,” he said. “And I talked to my mom, so I know what to do. But I’m not going to lie, I don’t feel ready for this. How are you holding up?”

  All at once I was acutely aware of the tool in my hand. The slight weight of the metal, the rubbery texture of the grips, and the pressure of its handles against my palm. How I could twist it in any direction I needed, pinch it tight, and pull the plastic sheath off the wire in one easy motion. How easy it was to take such simple tasks for granted, until you couldn’t do them anymore.

  I clenched my teeth and reached for another length of wire. “I can’t talk right now,” I told Milo shortly. “I have work to do.”

  Two

  I’d finished the main part of the flux compression generator and was wiring it up to the capacitor when Sebastian came back. “Curiously enough,” he said, slinging a hip over the corner of the workbench, “there’s been a gas leak in the building, so the makerspace is closed for the rest of the day. Or at least that’s what I told everyone on the mailing list.”

  And here I’d been imagining a nightmare of liability waivers and impossible explanations. I should have known Sebastian would come up with a much more simple solution. “Thanks,” I said. “But what about Barry?”

  “We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” said Sebastian. “At the moment, he’s having coffee with Milo and Alison—are you all right?”

  My hands were shaking. I put down my needle-nose pliers and pressed my palms against the workbench, silently cursing my weakness. But in the back of my mind all I could hear was Milo saying, I don’t feel ready for this.

  “This has to work,” I said. “I need it to work. And I’ve tested the prototype in my head and it works fine, but Barry says he’s never heard of anybody making an EMP bomb this small before, and what if I’m wrong?”

  “A crisis of confidence?” Sebastian sounded surprised. “That’s not like you.”

  I gave a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well, maybe this is what happens when a technician gets above herself.”

  “You’re not just a technician,” said Sebastian. “You’re more than that.”

  “I don’t know why you think so.” I picked up a battery pack and put it down again. “You’re the one who told me technicians were genetically programmed for obedience. And look at me. I’m seventeen years old, and I can barely even disobey my parents.”

  “Maybe,” Sebastian said. “Maybe you grew up thinking of them as your masters, however subconsciously, and it’s a hard habit to unlearn. But you’re hardly a mindless drone. You stood up to Mathis, back on the station. You even stood up to me.”

  I shook my head. “Talking tough is easy. But actions? My whole life I’ve dreamed of making something new and exciting, something that would change people’s lives. But the only times I’ve ever actually built anything important was when you asked me. This—” I waved a hand at the half-finished device on the workbench—“this is mine. The whole plan is mine. And nobody thinks it’s going to work, or wants me to do it.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “Even I don’t want to do it. But what choice do I have?”

  Sebastian reached out and laid his hand on my arm, right where he’d put the chip. He left it there for two seconds. Then, without a word, he got up and walked away.

  One

  Even finished, the EMP bomb didn’t look like much—more like a twelve-year-old’s Science Fair project than a weapon. It had none of the sleek, deadly menace of a rocket or the compact muscle of bundled dynamite. But all the right parts were there, and eight seconds after I pressed the button, it was going to send out an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to fry every piece of equipment in Mathis’s control room.

  Or at least I hoped so, but there were no guarantees. So many of the components I’d seen back on the space station had used metals and minerals I’d never seen before. And quicksilver was the strangest and most unpredictable element of all.

  “I still don’t get how this is supposed to work,” said Barry, craning over my shoulder. “I know you’ve got a timed detonator, so you don’t have to be there when it goes off. But how are you going to trick this relay thing into beaming up the bomb instead of you?”

  He said beaming up with a relish that made my skin creep—but then, I reminded myself, he only half believed the story I’d told him. He knew I was afraid of being abducted by a scientist who might or might not be an alien, but if there was actual teleportation involved, he’d believe it when he saw it.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to get the chance. I glanced at Sebastian and Milo, who had just come up the ramp, and nodded.

  “Hey!” Barry yelped, as Milo grabbed his arms and yanked them behind his back. “What are you doing?”

  There was a loud rip as Sebastian tore off a length of duct tape and plastered it across Barry’s mouth. “Sorry about the beard,” he said. He wrapped another strip of tape around Barry’s wrists and lashed them together with a cable tie, while Milo dropped to the floor to work on Barry’s ankles.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as Barry’s eyes rolled wildly and his face turned red. “But I can’t ask you to be part of this. And trust me, you don’t want to see it.” Then I stepped back, and let Sebastian and Milo carry him out.

  Alison came up to me when they had gone, forehead creased and eyes pained with the effort of ignoring my Noise. “Are you ready?”

  My insides shriveled up like match-lit paper. I pressed a hand to my stomach, but it didn’t help. “No,” I blurted. “I mean, everything else is. But I’m not.”

  Alison’s expression softened. “I know what that’s like.”

  She did too. Because back on the station last summer, after Sebastian told her our attempt to find the right wormhole had failed, she’d volunteered to stand in for the missing long-range sensors and use her synesthesia to get us home. She’d been scared to start with, but the first wormhole she looked into had nearly broken her—the sensations were so overwhelming, so excruciating, that she’d thought she was losing her mind. I’d begged her not to give up, and in the end she hadn’t. But how she’d found the courage to put herself through that torment again and again, knowing each time how much it would hurt and what it would cost her, was something I’d never understood.

  “How did you do it?” I asked her. “When you had to find our way home?”

  Alison looked down at the floor. “It’s hard to explain,” she said. “I remember I got to the point where it was so bad, I couldn’t fight anymore. I felt like I’d come to the end of myself, and there was nothing left of me that was worth holding onto, even if I could. So … I let go.”

  I frowned. “You mean you stopped caring what happened to you?”

  “No. I mean I stopped trying to control it. Stopped thinking it was about me being strong enough or brave enough to save you and Sebastian, or even myself. Because I couldn’t do it, not on my own. And once I accepted that, it was like this enormous burden had rolled off my shoulders. I realized that everything that was happening or had happened or was going to happen next—it wasn’t about me. The universe was so much bigger than that. So everything was going to be okay, in the end.”

  I stared at her. She gave an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. That probably doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. “It sounds like you had to be there.”

  But I
did understand, a little. If I hadn’t come to the end of myself this morning, I’d never have come up with a plan like this. And if I thought the whole thing depended on me, I’d never have the courage to go through with it.

  Yet there was still so much that could go wrong. I couldn’t test out the EMP bomb to make sure it would work. I couldn’t be sure what range the relay’s beam would cover when it activated or whether Alison would give me the signal in time. And if Sebastian or Milo froze up, even for a second…

  I shook the thought away. I couldn’t worry about those details right now. Either I was prepared to pick up this bomb and walk into the woodshop or I wasn’t, and that was all that mattered. Whether I had the courage to go through with this plan even knowing it could fail, or whether I’d rather give up than risk hurting myself for nothing.

  Unless—the hope flashed into my mind, and I clung to it—I didn’t have to make that choice after all. “Are we sure the wormhole hasn’t closed already?” I asked. “I’ve been assuming the relay would go dead if there was no signal, but—”

  “It’s still open,” Alison told me. “If it had closed, my synesthesia wouldn’t be this strong.” She winced and backed away. “I’m sorry. You’re just so loud.”

  When I’d asked her to look at my arm, she’d known how much the Noise would hurt her. She also knew what would happen to her synesthesia when the relay went off. Yet she’d chosen to help me despite the cost, despite the danger. Because she cared about me, even after all I’d done.

  And knowing that, how could I turn back now?

  I picked up the EMP bomb from the workbench, hefting it in both hands. “Go ahead,” I said. “I’m right behind you.”

  Zero Hour

  Draped in tarpaulins and paint-speckled plastic, the wood-shop looked like an alien landscape. The smells of sawdust and grease mingled with the fumes of rubbing alcohol from Milo’s first aid kit, and as I sat by the worktop with the EMP bomb lashed to my wrist, I felt oddly light-headed, as though I’d been drugged.