Star's End

  “Rena’s out looking for Isabel,” I said, more sharply than I intended. “Something very bad could happen to her. Who invited her?”

  The twins looked at each other, and then Daphne started to murmur in their hissing language.

  “No!” I said. “You’ll only speak Corominan in front me; do you understand?”

  They gave me dark glares. I’d been sharper than I should have; I hated how that language put up a wall between us.

  “Who invited her away?” I asked.

  “Her friends,” Adrienne said.

  “We’ve never met them,” Daphne added. “Isabel says they’re scared of us.”

  I looked back and forth between their calm, implacable faces. Dread threatened to swallow me whole. I had seen Isabel talking to someone in the woods—Private Sun had as well. But who? If it was someone on the estate, the soldiers would have seen them. Even if the kidnappers had cloaked themselves in camouflage technology, the soldiers could see on all levels of the light spectrum. And since the soldiers were engineered, none of them would have been bought off. That’s why you paid premium for engineered soldiers. Their loyalty was built in from the beginning.

  I was shaking.

  “You don’t know anything else about these friends?” I asked.

  They shook their heads. “She doesn’t talk about them much,” Adrienne said.

  I took a deep breath. I was aware of Grace standing off to the side, watching us, studying us, passing judgment on me, her employer who couldn’t find her sister.

  “Can we go back to our show now?” Adrienne said.

  “Not yet.” I pulled out the recording of Isabel’s voice from the security feed. “I’m going to play something for you. It’s Isabel, and she’s speaking in that language of yours. I want you to translate for me, okay? I know you think Isabel’s fine, but you’ve never met these friends, so they may very well be capable of hurting her. Do you understand? It’s important that you translate this.”

  They looked at each other again. Daphne leaned over and whispered something to Adrienne, and Adrienne whispered something back. Normally, I though this kind of thing was cute, the twins conferring among themselves. But not today.

  They turned to me. “We promise.”

  “It’s really important that you tell me the truth,” I said. “I don’t want anything to happen to Isabel. Or to you two.”

  “Yeah, just play it.” Adrienne sighed dramatically and flopped back against Daphne’s shoulder. I didn’t understand how they could be so calm, why they didn’t see the danger in Isabel’s disappearance. Perhaps I didn’t understand them as well as I’d hoped.

  I activated the recording. Isabel’s voice filled the room, crackling and dim and strange. The twins listened intently. When it ended, I asked them if they needed to hear it again.

  “No, it was easy. There wasn’t much.” Daphne shrugged. Adrienne nodded in agreement.

  “What did she say?”

  A pause. The rain beat against the windows. The air was thick with humidity and I wanted to shake the answer out of them but I knew I couldn’t do that.

  Finally, Adrienne answered. She stared straight me as she spoke, and her words paralyzed me with fear.

  “She said, ‘Hello, my friend. I’m excited to go play with you today.’ ” Adrienne blinked. “ ‘What are we going to do?’ ”

  • • •

  I kept the household feed on all night. It was quiet, just a few updates on the search as staff slowly trickled back in for the night. If they found Isabel, I wanted to know. But I also wanted to know when Dad came home.

  I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t expected to, but I tried anyway, tossing and turning and twisting the sheets around my legs. The rain picked up around midnight, pummeling hard against my windows, turning the evening light murkier than usual. Finally, I gave up. I climbed out of bed and sat down with my lightbox and drew up files from work. It was routine stuff, brainless: mostly approving work orders from the various militaries. The bulk of the approval work had been done already by the head of sales, so any anomalies had already been sorted, but I read over their requests myself anyway, checking them against the labs’ different abilities before pressing my thumb against the screen to finalize the deal.

  As I worked, my mind wandered—to Isabel, to the twins’ insistence that she was with friends. I’d taken the information to Private Sun as soon as I’d found out. He had listened closely, head tilted, frown deepening as I spoke. I knew he had reached the same conclusion I had, about the reality of a “friend” who dragged six-year-old girls out of the woods. Later, I wondered how he’d learned about the darker parts of the universe. If it was part of the genetic programming to come into this world fully cognizant of the atrocities of human beings.

  When I finished, he put a hand on my shoulder and said, “We’ll find her.”

  I wanted to believe him. I stared at him and told myself he was better equipped for this than I was—stronger senses, more stamina, a clearer mind. Surely, the attributes necessary for survival in a war were enough to rescue a little girl from whatever monster had stolen her away.

  “I promise,” he added, and smiled at me, a crooked, imperfect smile that didn’t seem engineered.

  But that was earlier in the evening, when the sun had been able to peek through the clouds and turn the drizzle into diamonds. Now it was storming, and Dad still wasn’t home, and I couldn’t stand the thought of working any longer.

  I shoved away from my lightbox and paced around the room. The feed was silent save for an occasional burst of static, interference from the soldiers’ equipment. I paced over to my window. Stopped. Opened it, something I hadn’t done during a storm since I was a girl. There was enough of an overhang that the rain fell like a sheet half a foot away, and the only water that got in was a sweet-scented mist that dusted across my face like sea spray. I breathed in the rain. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.

  And then the feed rippled with voices. I turned away from the window, away from the roar of the rain, and listened.

  “I’ll go tend to him.” It sounded like Mr. Whittaker. “I was expecting him a little later, actually. Tell Alicia to prepare his bedroom.”

  “Shameful.” It was a woman’s voice; I didn’t recognize it, but I agreed with what she said. “Staying late on a day like this. Absolutely horrific.”

  Mr. Whittaker just said, “He’s a busy man.”

  Bullshit. I fumed at Mr. Whittaker for taking his side, although that wasn’t surprising, given the way Dad always fudged the rules for him—technically, Mr. Whittaker was a Sixty-Five, but I suspected Dad told him information above his rank. He always seemed to know more than he should.

  I switched off the feed and threw my robe around my shoulders. It was psychopathic for Dad to stay late today. Psychopathic for him to keep Isabel’s disappearance from me until I arrived home—forcing me to put work first, just like he did.

  I stalked through the empty halls of the house to Dad’s suite. The door hung open; Alicia was in there, dressed in a robe, setting out a stack of towels on the coffee table in front of his sofa. She didn’t notice me until I slipped through the doorway.

  “Ms. Coromina! You startled me.” She pressed one hand to her chest. “Do you need anything? It’s awfully late—”

  “No, I don’t need anything.” I sat down on the sofa. “Just waiting for my father.”

  She nodded once, as though she understood why I was there. She finished putting out the towels and gave me a quick smile before disappearing into the hallway. I tapped my fingers against the armrest. Normally, I’d be terrified at the thought of confronting Dad, but in the wake of the day’s panic, an inexplicable calmness had washed over me, and I stared at the empty doorway, ready for whatever happened next.

  Voices drifted in from the hall. Dad and Mr. Whittaker. Dad barreled into the room, Mr. Whittaker trailing behind him.

  “—not be disturbed tomorrow. I’ve got a big call-in, and I’m taking i
t at the house for security reasons. You’ll need to tell the marines to activate the shielding—”

  He froze when he saw me.

  “Esme.” His voice had a hard, brittle edge to it, even as he smiled. “You really ought to be asleep. Between-world travel can be exhausting.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” I stood up. My heart was pounding. Mr. Whittaker kept looking back and forth between Dad and me. “Because of the emergency you told me about? Isabel? Your daughter? She’s missing.”

  Mr. Whittaker looked personally affronted. Dad waved a hand at him, dismissing him from the room. He slid away, shooting angry looks in my direction, closing the door as he left.

  “I was very busy,” Dad said.

  “She’s missing, Dad. She fucking disappeared. No record of her on the security feeds, a squad of genetically engineered soldiers haven’t been able to turn her up, either with technology or themselves. What does that say about our company’s product? That they can’t even find a little girl in a manicured forest?”

  I was crying. Dad stared at me, his face expressionless. “This outburst is unbecoming, Esme.”

  “She’s probably dead.” Speaking it aloud was the only way I’d allow myself to think it. “And you don’t even care.”

  “Of course I care. I’m deeply upset.” He didn’t sound upset. His voice was flat. “But Project X has taken up a large chunk of my time, and—”

  “Project X? Project X? You care about some obfuscatory bullshit business plan while your own daughter is probably being murdered—”

  “It’s not bullshit!” he snapped. “And I doubt she’s being murdered. The estate is big. No one saw her leave.” He must have seen the surprise on my face, because he added, “I may have been in the office, but I kept in contact with the soldiers. Don’t be so quick to judge.”

  I glared at him. “So, she’ll be murdered on your own property.”

  “She isn’t being murdered!” His voice roared out of him and I jolted back.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “I have my reasons, and they are none of your business. Now get out. I have a call-in tomorrow and I need to be rested for it.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Out!”

  I glowered at him one last time, my face hot with rage. He didn’t care.

  • • •

  I went downstairs the next morning in a haze. The staff were scarce, just Alicia and Grace cleaning up Dad’s breakfast. He’d had breakfast, as if it were a normal day, as if his daughter hadn’t been missing all night. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Would you like anything?” Alicia asked gently.

  “No, I’m fine.” I shook my head. “Some water, that’s all I need.”

  She filled me a glass, and when she turned to hand it to me, her face was lined with concern. “You really ought to eat something,” she said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  My stomach was walled off. I couldn’t stand the thought of food. But she and Grace were watching me, the remains of Dad’s breakfast—a pan dirty with scrambled eggs, a mangled grapefruit husk—spread out on the counter. I sighed and said, “I’ll take some oats. In the sunroom.”

  Alicia nodded and I left the kitchen. Everything was in a blur. Rain pattered against the roof, the steady silver drizzle that was the default this time of year. The sunroom was cooler than I expected. I’d gotten used to the heat of the dry season. The plants were all wilted, like Isabel’s disappearance had affected them, too.

  I had chosen the sunroom because it faced the direction of the cemetery, and if I couldn’t do anything else, I would sit and watch the empty yard, the rain and grass and trees. A dark-hooded figured trudged past, and my heart leapt—but then I saw the gleam from the light pistol. One of the soldiers. Still searching.

  Alicia brought my oats and set them on the table without saying anything. They floated, unappetizing, in their milk. I didn’t touch them. Dad spent tens of thousands from his personal account hiring engineered soldiers to keep us safe from an unnamed threat, and then when Isabelle went missing, he didn’t even care. It made no sense. It didn’t make financial sense.

  The rain kept falling. I picked up my oats and stirred them around, taking a bite and tasting nothing. The rain beat a rhythm against the sunroom’s glass wall, tracing snaky paths down to the soil. And through those paths, I watched the woods, and I saw nothing.

  I saw nothing, until I didn’t.

  It was a small movement, flickering from the trees. I shoved my oats aside and stood up. It wasn’t a person—more like a shadow, a trick of sunlight. But there was no sunlight right now.

  The rain. The rain was making me see things.

  It happened again, a flicker of darkness, like something moving on the periphery of my vision, even though I was looking right at it. And I thought about how the soldiers’ security feeds had seen only Isabel, talking to ghosts.

  My head buzzed. Some cloaking technology? A new sort that our espionage agents hadn’t uncovered? OCI was rumored to be working on something—God, I’d been stupid, to assume the soldiers could see through any cloaking technology a kidnapper could bring planetside. Someone was out there.

  I opened the sunroom’s door and burst out into the rain. It roared around me like a monster. I knew I should call the soldiers, but I was afraid this flicker in my vision would disappear and I’d lose her.

  “Isabel!” I screamed.

  The rain answered with its dull gray static. I ran across the lawn. The trees loomed ahead, the branches sagging. Water ran into my eyes and into my mouth and it tasted steely and cold. The world was a blur.

  “Isabel!” I shouted again. I was almost to the tree line. I stopped, whirled around in place. I was alone out there. Fear prickled at my chest. I could feel eyes on me, but everywhere I looked, I saw only emptiness.

  The rain pummeled my bare skin, and the grass poked at my bare feet. My fear built and built. I should go back. She wasn’t there. She was probably dead.

  “Esme?”

  I thought her voice was a hallucination at first, some willful lie my brain told me. But when I turned my face toward the woods, I saw her, wearing the same dress she’d been wearing in the security feed.

  “What are you doing out in the rain?” she asked.

  “Isabel!” I bolted toward her and scooped her into my arms. All thoughts of an unseen voyeur vanished, replaced by a flood of relief that I’d found Isabel—I’d done what Dad could not and I’d found Isabel.

  “Esme?” Isabel squirmed away from me, slippery from the rain. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Where were you!” I cried. “The entire household’s been looking for you! We thought you were—” I stopped myself. We thought you were dead maybe wasn’t the best thing to tell a six-year-old.

  Isabel squinted at me. She didn’t look like she’d been harmed. She didn’t even look hungry or tired. “Did I miss dinner? Is that why you’re upset?”

  “Did you—” I shook my head, not understanding. Dinner? She thought she’d missed dinner?

  The rain was cold. The rustle of it through the trees pounded at my head. “Let’s go inside.” I took her by the hand and led her across the lawn. She didn’t protest, just half-skipped alongside me like the way she did when she was happy. I led her into the sunroom and we stood dripping on the tile. Isabel looked around, blinking and wiping the rain from her eyes. When she saw my bowl of oats, she stopped and stared at it.

  “Isabel?” I knelt down beside her and put my hand on her back. “Are you okay?”

  “Why are you eating breakfast?” she asked.

  Dread threaded itself through my stomach. “Because it’s breakfast time,” I said.

  She looked at me. For the first time, I saw something like fear in her expression. “Breakfast? But I was only gone for an hour.”

  Everything turned to ice. Everything froze. Even my heart stopped.

  “Isabel,” I said, trying to find the words, “you??
?ve been gone since yesterday afternoon. Overnight.”

  “Overnight?”

  I nodded.

  She looked down, her face scrunched up like she was thinking. I felt sick. Something terrible had happened. She was fine, yes, but something terrible had happened.

  She looked up at me again. In the filtered light of the sunroom, with her pale skin and tangled black hair, she looked like a woodland imp from a story. Not human at all.

  • • •

  Rena stepped out of Isabel’s bedroom, easing the door shut so it wouldn’t make any noise. “She’s asleep,” she whispered.

  I nodded and we walked together down the hall toward the library, where we could talk in private. It was a cavernous room with big windows and skylights designed to flood it with light. That didn’t happen during the rainy season, however. Instead, it was as if we were underwater.

  Rena collapsed in one of the big leather chairs and rubbed her forehead. The lines of her face were deeper than they had before I left for my trip.

  “Mr. Hankiao looked over her,” Rena said. “But he didn’t find anything wrong with her. No injuries, nothing.” She paused, gazing up at the ceiling. “I tried speaking to her again. But I couldn’t get anything out of her either.”

  “Really?” I frowned, frustrated. “She didn’t say anything new?”

  “Only what she told you. She thought she was gone an hour. When I asked her where she’d gone, she said the cemetery, and when I told her we went to the cemetery and she wasn’t there, she clammed up.”

  I shook my head. “If someone did hurt her,” I said, “do you think they—they threatened her, or—”

  “I don’t know.” Rena’s voice was calm, soothing, the voice she used on me when I was upset as a child. “But we know she wasn’t hurt. At least physically. And she doesn’t seem to be in any emotional pain, either.”

  “But she had to have been on the estate!”

  “I know, sweetness.”

  I stood up and paced around the library, passing shelves lined with the glass squares containing all of Dad’s dull histories of business and war. It wasn’t much to look at, and so Dad had filled the empty spaces with polished stones and vials of sand and dried flora from all the Coromina I planets. The library wasn’t so much a library as it was a monument to Dad’s corpocratic acumen.