Star's End

  I knew there was a connection. I just had no idea what it was.

  By the time I arrived at the estate, the rain had slacked off, transforming from a wall of water to a thin gray mist. I asked John to drop me off at the back of the estate so I could slip in through the side service door. My curiosity was burning me up from the inside, and I didn’t want the staff to know I was home. I had some investigating to do.

  It had been a long time since I’d listened to the underground newsfeeds. A long time, really, since I’d thought about the Underground at all. It used to make me sad, thinking on it, because those crackly, distorted voices reminded me of Paco and Laila, of a whole life I’d never be able to touch again.

  Today, though, I needed the rumors, and I shoved aside my blue-tinged nostalgia to get to them. I locked myself in my suite and switched on my personal lightbox, the same one I’d had since I was a teenager. For a moment, I sat there staring at the holoscreen. It felt absurd to hook into the Connectivity Underground while I was still wearing my Coromina Group uniform, but I knew if I wanted to learn something, I was going to have to go there. Asking around in the company itself would only lead to problems. It would only reveal me as untrustworthy, and I couldn’t have that. Not now.

  I tapped in the code for the Connectivity Underground—an old one that Paco had given me years before. It still worked, the holoscreen swirling with colors and data until I was in.

  Nothing had changed. There were still the same scrolling headlines, the same distorted voice chattering in the background. Right now it was reciting an anti-corpocracy manifesto, calling for the dissolution of corporate control, a return to the democracies of humanity’s past, when we all had a say in our future. I tuned it out because there was no way to turn it off without being shut out of the Underground completely. A long time ago, that rhetoric might have spoken to me. But now I knew better.

  I scanned the scrolling headlines, but it was all the same sort of thing that you always found in the Connectivity Underground, detailed accounts of corporate atrocities, old information about Dad’s start as a war profiteer, profiles of CG’s upper staff. I wondered if I would see my name. Wondered what they would say about me—if they would include the fact that I had slept with one of their own, that at one point I had truly believed in their message.

  But my name never appeared.

  I kept scanning; the voice kept chattering. The manifesto had become more specific; now the voice was listing Coromina Group injustices in a rhythmic, singsongy way, as if it wanted to turn the company’s darkness into a poem: “Gassed anti-corpocracy protesters on Amana and placed them on a hyperdrive ship for banishment in the OCI system. An entire village has been wiped out—they say it was a natural evolution of the market, but we say they murdered those villagers for spreading anti-corpocracy ideas.”

  I didn’t believe any of this, of course—I knew for a fact that the village had been drying up for years because I had visited it when I worked for PM, to meet with the mayor and discuss ways to bring business back into town. No one was killed. They just moved away.

  But then I heard the phrase Project X in the voice’s distorted cadence, and I froze.

  “What is this Project X?” the voice said. “According to the Company, it does not exist. And yet we have internal memos which refer to it directly.” A pause. My heart pounded in my throat. “From Flor DeCrie, head of the Catequil death lab Starspray City, to Sterling Segal, one of the head honcho’s main men himself. ‘I agree that the DNA shows a great deal of promise, but I am uncertain of Philip’s claims that it can bind to human DNA. With all due respect, he is not a scientist, and he is perhaps too close to the subject to see things for what they are.’ ”

  I shrieked and stared at my holoscreen in horror. Too close to the subject. The voice was asking the wrong questions, about what this DNA could be, and why it was separate from human DNA, but all I heard was too close to the subject and I thought of the first time I’d seen Isabel as a baby, and how Dad had stared through the glass at her, his face haggard, and I’d almost thought he loved her.

  Too close to the subject.

  I shut off the lightbox and shoved it aside. I could still hear the voice echoing around inside my head. My heart pounded. I stood up, shaking, and pushed my hands through my hair. My thoughts were wild. I didn’t know what it meant. The memo sounded real. If the Connectivity Underground was going to fake a memo, they would have made it sound more horrific. They weren’t good with subtlety.

  I made my way downstairs. I needed time to mull this over, to decide what exactly I thought it meant. It was late enough in the afternoon that the staff were scarce, resting up before it was time to prepare dinner. The house was dim from the rain. I went out through the garden door and stood on the porch. Rain pattered across the yard. I could have grabbed my raincoat, but the truth was the rain helped me think.

  The dampness misted over my clothes and hair as I strolled across the lawn. The pineapple plants rose in spiky clumps up ahead; the trees trembled from the rain. I thought back to the day Isabel had come back. Dad had demanded that the soldiers case the yard. Perhaps theirs was the DNA in the memo. Was he training Isabel to be a soldier? No, that didn’t make sense.

  Something flashed in the periphery of my vision.

  I stopped, a cold prickle climbing up the back of my neck. It was like someone was watching me. But when I turned, scanning over the lawn, I didn’t see anyone.

  Except—

  I froze. There it was again, that flicker of shadows, the same thing I’d seen before Isabel came back. This time, it blinked by the hibiscus bushes, a smear of darkness amidst the vivid color of the blossoms.

  “Isabel?” My voice trembled. No answer. I felt like an idiot.

  Another flicker, more pronounced. It was almost in the shape of a man, and it was rimmed with a sickly yellow light. Just for a flash, and then it vanished.

  I gasped, jerking back. I was certain I’d seen it, certain this wasn’t a trick of the shadows or some momentary flaw in my vision—something, something was moving over by the hibiscus.

  I took a deep breath and walked across the lawn with slow, careful steps. I did not look away from the hibiscus. The misting rain made everything hazy, and every now and then, I had to wipe at my eyes to keep drops from forming on my eyelashes.

  When I came to the hibiscus bushes, I stopped. Rain pattered gently against the leaves. The blossoms bobbed up and down. I thought I smelled something faintly chemical, but then I only smelled the rain.

  “Hello?” I called out, tentative. I immediately felt like I’d made a grave mistake. No one answered. I didn’t see any more flickers, any more shapes of yellow light.

  But that creepy cold feeling still lingered. No one was there. But someone was watching me.

  What are you doing, Dad? I thought.

  I twisted my head around, trying to examine the lawn from all sides.

  No one there.

  My clothes were soaked through. I didn’t want to be out there anymore. The rain was no longer a comfort, and I couldn’t get rid of that unshakable sense of eeriness. I turned in place one last time, looking for anything unusual, and I saw only the lawn.

  I walked back inside.

  As soon as I passed through the doorway, the cold inkling of paranoia dissipated. I leaned up against the wall and I tried to make sense of what I had seen. Maybe it wasn’t a rival company that had developed invisibility armor. Maybe it was the Coromina Group. Maybe Dad was testing it—on me, on Isabel, on all of us. Maybe Private Sky had lied to me.

  I rubbed my forehead. I felt suddenly very tired, and I knew snooping around the Connectivity Underground wasn’t going to get me the answers I needed. It was just going to make me paranoid. Had I even seen a shape moving through the rain? In the dry safety of the house, it seemed impossible.

  I wondered what Dad would do if I cornered him and demanded answers. That sort of thing had never worked before. But maybe I was finally old enough t
o do it right.

  • • •

  In my dream, the world rattled.

  “Ms. Coromina! Ms. Coromina!”

  The voice was far away and desperate. I couldn’t quite latch onto it.

  “Ms. Coromina! Esme!”

  One last shudder and the dream was gone, forgotten, and I was stretched out at a crooked angle on my bed. Alicia hunched over me, her eyes red and scared, her face pale.

  “You’ve got to come quick.” Her voice brimmed with tears. “Quick, quick—down to the lawn—Mr. Coromina, he’s on his way—”

  I sat up, trying to rub the fuzziness out of my eyes and head both. Pale sunlight slipped through the windows. I’d stayed up late last night, waiting for Dad to come home so I could confront him. Except he never had, and I’d fallen asleep with my head full of questions.

  “Please! You have to come right now! Something horrible has happened!”

  Her words slammed into me, and for the first time, everything about this scene started to make sense. “Something horrible?” I stood up. “Isabel?”

  Alicia stared at me, her lower lip trembling. Horror rose up in my throat. But she shook her head. “No. Rena. Ms. Coromina, Rena’s—Rena’s dead.”

  Everything froze. All I could hear was the roaring of blood in my ears. It reminded me of the village beach. I hadn’t been there for months. Rena—

  “Dead?” I whispered.

  Alicia nodded. “They found her out on the lawn, near the hibiscus bushes, and—” Her voice turned into an atonal whine. The hibiscus bushes.

  The flickers of movement.

  The cold prickle on the back of my neck.

  The sensation of being watched.

  I fled the room. Alicia jumped away from me with a shout, then called out my name. I ignored her. I pounded through the hallways, my chest squeezing itself shut, adrenaline the only thing keeping me alive. The back entrance was crowded with the staff, all of them huddled together, some of them weeping: Mrs. Davesa, Grace, the gardener Claude, the faces all shiny with tears. When I burst into the room, every single one of them looked up at me like they’d never seen me before.

  “Ms. Coromina!” cried out Mrs. Davesa. “We sent Alicia. It’s terrible, terrible—”

  “What happened? Where is she?” I pushed through the crowd, my whole body shaking. Through the distorted glass of the door’s window I could make out the blurred shapes of the soldiers. “Are my sisters safe? Where is system security?”

  “Your sisters are up in their rooms with one of the soldiers. I’m not sure they understand what happened, but they’re being protected.” Mrs. Davesa stepped close to me. She wore a mask of bravery. “System security is flying in from Undirra City. Mr. Coromina has been contacted. Poor Claude found her a few minutes ago—he went to the soldiers first, and they asked us all to stay inside.”

  Of course they did. I plowed up to the door and flung it open. The early-morning light blinded me but slowly shapes came into focus—the hibiscus plants, the soldiers standing in a clump with their guns. One of them, I couldn’t recognize his face in the shadow of his helmet, moved toward me, calling out my name.

  “You need to go inside, Ms. Coromina. We don’t know the extent of the situation—”

  “What happened? Where is she?” I shoved forward. The soldiers shuffled closer together, trying to block my view, but in their movement, I saw a flash of pale skin.

  Rena.

  Rena’s body.

  My stomach lurched. I turned away, focusing on the hibiscus, looking for a flicker of movement, a shiver in the shadows.

  But everything was still.

  “Ms. Coromina, I have to insist you go back inside.” The soldier’s hand was on my arm. It was Private Sky-3—I recognized her voice. “We don’t know what happened, and for your safety—”

  My safety. Whoever had been there earlier was gone. There was no cold sensation on the back of my neck, no insistence in my head that I was being watched. Dad, did Dad do this—

  “Let me see the body,” I said in a soft voice, steeling myself.

  “Ms. Coromina, I have to insist—”

  “This is a direct order. Let me see the body.”

  Private Sky-3 fell silent. I watched her, waiting. Then she looked over at the other soldiers. Nodded once. They parted like the sea.

  I told myself I wouldn’t react, and I didn’t. But there in the grass lay Rena, the woman who had raised me, her sternum split in two, a jagged bloody hole where her heart should have been. Everything else about her was pristine: her face, her bare limbs. I wondered if the rain had cleaned everything away.

  Suddenly, all I could smell was blood. It reminded me of the scent of Undirra City, especially in the crowded quarters close to the docks. The world spun around, faster and faster, until the lawn and the garden and the soldiers and the planets in the sky flashed by me in an unintelligible blur.

  Only Rena was still.

  NOW

  Esme met with her father in his office. He seemed to have shrunk inside his suit, his shoulders jutting out like folded wings. But when he peered up at her, he was the same man she’d always known, his eyes as hard and glittering as diamonds.

  “Well?” he said. “What have you got for me?”

  “I met with Daphne. She’s agreed to come see you, although it will be in a few weeks’ time, since she has to arrange her schedule around the schedule of the farm.”

  Her father nodded. “Excellent. Where are you with the others?”

  Esme sighed. The windows looking out over the ocean were darkened, and the overhead lights were dimmed. The murkiness made her head spin. “I’m going to start looking into the records we have about Adrienne. I’ve got an appointment at Hawley Lab this afternoon about the breaches. I’m sure you read my report on Dasini.”

  “I did. It’s troubling. But I thought Hawley had been cleared?” Her father frowned.

  “Among the new recruits, yes.” Esme shifted her weight. Eleanora Dixon had already been detained; Esme had received the notification that morning. She didn’t want to think about it. “But one of the original R-Troop soldiers is stationed there. Sergeant Woods. Now that we know a breach is likely, Will wants to—to talk with him.” They wouldn’t really be talking, of course. Sharing thoughts. What Isabel had called Seeing, all those years ago.

  Her father nodded. “Get that locked down,” he said. “I want you focused on finding your sisters. So, you’re going to look for Adrienne. What about Isabel?”

  Esme tugged at her skirt. There were no records on Isabel at all—she had vanished the night Star’s End had burned. “I’m going to ask Will to help with that. Because of his—connections.”

  She looked up at her father, wanted to see if there was any guilt in his expression. Any hint that he knew he’d done wrong.

  He was unreadable.

  “Good. Will’s a good resource for finding Isabel.” He leaned back in his chair, the springs creaking. He looked so pale in the dim light. Pale and old. Because of the rejuvenation treatments, all her life he’d appeared middle-aged, some graying in his black hair, some thin lines crossing out from his eyes. He preferred to look a little older, some throwback to when he was young, when the signs of experience could still earn respect. But right now, in the shadows, he almost looked his true age. Three centuries of life. He almost looked like a corpse.

  “How are you doing?” she asked him. “Are the treatments working?”

  “I don’t want to talk about the galazamia,” he said. “Get to your meeting. I want you working on finding the other two as soon as you can.”

  Esme’s eyes narrowed. He had six months, he’d told her. She wondered if he’d been lying.

  “Go, get out of here.” He waved one hand dismissively. “I have some business to attend to.”

  Esme left. It wasn’t worth questioning him further; she doubted he would be willing to talk about it in the building, anyway. You never knew who might have an ear in the wall. Homes were always safe
r for gossip.

  She rode out to Hawley Labs even though it meant she would be early—she didn’t want to go back up to her office, didn’t want to respond to holos or check up on the progress for the latest upgrades to the R-Troops. She didn’t really want to go to the labs, either, but at least there she would have Will at her side. He always made her feel calm.

  The meeting on Dasini had unsettled her. The breach five years earlier had been difficult, a constant reminder of the last days of Star’s End, of all those memories she had tried so hard, for a while, to forget. Now she let herself remember them. But who knew what another breach would bring.

  Thirteen years earlier, she had watched Star’s End burn as she and the rest of her family made their escape in a helicopter. This was what the last breach had forced her to remember. The fire had been so big and so bright that it had stained the ocean red. It was the last time she had seen Isabel, too, in the strange echoing space that belonged to the Radiance. Her father had put out a massive search for her, not, Esme knew, because she was his daughter but because of the secrets locked away inside her body. She was a security threat.

  And she was gone.

  This was what the Radiance did, Esme thought as she walked into the cool, climate-controlled corridor of the laboratory. They complicated everything.

  She only had to wait a few moments for Will; he breezed in and smiled when he saw her. “Here we are again, huh? How was Catequil?”

  She knew he was asking about Daphne, not Dasini. “It was fine.” She stood up from where she’d been sitting. He already knew Daphne had agreed to come home; she had told him over holo when she had made the arrangements to go for a second meeting at the lab. But that had been a quick conversation, businesslike, and she hadn’t wanted to talk about Daphne over Connectivity, anyway. “If you want to get lunch after this, I can tell you more.”