Star's End

  Not long after that, we arrived at the Starfish Lounge. It was a diver’s bar, one I used to sneak to as a teenager, back when I still harbored a few streaks of teenage rebellion. The divers were out today, storm or no; from my table I could see a pair of them stretched out on the pier, sorting out their haul. Their boats flashed on the horizon. It was dangerous, diving during a storm. But most of them would do it anyway. You had to enjoy danger in order to become a diver. It was a bit like being a cog in the corpocratic wheel.

  The waitress brought me a rum-and-lime. “Odd choice for a suit,” she said as she set it down. “This is a diver’s drink.”

  “It’s a diver’s bar.” I didn’t tell her I used to drink these one after another when I came there with Laila and Paco. I took a long drink, the rum burning my throat. The waitress gave an approving nod and went back to the bar. I set my drink down and watched the divers on the pier. Two women, around my age or maybe younger, with tanned, lean bodies. Coromina employees same as me, serving that dual purpose of drawing tourists to the village and collecting the pearls and coral that went into making Coromina-specific electronics. That was the real trick to running a corpocracy. I’d learned it in my time running secret PM projects. Never let something do one thing when it can do two. Or more.

  Like Isabel’s DNA. Or Isabel herself. Was she dual-purpose, like those divers? A dual-purpose daughter, instead of a dual-purpose employee? I thought back through the last fourteen years, trying to find the clues to Isabel’s secret origins. But all I saw was my sister.

  I finished my rum-and-lime. The waitress came over just as I set my empty glass down. “You want another?”

  I was the only person in the bar. It would fill up when the diving hours were over, or when the storm blew in with its full force, whichever came first. But until then, it was just me and the waitress and the bottles of liquor stacked up behind the counter.

  “Sure.” I slid the glass toward her and she picked it up and set it on her tray. “Wait,” I said.

  She glanced at me. She was older but she had the look of having been a diver herself once. The usual ropy arms, the hair cropped short against her skull.

  “Do you know someone named Laila Zubiri?”

  The waitress blinked at me. Then she shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Was she a diver?”

  “No.” I turned back to the window. The ocean was as dark as the storm clouds.

  “Well, this is a diver’s bar, like you said.”

  “She had diver friends. How about Paco Lang?” I glanced at her again. “Does he ever come in here?”

  The waitress frowned. A line formed between her eyes. “You knew him?”

  The past tense in her question made me shiver. “Knew? What happened?”

  She sighed and put her free hand on her hip. My empty tumbler caught the lights and tossed them over my table. “He died. Two years ago, maybe.”

  My head rushed like the ocean. “Accident?”

  “Yeah.” The waitress hesitated. “Stayed out during a storm like this one.” She tilted her head toward the window. “Got caught in the riptide. Sad thing, but—” She turned away from me and went back to the counter. I couldn’t move. Paco was dead. The first boy I ever kissed, drowned trying to get pearls and coral for the Coromina Group.

  I wondered if I would have known about it if I had still worked in PM. If I hadn’t been distracted with all the secrecy of Genetics. I reached over and grabbed the sanitizer light they kept on all the tables and fiddled with the switch, the way I used to do when I came there with Paco, watching him move beneath the dim lights, his bare shoulders gleaming. I couldn’t stand the memory. He’d died and I didn’t even know it.

  “Got your drink.” The waitress set my refreshed tumbler down on the table. “I really am sorry I had to tell you about that. I— You must not get village news, being—” She gestured at my suit.

  “No.” I took a long drink. “He was my first boyfriend. More or less; you know how it is.”

  The waitress smiled, although she looked sad. I slumped back in my chair. The waves slammed up against the pier, throwing high arcs of foam.

  “Boats are starting to come in,” the waitress said. “It’s gonna get crowded in here.”

  “They don’t like having suits around, do they?”

  “Not really.” She tilted her head. “They’ll wonder about you drinking that, though.”

  I laughed. “Probably, yeah.”

  I expected her to go back to the counter, but she stayed at my side. The waves crashed into the shore. Every now and then, one of them was dotted with a diver’s boat, the lights flashing wildly in the darkening light.

  “I’ll tell ’em you knew Paco,” she said. “If anybody gives me shit.”

  I looked at her. She was still staring at the window. “Thanks.”

  “Not a problem.”

  Silence fell over the bar. Thunder rumbled overhead, closer now. The light fixtures rattled. By this time tomorrow, Alvatech and the Andromeda Corps and a squad of soldiers created from my sister’s DNA would intercept the OCI military in an abandoned expanse of space on the edge of the solar system. Mercenaries would kill each other on our behalf; my mother might be among them. They would burn up in the heat of sun bombs; they would be dragged into the vacuum to suffocate. And when it was all over, the newsfeeds would activate and they would tell everyone in the Four Sisters, me and Isabel, the waitress and the divers riding into shore and Laila, wherever she was, that those horrors had been done to protect us. And maybe some of us would accept it.

  But I was a Ninety-Nine now, and I knew what was true, and I knew what was a lie.

  “You want to hear a secret?” I sipped at my rum-and-lime. The waitress looked down at me.

  “What kind of secret?”

  “Company secret.”

  Her expression collapsed in on itself. “I don’t—”

  “Don’t tell anybody, you’ll be fine. And everyone in the system’s going to know by tomorrow night anyway.”

  She went quiet and I knew that I didn’t actually have to say it out loud.

  “Tomorrow?” she whispered. “It’s starting tomorrow?”

  I nodded, drank, stared out the window. Divers dragged their boats across the sand. Light forked in the sky.

  “Who are you?” she said. “You have to be—high up if you know that. And you knew Paco?”

  I drained the last of my drink.

  “Yes,” I said, and in true Coromina Group fashion, I never specified which question I was answering.

  • • •

  I walked home. I made it to the edge of the estate just as the sky opened up, water falling in shining gray curtains. I slipped off my shoes and walked barefoot through the lawn, mud squelching between my toes. I still felt numb from what I’d learned about Isabel’s surgery. It was like a nightmare I had just woken up from, and I turned the memories of it around inside my head, trying to make sense of them.

  Dad had known the perfect lie to spin to me. She was sick with an embarrassing disease, we could fix it with a single surgery and no one has to know, just tell everyone she’s got an internship—I’d sat trembling in my chair as he spoke, knowing I had to protect my sister. I just wished I hadn’t been so blind, that I’d given her the kind of protection she really needed. That internship had always felt wrong to me, and yet I did nothing to stop it. Nothing.

  I stepped onto the back porch, out of the rain. Thunder rumbled through the clouds. I suppose I should have been more shocked at the idea that my sister was some kind of part-alien, but the truth was, the idea was so bizarre that I couldn’t grasp it. All I could think about were my own failings as her sister. All I could think about was that day she was born, when I promised myself I would protect her. But I couldn’t protect her, because I didn’t know anything about her. Dad had kept that all from me.

  I went inside and tossed my shoes aside. I was dripping across the floor, leaving a snail’s trail behind me. Easy to track. I didn?
??t care. I walked up the main stairs, heading toward Isabel’s room.

  The hallway was dark; the lights had been switched off, and any sunlight had been swallowed whole by the storm clouds. But there was a glow around Isabel’s door, as if her room was enchanted. I walked up to it, lifted my fist to knock. But then I hesitated, wondering again if she could read my mind the way the soldiers could read one another’s. No, probably not—they said they couldn’t read the minds of anyone unlike them. But Isabel was different. She wasn’t manufactured. And maybe she knew I was standing here, trying to decide what I wanted to stay.

  I closed my eyes and knocked.

  She didn’t answer. I felt a swell of fear: I was right. She could read my mind. And she wasn’t going to answer.

  I knocked again, harder this time. “Isabel!” I called out. “I need to talk to you.”

  Something shuffled inside her room. Footsteps pattering across hardwood floors. I knocked again. “Isabel,” I said, and I pressed against the door and dropped my voice low. “I—I know. What you are.”

  My heart was beating much too fast. My throat tingled from saying the words aloud. And then the door swung open, and there was Isabel, skin ashy, hair tangled, eyes sparking.

  “What did you say?” she hissed.

  “Dad told me everything,” I said. “About you. About—Catequil.”

  I expected her to slam the door in my face. But she just stared at me, her knuckles turning white from squeezing the edge of the door.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, voice raspy.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You knew before. And you didn’t bring me home.”

  “What?” I shook my head. “Look—can I come inside? I don’t want to talk about this out in the—”

  “No,” she snapped, and she braced herself in the doorway, stretching out her arms and legs to take up space. “You knew what they were going to do to me in Catequil and you let me go anyway.” She leaned forward. “I saw it. In your head. I can do that; did Dad tell you?”

  “You misunderstood,” I stammered, but I knew it wasn’t convincing—I was stunned at the thought that she had seen inside my head. Hearing her say it aloud was a sharp, harsh reminder that she wasn’t human. Not all the way.

  Shame washed over me. Could she see all that, too? But she hadn’t reacted at all. Just kept glaring at me.

  “You misunderstood,” I said, my voice clearer this time. “I didn’t know what Dad was really doing. He told me you had Lasely fever—you told me you had Lasely fever.”

  She shook her head, her eyes burning. “I told you it was possible. But you knew something was wrong. You knew he was lying.”

  I gasped. Shook my head.

  “You let him hurt me,” she said.

  I shook my head, but even I knew that was a lie. All my time at the company, I’d tried to fight back against Dad. I’d fixed roads and tried to uncover his secrets. But it had all been bullshit. He’d tortured my own sister and I had let that happen. It was a secret I hadn’t bothered looking for until it was too late.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I reached out to her, to put a hand on her shoulder. She jerked away.

  “I don’t want to See you,” she said.

  “What?”

  She pulled the door shut. I jumped back so that my fingers wouldn’t be caught. I stood in the hallway, the gloomy shadows oozing around me. The one thing I wanted to make right before this war started, and I couldn’t do it.

  I realized my cheeks were wet.

  • • •

  The next day, I ate an early lunch in the kitchen, fish soup and a hunk of the bread that Mrs. Davesa had baked. The staff scurried around, preparing the day’s meals for my sisters and ignoring me. I wondered if they knew the war was starting. Probably not. The tension in the room didn’t feel right.

  I thought I’d throw my food up as soon as I took a bite, but instead I kept eating like there was a black hole inside of me.

  When I finished my soup, I slipped out the staff entrance and walked around to the front driveway. The wind had been roaring all day, bringing in the scent of rainstorms. Dark clouds lurked over the ocean. It wasn’t quite noon yet, but a car was already waiting for me, a different driver linked in behind the wheel. I had received word late last night, as I lay in bed and agonized over what Isabel had told me. At 2 p.m. Ekkeko time, the war would begin, and my presence was requested to watch the first battle.

  I knew that was a lie. I knew my presence was required, now that I was a Ninety-Nine.

  I hesitated for a moment, watching the car. The wind whipped at my hair. No point in delaying. I climbed in.

  “Good evening,” the driver said. The engine hummed to life.

  “Good evening.” Then, because I hated the heavy silence: “Storm’s coming.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  But he had nothing else to add, and neither did I.

  The car zipped down the road. I closed my eyes and listened to the whine of its movement. My thoughts drifted away from Isabel, to my mother. She was probably already converging up in the black, moving into her assigned space. Last night, I learned I had lost Isabel—I didn’t want to lose her, too.

  Raindrops splattered across the windows and sluiced in lines down the side of the glass, glowing with the road lights. We were in the jungle already, and the driver had slowed down enough that I could see square lights floating among the trees, lighting our way.

  The lab was a beacon in the rainy shadows.

  The building itself glowed with a pale green phosphorescence, an old terraforming trick to limit the use of electricity when the planet was only half-done. I didn’t know why Dad had chosen to use it there, but the organic lines of the building were even eerier when they glowed like a firefly’s abdomen.

  “Thank you for driving in the rain,” I said when we pulled into the driveway. The driver didn’t respond, and I climbed out. Damp wind lashed across my bare legs. For a moment, I just stared at the doors leading inside. The soldier at the reference desk stared down at his holo. Otherwise, the lobby was empty.

  I took a deep breath.

  I wished I was anywhere but there.

  I went inside.

  The pale electric lights were stained green from the phosphorescence. The soldier looked up at me, but I walked over to him before he had a chance to respond and offered my thumb for the sensor.

  “Top floor, Ms. Coromina,” he said. “You can take the main elevator.”

  I didn’t bother thanking him. My shoes clicked against the tile, echoing with a faint reverberating shiver. The sound made me feel more trapped. I rode the elevator alone to the top floor, my arms wrapped around my chest. Already this felt like a routine—offering my blood, riding the elevator. And I hated it.

  The elevator doors slid open.

  They didn’t open into a hallway, as I expected, but rather a large, airy room with big windows lit by the building’s glow. Twenty people stood in the room, most of them in military uniforms: green and blue for Alvatech, red and black for the Andromeda Corps. A handful were in gray Coromina suits. Dad stood at the center of the room, sipping at a tumbler that glowed golden in his hand. A few faces, curious, turned toward me.

  “There she is.” Dad’s voice boomed through the room, drawing all the attention. “My lovely daughter.”

  He said lovely like he expected people to disagree. Of course, everyone only smiled politely.

  “Someone get Esme a drink. This is her first battle.”

  A couple of the Coromina suits chuckled at that. The Alvatech general frowned, though. I didn’t blame him. This wasn’t my first battle. I’d never go to battle.

  Flor strolled up to me, smiling like we were friends. “What would you like?” she said. “We’ve got bourbon, whisky, vodka—”

  “Bourbon.” I swept my eyes around the room. Gabriella was there, chatting with a pair of military men, one hand fluttering next to her throat. She looked excited. But other than Dad and Major Water, I didn?
??t recognize any of these people. I assumed the ones in Coromina suits were the rest of the Ninety-Nines.

  Flor reappeared at my side with the bourbon. “You’re just in time,” she said. “The holo will be coming on anytime now. This is very exciting, to get to see the R-Troops in action. I’ve been looking forward to it since the first one came out of the vats—since we first looked at the sample of alien DNA, really. It’s pretty much a dream come true.”

  I sipped at my drink as she spoke. Her words rushed over me like the alcohol, and made me just as dizzy.

  “Esme!” Dad called out. Flor and I both looked over at him, and he gestured for me. He was standing next to those anonymous men in the gray suits.

  “Daddy’s calling,” Flor said sweetly. I glared at her.

  I wove through the room, taking wide loops to avoid running into anyone. It was easy, given how few people were there, how big the room was. Most of them were clumped together near the center, satellites clinging to Dad’s gravitational pull. And I was being pulled in too.

  I tossed back the rest of my bourbon. I needed the strength. I didn’t even bother tasting it. I’m sure it was expensive. I’m sure it was smoky and sweet with a vibrant finish. But the taste wasn’t why I wanted it.

  “These are the people you’ll be working with,” Dad said, gesturing out at those gray-suited strangers. “Now that you’re a Ninety-Nine. It’s time to get you ready.”

  “Well, not too ready,” one of the men said, laughing. “I don’t imagine you’ll be retiring anytime soon.”

  They all laughed, even Dad. I smiled politely because I knew it would not be in my best interests to make these men angry. Not if I was going to undo what had been done to Isabel.

  The storm had picked up and rain slammed up against the windows, smearing them with green liquid light. We were high up enough that the building seemed to sway with the wind. I thought of the storm crashing through the building, taking us all down, swallowing us up. The planet’s revenge.

  A chime sounded, three notes one after another like a symphony. The lights flickered.

  “The squads are approaching Sector 894.” The speaker was with Alvatech, and he sat off to the side surrounded by tablets and controls. “Everyone take their positions, please. Holos will be activating in thirty seconds.”