Star's End

  Isabel was gone.

  I trembled, my bones vibrating inside my body. The Radiance’s empty room dissolved away from me, and I was standing in the woods. Acrid air and hot wind slammed against me and made my eyes water.

  “What the fuck happened? Where did you go?” Harriet lunged over to me, light rifle out. “You just vanished!” She stopped, frowning. “Are you crying?”

  “I can’t explain.” I wiped my eyes. Isabel had chosen the Radiance. I had gone to her and I said the wrong thing and she had chosen the Radiance. “Get me to the beach.”

  “I thought you’d been fucking snatched out from under me.” Harriet jerked her head to the side and started stomping through the forest. I followed. My muscles moved on some separate impulse of their own, distinct from my mind. Star’s End was burning. I could see the light through the trees. I could hear the gunfire, the shouts of soldiers.

  “This way!” Harriet shouted up ahead. I stumbled forward, weaving through the trees. Sometimes, Harriet stopped me and went a few paces ahead, then gestured for me to follow. Sweat beaded over my skin. The air was thick with smoke and I wondered if this was the end of our world, if Dad’s cruelty had finally undone something larger than himself.

  We were clear of the woods now. The yellow light had faded into a burnished orange as it blended with the light from Coromina I. I didn’t know what that meant, what that signified. Isabel, I thought, and I knew I should go back for her. I should beg her for forgiveness.

  But then I heard the sound of the ocean, rushing in and rushing out. “Almost there,” Harriet said, glancing back at me. She reached out with one hand and grabbed me and pulled me forward over the sand. Instead of smoke, I smelled the briny fish scent of the sea. The ship was down the shore from us, lights blinking. Harriet shouted, waved her hands above her head. A figure bounded toward us. Another soldier, his light rifle bouncing. For a moment, I could only stare at him, numb with fear, with guilt, with horror at myself.

  Then an explosion ripped across the sky, dry hot toxic heat blistering through the woods. Harriet’s hand slipped out of mine and then I was flying, hair streaming around me. I landed hard in the thick tangle of grass. All I could hear was the ringing of bells. I lay on my back, panic choking around me. Beyond the forest, Star’s End burned.

  But the sky—the sky was normal again. I caught twinkles of stars.

  “Isabel,” I whispered.

  “What the fuck was that?” Harriet materialized beside me. She was shouting but her voice was still muffled. “Is this OCI after all?” She peered up at the sky, frowning.

  “Ms. Coromina!” It was the soldier. He peeled himself off the sound. “Get in the ship now!”

  I sat up. The movement was too much at once and the pain erupted in my side and my head swum. I cried out and tilted forward. Someone caught me. Daphne. Where had she come from? I realized the soldier must have been shouting at her, not me. But it didn’t matter. I was grateful for her. At least I didn’t deserve her hatred.

  She knelt at my side, sand streaking the side of her dress. The makeup around her eyes was blurred.

  “We don’t have time,” the soldier said. “The ship’s about to leave.”

  Daphne nodded. She scooped her arm around my shoulder and helped me, staggering under my weight. Harriet rushed over to my side, threw her arm around my waist. Together, the two of them dragged me over the sand. Off to our right, embers flared up from the fire at Star’s End. I turned my head and watched the burning with a dull fury waiting inside my chest. I didn’t even cry. There was no point, and crying didn’t reflect how I felt in that moment, anyway. The fire did. The fire, raging and devouring and furious.

  “Isabel,” Daphne whispered in a low voice. “They couldn’t find Isabel. I think they’re going to leave without her.”

  “She’s gone,” I said.

  Daphne blinked at me. Tears shimmered on her eyes, catching in the firelight. The ocean rolled in as if nothing had changed.

  “Not dead,” I said. “Just—gone.” Was this true? I didn’t know. I only wanted it to be.

  Daphne frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “She knew,” I whispered. “She knew this was going to happen.”

  Daphne shook her head. “No, that’s not possible.” The tears dripped over her cheeks. Something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t crying too, that I only felt fire. “How could she—” Daphne turned away.

  “Don’t think on it,” Harriet said, her voice hard. “Not right now.”

  We had made it to the ship, small and sleek and CG-built, glowing with the faint outline of the light-shields. Its engine was so quiet that I could still hear the ocean.

  Dad’s face appeared in the entrance. When he saw me, he jumped out to the sand. I felt Harriet stiffen beside me.

  “Sir,” the soldier said, “you need to get back on the ship.”

  “Where is she?” Dad strolled toward me. I felt like he would walk right through me. “She chose them, didn’t she?”

  “Leave her alone, Philip,” Harriet said. Dad glared at her.

  “Who can blame her?” I shot back.

  The soldier coughed. “It is imperative that you all get on the ship—”

  He stopped. His jaw dropped and his gaze shifted, beyond us. Daphne glanced over her shoulder. Then she screamed and leapt away from me, kicking up a spray of sand. Harriet whirled around, leaving me wobbling on my own, her gun up, ready to fire.

  Dad’s face was as hard as stone.

  “Move,” Harriet whispered. “Now.”

  No one did. I knew what they seeing, what they were staring at with such horror.

  Slowly, I turned around.

  The alien.

  I didn’t know if it was the same one that I had seen that night I became a Ninety-Nine. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it didn’t matter. But this one, I saw all the way through. Not in snatches through the shadows.

  It stood on two legs.

  It was taller than any of us on the beach.

  Its claws gleamed in the firelight.

  And it was staring at Dad.

  “Move!” Harriet shouted, and she grabbed me and Daphne by the arm and dragged us toward the escape ship stirring up sand. I let her do it. I was limp with grief; all I wanted was a mother to take care of me.

  Not that the alien was attacking. I looked over my shoulder as we approached the whine of the escape ship. It stared at Dad, and Dad stared back at it. He didn’t shake; he didn’t tremble.

  “Philip, you stupid piece of shit!” Harriet shouted, and the soldier who had run out to greet us grabbed Dad and yanked him back.

  The alien vanished.

  Dad screamed and blood pooled across the sand, oil-slick and almost black in the shadows.

  Harriet and the soldier opened fire, streaks of lights lighting up the beach. The image of the alien flickered. Someone yanked me into the escape ship—Adrienne, it was Adrienne, her face pale, her expression unreadable. Daphne threw up in the corner.

  And then Dad was shoved in after me. Harriet leapt aboard, screaming, “Go, go, go!” The other soldier was still firing his gun. Blood splattered across the opening of the ship, sprinkling across Dad and Harriet and dropping three spots on my dress, one after another, like a memorial.

  The escape ship lifted up off the sand without the soldier.

  I heard his screams as we were carried away to safety.

  • • •

  We went to the space station. Where else would the Coromina family go in a time of horror?

  My sisters and Harriet and I were corralled into a common area and told, by a soldier in an Alvatech uniform, that we were to stay there, that Harriet’s assignment was to guard us—I knew this really meant she was to keep us tucked away. I drew myself up and demanded to see my father. “I’m ranked Ninety-Nine,” I told the soldier, who remained stone-faced. “I have a right to know what’s going on.”

  “Your father fears you’re emotionally unstable right now,” the soldier
said calmly. “He thinks it would be better if you stayed here.”

  “What’s happening?” shouted Daphne, who stalked over to us, her eyes rimmed in red. She had wept the entire trip here. “Where’s my sister? Where’s Isabel?”

  The soldier looked at her but said nothing, only turned and stalked out of the room. Daphne lunged after him, and Harriet caught her, gently, by the arm, and pulled her back. “It’s not worth it,” she murmured.

  “Get off me!” Daphne wrenched her arm away from Harriet. “Don’t tell me what to do.” Daphne turned to me. “What’s happening? How could we leave Isabel behind? You said she wasn’t dead!”

  “She’s not.” I hoped this was true. I hoped the Radiance really were a second family to her, that they had gathered her up and taken her into that strange echoing realm of theirs. But the truth was I didn’t know, and my chest felt hollow.

  “Then where is she?” Daphne shouted. She flung herself away from me and stalked across the room to where Adrienne sat, curled up tight like a snail. She hadn’t said a word on the trip there, only stared out the window as we blasted through the atmosphere, her face pale in the light of burning oxygen. She still hadn’t spoken, in fact, but now she turned to me, her eyes hard and bitter. She did not look like herself.

  “You know more than you’re telling us,” she said in a voice so quiet it frightened me.

  I looked at them, Daphne and Adrienne, staring at me from across the room. There was so much space between us. Harriet stood near the door, fulfilling her assignment, keeping us away from Dad and whatever decisions he was making in my absence.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I expected Daphne to start shouting again, but she only slumped down on the faded sofa beside her sister. The walls of the space station thrummed. I glanced over at Harriet, and she nodded at me, just once. It wasn’t her place to give permission, but she did it anyway. I needed that from her right now.

  “Tell us,” said Adrienne, still speaking in that quiet, dangerous voice, “what you know.”

  I was suddenly exhausted. All the adrenaline had fled my system. I collapsed in a chair across from the sofa and dug the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. “Isabel,” I said, my throat dry. “Isabel—there’s something about her—she’s different.”

  I looked up at them. The room seemed to constrict upon us, and for a moment, I was aware of the precariousness of the space station, the way one punch through the wall would kill all of us.

  “She isn’t completely human,” I said.

  And with that, everything else flooded out. I told them all of it: I told them about the Radiance; I told them about the flu and the way it shaped Isabel in their mother’s womb. I told them about the surgery, and I admitted to them, tears trembling in my lashes, that I hadn’t been able to stop it.

  Daphne leapt to her feet, her face red, her hands curled into fists. “I don’t fucking believe this!” she shouted. She grabbed a statue from the end table and flung it across the room. It bounced off the wall and shattered when it hit the floor. Harriet didn’t try to stop her; I suspected she understood her anger. “Why didn’t you fucking tell us this earlier!”

  “I couldn’t.” My voice came out too small. “It was Level Ninety-Nine information.” I regretted saying this as soon as the words were out.

  “Are you kidding me?” Daphne whirled around, her eyes blazing with fury. “We’re fucking family. We had a right to know what the company was doing to her!”

  “I’m sorry.” It didn’t feel like enough. Daphne scowled at me and then sank back down on the sofa, her hands covering her face.

  Through all of this, Adrienne had watched quietly, her hands folded in her lap. But now she turned to me, and I saw in her expression a glitter of betrayal, of something like hatred. My stomach felt as if it were filled with lead.

  “That surgery happened months ago,” she said, her eyes fixed on mine. I couldn’t move. “How can you still be working for the company?”

  Her question took my breath away. Defection was an option I had never even considered. How could I? The company had been promised to me since my birth. My entire life I had been shaped to take it over.

  “I would have left,” she said, her eyes burning. “It’s not like we don’t have the money or the connections. You could have disappeared. You could have taken us with you. You could have taken Isabel with you.”

  I shook my head. I was cold all over. “It wasn’t—I wanted to change things from the inside. I was trying to help her, Adrienne, you have to—”

  “You didn’t give a shit about Isabel,” she said.

  I trembled. A weight pressed into my shoulder—it was Harriet, who had left her post at the door, who was trying to comfort me.

  “Don’t speak to her like that,” Harriet said.

  “You stay out of this,” snapped Adrienne. “You aren’t part of this family.”

  “Yes, she is,” I said. “She’s my mother.”

  Adrienne rolled her eyes. “Yes, and you could talk to her anytime you wanted, couldn’t you? Send her your little holos? All we had was a plot of flowers in a cemetery. That was all Isabel had. That’s the real reason you didn’t take Isabel away, wasn’t it?” She stood up. Her face was incandescent with fury. And I knew, in that moment, her fury was really for our father, for his company. But she couldn’t abuse him like she could abuse me. He wasn’t there.

  Harriet stayed her ground, her hand still on my shoulder, but it wasn’t enough.

  “You had your family!” Adrienne screamed. “You had a mother and so why should you care about us?”

  “Is that true?” Daphne said, looking at me. “Is that why you didn’t take us away?”

  I was crying, tears streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t even look at Harriet. I didn’t know why I hadn’t taken them away. It had never occurred to me as an option. I had been so focused on changing the company from the inside that I hadn’t thought I could just leave it all behind.

  Because I didn’t want to leave it behind. That was the truth.

  “You’re my sisters,” I said, tasting the salt of tears on my tongue. “I love you.”

  “But you didn’t protect her,” Daphne said.

  “I didn’t know!”

  “You found out!” Adrienne screamed. “You found out and you still didn’t protect her!”

  My tears fell harder. The room blurred. I had no answer for the twins, and so I stood up, shaking, and collapsed into my mother’s arms. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, going to my mother when their mother was dead, but she was the only ally I had in that moment.

  She wrapped her arms around me, squeezing me tight.

  And I could feel my sisters’ rage like a fire.

  • • •

  A few hours later, someone knocked on the door. I was curled up in the corner, away from Adrienne and Daphne, who had fallen asleep on the sofa. The room was thick with anger. No one had spoken much, because what was there to say?

  Harriet answered the door and conferred with whoever was on the other side in a low voice. I sat up, watched her, wondering what was going on. I was vaguely aware of one of the twins stirring, but I didn’t look over at them.

  Harriet nodded and turned to us. “Your father has called a meeting,” she said. “All of us have to attend.”

  “No,” said Adrienne. I glanced over at her in spite of myself. She was shaking Daphne awake. “No, we’re not going.”

  Harriet stepped aside and an Andromeda Corps soldier stepped inside. His light rifle glowed with its charge. Adrienne’s eyes widened.

  “You don’t have a choice,” he said.

  I stood up, my limbs shaky. Maybe this would help them understand that things weren’t so easy. That I couldn’t just pack them all up and fly to some other system.

  “No,” Adrienne said again.

  The Andromeda Corps soldier lunged forward, shoving past me. He yanked Adrienne up by her arm. She let out a yelp of surprise and then strained against him. Dap
hne, still bleary-eyed, shouted protests.

  “Let her go,” I said, nausea rising in my throat. “This really isn’t necessary.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” The soldier glanced at me as he dragged Adrienne off the bed. “All of you need to be in the meeting.”

  He wrenched Adrienne to her feet. Daphne stood up on her own, sullen. “Are you going to come without trouble?” he said.

  Neither of my sisters answered. But when he pulled on Adrienne’s arm, she shuffled forward, and Daphne followed. I let them go ahead because I wanted to keep my eye on them. Not that they cared. Adrienne glared at me as she passed.

  “This meeting isn’t going to be anything good,” Harriet said in a low voice.

  I knew she was right.

  We followed the soldier out into the narrow corridor. The lights were midmorning bright, the same as they would be down at Star’s End. Star’s End. It was probably gone now, destroyed in the fighting. And all those people—

  I hoped Isabel was safe.

  We arrived at a room at the end of the hallway. The windows were darkened and thrumming with security shields; when we stepped into the room, the shield prickled over my skin. Dad was already there, along with Flor and Gabriella and all the rest of the Ninety-Nines. They’d all gotten out of Star’s End safely. Maybe the destruction wasn’t as bad as I feared.

  No, I knew better. They got out of Star’s End because they were top priority. In all likelihood, they’d been escorted by the R-Troops.

  “I’m glad you’re finally letting me join you,” I said to Dad.

  The door slammed behind me. Adrienne and Daphne cowered together, their hands linked. Of course they didn’t lash out at Dad. They would only do that to me.

  “I wanted to give you time to clear your head,” Dad said. “But we also need to move fast on this. Most of the plans have already been set into motion. I just need to brief you.” His eyes flicked away from me, over to Harriet, to the twins. “All of you.”

  “What’s going on?” Daphne said, jutting out her chin. “Where’s Isabel?”