46

THE MOTH WHO KNEW HER WINGS WOULD BURN

PRIYA HAD NEVER BEEN SQUEAMISH AROUND wounds, even her own. Playtime scrapes were a source of fascination, something to be studied through the glittery fray of Madam Wink’s mane while her father sprayed on Heal-All. He often recited facts as he did—things to distract her from the sting, truths to tuck away for later.

“One minute is all it takes for a drop of blood to run through your body. Heart back to heart. The hemoglobin in your red blood cells threads oxygen through your veins to keep you alive. It’s pretty phenomenal stuff.”

“Why are some people so scared of it?” Priya had asked, thinking of Tommy, who’d abandoned his own hoverbike to help her off the ground, only to freeze when he saw her torn-up knees.

Her father went quiet. This silence went past tired, the kind of pause that meant something important would be said. So Priya had waited, squeezing her stuffed unicorn so tight its stuffing pushed back against the practice sutures.

“It’s not the blood people fear,” Dev Parekh said finally. “It’s the pain.”

Now, at eighteen, watching Far’s wound ooze through the screen, Priya understood. Here was a sight that turned her stomach. The pain was not a distant dream, but red and roaring, all of Far’s blood spilling out too fast to replace. His medical readings scrambled across the infirmary screens—fight-or-flight wild, a beat no song could match. Even if there were such a tune, playlists were a thing of the past. Both sets of Priya’s headphones, BeatBix and rip-offs, sat quiet on her desk, mirroring their surroundings in their gold plating: the see-through surface of a dead holo-paper zine, useless needles, Ganesh’s curled trunk. All appeared four times and shining, reminding her that this was the only way to make a way. Everything would be better when the string was cut.

But it hurt watching Far bleed out of life. It hurt watching life bleed out of him. Neither force crackled.

“Far! Don’t you dare stop, Far!” Priya’s own heart bled through the comm.

She was afraid.

“Keep fighting!”

“Priya! Priyapriyapriya!” Imogen appeared, a lemon-colored blob in the headphones—too frantic to register her cousin’s injuries. “We’ve got an emergency emergency. The Bureau jacktail showed up with the Corps, and he’s trying to fritz out Eliot’s equipment with a stunrod. His teleport equipment is working again and he’s chasing her all over the city and she’s still got Gaius in her pocket universe and I don’t know what to do. Do you have something zappy?”

If Gaius was in the pocket universe, then the chip was as well. They were supposed to be passed on to Empra together. Priya had even written a letter to Far’s mother, filling the inside cover of the Code of Conduct with instructions to give the chip to Far on his seventeenth birthday. The guidebook’s paper tore as easily as it folded and was now a tiny square in a small box in a pocket universe on Eliot’s wrist, hopping all across Rome. The Invictus’s whole past and possible future hinged on this: Stay with Far at the hour of his death, or save their lives for later.

All or nothing.

It wasn’t even a choice.

“I love you.” Priya’s finger trembled over the Mute button. “I—I have to go. Keep fighting.”

She cut the audio link before Far could answer and tossed a lab coat over the feed. Grief settled gray below her eyes, dry, yet dark enough to tarnish the BeatBix. “Why do you need zap? What about Eliot’s blaster?”

“Are you an ace shot?” the Historian asked. “I’m not. Anything short of a kill means squat when teleportation is involved. I figure it’s better if we can fritz Agent Ackerman’s jump systems before he fritzes Eliot’s. Less death, less hopping, everybody wins.”

“We don’t have any stunrods on board.” But they were in a ship full of live wires. Priya turned her back to the lab coat’s shine and pushed into the common area. A few floor panels remained crooked from Far’s Rubaiyat ransack. Sharp corners, tilting plane, covered in costumes from a blank-page past. Neon fires flared as Priya shoved aside the flash-leather suit, prying up the panel beneath. More rainbows appeared in the form of wires, bundled together by the dozen.

“Welcome to the Invictus’s nervous system,” she announced. “Very colorful, very electric.”

Imogen knelt next to her, gaping at the Medusa mess. “You’re gonna gut the ship?”

“This is all the zap we’ve got.” The correct combination of wires—high voltage, low current—could substitute as a stunrod, stopping a man, but not his heart. It was the ship itself Priya was worried about. Disconnecting the wrong line could bring down the holo-shield, the comms, the mainframe… any number of systems essential to their mission. “We can do without overhead lights or speakers, right?”

“Affirmative.”

Which wires were which wires were which wires were which? So many colors streamed together, and Priya found it hard to keep her head on when her heart was in the arena. Green? Light blue? Orange? Red? Red? Red?

“Hurry,” Imogen urged. “Eliot’s been through enough jumps to scramble an egg inside a hen.”

Purple and green. Priya wasn’t certain about the wires she chose, but this didn’t stop her from yanking them free. The Invictus’s overhead lights cut out, sparks scattering through newfound darkness. She’d gotten at least one of the wires right. The comm system had stayed online, too. Far’s datastream glowed through the infirmary screen, ghastly in new shadows. Priya couldn’t look at it. Her concentration was best served focusing on the wires in each hand, frayed ends far from touching.

Keep fighting, Far.

One more minute. That was all she needed: heart back to heart.

I’m going to save us.

“These wires don’t stretch much,” she told Imogen. “The Bureau agent has to land on this side of the common area.”

The other girl nodded. “Copy that, Eliot? Your order of save-the-day is ready. Come on home.”

The final word wasn’t even cold when Eliot appeared. Sweat streaked her eyebrows. Her eyes had gone from haunted to hunted. She slouched against the couch, ash in her warning: “Five seconds. He’ll be here.”

Priya’s fists tightened around the wires. A flickering in the infirmary called to her, but she could not look. She could not look. Priya wondered if she’d feel it—the moment Far died—or if that was a sentiment created by ancient poets. Souls twined so closely together one could feel when the other was severed….

Agent Ackerman’s materialization made Eliot’s teleports look mystical. Where she slipped, this man slammed, crushing the tricorne hat beneath his feet. His stunrod was pointed at Eliot, and it might’ve landed, had he not been so blindsided by the brightness of Imogen’s hair.

“I have had it with you history-hopping betch—”

Poke. Poke. ZZZZZZAP.

Thud.

One touch and the Bureau agent was grounded. Priya stared at the wires she held, shocked in a different sense. She’d never harmed another person before, had never thought she could, under the unspoken pressure of the Hippocratic oath. Everything was upside down, inside out. At the end of the couch, Eliot doubled over, charred fabric crumbling beneath her nails while she heaved. There was a wet splash of something on the floor panels.

Priya took an extra breath to keep her own sickness down. “Are you okay?”

“Too much—dashing—rearranging!” Eliot explained between gasps. “My—molecules—can handle it. Stomach—not so much.”

“Is he okay?” Imogen nudged Agent Ackerman with her toe. The man was face to floor, pinned by a force heavier than gravity. His hat had tumbled into the rest of the clothes, blending in with forgotten times.

“He seems to be breathing.” Eliot gathered herself enough to pick up the Bureau agent’s stunrod. She flicked it on, then off, white charge leaving a jagged imprint in the air. “Good call on the wires, Priya. You just saved the whole hashing day, and more besides.”

“The files? They’re intact?”

“Locked and loaded.” The eyes that were so like Far’s—and altogether different—blinked. “I’m feeding all of the ship’s current datastream into the chip as we speak, including mine. Anything you want to say?”

Priya’s fists buzzed and shook, no volts involved. What could she voice that hadn’t already been shown? How could she put love into letters, life into words?

“Far, you’re in the arena right now, fighting a really terrifying guy with a sword, because you believed this life is worth dying for. Please, give it a chance. Give us a chance. When we met in this life, I was working shifts in the Corps infirmary. Priya Parekh. Find me. Bring a mug of chai from the tea stand on Via Novus.”

“The files…” If Imogen were an animation, a lightbulb would’ve appeared. “You mean the Invictus’s logs! Clever, clever. Oooh, breaking news! Gram and Aunt Empra have made it to the rendezvous. Her second contraction just started—ah! It’s loud!”

“I should go. I’ll do my best to make sure the chip gets transferred.” Eliot pulled off her wig as she said this, elaborate Roman updo tossed into the pile. “Don’t let him out of your sight, okay?”

“You’ll warn me before the Ab Aeterno leaves?” Far couldn’t live past the time machine’s takeoff, no matter how much Priya wanted him to. “So I can tell Far when it’s time….”

Eliot vanished midnod, her exit just as sudden as her entrance all those days ago, prelude to doomed violins. No songs rose to meet Priya now as she looked toward the infirmary. Somewhere on the other side of this city, Far’s eyes were open, datastream transmitting a sight bright enough to sear through her lab coat. What a fearsome light, calling her, the moth who knew her wings would burn.

Let the flames come.

Let the watch end.

Clear sight or tears, she’d be there to see it.

“Im?”

“Yeah, Priya?”

“Will you hold these wires away from the metal floor?” Priya passed them to her friend one at a time. “I need to say good-bye.”