PROLOGUE

Brinn ALEXANDER

Winter 2, Sector Annum 106, 21h45

Gregorian Calendar: December 22

 

Blue is the color now. The bruised halo of the moon’s light against the blackened winter sky. The cobalt flash of electric fire, a single strike as it hits the man across from us. The navy of his shirt against the brown dirt and pale grasses as red blood spills from his chest and mouth. The deepening blue of panic as I clutch Remy’s arm, pull her to me. The blue ice in Soren’s eyes as he screams, run.

So soon a moment can change colors, so soon can it spoil, so soon can it wither.

It doesn’t matter that I hardly knew the man. Darrin Squire was his name. Was. He had a name, he was a teammate, we had laughed together. Now he is dead. So quickly a life is extinguished, so fleeting our moments of joy. I clutch Remy’s arm tighter as we run, as Gabriel and I propel her along with our momentum. She seemed so tired, so done, and yet here we are, running. Again.

It’s an inevitable experience for a doctor, watching lives fade to nothing. A daily tragedy to which we consign ourselves, hoping we can stave off death a while longer or, if not, at least alleviate the suffering. Some fade away, lingering too long, leaving relief and fatigue in their wake. Others burst like dying stars, an explosion of anger, bitterness, sadness at leaving this life too soon. The confusion, the shock, the agonizing awe of death’s absence has never dulled with exposure. Accepting death in a cosmic sense is all we can do to ease the pain of our patients’ passing.

We all die. Whether we wilt slowly from old age or instantaneously from a knife to the heart, we cannot escape it. So small are our lives in the span of universal space, so quickly they pass in the span of universal time. So fleeting are our moments of joy.

“Thank the fates you’re alive,” I’d said to Remy, just moments before, as relief washed over me, a river of joy. I was giddy at the sight of her, relieved as only a parent can be when you realize after days of worry and dread that your child is safe. I wrapped my arms around her and held her as though she was the only thing sustaining me, the only source of life. The color wasn’t blue then—it was blinding white. It was everything. It overcame me, overfilled me, spilling out into the world, my joy radiant and independent of me. Remy, safe! I felt like sunshine.

I think of Tai, my oldest daughter, as I have every day since the first moment I put my hand on my belly and felt her kick. And I think, for the millionth time, I can’t lose Remy, too. My children, my everything, put in danger by this transcendent and terrifyingly beautiful world.

It could have been different. Gabriel and I could have stayed in the Sector, stayed in safety. We could have closed our eyes, turned away from the truth. But we didn’t. We owed Tai the truth. So we brought Remy here, to the Resistance. If we had stayed, the Sector’s airships and soldiers wouldn’t be dropping down on us right now. If we had stayed, Remy wouldn’t have been taken prisoner by the Sector. If we had stayed, Remy wouldn’t be in danger.

But if we had stayed, Remy wouldn’t know justice. She wouldn’t know sacrifice. She wouldn’t know there is pain on the path to renewal. To grow, we must be pruned, bits of ourselves flayed open, cut back. In those carved-out spaces, we grow stronger.

“Recovery is painful,” I told Remy three years ago, when we mourned Tai. “We will bleed, we will swell, we will scab. It’s the same with life. It wasn’t Tai’s time to die, but she was taken from us. She would want us to heal from her absence, to feel joy again. But we don’t truly understand joy until we have known sorrow.” Joy and sorrow. Light and shadow. Life and death.

If we had stayed in Okaria, the three of us would have suffocated in the wake of Tai’s death, in the wake of our hypocrisy. Our silence would have killed us from the inside, like a cancer eating away at our bones. I was unable to protect Tai, but now, for Remy, I will do anything. Which is why, when the blue explosions of Bolt fire fill the air, Gabriel and I envelop her in our arms to shield her, even as we run.

I’m almost unsurprised when the blue flame ignites inside me. It begins in my back, where just earlier that day Gabriel’s hand rested, comforting, as he whispered that Remy would return to us, that he, like me, would do anything to bring her home. From my back, the blue spreads like ink on wet paper to my knees as I fall forward, to my head as the pain screams its arrival, to my lungs as I struggle to breathe. I try to move. I push myself using arms that don’t work. I twist away even as the fire sears into my bones.

Run, Remy! I try to tell her.

I’m putting them both in danger by falling here, I know, where the color blue rains down on us like death.

Tai, I think, distantly, as if I am speaking to myself from far away. Hush, child. I’m almost there. I’m almost there with you. Just a little longer. We all must die, after all. Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. It is our mortal curse and our mortal privilege that we are returned to earth. My transformation from Brinn to earth begins now. Even as a part of me hopes I might recover, that I could fight, that I could survive this, a bigger part knows it is over. My time as Brinn Alexander is over. I am ready to return to where I was made.

The screams of my family and those around me hurt more than the pain. I am conscious now of more than mere sight and sound. Gabriel cradles me to him and I am filled with wonder at the joy I have known in his embrace. The skin of my daughter’s hands, her grip fierce on my fingers. I feel nothing but the two people I love most in the world.

“You’ll die if you stay here,” I hear. Distantly I recognize the voice. Valerian Orleán. My brain functions just enough to register mild surprise that he is here with us. He is the enemy, a part of me says, but another part soothes and calms me. He will protect them. I watch through heavy lidded eyes as he looks at Remy. Her reaction is fierce, eyes narrowed, and she returns his gaze evenly.

“I don’t care,” she whispers. Three words from her lips a thousand times more terrifying than death.

Go, I try to speak. It’s my time, not yours. You will live.

Gabriel nods at Vale, some unspoken communication I can’t fathom, and lifts me up. I watch the world from my love’s arms as he carries me away from the unguarded air. Vale runs alongside me for a moment and I thank him with as much strength as I can muster, words that I speak aloud and words that will not come, that could never fill this space. He nods, but his eyes are fixed on the skies, his weapon up, guarding me, protecting my family.

In the clarity of death, my surprise at Vale’s presence fades. How could I be surprised? Three years ago, Vale looked at Remy like she was a new world, infinite with delight and passion. He tried to hide it when I was around, his budding love, but a mother can sense these things. One who has loved can sense these things.

Now, he looks at her like she is his salvation.

Gabriel sets me down on the ground. Remy kneels over me. I grasp for her hand, lean into Gabriel, my love, my loves. The explosions in the distance become faint as I focus on Remy’s touch and Gabriel’s voice. The blue fades. White fills me up as all other colors and emotions combine and blur into emptiness. I see a face I recognize, but distantly, and I struggle to focus.

Gabriel’s voice, the poetry, the resonance that vibrates in my chest: “I love you, I love you, I love you….”

I close my eyes and see Tai, laughing, beckoning, and I take her hand and go.