Scarlett—fourteen minutes remaining
Zila’s in my arms, all sharp angles to my softness, and I wish this wasn’t the first and last time I’ll ever hold her. I’m a snotty mess, and even though I know she’s right, I don’t know if I can take one more loss. I can do what I have to do, but what will be left of me on the other side?
But she gives me this moment, doesn’t pull away, just stays in my arms, real and whole and a part of my life for a few seconds more. And then … then something unwinds inside her, and she relaxes against me, head on my shoulder for a single heartbeat.
And I know she’s ready. She’s become who she needs to be to do this. And the parts of that transformation that don’t come straight from her, they were gifts from us.
I look up, eyes still swimming with tears, and Nari’s gaze is waiting.
I promise I have her, those solemn eyes say.
I squeeze Zila one more time, still looking across at the girl who’ll guard her for us. She’s everything, my own gaze tells her in reply. And, She needs someone to care for her.
Lieutenant Nari Kim simply nods. She already knows. She sees.
I draw back, let Zila go, and Finian slips a hand into mine. There’s nothing more to say, and no time to say it anyway. So the two of us turn, and we run.
Zila—twelve minutes remaining
It is strange to be following Nari instead of guiding her through comms, but I know every step as if I have run it myself a hundred times. Nari and I take a corner, flatten ourselves against a doorway, counting precious seconds as the patrol passes by at the end of the hall.
Finian and Scarlett will divert them in a moment. And so Nari and I will reach the core forty-five seconds sooner than she has before.
It would not be enough for her on her own. But it will give her time to defend me.
Together, we can do this.
Finian—ten minutes remaining
“Maker’s hairy—”
“Less talk, more run!” Scar gasps.
The sec patrol pounds down the hallway behind us, radioing for backup and probably immediate missile drops on our current location. There’s a Betraskan aboard their station, and now they know it.
So the good news is, we’ve distracted them. The bad news is that we’re nearly at the docking bays, and if we don’t lose the goons on our tail, stealing a ship is going to be preeeeeetty tricky.
Then I see it, up ahead at the intersection, mounted on a wall bracket. If it comes out easy, we live. If it sticks, we die.
“Scar,” I gasp. “Bank left.”
She doesn’t question—throwing herself around the corner just as I’m grabbing the fire extinguisher and yanking it free. And with a prayer to the Maker, I hurl it back at the goons chasing us.
They try to shoot me—one of them comes so close I almost get a haircut. But their shots also hit the extinguisher, blasting it apart. In a moment, the whole corridor is filled with fine white powder, and I’m blinded by it, inhaling a sharp chemical mouthful and feeling my way through the pale cloud to the door Scarlett’s holding open.
I slip inside, both hands clapped over my mouth to muffle my gasping coughs. The door hums closed, and we listen as the patrol reaches the intersection, curses up a storm, and divides four ways, pounding away from our hiding place.
Suckers.
Zila—eight minutes remaining
Liebermann went down without shooting Nari this time. The security guards outside the lab have been incapacitated. We reach the sign.
NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT.
“SECURITY ALERT, LEVEL 2. REPEAT: SECURITY ALERT, LEVEL 2.”
A stolen passcard against the door. A deep electronic hum.
And the announcement that tells me there are eight minutes remaining until the implosion of the station and the end of our final loop.
“WARNING: CONTAINMENT BREACH ESCALATION UNDER WAY, ENGAGE EMERGENCY MEASURES DECK 9.”
And I am here in person, in the large circular room I have seen over and over through Nari’s eyes. A cylindrical glass case dominates the space, cords and conduits connecting it to the computer banks against the walls. Our target is within, cracked and suspended midair, pulsing with light.
The first time I saw one of these probes, Aurora touched it, and lived half a year inside the Echo with Kal. I wonder briefly how they are. If they make it. If all of this will be worth it.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Nari stuns the man in the white radsuit. Stuns his companion before he has time to draw his sidearm this time. I drop to my knees, plunge my hands into the machinery, narrowing my focus to the task at hand.
This moment is all that matters.
“Twenty seconds till company arrives,” Nari murmurs, perfectly still, eyes fixed on the door. A hawk hovering, waiting for her chance.
The system to eject the crystal out into space is mechanical rather than electronic—in case of a power failure, I suppose. There are four locks holding the probe in place, one at each compass point, and all must be disengaged manually. But the mechanisms are heavy, bolted shut. Scanning the floor around me, I crawl toward one of the unconscious engineers. Shoving him onto his back, I search his tool belt, grabbing a heavy wrench.
Hurry, Zila, hurry. This time you can save them.
“Heads up!” Nari shouts, and the doors burst open, and everything is sound and light, smoke billowing around me, and I spare one hand to tug my shirt up over my mouth and nose. The wrench fits onto the first of the couplings. I yank it, yank it again. It loosens. I pull it free.
Crawling to the second lock, I ignore the fire sizzling over my head, the smell of melting metal. Nari is holding them off, but there are so many, and I know there are only seconds remaining until one of them uses the covering fire of the others to charge into the lab.
I glance at the probe and wrench the second lock free, the alarms ringing louder. It still hovers, still pulses with light, anchoring my friend here.
Now.
“Zila!” Nari shouts as weapons roar and the column above her head explodes in a shower of sparks. “Hurry up!”
I crawl to the next lock on my belly, sirens screeching in my ears. My hands are slick with sweat, the wrench slipping in my grip as I pull hard, face twisting, finally uncoupling the third bolt.
“ZILA!” Nari roars.
“Ten seconds,” I shout back.
I am at the fourth lock now, fitting the wrench into place and yanking with all my strength to turn it. The last coupling resists, stubborn, infuriating, the fate of the entire galaxy resting in my hands. I am not a religious person, but a part of me desperately wishes I was.
“Please,” I whisper to whoever is listening.
Please.
And finally, finally, the bolt comes loose.
For a moment more, the pulsing glow lingers. The energy flowing through to the broken probe stutters. And at last, the light within flickers.
Then dies.
With a hollow clunk, the cylinder containing it opens, the broken probe slipping free, ushered out into the cold void of space.
Powerless.
Lifeless.
I did it.
But there is no time for celebration. Nari backs up toward me, still firing, cursing. The air is filled with gunfire, the noise almost deafening.
Five seconds.
Nari spends the last of her ammunition on the doorway, then ducks behind my column, lacing her hands together as we planned.
I drop the wrench and rise, planting one boot on her joined hands.
With a grunt, she stands, boosting me upward. I punch at the ceiling vent and grab the edges of the hole, pulling myself up in one movement, swinging around with no regard for the pain as I jam myself into too small a space, and lowering my upper body down to reach for her.
Nari jumps, and another bank explodes behind her, and for a moment I think our hands will not connect, because she is not tall.
Then her palms slap into mine, and with everything I have, I pull her up just as the security patrol bursts in through the door.
Finian—seven minutes remaining
We’re later than usual, and the docking bays are alive, our usual path to our shuttle gone. My head is swimming, heart pounding, and as I crouch by Scar in the shadow of a supply vessel, I try to breathe deep to calm myself.
It whistles in my throat, a weird, high noise. I can still taste that piece-of-chakk fire extinguisher. Ugh. What do Terrans put in those things?
“We still have to try for the same ship,” Scarlett whispers. “Most of the crew is gonna jump for the escape pods, but that shuttle’s the only thing that’ll get us out into the storm.”
I want to agree, but my tongue feels weirdly heavy, my lips tingling, and my mouth won’t do what I want. When she looks across at me, I just nod.
“Can you … can you divert them or something?” she whispers. “Set off an alarm somewhere, do a magic computery thing?”
I shake my head, leaning forward, pressing my palms into the ground. My breath won’t come. I’m dizzy.
“Are you okay?” she whispers, eyes widening.
I gesture at the ship. We have to keep moving.
“Low-tech it is,” she mutters, leaning out and taking a good look at the crews surrounding us. Then, with both hands, she pulls a chock out from behind the wheel of the nearest fighter and, with all her strength, hurls it farther up the landing bay.
It lands with a CRASH, and all heads turns.
Scar is off like an athlete out of the blocks. I’m stumbling behind her, too hot, too dizzy, my vision starting to swim. I know which way I need to go, but I’m running blind.
My legs are weak. My exosuit is working overtime.
We reach the heavy shuttle we always steal.
Pain shoots through me as my knees hit the ground. I work quickly on the hatchway, hot-wiring it open amid the swirling smoke and chaos, same as I always do. But my hands are shaking.
I can’t seem to get enough air.
My tongue feels weird.
Something’s wrong.
Zila—six minutes remaining
“Zila!” Scarlett’s voice comes through comms, garbled but audible.
“One moment,” I say, turning a corner and crawling after Nari. The vents are very tight, and we are both small. Nobody on the security team will be able to follow. But we do not have long to reach our escape pod.
“REPEAT: CONTAINMENT BREACH ESCALATION UNDER WAY, ENGAGE EMERGENCY MEASURES DECK 9.”
“Zila, come on!” Nari calls, kicking out a grille ahead.
“Scarlett?” I ask, crawling forward on my belly. “Are you aboard the shuttle?”
“CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT, T MINUS THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING. ALL HANDS PROCEED TO EVACUATION PODS IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IN THREE MINUTES.”
“Yes, we launched!” Scarlett cries. “We’re headed toward the storm, but something’s happened to Fin! He inhaled some chemicals upstairs and now he can’t b—”
“REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT. ALL HANDS PROCEED TO EVACUATION PODS IMMEDIATELY.”
I hold on to the walls as the station shakes around me. The sirens in the vents are terribly loud.
“Say again, Scarlett? What has happened to Finian?”
“Zila, he can’t breathe!”
Scarlett—five minutes remaining
Fin is slumped in the pilot’s chair, and space all around us is on fire. Escape pods are blasting out of the station’s flanks, and burning plasma is venting from its hull, and we’re rocketing toward the huge coiling tendrils of the dark matter storm, the sail and the pulse beyond, our ticket home.
Except I don’t know if Fin’s going to make it.
His face is swelling, eyes bulging, lips turning a strange purple. I try to ignore the panic, hold myself together. I lay him on the floor as we rocket closer to the tempest, focused on Zila’s voice.
She sounds so far away.
“Can you hear wheezing, Scarlett? Whistling?”
I bend down, my ear to his mouth, heart hammering on my ribs. He’s not moving anymore, he’s not talking, he’s not …
Oh Maker, please please don’t do this… .
“Yes.”
“Then he is still breathing,” Zila says. “Nari and I are headed to the escape pods. If Finian is incapacitated, you must guide the ship through the storm’s turbulence and out to the quantum sail. You must be close when the pulse strikes. Ten meters or less to be sure.”
“Me?” I glance around wildly, spot the pilot’s chair. “I don’t know how to fly this thing! My job’s always been witty commentary!”
“Listen carefully, Scarlett.”
“Zila, I’ve never flown anything without autopilot!” I cry. “And I don’t know what’s wrong with him, I don’t know med—”
“Scarlett! Listen to me. This is our last chance to get you home. You can do this. You must do this.”
I look to the boy on the deck beside me, struggling to breathe. All of our futures hanging in the balance. Every moment of my life has been leading to this. And I hear his voice in my mind, as clear as if spoken aloud.
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the person holding our whole squad together is you. We need you, Scar.”
And I close my eyes, and take myself by the mental lapels, and give myself a shake.
They need me.
He needs me.
“Okay, go.”
Finian—four minutes remaining
My head’s spinning and my body’s struggling, fighting to drag in a breath, but I’m drowning and there’s nothing to hold on to. I’m trying to climb onto a rock as the ocean pounds at me and grabs me with icy cold hands, every wave pulling me down, and down, and down.
And all I can think is that I can’t let go, I
can’t
let
go.
Not until I’m sure we’re out of the loop.
If I die now, will I start us over again?
I can’t take that risk.
I can’t die yet.
And I’m sinking my fingernails into that rock as the sea washes around me, the waves slamming down, squeezing my lungs, vision spinning.
And I’m so, so sorry that Scar will be alone, that she’ll be the only one left to face the Ra’haam. That the heart of Squad 312 will be the only part left, but maybe heart was all we ever had, maybe love was always the flame we used to hold back the dark.
My vision’s closing in.
I have to hold on.
Just until we get home.
Scarlett—three minutes remaining
“Zila!” I’m screaming, staring down helplessly at Fin as his back arches, his hands make claws. “Zila, he can’t breathe!”
Zila’s voice is calm in my ear. “You must prioritize, Scarlett. Are you still on course for the quantum sail?”
The shuttle is buffeted again, engines straining against the tempest outside. Even on the edge of the storm, the forces at play are crushing, colossal. I glance at the shuttle scopes, look out the viewshield to the massive silver rectangle rising in the dark ahead of us. “Yes! We’re headed right toward the sail! Range ten thousand kilometers!”
“Good. Does the shuttle have a medical kit?”
I lift my head, scan the tiny cabin desperately. I push to my feet, rip open the cabinets, dig through them as supplies cascade around me.
“I don’t see it!” I cry, thumping back to my knees beside him.
His eyes flutter closed.
I can hear the sirens wailing through her mic.
“WARNING: CONTAINMENT CASCADE IN EFFECT. CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT, T MINUS THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING. ALL HANDS PROCEED TO EVACUATION PODS IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IN THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING.”
“If there is no medical kit, then we will work with what we have,” Zila says simply. “Describe his symptoms.”
“H-his lips are swollen, his eyes …” I gasp, squeezing his hand. “He can’t breathe, he keeps scratching at his throat—”
“You are describing an anaphylactic reaction, Scarlett. Probably to the chemicals he inhaled. You must perform a tracheotomy.”
“A what?” I screech.
“His throat has swollen closed. We will make an incision below the swelling so he can breathe. You will need a knife.”
“Zila, I can’t—”
“Scarlett.” Her voice cuts me off. “We have no time. Finian cannot die before the pulse strikes, or else the loop will simply start again. He has a small screwdriver in the right arm of his exosuit.”
My hands are shaking, and he’s not moving anymore, his arm heavy as I lift it, twist it, find the screwdriver nested into its little groove.
This can’t be happening.
“Got it,” I pant, somehow doing this and refusing to believe I’m doing it all at the same time. “Got it, what next?”
“You will need a small, rigid tube, thinner than your little finger.”
“A tube?” I’m screaming, my breath coming too fast, and some people might get unnaturally calm in an emergency, but Scarlett Jones isn’t one of them. “Where in the Maker’s name am I supposed to get—”
“Look around you. There must be something.”
“There’s nothing! Zila, there’s nothing!”
The shuttle rocks around me again, the energies pulsing outside threatening to tear us apart. The utter blackness brightens to a deep somber mauve as a burst of dark energy crackles through the storm around us, and glancing at it through the viewshield, the scope of it, the power of it, I realize I’d be terrified for myself if I wasn’t already so terrified for Fin.
We’re still too far from the sail. He’s going to die before we reach it, he’s going to die right here in my arms.
We’ve come so far. Fought so hard. Lost so much.
A story hundreds of years in the making.
And this is how the final chapter gets written?
And then it comes to me. Like a flash of that awful energy. I shove my hand into the breast pocket on Finian’s suit, fumbling, desperate, and my fingers finally close around it.
The pen.
“Zila, the damn PEN!”
“Hmm.” I hear her say. “Interesting.”
“He bitched about this damn thing every chance he got,” I mutter as I frantically unscrew it, Fin lying motionless as I shout in his face. “Not such a crappy gift now, huh?”
His chest isn’t moving.
His eyes are swollen shut.
I let all the pen’s parts clatter to the floor of the shuttle until I’m holding just the casing. Stainless steel. Bright and heavy. The storm roils around us. Dark energy arcs across the black. “What next?”
“Run your fingertips down his throat,” she says, and she’s still so calm, and I’m clinging to her like a rock. “You will feel two bumps. Between them, make an incision, and insert the pen.”
I force my hand into stillness with pure willpower, fingertips trailing down his skin, once, twice, making sure I’ve got the spot. The storm shakes the shuttle in its rivets, and I tell myself to be still.
To be calm.
To breathe.
And then it’s just me, holding a screwdriver, and Finian’s throat, and oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Why couldn’t this have been anyone on the squad except me?
“You can do this, Scarlett,” Zila says quietly. “You can do anything.”
I take a breath. I mark the spot.
I can do this.
Zila—two minutes remaining
“He’s breathing! Zila, oh Maker, he’s—”
Scarlett’s words vanish into a sea of static as she and Finian near the storm and communications are cut.
I know those are the last words I will ever hear from them.
Nari and I are in our escape pod, watching through the porthole, our faces side by side. The dark of the void around us is lit with hundreds of tiny lights, red and green—other pods blasting from the ruins of the Glass Slipper Station. Beyond, we can see the storm, Scarlett and Finian’s little shuttle hurtling through the inky dark toward its rendezvous with the quantum sail.
In less than two minutes, if all goes well, the pulse will strike them. The last of Squad 312 will be two centuries away, forever beyond my reach.
Except that is not true. Everything I do will reach them, eventually.
We watch the shuttle soar into the tempest.
Nari presses her hand to the glass.
“Godspeed,” she whispers as the ship is obscured by the storm. “And good hunting.”
One minute.
I turn toward her, studying the features that have become so familiar as we lived this day together over and over again. I know so much about her, and yet so little. I have the rest of my life to learn.
“I know they’ve left you behind,” Nari whispers, her eyes locked on mine. “But they haven’t left you alone.”
There are sparks in her words, and they jump between us like static electricity, like tiny quantum lightning strikes. And as they hit, I am like the shuttle, and I am transformed and transported, I am somewhere new, and …
I lift my hand, and so slowly, so carefully, I brush my fingertips down her cheek, curve them around the back of her neck.
Her skin is warm.
She is so brave, and so fierce, this hawk.
So full of life, tied by a thousand bonds to her friends, her family, her world.
And she is beautiful, the lines of her face, the curve of her mouth. I can hear Scarlett’s voice in my mind, rich and amused. She is not tall.
And I am not alone.
I am with her.
It takes only the faintest pressure of my fingertips against the back of her neck, and she is leaning in, and her lips are brushing mine, and in a few moments the pulse will strike outside, but here, I am already afire.
Scarlett—one minute remaining
I wish I was the sort of person who prayed.
But Finian’s chest is moving slowly, and I’m watching him, counting down, counting down. My hands are steady on the flight controls. There’s nothing to do but wait.
I don’t know what we’ll find when we get home. I don’t know if we’ll get home at all. But I know I’ve done everything I can.
I glance through the viewscreen at the storm raging outside, and when I look back down at him, his dark eyes are open.
“Stay still,” I say immediately. “Stay still. We’re going to need to get you to a real doctor pretty soon.”
His brows lift, but he doesn’t try to speak.
“Not yet,” I continue. “A few seconds more. Assuming you’re asking if we made the jump. If you’re asking where I found the skill, courage, and general fabulousness to perform emergency surgery in the middle of all this chaos, well. If you think that after auditioning all those guys to find the perfect boyfriend I was going to let a little thing like a tracheotomy get in the way of true love, you’ve clearly underestimated how tired I am of the search.”
His mouth quirks weakly.
I glance up at the clock again.
This is it.
I’ve done everything I can.
The sail stretches out below us, metallic, rippling, a thousand kilometers wide. The storm around us, endless, impossible, the power to tear through the walls of space and time gathering around us. The crystal at my throat begins to burn. Black light. White noise. I can feel it on my skin. I can hear it in my head. We’re so small, so insignificant in the face of all this, I wonder for a moment how any of it matters at all.
Finian looks up at me with those big black eyes I used to think were hard to read. And as our gazes lock, I realize it’s this.
This is what matters.
“See you in the future, handsome.”
ZAP.