These Broken Stars

THIRTY-EIGHT

TARVER

IT’S LATE WHEN I MAKE MY WAY back across the clearing, head clearer, step surer. There’s something about going outside and stretching my legs that helps me line up my thoughts. When I make my way through into the comms room, it’s empty—but different.

The monitors, usually black, are lit up like a city skyline, blinking incomprehensible lines of code at me in vivid red, lights dancing across the controls. We’ve got power. Proper power, not whatever we’ve been squeezing out of the backup power mode.

Hope surges through me. Maybe she found a way to get through the door, into the locked room. I’ve spent every waking moment trying to find a way in, hoping for something behind that door I can use to help her.

But if she got the door open, why didn’t she come find me? My mind keeps replaying one image: the canteen dissolving to dust.

Stay calm. She’s fine. But my heart’s thumping wildly as I swing down onto the top rung of the ladder. I can hear my old drill sergeant screaming in my ear to keep me from trying some stupid, impossible jump to reach her faster. Keep yourself safe, he bellows at me from beyond his grave on another planet far away. You can’t help anybody else if you’re in pieces. Don’t rush in.

But I can’t help it. I scramble down, ignoring the stab of pain as I twist my ankle in my haste. The lights are on, and I hurl myself down the corridors and then the metal stairs, swinging around the corner.

The round door is open.

Lilac must have heard me coming—she stands framed by it, looking out, waiting for me. Her skin is nearly a dull gray, too pale, her eyes lost in the shadows. I can see her shaking as she grips the edge of the round doorway. I slow to a walk as I approach her.

“I guessed the password.” Her whisper rasps.

I want nothing more than to go to her side, but I know she doesn’t want me to, and I hold back with a monumental effort. “How?”

“My father. This is his station—his emblem is everywhere. He always said my name was all I’d ever need to get anywhere. So I did. I used my name.”

“Lilac.”

She nods, her mouth twisting. I understand the grief in her expression. If the password was her name, it means her father did this, and not some faceless person at LaRoux Industries without his knowledge or consent. He’s responsible for whatever happened here, and for covering it up afterward. And he used her name as his key.

“I got a distress signal working, though it’s weak.” She says it quietly, tightly. “It’ll only show up as static, unless enough relays catch it and boost the signal.”

This news that once would’ve been some of the best I’d ever heard is instead twisted, dark. I don’t know anymore whether I want them to come for us. Not if I can’t find a way to save Lilac.

“Come through,” she says. “There’s more.”

She steps back, and I climb through the doorway, unable to stop myself from reaching for her hand. When I grip her fingers, the squeeze she returns is just a weak flutter. I can feel my own strength draining away as the shakes start to take me. It’s like the side effects from the visions, only ten, twenty times worse.

The room hums with power, lined on every side with banks of monitors, control panels, and machines. Thick cables stretch from the consoles into the middle of the room. Towering over us is a circular steel frame twice my height. Flickers of blue light snake back and forth inside it like lazy lightning strikes, creating a shimmering layer of air. The frame dominates the room, overwhelming.

I can no longer hear my heartbeat, my harsh breathing—all sound is lost in the crackle and hiss of electricity. The room beyond the metal frame is hazy. The air is thick and heavy and tastes of something metallic at the back of my throat. The humming in the room makes my very teeth ache.

Two large, yellow-and-black-striped warning signs are mounted on the steel frame, one at the top, one down the side. Contact with subjects forbidden. Risk of rift instability, they read, in blocky letters.

Subjects. The test subjects from the papers above us.

Whispers rise suddenly, swelling in my ears, insistent. They hover just on the edge of comprehension—as though if I could close the gap between us just a little more, I could understand them.

Without thinking, I step toward the frame, unable to resist its pull.

For a moment the room around me is gone, and blackness overlays it, pinpoint stars twinkling.

And then something jerks me back. I blink again, and it’s gone—and Lilac is there, grabbing at my hand and pulling me away.

“Are you insane?” she gasps. “Don’t you remember what those papers said? If you touch it, you could bring the whole thing to a fatal collapse.”

“What?” I’m still shaking the vision of stars, the sense that I was a hairsbreadth away from understanding.

She gestures at the hypnotizing blue light inside the metal frame. “Don’t you see? This is the rift. It has to be.”

I open my mouth to respond, but before I can, the lights overhead flicker, leaving only the roiling blue electricity to light the room. The lights dim once. Yes.

“Oh, God,” Lilac whispers, her eyes on the portal. She’s sweating, her hand clammy in mine. She feels cold, too cold. I can’t tell for sure in the flickering blue light from the metal frame, but it looks like her eyes have become more sunken, the dark circles under them more pronounced.

“Lilac?”

“It’s them.”

“What—” But I can see her staring at the frame. And I realize what she means.

“The creatures, the subjects. The whispers. They are the power source for the station. This light, this energy—this is my father’s rift. A gateway between dimensions. And they’re here, trapped somehow by this metal ring they’ve built around it.”

The lights flicker madly, and overhead a number of the fluorescent lights burst, showering the metal floor with shards of glass. Within the steel frame containing the rift, the blue forks of lightning fluctuate wildly.

“Energy-based life-forms.” My voice is a whisper.

Suddenly Lilac’s weight sags, her clammy hand slipping from mine as she drops to her knees with a moan.

My heart stops, and I drop to the ground beside her.

Her pale skin is nearly translucent now—I can see the dark veins snaking up her arms. She lifts her head with an effort, gasping for breath. When I lay a hand on her shoulder, a part of her dress crumbles at my touch, drifting away. Like the flower; like the canteen.

Being this close to the whispers is killing her—the symptoms are a thousand times worse. I have to get her out of here. I wrap an arm around her and drag her to her feet, more of her dress turning to dust with every movement. The fabric flutters and flakes away, drifting through the air like ash. I haul off my jacket and wrap it around her, then swing her up into my arms.

They’re the power source, I hear her voice echo.

And they’re running out.

My mind shuts down, and I turn to carry her back out through the doorway. All I know is that I have to get her out of here.

She recovers enough to grab at the ladder a little as we climb back up to the surface, and I help her into one of the chairs in the common room. I’m as gentle as I can be, but she still winces. It’s clear she has a link with the creatures in the rift that I don’t. The energy flowing through the station is the same as the energy flowing through her, the life force keeping her here with me.

She fixes her gaze on the far wall as she tries to steady herself, and for a moment my heart stops as I see her go still. Then I realize she’s staring at the savage paintings we try so hard to ignore.

I follow her gaze to a figure painted in red.

“Tarver, I know what the paintings are.” Her voice is a cracked whisper now, quivering with intensity. “Do you see?” She lifts one hand, the effort obvious, to point at the next in the sequence, also in red, and then the next. “He’s there again. See the handprint beside it? It’s the same. In this first one, he breaks his neck. Here, it’s the spear. Here, he’s burning. It’s the same man, over and over. Tarver, the researchers stationed here did this to themselves.” Her voice is raw, and she’s forcing the words out of her throat. “And then they were brought back, like me.”

“Holy—you’re right.” My mind’s whirling, freewheeling, trying to find something to latch on to. “They came back again and again.”

The figures painted on the wall are clearly distinguishable, and suddenly I can see each individual going through death after death, the pictures surrounded by the handprints, and the LaRoux lambda, painted large and bold beside them. Suddenly the recurring blue spirals scattered throughout the paintings have a new meaning. The rift, and its prisoners.

Her gaze sweeps across the paintings, which become wilder, more frenetic, and slowly degenerate into primitive daubs I can barely make out. At the end of the stream of pictures is a single handprint, smeared.

Then nothing.

I know we’re both seeing the same thing. This is what they found here.

They died, and lived again, and found madness somewhere in between. They came here to study the creatures that gave me Lilac again, or to kill them, perhaps, and discovered a kind of twisted immortality.

Until—what? Until the whispers were too weak to bring them back anymore and power the station at the same time, and the researchers died for good? Until LaRoux Industries pulled them out, and buried this place?

I’m still staring when Lilac brings one hand down against the floor with a dull smack. “Why would anyone choose this? Living in limbo, in constant fear that you’ll crumble away?” Her voice is ragged, broken.

I wish I could reach out, wrap my arms around her. Instead the distance between us feels like a canyon. “Maybe it was different for them, when this place was at full power. We only have the remains, what the company left behind.”

“And when I do fade away, they won’t have the energy to bring me back.”

She sounds as though that’s what she wants. My breath fails me, and I’m left staring at her, aching.

“I just want to sleep,” she whispers, eyes dark in her white face, transformed by her longing. “I wish it—because you’d be heartbroken, and you’d mourn, but you’d—you’d heal. They’d find the signal and you could go home. And you’d have your parents, and the garden, and… Then the station could die, and the whispers could rest. I could rest. That’s all we want. Real rest, not that coldness, that—”

“Lilac, I don’t need to heal. I don’t want to.” My voice is as broken as hers. “I want you. We’ll find a way to stop this, get the power to keep you whole. I won’t lose you a second time.”

“You’re not losing anything, Tarver. I was already gone.” Her struggle’s written all over her face, eyes closing tight, mouth pressed to a thin line that doesn’t keep the tears from spilling down her cheeks.

For the first time I can see this other longing—the desire to stay. For the first time I realize that maybe she insists on us staying apart because she doesn’t want to lose this all over again.

I slide my hand forward a fraction of an inch at a time, until I can slip my hand into hers. She closes her eyes, breath catching. If my touch hurts her, she doesn’t pull away.

“Whatever they’ve done to me, Tarver, whatever I am—I love you. Don’t forget that.”

I gather her against me, her hair spilling over my chest, her face in the crook of my neck. I hold her until she falls asleep, her breath warm against my skin. It should feel like a victory: she’s here, with me, finally coming into herself again. Instead, all it feels like is a good-bye.

The rungs of the metal ladder are cold against my palms as I climb beneath the station once more. Though it’s night aboveground, down here the light is the same harsh, steady fluorescence. My footsteps echo as I walk along the hallway to the humming room.

The rift waits for me, blue light curling about inside the circular steel frame of the containment device.

Whispers rise up, and the metal frame crackles with the electricity of the beings trapped there. There must be a way these creatures can help me save Lilac. The images they showed us come flooding back—a valley full of flowers, my parents’ cottage as large and colorful as life, a single blossom in Lilac’s darkest hour to keep her going. I refuse to believe a species capable of such compassion could be so cruel.

I stare up at the snapping, electric-blue glow of the rift, desperate to somehow decode these beings, to understand why they reached out to lead us here from so far away. Frustration surges up inside me as I stare at the ever-changing blue light. I’m running out of time, and I’m no closer to saving her.

The whispers rush into my ears once more, shapes flickering at the edges of my vision. My heart pounds.

All this way, all this pain, and now they can’t find a way to just give me their damn message?

“What the hell do you want from me?” My voice is hoarse.

The whispers surge, as if in reply. But of course, as ever, there’s no sense to be found there. No answers. No way out for Lilac.

“Go on, then.” I fight the urge to strike at the damned thing with my bare fists, to attack the problem the only way I know how. “You’ve got me here. I trekked all the way across your damn planet. What do you want me to do?”

Silence, broken only by the crackle and snap of electricity, and the humming of the machinery. If I can’t figure out a way to stop this, Lilac’s not going to last much longer. And this time it’s going to happen slowly, and I’m going to have to watch her die all over again.

Like hell I am. Something in me snaps. I wheel around, slamming my hands down on the control box attached to the metal frame around the rift. I hit one of the dimly lit screens, the plasma rippling at my touch. I strike it again, and again, until the plastic cracks and the monitor frame warps and my arm throbs with the impact, and it’s still not enough.

Every step of this journey, every ounce of pain, everything I’ve found in her. It can’t end here. There’s a chair in my hands now, and sparks fly as I slam it into the metal framework. My mouth tastes like copper, and the room reels around me. Someone far away is bellowing grief and frustration, the blood roaring dimly in my ears. I bring down the chair again, and again, caving in the control box and the monitors attached to the rift, sending up sparks and smoke, intent only on destruction.

Then there’s another voice, shouting to be heard over my grief.

“Tarver. Tarver.”

I whirl around, shaking with fury and helplessness. Alec stands on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets. The air goes out of my lungs.

“Alec, you can’t be—”

In the next instant I realize he’s blurred at the edges, not solid.

My hands are still trembling, and I drop the chair with a clatter, swallowing hard against the sharp taste of metal in my mouth.

Alec steps forward. His walk, the slight cant of his head, the thoughtful look on his face: it’s all so familiar, so hauntingly real. My heart shudders, constricting painfully in my rib cage. He doesn’t answer me, but looks instead at the rift, at the swirling energy inside. With a jolt, I realize that his eyes aren’t the brown that I remember. They’re blue—bluer than Lilac’s, bluer than the sky. They match the color of the rift perfectly.

“You’re not my brother.” My hands grip the edge of the console, holding me up.

“No.” He hesitates. “We came here through the…” He looks past me at the blue light.

“The rift? How?”

He nods at the smashed console. “You broke the dampening field. We can reach more easily inside your thoughts now. We can find words, and this face. It’s always somewhere in your mind.”

I suck in a slow, steadying breath. “What are you?”

Alec—or the thing wearing Alec’s face—pauses in a way so human I have to keep reminding myself he’s not who he looks like. “We are thought. We are power. In our world, we are all that is.”

“Why did you come?”

Alec’s mouth tightens, as if he’s in pain. “Curiosity. But we found we were not the only ones here.”

“LaRoux Industries.”

Alec nods. “They found a way to sever us, to cut us off from each other.”

“But why don’t you leave?” I ask. “Return home?”

“This is the cage they built around us. We cannot fully enter your world or return to ours.” His face—my brother’s face—is taut with grief. His image flickers, and fear snakes through my gut. Their strength—Lilac’s strength—is running out.

“Please! How can I help you? I can’t lose Lilac again.”

Alec’s face is awash with sympathy. “This cage keeps us here, but we are stretched too thin. There isn’t much time left. Less, now. If we could trade our—our lives for hers, we would. To find an end, to sleep.”

“Why less?”

“Her signal.

“The distress signal? That’s draining you?”

“Soon there won’t be enough left.” Alec flickers again, fading as his image sputters out. The next moment there’s only me in the room, and I’ve never felt more alone.

I jog over to the bank of monitors where Lilac rigged her distress beacon, watching the signal jump brightly across the screens as I search for any way I can find to shut it down. In the end I simply yank out a handful of leads. The screens go dead, and for an instant the rift swirls a little brighter.

Alec’s voice—the whisper’s voice—is still ringing in my ears. We are stretched too thin. Lilac’s only hope is tied to these creatures, and they’re fading.

I walk back toward the ladder. I need air—I need space to move. Deep within me, I feel the weight the whispers carry.

They’ve poured what energy they have into reaching out to us, drawing us here with visions and whispers, giving us what we need—giving me my Lilac—so we could find them. Now they can barely keep her here.

I understand now why they brought her back. They needed me moving, exploring, trying to understand the mystery of the station. They couldn’t risk me blasting my brains out in the cave, when I was their only hope at release. But they’re still trapped, and I don’t know how to give them the end they want. My head’s spinning.

The fresh air outside the station is a relief as I step over the rubble in the doorway and out into the clearing. I tip my head back to stare up at the now familiar stars, tracing out the shapes I’ve come to know. I blink as my vision blurs for a moment, the stars shifting. Another blink, and I know what I’m seeing is real.

One of the stars is moving. No, not one—there’s another. And another.

I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen it on every planet I’ve been posted to. Those are ships in orbit. They must have picked up on Lilac’s distress signal and come to investigate.

Panic hits me like a body blow. If they find us—if they find Lilac—they’ll take us on board, and if they take her away from the whispers sustaining her—

My body flows into action before the thought’s complete, and I pound back into the station. We have to hide. If they drag us off this planet before I can find a way to save her, she’ll die, and I’d choose any length of time here with her over a life at home, alone. I choose her. I choose whatever world has her in it.

I burst into our bedroom, and a moment later she’s sitting bolt upright in bed, eyes wide and bewildered. “Tarver?”

“Quick—” Panic steals my breath, and I’m gasping. “There are ships in orbit. I don’t think they know exactly where we are yet. We have to—”

She’s scrambling to her feet before I’m finished, and I grab my bag and my gun as we bolt for the trapdoor that leads below the station. I’m praying they’ll think that if we were once here, we’re gone now.

She falls down the last few rungs into my arms, and I half carry her along the hallway to the control room. She breaks away from me, stumbling past the rift to the bank of monitors. I hear her horrified gasp as she realizes the distress signal is shut down, and next moment her fingers are dancing across keys and screens. An instant later a shrill alarm pulses, red displays flashing.

“Lilac, what the hell are you doing?”

She looks up at me, eyes huge, shadowed, gaze wild. “I’ve got it back up. I can overload the system. It might create enough electrical activity for us to show up on a scan.”

My heart stops. She’s trying to show them where to come and find me, using the last fragments of power that remain. The last fragments keeping her alive. I lunge for her. “Lilac, stop—”

She slaps at a screen, and another alarm starts, screaming an alert at us. Blue light flares in the rift, then fades to nearly nothing. I wrap my arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides, dragging her back from the screens.

Lights flash from screens, and the alarms scream their chorus.

I’m going to fail them all. Lilac’s energy will drain away, and she’ll crumble to dust. The aliens will stay trapped in the rift, neither alive nor dead.

There must be a way out. The blue light in the rift is twisting and pulsing, weaker than before, but trapped by the steel ring, the cage, unable to tip into nothing. My eyes light on the signs plastered to their steel cage. Contact with subjects forbidden. Risk of rift instability.

And then I remember the charred papers, the first time we found any sign of the rift’s existence. The rift collapse would release energy, they said. The word fatal leaps up in my memory.

Fatal to an ordinary person, perhaps—but Lilac isn’t, not anymore. Lilac is something different, created by the very energy inside the rift. All this time the whispers have been helping us—all this time we’ve only had to trust them.

Of all the people they could have chosen, they used Alec to speak to me. The one person in the universe I trusted more than my own self. The one person who always knew what to do.

I tighten my grip on Lilac and pull her away from the console. She cries out, fighting me as I drag her toward the blue light of the rift. It’s like she senses my intention, using every last scrap of her remaining strength to pull away. In the end I wrap both arms around her and leap, sending us both plunging into the heart of the rift.

“LaRoux Industries has suffered huge losses as a result of this venture, Major.”

“I didn’t crash the ship.”

“But the damage to the monitoring station. That was property of LaRoux Industries.”

“How much did building the Icarus cost again? How many lives lost? And you’re more worried about a monitoring station? You think the station was the huge loss?”

“Of course not. But we take any wanton destruction of our property seriously.”

“Perhaps you could point out to Monsieur LaRoux that I was trying to save his daughter.”

“It’s at Monsieur LaRoux’s request that you’re being questioned. I believe he would point out in return that he has lost his daughter anyway.”