Their Fractured Light
Page 91

“What is that?” Tarver whispers, from where he crouches.
“It’s them,” Lilac replies, just as softly. “They’re going to leave the barriers down. We have…a lot to learn from them. And they want to know us, to learn from us what it means to be human.”
“I think,” Flynn murmurs, “that they just had their first lesson.”
“What do we do with him now?” Jubilee asks, hesitant, looking down at Roderick LaRoux.
“I don’t think there’s anything left to do to him now.” Lilac’s grief is visible, and for an instant I’m back in the LaRoux mansion courtyard, listening to Tarver speak to her father. She’s perhaps the only person, the last person, in this existence to care for you at all.
“What do we do with ourselves now?” Sofia’s voice is quiet, but near enough to my ear that it resonates through my bones.
Lilac dashes her hand across her eyes and straightens, exhaling as Tarver’s arm curls around her waist. “Now…” she starts, eyes shifting to sweep across the rest of us. “Now, we rebuild.”
We are whole again.
We are the weary ones who waited, forgotten, for a pair of shipwrecked lovers to set us free. We are the angry ones who fought, all too eager to bring pain to those who brought pain to us. We are the strong ones who loved, and were loved, discovering hope in stolen dreams and in the clasp of fingers made to interlock.
And we are the darkest ones, who lived in agony and in rage, and found that even in silence and darkness there is always a spark.
We are, and will always be, what we choose.
WITH A FAINT CLUNK, THE door to Gideon’s new den shuts behind me. He’s sprawled on the mattress on the floor that serves as a couch, and looks up to flash a smile at me—or at the armful of takeout I’ve got with me, sending the smells of coriander and coconut milk and lime wafting through the air.
“Mrs. Phan made her first batch of laksa,” I announce, crossing the room to flop onto the mattress next to him.
In the three weeks since the crash of the Daedalus, Gideon’s managed to put together a reasonably respectable den. He’s satisfied with the security of his hypernet lines, and this time there’s a fridge for food that doesn’t come in foil packets. I’d planned on getting my own place, knowing Gideon’s almost religious obsession with anonymity, but before I could even raise the issue, he’d programmed a security code for me. He had to rewrite his whole system to make it possible for there to be more than one entry password, but there it was, waiting for me. Along with a row of skylights letting in actual light, through a clever series of mirrors leading up shafts to the surface above the undercity.
Gideon digs in, practically ripping the bag open in his eagerness to get to the soup inside. “Good call, Dimples,” he says, already reaching for the chopsticks and spoons. “They’ll be celebrating her reopening from here to the next sector.”
The streets outside in the undercity are still strewn with debris, still harboring displaced folks with nowhere else to go, still draped with mourning banners of black, white, blue, and gray, but more sectors have power every day. One by one, businesses are coming back to life, families are finding each other, and the community is taking its first, shaky steps toward normalcy.
I thought about seeing what shape Kristina’s penthouse suite was in, but the truth is, this is where I want to be. With the people hit hardest by all that’s happened. People like me and Gideon.
Though a series of monitors and hard drives were Gideon’s first purchases for the new den, he hasn’t found a console chair he likes yet. I’ve got the sneaking suspicion, though, that he’s putting off finding a chair because sitting on the mattress means there’s room for me beside him. Bowl in one hand, he wraps the other around me and pulls me in close against his side.
“Did they start yet?” I ask, reaching over with my chopsticks to snag a mouthful of noodles out of his bowl. His main monitor, connected to a feed he jacked into from the central grid, shows an aerial view of a seething crowd gathered by the Daedalus crash site, secured now with structural supports and construction scaffolding as they rebuild those layers of the city. He’s got the skylights shuttered, so the monitor colors are bright and sharp.
“A few minutes ago, I think. Muñoz is speechifying.…Here, I’ll unmute it.” He flicks his fingers at the monitor, and suddenly the dull roar of the crowd and the president’s voice come through the speaker system.
“‘We are not alone.’” The camera drone circles in closer to President Muñoz, who stands behind a lectern, gazing out at the crowd as her words ring out. “Words mankind has imagined hearing for centuries, ever since the first ancient peoples looked up at the stars and made them gods. I stand here today in front of our answer—we are not, we have never been, alone.” Behind her is the rift, its golden glow visible even in the bright noonday sun. With the doorway between universes permanently open, the whispers—officially named the Collective—have been slowly exploring our world outside the confines of LaRoux’s machinery. They’ve been met with suspicion, with anger, with curiosity, with reverence—and, mostly, with hope. Thanks to their aid, the reconstruction of the city after the crash has gone twice as fast as we could have done it on our own.
President Muñoz takes a beat, eyes scanning the faces of the crowd. “Now we know that intelligence, empathy, and curiosity are not only human traits. We have much to teach, and much to learn. We will enrich each other’s lives as we build a foundation of trust, and hope. I know many among us have questions, or even fears—I know many find that, especially in light of our terrible losses, trust does not come easily. That is why I have created a new position, one voice to speak for the Collective, and to the Collective. In light of all that has happened, some of you may find this decision surprising. But our new ambassador is eloquent and poised, and remains the only human being ever to join, however briefly, with the Collective on the other side of the rift. And no one has reason to work harder toward peace and reconstruction. Please join me in congratulating Ambassador LaRoux.”
The president steps back, to make way for the new ambassador to join her at the podium.
“There she is!” I squeal, poking at Gideon’s leg with my chopsticks. “Holy cow, look at that dress. Jeez, she wasn’t kidding.”
“I still like yours better,” Gideon says around a mouthful of noodles. “The one with the lights and the fringe.”
“The one that got shredded and full of holes because I was wearing it during a spaceship crash?” I eye him sidelong. “I think there’s more dress missing than there.”
“Why do you think I like it?”
I stab at his knee again with my chopsticks. “Shush, I want to hear.”
As the president swears Lilac in to her new position, the camera drone pans across the delegations from each planet. My eyes are trying to find the Celtic knot and single star of Avon’s crest, but it’s Flynn’s face that jumps out of the crowd at me first. I grab at Gideon’s arm, but he’s already grinning. Jubilee’s sitting next to Flynn, and the sunrise-peach color of her dress is beautiful in the sunlight. I don’t think it’d be noticeable if you weren’t looking for it, but I can see Flynn’s got his eyes on her, rather than on the dais up by the rift.