Entangled (12 page)

Telling Lee before their feet left soil had been her best chance. Her only chance. And she'd missed it. She could see now that it was too late—off-planet, the situation had one possible ending. Lee would stutter some nervous thing, and decide that Cade had gone spacesick.

So she had to keep Xan a secret. It was hard enough when he was busting into her head, sending thoughts and feelings. But now he'd gone radio-silent.

Cade sent messages the same as before—snippets of emotion, flashes of scenes she thought he might like. Once or twice she reached hard and tried to drop him into the moment. But for the first time since the Noise had cleared, Xan wasn't there to answer her call.

What could be so strong, so distracting, so terrible that it could keep him from her?

It made her wild to connect. If Cade's thoughts about Xan had been a rhythm, now the beats blurred into a hum. She couldn't sleep, or muscle down more than three bites of egg-dish in the morning as Lee picked the rest off her plate. All she did was stare at the walls and think of ways to get to him.

And then, on the afternoon of the third day, Cade remembered. The fight-or-flight connection. The automatic snap that brought them together.

It was time to send Xan a message he couldn't ignore.

Cade couldn't use the bedroom in case Lee came in. The main cabin was too central and the mess was crowded with tables and cookware, and people ate at all hours. Rennik split his time between his cabin and the control room, and sometimes Lee was up there, too, looking out the star glass and chatting to Renna.

No one seemed to use the common area.

Cade slipped in and closed the door behind her. It was a spare and clean space, ringed with cushions and dotted with a few game boards and books that could translate themselves into fourteen languages at the touch of a button.

Cade pulled a cushion to the middle of the room and sat facing the door. She would find Xan. Make sure he was safe. But first she would have to stop the endless Möbius-stripping of her own thoughts.

What did the Unmakers want with them?

She and Xan, and the rest of that batch of babies from Firstbloom, could survive better in space than the rest of their kind. But that didn't help anyone else, as far as Cade could see. Was she supposed to be a blueprint for a new generation? The scientists on Firstbloom were dead, and it's not like there were hordes of other humans scientists to pick up where they left off—if it was even right to go on with their blatant baby-altering.

Cade shook her head and rattled out the questions. There were no answers to be had at that moment, sitting on a cushion in the common room. And there was something she could do.

Check on Xan.

Get to Xan.

Xan.

His name clinked over and over and over.

Cade reached out into the silent space in her head and then past it, to the edges. But she didn't feel him there.

She stood up and ran as many laps around the small room as she could before she felt like a total spacecadet. Her heart rocketed against her skin. She sat down, panting, and the transmission kicked in.

Xan was with her. Nervous, eager. She could feel the strain of him—a chord aching to resolve.

She beamed.

You're here. You're here.

But it wasn't enough. Cade wanted to be sure he was safe, at least for the moment. And while she was at it, she could search for some clues about why the Unmakers hated them so much. To do that, she needed to see what Xan was seeing. She needed him to feel something strong enough that his own transmissions would kick in, too. She had to flip this channel, or make it run both ways.

She looked around the small room, desperate to show Xan something that would put him in an excited state. But cushions and boardgames and books in languages he didn't know weren't going to do it.

Cade dug through her pockets and found three things. The circle-glass. The seven-blade knife. The tip of mirror.

Xan knew that he was entangled, so the shock of the circle-glass was out. That left her with two options, and two ideas, both of which sparked into her head at the same time. It came down to a guess—which one would have more of an effect on his heartbeat.

Blood or skin.

Xan had seen horrible things on Firstbloom. The Unmakers had murdered everyone he knew, unless you counted Cade. His system might run fast and wild at the sight of blood—or he might be almost immune to it. But as a human in a coma for most of his life, and then kidnapped, Xan had missed all of his chances to see skin.

Besides, it seemed like the much nicer shock.

Cade pulled out the tip of mirror and angled it down. Her tan shirt had a high neckline but the buttons slipped their holds without a fuss. Cade couldn't ignore the amped-up crashing of her own blood as she undid the first three—then popped one more for good measure.

She could see the faint underline of her breast where it stretched into the cotton curve of the shirt. Finding a connection to Xan was what mattered. Keeping him safe. But all she could focus on was that line of skin, and the dangerous edge of her feelings. She reached in and brushed a thumb against the dark circle. The touch echoed, first in her fingertips, then farther, chiming through her body.

That seemed to do it.

Cade dropped into the picture of Xan's room.

Something was wrong. She could feel it even before she saw the two Unmakers posted in the corners.

Xan sat on the bed. Not tied or lashed, but he couldn't leave that place. Stuck as fast as a stone in deep sand.

“She's here now,” Xan said.

The Unmakers leaned over him, their robes so black they blotted out the rest of the room. Their faces—if they had them—hid in dark folds. Cade focused on the too-small hands that crept out from the dark swirl of sleeves.

Here came voices for the first time. Deeper than wells, deeper than steam pits, the deepest sounds Cade knew.

“Did you tell the girl to come?”

“No,” Xan said. His own voice was lower than Cade had expected, and scratchy. But it was nothing compared to the bottomless slide of the Unmakers.

“She's getting smarter,” said one, his breath tinged with the smell of metal.

“Too smart,” said the other.

“This is how it begins.”

Cade sent all of her fighting strength to Xan. But Xan fought back—against her. He pushed down all of her impulses to kick, scratch, and run until the universe ran out. She pushed, and he pushed back, just as strong.

He sent her waves of calm and control. Everything about him said,
Let it go.

Cade trusted Xan—and she had never trusted anyone. The feeling was new and uncomfortable, like the hand-me-downs she'd worn at the Parentless Center. Itchy and three sizes too big. But there was relief in trusting, too—knowing that when Xan made a choice she could stand by it. Even now she could see that he'd let her calls go unanswered because the Unmakers kept a tight watch.

So Cade let it go. If it was too dangerous to fight, she wouldn't force it. But she wanted the Unmakers to know that they wouldn't have him. That even if he was sitting on a bed in front of them, he belonged with her, half a universe away.

She sent the raw thought to him, hoping he would be able to translate it back into words.

They won't have you. Tell them. I'm coming for you.

Xan put up a struggle against this, too. But Cade insisted.

Tell them.

The Unmakers bent so close now that Cade could feel the warmth of them, the weight of them, and smell their metal breath.

All she could do was send her calm, her strength, her steadiness to Xan.

And he wasn't afraid.

“She wants me to tell you . . .”

Tell them.

“That she'll be here soon. For me.”

The Unmakers must have thought he was making it up. A sad little burst of self-defense. They started to laugh and it was like the ground opening up beneath Cade's feet. It was like falling.

“Cade!”

Her name rang out—but it wasn't Xan speaking it, or one of the Unmakers. The voice was flat and warm and familiar.

“Cade!”

Sound ripped into the picture. Blacked it out. And then the world faded to white.

Cade was in the common room, Rennik bounding at her. A strange white object clanked in his hands and a smile claimed most of his face. He stopped short when he saw the wide-open state of Cade's shirt.

She jumped to her feet and spun, so she could button up in something like privacy. Rennik turned and faced the door. They talked in opposite directions, to each other.

“Are you all right?” he asked in the politest tone she'd ever heard. “Your eyes were . . . very far away.”

“I'm fine,” Cade said, doing her best to keep the snarl out of her voice. It wasn't Rennik's fault she had been sitting half-dressed in the middle of the common room.

“I need a minute.”

She stabbed the buttons through thin slits on her shirt. She had to get rid of Rennik and get back to Xan.

“Just . . . getting myself together. I was—”

“What you do with your free time is none of my concern.”

She got to the bottom of the shirt only to find that she had one slit left, and no more buttons. All the tugging in the universe wouldn't make the ends line up right—which meant an open flap at the top. But after what had just happened, Cade didn't care if Rennik saw one clumsy stripe of skin.

She turned around, defiant. “What is it, exactly, that you wanted in here?”

“It's just . . .” Rennik still faced the door. Cade wanted him to turn and look at her. She wanted him to leave. “I brought you something.”

He spun, and pressed one arm into the space between them.

Rennik was holding a guitar.

“Where did you . . . ?”

Cade's hurry slid off, and she wanted to be in the common room, with that perfect white guitar, for as long as she could.

“It's something I would love to take credit for,” Rennik said. “But I can't. Renna wanted you to have it.”

Cade could see now that it was made of the same stuff as the walls. A thick, dependable sort of white clayish material. The strings stretched thin and soft, like strands of hair. It was acoustic, which meant Cade couldn't play it in her trademark ear-destroying fashion. But it didn't need a current, which meant she could play it anywhere. From one end of the universe to the other.

“She made this? For me?”

Cade's hands couldn't wait for the answer. She reached for the half-circle of the guitar's neck, caught the body in her other hand. It had a bit of shine and was cool to the touch. Rennik let go with a linger, making sure the instrument didn't fall. But he had nothing to worry about. Cade pulled it to her like a needed breath.

“There aren't any other musicians onboard,” Rennik said. “Unless you count Renna. She makes something like music, if you know how to listen. Lee is tone-deaf, and I don't think we'll see Gori bursting out in song anytime soon.”

“What about you?” Cade spared his four-knuckled fingers a glance. They thinned to long fingertips, and there was an ease to them, a sureness that made Cade trust they would land in the right places. There was serious potential in those hands.

“So?” she asked.

“I'm afraid not,” Rennik said.

But he was smiling. He started out of the room and stopped in the door, turning around with one hand on the frame. He looked up at the ceiling, at the walls, at the whole first-class ship.

“In case you were still wondering . . . this means she likes you.”

He closed the door on his way out, leaving Cade with the guitar. She picked it up, touched its thin fretboard and deeply curved side. She rushed her fingers over the strings, made a breathless run through her scales. They sounded like spun silver. All she wanted was to spend hours sinking into this instrument, until her fingers blistered and her mind melted down to music.

But she set the guitar on the softest cushion she could find, and hid it so it wouldn't tempt her, at least not until she was done.

Cade had an entangled boy to get back to.

She closed her eyes to look for Xan again. She didn't get far before something stopped her.

A snap.

The stare of two dark, lashless eyes.

Gori had her own seven-blade knife at her throat.

 

 

CHAPTER 9

NON-OBVIOUS CAUSALITY: A complicated interplay of factors resulting in a given outcome

Cade was impressed. He picked the right blade and everything.

“Gori . . .”

The tip of the squat, triangular blade nicked the soft patch between her collarbones.

“Look, Gori, whatever you think I did . . .”

His face loomed close, eyes filmy, with crumbs at the corners—like he'd been sitting in a strong wind with his eyelids pinned open.

“The reaching has become
too much,
” he whispered. The fingers of his knifeless hand worked the air. “To have you
grasping
at me all the time, it is not to be allowed.”

Cade put her palms up to show him that she wasn't reaching for anything.

“Probing, prying, filth-minded human,” he said, twisting the blade a bit closer.

Cade didn't jump. Didn't cry sour. She stayed calm.

Maybe it was knowing that Xan would come and help her. Maybe it was enough that Cade knew Gori had her all wrong. She looked down at his short, stout frame, at the robes that clung to the patterns of his shriveled skin.

“I don't want to touch you,” she said, with complete honesty and a touch of brass. “I'll keep to myself.”

Gori skittered the point of the knife up to her chin.

“This is not a game,” he said. “Rules are rules. There is no going back if you break them.”

Cade swallowed against the press of the knife-tip.

“Consider them intact.”