Entangled (15 page)

“You don't even know what you almost did,” Lee said. “To the people
I care about.”
She shook her head, hair fallen from its ties and tracing crooked lines almost to her hips. “What's more, it doesn't matter to you. All that does is that brother of yours.”

Cade didn't spit out a response—because she had nothing. Lee had scraped too close to the truth. From the second Lee had said the word
planetbound,
Cade had been determined to change it, right her tipped-over plans to get to Xan. Maybe stop Lee from hating her, as an afterthought.

“Why spacesick?”

Lee went back to a whisper. “It's the best way to get Renna and Rennik to set you down. They like you, you know.” Lee added a flick of the eyes that said,
I'm sure I don't know why.
“If I tell them to drop you to save their own necks, they won't do it. But if they think it's the only way to help you . . .”

Lee shrugged. “Besides, could be true for all I know. You spend enough time acting like a spacecadet.”

If the scientists were right, entanglement and spacesick were mutually exclusive. But even if Cade was immune, no one on the ship knew it. Lee's claim could still ruin her life.

“I don't have time for this,” Cade said. “Tell Rennik to stop with the hailing codes.”

“Or you'll do what?” Lee asked. “Stick me with your seven-blade knife?” She pulled it out of her own pocket, left there from butchering Cade's side. Cade felt all of her sore spots like the knife had called their name—from the freshly exploded vessels where Lee had hit her to the terrible strains of her missing tooth.

Lee dropped the knife to the floor. Cade picked it up in one clean swipe.

“I'll tell them that you got it wrong,” she said. “Prove that I'm not spacesick. Simple as that.”

“There is no proof,” Lee said. “There's your word, and there's mine.” None of their shipmates would take Cade's over Lee's. She didn't even have to say it. “You did make a good run of it, though. Pretending to be one of us.”

It was a solid hook, and it landed. But Cade knew all the signs that Lee still had a fight brewing in her. Twitchy fists. Shallow breath. Flashes of anger across her face like heat lightning. It would feel good to clash with that again—lose herself in the landing of a few blows.

But anything Cade started, Lee could use against her. Say that she was in deep with spacesick, and had gotten to the hands-all-over stage. That she would lash out and not know what she was touching, who she was hurting.

If Cade wanted more, she would have to snare Lee into starting it.

“I hope all of your friends know how fast you'll drop them, when you get scared,” she said. “You're still scared, aren't you?”

Lee flew across the room.

This time Renna didn't bother with the floor.

Water burst from the ceiling. Not unsure fingertip-flecks—this was rain. The drops as fast and knowing as a spring storm.

They slicked Cade off her feet and into a newly formed puddle. The water slid over her sore skin and sent calming messages to her overheated muscles. It doused some of Cade's sureness that everything was going to hell.

Cade tipped her face to the ceiling, opened her mouth.

The water tasted silver-perfect, and it went down with a cold burn, the way Cade imagined it would be to swallow a mouthful of stars. But when she looked over at Lee, she was shining with water, stone-faced. She looked like a girl who'd never learned how to smile.

She looked like a stranger.

 

 

CHAPTER 11

HIDDEN VARIABLE THEORIES: Created to explain how previou>s definitions of quantum mechanics were incomplete

Lee left, and Cade wasn't sorry to see her go.

The bedroom dried as Renna circulated a hot wind. Now Cade was back in the desert every time she blinked. She crashed onto her bunk. No use wasting energy—she would need all the drops she had left to fuel a connection to Xan.

Cade called out to him with the insistence of her heart, the battering of her breath, all the clamor she'd held back during her fight with Lee. But the automatic connection wouldn't snap on. It didn't help that Gori's little outburst added to Cade's list of concerns. Now she had to be specific, and careful, when she reached for Xan. It felt like a mental tiptoe, when she wanted to sprint.

Cade reached harder, slammed through her own resistance, tested the limits of her mind against unfeeling time and space. She needed to know if Xan was all right. She needed to know that she would be, too.

He didn't come.

Cade squirmed on the inside when Xan didn't tune in to her transmission. It brought up Unmaker-shaped worries, and now those had been sharpened on the edge of Lee's words.

Cade heard the grind of metal against the dock. It sank into her like teeth. The hailing codes had worked, and fast—Rennik had found someone to pick her up and slam her on a new surface.
Planetbound.

But as the docking eased into smooth clicks and sighs, Cade recalibrated her thoughts. Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing. Lee could kick her into the starry cold; she could null and void Cade's plan with one perfect lie. But no one could stop her from aiming for Hades.

Maybe it
was
time for a new ride.

Cade grabbed Moon-White and chased the sounds of the incoming ship. She didn't think anyone would show up to send her off—but there they all were, in a ragged line facing the dock. Rennik, Gori, Lee, with her jaw set to one side and her hair pressed back into its knots.

“It's not a party,” Cade muttered. She didn't trust Lee. In light of their willingness to toss her off the ship, Cade didn't trust any of them—and she didn't have to. Cade had never needed a band to back her up with wilt-wristed drumming and uninspired bass. She went on solo.

Rennik stepped forward and dropped a hand on Cade's shoulder. Nailed the role of the nervous friend. “I want to meet this girl.”

“Yeah,” Lee said darkly. “Me too.”

“I intend to watch that one leave the ship,” Gori said, pointing a shriveled excuse for a finger at Cade. “I have no interest in the girl.”

“Girl?” Cade asked. “Who is this girl?”

“I spoke with her briefly through the transmitter,” Rennik said. “She's a human pilot, traveling alone on a long-distance mission. Everything sounded in order. This is just a precaution.”

Cade deadened her eyes. “So you
do
care if the pilot you dump me on is a murderer. That's nice.”

Cade meant the words to sting, but Rennik had a severe allergic reaction. His face swelled. His already-long neck stiffened into strings.

“Hey,” Cade said. “Are you all right?”

Lee set a hand on Rennik's arm, curling her fingers around the muscle and leaving Cade with nothing to do but drain out.

The door on the other side of the dock swirled open.

The girl who crossed the threshold had the sort of hectic-busy hands and shy feet that Cade had seen only in small children at the market. But she was older than Cade, and more advanced, in obvious areas. Her broad frame burst with curvature. None of the scrappiness Cade was used to—this girl looked like she'd grown up on a planet that boasted better nutrition than cactus milk and rodent stew. She looked like she'd grown up on a planet with hamburgers. She had amberish skin, and dark curls, and her brown eyes were bright—but that could have been a side effect of the curiosity that flew out of her, like sparks.

Cade waited for her to start things.

She tossed out a hand, a flare into darkness. “Ayumi.”

“I'm Cade.”

“Interesting,” Ayumi said, still shaking her hand. “I've never come across that name, attached to a living person or a history. Do you know its origins?”

Firstbloom. It rose in Cade, drenched in white and antiseptic.

“No.”

Ten seconds in, and she was already not-telling truths. But Ayumi was too taken with her surroundings to notice. She met the wonders of the main cabin with more eye-sparks and fireworking fingers. When she reached the line of shipmates, she nodded and shook hands, vigorously, collecting the rest of their names.

Ayumi was ankle-deep in a conversation about Hatchum genetics when Cade heard her own voice.

“Let's go.”

“Go?”
Ayumi asked, half turning. “But this is a fascinating ship. And I'd like to speak with all the passengers before we leave. Human ones, in particular. And . . .”

She caught sight of the latest Human Express haul in the cargo hold. Things were out of their crates, which didn't surprise Cade—Lee only seemed to care about inventories when she was mad.

Ayumi ran, her fingers outstretched. “What is this?”

“Those are mine,” Lee said. She rushed to the crates and started loading her arms with blankets and papers and books.

“They're human-made.” Ayumi touched the items with painstaking care. “Yes. I would stake my ship on it.”

“They're little trinkets,” Lee said. “Just things I pick up.”

Ayumi's eyes could have set the hold on fire. “They're
artifacts.”

Rennik caught up to them and tried to regain control of the conversation. “Where are you headed?” he asked.

“Headed?” Ayumi said. “Nowhere. Or rather, right here.”

Lines stamped the skin around Rennik's lips. “You're floating around the universe . . . untethered?”

Ayumi blinked a few too many times, and then said, “No, no, that's not it at all. I'm here for Cade. She needs me and I, as it happens, need her.”

Cade cocked an eyebrow.

“I'm from Rembra,” Ayumi said. “You've heard of it?”

Rennik, Lee, and Cade shook their heads.

Gori closed his eyes and puffed slightly, all over. “No,” he said. “But I can feel its presence.”

A clear battle clashed on Ayumi's face—whether to stop and ask Gori a thousand questions, or push on.

“It's one of the last self-sustaining human colonies,” she said. “Everyone there has a purpose. Mine is to find, collect, catalog, and understand things related to Earth. And all humans have a relationship to Earth, no matter how old and rickety.”

Cade didn't know if she liked the idea of being part of someone's little project. It sounded demanding. She'd hoped they could make it to Hades in silence. Punctuated by Xan. Still, it wasn't a bad trade, considering she needed a ride to the darkest brink of space.

“Should we . . . ?” Cade asked, pointing toward the dock, all readiness.

Ayumi looked universe-bent on staying where she was.

“I can't help but notice certain clues as to what you're doing here.” She focused on Lee and blushed molten-red. “This is the Human Express, isn't it? You're carriers.”

“
I'm
a carrier,” Lee corrected.

Ayumi turned, unleashing her blush on the rest of them. “And this is your faithful crew.”

“Yeah. Well. Minus one.”

Lee's stare lodged in Cade—but if Ayumi noticed, she chose to ignore it.

“This is the best hailing,” she said, running her fingers through the piles. “I usually pick up stowaways being flushed from various craft because the crews are too soft-hearted or weak-stomached to toss them out of the airlock. Or they don't have an airlock. Or their cultures don't permit murder. But that's about all I get these days—space-rats and traitors.”

Lee's stare didn't budge.

“It's time for us to go,” Cade said.

She cut through the main cabin and waited at the dock. Ayumi looked confused, but followed. Lee nabbed the girl's arm. Ayumi stared down at Lee's fingers like they were words in another language.

“Look,” Lee said. “You seem like a decent person.”

“That's a nice, if somewhat hasty and unfounded, opinion.”

“Fine. Maybe you're a snugging cannibal. Either way, don't let this one talk you into a suicide run.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hades.” Lee crossed her arms. “If she brings it up, do the iron-stomached thing. Toss her out the airlock.”

Cade cracked her knuckles. She would have to do this,
again,
in front of everyone. And this time she wouldn't stop Xan from helping. It was bigger than a grudge now. It was a matter of getting to Xan before he got hurt. Cade couldn't let one knot-haired scrap of a girl stand in the way.

As a bonus, people would come out of this with the truth. What they did with it would be up to them.

Cade threw the first punch.

Rennik was between them, fast, and her fist met the wrong body, square on his rib cage. It didn't shake him.

He turned to Lee. “What is this about?”

“Don't listen to her,” Lee said. “I'm doing you a favor.” Rennik circled his arms around Lee, but she crashed hard against him. Started to cry. “You have to trust me. Why doesn't anyone here trust me? Why doesn't anyone tell me things I need to know or trust me when I tell them—”

“You lied.” But it didn't come out like the swell of triumph Cade thought it would. It sounded small. A technicality.

Lee sank to the floor, and Rennik went with her. She was all broken-down parts and steam. “I'm the honest one here. You want more true things? You want me to tell you all of it?” she babbled, running her hands over and over each other like water.

Cade closed her eyes. Braced herself for something so bad it had melted Lee down to this.

“I had a sister,” she said. “The Unmakers killed her.”

 

“Well, this is first-class embarrassing.”

Rennik had installed Lee in the narrow bed in his own cabin and then disappeared. Lee looked small, with the covers pulled up to her chin. Cade had followed her in and hadn't gotten herself kicked out. So far.

“What's your pilot doing?” Lee asked.