Entangled (29 page)

It sounded right.

“We need to leave,” Rennik said. “Lee is in a cell down the hall. They would have left her onboard the ship with Gori, but she resisted surrender.” Cade couldn't help it—she laughed at the thought of Lee turning her explosive combinations of curse words on the Unmakers. “We'll collect her on our way back to Renna.”

Cade shook her head. An escape plan had crash-landed in her lap, but she couldn't take it. Not without Xan.

“Rennik, you have to go,” she said. “You all have to go.”

“Renna would be offended by that, to say the least. She's attached to you. And I . . .” Rennik shifted from one foot to the other, and back. “I said I was coming to Hades with you. I won't leave unless you're onboard.”

Cade grabbed his wrists.

“Let me get to work on this.”

Rennik sat at the perfect edge of the bed, facing away from Cade. Her fingers lighted on the ties. She tried not to look too hard at the impossible knots. She focused on Rennik's wide back, the sharp scrawl of his profile.

“She was killed by . . .
them,
” Rennik said.

Cade hadn't wanted Lee to face the Unmakers for her sake. But it was just as bad for Rennik—in a different way.

Cade pried free a strand of the knot on Rennik's left hand. There were still at least ten strands on each. She worked a nail in. The muscles that rivered down Rennik's back tightened as he started to speak.

“It happened after the banishment. Renna had been spaceworthy for years, and I had been running passengers, so I kept running passengers. But without the proper connections and the expected paperwork, I could only get the worst clearance on the seediest planets. And I couldn't take Lee and Moira everywhere they needed to go for the Express, not without putting them in more danger. It sounds ridiculous when I say it now.” Rennik laughed—an uncorked sound—so loud that Cade worried about the guards. But he wasn't afraid. He was safe in the folds of another time, a story-space where the pain was in the past.

“I was the one who arranged that flight from Sligh,” Rennik said. “I was the one who told her it would be safe.”

Cade's hands went numb on the ties. She rubbed across her knuckles, got them working, and watched Rennik's face as sadness and panic shot under it like flickers of fire.

“It's happening again,” he said.

Cade couldn't see his eyes now, they were turned away. All she could do was redouble her attack on the knots.

“You didn't fail her,” Cade said. “I know that you swore—”

“To help humans,” Rennik said. “I do that where I can, Cadence. But it's not just that. Not all humans remind me of her.”

One of the knots came undone.

“And I do?”

“Of course.”

Cade swore quietly. Her fingers scraped along a row of three small knots underneath the one she'd picked loose.

“Sit tight,” Cade said.

But something inside of her wouldn't be still. She tried to call up the precise words Rennik had used to describe Moira.
Fierce, imperfect, in love with too much.
Fierce, Cade could understand. Imperfect—that was as obvious as sweat under the noon sun. But she had never been compared to someone who cared too much.

She worked at the small knots.

“You really are just like her,” Rennik said. “You're scowling back there, I can feel it. All those knots. She would have scowled, too.”

Rennik shone at the memory of this girl who was gone, and Cade could see that Moira wasn't really gone—not for him. The connection was live, and Rennik used it to steer him through his days.

Cade rested her hands on his upturned wrists. When she talked, the words went over his shoulder. “The knots are too much,” she said. “I can't undo them. So you're going to have to tell me if you want me to stop.”

Before he could say something too reasonable and ruin it, Cade swung to Rennik's side and centered his face between her numb hands. The distance between them was inches, or galaxies. She stared at him for less than a second. More than an unraveled light-year. Scale made no sense. Time lost the firmness of its hold. Now Rennik's calm was not a Hatchum oddity. His eyes coded their signs in a language Cade could read. He filled them with patience. Steadiness. A
yes
that wouldn't make her flinch, or alter the course.

The distance between them was impossible.

Then it was gone.

Time and the solidness of things rushed back up to meet them as soon as Cade reached the high curve of Rennik's mouth. Her hands slid down his face, down the front of him like glass. Her lips took a few moments to find the pulse of this specific kiss—slow, with a linger on the upbeat. And then it was warmth and softness in matched rhythms. Over much too fast.

“Why did you do that?” Rennik asked, looking at her at a much closer range than anyone had before. She couldn't take in his whole face at once, so she focused on the outside crease of his left eye.

“Because I might die. Because of Moira. I don't know.”

Rennik nodded as if that made perfect sense. But his legs shook, even under the light pressure of her hands.

“It's time,” he said. “We have to go.”

Cade shook her head. “I need to get to Xan.” His name chased off the moment, and Cade landed back in a cold cell on a dangerous ship in a vast stretch of nowhere. “I came all the way here, Rennik. I can't leave without him.”

“We'll find him on our way out,” Rennik said, and he was on his feet, headed for the door.

“It's not that simple,” Cade said. “He might be working with the Unmakers.” She didn't believe it, but she had to be ready in case it turned out to be true.

“If he's on their side, don't trust him,” Rennik said. “Don't even look at him, if it can be avoided.”

But her connection to Xan would never let her rest until he was conscious, until she saw him, until he was safe.

A knock sounded in the thick metal door.

Rennik slumped, and in the soft white light, tired and etched, he looked exactly human. “We have to get Lee and get out of this place. If you think we can find him in time . . .”

Another knock, and a kick at the door.

“I can do it,” Cade said.

Rennik braced a shoulder against the metal, ready in case the Unmakers decided to slam it in.

“What now?” he asked.

Cade stood up with a mattress-creak. Crossed the room to the mirror. The mirror that all of a sudden made sense—because the Unmakers who'd put it there had been human this whole time. Cade wanted to tell Rennik, but their minutes were up. She tipped the mirror, and it shattered on the cold white floor.

 

The Unmakers were in the room in less than ten seconds.

In that time, Cade grabbed a shard of cracked mirror, sliced the ties off Rennik's wrists, stooped again for a handful of mirror dust.

She stuck the shard in the swirled robes of the first Unmaker and wrenched it up, drawing a line from the collarbone. Now that she knew they were costumed, she could use it against them. Instead of cracking herself on plastic and metal, she tore the cloth from the Unmaker's face. As soon as she saw the blear of pale blue eyes, she tossed the mirror dust.

The Unmaker screamed—a reedy, unamplified sound. Now that Cade knew they were human, her fear was scaled down in proportion. Two humans against a Noise-battered Cade and a soft-hearted Hatchum? She had seen enough bar fights on Andana to know what made a fair one.

She kicked low and swept the legs of the second Unmaker.

He went down with a head-crack on glass.

Fair enough.

“How many in the halls?” Cade ran out of the small room, Rennik trailing.

“Patrols of two,” he said. “And a few large groups, but they were out on the perimeter. This is the heart of the ship.”

Of course it was. No windows. Fewer clues about where prisoners were held. Ringed on all sides by Unmakers, so that if someone did escape, they wouldn't stay escaped for long.

“Are all of the holding cells in this cluster?” Cade asked.

“I'm not sure,” Rennik said. “But I know where they took Lee.”

He didn't have a chance to tell her, because a two-man patrol appeared along the far curve of the hall.

Cade didn't wait for the rush. She was the rush, streaming her voice behind her like a banner.

Before the Unmakers knew how to handle her, she had unarmed the first guard and tested the knees of the second. By the time Rennik caught up, Cade had them fighting hand-to-hand. The little gloves of the Unmakers were slippery where they landed, and glanced off her skin. Stitches in the leather printed themselves to her cheekbone. She reached up with her right hand to check the damage, and the Unmaker snatched her fingers.

Cade lashed out with the mirror shard in her left hand, starting in on the Unmaker's robes. A thump to one side let her know that Rennik had put his guard down. With another well-aimed blow, hers went down, too.

The Unmakers blended into one black stain on the ground. This time it was Rennik who hurried off. Cade stopped to check the swelling of her cheek, to push down the wildness of her heart.

And then she ran.

She took a blind curve at top speed, arms out, and almost slammed Lee to the ground. Cade caught their combined balance and slung them both into the wall instead.

Lee pushed Cade back, holding her at arm's length.

“You
snugging spacecadet!”

“That's one way to say thank you,” Rennik said as he caught up.

Lee's laugh was so big, she could barely fit in the words. “You're right.” She flew at Cade on purpose this time, arms flung over-wide, pretending to knock her down, but catching her up in a hug at the last second.

“First-class rescue.”

“Come on.” Cade pulled Lee's hand, tapped Rennik on the shoulder as she passed him, and they were off.

Onto a new length of hall and another batch of doors, staring at Cade white as rolled-back eyes.

If she had her up-and-functioning entanglement instead of the Noise, Cade would have been able to follow her own body to Xan, like the dreamwalk that happens when a person is pointed toward home. The turns that spin themselves before memory can catch up and garble the directions. The magnetic on-and-on, the weighted pull of it, the need.

“Hey, Cade, Renna's back the other way,” Lee said.

“Where are we going?” Rennik asked. No uptick in his steps, no hitch in his voice. But Cade could see past the shallows of his calm now, to the depths of feeling. He would worry until she told him where they were headed. Unfortunately, Cade had to do more than inspect the identical doors to know that.

She needed to connect to Xan. And that meant kicking the Noise out of her head.

Cade thought back to Andana, back to Club V, and the night when her head went silent. She started with the show—labcoat in the crowd, spacesicks throbbing at the edge of the stage, lights setting their brand on Cade's skin. She had never examined that night, turned it around like a stone, looked at its underside. Now Cade blasted down the white halls, Rennik and Lee close behind, and remembered.

She followed her old self through the set, then backstage. She met Mr. Niven again. Distrusted him again. Cade fast-forwarded through the filmstrip—she'd had enough of that white-spliced lie. When she got past it, she slowed down. Stuck on the part where the idea of entanglement took hold.

Cade had assumed that it was Xan coming out of his coma that had defeated the Noise. But Mr. Niven had never told her that. Maybe she'd put the idea together backwards. It could make all the difference. Play a line of music forwards, it was pure meaning. Play the same line backwards, it was whine and drone. Useless.

Maybe Xan hadn't turned off the Noise at all.

Maybe Cade had woken him up.

And if she had done that once, she could do it again. The music had made it happen that time. But Cade didn't have Moon-White. Besides, making sounds of the loud-enough-to-scare-off-the-static variety would bring a pack of Unmakers so fast that Cade didn't count it as an option. But there was another possibility. She had sent music—real music—to Ayumi's mind, without making a sound.

She would have to do that. But first she needed to reach out, open up, and overwhelm the Noise.

The attempt came out rusty at first, all sharp notes and stabbing rhythms. She fiddled with it while Rennik took the lead, kept her moving, eyes slanted back at her even as he rushed.

The Noise needed structure to cancel it out. Well-built, intentional, intricate music. But it demanded surprise, too, or else it would beat her to whatever punch she wanted to pull. Cade swelled over it, smothered it, ordered it to sit down and play dead.

But she couldn't quite kill it.

She tried to remember the song she'd played at Club V, remake it in miniature in her head. Verse-chorus-verse. Comfort food.

And then the bridge. Cade hit it, and for the first time, she could see where she was headed, the spot on the other bank where she wanted to land. It had been an unformed place for too long. Now it was a few steps in the right direction—a certain, small white room.

Cade was close to overcoming the Noise. She could feel it. All she had to do was insist. And that meant getting loud. So she turned the volume up, cranked it higher, until she thought her head would split down the center and pour out music in loud colors. The coma static slipped into the background. When it gave out, she stopped.

Dead in front of a door, the same as all the other doors.

But this one she tapped open.

“Cadence?”

His voice filled the space that the Noise had scraped out. It rang through her like bells.

 

Less than ten steps across the room to Xan, but they were the longest, strangest steps of Cade's life.

She saw him and he wasn't in her head, and she wasn't in his. He wasn't a symphony of feelings that she could slip into. He was a boy, in a too-small room, waking up. Paler than clouds. Brighter than the nearest sun.