Wandering Star: A Zodiac Novel (20 page)

Nishi looks up and sees him first. She screams. From where I’m sitting, I can see only the soldier’s back as he raises his gun.

I don’t know when he fires—all I see is Deke’s face in the gap between the soldier’s legs.

He’s wearing the same expression as Twain.

NISHI THROWS HERSELF OVER DEKE’S
chest in one final attempt to protect him, but his eyes are already unblinking and lifeless.

The Zodiac stops spinning. Time isn’t cyclical or linear or multidimensional—it isn’t anything anymore. All of existence has ended forever, and I feel like I’ve been sucked into a Snow Globe from my life, a memory where I can live out my remaining minutes.

Suddenly I’m twelve again—small body, big hair—and choking back tears as I part with Dad and Stanton to board a ship to the moon. I was heading to the Zodai Academy on Elara.

While hugging my brother, I spotted a sandy-haired boy in the distance bidding his parents and older twin sisters farewell. The women and girls were weeping, but the boy was in good spirits—he kept making them laugh through their tears. I couldn’t imagine being funny in that moment—this was the second-worst day of my life.

“You’re shivering,” said my brother, gazing concernedly into my eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this, Rho?” He’d been asking the same question ever since I received my acceptance from the Academy.

“I’m sure, Stan.”

He took off his favorite gray jacket, the one I was always begging to borrow because my frizzy blond curls fit comfortably inside its oversized hood. Also because it was his.

“I want you to have it,” he said, helping me into it.

“But you love it! You never let me—”

“It doesn’t fit anymore,” he said, even though it looked fine on him. “Now go, before the ship takes off without you.” I gave Stanton another hug, and then we both pulled away quickly to avoid tears.

I queued up in line with the other students, forcing myself not to look back as I boarded. Inside, no one was crying, so I bit on my bottom lip hard enough to distract myself from the wound widening in my chest.

In the seat beside me was the sandy-haired boy. Peeking up at him, I was shocked to see tears freely fountaining from his turquoise eyes. He didn’t look happy or good-humored anymore, and I realized it was all an act for his family’s benefit. He was being strong for them. He reminded me of Stanton.

“I’m Deke,” he said, seeing me seeing him. He held out his hand.

“Rho,” I said as we bumped fists.

“Is that your brother’s jacket?” He must have watched me with my family, too. I nodded. “Is he your best friend?” I nodded again. “My sisters are mine. Want to be substitute siblings?”

“What’s that?”

“You be my sister and I’ll be your brother while we’re at the Academy.” He passed me some tissues, and I realized I’d been crying this whole time, too.

I nodded in agreement. He took my hand and held it in his, and suddenly I was no longer alone. Thanks to Deke, within minutes of leaving my family, I found a new one.

The ground shudders beneath me, and a sharp, piercing cry shatters the glass of my Snow Globe.

I try holding on to twelve-year-old Deke’s hand, but I’m already old again, and time is moving unmercifully forward. I open my eyes. Nishi is still lying on Deke’s body, her limbs nearly as limp as his. A scream cleaves the air—it’s my brother.

The Riser jabs him with the butt of her weapon, and the sound of a rib cracking echoes through the ship. When Stanton cries out again, I cry, too.

She hits him again, this time on the head, and I let out a shrill scream as my brother falls to the floor, unconscious. Aryll’s bound feet hook around Stanton’s arm, and he pulls my brother closer, until he’s dragged Stanton’s body to him. He holds him protectively.

“Shackle them to the wall this time,” the Riser commands the injured soldier. Nishi resists him only a little, as if her life force has been halved. The soldier whacks her across the head with his weapon, and I scream again as Nishi passes out. My throat is so raw I taste blood.

I watch Nishi’s placid, unblemished face hang sleepily as the soldier chains her to the wall, and I wish they would knock me out, too. Maybe Nishi resisted on purpose.

Aryll, who didn’t do anything aggressively defiant, is the only one who isn’t brutally punished. He’s in shock, leaning over Stanton like my brother is all he has in the world.

The injured soldier returns to the control helm as the Riser sets up a broadcast and goes over the plan with him. She speaks out loud now, clearly confident in her triumph and not worried that we’ll overhear. “Too bad we’re down to three expendable hostages. Would’ve been nice to be able to show off our weapons by offing the Sagittarian on the live feed. We’ll save the rest in case the crab gets tongue-tied later. Let’s pull the Virgo and Cancrian corpses into the shot. Get rid of the third body.”

She doesn’t even care enough about her own fallen comrade to give him a proper burial—let alone refer to him by name. I close my eyes as she puts
her mask back on, and the transmitter lights up. In the Marad’s voice, she starts in on a new proclamation.

“We have captured Rho Grace, the fallen Cancrian Guardian. We have already executed two of her supporters”
—Deke and Twain are still right there on the floor before me, but I can’t look
—“and we will be executing the rest, live, within one galactic hour. The Zodiac is too fractured to be united, and the House system is on the verge of collapse. A new order must rise. First we will get rid of the Guardians, the last remnants of an old and outdated civilization. This Cancrian, though no longer a Guardian, represents the hopelessness of unity among you. In one hour, that fairytale will end.”

The transmission cuts out. The Riser removes her mask and stares at me, excitement flickering in her close-set eyes. She takes my trembling hand in her scaly one. Her touch is almost tender, reassuring. But then her stare grows cold again—and she yanks off my thumbnail.

I bite down on my tongue, tasting the metallic tang of blood again, my skin searing in agony. But I stay as mute as the dead bodies beside me.

Laughing softly, she plucks off the next nail. Tears stream down my face, the pain so great my head is drowning in it, and I grow too dizzy and nauseated to think clearly.

“If I were to kill you now, you would become a martyr, and that’s not the boss’s plan,” she whispers. “Before you go, you will denounce the House system and the whole Zodiac way of life for the entire galaxy to hear.” She turns and looks back at Nishi, Stanton, and Aryll. “If you aren’t feeling my message, don’t worry—I know how to get you in the mood.”

Then she wrenches the nail from my middle finger, and the world goes dark.

“YOU THINK THE STARS KEEP
you safe at night . . . but they can’t protect you from what’s coming.”

I open my eyes. My vision is bleary, and my face feels wet. There’s water on my lips. I lick them thirstily and look around. Something’s hurting me. . . .

“You believe there are twelve kinds of people in the universe, but what about me? Where do I fit in, crab?”

The scene on ’
Nox
is blurry and out of focus. The Riser is still talking to me and seems to have been speaking to me this whole time . . . as if she didn’t realize or care that I’d passed out. I look down at my fingers. Every nail on my left hand has been removed.

When I see what the Riser is doing now, I bite back a scream—
I can’t react, I can’t let her win, I can’t fall apart.

The pain I’ve been feeling comes into full focus. She’s slicing my arm open with a knife. She’s carving the twelve House symbols into my skin.

“You won’t belong to any House either when I’m done with you.” She’s already up to my elbow and midway through the Zodiac. The pain is so
overwhelming that nausea is rising up again, and I can’t cling to the present for very long.

“You’re killing her!” screams Aryll, his face red and splotchy. He sounds like he’s been shouting himself hoarse for as long as I’d been unconscious.

The Riser holds up her knife, giving me a moment to breathe. “I can take care of that tongue for you, Red. While I’m there, I can pluck out that other eye, too, make you symmetrical again.”

She’s going to keep torturing me until it’s time for the broadcast, even if she kills me first. I can see from the look in her eyes that not even an order from the master can stop her from going too far.

The injured soldier is still at the control helm, watching the Riser closely. Again, they’re communicating in silence. After a few moments of this, she grudgingly puts down the knife. “Fine. You have two minutes to recover before I continue, crab.”

She takes a drink of water and then splashes some on my face. My only ally now is the time I have left until the broadcast, and all I can do is distract her as long as I can. Everything’s riding on the hope that Brynda, Rubi, and the others can get past the Marad’s technology and track our location. Before we’re all dead.

“H-hey,” I manage. “What . . . what House were . . . you from?” My voice is croaky and insubstantial, and it makes me cringe to hear it.

She shrugs disdainfully. “What do you care? I don’t. I don’t even remember. The Houses have nothing to do with me.”

Mom taught me about these kinds of Risers—the ones who shift so many times that they begin to lose their earliest memories, until eventually they can’t remember anything before their life in their current House cycle. They forget who they were, and even though they’ve taken on a new appearance in a new constellation, all that truly remains of them is emptiness. A void so vast they try to fill it with anything—money, sex, violence, power—whatever works.

“Do you have a name?” I chance.

“One I have chosen, not one that was given to me.” I note how important the distinction is to her. “I am Corinthe.”

“Is . . . is there anything you care about?”

“Killing you. Destroying whatever hope the Houses have left.”

“Why? What will that do?”

“Cleanse the planets so we can start anew,” she says in her raspy voice. “We won’t have to hide behind masks because we won’t need your acceptance anymore.”

“Corinthe, this isn’t the way. If you let us go, I’ll still appear on the broadcast with you and plead for your acceptance . . . even after everything you’ve done.”

“Break’s over,” she snarls. She yanks on my arm, and a spasm of pain shoots through me. I turn my head to the side and vomit on the floor.

“What an idiotic little fool,” Corinthe says fiercely. The blade of her knife pierces my skin, and the agony is unbearable. My whole arm is on fire as she carves the Scales of Justice into the crook of my elbow. “Acceptance of the new only comes with the ousting of the old. Just like the Trinary Axis. You have to overthrow the system to build a new one.”

“You’re . . . wrong,” I breathe. “You’re being . . . brainwashed.”

Corinthe has been ostracized, bullied, despised. Like Vecily’s friend Datsby. And now the master is exploiting her pain for his own needs. “Corinthe, you’re as much a victim as the rest of us.”

The knife digs so deep I can’t hold back my cry. I pass out as she starts on the Scorpion.

When I come to again, my whole arm is cut up, from wrist to shoulder. I’m pallid and weak, and I’ve lost a lot of blood. A light is flickering in front of
me, and I realize Corinthe is beginning her broadcast.

“Took you three ampoules of wake-up gas,” she murmurs in her reptilian tone. “Do as I say, and I promise you a swift death. You’re nearly there already.”

A message scrolls across the wallscreens in the nose. It takes me a moment to see the words clearly.

My name is Rhoma Grace. I was a citizen of what was once House Cancer. I’m here to tell you I’ve realized that the House system is wrong. It must be overthrown. The only way for us to truly unite is to lose the twelve signs and come together under one banner. We are all Marad.

“No,” I croak.

Corinthe raises her weapon and points it at Stanton, who’s sitting against the wall, half-conscious, watching us. He barely has any strength to react.

“No.”

Not my brother.

I have to say what she wants.
But she’s going to kill him anyway
, says a small voice in my head. I might as well die staying true to my beliefs.
Doesn’t matter
, I argue with myself. I can’t do something that will cause Stanton pain.

My eyes fill with tears as I read the Marad’s words once more, this time preparing myself to speak them aloud. Charon was right, after all—I am a coward. My Cancrian heart doesn’t make me strong; it makes me weak. I’m about to betray everything I hold true, everything I’ve fought for, because of my irrational, irrepressible love for my brother.

I clear my throat and look into the transmitter. “My name is Rho—”

The transmission cuts out as every light in the ship shuts off.
Equinox
goes dark.

“What’s happening?” says Corinthe, sounding nervous for the first time.

“We’ve lost power,” says a man’s muffled voice. It takes me a moment to realize it’s coming from the injured soldier, who’s speaking through his mask. That means their communication system has been affected, too.

The nose is completely black, but I begin to hear faint footsteps nearby. “Try to—”

Corinthe is cut off abruptly, and soon I hear the sound of a scuffle by the control helm, too. Something heavy hits the floor.

For a moment I hold my breath, unsure what’s happening.

Then I hear him.

“Look alive, ’
Nox
.”