She spun around, aiming the gun at Bonebreak. He came hissing to a stop, but then cackled. “That is Kindred technology. You cannot operate it.”
“Try me,” she hissed back, hoping the lie sounded convincing, and jerked her head toward Anya’s unconscious body. “She moved you around like a toy, or don’t you remember? She isn’t the only with those abilities.”
Bonebreak’s head cocked slightly, as though considering her words. Something warm seeped into her clothes; Lucky’s blood. It had rolled all the way to the other side of the ship, and her stomach lurched, but she forced her hand to keep the gun steady.
“Yes. I remember.” Bonebreak’s voice turned hard. “But none of the rest of you are capable of telekinesis, or else I wouldn’t have gotten my mind back.” He chuckled to himself, a grating high-pitched wheeze.
The blood thumped in Cora’s ears. He’d called her bluff. She tried pulling the trigger, but nothing happened. She prodded the inside of the gun with her mind, wrapping her thoughts around the intricate mechanics. If Anya had figured out how to fire it, then surely she could too. But Anya was a prodigy. A few sessions with Cassian and a pair of dice hadn’t prepared Cora for this.
“Cora,” Nok said, low and warning. “Your nose.”
Cora tasted the bite of her blood on her lips but ignored it.
“I can fire it,” she insisted, spitting blood.
Bonebreak snorted. “Then fire.”
Her mind prodded and prodded. How did it work? Magnetics? Moving parts? She thought of the training steps: moving the dice, then levitating them. She had barely made it past nudging, let alone . . .
Levitation.
The last time she’d trained with Cassian, she’d levitated a die six inches. A far cry from a five-pound gun, but it was a starting point. Concentrating as hard as she could, she took her index finger off the trigger. Then her middle finger. The gun was heavy, but she gritted her teeth and focused. She removed her ring finger. Then—taking a deep breath—her pinky and her thumb.
The gun hovered in the air.
Cora was so shocked that she nearly forgot to breathe. “You see?” she hissed. “I do have abilities! I can fire this gun too; and I will, unless you get us back on course.”
Bonebreak let out a surprised grunt, and her fears thundered in her ears. Did he sense the bluff?
The ship was silent, save for the sounds of Nok’s labored breathing and a hum of machinery. Cora’s blood pulsed harder. It took every ounce of her concentration to keep the hovering gun aimed at Bonebreak. Her attention was slipping. Cassian said she needed to be able to levitate an object for thirty seconds, but only five or ten had passed, and her mind already ached. She couldn’t hold on forever. . . .
Bonebreak sat heavily in the captain’s chair. He cracked his knuckles, then wiggled his fingers in the air, getting ready to operate the controls. When he spoke, his voice was light and jovial, as though all this had been a prank.
“Earth?” he said. “No problem. I wanted to go to Earth anyway—didn’t I mention that?”
Cora reached out for the gun a second before it fell. Her mind let go all at once, and she slumped over, trying hard not to reveal how much it had cost her. She wiped her wrist under her bleeding nose and collapsed in the second pilot’s chair next to Bonebreak, trying hard not to think about the boy on the floor.
“Then get us out of here. Now.”
42
Cora
THE SHIP GAVE A low rumble as it glided through space. For hours as they flew, the same image showed through the viewing screen: blackness with stars in the distance, the halo of a nearby moon on the right side of the screen.
Bonebreak worked the controls wordlessly, lazily spinning a finger on a trace pad, occasionally flipping levers with his mind. If he was furious, it didn’t show. Everything is a whim for them . . . betraying a promise or keeping it, Cassian had warned. Cora just hoped Bonebreak’s calm lasted until they reached her solar system. In her own heart, calm was the last thing she felt.
Once the others had realized that Lucky had died, they’d all fallen into denial, and then a sort of shock. Nok had helped her clean up the blood and drape a tarp they found in the ship’s facilities room over his chest. Now they all huddled near the captain’s chair, faces expressionless, no words exchanged. Cora stroked Lucky’s dark hair, picking out the dried crusts of blood, trying to ignore how cold his skin had grown.
“How long until we get to our galaxy?” Rolf asked Bonebreak quietly.
Bonebreak flipped another lever. “Settle in. I hope you brought snacks.”
Rolf’s fingers tapped anxiously against the floor. “This trip is very risky, when we do not even know if our planet is there.”
“It’s there,” Cora said softly.
“How are you certain?” Rolf asked.
“A boy named Chicago overheard the Kindred talking about the algorithm having been changed. Cassian looked into it for me.” She pressed her lips together, thinking of that awful scene of him tortured. “He said there’s almost a seventy percent chance humans haven’t destroyed Earth.”
Rolf reflected on this for a moment. “Almost seventy is not one hundred.”
Nok placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes it’s not about the numbers. It’s about faith.”
Cora kept stroking Lucky’s hair. She still clutched the gun in her other hand—just to remind Bonebreak who was in control. The tear in the back of her head was throbbing, low and dull, but persistent. She glanced over her shoulder. Mali had laid Anya flat and was rubbing the girl’s feet with a circular motion that she explained promoted blood flow. Leon had removed his Kindred uniform and managed to reset his shoulder himself, and was now sewing up a wound on his arm with the Mosca’s black thread.
Cora kissed Lucky on the forehead and then drew the white tarp over his face. She scooted back against the wall and squeezed his journal tightly.
Mali watched her from across the room.
“Did you know about this?” Cora asked, holding up the journal.
Mali nodded. “I hear him writing sometimes. At night. It was a gift from Dane.”
Cora sat in the second pilot’s chair, ignoring Bonebreak’s smell that kept the others away. Her mind turned to riding in a car, years ago. Her father behind the wheel, her head on the cool glass window, as they drove home from a political fund-raiser. The night he’d had too much to drink. The night that she had lied to protect him, which had kicked off a series of events that had led to this very moment.
Squeezing Lucky’s journal, she let her chest rise and fall.
They were going home—but at a heavy cost.
A sob started to crawl up her throat again. She felt herself on the verge of shattering, and knit her hands together to keep them from shaking.
A fantasy played out in her head:
Lucky, alive and well, appears at her side, looking worn out but stable as he drags a weary hand through his hair. “Did we actually . . . did we actually do it?” His eyes sparkle.
“Yeah,” she whispers, smiling. “Yeah, we did.”
His grin mirrors her own. He lets out a breath, shaking his head like he still can’t believe it. “I just . . .” He lets out a laugh. “I can’t . . .” He raises his hands in wonder.
Cora grasps his hands, squeezing tight. She meets his eyes. “I know. We’re going home.”
He pulls her out of the chair, wrapping his hands around her back. She leans into his chest, breathing deep. “How are we going to explain where we’ve been?”
“We pretend we don’t remember.” His breath is reassuring as it whispers against her ear. “And we’ll have each other. You and me. We’ll make sure we remember.”
Bonebreak let out a garbled sneeze beside her, and Cora flinched out of her fantasy. Coldness started to creep back in as she glanced at the tarp. Shakily, she opened the notebook. In addition to Dane’s instructions about the weapons, Lucky had written his own thoughts in it too, and she imagined those long
sleepless nights backstage, all the fears and hopes that must have been running through his head.
Today I brought a gazelle back to life. . . .
Cora trained again today with the Caretaker. She won’t talk about it. . . .
I keep thinking tomorrow will be my birthday. No, tomorrow. No, tomorrow . . .
And then:
How can we just leave them all behind?
She slammed the journal closed. Panic was crawling up her throat again, as his words kept ringing into her ears. This is our place. This is our cause.
She picked at her lip, looking out the viewing screen at the stars hanging in the blackness. One of them might be their sun. One of them might even be Earth. It was out there, waiting. She could feel it. But why was there that little nag in the back of her head?
“How many humans are on the Kindred’s stations?” she asked Bonebreak.
He shrugged. “A few thousand.”
“And animals?”
He thought for a moment. “Double that.”
Cora knit her fingers together harder, thinking. The Kindred’s tattoos on her palms flashed. Even now, they had their mark on her.
She wiped at the marks on her fingers, wishing she could rub them away, especially the ornate one on her ring finger. Why had Cassian altered her markings, if not to make some twisted declaration of love with a ring? She kept rubbing. There was more than black on her hands. There was blood there, too.