Unravel Read online

  “So that’s what curfew looks like,” said Ivan, behind her.

  Felicia’s response held a sharp note of surprise. “That’s what it is? Who said?”

  “Bryn mentioned it. You didn’t hear?”

  “I didn’t. Seriously, Ivan, a curfew? They don’t have the personnel to get those refugees to safety, but they have enough to enforce a curfew?”

  “It’s a whole-planet takeover,” Ivan said. “Pretty sure a curfew’s standard IPL protocol. If they get resistance, that is. Riots, terrorism . . . you can see why they’d want to clamp down.”

  “I can see, yes. It doesn’t mean I think it’s the right idea. Treating every Sekoian citizen like a criminal whether they are or not?”

  “Oh, I’m with you. I know. But what’re you gonna do? It’s a takeover. That’s how they do it—how they’ve always done it before. And, you know, I don’t suppose the populations of Endymion and . . . which were the others . . . ?”

  “Galapagos and—”

  “—Rin, yeah, I remember now. I don’t suppose they liked it any more than Sekoia, but they did accept it.”

  “Well, if you were an Endymion citizen, anything must have seemed better! They were living with the systematic disenfranchisement of transgender people, for God’s sake. And Rin was on the verge of global famine. They’d probably have accepted imprisonment if it meant they could get a guaranteed half a meal a day. Sekoia, though—Ivan, I’ve lived here since I was nearly as young as the twins, and if I could sum up what the average Sekoian citizen believes, it would be ‘As long as I don’t break the law, I’ll have nothing to worry about.’ I swear, most Sekoians think everyone’s divided into two groups: decent people and criminals. And now IPL’s treating them like they’re all criminals? If that’s not a recipe for disaster—”

  Sudden pain jabbed through Elissa’s eardrums, jerking her attention from the conversation. Lin flinched, putting her hands up to her ears.

  “Swallow,” said Elissa, remembering long-past information Bruce and Cadan had given her. “It’s the air pressure. It doesn’t happen in spaceships, ’cause they adjust it for you. If you keep swallowing, it won’t hurt so much.”

  Lin screwed her eyes up, swallowing, swallowing again, fingers pressing just in front of her ears.

  Elissa did the same, cupping her hands over her ears, swallowing against the pain, feeling her ears crackle as the air pressure shifted.

  Then the spaceport lights rose around them, a bright, colorless ocean. The shuttlebug touched down. The pain in Elissa’s ears dissipated, leaving no more than a faint ache that made her want to keep rubbing them.

  Cadan touched the com-screen. “Phoenix to Savior. Permission to disembark, Commander?”

  “Feel free to disembark, Captain,” came the commander’s oddly inflectionless voice. Now that it was once again unconnected to a physically present person, Elissa found the voice difficult to hear as something that belonged to either a female or male.

  Cadan unsnapped his seat belt and got to his feet.

  Made clumsy by hurry, Elissa fumbled to undo her seat belt as Cadan went to the door at the back of the shuttlebug. She and Lin joined the rest of the crew as they gathered behind him.

  If things went wrong, how were they ever going to get back to the Phoenix? They’d given up so much control already—it seemed suddenly terribly important to stay close together, to make sure they couldn’t get separated. Then, a sudden, unnerving thought: Why are we at the spaceport? Are they just going to push us onto a ship and off-planet? And if that’s what they want to do, how are we going to stop them? How will we get back?

  A little bit of her couldn’t help feeling relief at the thought of being away from Sekoia, away from the people who wanted to hurt—or use—Lin. But she was kind of surprised at how strongly the rest of her rejected it. Despite the terror of finding out what was happening on Sekoia, what could happen to Lin, she didn’t like the idea of running away. If it wasn’t okay for Lin to be in danger, it wasn’t okay for any Spare to be in danger. We came back to help. If helping means saving other Spares, then we’re going to save other Spares. Even if it puts us at risk.

  Cadan unsealed the air lock and went through into the small chamber, then tapped in the codes that would open the exit. Lights blinked from red to amber to green. Then the shuttlebug doors whooshed open, letting in a flood of light and a rush of hot air, full of dust and the scent of rocket fuel.

  Cadan paused in the doorway, a silhouette against a wash of brightness. He was braced, not quite tense, but alert, his hand close to his hip, ready to go for his blaster—or, Elissa realized, the whip she’d seen him use with such devastating effect.

  Then he froze. Clearly outlined in the spaceport floodlights, the hand near his hip clenched. Every cell in Elissa’s body jumped, before she realized he hadn’t gone for a weapon. Whatever he’d seen out there, it wasn’t a threat.

  “Cadan?” said Felicia, at his shoulder. “What—?”

  Like an echo from outside the flyer, another voice came. A man’s voice, one that seemed familiar but that Elissa couldn’t immediately place. “Cadan?”

  Cadan’s hand dropped. He swung out of the doorway, and two strides took him from Elissa’s sight.

  “Who is it?” said Lin. Sudden interest seemed to have shaken her out of her shock. “Someone who knows Cadan? Ivan, I can’t see past you!”

  “Moving. Moving.” Ivan gave her a tolerant look over his shoulder as Felicia and Markus followed Cadan, then stepped down after them out of the shuttlebug.

  Elissa hurried after him, suppressing the urge to push past.

  She got down the steps and landed on concrete, which was warm enough that the heat came through the soles of her shoes. For a moment the full impact of the floodlights blinded her, and she blinked, trying to see through a dazzle of tears. The crew were dark shapes in front of her, and beyond them was a confusion of more dark shapes.

  She blinked again, and the shapes resolved themselves. Cadan had his arm around a tall woman who looked thirty or so years older than him, his free hand on the arm of a man who looked a similar age. They were both wearing the sort of protective jackets Elissa had seen Cadan wear to ride his skybike, and the woman’s short fair hair was ruffled. Cadan was grinning, his whole face alight, more relaxed—more at home—than Elissa remembered seeing him.

  As she stopped, uncertain, he turned to see her, his arm still around the woman. His grin spread, shining as brightly as the floodlights. “There she is. Mom, Dad, you remember Elissa, don’t you? Lissa, you remember my parents? Can you believe, they came over on my skybike?” He looked down at his mother. “After everything you said about safety issues . . .”

  Elissa went forward as the woman laughed. It’s stupid to be shy. It’s stupid. Cadan said, when he had that one interplanetary call back on Sanctuary, they’re not mad with him for rebelling against the government—they don’t blame him for ruining his career. And they were always nice to you when they met you before.

  But before, she’d never had to meet them as Cadan’s girlfriend. And . . . I can’t remember, how much did he tell them in that one phone call? Did he tell them that I lied to him to get on board the Phoenix? Did he tell them how much danger I put him in? That I only told him the truth after his ship had been attacked for the third time?

  Elissa pushed the thoughts aside as best she could and smiled at Cadan’s mother, remembering the angular lines of the older woman’s face, noticing for the first time how similar they were to Cadan’s.

  “Elissa.” Mrs. Greythorn slipped out of her son’s arm and put both hands out toward Elissa. “My dear girl, I’m surprised if you can manage to remember anything after the time you’ve had.” Her hands, warm and smooth, closed around Elissa’s. “You’ve been incredibly brave, I hope you know that? I hope someone’s”—she gave her son a little sideways look—“made sure to tell you? We’ve only had the barest bones of the story so far, but what you managed to do . . .” She gave Elissa
a smile, as warm as the feel of her hands. “Clement and I have been saying, if we, as a society, have managed to raise young people capable of doing what you—and Cadan—have done, then Sekoia really isn’t in such dire straits as the news reports would have us believe.”

  All at once the tears were back in Elissa’s eyes. She’d never thought to expect that Cadan’s parents might not just refuse to condemn, but approve of the actions she’d taken. Her own mother hadn’t, and although her father had been kind, had acknowledged Lin was his daughter, he hadn’t told her she was brave, hadn’t said he was proud of her. Until this moment she hadn’t realized she’d wanted him to.

  “That’s really kind,” she said, stumbling a little over the words. “I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t plan it, I didn’t really mean to do it until it was happening. And I couldn’t have done it without Cadan. He was amazing, Mrs. Greythorn—he saved us, like, a million times.”

  Mrs. Greythorn laughed. “That many?” But it was kindness, not mockery, in her tone. “Let’s get you back home with us, okay? And you can fill me in.”

  “Home?” Her voice came out sharp with sudden panic. “But . . . everyone’s been saying the city’s not safe?”

  A shadow crept over Mrs. Greythorn’s expression. “Everyone’s right. When I say home, I mean the safe house whose exact location I’m not permitted to give you until you’ve been given security clearance.” There was a wry twist to her voice. “But we are allowed to take you there.”

  “All of us? The crew, too?”

  “All of you. I have to say”—she gave Cadan a teasing look—“my son showed great foresight in getting rid of most of his crew. I know there’s room for an extra six at the safe house. We’d have struggled with an extra eighteen.”

  “It was entirely deliberate, of course,” Cadan said drily. “Obviously I like flying a ship with a quarter of the crew it’s supposed to have.”

  “Oh, please,” said his mother. “It was a challenge, wasn’t it? How many times have you said you wanted more challenges?”

  Elissa laughed, charmed by the snapshot portrait of Cadan as seen through his mother’s eyes, and Cadan gave her a wry look. “Don’t go ganging up on me with my mother, now. I have enough of the female solidarity with you and Lin.”

  Lin. All at once Elissa realized that Lin was no longer by her side. As Elissa had gone forward to meet the Greythorns, Lin had backed away. Guilt shot through her. Enfolded in the warmth, the welcome, of Cadan’s family, she hadn’t remembered that Lin didn’t know them at all, that to Lin they were just more people who’d had legal human status their whole lives, who might see her as a freaky full-body clone, something subhuman, something to be wiped out or gotten rid of or used.

  They were welcoming Elissa, but it didn’t mean Lin knew they’d welcome her. And although Mrs. Greythorn was being kind enough that Elissa thought she would, she’d gotten it wrong before, had underestimated how people would react when faced with a Spare. The words of Cadan’s former copilot, Stewart, came back to her. . . . the freak double you stole. Your twin? It’s not even a real word.

  Lin was standing near the shuttlebug entrance. Her shoulders were a little hunched, her hands locked together, the pale fingers tight against one another. She was looking at Elissa, and the expression on her face was as if she stood on some last remaining edge of rock, watching as everything around her fell away beneath her feet.

  “Lin.” Elissa ducked out from under Cadan’s mother’s arm and hurried across to her sister. She’d been going to say something calm, something that would reassure Lin with its ordinariness, its assumption that of course no one was trying to leave her out, that she wasn’t losing Elissa. But when Lin’s eyes met hers, when she saw the desolation in them, all the ordinary words went out of her head.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t look like that. I’m not leaving you behind. I’m not leaving you out.”

  Lin’s hands twined tighter around each other. “I forgot . . . coming back here, I forgot. You had a whole life. You . . . fitted in.”

  “You know what my life was like here,” Elissa said. “And anyway, Cadan’s parents weren’t part of that—not really. I only knew them ’cause of Bruce in the first place, and I haven’t seen them properly for years. I didn’t fit in with them.”

  Lin’s eyes fixed on hers, huge and dark. “You fit now. I . . . I can see. It’s okay—you should. You should fit in. I just . . . I wasn’t expecting . . . I’d forgotten . . .”

  “Lin.” Elissa took her sister’s cold hands in hers. “They’re being really nice. They’ll be nice to you, too. I don’t know them well, they’re not my family. It’s just”—she hesitated, lowering her voice, not wanting anyone to hear—“it’s Cadan’s family. I thought they might be angry with me. His SFI career—they were so completely proud of him when he got in, of how well he was doing. I thought they’d blame me, maybe. So now his mother’s saying she’s impressed at what we managed, and she’s just . . . being nice, ordinary, like we didn’t—I didn’t—turn the whole world upside down.”

  She looked at Lin anxiously, willing her to understand. “I thought they’d be angry,” she said again. “And it’s Cadan, and I . . .”

  Lin nodded. Her fingers relaxed in Elissa’s grasp. “You want them to like you?”

  Elissa hesitated. It was more complicated than that, a whole mix of wanting some kind of outside sign that, despite everything, she was good enough for Cadan, that it wasn’t just luck they’d ended up together. And wanting that approval and acceptance she hadn’t gotten from her own family. And . . . oh, after weeks of having to be responsible for herself, and for Lin, of having to be an adult when she’d never even had a proper chance at being a normal teenager, it was such a relief to be with real adults, proper grown-up parent types who’d know all the right decisions to make so she wouldn’t have to keep guessing and second-guessing.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I do. I want them to like me. And I want them to like you.”

  Lin grinned, in one of her disconcertingly sudden changes of mood. “Well, we’re here to fix the world. What’s not to like?”

  Elissa laughed, in relief as warm as the ground beneath her feet. “I’m not sure they’ve a hundred percent grasped that’s what we’re here for yet. Here.” A whole lot more confident this time, she tucked her hand through Lin’s arm and pulled her to where Cadan’s parents stood. Cadan, she noticed, had walked over to speak to the Phoenix’s crew.

  “Mr. Greythorn, Mrs. Greythorn, this is my sister, Lin.” She didn’t quite mean it to, but “sister” came out with an edge of emphasis, almost defiance. I do want them to like me, I do, but if they react to Lin the way Stewart did—the way my mother did—it doesn’t matter that they’re Cadan’s family, I don’t care, they have to treat her like a proper human. . . .

  Mrs. Greythorn’s smile was as warm as the one with which she’d welcomed Elissa. “How lovely to meet you, Lin. I think Cadan said you and Elissa chose that name for you?”

  As Lin nodded, half-shy, half-eager, and began to explain how they’d come up with the name, Mr. Greythorn looked across at Elissa. “The safe house isn’t far,” he said, and she realized that, overwhelmed by meeting Cadan’s mother, she hadn’t yet spoken to his father. “You look tired, all of you.”

  “Yes.” She smiled at him, shy—ridiculously—all over again. “The base we were at got attacked.”

  “We heard.” Grimness showed in his face, and frustration. “It’s not as if we didn’t know people’s capability to resort to violence. But this . . . It’s not coming from the known criminal element, or from what you’d normally think of as people who are criminally predisposed—it’s not even coming from a distinct level of society. This is coming from ordinary citizens—throughout every level. All the planet had to do—all it had to do—was comply with IPL, and instead the riots, the attacks, plain vandalism . . . they got worse and worse until IPL had no choice but to institute full military law.”

  Cadan’s father
was—had been?—on the city police force, Elissa remembered now. The same as her father, but whereas her father had been high up in the tech-crime unit, Mr. Greythorn had been an ordinary police officer, lower grade and unspecialized.

  “Full military law?” Cadan said, walking back to them accompanied by the three crew members.

  “Yes, believe it or not. On our planet.” Mr. Greythorn gave a frustrated shake of his head. “I should be past being shocked by people, I know. But for God’s sake, safe houses being needed for teenagers?” He looked at Felicia. “Ms. Ambra, isn’t it? I have a message from your mother.”

  Relief relaxed every line on Felicia’s face. She put out her hand for the myGadget Mr. Greythorn offered her. “Mr. Greythorn, thank you so much.”

  He made a courteous, dismissive gesture. “I’m only sorry none of your family were permitted to come with us. We asked, but the security forces are desperately overstretched. They did agree that the Phoenix’s crew members needed the same level of protection as Cadan, but that was as far as they were willing to go.”

  Felicia tore her gaze from the myGadget screen to look up at him. “I understand. Please—it’s enough to know they’re safe.”

  Cadan made introductions, then, and there was a wave of conversation that seemed to wash over and around Elissa without touching her. She was horribly tired, she realized. She wasn’t wearing her watch, which meant she’d probably left it back on the Phoenix, but it couldn’t be earlier than midnight—and it was probably a lot later. She must have been keeping awake on adrenaline born of tension, and now that the need for tension had gone, she was crashing fast.

  Cadan came over and put an arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of his jacket.

  Clement Greythorn glanced toward where they stood. For an instant his gaze seemed to catch, then he spoke to his wife. “Emily, we’re keeping the cars waiting. Let’s get these kids—and the others—home, okay?”

  Emily Greythorn turned, a friendly hand on Lin’s arm. “Yes indeed. Elissa, there are three IPL-approved beetle-cars just the other side of the passenger shelter—” For a moment her gaze, too, snagged on where Elissa’s head rested on Cadan’s shoulder, then she raised her eyes to meet Elissa’s and smiled. “You poor girl, you look exhausted. Cadan, don’t let her fall asleep on the way to the car, all right?”