chain about his neck. Ty’s always played it by the book. Ever since we were thirteen years old on New Gettysburg, signing on the dotted line.
The cargo you carry is more precious than any of you can know.
“Believe … ,” Aurora whispers.
Tyler clenches his jaw. His hand slips from dad’s ring to the Maker’s mark at his collar. As the Longbow shudders and shakes all around us, Ty crawls across the bucking floor, up to his command console. And as I watch, he logs into the navcom, sets us a new course.
Almost immediately, the Longbow stops shaking. The engines pick up, I feel the press of thrust through our inertial dampeners.
The light in Aurora’s eye flickers and dies like someone turned off a switch. She slumps down in her chair, blood dripping from her nose, out cold again. Zila runs to her side to check her vitals, Kal offering assistance. Cat’s eyes are narrowed, shaking hands wrapped around her disruptor’s grip. My eyes are on the navcom, the new course Ty just plugged in.
“Where we headed, Bee-bro?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Sempiternity,” he says softly, looking around the cabin.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
He touches the Maker’s mark at his collar again, staring at Auri.
“But sometimes you just gotta have faith.”
14
Auri
“Jie-Lin, wake up.”
I open my eyes, wondering for a moment where I am. I remember the argument on the Longbow’s bridge. Tyler and Kal and Scarlett and Cat. Bright light. But now I’m lying in a soft bed. A warm glow around me. Posters on the walls I recognize, a familiar stuffed toy squirrel beside me.
My room.
I’m in my room.
“Jie-Lin?”
I look up, and sitting above me is a face I never thought I’d see again. Round cheeks. The lines across his forehead that my mom used to joke were there from the age of fifteen, because the world surprised him so much.
“Daddy?”
“I’ve been waiting for you, Jie-Lin.”
He pulls me into his arms and I can feel his chest shaking because he’s laughing and he’s crying and I’m laughing and crying, too. And all the things I could have said, I should have said, are filling my head because he’s not dead and it’s not too late and I try to pull away and speak because there’s so much I want to say.
But I can’t.
I can’t pull away. He’s holding me too tight. And I can’t breathe and I can’t speak. I push hard, forcing him off me, but it’s like he’s made of tar. Pieces of him come with me as I pull back, long strings of him stretching between us like human taffy. Seeping in under my skin.
“Let me go!”
He looks me and smiles, and his irises are shaped like blue flowers.
“Ra’haam,” he says.
“Let go!”
“Ra’haaaaaaam.”
•••••
“Aurora?”
I open my eyes, heart thundering, blinking in the light. Scarlett’s sitting beside me, Zila and Kal standing above me. My mouth is dry as chalk and I ache all over. But slowly, I realize I’m still here. Not there.
A nightmare.
I don’t know whether to be relieved or heartbroken all over again. I’m not home, not back in my room. I’m on a spaceship a million light-years from any of it. Everyone’s still gone, my dad is …
Scarlett hands me a cup of water, concern and suspicion in her eyes. It’s not lost on me that Zila has her hand on her pistol. That Kal is armed, too, watching me with those cool violet eyes from over near the door.
“Do you remember what happened?” Scarlett asks.
I blink hard. Images flashing in my mind. Me throwing Scarlett into the wall. Blood on my lips. Raised voices. My dad’s skin melting into mine like taffy. One image burning brighter than the rest. A name.
“Sempiternity,” I murmur.
Zila and Scarlett exchange a glance, and the redhead nods. “We’ve been Folding for almost four hours. We’re nearly there. Tyler asked us to bring you up to the bridge in case you … see anything.”
I blink hard to rid myself of that image of my dad. The pieces of him melting into pieces of me. Wincing as Scarlett helps me to my feet, I note we’re in some kind of habitation area. Bunk beds and lockers and gunmetal gray, Aurora Legion logos on the walls. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror. The shock of white in my bangs, the white in my right iris. I don’t know what any of this means, but it feels like a stranger looking back at me.