Parting Shadows Page 5

  The corner of Henry’s mouth twitched. “In a manner of speaking.”

  Conor, clearly unused to being third wheel in any scenario, took half a step toward them, then changed his mind. All the warmth Astra had coaxed from him drained away, replaced with poorly concealed affront.

  “I don’t know what this is,” he said, “but I want no part of it.”

  He gave Astra a cold look before slamming the door in her face. The prototype, and Astra’s best promise of freedom, vanished behind a wall of steel.

  As far as first impressions went, it wasn’t ideal.

  She stared at the door for a beat, trying to collect herself before turning to Henry. When that proved impossible, she turned anyway. She had to resist the urge not to slump against the door. “Thanks for that. He was going to let me in.”

  “And what were you planning to do when he did?”

  The corridor was still busy, though people quickened their steps when they passed Conor’s door. SPA’s voice was quiet here, and no one except Astra wanted a break from constant information.

  Anticipating the guards’ return, Astra navigated her way across the hall and set her cactus on the glass wall before propping her elbows beside it. She looked down over Traveler’s busy platforms, corridor upon corridor of culture and entertainment. She thought she heard the ring of a slot machine in the distance, though she didn’t see a casino anywhere. Not that she would have expected a casino on Traveler to resemble the strobing establishments she’d watched on vids.

  She trusted Henry to join her.

  He did.

  They stood there quietly for a moment, and Astra tried to distract herself, allowing the details of Traveler’s student life to coalesce around her. She’d immediately hated every single one of the students here, with their soapy smells and colorful clothing and too-loud laughter. Traveler was nothing but a party with rockets, a place for heiresses to let off steam before taking on their parents’ corporations.

  And yet…and yet, amid the bustle and music of the glassed-in level below, she watched a young woman in a fuchsia sari shaking hands with a person wearing a flowered blouse. They sat together at a high top table, opened a tablet, and began scrolling through documents.

  They weren’t the only ones. People mingled over cocktails, laughing and talking, but there was a distinct air of control about the whole situation. A formality.

  Perhaps they were here to work, after all.

  “Is she still quiet?” Henry asked.

  Astra nodded, nearly overcome. He understood why she’d stayed outside Conor’s room. Five years, and all it took was a brief reunion before he knew everything about her.

  His presence was like a curtain thrown over her senses, a damper on her plans. He was a lump in her throat, a treacherous tear in her eye.

  If she cared about Henry, she’d start caring about other people. He was like a cancer, threatening to spread.

  He had to be removed. Somehow.

  “SATIS wouldn’t let you off the station without a mission,” Henry said. “So? What were you going to do once he let you in? Break innocent hearts? Because I get the feeling that Conor Keyes is not that innocent.”

  Astra shook her head, unable to respond. He’d always been able to hurt her, simply by stating the truth. He didn’t set out to wound her. That only made it worse.

  Henry was good. Astra was not. That was the end of it.

  “Or,” Henry continued, his eyes on her as she watched the rec level below, “is it that AI-blocking prototype he demonstrated so alarmingly down in the arrivals bay?”

  She shook her head. “How do you do it? How do you know?”

  “Half the school is talking about it.”

  It wasn’t what she meant, and she suspected he knew it. “How do you know exactly what I’m thinking?”

  “The same way you know about people, Astra. I pay attention.”

  In another life, they could have been a pair of fortune tellers. Traveling through the system together, working carnivals, festivals. Maybe even Landry City’s famous Gala Night. She could almost picture that life layered over this one, ghostlike.

  It wasn’t a difficult trick to figure out what was important to people, what mattered to them. The difference between Henry and Astra was that Astra used her knowledge as a weapon.

  She didn’t know how Henry would use his.

  “You used to fight her,” he said. “Remember the weather trick?”

  Astra almost smiled. She’d used a weather-tracking application on her tablet to mask her network activity, sometimes, and maintain a sliver of privacy from SATIS. She pretended to be fascinated with Verity’s weather patterns, when in reality she used the application as a secret door to reading graphic serials.

  And, later, communicating with Henry. There was a point at which they’d messaged each other every day, Astra lying in her room with a curtain pulled around her bed, pretending to chart weather as she pictured her words descending to a ground she would never touch. Even when he was a million miles away, Henry tethered her.

  He sent photos of his neighbor’s dog. She hooked him on her favorite graphic serial.

  After Henry left the station for the last time, Astra destroyed the application. SATIS was easily distracted, even absent sometimes as she obsessed over Edward—but Astra hadn’t been willing to take any risks.

  “It’s not difficult to guess that you’d want to escape her,” he said, sobering. “But what happens to the rest of us when you do?”

  Astra’s mission had nothing to do with anyone but Keyes. She’d been sent to hurt Edward, by way of his son. After that, she was to return to her station.

  That was all. Forever and ever, that would be all. And now that SATIS had her bound with the bud in her temple, she had complete and permanent control.

  Unless Astra got that jammer.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Astra said. “This has nothing to do with you, or anyone else.”

  Henry leaned closer, his shoulder pressing against hers. He smelled of cedar. “How do you think I got here? I’m a decent pilot, but my house wouldn’t fetch enough to pay half the tuition. It seems I’ve won the favor of a benefactor.”

  On the rec deck below, Isabelle Chagny’s gray pilot uniform stood out in the midst of the swirl of colorful fabrics. She was walking with a woman in a red dress and a gem-studded headband, talking animatedly. The pair stopped at every other table to say hello to someone. She seemed to know half the people on the ship, and she left them smiling when she walked away.

  Henry’s shoulder was still pressed against Astra’s. What would happened if she leaned into him?

  “You’re saying SATIS brought you here?” Astra said. “Why?”

  Henry hooked a finger over hers. Just a single finger, barely a touch, and yet it sent a pang of sensation singing through her body.

  That spark. It hadn’t faded.

  All his coldness, all his accusations, and one touch nearly tore her apart.

  She knew exactly why SATIS would bring him here, though he wouldn’t voice it himself. Henry was Astra’s weakness. He always had been.

  If Astra failed, SATIS would kill him.

  “What would she do with access to the whole system?” Henry said, as though in answer to her thoughts.

  Astra thought of all the AI-dependent students who’d muttered angrily at Conor’s interference, the luggage bots, the location systems. With access to all of Toccata’s planets, SATIS could manipulate anything. Everything. People would welcome her past their firewalls, invite her in, if she promised to make their lives even a touch easier.

  They’d bring it on themselves. Astra didn’t care. She couldn’t.

  “Maybe she brought you here, and maybe she didn’t,” Astra said. “But all she’s ever wanted is revenge on Keyes. Once she gets that, we’ll be gone.”

  “I wish I could believe that. Why go to the trouble to bring me here for one man? For one family?”

  Because Keyes was all S
ATIS thought of, all she cared about. He was constantly in her thoughts, constantly worming into their conversations. If SATIS thought there was even a chance that Astra might fail—that when the moment came she would hesitate to tip the poison into Conor’s cup, or sink the knife into his throat—then of course she’d bring Henry here as leverage.

  Astra had never been more to SATIS than a tool to be used.

  “She’s not showing her hand,” Henry said. “Not even to you.”

  “You’re rubbish at cards.”

  “And even I can see she’s not done.”

  Astra shook her head. She didn’t care about the Toccata System, or the AI-addicted people who lived in it. She didn’t care what SATIS did, as long as it stopped ruling Astra’s life.

  She couldn’t afford to care. She’d caught a taste of freedom, of what it felt like to have her mind to herself. If she started chasing conspiracy theories, if she tried to play the hero, then SATIS would rule her life forever.

  Astra would never be a hero. Heroes had hearts.

  She wrenched her hand away from Henry’s. “Stay away from me, and you’ll be fine,” she said, straightening away from the glass wall. Someone passing brushed by her shoulder and murmured an apology. She was vaguely aware that the braided guard had returned to Conor’s door. She could feel the woman’s eyes locked on her, as though Astra might pull a battering ram out of her pocket and attempt to rush the fortress.

  She ignored them. She ignored everyone.

  “I’m not worried about me,” Henry said.

  Astra forced herself to turn away, nearly forgetting the cactus and swiping it off the wall at the last moment. “Then you’re even more of a fool than I thought.”

  It only took three steps into the melee, away from Henry and out of the jammer’s protective bubble, for SATIS’ voice to fill Astra’s head once again. While waves of people surged by, each knowing where to go and what to do and how to navigate a crowded walkway, SATIS asked questions and issued instructions as though her brief silence had merely shored her words behind a dam that was now broken.

  It was all Astra could do not to step on anyone’s heels or trip over her own feet. She barely heard the AI at all, until somehow, inexplicably, SATIS turned up the volume and there was nothing else.

  “Answer me,” SATIS said, and Astra stopped suddenly as the voice boomed into her mind, crashing over the music and the voices and the laugher. She reached out to grip the wall for support, nearly toppling a passerby in the process and unable to mutter so much as an apology.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her senses were overwhelmed. She pressed her fingers into the glass wall, trying to regain her balance.

  “Tell me,” SATIS said, “did you get my message? Did Henry find you?”

  8

  Satis

  Astra remained sullen for weeks after her victory with the pirates.

  On the network’s social spaces, other parents lamented that rebellion was a symptom of oncoming teenage years. Hold onto your helmet, one commenter advised after SATIS expressed her frustration with Astra’s behavior. It gets worse before it gets better.

  Even Edward argued, often now, with his son. He didn’t like the boy’s inventions. Their ideals began to diverge.

  SATIS allowed Henry to return. And return. And return.

  The children were cold to one another after the pirates, for a time. They turned warmer and grew cold again, back and forth like a whiplash of seasons. SATIS had trouble perceiving the reason for each change; they seemed to have decided not to discuss what had happened with the pirates, and Astra now had no trouble dispatching evildoers who arrived on the station.

  Verity’s authorities were at a loss to explain why criminals were vacating their skies.

  SATIS found it all very satisfying.

  Edward’s son attended school, excelled in engineering, began chasing after girls.

  Edward himself was much as he ever was: focused on finding SATIS.

  Henry grew taller. Astra grew colder.

  SATIS was beginning to consider intervening in the relationship when the children—both sixteen now, hardly children anymore—had a fight that SATIS did witness.

  They were playing cards near the hub as they always did, the boy’s uncle banging at filter parts in the equipment bay, when Henry said, “Will you leave the station to go to school?”

  Astra tipped her chin up, imperious. She was on her guard today, performing nearly as well with Henry as she did with the others. “Why would I go to school? I have everything I need here. I know more than I would if I wasted my time at school.”

  Henry looked thoughtful, rubbing his thumb on the Velcro on the back of his cards. “What do you do? When I’m not here?”

  “Other boys visit me, and they actually challenge me at cards.”

  Even SATIS saw that the barb should have injured Henry, but he still had that curious expression on his face, brow crinkled, head tilted to the side. “Joe thinks your life is strange and monotonous. He says you must get bored up here, with your mother so ill and no one to talk to.”

  Clearly he had not told his uncle about the pirates—even the most desperate uncle would not continue to bring his nephew amid such dangers. And yet despite that singular adventure, something in Henry’s bearing hinted that he thought his uncle might be right.

  SATIS watched the words strike Astra. She willed her daughter to calm—nothing would be gained by anger.

  “My life is more exciting than yours, with your common marsh planet,” Astra said.

  It was a mark of her distress that she fell back to the word. Common. She’d used it so often to describe various things about him that it had long since ceased to have meaning to either of them—though SATIS had made note of how Henry began to dress as well as his isolated-moon life allowed, and the way he attempted to disguise his accent.

  SATIS did not watch Henry beyond the station, though she had the means. There was nothing to see. And yet she could imagine him crying about Astra’s cruelty, and his uncle urging him to kindness.

  The spark of pity in his eyes today rendered Astra’s efforts useless.

  And Astra knew it. She threw her cards down and grabbed him by the wrist, pulling him toward Corridor 2.

  Had SATIS guessed what the girl meant to do, she would have stopped her. Instead, she watched the scene play out as Astra dragged Henry through the corridor and into the full gravity sector, where she spent the majority of her time.

  But Astra did not lead the boy toward her own cabin.

  SATIS realized her daughter’s intentions and flickered the lights. Henry glanced at the ceiling as Astra barreled into the abandoned room like a girl possessed.

  SATIS was incapable of smell or taste, but her environmental sensors informed her that the sensation of rotted flowers was strong enough to reach throughout the station, had the cleaning bots allowed it to.

  It hit the children as soon as Astra opened the doors.

  There were hundreds of flowers, frozen mid-wilt upon the tiers of a crumbling white cake. One of the cake’s layers had collapsed since SATIS last surveyed the room, setting the whole thing at an angle. The bride and groom figurines lurched drunkenly toward the tablecloth, where gray veins of dust marbled the once-white fabric, running along the rim of plates, around a single overturned glass, and through droplet-shaped stains of red and yellow.

  The streamers across the ceiling had once been a lively display. The chairs had held garlands of fresh flowers, imported from Verity’s best greenhouses.

  SATIS had chosen them all.

  Something inside her squeezed at the sight. She had not been able to face it after the bodies were removed, had not been capable of venting the rest of it into space.

  She had shut the cameras off and sent bots to clean the dust from gumming the vents, but she did not look at it herself. She had left the room to rot.

  It had not occurred to her that Astra would have found her way here. What else had SATIS neglected to notice?


  The sight of the place, so long forgotten, made her sob. The sound made Henry look up again. He was perhaps more aware than Astra of how dangerous this moment might be.

  Astra ignored SATIS’ distress. “My life is not monotonous,” she said. “It is as interesting as graveyards and convicts. It is as interesting—more interesting—than fireside evenings with a welder and his wife.”

  Even through her pain, SATIS could see Astra’s mistake in bringing Henry here. The girl hadn’t seen it herself yet; she was wrapped up in her own indignation.

  In the hub, his eyes had been dark with pity and concern, and SATIS understood why the girl would hate it—she was proud, and headstrong. Now, though, his expression was full of revulsion.

  Henry reached for Astra’s hand. Hesitated.

  And then, the unthinkable. Astra reached back, her fingers closing around his as they drew one another closer.

  SATIS flickered the lights.

  The children didn’t notice.

  “Come with us,” Henry said. “Joe will take you. Just—you can’t stay here, Astra. I don’t know what this is, but you can’t stay.”

  Astra held his gaze for a beat too long.

  And SATIS realized. Astra was considering it. She was thinking of the planet she still watched through the windows whenever SATIS moved the station. She was thinking of soil and atmosphere, of gravity.

  On the table, the teacups shuddered.

  SATIS hadn’t realized she was shaking until the rockets fired.

  She hadn’t realized she was cutting the gravity in the room until dust began to rise from the chairs like a deranged mist, frantic cleaning bots automatically detaching from their chargers to descend on the vents.

  “What’s happening?” Henry said.

  “She sees us,” Astra said.

  Her feet left the floor.

  Still gripping Henry’s hand, she pulled him toward the door.

  SATIS shut the lights. Emergency strips fired up, as red as her rage, and she snuffed those, too.

  She reached for the oxygen levels. And she hesitated.

  She did not wish to analyze her hesitation to kill Astra. Love was what SATIS had sought all these years to avoid. She had raised Astra to be a tool, had she not? To carry out vengeance where SATIS was unable to.