Unmade (15 page)

Mira paused, out of ready-made answers. “You don't make sense. None of you do.”

Cade merged the thought-songs with the sound of footsteps and the soft rub of voices to create a living map. She held it firmly in her head as she led Mira into a slimed honeycomb of basements.

“Agreed.”

The people they found there fell into different categories: eager to follow, suspicious of every word, itching to fight. So tired that they could barely lift their heads. So foul that Cade wanted to cut her nose off. Mira had promised to stay behind Cade, but she edged out with her voice, talking to people from behind Cade's back.

“Space is a lot nicer than this,” she said. “You'll like it.”

“We have lots of grain-mash on the ship, and even sugar to put on it sometimes.”

“Don't make me fight you,” she said, which was met with laughter—grimy as old coin, but true underneath.

Sometimes all Mira had to do was smile and activate her dimples. Cade let her go a short distance in one direction while she took the other, staying close enough to keep a watch on the girl but far enough away that Mira could double the ground they covered. She was so good at reading people that Cade wondered if soon, with the fleet gathered and her strange skill set put to bed, she'd be able to retire.

The thought was cut off by a long scrape and a cloth-dampened scream.

Cade ran and found a man dragging Mira into a sub-basement. The smell of turned meat leaked from the entrance. Cade lunged with her knife, but the man was more alert than she'd given him credit for, and when he spun, he caught her across the cheekbone.

“Give me the girl,” she said. Her voice was a fierce, pulsing thing.

“What girl?” The man stared at Cade as he gathered up Mira, holding her still and much too close, a long needle at her throat. It was dull at the point, no shine. It could have been a knitting needle in another life. But with enough pressure—

“Let me have her,” Cade said. “She's mine.”

“No idea who you're referring to.” The man's eyes were pasted over with madness. But there was a hint of a smile, too, like he dared Cade to argue that Mira was real, when in his mind she was a piece of meat.

“It's okay,” Mira said. “You can go. Make it to the club. Gather the fleet. That's what you're supposed to do, Cade.” She swallowed hard, and the needle bobbed against her throat. “So do it.”

Cade shifted her weight, testing the man's readiness. He read the signs, predicting all of her possible attacks. Cade backed off, each step boiled down to glue, the sticking awfulness of letting Mira believe for even ten seconds that she would be left to die.

Cade stopped with her back turned. She closed her eyes, and the sounds of dragging scratched at her like fingernails. Cade settled into the wide, balanced stance that she used for playing
hardfastloud.
Music swept like a strong wind through her mind, gathering fury and force as it went, and she sent it out, out, out.

The man's mind wasn't open to her, but she wrenched it open, and turned to find him on his knees, silent-screaming. Mira wriggled away from his grip and ran clear. Cade moved in and sliced the man's calf just above the ankle.

Then she ran.

She kept Mira in front of her, little heels slapping. As soon as they were up the stairs, Mira turned and looked at Cade with awe.

“You came back for me.”

Cade ruffled Mira's hair, and it was strange how natural the impulse felt. “You know, this isn't the first time I saved you.”

“But before, I could have been anyone. This time you came back.
For me.
”

 

The staircase that dropped down into the club felt the same as it always had. The rest of the city around it had changed, but when Cade circled those stairs, she could have been on her way to play Club V on a Saturday night.

The chairs and tables at the back of the club had been overturned, stripped, broken down for parts. Some of the table legs and curtains from the stage had been thrown together to form what looked like small huts. Leading with her knife, Cade checked them one by one. If there had been buzz-fiends living here, they were gone, leaving rows of empty bottles behind the bar.

Cade slapped her palms on the stage, pulling herself up by her arms. By the time she rose to standing, she was drenched in memory. All of those Saturdays, all of those songs. Everything strong—the stage lights, the crowd-stares, the drinks.

Cade hadn't picked this place so she could swim around in old times, but they came back anyway. The brass, and under it, the loneliness. And then, the one good part: the pure rush of music.

Cade had been a guitar-slinger once, not a savior. But even in those old days, she'd been different from other people. Cade and Xan were already entangled, and he'd needed a kick start to the brain to wake him up from a coma. Cade had provided that with the loudest, hardest, best song she'd ever played.

It was while she stood here, on this stage, in this spot, that it had all started.

Cade shook off the memory and it broke and left her, like a shattering of droplets. But some of them clung, seeping into her as she set up the microphones, found the booth, and brought the stage lights back to life.

Rennik led in a group of survivors, and the club started to look like it always had on show night, thick with bodies and excitement.

“Have you done a sweep of the backstage areas?” Rennik asked.

Cade shook her head.

“I can do it!” Mira cried, running for the black-painted hall.

“Better let me,” Rennik said. A few long strides and he passed Mira with a pat on the shoulder.

Cade tried not to think about him in the dressing room, every turn of him reflected in her mirror. Now she was the one who wanted to knock on the door, impatient, press him back against the wall.

Putting her wants away was easier work than usual. Cade couldn't change what had happened, but at least she could promise herself not to make the same naïve stumble twice.

Lee and Ayumi thundered down the stairs with a set of survivors. Till and the man from the clothing stall and the others followed with their own groups, until there were fifty people, maybe seventy-five.

A full house. Cade slitted her eyes against the stage lights, really looking at her audience for the first time. The survivors. The spacesicks. The exhaustion that sat on people as clear as grime-layers. Cade's crew lined the room, looking triumphant in the case of Lee and tense in the case of everyone else.

Cade rushed to set the rescue in motion.

“If you're here,” she said, “it's because you want off this planet as much as I do.”   

Cade had it all planned, the brass speech, the quick flight to the outskirts of the city.

But the floor had other ideas. It wavered under her feet.

 

back where

things begin

packed infinities

 

trembling, like a word on the tongue

to grow

into the shape of itself

careen out—

be the air and fill it

 

waiting

to wild-expand

to

become

 

Cade held the stage as this streamed through her.

She managed not to fall to her knees, and that felt like a victory. She cleared her throat and got ready to move on to the rest of the speech.   

But then a ruckus—a full ten on the scale—broke wide at the back of the club. People dressed in robes rushed in and spilled forward, swirling the crowd like dark paint. The figures came first, and then the sounds. Grunts, knives, skin.

And everything inside of Cade exploded.

She felt like she was being torn in thousands of directions, from the center outward. Every time she closed her eyes, she was in a strange world of violent expansion.

When she opened them again, she was in the middle of a bar fight. The fake Unmakers hadn't reached the stage yet, but Cade didn't have long. Robed figures crashed through the crowd, which was armed for the most part, thanks to the constant death threats.

Cade had just enough time to get clear. She had to. But she couldn't move. The wrenching apart of her particles was too much, too strong and painful. It flashed and strobed through her. Tore time into pieces.

 

and inside things were moving

out fast white-hot

wild and spreading

everywhere

and she couldn't

 

Stop it. She had to stop it.

The fight, the inner explosion, everything.

Cade opened her eyes. Knives flashed at her feet. All it would take was a few steps and she would be backstage, but she couldn't do it.

She fell to the floor, and crashed. Inside. Outside. Everywhere.

 

the beginning,

all over again

the same as before

the same always

she could feel it

this time, she could feel

 

Everything.

Beauty, pain, all of the things she hadn't been able to feel when she lived on Andana, when her life was loneliness and the scratch of sand.

Lee caught her eye across the room.

“What's happening?”
Lee mouthed, clear as noon. She shoved a robed man off and put a knee to his stomach.

What's happening?

Cade didn't know. Something with Xan. Something with her particles. Something with the universe.

Exploding.

Cade tried to shrug, but her shoulders were made of parts that were moving away from each other too fast to act like a shoulder.

None of this made any snugging sense, and Cade had just enough of her brain functioning to know that. But it was real. It was happening. She tried not to blink, but that just dried her eyes out and didn't stop it.

 

forcing her open,

and open,

and more open

 

Focus.

Cade would have to smash herself back together. Fast.

She tried to follow the fight, find its rhythms, so she could throw herself back into it. She watched Till take down three fake Unmakers, only to get slashed in the gut. Ayumi and Mira stood behind the bar, smashing bottles and handing them to people who needed weapons.

Rennik had his double blades out and swinging, but he kept interrupting himself to toss concerned looks at Cade. They all did. Her inner disruption was throwing them off, holding them back from winning this fight.

Cade had to get it together.

She pulled out her knife, jumped off the stage, and was fighting before she hit the floor.

A fake Unmaker grabbed Cade by the shoulder. She hit him and sent him down. Easy. The hard part wasn't being strong. The hard part was keeping herself in her body. The hard part was staying in one piece when her connection to Xan was splitting her apart.

 

farther and farther and father and

 

Cade had to stop him.

 

but this was part of her

how could she contain it,

how could she ask it to end when it was all starting

 

“Stop, stop, stop,” Cade muttered.

Rennik fought his way over to her.

“Are you all right?”

He planted himself in front of her, between the stage and the robes and the clash that wouldn't stop.

“Are you all right?” he asked, louder.

“I will be,” Cade said.

 

she let it stream and have her,

be part of her,

all of her

 

And then she turned it off.

 

Dark, silent, done. It was as simple as telling Xan that he wasn't welcome anymore, which was something Cade hadn't been willing to do. Not after everything that had happened. But she couldn't hold this anymore.

 

And then—

Cade came up kicking, biting, swinging with all of her force. She fought with a cold intensity she had never felt before. She would get them out of this club, off this planet, away from here, forever.

Cade fought shoulder to shoulder with Lee. She nodded at Rennik to let him know that she was all right. Better than all right. She was back to herself—a Xan-less self, but she would deal with the loss later.   

The fake Unmakers put up a fight. Still, under their robes, they were cowards, the kind who would turn on their own species to keep their skins intact. Faced with a serious brawl, they ran up the stairs.

Once the crowd was back to its original composition, Cade breathed out so hard she almost sank, but she braced her knees and kept it together. She decided to skip to the end of her speech.

“Let's get the snug out of here.”

Lee fired her gun into the air and let out an open-throated sound, a pure rallying cry. Cade ran up the circle of steps into the warm night. Over the last stretches of sand, back to Renna, trailing all of the people who wanted to live as much as she needed to save them.

Survivors crammed every inch of the ship. They dimpled the wall with their elbows as Renna cracked atmosphere.

Lee and Rennik set the course to meet the rest of the fleet, but Rennik was distracted. His eyes stuttered over the crowded control room. Cade could almost see the worry expanding inside of him.

“It's just for a little while,” Cade said. She patted the panels so Renna knew the comfort was meant for her, not her frustrating counterpart. “We'll get them onto
Everlast
as soon as we join the rest of the fleet.”

It was one more stretch of black now, one good haul away. Cade needed to check and make sure the ships were all coming together the way that they'd planned. But first, she needed to find a minute for herself, curl her fingers around a little bit of time. She figured she had earned it.