Unravel (33 page)

SHE LEFT
them to die.

It was late afternoon, and Elissa was alone for the first time in hours, walking down one of the shiny-white, sterilized-clean corridors of the city spaceport hospital.

The flyer had gotten them to safety at the spaceport several hours ago, but it wasn't until now that she'd had the chance to seek out a few minutes alone with Cadan.

Sofia and Felicia had both been taken to the hospital the moment they arrived at the spaceport. Sofia had been bandaged up, given an antibiotic injection, and was resting, El waiting in a chair next to her bed.

The rest of the group were in the hospital too, although they were in the waiting rooms, not the treatment wing. Unlike normal hospitals, the spaceport hospital had been built underground, and right now was about the most secure place they could go.

Felicia's condition had been a whole lot more serious
than Sofia's, but she, too, was recovering. Her wound was clean and stitched, she'd been given a blood transfusion and pumped full of anti-infection drugs and healing accelerants. The rest of the
Phoenix
crew had been allowed to see her as she lay pale and tranquil in drug-induced sleep, and everyone had told Elissa how well she—Elissa, not Felicia—had coped. Everyone, too, had told Elissa and Lin how well they'd both done, how amazing they'd been, how fantastic their linked powers were. It was the recognition, the praise Elissa had thought she'd wanted. Now, though, every time anyone said anything about it, she felt as if she were once again breathing in the dirt and dust from back in the square, feeling it sting her eyes, clog her throat, lie bitter on her tongue.

She left them to die. I asked her to help and she wouldn't.
The thought seemed to burn through her brain. She pushed through a swinging hospital door, letting it flap shut behind her, glancing up at the exit sign on the clean white wall.

As soon as they knew Felicia would be okay, Cadan had left the hospital. He'd gone in the shuttlebug with Markus and one IPL official, back to the base where they'd left the
Phoenix
. Commander Dacre had organized clearance, and he'd been going to fly the ship back to the spaceport. That had been several hours ago. He'd sent a message through IPL channels to say he'd gotten back safely, but Elissa hadn't seen him. He'd stayed aboveground with the
Phoenix
, overseeing its preparation and refueling for the twenty-four-hour journey to Philomel.

For our evacuation.

Well, what did I expect? I should never have let her come back in the first place.

They'd known it was a risk, known they were returning to
danger. But—and now Elissa couldn't believe she'd ever been so naive—it hadn't crossed her mind that the risk would be not to Lin's safety, but to her humanity.

By returning to Sekoia, she'd brought Lin back to the world that had declared her nonhuman, the world that had treated her like a lab animal, that had wanted her imprisoned—and if not imprisoned, dead. How could Elissa have thought it would end in anything other than disaster?

She turned a white, featureless corner, into the white, featureless corridor that lay past it.

I should never have come back either.
In the world beyond her home, and then out in the vast reaches of space that lay beyond Sekoia's atmosphere, she'd become somebody she liked. Somebody she could feel almost . . . proud . . . of being.

At the time she'd felt as if all she was doing was stumbling from crisis to crisis. Looking back, though, she saw someone who'd managed to make decision after difficult decision, someone who'd coped with fear and pain and danger. She'd not only protected Lin but had helped her to learn how to live in the world outside the facility.

But now . . .
God, the worst mistake she'd made must have been bringing Lin back to Sekoia. Now, when it was too late to change it, it was horribly obvious that it had been too much, too soon, had crushed the empathy—the
humanity
—Lin had been developing.

Back when she first found me, I realized then that I had to get her away from Sekoia because I was afraid she was a sociopath. Why didn't I know better than to bring her back?

The next door opened on a flight of stairs, as impossibly clean and white as the corridors. The hospital elevators were all shut off, conserving energy here as in the rest of the
city. Elissa started up them. Heaviness dragged at her as she climbed, as if artificial gravity were being used in the hospital as it was on the
Phoenix
, as if it had been turned up just that uncomfortable fraction too high.

Well, at least this time I don't have to figure out how to get Lin off-planet.

They wouldn't be able to come back. Given everything that had happened, she didn't think Lin would even want to. Not now, not anymore.

They would go to Philomel. She and Lin still had a whole lump of their compensation fund—they could move on where they wanted, go to college like they'd been half planning.
Lin can train to be a spaceship pilot if that's what she wants.

But whatever they did, wherever they went, they would have to stay away from Sekoia's shattered society. That was no longer even a question. If they ever came back, if something else happened . . .

I'll lose her. If we keep being faced with danger, on this world that did such terrible things to her, if she keeps being pushed and pushed . . . she's going to end up doing something awful, something so bad I won't be able to forgive her. Something so bad
—Elissa flinched; oh God, even the thought was a betrayal—
that I'll end up wishing they'd left her locked up.

The stairs led to a little landing. Elissa crossed it and took the next flight of stairs, continuing to climb.

So they'd go, because they had to, and they wouldn't return, because they couldn't. They'd forget that they'd come to Sekoia full of high hopes—of changing things, of giving aid to their world. They'd figure out a life for themselves somewhere else.

But what about Cadan? Will he do that too?
Inside her, something twisted. Cadan had mostly wanted to come back to
see if his family was okay. But now he'd seen what was happening to the planet he'd been trained to protect. Once he'd gotten the ship's load of passengers to safety on Philomel, would he want to return to Sekoia? Would he want to come back to give the aid Elissa and Lin couldn't?

What was there to keep him on Philomel? His parents would be there, but he was twenty-one, and he'd been living away from home for years—their presence wouldn't keep him on a planet to which he had no other tie.

But there's me. I'll be there.

Yeah, but was she kidding herself to think that was anything like close to enough?

This—everything he can offer the IPL on Sekoia—this is the kind of thing he trained for, after all. And he'd be useful—truly useful. Even Commander Dacre said it would be different if he'd come here without me and Lin. He wouldn't even need our money to refuel the
Phoenix
for him. If he told Commander Dacre he wanted to come back, she'd arrange for IPL to fund him, I know it.

Extremely useful,
the commander had said that morning, endless hours ago. Not Elissa, not Lin—they were burdens, both of them, too young, too fragile, too much of a liability—but Cadan and the
Phoenix
and the—
adult
—crew.

If he did return, his parents would approve. They would know, this time, that he was doing it because it was the right thing, not because he'd been manipulated into it by his girlfriend. And Cadan would know it too. He wouldn't have to have doubts anymore, wouldn't have to struggle with not being sure whether his motives were all clear and right the way he always needed everything to be.

He doesn't like gray areas. He especially doesn't like thinking there might be gray areas in himself.

The next thought came from nowhere.
IPL could call Bruce back from Philomel too. Give him
his
career back. Put them both on the
Phoenix
to work together, pilot and copilot like they were meant to be before Bruce had to go into quarantine and missed his chance.

Then, borne by a vicious stab of jealousy:
And won't that seem just like old times, with no irritating little sister around to whine and cry and mess things up?

No. She was being stupid. That might be how Bruce would think about it, but it wasn't how Cadan saw her. It
wasn't
. And there must be half a million things for a trained space pilot to do—and plenty of them that his parents would approve of. There was no reason to assume he'd want to come back to Sekoia when there was a whole star system of opportunities out there.

But the idea was there now, the twist tightening in her belly, moving up into her lungs so for a moment it was difficult to take in enough breath to keep her climbing the stairs.

If Cadan comes back to Sekoia, I'll be scared the whole time. Every minute I'll think he's been killed.

And nearly as urgent as that fear—she despised herself that it
was
so urgent, but she couldn't help thinking it—was the fear of what would happen between them.

If she and Lin stayed on Philomel, and Cadan came back here, what would happen to them, to him and Elissa? Would what they had survive a separation of—God, maybe months, with scarcely any contact? With Elissa not knowing from one day to the next whether he was even still alive? With Cadan in the midst of a combat zone, civilian preoccupations fading further and further from his mind?

She reached the top of the stairs. The door in front of her was a normal sliding one rather than a flappy hospital door.
Elissa opened it and went through into an entrance lobby. It wasn't one of the main hospital entrances, so although it had a reception desk, the current understaffing situation meant that the desk wasn't staffed, and the only person she could see was an armed IPL guard standing just outside the doors.

Even as she noticed him, another person came into her line of sight. Cadan's mother, her hair ruffled by the dusty wind that swept almost constantly across the plateau, walking toward the hospital door. The guard nodded as she reached where he stood, and she smiled at him as he put a hand up to hit the doorpad and open the door for her.

The door whooshed open on a gust of air as hot and dry as if it came from an oven, and Elissa instantly tasted dust and sand and rocket fuel, smelled dead, baked-dry grass. Her skin welcomed the wave of warm air even as her nose wrinkled at the smell.

“Elissa?” said Cadan's mother. “Whatever are you doing up here? Did you get lost?”

“No. No, I'm fine.” Infuriatingly, she found herself stammering slightly, nerves tying her tongue.

Emily Greythorn came toward her as the door swooshed shut. “You really shouldn't be up here, though. I know it's guarded, but—well, you're already well aware of the threats we're facing, aren't you?”

Elissa shook her head. “Oh, I know. I'm not going to stay long—I just wanted to see Cadan.”

Mrs. Greythorn's eyebrows lifted. “Ah . . . Elissa, it's probably not the best time for that. He's up to his elbows in prepping the ship. I'm sure you'll get a chance to see him later, when he's not so busy.”

Elissa bit her lip. She didn't want to be rude to a grown-up—and
really
not to Cadan's mother—but she'd waited for hours already. And she and Cadan had managed their relationship for weeks without needing advice. She made herself smile, hoping that it didn't betray the edge of resentment she was feeling. “I won't interfere. I know he's super busy. I just have to see him for a minute.”

She took a step toward the door, and—to her bewildered surprise—Emily Greythorn put a hand out and laid it on her arm, halting her, gently but inexorably.

“I really don't recommend it,” she said. “He won't thank you for interrupting him, not right now. Take my word for it, my dear.”

The bewilderment morphed into something much simpler. Heat flickered into Elissa's cheeks. She lifted her chin and stepped back so that Mrs. Greythorn's hand fell from her arm. “Cadan's pretty much always happy to see me.”

“I'm sure he is.” Mrs. Greythorn's voice remained utterly calm—and kind, like she thought Elissa needed reassurance or something. “And I'm sure that when he's next at leisure he'll be happy to see you again. Right now, though—” As if she'd caught the flicker in Elissa's expression, her voice changed to firmness. “Elissa, he's at work.”

The heat spread through Elissa's veins. “Wasn't he at work when you came to see him too?”

Mrs. Greythorn's eyebrows lifted again, and under them her eyes were suddenly the cold blue that Cadan's could go. “I am his mother.”

Elissa folded her arms. “Okay. Well, I'm his girlfriend.”

“Oh good Lord.” For the first time impatience lent an edge to Mrs. Greythorn's calm tone. “I don't think it's really the same, do you?”

“Well, it's not like he's
flying
the ship right now. If he doesn't mind
you
interrupting him—”

“I didn't ‘interrupt' him,” Emily Greythorn said sharply. “I've been an SFI mother for a long time, I know better than to disturb him when he's working. I had business there—I was arranging for his skybike to be fitted in the cargo hold. There are no slidewalks on Philomel, and Cadan can't be of as much use if he's grounded.”

Her manner had that not-quite-conscious pride Elissa's own mother had always shown when she mentioned
her
SFI son.

“Well,” Elissa said, and it came out with more of a snap than she intended, “I know better too. I
grew up
with him—him and Bruce. It's not like I don't know what he does. I'm not going to
interfere
.”