Unravel (37 page)

It seemed like she wasn't any better at making a mental shield than she was a physical one. She hadn't spoken to Lin in the two hours since her sister had walked away from her, was avoiding looking at her now, trying not to notice what she was doing, trying not to listen when she spoke—and Lin seemed to be doing exactly the same. But all the same, Elissa kept getting gusts of Lin's emotions, bitter and laden with pinpricks of hurt like blowing specks of sand.

She'd planned on finding Lin, talking to her before they left the hospital to board the ship, but Lin had more or less disappeared the whole time, appearing just once, and only then when so many other people were around that Elissa couldn't face trying to talk to her.

Sofia and El were back with the others now, Sofia bandaged up and looking pale but okay. Felicia had regained consciousness but wasn't being allowed to walk: She'd been stretchered on board the ship a short while ago and was going to be traveling in the med-bay, with Ivan—was there anything he
couldn't
turn his hand to?—watching over her during liftoff.

Next to Elissa, Ady said, “Are you okay?”

She looked at him, biting her lip. She still felt he was the one among all the other twins who'd have the best chance of understanding what she was going through, but if she talked to him now, Lin would know. And would experience it like another betrayal. A weird, uncomfortable mix of loyalty and pride held Elissa back too. She and Lin had come back to Sekoia so full of noble ambitions, hopes for saving their world, and they'd screwed up everything so badly. She didn't think she could bear to articulate how stupid they'd been, how unreasonably idealistic. She was ashamed of what Lin
had done, and scared it had been her fault, but also, she was ashamed of how she, Elissa, had treated her sister.

I'm so freaking
bad
at relationships. It's like I forgot how to do them in those three years when I was ill.

“Oh, you know,” she said vaguely. “Stuff . . .”

“Yeah,” said Ady. He was looking ahead to the upright squid-shape of the spaceship, his eyes narrowed against the blowing dust. His voice sounded as if he was, not sympathizing, but identifying.

Elissa glanced at him, a little puzzled. His jaw made a hard line, as if he was gritting his teeth.

“Are
you
okay?” she asked.

Ady gave a little snort, half laughter, half not. “Not really. I'm worried about Zee.” There was no hesitation in his voice—he hadn't been agonizing over whether to tell her. In fact, Elissa thought, he'd probably been
waiting
to tell her.

She looked ahead to where Zee walked at the edge of the original group of Spares and twins, a little separate from the larger group of further Spares, twins, and carers who had been assigned for evacuation on the
Phoenix
and who had arrived in the last hour. As she did, she realized that was where Ady had been looking too, rather than toward the towering shape of the ship, colorlessly flaring in the sunlight.

“What about?” she said.

Ady's gaze skated to hers for a second. “I'm not even sure. That sounds crazy, right? I mean, if it was anything . . .
concrete
 . . . I'd talk to Clement or Emily. They told us about, like, post-traumatic shock and the stuff to look out for, and they said it wasn't our job to, you know, try to do therapy on our twins. They said to just refer any concerns to the people in charge of our group.”

“Shouldn't you, then? Anyway—whether it's concrete or not?”

Ady lifted a shoulder. “But like I said, I don't even know if it
is
anything. How much of a douche am I going to sound if I say I don't like the way he looks at me? Not even all the time, but it's only been in the last couple of days. I don't think he was doing it at all before.” He shrugged again. “But even now, it's only sometimes, not often—and there's not even anything
wrong
with what he's doing. . . . And God, you know, he's been majorly traumatized and I've had everything, and . . .” He trailed off, and the look he gave Elissa showed he was pretty sure that whether he finished the sentence or not, she would get what he meant.

She did. Within her, a despairing voice asked how any of them were ever going to manage normal relationships with their Spares while each one of them bore this guilt. This guilt of having had a normal life when their twins were being strapped onto torture tables and told they weren't human.

“What do you mean, you don't like the way he looks at you?”

Ady's shoulders slumped, as if he were already giving up the hope that she'd understand when he told her. “He . . . I don't know, maybe it's not even at me . . . I . . . it's like he goes into a fugue state?”

Elissa blinked at him. If it had been Cadan who'd used the term, she'd have been instantly trying to work it out from the context, trying to avoid admitting she had no idea what it was. With Ady, though—according to him, she and Lin were already heroes; she didn't exactly need to try to impress him all over again. “I have no idea what that is,” she said.

“Oh, sorry. It's this weird psychiatric thing when someone
just, like, checks out of their normal consciousness. A kind of temporary amnesia? Then they come back to themselves, without any memory of what happened—or what they did—during the fugue state. It sometimes happens as a response to major stress. I mean, I haven't
asked
Zee, so it might not be anything like that. But major stress would totally apply, and that's kind of what it looks like . . . the checking out, I mean.” He sighed. “Okay, that sounds crazy. Does it make any sense at all?”

The description had sparked memory. “Yes, actually. I'd forgotten, but back on the med-flyer, I thought he was going into shock or something. It was just like you said—he went all blank and starey, then he snapped out of it. And I forgot, with everything else that was going on.”

They'd come into the endlessly elongated shadow of the
Phoenix
now, and were climbing the slope of the cargo-bay ramp, drawing a little nearer to where Zee and Cassiopeia walked.

Ady dropped his voice, but she could still hear the relief in it. “So it's not just me. God, I'm so glad, you don't even know. Not that I
want
something to be wrong with Zee, but at least something like that . . . with what he's been through and everything, it makes
sense
. I was”—he gave her an almost shamefaced look—“I thought I might be imagining the whole thing, that it might be something going wrong with
me
. Like . . . paranoia or something? A reaction to all the weirdness and the . . . well, the whole guilt thing I told you about?”

She nodded. “I understand.”

He gave her a friendly little nudge with his shoulder. “Well, yeah, of course you do. Thanks, okay? At least now I know there
is
something. I will talk to Clement. I mean, not this
evening, obviously! But tomorrow, you think?”

She nodded. “Yeah.” She laughed a little. “You're right, I can't see him being grateful for
more
stuff to think about tonight, not after . . . oh jeez, everything. But it's not like he'll have a ton of stuff to do tomorrow, not until we land.”

“And once we're on Philomel they can, like, run tests or whatever, can't they? Do all that psychiatric help they've been talking about offering us?”

They were too close to Zee now to continue the conversation, and Elissa didn't want to risk answering. She nodded again, and it seemed like it was enough. Ady didn't say any more, just flashed her a brief, grateful smile.

They went up into the chill shadow of the cargo hold, then climbed the long flight of steps leading to the walkway that would take them to one of the corridors into the main body of the ship. After a quick word to his father, Cadan, accompanied by Markus, drew swiftly ahead of the rest of the group. They would be going straight to the flight deck, to the controls of the ship.

Entering the
Phoenix
, her home for the past few weeks, Elissa's first instinct was to go to her cabin, which had come to feel as if it were really
her
room, her own space, not just a temporary resting place like a room in a motel. But of course it wasn't just hers, it was hers and Lin's. She couldn't go there and be sure of being alone. She needed to put things right with her sister, should have done so before they left the hospital. But now, with Lin clearly avoiding her, it seemed so difficult she didn't even know where to begin.

So she followed the group as they, in turn, followed Mr. Greythorn along the bluish-lit corridors, then into the amber-lit corridors of the passenger section, and finally into
the passenger lounge, with the viewing window that made up its exterior wall. Someone—Cadan? Mr. Greythorn?—must have decided that was the best place for them all to be during liftoff, and of course it was the area—aside from the flight-deck—where you got the best view. Now, though, the idea of standing on the
Phoenix
, with fractured relationships all around her, watching Sekoia, the place she'd thought they could save, the place where they'd failed—where
she'd
failed—dwindle behind them, did nothing but fill Elissa with a cold weight of misery.

The glass window gleamed in front of them, filling the entire wall and curving slightly into floor and ceiling. It looked out on the side of the
Phoenix
facing away from the sun, into the shadow the ship cast across the flight pad outside. With the lounge lights on, the group's reflections stared back at them, shimmery and indistinct, seeming to swim between the ground and the slightly concave surface of the glass.

Sofia hurried to one of the little tables fixed to the floor, choosing the one farthest from the viewing panel. “I seriously hate this bit,” she said when she caught Elissa's quick glance. “And please
don't
tell me how illogical that is, okay?”

There was a panicky edge to her voice. Elissa shook her head, sending Sofia a hopefully reassuring smile. “I won't.”

“It's not actually illogical,” said Jay behind her, his voice calm and interested. “I was reading about it on Sam's bookscreen just last night. Statistics show that the most dangerous point in the flight is during liftoff.”

Sofia snapped a look up at him, and he must have taken the expression on her face as one of interest, because he continued, “It's not just because of accidents due to technical failure or pilot error—the book said it's also the time when
passengers are most likely to inadvertently injure themselves, and to have what are believed to be psychosomatic nosebleeds, brought on by the knowledge that the air pressure outside the ship has changed, even though there's no physical change within the actual ship—”

“Oh my
God
,” said Sofia. “Do you think that's even a
bit
helpful?”

Jay stopped, his face surprised, and Samuel laughed. “Hey, you said you didn't want to be told it was illogical. Jay's totally helping you out.”

“He's really not,” Sofia said, her voice tight. “Jeez, you two are
linked
, he should be
more
socialized than Zee and El, not less.”

The grin fell from Samuel's face. “Hello? Let's not talk about people like they're not here, yeah?”

Emily Greythorn hurried toward them. “Guys? Is everything okay?”

The low thunder of the engines rumbled through the room, the steel auto-safety shutter slid across the glass, and Sofia's face went rigid, her fingers locking together in her lap. Emily took a seat next to her.

“Breathe, Sofia. It'll be over in minutes.”

The ship took off with that stomach-swooping rush that the best antithrust cushioning couldn't entirely eliminate, and Sofia went faintly green. Over by the shutter, Lin stood, her fingers spread on it as if to feel every vibration of the accelerating ship as it blasted through the envelope of Sekoia's atmosphere. The first time they'd done this, her face had lit with the first expression of pure happiness Elissa had ever seen on it. This time, though, she reached out as if for comfort, as if to touch the thing that, despite everything else, had
remained constant. She'd done everything wrong, couldn't be a real human after all, but at least engines still roared, ships still flew. Outside the world that hated and feared her, the world she'd never be able to understand, space was still black and endless and . . .

Just as it dawned on Elissa that she had, once again, tapped inadvertently into her twin's thoughts, the acceleration eased. The lights of the room dimmed as the shutter lifted away into the ceiling. Outside, green and blue and white, Sekoia shone against a background of space, a background that was black and endless and . . .

. . . filled with more stars than you can ever count. Stars that make everything else small.
The words came into Elissa's head, but she didn't know whether they were her own thoughts or her sister's.

As she slid a look toward Lin—
I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry. I messed up, I never meant to make you feel less than human
—her gaze caught on Zee.

Like most of the others, Zee was standing near the window. Elissa remembered Ady saying
I don't know how he's going to be able to get on a ship for relocation. . . .
It looked as though it wasn't a problem after all. Maybe the experience of being on this ship was so different. . . .

Then she noticed how Zee was standing.

He was motionless, motionless as if he'd forgotten how to move—as if, Elissa thought, looking at his face, he'd forgotten that a concept like moving even existed.
Fugue state
.
Like Ady said, he's checked out of his normal consciousness.