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When the ACs set up camp six nights later, Cass still hasn’t fired the flare.
They’re on the other side of the mountains, now: too far from Forthaven to see anything but the sky they share. Fleur sits apart from the rest, as she has each night, waiting for the signal. They’re laughing round the fire, telling stories that mean nothing to her. A baby cries in the shelters, where the mothers have gathered. The valley rumbles like a stomach and she draws herself up, scanning the stars.
It’s thunder, is all. Another storm coming. Carpathia is never short of them.
“They’ll be so busy,” she says, feeling Rudi’s presence behind her. “With the new ship coming.”
He crouches beside her. “Join us tonight. Your people would welcome your company.”
“Your people,” Fleur echoes. It makes her draw a line, one she might never be ready to cross. “They were made for trekking hundreds of kilometres a day. I can hardly stand, let alone give them a song and dance...”
She shifts, wary of offending him. Rudi is adamant she belongs here, but his good graces stand between safety and eking out survival, all on her own. She feels like the plants they brought from Earth, too displaced to thrive. She can’t be what he wants her to be.
She just wants to go home.
“Maybe tomorrow,” she says, giving him a tired smile, by way of apology.
Rudi’s eyes fix on the horizon. The ACs have senses keener than Fleur’s; perhaps he can hear the sounds of the welcome party, drifting on the air. The crackle of the pyre, for the dead and dying. Lily, Tipper...Cass. Even if she could go back, there might not be anyone left to greet her.
Whatever he’s seeing or hearing, he doesn’t share it. Fleur draws up her knees, resting her head on them. A non-AC might put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but Rudi doesn’t touch her. Nor do the others: not so much as a brush of fingers as they pass round the flagon. She doesn’t know if it’s an unwritten rule, boundaries born from living cheek by jowl, or an expression of how alien they find her. They’re bonded by privation, the need for revenge; Fleur knows nothing of those, either.
They barely even talk to her. Rudi is the only one who tries.
He rises to his feet, giving up for now. “You’d find it easier to keep pace,” he says, finally, “if you stopped looking behind you.”
He leaves her to her vigil, alone but for the planet’s twin moons, staring coldly down.
The ACs were built for survival, but they’re not invincible. A tracker impales his foot on a branch, a mutant limb, jutting from shale. A guard drinks from a stream, not spotting the bird, bloated and rotten, bobbing at its shore. He vomits like an erupting volcano; it takes most of their water, to rehydrate him.
Some of the women are suffering from morning sickness. While they’re foraging, Fleur finds a root that smells like ginger, and tests it on herself. It’s milder, sweeter, but still floods her with memories. When Karina was pregnant with Linus, ginger was the only thing that helped. The cooks used to bake her biscuits: strictly rationed, with dwindling supplies. She’d insist on sharing with Fleur, keeping her company while she waited for Mitchell. They’d sit on the sand as the sun rose up, scoffing like children.
When pains lance through her, later, she blames the not-ginger. In the morning, her thighs are slick; she counts back, and it dawns. Her hasty departure gave her no time to consider what she’d need: she never believed she wouldn’t be coming back. She grits her teeth and washes herself, a safe distance from the others.
She’ll find a way to manage. She doesn’t need their help.
A woman comes close to her, baby pressed to her breast, as they set off. She hands Fleur a parcel of cloth, smiling shyly. It’s the mother of Rudi’s child—partner, lover; do ACs even use words like that? Fleur knows little about her, except that she exists. The women are outnumbered by the men. They seem to keep apart from them, unless they’re watchers or scouts, and those are few and far between.
She unwraps the bundle, finding crude strips of fabric inside it. “How did you know?”
“You’re one of us now,” the woman says. It’s a non-answer worthy of Rudi. Fleur can see why he likes her. She has a pretty, heart-shaped face, the sharp eyes they all seem to share. Her hair is long and dirty-blonde, snarled to knots by the wind.
“You mustn’t be disappointed,” she continues, kindly. “You’re still very young.”
“Disappointed..? No. No no no. I’m not—” Fleur stops. The woman’s deep gaze makes her examine her feelings. Frustration. Embarrassment. Something else, simmering below. Relief: an overwhelming, giddy sense of it. Release from a fear she hadn’t even realised she had.
The ACs are having babies, and Forthaven isn’t. She slept with Jack, before she found out. She gets her injections, yes, like everyone who wants them, but to have that choice taken from her, like everything else— She doubles over, hysterical laughter threatening. To get pregnant from a one-night stand with Jack, of all the men on Carpathia—
“You don’t wish to bear a child?”
“Maybe one day,” Fleur says. She reaches into her pack, finding the fake ginger. “My people—the others. Our women use a root like this, to ease nausea during pregnancy. I don’t know how effective it’ll be...”
“The sickness passed quickly, this time.” Her fingers ghost across Fleur’s, accepting the offering. “I will share it with my sisters.”
They walk on in silence, feet crunching on the stony ground. More mountains rise up ahead of them, leviathans in the mist. Rudi and the trackers are a length in front, mapping terrain. It’s not an aimless trudge, even if that’s how it feels. They have a destination, one he’s told her was given to him. Fleur has no idea what that means, much less what might be waiting, once they get there.
“I’m Fleur,” she says, “by the way.”
The woman’s face brightens like the sunrise. “Vida,” she says. “They named me Vida.”
Rudi comes to the shelter one afternoon, face grim as granite, and asks for Fleur. The other women mutter, too low for her to hear. Vida is asleep in a corner, one hand resting on the curve of her belly. The baby is pumping small fists beside her, as full of fire as her father.
“They don’t like you coming into their space,” she observes, trailing him across dusty, brittle ground. It reminds her of Forthaven: white as bleached bone. There are bodies everywhere, curled with fatigue. The life they lead is harsh, and unforgiving. Weeks of scaling cliffs, it turns out, can tire even the hardiest of them.
He glances back. “Women summon men. Isn’t it the same for you?”
“It’s...complicated.” She thinks, a sharp pang, of Cass. Then of Priya, slinking into her bedroll, alone. I lie with him when I choose, she’d said, nodding to Tadhg. Today, I choose to rest.
Rudi stops, waiting for her to catch up. She does, in more ways than one. “Oh,” she stutters. “Oh. You mean they think—”
“No,” he says. Wry humour tugs at his lips. “It doesn’t stop them disapproving.”
A cry splits the sky. Heads dart around them. Rudi’s face darkens further, levity forgotten. He quickens his pace, leading Fleur to a tent, Forthaven-issue, on the fringes of camp. They must have stolen it, or got it from Mitchell; she’s never seen it used, before.
Inside is a makeshift medicentre. There are barks ground to powder, a jumble of leaves and herbs, turned into salves. Bloodstained fabric ribbons the floor. In the midst of the carnage is Josiah, the tracker who hurt his foot, moaning incoherently. They’ve all lost weight, the child of stretched supplies and non-stop walking. He’s wearing only combat pants, cut off high on his right, and his torso is not so much lean as skeletal.
Fleur swallows hard, and crawls up one side. The foot has swelled to monstrous proportions. Josiah’s leg is mottled and purple, an overripe grape, oozing grotesquely. She spies a knife, half-wrapped in cloth; a branch chiselled to smoothness, that can only be meant for him to bite on.
“Infection has set in,” Rudi says.
“You think?”
He moves slowly up Josiah’s other side, shoulders too broad for the space to easily admit him. There are dark moons beneath his eyes, as they fix on hers.
“Why did you bring me here, Rudi?”
“Because there’s something I want,” he says, taking Josiah’s limp hand.
“I’m no doctor,” Fleur snaps. “It was Forthaven who saved your daughter. You were happy enough to ignore us, until you needed our help. We’re too far away now even to beg for it.”
He studies her a while. “You’re angry with me. For leaving.”
It’s not a question. She doesn’t answer it; there’s not much point.
“But not with them, for forcing you to go?” He drops the hand. “Grieve however you need to, Fleur. But first, help me decide.”
Fleur wets a cloth from a flask, pressing it to Josiah’s forehead. He stirs, mumbling to himself.
“He’s too weak,” she says softly. “Even if you amputate. We don’t have antibiotics”—Rudi’s brow creases, the word unfamiliar—“and we certainly don’t have morphine. He needs sterile surroundings. Weeks of rest. The land is barren, here... We have to keep moving, and we have no way to transport him.”
Her eyes well, blurring the hard lines of him. We do what we have to, Tate told her once, to survive. She never really understood that, before she came here.
“That’s the decision you need to make, isn’t it? The same one Tate did. Sacrifice the few, save the many...”
“I am not Richard Tate,” Rudi spits.
She wonders how to tell him that she might be, at least in part. He hates Tate with more passion than he seems to feel for anything else. He’d think less of her, if he knew. He might even hate her too. She’s lost too much already, to risk it.
“No,” she says. “You’re a merciful commander.”
Rudi holds her gaze. He picks up the knife, turning it over in his hands. Then he discards it, resting a hand on Josiah’s face. He spreads his fingers, spanning nose and mouth.
“Leave,” he orders.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Fleur says.
She stays with him, until it’s done.
The mountains rise and fall like a wavelength. The land finally levels, a wide, flat valley carved between peaks. Sunburnt grass unfolds, red carpet, far as the eye can see. It’s dotted by small black flowers, swaying on tall, fur-lined stems. The ACs avoid them, obeying some silent command. Fleur doesn’t need one, to do the same. She finds them unsettling, in an indefinable way; they make her think of funerals, and mourning.
If there’s life on Carpathia, this must be where it’s been hiding. Birds sing above them, insects dancing a chorus. A river meanders past, the water cool as crystal. There are fish swimming in it, a kaleidoscope of colour. They catch them, roast them whole on sticks. The flesh parts from the scales like fruit.
The baby walks for the first time, in this strange oasis. Fleur sits near Vida, grass tickling her ankles, cheering her on as she stumbles towards Rudi. He scoops her up, rare smile on his face. Fleur watches him, strong hands cradling his daughter like glass, something growing inside her she’s unable to name. The baby is advanced for her age, in Fleur’s limited experience; an evolutionary advantage, Tate might call it.
Were her parents—creators—proud of her, when she learned to walk? Or did they just tick it off from a checklist?
She has vague memories of her childhood, if not her first steps, but that doesn’t mean it happened. If they can alter genes, they can do the same to memory. DBV is proof they’re capable. Berger was probably right, to get council to ban it: even if it left Josie Hunter an unsolved puzzle.
A violation, he’d called it in the minutes. The Universal Spirit, alone, has the right to see inside of us...to judge if our hearts are true.
“Is she ready for her name now?” Fleur asks Vida, treading gently. Names are a delicate subject, for the group. Fleur’s surname provokes much interest, since she’s the only one who has one. The first of them had designations, like Tigger 99; the rest seem named by alphabet, like storms on old Earth. Their names weren’t given with love, but granted by science.
In that, she supposes, they’re the same.
Vida tsks; a patient scolding. “She will choose her own, once her tongue can shape it.”
“Careful with that,” Fleur says. “My first word was horsie.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“It’s an animal.” She doesn’t remember it, exactly: this story is vivid enough that there’s no difference. “There was a protected zone then, in the Highlands. That’s where they put the animals, to try to save them. The horses ran free. They were feral, but one was tame enough to trust us. She had huge, scary teeth, and these kind, beautiful eyes. I fed her a sugar lump...”
There’s a lump in her throat, too. It sounds ludicrous, suddenly, not quite adding up. It’s nothing but a fairy tale, programmed into her. That’s all memories are: the stories people tell themselves, wanting to believe they’re real.
Her entire life is a series of purpose-built fabrications. At least Cass knew: that his name—his whole identity—was nothing but a lie.
“I would like to hear more,” Vida says, prompting her back to the present, “about the horsies.”
Fleur bites her lip, wrestling with it. “I’ll tell you all later,” she promises. “Once they light the fire.”
She looks over at Rudi, planting his child on her own two feet, sending her back to her mother. She falls on the ground, scrunches her face, cries a bit. Struggles up again, toddling forward, the big, wide world opening up before her.
Baby steps, she thinks.
Baby steps.
She wakes one night to find Cass, sitting on the hard ground next to her. She scrabbles up, heart racing, reaching for her long-gone holster. Finally, inevitably, she’s lost her mind. Or eaten something she shouldn’t have: odds-on, when your last meal was toasted snake.
Or maybe it’s his ghost. Cass bloody Cass. It would be just like him, to come back and haunt her, and think it’s funny.
And then she remembers Pak’s impossible dog—and she knows it’s not a ghost at all.
“Who are you?” she demands. “What the hell do you want from me?”
Cass—the thing wearing his stupid, beloved face—tilts his head. “To see where you belong,” he says.
“Join the queue,” Fleur retorts, with a bravado she doesn’t feel.
She opens her mouth to shout for Rudi; for one of the nightwatchers. Her eyes never leave it, but in the space between one blink and the next, it’s gone. The scream dies in her throat. She wraps herself in her blanket, shoulders shaking with fear, birthing rage. How dare it come to her, pretending to be him? Longing rushes through her, but when she pictures Cass again, all she sees is his empty-eyed clone, waiting by her bed. She can barely remember what he sounds like.
She cries herself, homesick and guilty, back to sleep.
The visit has meaning, for the ACs. They seem to know, before Fleur tells them. Morale has been dropping, the rigours of the journey taking their toll, but as the news flows through camp, everything ticks up. Even the guards nod at her, instead of grunting. Priya kisses her on the cheek, and calls her sister. It doesn’t make her recoil, the way it once might have done. It feels like acceptance, and that feels—surprisingly—okay.
More than that: good. Like something she was craving, without ever knowing.
She sheds her jacket and unties her hair, soaking up the sun. There’s a freedom in it that she never felt, living behind a fence. She shares breakfast with Vida: dried meat which is actually quite tasty, if you ignore where it came from. She tells her about Jack, the dull jab of betrayal that his name always brings. She opens up over Cass, the things that might have been. Sitting with a friend, discussing boys: it feels almost like being with Karina.
She’ll look back later, and think that an omen.
Rudi leads her from the group, to a space where the land falls away. The view stops her breath. Carpathia goes on forever, glowing like a jewel. Forthaven was icy sands, harsh sun, jagged edges. Here, the sun is a warm slice of orange, everything it touches a soft shade of green. It’s what Earth must have been like, before humans started killing it—before it started killing them back.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
Fleur rolls them, instead. It doesn’t ruffle him: he’s learning her language, the way she’s learning his. He extends a hand, waiting for permission. When she gives him a cautious nod, he takes her arms and spins her round, back flush against his chest. Her pulse gives a traitorous thump.
“This is a great starting point for a self-defence class...” She adds, more for her benefit than his, “I’m a PAS officer, remember. I could have you flat on your back in seconds.”
He’s too single-minded to take the bait. “Closing your eyes will help you focus.”
“Focus on what?”
He dips his head, raising goosebumps on her neck. “Everything.”
Fleur sighs a protest. She humours him; trusts him. The world goes dark, light flaring behind her eyelids, and her senses narrow. The whisper of the breeze. The heat of Rudi’s skin, resting on hers. The sweetness of something, blossoming. She can hear a heartbeat, and doesn’t know which of them it belongs to. It’s his; it’s hers. It’s neither. It’s both, the same way she is.
There’s a pull at her awareness, urging her attention. She goes where it leads, a shining thread in the black. Like calls to like: it’s part of her, somehow, and she of it. She reaches for it, closing the circuit, and electricity surges through her, turning her to liquid. Every sense scrambles, so much more than she understood them to be. Her mouth is sandpaper dry: the dunes where they met. There’s salt on her lips, a storm in her heart. Invaders explode into stardust, and she is happy—and her vision follows.
She whirls, gasping for air. Rudi cups her elbows firmly, anchoring her to him. She stares up at him, scorched by too-bright light, fumbling for words that no longer mean what they did.
“Home,” she settles on. “It’s taking you home.”
His eyes burn with awe. “Home,” he repeats, like he can’t imagine what it feels like.
Fleur looks around them, drinking in every detail. Things have shifted, in her perception. Everything looks different. The grass is sharper, clear as day; thousands of miniature mouths, seeking sky. There’s a halo, crowning the largest moon. It’s halved, in symbiosis with its sister.
“It’s going to rain. I mean, a lot...”
“Yes.” Rudi’s lips flicker. “I feel that, too.”
She glances at his hand, thumb rubbing slow strokes on her arm. He looks down, realising. The motion stops, but his hands don’t move. She wants to close her eyes again. She keeps them open, watching his face; the way it changes, in the moment it dawns. Rudi goes very still. He meets her eyes, and she wonders if he’s seeing the same thing in hers.
The gunshot crashes through—and both of them start running.
The rain begins to fall as they lower Vida, and her unborn child, into the ground.
The guard who was careless with his gun, horsing around with his comrade, Rudi takes away, afterwards.
Only one of them comes back.
Traipsing through seas of mud leaves the group a sorry, sodden sight. Driving rain bleeds down Fleur’s arm, pooling at her cuff, through the rip in her jacket. Her trousers cling, but her PAS-issue boots never let her down: her feet stay dry, the whole way through.
She takes turns with the rest, carrying the baby, heart and muscles aching. She’s too big to be held for long, but there’s no other choice. She pummels at Fleur each time she wakes, wanting to get down and run; wanting her mother.
She draws level with Rudi, forging ahead of the pack, wiping moisture from her cheeks. He doesn’t react, even to his child.
“Rudi, we’ve got to find shelter...” The downpour drowns her out. She raises her voice, repeats herself. Bangs at the door, until it sinks through.
“We have to keep moving.”
“People are going to die of exposure, if you don’t get them warm and dry. You’re pushing them too hard. Lei is heavily pregnant: she’s really struggling.”
He blinks at that, but his voice doesn’t change. “There was always a chance of losses, on such a long journey.”
Fleur grabs his arm, pulling him to a halt. He stands there, an immovable object. The others stream past them, river parting round rock.
“Stop being so bloody philosophical,” she snarls. “I know you’re hurting...but so are we.”
His jaw works as he stares at her. She lifts her chin and stares right back.
“We were made for these conditions,” he reminds her. “You were not.”
Needles of rain stab at her skin. It stings more than she expected, to hear him draw that line. “So now I’m not one of you? Now you brought me all the way out here—”
“You chose to come.”
“Did you miss the part where the XPs were arming themselves to the teeth, ready to wipe us from the face of the Earth?” She snorts; language has found it even harder to adapt. “Carpathia, I mean—”
“Us?” he asks, scornfully.
The baby kicks in the nest of her blankets. Fleur shifts her weight, temper cooling. It’s hardly the first time she’s challenged him, but it’s the first time it feels dangerous. She has a place, here; she doesn’t really think he’ll banish her, at the first sniff of conflict. But he’s too good at holding grudges for a primal part of her not to fear it.
“If you don’t want me here,” she starts. “If I’m nothing but a burden, dragging you down, then stop pissing me about. Tell me to go.”
Rudi looks stricken. His eyes blaze, fists clenching. His stoic mask cracks. He sounds strangely childlike when he says, “But I need you to stay.”
There’s a rawness in his pose that hurts to look at. It’s like staring straight at the sun, and Fleur looks away. The last of the group wends its way past them, four guards at the rear. One of them—Marnus—pauses by Rudi. He nods him on, leaving them alone.
Rain drips down the grooves of his face. She searches it, an exposed nerve. His skin is wet, but his eyes are dry: she’s never seen them water, even in the midst of a whiteout.
He takes her in, focus sharpening. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m soaked to the bone. Of course I am.”
He glances around, scanning the landscape. “There are tunnels here,” he determines. “Caves, somewhere close.” The baby lets out a wail of protest. He tilts his head, face softening, and Fleur passes her over. His hand quivers with feeling, an untapped well, as he holds her.
“You can’t cry,” Fleur says. “Can you?”
Rudi jerks, as if she’s shot him. She opens her mouth, and then closes it. Some pains run too deep for words to comfort. She stays silent as he calls back Marnus, issuing orders to find the closest cave.
Fleur thinks she won the argument. It doesn’t feel much like a victory.
Carpathian weather gods must have one twisted sense of humour. No sooner has the rain stopped than there’s another whiteout, dust digging tiny nails into every crevice.
Fleur hoods cloth over her face, accepting Rudi’s hand when he offers it, to help her through the storm.
Neither of them lets go, even when it passes.
She’s given up looking for meaning, in the shape the entity chooses. It swaps and changes like a human might an outfit, fancy dress with faces: Berger, Tipper, Jack. It’s impossible to tell if it’s the same one each time, or another of its kind—another part of the vast, greater whole. The plurality is hard to grasp. Sometimes it says we: certainty she can’t help but envy.
It ignores her, when she asks about the skins it wears; the fate of their real owners. It ignores most of her other questions, too, but that doesn’t stop her trying.
“Why do you hate the others so much?”
This time, it’s Stella. The answer remains a blank-faced stare. Fleur might as well be chatting with her own reflection, looking on from the river.
She watches the other her, freshly baptised, rippling in the silvery water. There are no illusions in mirrors: she’s sitting on the bank, alone, sun throbbing down. She misses hot showers, but she’s clean enough. Her hair is too long, too unruly; she should borrow a machete, and cut it.
She already knows she won’t. She's not sure what that means, either.
“It was you, wasn’t it, who helped Patrick Baxter? Even after he beat his friend to a pulp: showed you humanity at its worst. As for the ACs—they took me in, but they were never some peaceful bunch of nomads.” She pushes back an image of Mitchell, slumped and still. “We all have blood on our hands.”
The sound of splashing and giggling distracts her. They’ve spread out, for privacy, but the clan has been together far longer than she’s been a part of it. Some don’t mind sharing. Fleur isn’t ready for that: she’s come further down the river than any of them. Her mind was designed by committee, but her body belongs to her. She chooses who gets to see it, and when.
She wonders which school Rudi subscribes to. If he ever takes those ragged vests off—what he’s hiding underneath them. She quashes the thought, heat flashing. She misses cold showers, too.
“You pitied them. Is that it? You liked that they’d been bred for this world: that they belonged here. The colonists brought rovers they couldn’t drive, planes that wouldn’t fly. Seeds that never grew. And then they cocooned themselves in their city, trying to fix it...”
Mitchell was right, she thinks now, about that. The old Fleur, with her tidy hair and world view, never would have admitted that.
“They fought against your world, instead of adapting to it. Even Pak managed that. They were too stubborn to give up and die. So you taught the ACs what they needed to know. Maybe you even made it so they could have kids, and Forthaven couldn’t. You’re invested in our survival. Why?”
Stella cocks her head, considering.
“Were you like us?” Fleur presses. “Before you evolved into this? Are you some universal spirit? Or are you really Carpathia...deciding who gets to live here...and who has to die?”
“You ask many questions.”
“That’s not an answer.”
It looks at her, and says, with the faintest trace of a personality, “That was not a question.”
Fleur heaves a frustrated sigh, sitting back on her hands and turning her face to the sun. The rays slide inside her, clever fingers. She’s never been good at sitting still, but now it feels like a luxury. Her thoughts travel, to the vehicles that came on the transporter. They never could figure out the propulsion problem; blamed it on interference from the planet’s magnetic field. Where does the border lie, between that interference...and a nudge in another direction?
She’d go and stare at the rovers, sometimes, before they finally admitted defeat, and melted them down. The kids used to sneak in and snog on the back seats. Fleur was always too well-behaved for that, but they interested her, even so. In a place where everything and everyone had a function, they alone sat idle. Useless piles of metal, rust flaking like skin. They would have come in handy, for the XPs. They’d come in handy now.
She’s drifting off, lost in wanting, when the giggles turn to shouts. Tremors shoot through her hands. The ground is vibrating. Fleur jumps up, scratching for forgotten seismic data. She pulls on her damp boots, adrenaline roaring through her veins. The lifeforce, whatever it might be, has vanished. Off picking its next bodysuit.
She reaches the bend of the river without breaking a sweat. She was always fit, but her shape has subtly altered, over the past few months: there are planes of muscle now, peeking through. The rumbling is getting louder, pounding like heartbeats. She pushes through a cloud of mist—sand?—towards the figures, gathered beyond it. Rudi is already there, flanked by his men. His hair is still wet, sun-kissed and shining.
“Dust storm?” she asks, and as he turns to her, boyish rapture on his face, she sees them.
Horses.
A journey that seemed endless turns to memory in a few short weeks, after they leash the horses. It’s not what they are—the heads too round, the legs too short—but once the name sticks, distinction is meaningless. Like Fleur and the others, they’re a different kind of same. They’re resistant at first, grudgingly won round. It’s worth the effort. They cover ground faster than any human being ever could, even if they are genetically modified.
As for whether they’re native to Carpathia, or imperfect, collective imaginings, given life— They feel real enough. Perhaps that’s all, in the end, that really matters.
Their new home is everything they could have wanted. Fleur questions why the first missions didn’t land there, until she remembers why it wouldn’t have appeared on the surveys. There’s a lake nearby, a tall wood teeming with life. They cut down trees, forging rough shelters, lit by tapers rolled from fat. It feels like being back in the construction brigade. She’s building for the future, again, even if it’s not one she expected to have.
Any structure that was once there has long since crumbled into dust. But there are grottos nearby, walls adorned with etchings. She reaches out, with that other sense, but finds no answer. She traces them with her fingers, instead, trying to parse their meaning, and wonders.
What their creators became; what might become of them, entrusted with that legacy.
Children don’t always follow in their guardians’ footsteps. But sometimes, the planet whispers, in the voice of the wind, they do.
Lei and Noah’s baby is born six days after they arrive. They buck convention, and name him Elijah. The wood gets named after that, and the lake; ghosts of the past, getting laid to rest.
“I think they made me from Tate,” she tells Rudi, one night at the bonfire, while they’re both staring into its heart. She’s had months to wrestle with the idea, to try to make peace with it. It feels right, to share it; to christen a new start with confession.
“It was what he said, before I left—that he loved me like his own child...”
She glances over at Rudi’s child, playing with the other babies, under the watchful eye of the mothers. He hasn’t given her a name, yet. Fleur suspects he’ll call her after Vida, when he’s ready to hear it said. It’s the human thing to do, hard-wired into them like the ability to parent their young. Like the ability to love, when they had no example set to follow.
The moons are bright and full, uneven pupils in the clear night sky. Some of the others are dancing, making their own music. Priya is kissing Tadhg, half-dressed, not caring who’s watching. She awaits Rudi’s verdict, but when he looks at her, there’s no judgement in his face.
“Can you forgive him?”
It’s a question she’s found no answer to, either way. Tate would lie; it’s Cass’s first instinct, too. Fleur is neither, and she asks, “Can you?”
Rudi is silent for a long while. The fire cracks and pops, heat wavering around him. He says, eventually, “I can pity him.”
“There’s a saying,” Fleur begins. “The best revenge is living well.”
“Then mine is yet to come.”
Her temper flares, wild as the land around her. “You got them here, didn’t you? They’re safe. They’re thriving. Why can’t that be enough? Why can’t you ever let go?”
He regards her evenly; a little sadly. She hears, all too clearly, the words he doesn’t say.
“I want to build boats,” she blurts, a glance at the shore deciding it. She has plans, wishes. Hopes, taking root. They’re different, now, but they matter. She wants, very badly, to make him understand that. “We could sail out on the lake. See what’s on the other side.”
“You were raised in a dust bowl.” There’s amusement, twitching on his lips. “Can you swim?”
“Can any of us?” She prods his arm, mock-offended. “So help me, Rudi, if you tell me you’ve got gills under there—”
Her eyes linger, too long. She snaps them away. He watches her a moment, reading her face. Reading her body, clear as a landscape. The warmth that coils inside her has nothing to do with the flames. It’s like standing on the edge of a precipice, air thinning in her lungs, going straight to her head.
“You are the best part of him,” Rudi says, returning to ground only slightly less precarious. “If our paths should cross again, one day, I shall thank him. Will that satisfy you?”
“No,” Fleur says, honestly.
He smiles to himself, eyes gone hard. “I want Tate dead. I want him to suffer. I will only live well once it’s done. I can’t change that, Fleur...even for you.”
He reaches for her hand, an apology of sorts. Their fingers tangle. Fleur closes her eyes. She feels the connection, pulsing between them, that’s always been there, even before she knew why it was. She’s always believed that humans can change. They can bend, even when they can’t imagine it; even when it seemed unthinkable, ever to do so.
“Did you love him?” he asks, made careless. He might be talking about Tate. They both know he’s not.
She pictures paths diverging, roads not taken. The joyless waste of a life survived, instead of lived.
“I could have done.” She looks at him, and says, “If I’d stayed...” The rest of it hangs, a world of possibility: But I didn’t.
The land, the sky, the sea: they stretch out around her, hers to know, the way only her people truly can. Something quiets at her centre, finding its balance; making its choice.
“When I called you,” Fleur remembers, slowly, “back there—you always came.”
Rudi looks confused. “I saw your flares.”
She steps closer, touching a hand to his face, thumb sweeping bone. Line after line, being redrawn. His mouth makes a surprised sort of shape, body far ahead. He can’t lie to her: and she is so very tired of being lied to.
“I don’t have any flares,” she says, walking away, trusting that he’ll see the summons, anyway—that he won’t keep her waiting.
This time, he follows her.
She burns like a flare, when he touches her. She peels off his jacket, his vests, exploring him, finding scars. “I didn’t know,” she says. “Rudi, I didn’t know—” but he draws her face to his, and kisses her hard, and words are forgotten. She pushes him on his back, hair falling like a curtain, blocking out the world. He pulls her against him, rough hand cradling her jaw, the other tight on her hipbone. “Fleur,” he says, looking at her like she hung the moons. “Fleur—” as she settles above him, and takes him inside her.
They move together easily, no difference left between them. It’s not enough: it’ll never be enough. She wants to feel him everywhere. She wants to sink inside his skin.
She’s a writhing column of sparks, white heat in the night. The ground is bumpy beneath her, as Rudi rolls them, a solid weight above. “I’m glad,” she whispers into his shoulder, where her teeth have left marks, sharing every secret part of herself. “I am. I’m glad—” She doesn’t think he’s heard, that he remembers, but then he stills against her, coaxing a groan from her throat. He looks at her, face so tender it makes her shiver, down to her bones. His hand finds hers. She thinks only this: that if there’s anywhere in this world she belongs, it’s here.
She arches up to meet him, body doing the rest of the talking.
In the future, they’ll expand their settlement, growing it from village to town, to city. They’ll change, and learn, and build. Forthaven will be a footnote in history: the thing they warn their children about, to make them behave. No one will remember why tate is another word for enemy: simply that it is.
Their descendants will discover science, turn storm-proof eyes to the stars. One burns brighter than the rest, twenty-three degrees east of north. They’ll find the planet that orbits it. Recall the stories, that their foremothers used to tell: frayed scraps of memory they’ve long stopped believing.
Carpathia will be pleased, to have a daughter.
She’ll name it Earth.
Fleur wakes from the dream with only a vague impression of it, uncertain that she’s slept. She’s impossibly tired, as if gravity is weighing her down. The blankets are cool beside her, warm light slanting in. Her stomach alone tells her it’s nearly lunchtime. She’s not the only one counting hours and days, anymore; her customs combining with theirs, creating something new.
She dresses with leaden limbs and drags herself from the cabin, in search of Rudi.
The market is a hive of activity. She ambles through it, nursing her thoughts; pausing to talk, to listen, to laugh. When she finds him, a smile still on her lips, it’s at the edge of the fields. His back is turned, as if he’s talking to someone.
There’s not much call for guards, in a peaceful society—most of them have taken up farming, instead. Wren has begun weaving cloth; Marnus is making clothes, and he’s not half bad. Lei is a better shot than both, now Fleur has started to teach her. This is not one of them. It’s not a human being: she can tell that, hair rising on her arms, even from a distance.
She rounds Rudi’s shoulder—and finds Tate, head bent, standing in front of them.
The last of her demons: the only one who’s never appeared to her. It was only ever a matter of time. She stares at him, happiness nipped in bud. Tate in statue: it’s not the legacy he will leave, here.
“Is that for my benefit?”
“You see him too?” Rudi’s face is worried. “They’ve never used this form before. It won’t answer my questions.”
“Welcome to my world,” Fleur says. She nudges him. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You need your sleep,” he says absently. He glances upward, frowning. “The sky is strange. I’ve never seen it this colour.”
Tate’s head flips up. His eyes bore through her. They look like a plea. When he speaks, it sounds like a recorded message; almost like the real him. His voice returns to her, reborn, an electric shock to her system.
“Help us,” he says, and his accent turns heavy, tinged with desperation. “They’re killing us. They have no idea what they’ve begun. They’ll kill us all. You have to help us—”
His head sinks back to his chest, a switch flipped off. Bile claws up Fleur’s throat. Life in Forthaven seems a distant memory, not quite real; she doesn’t even dream about them, anymore. And now, out of nowhere, this— Something curls inside her. She turns and vomits up nothing, into the hay. The creature has vanished, when she looks back around, leaving yet more questions behind it.
“Who is they?” she asks, later, reasoning it out while they sit. “Which one is us? Are they using his words, to get our attention?” The vision of cool, pragmatic Tate, toppled so far from his pedestal, makes her queasy. She watches the horses, grazing serenely in the pasture, until it fades.
“They can’t actually be letting him speak to us. They don’t want them here. What could have happened, to make them help?”
“The new ship,” Rudi guesses. “It brought something even worse than Tate.” His mouth twists, always so certain in his loathing. “He lives. He has started another war.”
“What if it’s a trick?”
He pours her more water, shaking his head. “Tate lies like he breathes. This place does not.”
Fleur hugs her knees against the breeze, looking up at the sky. He’s right: there’s something wrong with it. The blue is too stark for the time of day, clouds eerily calm. There’s a jaundiced pallor, coating the moons. Even the air tastes odd; metal on her tongue. It’s an extension of her body, by now: both of them trying to tell her something, if only she’d listen.
“Rudi, I think the planet is sick...”
He rests his jacket on her shoulders. His hands are gentle, weighing something up, eyes very far away. Her mind wanders to Tate. To her parents, whoever they really were. To Vi, fighting for her life, fragile in its beginnings.
“You’re a father,” she says, and his hands stall. “Has it never bothered you—that they killed their children?”
“Sometimes,” he admits. He smooths a curl from her cheek. “It never used to.”
She already knows what she has to do. It’s duty, not desire: the idea of seeing Forthaven again is like picking at a well-healed wound. She wanted more than anything to go back there, and now the chance is here, it feels alien even to think it. Tate, Stella...Cass. Unanswered questions flood back. Are they really still alive? Do they think she’s dead? Could there be hope for them, after all?
So much has changed. So much is going to: it’s the only constant, on Carpathia. She’s scared they won’t recognise her, anymore. She’s scared that she won’t recognise them.
“I don’t care who it is, asking for our help.”
“Fleur,” he begins.
“I know you want nothing to do with them. I know you’d rather stay here, in your cocoon, and pretend they never existed—”
“Tate is the father of his own misfortunes.” Emotions war on his face. “He will take us down with him.”
“They chose us for a reason: we can’t just sit it out. If we really think ourselves the future of this planet, then we have a responsibility. You promised me we’d go back there, one day...” She gestures at the sky. “One day is here.”
“I said perhaps.”
“We walked away once. Please don’t ask me to do it again.” She softens it; gives him a small, secret smile. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay. It won’t be just us.”
He watches her, that careful look in his eyes. “To walk into that place, and finally reckon with Richard Tate—others will gladly volunteer.”
She bumps his shoulder, and laughs at him.
“Why are you laughing?” he asks, fondly, toying with her hand. It makes her heart swell, to think how far they’ve come.
“You know why... You knew before I did.”
Rudi opens his mouth. Fleur scoots into his lap, and puts a finger to his lips. His hands settle at her waist, thumbs resting, feather-light, on her front.
“Not yet,” she cautions. “Not just yet.” She lowers her hand, feeling his heart beneath her palm. “Say something else.”
The beat is answered within her, the planet humming in the background. The sun beams down, moons looking on. They’re watching—always watching. She pushes it all away, a light slap on the wrist. There’ll be time for it, after: for the conversations, the planning, whatever might follow.
This is hers. It belongs only to them.
“How does it feel,” he asks her, finally, “to be going home?”
“I’m already here,” she says, and leans in to kiss him.