Range (33 page)

Oh, God, no. They can't! I'm too old! They can't!

They already did, Junco. You missed a whole month of school, James brought you back and—

Oh, shit! Where's James?

Silence in my mind from her.

HOUSE? Where is he?

They have him locked away. He's not doing well, not well at all.

Oh, fuck. Do they know what I've been doing?

Yes, they know of the Hando Corporation and the Texican jobs, but not the first one.

I breathe a small sigh of relief at that. I have one last secret.

They're going to deliver another drug, Junco. Not erasure yet, they think they'll kill you if they do that again, especially so soon after the last one.

Especially since erasing anyone older than twelve is totally off-label use, I don't add.

It's supposed to have similar effects, but with less psychological damage. They still need you and Gideon needs you too, so even though this cocktail will not work, you must be compliant when you wake up next, do you understand?

Will you still be here? When I wake up?

No, you'll be alone. Your father—

He's not my father!

Commander Coot is going back tonight and I have to piggy-back in the flier or someone will notice I'm not running things back home. If they call down to my engineers to see if I'm sick, they might figure out what we've been doing all these years.

What have we been doing? I'm not even sure.

It's OK, I'll remind you when we're ready. They're coming now, be good and be careful.

And then the door clicks and her presence in my head disappears as the doctors enter.

My eyes track them but I stay silent like HOUSE suggested. She's got a far better grip on what's going on than I do, might as well listen to her for once. If you can't trust your AI to take care of you—well, who else is there?

The doctor is not someone I recognize, but my memories cannot be trusted if they've erased me recently. It took me years to remember stuff after the last time. And that's the rub with this procedure, you never lose them forever. If they could make memories go away completely then things would turn out better. But that shit always wears off. The mind finds a way. The drugs might fry the connections, but the brain rebuilds them every single time.

Sometimes, if the patient is very young, you can direct the regrowth so that when the memories do come back, they are not as frightening. They did that to me when I was eight. Those memories came back. The ones with the lions and the test where I was supposed to kill them.

That hurts a little even now when I think of it. I can feel my fingernails lifting up from my skin as I frantically climbed, higher and higher, until the pursuing lion could not come after me.

It was heavy and I was small and light. I climbed so high I was swaying in the wind. It was a nice rhythm and it reminded me of riding.

When you're young, they can regrow the connections in a way that lessens the fear. And that worked too, that first time worked because I don't fear that memory as much as the next one. I feel rage instead. Rage against these heartless monsters who would do that to a little kid.

My dad was furious when they had to finally call him and get permission to end the test, drive a cherry-picker out into the wilderness, and pluck me from that branch.

I was a mess, all soaked with urine and shit, no water for days, no food, barely alive, really. I watched him beat the shit out of Matthew as I sat in his Jeep wrapped in a blanket and an IV sticking out of my arm.

I didn't cry or scream or do anything. I just sat. In silence. For months. I couldn't go back to weekday school that whole year. They locked me in my room and had doctors come talk to me.

But in the end it was determined that I was just broken. That experience was more than I could handle emotionally and I had simply shut down.

The erasure probably did save me that time. It was the only option.

But the next time was after Gideon left.

I told anyone who'd listen that I was an RR secret weapon, that I killed people for the government. My dad warned me after the first time that Matthew would kill me, but I did it anyway. I just couldn't stop myself, even when I tried, the words would just spill out, like I'd been hypnotized to say them or something.

Erasure definitely saved my life that time. No way around it. I was lucky.

And everything was pretty good after that. I went to cadets, did a few odd jobs, saw Gideon a few times when he was home from doing whatever he did for them, and life was pretty normal.

But things are anything but normal now. And what's normal, anyway? Sanity, maybe. Or insanity. It's hard to tell, really, because I always feel so much better when I'm insane. It's such a relief to be able to let go and not have to lie or pretend. Because normal is definitely not what I am.

The biometrics flash on the door.

I have to make a choice—either embrace sanity or the dark place that drives me to be crazy.

The handle on the door turns slowly and I wonder for a fraction which one of those monsters will be the one to come through.

Sanity is so much harder than crazy. It takes so much effort. And I'm just too tired.

The door opens and James is pushed through. He stumbles and falls on the floor. The sharp crack of his teeth against the hard tile makes me cringe internally.

But I show nothing.

They kick him, but he's so far beyond caring that not even a grunt of pain comes forth from his mouth that is now full of blood. I close my eyes as they undo the bindings and pull me into a sitting position.

And I make my decision.

The commander who looks like my father is barking orders at me but I can't even hear him. I look blankly at my friend on the floor and know this is his day to die.

And I'm his killer.

That's the plan, it's so obvious.

The SEAR knife is thrust into my hand and I look down at it. It's not
my
SEAR knife, not the knife that's coded for me and all my handlers.

They pull me off the bed and drag me over to James, not even waiting for my feet to find the floor.

I flick the knife on and they all back away, most leave through the door, but the man who is not my father stays, cautioning me that he is coded for this knife.

I know what he wants so I complete the task before he even gives the order. A single flick of the knife across the top layer of skin on James' neck, just below the right ear.

The little sizzle leads to a tiny tendril of smoke as my friend writhes in pain on the floor.

It's so much easier to just do what you're told and besides, this is my one true purpose and you can't be half a killer. You just gotta embrace your inner evil, that's what I think.

Just be who you were born to be.

Chapter Forty

My mind wanders back after the memory fades.

The pinpricks of light from the bright stars Deneb, Vega and Altair appear suddenly, like they just popped into existence, but I know this isn't true. I wasn't paying attention and now look, the brightest stars are not only out, they're already well on their way towards setting on the horizon.

These three stars make up the summer triangle asterism as it connects the constellations Cygnus, Lyra, and Aquila. Both Cygnus the swan and Aquila the eagle span the edges of either side of the Milky Way, their wings open, necks stretched as they reach out for each other. Lyra is on the Cygnus side of the galactic haze, playing music so the two lovers can find each other again.

If that were the end of it, it'd be a great story. Unfortunately the story is never complete unless there's some tragedy to fuck it all up. Because the lovers in this tale will never meet. In front of each bird is a wall.

This is one of the stories Gideon used to tell me. What purpose it served in the grand scheme of keeping Junco compliant and subdued, I have no idea, but he told it often. In Cygnus' case, the wall is the little fox Vulpecula who stands in front of her—ready to eat the swan if she tries to cross the river of stars.

As for Aquila, well, he doesn't fare much better because he's got Sagitta in front of him. The arrow of Jupiter, ready to stab him in the heart and break his love for Cygnus if he tries to save the swan princess.

So they float there out in the deep dark, helpless and miserable—separated by a mere river of stars—for eternity. With no hope of ever being together.

Great story, huh?

When I got older I started asking Gid questions like
Why doesn't Cygnus just kill that stupid fox and why doesn't Aquila just snap that arrow in two with his raptor beak?
And seriously—a fox is sorta small compared to a swan. If you've never been batted down with their massive wings you might think they're helpless. I mean, they're not fast or anything, but I have been mauled by a swan before, so I know what they're capable of. That year my dad took me to the British Museum for birthday week we were walking along the Thames and I got it in my head that I was gonna catch one of those suckers to see what kind of game they had.

It didn't end well for the swan, I can tell you that. It was almost an international affair because apparently all the swans on the river are the property of the Queen.

And I knew for a fact, even back when I was little, that a raptor beak could take that arrow out no problem because Gideon had a hawk all growing up and normally I was not allowed in the mew or to fuck with her in any way, but again, I just wanted to see if the arrow was strong enough to stop her.

That one did not end well for me. I couldn't just kill Gid's bird.

When I got a little older he got tired of the questions and changed the ending and put a happy spin on it. Some bullshit about magpies building a bridge one day a year so the lovers could reunite. Which is stupid because that's just a ripoff of the Chinese Qixi festival myth. He forgot I studied Chinese mythology in fourth year, I guess.

Tonight's sky is not that much different from the one Tier and I looked at years ago at my cabin. Not really. The months are different—that was November and this is still September. So everything is slightly shifted, but we're still up there.

He thought I should be Cygnus and I thought he should be Aquila.

It's a very bad omen.

Me, the swan, desperately flying towards Tier, the eagle. But we can't ever quite cross that river of stars that separates us.

And if what Lucan said was true, then we never will. Because Tier will die and I'll be left here all alone. Probably dissipated out into the nether for eternity with my luck.

I huff out a sad breath of air and direct my attention north to the Big Dipper and find Alcor. It's sitting pretty, right there in the second bend of the ladle's handle. I've always been able to see Alcor, which is actually a binary system that sits right next to its twin, another system called Mizar.

They call the two of them together the horse and rider, and if that little detail isn't enough to make you want to shut the book on mythology altogether, then how about this one?

Alcor is also known as the Lost Pleiad, of the infamous Pleiades Cluster, aka the Seven Siblings.

Gideon. He's the missing Sibling. He's Alcor.

He is the star I can see.

In ancient times it was a test of good vision to be able to distinguish between Alcor and Mizar and not blur them into one dot of light, so when Lucan and the guys said I can see Alcor but miss the full moon, it was a joke.

Junco, it means you miss the obvious so often it makes me cringe.

That's what he said to me that night I discovered he's the Devil.

Except I don't believe he's the Devil, even though my dad certainly does. And I don't believe Caleb works for God. Lucan's not the Devil, but there's no God here, either.

I don't know what other people see when they look up at the night sky, but I see a revolving story. My mind has been looking up at these patterns for so long, has been schooled in their history and mystery for so long, that I see it all with very little effort. When I look up I don't see points of light—I see every character, I see the story behind the stars, I see the cyclic movie made by the rotating Earth.

I see the swan, I see the eagle, I see the walls they built, I see the hunter facing down the charging bull, the Gemini twine, the scorpion chasing Orion, Pegasus and Cassiopeia, and Andromeda.

I see them all.

Whenever I had a good friend growing up, whether it was Gideon or Aren or John Hando, or even the various boys I dated on and off at school, they always asked me the same thing.

Why do you always look up?

When I was a very small child I had a compulsion to look up, but I was not supposed to talk about that. So I started telling Gid this excuse of seeing them as characters in a story. And then when I got older and other kids at cadets would start asking I used to just shrug, you know, not answer. But then Charlie said all that stuff about the starshine lighting up my night, and then it almost felt like that really
was
the reason.