Unravel (59 page)

Outside, another ship was coming in to land. For a second, its shadow passed by the window, drifted, like smoke, over Lin's face. Elissa put her hand out, felt her sister's fingers clasp it.

She understood what Lin was doing. It made sense, and it spoke of an aspect to Lin's character that, some months ago, hadn't existed.
That's good. I should be glad—I
am
glad.

Just as she'd promised, during those horrible moments three months ago, the loss of the link hadn't meant the loss of everything. She and Lin were still sisters, still twins. As Sekoia recovered, they'd begun to think again about college, and there wasn't any question but that they'd go to the same one.

But . . .

But it's not fair. The link is remaking itself for everyone else. For people who never remembered losing it, for people who didn't care that it had died. While ours . . .

For her and Lin, despite what Cadan had said, despite what Elissa, from reading up on brain damage, knew to be true, her brain wasn't repairing itself. She and Lin no longer shared thoughts. When Lin entered a room, Elissa didn't immediately, instinctively know it was her twin.

Every time Elissa spoke to her father, she was reminded of
exactly how much she and Lin
hadn't
lost. They still had each other, they could still share a room, still talk, still reach out for comfort. Elissa
wasn't
crippled, left like half a person, the way her father had been.

But, still, every day she felt the loss of the link, the link she'd taken for granted, resented, feared. The link whose importance she hadn't fully understood—until it was gone for good.

“It's Cadan,” said Lin, putting her hand up against the window in order to cut out reflections and see better. “Look, he's back, and you're not even a bit dressed up.”

Elissa leaned forward to peer through the window next to her. Cadan had jumped down from the ship, and the twins—two boys Elissa knew only slightly—were climbing out. They moved toward the main building, the angle of their heads indicating animated conversation.

Elissa spread her fingers on the glass, watching him, the bleak thoughts receding, warmth tingling in her fingers and toes. His flight must have gone well too. He'd be making his way to the pilots' quarters now, showering and shaving, getting ready for their night out. Dinner, and then . . .

She'd been doing her research. As well as its restaurants, the Starlit Park had a whole ton of places that might have been designed for dating couples to be alone. Cadan was flying again tomorrow, so he had a curfew, and Felicia's family wouldn't like it if Elissa was
too
late back, but there was still going to be plenty of time between the end of dinner and when they'd have to leave.

The warmth spread, tightening in her chest, tingling all the way through to her fingertips.

Even with all the crazy-busyness of the last few months,
they had gotten a whole lot more time alone than they'd managed before, on the
Phoenix
and on Sekoia. She remembered how she'd thought, back then, that he didn't need to worry about pushing her into stuff she wasn't ready for so much as getting the time to do stuff she
was
ready for. Now . . . her skin burned, a trail of sparks marking the path his hands had made on her body the last time they'd been alone . . . that wasn't really a problem anymore.

“Not even a bit dressed up,”
said Lin, with emphasis.

Elissa laughed, flushing, pushing herself away from the window. “Okay, let's go. Are you still hanging out at the apartment tonight?”

By the time they'd left the spaceport, taking one of the elevators that dropped down the cliff at the side of the plateau, and hopped out onto a slidewalk that would get them back to Felicia's family's apartment, Elissa had managed to cool her cheeks and had pushed thoughts of Cadan away too, to be taken out later.

The slidewalk curved away from the cliff side, taking them out into the last warm rays of the setting sun, then spiraled down through the lengthening shadows of early evening. Elissa, as she always had, directed her gaze forward or up, knowing that if she looked down, her stomach would swoop with vertigo. Lin, as
she
always did, peered happily down through the spaghetti tangle of slidewalks and monorails. Lin wasn't just not afraid of heights, she actively liked them.

That's another reason why she'll be the pilot, not me.
With no link, she and Lin weren't going to be able to power hyperdrives, but at least Lin would be able to keep on with her pilot training. At least, one day, she'd be able to take her own ship into space.

In the meantime, she could get a skybike license. We've easily got enough left of our compensation money to buy her a skybike.

The memory came back to her, of that terrifying, headlong swoop into Philomel's sky, of the lurch in her stomach, the freezing wind battering at her body. She remembered Cadan saying, . . .
Don't hold on to me, okay? There're handgrips behind you. It's much more secure, trust me.

Lin would love that. She'd love the speed, the height, the control. . . .

“Could I get a skybike?” said Lin.

Elissa's feet stuttered as if the smooth slidewalk had suddenly become a tripping hazard. “A skybike?”

It doesn't mean anything. This has happened before—you thought it meant something and it didn't, it was just a coincidence, it was nothing.

She looked up, scanned the rails around them, the sky above. “I— Did you just see one or something?”

Lin shook her head. “No. I was thinking about Cadan's.” She frowned. “I don't know why, though. I—I suddenly thought I remembered him saying that if you rode behind him you shouldn't hold on to his waist. But”—she hesitated, looking confused—“you only rode on it that one time, to come find me, didn't you? And
I've
never been on it, he's never told me anything about it, so I
can't
be remembering that.”

Elissa stopped breathing. One moment she'd been peripherally aware of all the things around them: the slidewalk under their feet, the clank and rattle of the monorail above their heads, the smell of rocket fuel gusting past on the hot breath of evening. The next moment she lost awareness of it all. There was nothing, nothing except what Lin had just said.

“That's what you were remembering? Him saying that?”

Lin was still frowning. “Yeah. He said, ‘There're handgrips behind you.' And ‘It's much more secure, trust me.' Did you ride on it before, Lissa? When you were living with your parents? Because I can remember him saying that, but it doesn't make sense. . . .”

Elissa's breath came back in a rush. She looked at her sister, looked as Lin's face changed, as Elissa's silence got through to her, as sudden anxiety swept over her expression.

“Lis? What? What is it?”

“I only rode on it that one time. After the link had gone, to find you.”

“Oh. Oh. But then . . .”

“And he did say that,” said Elissa, the words louder than her heart thudding in her ears, words to sweep away pain and bleakness, to lift her so high out of the abyss she'd never be in danger of going back. “The memory of him saying it, that came into your head just now? It came into your head because it was in mine.”

Lin's face froze, the pupils of her eyes so wide they swallowed up the color. “You—” she said, then her voice froze too.

Around them and above them the slidewalks clattered, metal on metal squeaked, beetle-cars rose, humming, or descended to clank onto the monorails. All over the city, lights began to blink awake, amber and silver and no color at all. There was the scent of hot metal in the air, and the lingering, dusty warmth of a long summer day, and a sudden gust of perfume from the woman traveling on a slidewalk that ran parallel to theirs.

Three months ago Sekoia had seemed a world shattered,
unraveled. Now it was a world renewed—a world weaving itself back to wholeness.

Now, their link, the link that had brought them together, that had given Elissa pain and happiness and fear and hope, a whole confusion of good and bad that she might never make sense of, the link that had seemed as unraveled as her world . . . it, too, was . . .

“It's getting repaired.” Lin's voice was no more than a breath. If Elissa hadn't heard the words in her mind as well as her ears, she might not have picked them up at all.

“Yes.”

“Not just the link. I mean . . .” Lin gestured from herself to Elissa. “I mean, this. Us.” Uncertainty wavered at the edge of her voice. “Don't you think?”

Elissa reached out, taking Lin's hand, feeling the nervous flutter of her twin's fingers relax into stillness. “Yes.”

The slidewalk turned a corner, bringing them into the full blaze of the sun as it dipped below the curve of the world. Light broke over them, so bright that for an instant it wasn't like a sunset, but like a sunrise.

“Our world's becoming whole,” she said. “And our link. And us.”

ALSO BY IMOGEN HOWSON:
LINKED

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Imogen Howson

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Howson, Imogen.