Nova (28 page)

33
I MAKE IT THROUGH THE DOORS
back into the hub just before they lock the SlipStream station down. My chit is vibrating like mad.

Michael.

I can’t do it. If I see him now, I’ll crumble. Fold in on myself and collapse like a balloon someone has let all the air out of. Sliding the tip of my knife under the edge of the chit, I force the handle down with all my might. Fire shoots through my hand as the chit tears away from the biometal filaments embedded in my nerves. The metal piece pops out of my palm, leaving five tiny pinpricks of blood at the base of my thumb. I ignore the pain and chuck the chit as far away as possible.

Making for the nearest hygiene unit, I dig in my tool belt until my fingers come up with the thing I’m looking for. A piece of wire—extra long, hair thin, and extremely sharp.

Unlike the first time, I don’t even hesitate, jamming the wire into my eye almost recklessly until the tip hits my chip.

*00:15:00*

I hold my breath and wait.

*00:14:59*

*00:14:58*

*00:14:57*

Fifteen minutes. The time feels like a lifetime and a blink of the eye all at once.

Coming out of the hygiene unit, I hear it. A great clang as the metal clamps connecting the spokes to the hub release and retract. I run to the nearest lounge and stare out the observation port. As I watch, the thrusters on the hub begin firing, pulling us up and away.

The rings quickly fall away from us. Michael was right; the thrusters are fast. After all, they were designed to move the hub away from the habitat areas in the case of a power reactor breach in the hub. Teal’s idea to run a reactor breach alarm to separate the two was brilliant. Luckily, Michael held on to his dad’s old chit instead of throwing it in the ’cycler like he was supposed to. There will probably still be a few infected in the rings, despite our efforts to flush them out. However, once Rowan links with Teal and Michael and sees my memories through them, he’ll know what to look for. He may have to use his psychic abilities to check everyone in the rings individually, but unlike the first time he checked in a mob of infected ex-prisoners, this time he’ll know what to look for.
In Spectris Intra.

The Spectres Within.

Before I know it, the rings are out of sight, too far below us to see through the viewport no matter how much I crane my head. I sigh and slump against the viewport.

*00:11:14*

Eleven minutes to go. My mind feels rolled out and flat, and sparks are dancing madly in both eyes. I wonder what I should do with the last few minutes of my life. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. According to Niven, the explosives are so powerful, I don’t think it will matter where I am on the station when I go.

I press my face against the port again. I wish I could still see the rings. Maybe I couldn’t see Michael through those distant windows, but I could pretend. Pretend that he’s there in one of those observation ports, looking back at me even as I gaze at him.

An idea occurs to me. Maybe I
can
have one final look at the rings.

Quickly, I head toward the lift. The station is pretty much empty now, everyone either in the shelters or at their posts. I grab a platform going down, my heart beating a rapid tattoo as the levels pass one by one.

Six. Seven. Eight—my home for so many weeks. Nine. Ten. Eleven—PsyCorp. I once thought they were my biggest enemy, but instead they turned out to be my greatest ally. Twelve, Thirteen.

I jump off on the bottom floor. The level is deserted, and within seconds I am squeezing through the door into the storage space at the bottom of the station. I thread my way through the crates and boxes and throw open the trapdoor. Then without a second thought, I climb the ladder down through the tunnel.

My feet hit the floor of the observation deck with a thud. Glancing around, I gasp in wonder. The velvet cloak of space spreads out around me, so deep and dark it transcends the color black, and in it twinkle the blazing white lights of a million stars. It’s so exquisitely beautiful it makes my breath stop. How could I have not seen it before? How could I have looked from these ports without seeing this place for what it is? A vast, blazing, wondrous piece of heaven.

I collapse on my hands and knees and look down through the clear floor. I can barely see through the gold and silver sparks in my eyes, but there are the rings just below us now. My heart is pounding so hard I feel like it will burst from my chest at any moment. Heat begins filling my forearms. I hold my breath, remembering that this is where it all went wrong the last time. If it goes wrong again . . .

I feel a pinch in my arms, and suddenly the heat rushes out of them, dispersed into my bloodstream, and now I’m sure. It’s done; there will be no malfunction this time. I am going Nova. I check my time.

*00:01:03*

*00:01:02*

*00:01:01*

I’m well past the point where my clock stopped before, and still it’s going strong. Completely blind now, I can’t see a thing past the mass of bright sparks in my eyes. Warmth rushes through every limb, pushed through my veins by the furious thumping of my heart, and I can imagine those chemicals coming together, only a matter of time before they reach a high enough concentration to react. No, there will be no stopping this time.

To my surprise, tears start to form in my eyes. At first just one or two, and then suddenly my eyes are filled with liquid. A sob escapes my throat. I clap my hand over my mouth, but it can’t stop the sob that follows. Or the next, or the next. Realization bursts through me.

I don’t want to die!

I cover my face and drop my forehead to the floor, unable to stop weeping.
Oh God, I’m so scared!

I laugh through my tears as I remember my first countdown. How fearless I was then! Going Nova was my only purpose, and I embraced it with everything I had. Only that was the false Lia, the one with no name, no family, no friends. The real Lia is nothing like her. She’s not fearless; she’s not brave. She doesn’t want to sacrifice her life or save the world. The real Lia is terrified. Terrified and heartsick and alone, and wanting nothing more than to cling to life with every cell in her body.

*00:00:26*

*00:00:25*

*00:00:24*

My body is shaking now from the effort of trying to contain the reaction inside me, and I don’t even try to fight it. I’m burning up, energy pulsing off my body in waves as though I was a star itself. I can feel everything in the minutest detail—the hardness of the floor under my knees, the soft flow of the air drifting around me, the coldness of the glass against my forehead.

*00:00:09*

*00:00:08*

*00:00:07*

My parents. Michael, Teal, Taylor, Kaeti, Shar, Rowan, Jao, Cavendish, Niven, everyone I’ve ever known. They flash through my mind in a million images, sharp-edged and brilliant. Aurora, Tiersten, New Sol. Every moment of my life, happy and sad, flooding my heart until I no longer know if I’m crying from grief or joy. From hope or despair. From the exquisite beauty of it all or the terrible unfairness of it all.

*00:00:01*

The sparks in my eyes go out, and suddenly the purest, brightest, most brilliant white bursts into my vision. For a brief moment, everything falls away, and all I feel is . . .

Peace.

The peace of a cold mountain lake, enduring through time, clear and deep and still.

Then the final second ticks down, and everything inside of me clenches, compressed together like coal to create a diamond, tighter and tighter and tighter until finally something snaps and then . . .

Nova

TEAL STOOD IN THE EAST
Observation Deck and watched the crowd. Stationers packed the place from stem to stern, everyone Teal could find and drag along in the short minutes she had after getting off the SlipStream. The last-minute announcement Rowan made, calling people to the observation decks, had brought the rest. Now they milled around as much as the space allowed, muttering to themselves and each other, wondering just what was going on. Teal could have told them.
My friend is about to die, that’s what’s going on.

She could’ve, if she’d been able to speak around the huge lump in her throat.

Teal stared out the viewport at the hub, now a hovering shape in the distance. She wished she was anywhere but here. Knowing what was going to happen was bad enough without having to watch it. She had only come because Lia had asked it of her. She thought back to Lia’s hurried explanation, trying to make sense of it once again.

“Jao—this resistance commander I knew—said something to me once. He said, ‘How do you make someone believe in something you can’t see or hear or touch?’ Don’t you understand, Teal? It’s the reason the alliance fell. The Spectres came—invisible, soundless, incorporeal—and the Tellurians never had a chance. Half the alliance was infected before anyone even knew what was happening. Even once TelPsy knew, their resistance efforts were limited, since they could only spread the word by linking with people one by one. They needed hard proof; they needed people to see. And that’s what we’re going to give them.”

Teal pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. She still didn’t really understand. All she knew was that Lia was going to die. She was going to go Nova right in front of Teal’s eyes, and she thought it was going to be glorious, of all things! Even now, Teal couldn’t think of those words without choking up.
Glorious?
How could Lia say that, as though her death was nothing more than a spectacle to watch? Teal had this horrible feeling inside, like she wanted to burst into tears, only she
didn’t
cry. Not ever.

Except this once.

Swiping surreptitiously at her eyes, Teal checked her watch. Less than a minute to go. Something squeezed inside her chest. She couldn’t do this, she had to get out. Pushing away from the viewport, she started to head for the exit, and that’s when she saw it.

A light. Shining like a beacon from the very lowest tip of the hub, white and soft and so faint that at first Teal thought she was imagining it. But no, the light was getting brighter.

Teal put her hand on the viewport, drawn against her will to the light growing steadily in the distance. Others had noticed it too, now, and they pressed around her, murmuring as they tried to figure out what it was. Brighter and brighter the light grew, its rays shining out through space like a majestic lighthouse of old, providing safe passage for those adrift at sea. Hope bloomed in Teal’s chest as she watched the light. Maybe this is what Lia had meant. Maybe she wasn’t really a bomb at all, but something—

The light exploded out in every direction with a boom that could shake the stars. It shot upward into the hub, blowing the lowest floor apart in a maelstrom of debris. Like some avenging angel, beautiful and deadly at once, it continued upward, taking out each level in a succession of fireworks—
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!—
one after another, until finally the top level burst apart in a shower of sparks.

Teal shielded her eyes against the light, so brilliant it was almost like looking into the sun. All around her, people were screaming, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the light. And then, there, within the shards of the hub, a dark shape appeared, and then another, and another, and then the entire space where the station used to be was filled with black shapes. They roiled and frothed within the light, thousands upon thousands of them, their black bodies shimmering with color like slicks of oil, like black rainbows, exquisite and unnatural.

They were the most terrifyingly beautiful things Teal had ever seen.

A hush fell over the deck as everyone stared at the brilliance before them. Then a quiet voice breathed, “My God! What
are
they?”

“Spectres,” Teal whispered. “They’re called Spectres.”

Her voice was barely audible, and yet someone heard her. The word spread across the deck, rippled through the air until there wasn’t a single tongue it didn’t sit upon. Then as they all watched, the dark shapes began dissolving, dissipating into the pool of light surrounding them until the last one was gone. As if absorbing their essences into its own, the light intensified, sparkling with the glow of a million diamonds against the void of space. Then it, too, dimmed and fell away into the dark.

Teal didn’t even try to wipe away the tears running freely down her face. She understood now. She understood what Lia had tried to tell her. People needed to see, to
know.
The Spectres had won by lurking in the shadows for three years, taking planets down one by one because few even knew they were there. Not anymore. The ring’s instruments would have recorded everything, and just like the people on this observation deck, the rest of the expanse would finally see. They would know what was coming for them, and they could finally fight back. The blaze of light that Lia had become signified more than simply her death. It signified hope.

Teal just wished Lia had been here to see it for herself.

Casting her gaze out through the viewport, Teal searched that vast blanket of space as though, in one of those brilliant stars, she might find Lia, smiling back at her.
You were right, Lia
,
she whispered silently to the blackness.
It
was
glorious.

It was more glorious than you could have possibly imagined.

TO THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE
, I tender my warmest regards and sincerest gratitude:

My agent, Lindsay Ribar, and the team at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. You were worth the wait.

My editor, Betsy Wollheim, and everyone at DAW Books. I’m honored to be a part of the DAW family.

To my writer friends, who have offered invaluable advice, support, and feedback: Joyce Alton, Donald McFatridge, Diana Robicheaux, Carla Rehse, Christine Berman, Anthony Nicholas, and Angie Sandro.

My sister, Wendy Fortune, who is not only my number one fan, but also came up with the awesome math problem Michael attempts to solve in chapter fifteen.

And of course, my mom and dad. Nurture or nature, either way, I guess my writing talents and success are ultimately
your
fault!

Thank you all for making what was a very long and lonely road just a little less long and lonely.