These Broken Stars (23 page)

He looks at me, hollow-eyed, then tightens his jaw as his gaze drifts off again. “Not going to let you wander around here by yourself. You get hurt, there’s no one to help. It would take me ages to find you, if I did at all.”

I get up and kneel on the floor in front of him, reach up to turn his 
face toward mine and force him to meet my eyes.

“And I’m not going to let you get sick from an infection because you’re too stupid to take care of yourself. I’ll be careful.”

His mouth twists, for all the world like a child refusing to take his medicine. He knows my chances of making any headway by myself are slim. If he weren’t here I’d have died any one of a thousand deaths already on this godforsaken planet.

And then I know how to convince him.

“If you die,” I whisper, my eyes on his, “then I will too.”

By the time I return from the ship to camp again, night has fallen, and Tarver is only half conscious. It didn’t take long for me to find one of the food stores—but even the sight of dried pasta and spices and sugar couldn’t relieve the knot of tension twisting in my chest. I ought to be relieved—we were on our last few ration bars. But hunger is no longer our biggest problem.

The packets are all stamped with the stylized upside down
V
of my father’s logo—the Greek lambda, for LaRoux. My father and his stupid fixation on mythology. He told me all the old stories when I was little, of warring gods and goddesses, and I almost imagined he was one of them. All-powerful, all-knowing. Someone to be worshipped unconditionally. But who names a starship the
Icarus
? What kind of man possesses that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?

I’ve stopped waiting for him to come for me. There are no ships flying over the crash site. No one’s looking for us here. With a jolt, I realize that by now my father must think I’m dead. There are no rescue ships, so they must not know where the
Icarus
went down—she could have fallen out of hyperspace anywhere in the galaxy. He already lost my mother. I’ve been all he’s had since I was eight years old. I try to imagine him now, knowing I’m gone—and my mind just goes blank.

I wonder if the engineers who designed the
Icarus
are still alive, or if his vengeance has already destroyed them.

I shiver, tracing the shape of the logo with my fingertips, as I’ve done countless times throughout my childhood. It would be easier not to connect this twisted heap of wreckage, this mass grave, with the flagship of my father’s company.

I make three trips back inside the ship, my last lugging a pot full of spices and boxes of powdered broth. I make a fire, heat some soup, try to get Tarver to drink. He wakes up only reluctantly, and only after shoving me away in his sleep. I get a few spoonfuls of broth down him before he collapses again. I get the camp ready for the night, checking to be sure the fire isn’t visible beyond our little hollow, that our belongings are all close, that Tarver’s gun is at his side, where it belongs.

I lug some water from the stream nearby and use strips of the sheets to wipe his face and throat, which are burning hot to the touch. I’m 
afraid to unwrap his hand because I have nothing sterile with which to 
wrap it back up again, but the skin around the bandage is flushed red and 
painful-looking.

Eventually I run out of tasks and crawl into the bed beside him. He’s so warm that despite the chill, it’s uncomfortably hot under the blankets. Nevertheless, I slip close to him so I can feel his heartbeat and smell his scent, grass and sweat and something else I can’t name. Familiar, comforting. In his sleep, his good arm curls around me, just a little.

I’m awakened in darkness by someone shoving me roughly off the makeshift mattress and onto the hard ground. My mind is slow to wake, and for a few moments I can only think another survivor has found us and is trying to see if we have anything worth stealing. My heart is pumping pure adrenaline, my every nerve screaming.

Then I realize it’s Tarver who shoved me away. As I pick myself up I hear him murmuring to himself, and my heart leaps. He’s awake. Surely this is a good sign. The sky is partially cloudy, blocking the light from the artificial mirror-moon.

I crawl toward the coals of the fire and throw on a few pieces of deadwood until it flares up, letting me see his face.

My heart sinks.

He’s staring right through me, his eyes wild and glassy, and—I would’ve thought it impossible if I hadn’t seen him above the valley with the vision of his house—afraid. His muttering is unintelligible, his lips dry and cracked.

“Tarver?” I crawl toward him. “I’ll get you some water. Let me just—” I start to reach for his forehead, to feel his temperature, when I’m suddenly knocked over, sent rolling in the dirt, my head ringing and throbbing. The stars overhead weave and waver as my vision clouds, and it’s only with a monumental effort that I claw my way back toward consciousness, dizzily dragging myself back upright.

Tarver’s half sitting up with his gun pointed directly at my face, though his eyes are staring into space. His face is set in a snarl far more fierce than anything I could’ve imagined from him. The spot where the back of his hand connected with my cheek throbs and radiates heat with 
each pulse of my heart.

“Tarver?” It’s barely a whisper.

He blinks, and his head turns toward me. The barrel of the gun wavers and dips. His eyes focus, and my heart leaps. He swallows, speaks through dry lips.

“Sarah,” he croaks.

“It’s me,” I say pathetically. I sound like I’m begging. I
am
begging. “Please, Tarver. It’s me. It’s Lilac. Your Lilac, you know me.”

He groans and collapses back again, the hand holding the gun dropping. “God, I’ve missed you.”

“I haven’t gone anywhere.” I should get close, feel his temperature again, but it won’t do any good. I know he’s burning up. The makeshift pillow under his head is soaked with sweat.

“Sarah, I feel rotten.”

In his fever, he thinks I’m some other girl. His girlfriend, maybe— 
does he have one waiting at home? I realize I never even asked.

“I know you do,” I whisper, giving in. I can’t reach him. The only thing I can do is get back inside that wreck, clear a path to the deeper, less intact parts, and find the sick bay.

He mumbles something else, and I slip in close enough to ease the gun out of his grip. He doesn’t even twitch. I tuck it into the back of my jeans, my skin crawling at its presence. I don’t know the first thing about guns, but I know I can’t leave it here with him and risk him shooting me in his delirium.

I take a deep breath, locating the flashlight—and after a moment of hesitation, Tarver’s notebook and pen. I need to make a map. It’s going to be harder to navigate the labyrinth of sharply slanting corridors and broken staircases in complete darkness, but I can’t afford to wait. Tarver can’t afford for me to wait.

He’s so thin now. I hadn’t even noticed, seeing him every second of every day, but here, while he’s asleep and flushed and delirious, I can see how lean he is. I brush the damp hair back from his forehead.

“I’ll be back,” I murmur. “Hold on.”

He calls out for Sarah as I make my way back toward the ship, and it breaks my heart. I’d sit with him and be his Sarah if I could, if there were 
someone else to go look for his medicine. But I leave him with his ghosts 
and descend into the wreck, ignoring the voice behind me begging me to return.

In the darkness, the ship is a maze.

Over the last few days of searching I’ve still only found the one entry point, so every time I come back I have to retrace my steps, spending precious time going over the same ruined pathways. I try every possible turn, and each attempt ends in a crushed floor or a dead-end room.

I found an emergency fire station a few hours into that first night, with a fire blanket, an ax, an extinguisher—and a handful of chemical glow sticks. I’ve discovered that they shine steadily for about an hour and a half before they start to fade, and so I’ve been using them as timers. An hour and a half, and then wherever I am, I turn back. To check on him.

Three hours in and back, and then I can make sure he’s not dead.

I’ve lost track of how many trips I’ve made. The flashlight is growing dim after so much use, so I turn it off, relying on the light of the glow sticks instead. I know this particular corridor, the pattern of its destruction, by heart now. I don’t need light here.

To the right is the laundry room. I go straight. Farther along are more corridors branching off into dormitories for the staff. I discover a tiny gym with equipment so smashed it takes me long moments to realize what it is. What hope is there that, even if I can find the sick bay, there’ll be anything remotely usable?

The darkness spins, exhaustion briefly threatening to steal my balance. I shut my eyes, stretching out a hand to grab on to the wall. I can’t afford to think hopelessly.

I wait until the dizziness passes and make a mental note to eat something the next trip I make back to camp. When I open my eyes I realize I’ve made it to an intersection where I turned right, last time. This time I go straight ahead, into new territory.

Exposed steel spars and wiring make it impossible to move without deliberation, and debris strewn about threatens to drag me down at every step. I saw the
Icarus
dismantled like this once before, nearly a decade ago. She was my playground once, when she was little more than a steel 
frame and a sketch in the minds of my father’s engineers. But then she 
was new and clean, bare with unrealized potential and promise. Not 
smashed beyond recognition.

I try to visualize the ship I played in. Did I know then what the rooms would be used for? I don’t remember. Did I ever know where the medical wing was? Was I ever sick?

No.
But Anna was.
For the first time the thought of my cousin doesn’t fill me with guilt so tangible I want to throw up. Instead, a tiny flicker of memory floods my mind, and with it, something like hope.

I remember the smell of soap as I brought Anna to sick bay. And not the astringent scent of medical cleanser, but light, airy, clean-scented soap. The laundry.

I can’t be far, then. Can I?

There’s no smell of soap now, though I can smell something else.
Perishable food
, I think. It smells like a meat locker that’s been without power for a week. But very faint.

The glow stick is getting dimmer. I have to move more quickly. Soon I’ll need to go see if Tarver’s still alive. Check his bandage, force some water down his throat, and hope he doesn’t mistake me again for a threat. The bruise on my cheek throbs at the memory.

I can only see about a foot in front of me by the dimming light of the glow stick. Tomorrow I’ll have to remember to set the flashlight out in the sun to recharge.
Tomorrow? It is night, isn’t it?

Maybe it’s tomorrow already.

Go back, I tell myself frantically.
Just go back now.

I have the strangest feeling, almost a superstition, that if I leave him for more than my arbitrary three-hour limit, those few minutes will be the death of him. And yet, the time it takes to go back and forth checking on him, instead of locating medicine, could be just as deadly.

I keep moving.

The path is clear enough here that I can break into a slow run. All that hiking has paid off, and though it’s been a couple of days now since I slept more than an hour or two at a time, I still have enough energy for this.

Ahead of me yawns sudden blackness, not the grid of the floor. My mind, sluggish with lack of sleep, fails to process it. Before I realize I 
have to stop, I’m falling.

Something soft breaks my fall with a muffled crack. I drop the glow stick, gasping for breath as a sudden wave of nausea shudders through me. It’s the meat-locker smell, not the fall, making me sick. The smell is stronger here. Too strong.

I roll away from whatever I landed on and push myself to my feet. Half in shock, my mind runs through an oddly detached checklist of my body, making sure everything’s still working. Tarver would kill me if he knew I’d been so reckless. If he’d been here.

I turn back for the glow stick, which clattered out of my hand when I 
fell. I stoop to reach for it and freeze.

It’s a face. A tiny patch of sickly green glow shines from the stick, lighting the hollows of the cheeks, the empty, staring eyes, glinting off the teeth just showing between parted lips.

I scream, flinging myself away until I hit the floor. My face presses into the cold iron gridwork, and I gasp for breath, trying to inhale shallowly through my mouth. The meat-locker smell—God, and it
is
rotting meat, isn’t it?—is so overpowering I think for a moment I might pass out. I can taste it on my tongue.

I lurch to my feet and into a run. In darkness and fear, I keep colliding with walls and ricocheting around corners. I step on something that gives beneath my heel, and my ankle rolls, but I keep myself upright. I know that if I fall, what I fall on will be the end of me. Soft things. Rotting things. Dead things.

This ship isn’t a maze—it’s a tomb.

Exposed debris slices at my clothes and my hair and my face. Still I run, deeper and deeper into the dead part of the ship, helpless with the knowledge that after such a long fall, I can’t climb back up to get out the way I came in.

A jagged rebar catches my arm and jerks me sideways, flinging me 
against a wall. My scream is a hoarse, desperate noise.

My hand finds a door handle and twists, and I lurch into the closet-like space behind it, dragging the door shut behind me. I slide down to the floor amid the clanking of buckets and mop handles and fumble for the flashlight. Its beam is warm and golden, if dim, and lights the inside of what seems to be a janitorial cupboard. It’s strangely intact, mops and 
brooms neatly lined up.

My heart threatening to slam its way out past my rib cage, I put my head down on my knees and focus on my breathing. Anything but the thought of what waits for me outside, the dead eyes and bloated corpses.