The Brightness Between Us (The Darkness Outside Us, #2)

by Eliot Schrefer

The life of Ambrose Cusk is full of unfairnesses, and most of them benefit me.

“You think Dad will be okay with that?” I ask. Father smiles, just from thinking of him.

Running away here means spending my life alone, but I don’t mind. Alone is how I’m meant to be.

But there’s another me out there. Another Kodiak. Who will spend his life relying on you.” I furiously avoid Ambrose’s eyes, because it is already hard to speak.

I almost wish I could stick this information into a fly and shoot it to the Coordinated Endeavor: just be quiet for a while, Ambrose—then Kodiak will come to you.

“That as soon as we classify someone, we establish the ways in which they’re separate from us. It’s the most fundamental othering that we do.” “Ah,” I say. “That sounds very . . . like you are trying to show off in a seminar.”

“No sign of the warbot,” Ambrose says, peering into the street below. “Not that I can see very much in this dark. And look—the last moment of sunset.” I scan where he’s pointing. The bottom of the sky has an orange tinge. “That’s the wrong direction,” I say. I point to the west. “The sun set over there, about an hour ago.” “Oh,” Ambrose says.

If I’m about to die, I’m going to hold those hands of his at least once.

Father—Father!—is crying into his lover’s hand. “You’re alive. I was so scared.” “It must have been absolutely terrifying, imagining a life without me,” Dad says.