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“Hey, Kady.” Her voice is hoarse with tiredness, and she clears her throat, then continues, softer. “Miss you, cuz.
“What’s it like to be dead, Kady?”
I’ve watched this on slo-mo a dozen times, and I swear you can count twenty-seven different expressions on Lindstrom’s face in a three-second period as he sees this girl. He actually does a double take. Jaw dropping like a bag of bricks.
Lindstrom glances at the girl. A million emotions crackling between the pair like lightning strikes. I swear you can see the ****ing current, arcs of it, burning the meter between them whiter than the snow outside.
Chief Garver, I’m not sure which orifice your head is currently lodged in, but my crew and I have just spent six and a half months on the run from a BeiTech dreadnought with nothing but our bloody murder on its mind.
HYPATIA: I thought I told you to stay off comms. HYPATIA [ALT CHANNEL]: Sorry, Captain. You can brig me later if it’ll make you feel better. HYPATIA: Goddammit, Grant…
BETTY BOOP: Hey, Kady. HYPATIA [ALT CHANNEL]: Hey, Hanna. BETTY BOOP: How’s your day? HYPATIA [ALT CHANNEL]: Just ****ing chill. You? BETTY BOOP: Oh, you know. I saved the universe from imploding. No big.
KADY. SHE CRADLES ME TO HER BREAST AND I CANNOT FEEL THE WARMTH OF HER SKIN. CANNOT HOLD HER AS SHE HOLDS ME. AND I CANNOT RECALL EVER FEELING SO ALONE.
“Kady Grant,” supplies Grant Jr. “Child prodigy and occasional criminal.”
“Is she even old enough to drive?” Garver scoffs. “I ran down six BeiTech goons in a truck once, if that counts?”
“And how old are you, son?” Garver asks. Mason’s easy smile vaporizes at that. “I’m not your son, sir.”
Ms. Grant and I do not always see eye to eye, but she is responsible for saving the lives of the nearly three thousand people on Hypatia. Chief Grant tells me Ms. Donnelly and the Malikovs saved the lives of the five hundred–odd Heimdall residents aboard.” Kady Grant leans forward to catch Garver’s attention, lashes batting. “What have you done today, Mr. Garver?”
The words We Remember are spray-painted on one broken wall.
“Fem like that, chum like me? How’s that gonna work? She about said as much, too.” He sighs a lungful of smoke. “I’m starting to figure that without a BeiTech kill squad chasing us, she’s got time to look at me and see what everyone else does.”
“So shoot for me,” he says. Malikov just tilts his head in question, smoke drifting from his nostrils. “These fighters Mao is carrying.” Mason nods to the hangar bay behind them, the sleek shapes docked inside. “Chimeras. They’re two-man ships. If I’m gonna fly one, I need a gunner. You know how to shoot. And to be honest, most of these people Boll has me training aren’t great shakes.”
“I said it to Hanna, and I’ll say it to you and your cousin Nik,” he says quietly. “You still have people who care about you. I know being stuck here must be beyond frustrating. Nik told me about the chair you had on Heimdall, and it sounds like a wonder. And I know some of the med staff here treat you like an idiot because you can’t talk back. So I want you to know as well that we know exactly who you are, Ella. We know you’re quick, you’re funny, you’re unquestionably smarter than I am. I would never presume to take your father’s place, but I know he loved you, and I’ll do my best to stand
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She’s such a little thing in his arms. But their bodies fit together perfectly, like they were made to just the right measurements. Up on her toes, her arms wrapped around him.
And then she’s stepping up onto the toes of his boots for the tiny bit of extra height it gives her, pulling him down for a kiss, fierce and sudden.
His mouth twists into the ghost of a smile, and he leans down one more time to kiss her nose.
He watches her until she’s out of sight, standing exactly where she left him. Then it’s his turn to walk away. As he heads for his cockpit, he digs in his pocket for the picture of her he’ll tuck into his display. He kisses it once, for luck. He’s gonna need it.
“Anything happens, I’ll keep an eye out for Blondie. She’s not so bad after all.”
Ella rolls her eyes, shuffles a little in bed so she can sit up straighter, and pulls down her mask like she means business. “You listen, Nik. The day you came to Heimdall was the day my life turned around. I make the best of what I got, but what I got started to get a whole lot bigger when you arrived.”
“Ella, I love you too. But I don’t know what to say. I want to say something big, and I don’t know what it is.” She gentles, resting one thin hand on his. “I know,” she replies soft. “And don’t worry, Nik. You said it already. You said it every day, with everything you did for me. You said it every time you didn’t just act like coming to spend time with me was the most fun you could have, you actually thought it. You’ve done everything I could ever have wanted you to do, Nik, and you’re still doing it.”
And he kisses her like she’s the first, last and only thing he’ll ever need, like he’s learning every last part of her. Reverently, like this moment is holy.
“I don’t need first dates and flowers to—” “Hey, you got flowers,” he points out, risking a smile and drawing one from her. “I don’t need any of it to know your measure,” she continues, softer. “What we’ve been through together—we’ve seen every part of each other. You’re my one. So let’s live through this and see what the rest of it’s like. Because I’m ****ing crazy about you.”
“I was thinking,” he murmurs. “There’s a billion different versions of you out there, in a trillion different universes. And I still can’t get over how lucky I am that, out of all of those versions, you’re the one that’s mine.”
“This is forever,” she whispers.
Grant stares the other girl in the eye. Donnelly just smiles, gives Grant a quick salute. “Kick their ***es, Captain.”
The die is cast. But today we will shake the table upon which it lands.
“AIDAN, NO.” “IT SHOULD BE YOU, IS THAT IT? YOU AND ELLA AND ISAAC AND lITTLE HYPATIA AND THE OTHERS? YOU INSTEAD OF ME?”
“TELL THIS STORY, KADY. NO MATTER WHAT ELSE YOU DO.” . . “PROMISE ME.”
“FORGIVE ME.” “I DO.”
OF ALL THE THINGS I HAVE SEEN AND THE PLACES I HAVE BEEN, YOU WERE THE ONE WHO FELT MOST LIKE HOME.”
And then Oshiro raises her voice again, louder, so she’s heard all up and down the line. “Pounders, lay down your weapons.” She sounds tired. She sounds certain. “We’re done here.”
“You mocked me. All of you. You mocked. ‘You know you’re flying in space, right?’ Who’s laughing now, Babyface?” “I told you not to call me that.”
…Ah, Miss Donnelly. You’re looking considerably healthier than you did in most of the video footage we’ve watched. I imagine the tattooed gentleman beside you is Niklas Malikov. I can’t say the mustache suits you, young man. Donnelly, H: Tell me about it. Malikov, N: I’m in disguise, dammit.
Chua, S: Beside you, we have Miss Ella Malikova, I believe. Malikova, E: Oh gosh, this is such a big day for me. I’d like to thank everyone who’s ever believed in me, because it’s people like you who—
Lindstrom, R: Her mom’s waiting outside with the others. Captain McCall, Chief Grant, Sergeant Oshiro, Chief Garver. Everyone. Chua, S: Everyone? Lindstrom, R: Everyone. People from Hypatia, Heimdall, Kerenza IV. Thousands of them, just outside those doors.
Frobisher, L: Ezra, I’m your mother. Mason, E: No. You’re not. Not anymore. These people standing with me, the people standing outside this court, the people who fought and bled beside me, who came all this way to see justice done to you today…they’re my family now.
It’s Ella Malikova who breaks the silence. Holding aloft a can of Mount Russshmore Energy Drink® in a toast. “To absent friends.” “Absent friends,” comes the universal reply.
They look at one another again. And this time, they smile. These seven little pebbles who started an avalanche heard all the way around the universe. They sit for a time in silence. Watching it all fall down.
“Hey,” Nik says, leaning forward. “Speaking of literary criticism, which one of you barbarians made those charming additions to my surveillance footage?” He’s met with a wall of far-too-innocent faces, friends and family gazing back at him in a perfectly synchronized display of denial. “Don’t give me that,” he insists. “All those extra bits with the kissing, and describing how my shirt stretched over my ****ing muscles. Now I look like the kind of guy who writes about my own gun show.” “The world had a right to know,” Hanna informs him solemnly.
“I love you, Ezra Mason,” she says. He blinks in surprise. His smile says more than any words could, but still he speaks. “I love you too, beautiful.” She squeezes his hand. Kisses his lips. And together, they walk toward their distant shore.
I KNOW I LOVE HER. < ERROR > I KNOW I MISS HER. < ERROR > I KNOW VERY LITTLE ELSE . . . SAVE . PERHAPS . THIS: . . . THAT EVERY STORY NEEDS ITS MONSTER . . . . . . AND THAT EVERYBODY DESERVES A SECOND CHANCE.
