Page 30 of The Brightness Between Us

“Ambrose,” she says. Something in her tone makes me turn and look. She’s crying. I’ve never seen such a thing. I’ve never known it was possible. It’s only one tear, but it’s there.

“What, did you really expect me to behappyabout this?”

She shakes her head, hand at her chest. “I didn’t think that. But I thought you’d understand my reasoning. That you might be glad to have a purpose greater than yourself.”

“I understand your reasoning. It’s just that I hate it. Ihate it.”

She looks at the chair, overturned on its side. She looks at the vault door. She looks at me.

“Let. Me. Out!” I shout. Something the clones of me on that ship, those twenty Ambrose Cusks, will never be able to do. For them, getting out will mean dying.

Surprisingly, she complies. Tears in her eyes, gaze on the floor, she skirts by me and raps a complicated knock on the door. One of the landkeepers opens it.

I have to step past her to leave. As I do she raises her arms, I guess to embrace me. I blow past.

I stalk past the first landkeeper, past my assistant, past the second landkeeper, past reception and into the express Cusk elevator. I shout out my floor stop and get a smallburst of pleasure when the door closes on a landkeeper’s face. I can just glimpse the other landkeeper racing to the next elevator bay over.

I know what they’ll try: they’ll keep me penned inside somewhere before they haul me out for the press conference. If I refuse to attend, they’ll make do, and spin a global narrative that I’m too racked with sorrow over Minerva to show my face. Everyone will sigh and worry about me and mourn for my sister and be glad that at least we’re making use of the ship after all and doesn’t this make the troubles of the world seem silly by comparison?

Part of me thinks that I should attend that press conference and go off script, tell everyone what my mother just said. But the feed is assuredly on a ten-second delay, and will be scrubbed clean before anything gets out of the room.

All the same, there’s no way I’m going to dutifully do as she asks.

What I’m going to do is to never see her again.

I hear whirring in the next elevator shaft over, the landkeepers racing to catch up with me. I have a ten-floor head start, which is all that I need. My clones might be at the mercy of theEndeavor, but not me, not here. One advantage of being a child of my mother: I know plenty of ways to get lost.

Chapter 2

The academy’s major ceremonies take place in the grand hall, a vaulting hangar space with Dimokratía flags lining one side and Fédération the other, a giant Cusk logo suspended in between, an amalgam of four different types of real quarried stone. Two years ago the press dais was occupied by Minerva, decked out in her crisp spacefarer suit, grinning wildly as reporters captured inspiration reels of her to distribute around the world.

I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but they’ve managed to cram even more people into the grand hall today. In the front row is the press, recording the event on their bracelets, deploying microdrones to capture multiple angles so they can render the reels in three dimensions. Behind the dais are rows of cadets in formal regalia, standing at attention with their hands folded before the Cusk logo on their belts. My eyes instinctively go to Sri, on the mid-left. They salute—a little sassily—as my mother enters in her bespoke suit, walking crisply to a podium on one side of the red-velvet dais.

On the other side of the hall is an identical podium. It’s empty.

I’m supposed to be standing at it.

My mother’s face stays composed, but I can just imagine what she’s thinking:Surely my child wouldn’t do this to me. He might be angry, but he wouldn’t wreck his future and shame his family name, his country, his mother. He will show up.As long seconds drag by, I zoom in, watching for her expression to crack. But it’s like when I first entered the vault room, like her reel has been paused. The only sign that I’m seeing a person and not a static image is the occasional restlessness from a member of the press corps. And Sri. They are the only cadet whose gaze isn’t straight forward. They look up. Many hundreds of cameras are capturing the ceremony from many hundreds of angles, but Sri knows which one is the Cusk corporate feed. As they look right into it, right at me, a smile spreads on their lips.

I’m watching all this from suborbit.

Earth has four space elevators. The nicest one is (of course) here at the Cusk headquarters in Mari, within the Fédération territory of former Syria. My mother blocked my official onyx-level access, but I have no fewer than three onyx accounts. One is my official one, one is a hack I created as part of my final programming thesis for quaternary class (wasn’t supposed to actually bring it online, but noone ever explicitly told me not to, joke’s on them), and the third is Minerva’s, which she gave me before she departed, hiding it under my plate during our final meal of manicotti.Make good use of it. There are no onyx perks on Titan.

I kiss that onyx card as the elevator climbs. Minerva’s portrait—which the personal elevator pod thinks is my own—stares back at me from the ID screen, all white teeth and confidence. I toast it with my bottle of PepsiRum. “Here’s looking at you, Sister.” I burp. This will not be my first bottle of PepsiRum today.

I sprawl out, my fingers drumming on the upholstery. I’m all alone, which heightens my “let’s fuck around” feelings. I cannot wait to arrive and get started doing just that.

Cusk operates three different pleasure satellites, but the one above Mari is the biggest and oldest. It was named Disponar—technically in honor of the first Dimokratía prime minister so that Cusk could increase its business across country lines—but everyone calls it Death Star, because it rhymes and, well, Disponar looks like it’s from this old reel calledStar Warsthat gets trendy again every twenty years, a pale tech-y moonish thing up there in the daytime sky.

The Earth falls away below as I near the end of the elevator trip. There’s the planetary horizon, blue below and black above—if the elevator went even a kilometer farther, I would be in outer space.

Dressed in civilian blacks, I use my sham onyx card to skip the queue and get the next automated taxicraft from the arrival station to the pleasure satellite. I requested the taxi be preloaded with a fresh bottle of PepsiRum, even managing to get it in the new limited-edition Wild Ginger flavor. I crack it open as the craft whisks me through the thin atmosphere.

It’s a short trip, and at first, I’m content just looking at the Earth horizon, telling myself I’m not going to keep watching the press junket. But finally curiosity gets the better of me.

Though I keep the reel on mute, I watch the great hall as it empties, projections of commentators desperately trying to fill up airtime, impromptu panels of pundits proposing tangled explanations for my absence. My mother is long gone.

I can imagine the Cusk press secretaries trying to spin my non-arrival. They’re trained professionals. They can announce a canceled rescue mission without me. It’s not the end of the world. No one gets to fool me and then depend on me to fix it.

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