Page 35 of The Brightness Between Us

He darts the tip of his tongue over his lips. “Care to share?”

I’m about to say something reckless. State secrets level. But he’s right, why should I have any loyalty to Fédération? Devon Mujaba has treated me with more respect thananyone at Cusk mission control ever has. Than my own mother ever has. “Clones. Twenty clones of me are on that ship. Living their lives out as a lie, thinking they’re rescuing my dead sister, until the last survivor settles a new planet.”

He stares at me, aghast. “No. Why?”

“Yes,” I say, shocked to find a tear-struck sound in my voice at the end of the word. “So they won’t despair in space and kill themselves. Revelations on all sides, Mujaba.”

“My god,” he says, voice rising above a whisper. “How are you okay right now?”

I shake my head and nod it at the same time, place my fingers over his lips to remind him to be quiet. “I don’t like to talk about the feelings part,” I manage to whisper.

“That’s fine,” he says. “We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

The PepsiRum makes the room tilt. Wild Ginger must have a calming add-in, because I know I’d be swirling the drain with despair right now if it didn’t.

But the add-in is working on me at the same time as big feelings. I feel somehow both serene and eager, like I’m suspended over an infinite void, about to tumble to nothing... but sort of jazzed by the doom of it all? Horror and peace living side by side, all at once. Thanks, PepsiRum. “Was this all—was getting the chance to tell me about theAurorayour only reason for playing this gig, for accepting my invitation here? I still don’t get why you’re taking this risk.”

He smiles, his fingers tweaking my chin. I don’t know if he’s doing it to appease surveillance, or because seduction has always been his way of accumulating power, or if he is feeling real warmth toward me. I’m not sure it matters. “It seems like the most unfair thing in the world, what they’ve done to you. And to that Dimokratía spacefarer, plucked from his training. He’s feeling this betrayal even deeper than you are. If you think you were raised for a mission only to have it snatched from you, believe me, he’s feeling it twice as hard. He doesn’t even have a family, friends, or the luxury of money to fall back on.”

“Devon Mujaba, with the heart of gold,” I say.

His expression clouds. “You don’t have to be ironic all the time, you know.”

“You’re a total stranger,” I say, pulling away from Devon and his ersatz green eyes. “You expect me to be my vulnerable self? Maybeyou’rethe one who needs advice on how to act.”

“Fair,” he says. He goes silent; I can sense him considering and censoring a thousand different tacks. And in that silence, my heart realizes Devon is more right than he’s wrong. Is there anyone I have ever been my actual insecure self with?

“This isn’t just out of blind sympathy on my part,” Devon says. “What’s been done to you is the symptom of a brutal system that fosters economic expansion as surely as it doessuffering. Because we liveinthis version of the world, we don’t see it. But now, the lie and the turmoil down below... this is a moment when everyonecansee it.”

“See it how?”

“We show them. We reveal the manipulation. Publicly. Pour fuel onto the unrest down in Brasilia.”

I roll onto my back, fingers twined over my chest. “How would that work, exactly?” I ask. “We drop an anarchist banner from Disponar? Paint angry graffiti on theEndeavor? Go steal a clone?”

Devon Mujaba laughs. “None of those is such a terrible idea, actually. Whatcouldwe accomplish together? I wonder.”

I chuckle, too, despite the self-pity welling up. “What if I joined the Heartspeak Boys and we did a guerrilla concert in front of the ship? We could have a new song, maybe. ‘Daddy Was Alexander the Great, but Mommy Just Fed Me Lies.’”

“Could be a hit. If I sing backup for you they could call me—what was Alexander’s lover’s name?”

“Hephaestion. And that would be hot. But. Well. I’m afraid you haven’t heard me try to sing.”

“Hey,” he says. “Singing well is not a prerequisite to being a Heartspeak Boy. You literally haven’t heard José Luis sing, either.”

“No!”

Devon nods. “Yes. She’s piped in.”

“Forget my false rescue mission or you betraying your country’s secrets. José Luis has been dubbed this whole time? José Luis?!That’sthe scandal of the year.”

“She’s super cute, though.”

“Yes,” I say, “she’s super cute.”

Devon Mujaba opens his lips to ask a question, and I answer before he can even pose it, as I lay my hand on his chest. “Let’s go fuck things up.”

His eyes tear up. It reminds me that his whole life has led up to this. “Ambrose. Thank you.”

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