Page 92 of The Brightness Between Us

“I have to ask. Are you armed?”

In response, he holds his hands up behind him. He’s tied something around his wrists. “The opposite. You saw. I don’t want to hurt you all.”

“Oh, Brothership,” I say. I want to free him, and I’m also grateful that he’s restrained himself so I don’t have to do it.

I get down to my knees, still across the chamber from Yarrow. The malevor must have heard our voices and wandered through theAurorato find me. She nuzzles my side, staring at Yarrow suspiciously.

“It’s not your fault,” I say. Yarrow watches me, barely blinking, as I tell him again, slower this time, about finding the beacon, the schematics coded inside it, how we’ll start the nanotech device printing when and if we’ve survived the comet impact.

He closes his eyes heavily. “I can be fixed. I don’t know if I deserve that, after what I’ve done.”

“It’s not your fault, Yarrow. I mean that, it’s not your fault.”

“Why would they have done this to me? What did I do to deserve it?”

“Nothing. And I don’t know why we were sabotaged. I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

“Will you tell Father I’m here, for me?” he asks. “I don’t think I can face him right now. I’m worried he’ll... that when he sees me he’ll...”

Could Father attack him? I can’t imagine it, but I also couldn’t imagine Yarrow shooting Dad. Father loves Dad so much—I guess it’s possible. “Yes, I’ll tell him,” I say.

“If I may,” OS interrupts. “Judging from Kodiak’s vital signs while you tumbled through the shaft screaming, he is well aware of your presence. He’s been too busy with the final preparations to come over.”

I manage a tired smile. “There you have it. He knows you’re here, and he’s just ignoring you. Back to family business as usual.”

“As soon as Rover is available, we’ll prioritize your immediate health, Yarrow,” OS says. “It is at more acute risk than Ambrose’s.”

“You don’t hate me?” Yarrow asks OS. The way he says it, it’s more an expression of wonder than a question.

“No, I do not hate you,” OS replies. “I am still investigating the reprogramming you implemented days ago. Itmakes me feel scrambled in your presence, but the experience is more akin to anxiety than hatred.”

“I do hate you, a little,” I say. “But I always have. It comes along with loving you.”

A smile spreads across Yarrow’s face. “And I guess I always deserved it. Despite my claims otherwise.”

“No, you didn’t deserve it,” I say. “But you do now, that’s for sure.”

Chapter 4

Owl

We’re in theAurora’s room that has the broad windows that once looked out into space. Or, for most of the dads’ clones’ voyage, showed a false digital representation of space. Dad is sitting up on his mattress, which we’ve transferred here, while Father sits at a console, monitoring the ship’s air quality as he knits. The baby malevor, who will one day be the source of his yak wool, is curled at his feet. Yarrow is in the corner, bandaged and with a hydration IV but still restrained—at his insistence. We switched the horsehair out for a rolled-up blanket, for comfort.

The comet struck the other side of Minerva nearly two hours ago, according to OS. We haven’t felt even a slight tremor in the soil around us—yet. “The shock waves move at a non-instantaneous speed,” OS explained. “This is a big planet. They will take time to reach us.”

We left unsaid all the worries that a shock wave raises, like whether it will rupture the hull of theAurora. Cusk engineers designed a ship that could withstand a variety of conditions, but it’s unlikely they planned for underground shock waves. Even if they had, theAurorais an antique,long past its designed life span. OS claims it will hold. OS is very good at predictions. But it’s also good at manipulating our emotions around difficult outcomes, particularly when there’s nothing we can do about them. OS well knows that hopelessness is its own terminal condition. It saw multiple pairs of the dads die of it.

Rover is in what used to be called the “blind room,” but which is now just a regular chamber with the annoying trip hazard of a printed barrier along the doorway. It’s busily printing away based on the schematics saved to the ship’s memory. The smell of burnt hydrocarbon is in the air, which in my hungry state smells oddly delicious. A bit like the smell of roasted dead malevor.

If all goes well, within a couple of days the nanotech device will be online, and Yarrow will have recovered enough to go first. The same tech that created the memories in the minds of the cloned Ambrose and Kodiak will edit the connections in Yarrow’s cranium. I’ll go second, with only two weeks to spare before my sixteenth birthday. I’m not even sure that anniversary matters, though it certainly did for Yarrow. The operation is horrifying, risky, and might save us all.

I’m incessantly pacing the room marked 06. It’s clearly driving Father bonkers, but I can’t help it.

“Owl...,” Dad says.

“I know, I know,” I say, forcing my feet to stop, eventhough my body keeps sayinggo, go, go.I pick up the piece of alien wood from where it lies in the corner, look at it, then put it back down. I’ll use some of this bunker time to figure out how to use it to make a new violin for Dad. But I can’t possibly think about that right now.

“No, I don’t mean your pacing, although that is indeed infuriating,” Dad says. “I just want you to come here for a second.”

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