Nova (14 page)

Ah.
I knew I hadn’t seen the last of Shar.

18
I’D THOUGHT SHAR WAS ANGRY
enough at our last encounter, but this time she’s absolutely livid. Her eyes are blazing, her entire body quivering with tension as though it’s all she can do to keep herself from unleashing the full might of her rage at me.

A bolt of fear shoots through me. Last time I had the advantage of surprise and my own not-so-inconsiderable temper. This time, it’s Shar who clearly has the edge. More than an edge. She could kill me, I suddenly realize. Right here behind these cargo containers before anyone even realizes what’s happening.

I should scream, but for some reason my throat doesn’t seem to work.

“What did you
do
,
you little leaker?! What did you tell them?!”

I shake my head, confusion and shock keeping me frozen against the wall.

Shar grabs my collar and bangs me against the locker again. “Don’t play deficient with me! I
know
it was you who must have told them. Tell me what you said!”

I have no idea what’s going on, but my dormant temper is finally starting to rile, my own fury igniting at being ambushed by this lying thief. This time when she grabs me, I grab her back, fingers sinking into the front of her jumpsuit. I yank with all my strength, trying to pull her off-balance enough to make her loosen her grip. She grunts but hangs on, the two of us careening over the floor as she struggles to keep upright.

“I gave you the stupid reader back! Why’d you have to tell on me?”

“Tell who?” I scream back, finally finding my voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

My shoulder glances against the wall as we whirl in another circle, and I trip, falling backward over my own feet before I even realize what’s happening. We both go down in a heap, Shar on top, and in a desperate move, I reach up and grab her throat. A sizzle of white snaps and pops along my mind. Words burst into my brain.

Don’t touch her, don’t touch her, don’t touch her!

I gasp and yank my hand away, but Shar is already scrambling off of me.

“
Who
are you?” she breathes, eyes wide in horror.
“What’s that in your head?”

I shake my head, unsure how to answer when I don’t even know what she’s seen. I almost don’t catch her words, she mumbles them so softly:
One-fifty-nine, one-fifty-eight . . .

My mind flies to my clock.

*00:01:58*

Slag!
I lost time during the fight, and Shar saw. She
saw
it! Just like Rowan would have seen it had he touched me just a few minutes later in my entry interview.

“You’re a
psychic!
”

Shar jerks back as if slapped. The hatred and anger are still in her eyes, but now they’re clouded by something much stronger. Fear.

I don’t get it. So she’s a psychic. What does she have to fear from me? If anything, I’m the one who should be angry, without that half-star on her jumpsuit to tip me off.

Understanding pours through me. A psychic, spending six weeks living in a crowded cargo bay full of refugees with nothing but a couple of dirty jumpsuits to wear? On a station with a strong PsyCorp presence, no less? I don’t think so. PsyCorp takes better care of its people than that.

“You’re unregistered.”

She flinches. “Why did you have to tell them?”

“Who?”

“PsyCorp!”

“I haven’t talked to PsyCorp,” I deny. “Not about you. I didn’t even know you were a psychic until you jumped me like a lunatic just now.”

“Oh yeah? Then why have they been watching me? Why did they link me to say they want to see me in an hour?”

“How should I know? You—” I stop, recalling my own interview with them just a few weeks ago. “Wait. Are you from Aurora?”

Shar blinks in confusion but nods. I laugh, unable to resist the irony. There I was, completely vaccing out four weeks ago because I thought PsyCorp had discovered my little secret, and now Shar is doing the exact same thing—and all for nothing! It’s actually kind of funny now that it’s Shar and not me.

Well,
mostly
funny, I think, irritatedly rubbing my back. It would be funnier if my face didn’t hurt and my back wasn’t bruised.

“What? What’s so funny?” she demands, terror choking her voice with every word. “Do you
know
what’s going to happen when they—”

“Power down!” I interrupt, pity finally kindling in my heart at her obvious distress. “They don’t know anything. PsyCorp is doing interviews with all the Aurorans. They told me so themselves when they brought me in a couple weeks ago.”

“They—they are?”

The hope in her eyes is almost worse than the hatred. It’s hard to stay pissed at someone who has the expression of a kicked puppy.

“They’re trying to figure out what to do with all of us,” I elaborate. “They just want to know if you have friends or family you can go to.”

“Oh. Not me.” Shar lets out a visible sigh of relief and absently rubs her head. “I suppose you’re going to move in with those friends of yours?”

I shrug uncomfortably and finally answer, “It’s complicated.”

We don’t say anything for a minute.

“I thought you figured it out when we slapped hands before,” Shar says tentatively. “There was something glitchy when we touched.”

“I know.”

She looks at me curiously. “What are you? You’re not a psychic, I can tell, but you’re sure not normal either.”

“Forget it,” I order her. “Just forget it! It’s not anything. Not anymore. Keep your airlock sealed, and I won’t tell PsyCorp about you. Deal?”

Her jaw trembles at the mention of PsyCorp, but she quickly nods. “Deal.”

We don’t shake hands on it, neither keen to touch the other again, but I don’t think Shar will betray my secret. She’s too afraid of PsyCorp to risk it. Afraid? No, terrified, more like! As I watch her go, I wonder why. She won’t get in trouble for not registering. As she’s a minor, it was technically her parents’ responsibility, not hers. Besides, PsyCorp needs every psychic they can get, especially with the war on. They won’t waste time or energy on punitive measures. Plus if Rowan’s right, PsyCorp will probably be a far better option than whatever is in store for the Auroran refugees. Not that I tell her that.

No, it’s in my best interests to keep my opinions to myself. Her fear of PsyCorp may be the only thing standing between me and discovery.

I dream again tonight—more of those fleeting sensations when you feel like you’re both asleep and awake. The images make perfect sense and yet no sense at all.

The barbed wire fence stretches long and taut between the posts. On either end, a guard tower rises up into the air, manned with soldiers armed with LS-3500s. They’re merely a gesture though, nothing more, and we all know it. There is no safety; not here, not anywhere.

On the post, a red light remains dull and unlit. The force fence is offline again. Just as well. No one really believed it was working anyway. Not after what happened before.

A siren screams, so shrill I can almost see it with my eyes, red and blinding. No, that’s the light from the post, suddenly come to life. I run to the fence and jerk my head back and forth, frantically searching for the threat, but no one is there. No one at all.

I’m inside now. The room is small and spare, with a table and chairs, a flag, and little else.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” someone asks me. It is a man in the tired green and grays of the Tellurian fleet. His face looks as tired as the clothes he’s wearing, the smudge of dirt on his face matching the dirt on his uniform.

“What choice do I have?”

“There’s always a choice. Even in the darkest hour, we still have the freedom to choose.”

He’s trying to be encouraging, but I can’t help laughing at the blatant lie. I shake my head. “Not me.”

The man nods, accepting my decision. His eyes are full of resignation. “I’m sorry. You know that, right?”

I laugh, the sound bitter and hard. “Save your apologies for your maker. You’ll need them.”

The scene changes again and now I’m in some kind of bunker, all gray and concrete and hard.

“Lia. Lia, sweetie, please!”

The woman presses against the glass, her eyes pleading and scared. She is beautiful, though her blonde hair is lank and greasy, and black circles ring her eyes. As I watch, her body seems to shrink in on itself until her clothes hang off her form in limp folds. A yellowish cast comes over her skin, and I know she will not last much longer.

“I don’t know what they told you, but it’s not true. Look in my eyes—you know me! You know what I say is true.”

“I know,” I tell her, resting my hands gently on the other side of the glass from hers. “I know.”

In a way, she’s right, and it’s that understanding that takes my heart apart every time.

Suddenly the glass is gone, and she’s right there. I reach up to touch her face, my hands trembling as I cradle her papery skin.

Fangs explode from her mouth. Her hands twist in my hair, an unearthly howl rising from her throat, and then she lunges—

I wake up screaming.

I’m so loud that when I get my bearings back, I think I must have woken half the cargo bay. I haven’t though, the majority of people still unmoving in their cots. Lots of people suffer from nightmares here; we’ve learned to sleep through the ruckus. A handful of people near me are awake though, a few glaring at me, but most with pity in their eyes. I nod at them as if to say,
I’m sat
, and force myself to lie down again. Only I can’t stop trembling, the images painfully clear in my head rather than fading the way dreams quickly do. Suddenly the cot dips. I sit up, eyes narrowing as I make out a flash of red in the faint glow of the night lights.

“Kaeti?”

“It’s okay, Lia,” she whispers, her small hand touching my cheek. “I have bad dreams, too.”

I’m dumbstruck. I have a nightmare, and it’s Kaeti, little Kaeti, coming to comfort me? I should send her back to Lela and her cot, but I don’t. I just lie back down with her curled up in my arms.

It helps.

When I wake she’s gone, and I can’t help wondering if Kaeti was as much a dream as everything else. I dreamed more after I slept again, but the images were faster that time, too fleeting and nonsensical to grasp. Still, they were more powerful than anything I’ve dreamt since coming on the station.

They’re just dreams
,
I tell myself firmly.
Nothing more
.

But they don’t feel like
just
dreams, not the next night or the night after. In fact, they don’t feel like dreams
at all
.

“Ha! Beat you, Michael!” I lean back against the door to his apartment, laughing between breaths as Michael pounds up beside me.

He slumps against the door with a wheeze. “No fair! You had a head start.”

I snort. “Whatever. I’m just faster than you, like I’ve always been. Loser buys ice cream, and
that
would be
you
,
” I tell him, poking my index finger into his chest for emphasis.

He grabs my arm and yanks, pulling me off balance. I shriek and clutch at his shoulders as he laughs. Even when I get the better of him, Michael always seems to find a way to turn the tables on me. It’s one of things I like about him.

Hitting the door control, Michael loops an arm around my shoulders and walks me inside. “Alright, Li-Li, you’ll get your ice cream. Just let me change my shirt first.”

I grab a glass of water and say hi to Taylor while he disappears into the bedroom. The sound of Teal’s shrieks immediately follows, and I grin. Michael is shaking his head when he comes out. “Don’t go in there,” he warns. “If you go in, you may never find your way out again.”

Before I can ask what he means, Taylor interrupts. “Michael, you never took the trash out to the recycler.”

“Aw, Gran, can’t you see Lia’s here? I’ll do it later.”

“I think Lia can wait ten minutes.”

“Oh, yeah, I can wait,” I agree with a mischievous smile.