Under the Never Sky (25 page)

His eyes flew open. “Yes.”

She took a moment to think through the lyrics, and then to muster up the courage to tell him—everything—without looking away.

“How the stars shone. How sweet the earth smelled. The orchard gate creaked, and a footstep pressed on the sand. And she entered, fragrant as a flower, and fell into my arms. Oh, sweet kisses, lingering caresses. Slowly, trembling, I gazed upon her beauty. Now my dream of true love is lost forever. My last hour has flown, and I die, hopeless, and never have I loved life more.”

They reached for each other then like some force had pulled their hands together. Aria looked at their fingers as they laced together, bringing her the sensation of his touch. Of warmth and calluses. Soft and hard together. She absorbed the terror and beauty of him and his world. Of every moment over the past days. All of it, filling her up like the first breath she’d ever taken. And never had she loved life more.

Chapter 27
ARIA

W
hen she went back to the Navel with Perry, only forty-seven minutes remained on the time counter. Roar was at the control table with Marron. She had a vague notion of them speaking together quietly, and of Perry pacing behind the couch. She couldn’t focus on anything beyond the numbers on the screen.

Mom,
she pleaded silently.
Be there. Please be there. I need you.

Perry and I need you.

She expected fanfare when the counter reached zero. An alarm or some sort of noise. There was nothing. Not even a sound.

“I have the two files here,” Marron said. “Both stored locally on the Smarteye.”

Marron pulled them up on the wallscreen. One file had a date and a timer on it. The readout showed twenty-one minutes of recorded time. The other was labeled SONGBIRD
.

Aria didn’t have any memory of Perry joining her on the couch or taking her hand. She didn’t know how she hadn’t noticed. Now that she did, he felt like the only thing keeping her from drifting off the couch.

They’d decided to check the files before trying to contact Lumina. Aria asked to see the recording first. This was the file they both needed. Barter for Talon. Evidence that would clear her name. Then she braced herself for fire and Soren. For the sounds of Paisley dying. She couldn’t believe she actually
wanted
it to be there.

A smoldering forest appeared on the wallscreen. Paisley’s panicked voice burst across the room. Images Aria had seen through her eyes played out on the screen. Her feet blurring beneath her. Flashes of Paisley’s hand linked with hers. Shuddering images of fire and smoke and trees. When it came to Soren grabbing Paisley’s leg, Perry spoke at her side. “You don’t have to watch all of it.”

She blinked at him, feeling like she’d stepped out of a trance. There were still six minutes left, but she knew how the recording ended. “That’s enough.”

The wallscreen went dark and silence came. They had the recording. It should have felt more like a victory, but Aria felt like crying. She could still hear the echo of Paisley’s voice.

“I need to see the other file,” she said.

Marron selected “Songbird.” Lumina’s face took up most of the wallscreen. Her shoulders reached from one end of the room to the other. Marron adjusted the image to half the size, but she remained larger than human.

“That’s my mother,” she heard herself say.

Lumina smiled at the camera. A quick, nervous smile. Her dark hair was fastened as she always wore it, pulled back from her face. Behind her there were rows of shelves with labeled boxes. She was in some sort of supply room.

“This is strange speaking to a camera and pretending it’s you. But I know it’s you, Aria. I know you’ll be watching this and listening.”

Her voice was loud, everywhere in the room. She reached up and smoothed the collar of her doctor’s smock.

“We’re in trouble here. Bliss has suffered serious damage in an Aether storm. The Consuls estimate forty percent of the Pod has been contaminated, but generators are failing and the number seems to be climbing every hour. The CGB has promised help. We’re waiting for them. We haven’t given up. Neither should you, Aria.

“I wanted to tell you when it happened, but the CGB shut down our link with other Pods. They don’t want panic spreading. But I found a way, I hope, to get this message to you. I know you must be worried.”

Aria’s heart had stopped beating. Lumina sat back. Her hands were offscreen but Aria knew they’d be folded in her lap.

“I need to tell you something else, Aria. Something you’ve wanted to know about for so long. My work.” She sent a fleeting smile toward the camera. “You must be happy to hear that.

“I have to begin with the Realms. The CGB created them to give us the illusion of space when we were forced into Pods during the Unity. They were only meant to be copies of the world we left behind, as you know, but the possibilities proved to be too enticing. So we gave ourselves the ability to fly. To travel from a snowcap to a beach with a single thought. And why feel pain if you don’t have to? Why feel the brunt of real fear if there’s no danger of becoming hurt? We increased what we deemed good and removed the bad. Those are the Realms as you know them.
Better than Real,
as they say.”

Lumina stared at the camera a few moments. Then she reached forward, pressing something beyond the camera’s view. A colorful scan of the human brain appeared in a quadrant over her left shoulder.

“The central area in blue is the oldest portion of the brain, Aria. It’s called the limbic system. It controls many of our most basic processes. Our drive to mate. Our comprehension of stress and fear and reaction to it. Our quick decision-making capability. We say a gut reaction, but actually these reflexes come from here. Simply put, this is our animal mind. Over generations in the Realms, the usefulness of this part of our brain has vastly diminished. What do you think, Daughter, happens to something that goes unused for time too long?”

Aria let out a sob, because this was her mother. This was how she’d always taught her, asking her questions. Letting her form her own answers.

“It’s lost,” Aria said.

Lumina nodded as though she’d heard her. “It degenerates. This has catastrophic consequences when we do need to rely on instinct. Pleasure and pain become confused. Fear can become thrilling. Rather than avoid stress, we seek it and even revel in it. The will to give life becomes the need to take it. The result is a collapse of reason and cognition. Put simply, it results in a psychotic break.”

Lumina paused. “I have spent my life studying this disorder, Degenerative Limbic Syndrome. When I began my work two decades ago, incidents of DLS were isolated and minor. No one believed it would amount to a real threat. But in the past three years the Aether storms have intensified at an alarming rate. They damage our Pods and cut off our link to the Realms. Generators fail. Backups fail. . . . We’re left in dire situations that we’re incapable of handling. Entire Pods have fallen to DLS. I think you can imagine, Aria, the anarchy of six thousand trapped people who have come under this syndrome. I see it around me now.”

She looked away from the camera for a moment, hiding her face.

“You will hate me for what I will say next, but I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again. And I can’t hold this knowledge from you anymore. My work has led me to research Outsiders in search of genetic solutions. They don’t have the dangerous response we do to stress and fear. In fact, what I’ve seen is the reverse effect. The CGB makes arrangements for us to bring them into our facility. That’s how I met your father. I work with Outsider children now. It’s easier for me after what happened.”

Aria’s heart tightened and tightened, twisting, the pain unbearable.

This couldn’t be happening.

She was not an Outsider.

It couldn’t be true.

Lumina reached up, pressing her fingers to her lips as if she couldn’t believe what she’d said. Then she brought her hands back down. When she spoke again, her voice was hurried and raw with emotion.

“I never viewed you as being inferior in any way. The Outsider half of you is the part I love most. It’s your tenacity. Your curiosity about my research and the Realms. I know your fire comes from that part of you.

“You’ll have a thousand questions, I’m sure. What I haven’t shared is for your own protection.” She paused, giving the camera a teary smile. “And it’s always better, isn’t it, when you discover answers on your own?”

Lumina reached forward, ready to shut off the recording. Her pained expression filled the screen. She hesitated and sat back, her small shoulders shifting nervously, her petite frame rocking, like she couldn’t stop herself. Seeing her that way, tears streamed from Aria’s eyes.

“Do me a favor, Songbird? Sing the aria for me? You know which one. You sing it so beautifully. Wherever I am, I know I’ll hear it. Good-bye, Aria. I love you.”

The screen went dark.

Aria had no limbs.

No heart.

No thoughts.

Perry appeared in front of her, his eyes flashing with rage and hurt. What had just happened? What had Lumina just said? She studied Outsider
children
?

Like
Talon
?

Perry picked up the small coffee table, upending the vase of roses. With a guttural cry, he hurled the table at the wallscreen. The vase broke first with a hollow pop at her feet. Then the screen shattered with a terrible explosion of glass.

Long after he’d left, shards still rained on the floor.

She watched her mother’s message three more times in the upstairs common room. Marron stayed with her, patting her knee and making soft comforting sounds.

She looked down at the handkerchief wadded in her hand. Her heart ached, like it was ripping inside of her. The pain only seemed to get worse.

“It happened in Ag 6,” she said to Marron. “This thing. DLS.” Aria remembered Soren’s wide, glazed eyes as he’d stared at the fire. How intent Bane and Echo had been. How even Paisley had been afraid the trees might fall on her. “The only difference is that we shut off on purpose that night.”

Aria pressed her eyes closed, fighting the image of the chaos in Ag 6 on a grand scale. A Pod-wide riot where her mother was. A thousand Sorens starting fires and ripping off Smarteyes. What chance did Lumina have, between the Aether and DLS?

Marron’s eyes were full of compassion. He looked worn from the day, his hair mussed, his shirt wrinkled and damp from when he’d held her and let her cry. “Your mother knew about this condition. She sent you this message. She had to have been prepared for something like this.”

“You’re right. She would have. She’s always prepared.”

“Aria, we can try the Smarteye now. If you’re ready, we can try getting you into the Realms. We might be able to reach her.”

She nodded to Marron quickly, her eyes filling again. She wanted to see her mother. To know she was alive, but what would she say? Lumina had kept so much from her. She’d kept Aria from knowing herself.

She was half Outsider.

Half.

She felt that way. Like half of her had just disappeared.

Marron brought her the Smarteye. Aria’s hands shook as she held it. “What if there’s nothing? What if I can’t get her?”

“You can stay here as long as you like.”

He said it so quickly, so readily. Aria looked into his round, kind face. “Thank you.” She couldn’t speak the next question that came to her mind.

What if I find out she took Talon?

She needed to know. Aria placed the Smarteye over her left eye. The device pulled uncomfortably tight on her skin. She saw the two local files on her Smartscreen. Soren’s recording. Her mother’s message.

She ran through the mental commands to bring up the Realms as Marron monitored everything on the palette on his lap.

WELCOME TO THE REALMS! flashed across her Smartscreen, followed by BETTER THAN REAL!

After a few moments, another message appeared.

ACCESS DENIED

She took the Eye off quickly, not wanting to see those words. “Marron, we failed. I’m not going to go home. Perry’s not getting Talon back.”

He squeezed her hand. “It’s not the end of the road yet. It didn’t work for you, but I have something else in mind.”

Chapter 28
PEREGRINE

T
he Croven were chanting when Perry strode out to the roof. He braced the rail with his good hand and looked out across the pine forest, listening to the distant ringing of their bells. His legs twitched with the need to run. To escape. Even now, with nothing between him and the sky, he felt trapped.

It couldn’t be true. He had blamed himself for Talon’s kidnapping. He’d taken the Smarteye, and the Dwellers had come after him. Now he wondered—was it possible the Dwellers had Talon for an
experiment
? Was he suffering at the hands of Aria’s mother? A woman who stole innocent
children
?

He yanked an arrow from his quiver and fired it toward the Croven, not caring that he was too far. That he couldn’t even see them. Cursing, he loosed one arrow after another, letting them sail over the wall and past the treetops. Then he slumped against the elevator box, cradling his throbbing hand.

He spent the rest of the night staring at the Aether, thinking of Talon and Cinder and Roar and Liv. How everything was about searching and
missing.
How none of it was coming together the way it should. By dawn, with daylight creeping to meet the Aether, all he could think about was Aria’s face as her world had shifted around her. It had torn her open to learn she was like him. He’d scented it. Her temper had slammed into him, fire and ice, shooting into his nose. Straight to his gut.

He couldn’t have slept more than an hour when Roar came up to the roof. He perched on the rail with the cat’s balance of an Aud, no trace of fear at the huge drop behind him. He crossed his arms, a cold edge in his eyes.