Chapter 2

HOW FAR IS TOO FAR? HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO SAVE A WORLD YOU’VE ALREADY LOST? WHAT SINS WOULD YOU COMMIT? WOULD YOU GIVE UP YOUR LIVES? WOULD YOU SACRIFICE YOUR CHILDREN? WOULD YOU SEND AWAY YOUR FUTURE IN THE HOPES OF SAVING IT? AT WHAT POINT DOES THE END JUSTIFY THE MEANS?

-SKIPPER NOBLE KILLA MITTONE, ON COMBAT, TACTICS, AND THE BURNING SKY, PG 17.

.•° ✿ °•.

The steel halls that defined us weren’t warm; they didn’t nurture; they weren’t home. Home was big open spaces. Home was fresh smells and bright skies and crisp winds.

I grew up amongst berries and wheat, I’d make imaginary paths through the fields as the afternoons drew on, grinning maniacally and proudly while mapping out every single twist and turn I wrote in, feeling so exceedingly clever when I found my way back home. For all the clinical utilitarianism of the world as it was now, at least that was one skill I could still use.

I padded down three flights of stairs to the recreation deck and pushed out the heavy bulkhead door with my shoulder because my hands certainly couldn’t have managed it. There were joys beyond this bulkhead that drew such a smile to my youthful face.

And I loved the smell of bromine.

Rationally, I knew that I shouldn’t have, it was just a chemical in the water to keep it pure and associations like that were foolish at best and childish at worst. Foolish as it may have been though, the pool was one of my favorite parts of the station; I loved every single thing about it; I loved the water on my skin; I loved the heat exchanges above that felt as close as we ever got to sunlight; I loved that even with several hundred people here at any one time, it never felt crowded owing to the cavernous size of the space.

There wasn’t all that much left of humanity, but when the pool filled up, it was easy to forget that.

I glanced over the tables for anybody obviously waiting for a Skipper to appraise them, but my search came up empty. What would that even look like, anyway? What did a Skipper candidate look like? I knew how they acted - I saw no overly eager teenagers looking to save the world, for example. There were no stodgily pragmatic students sneaking their way into the vetting process just to criticize the work we did - and we did have to deal with those sorts of protests, disgustingly. But I had no idea what someone like this was supposed to look like. I should have asked Laurent.

But I guess I’d get my swim, after all. For a time.

.•° ✿ °•.
“Cadence?” I didn’t recognize the voice, and I only even heard it in the first place from the far end of the lap pool because I was a Skipper. My violet eyes scanned the artificial horizon, the far end of the gigantic pool hazed from the fumes of the chemicals rising off the warmed surface. Tattered plastic deck chairs and the relaxed and weary masses peppered the view and for a moment I couldn’t pinpoint the source of my name. Then I saw her. A figure that bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. She wasn’t dressed to swim; she was wearing a figure-hugging black dress that told me two things very certainly.

1. i.) She wanted to impress someone

2. ii.) She had no idea what job she was applying for if she came dressed that way.

I disappeared beneath the surface of the water and emerged only once I was at the edge of the swirling

liquid closest to where she was standing. Up close, she was definitely attractive; she had a piercing through her lip and one through her eyebrow - there was nobody on this station that could have installed those, but that didn’t mean self-expression didn’t exist - and her cherry red hair fell down one side of her face, circling round to a semi-circular pixie cut, with the opposite side of her head completely shaved. Maybe she’d had an implant recently, but I didn’t see the scar. Maybe she was just very cute.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she professed awkwardly, her voice in a strange and warbly pitch, like maybe I intimidated her. I pulled myself up out of the water as she talked, drips of communal water running down from my hair to my chest to my very swollen hip area and down my legs, gathering in a puddle at my feet.

“Towel please.” I looked up at her with an expression I wanted to be serious and professional, although given the two-and-a-half-foot difference in our stature that was unlikely. I probably sounded less ‘adult warrior of the human race’ and more ‘please help, Mom.’ She looked like she’d been dazzled for a moment but caught herself impressively quick. Clearly, she’d never seen a Skipper in person before.

I toweled off and we sat together. She introduced herself as Lilt, and we talked about the pool, because I was the last person on this station to be qualified to interview new recruits. We were so lucky to have the space, honestly; most stations wouldn’t have been so accommodating - what we called the pool really only had a function for recreation as secondary.

“Well, the main reactors have three banks of coolant,” I explained, happy to focus on it rather than me, “one in active use, one bank being purified, and the third bank waiting to be moved into place on weekly rotation - and that’s this, that’s our pool.” I gestured, as if she hadn’t grown up on this station in the first place. She had to be forty-five, which was certainly not the age range of our recruiting stock.

Not that it mattered for a Skipper.

“I guess we make the best of it,” I mused. “The pool? Or the situation, I guess. We just seem to be entirely unwilling to have our spark go out.” Her head cocked to one side, falls of scarlet hair tipping accordingly like water running over a smooth stone.

“I know you, Cadence,” she said, sure but cautious.

“Well, I’d think so,” I shrugged. “The Skipper rosters are made public, and- “

“No-no,” she cut me off and shook her head, waggling a finger from one side to the other. “I asked for you by name when I saw you on the roster. I thought it had to be a coincidence at first because it doesn’t seem possible. But I know you!”

My eyes narrowed and the little clouds in my violet irises focused in her face. She knew me, but I didn’t know her - I’d have remembered someone named Lilt. And she was forty-five and I was clearly not.

“Your Mom and Dad’s names were Billie and Jane. Your Dad was Jane, and your Mom was Billie, and I used to think that was the most incredible thing. You sat three rows in front of me on prac days, and on remote days, you wouldn’t be able to have your picture anywhere but the bottom left quadrant, one up from the last row.”

What’s that feeling where your entire body is regulated and it’s literally impossible for you to sweat, but you feel the prickling pinch of perspiration anyway? Oh. Cold sweat. Right. I mean, she could have known that information from anywhere; there were detailed files on all of us because the public had to trust in who we were. But that was so specific.

“Who are you, Lilt? I don’t know anybody by that name; I didn’t know anybody by that name even when I was in school.”

“How’s that even possible?” Lilt mused under her breath, like she hadn’t heard a word I said. “How is it possible that you’re here? You died, Cadence. You burned when the sky fell. Your whole family did. And you haven’t aged a day either - if anything you look younger. How is that even possible?”

Oh boy.

Oh boy indeed.

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Lilt, and this can’t be the place to talk about it. Come with me.” It wasn’t a request.

I stood up from my chair and set the towel down on the table, stretching my arms up above me to work out the cramps and kinks from swimming. Little movements happened in the exposed joints of my elbows, channels and sockets that were disconcertingly visible to the naked eye, like those on a child’s doll. Her eyes tracked everything I did. Curious, maybe? Or analytical. Working things out?

The right thing to do would be to take her to Skipper Command and have her educated on the dangers of espionage... even the unwilling type. Loose lips and all.

What I did was take her to my room. Who the heck was this woman?