An End

Even in the cold, the lace of the silver began to bristle in fine patterns across his skin, a disconcerting screen door gooseflesh. It danced, disappeared only to re-emerge in another place. It was searching for a foothold.

“How much longer?”

He shook his head against the meeting place of neck and shoulder.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

He looked into the eyes of the little girl who, almost two decades ago, had waved at him each day from behind a wrought-iron gate. They cage us, in so many ways, in so many ways.

Decades?

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“Liar.”

“Liar.” His voice was mocking. His impersonation made her smile: lips parted in that liquid way. His eyes moved from hers to her lips, back to eyes. Not a signal, but a signal.

“Lily Lily.”

“Hunter Hunter.”

Breathing became as one.

They kissed and laughed in the vacuum chair, spinning lazily on its mount, revealing in turn the cracked systems display, the projector that emitted static and coordinates that no one wanted to acknowledge, the dead form of an angel, chest an angry confusion of wires, stripped of parts, featureless face surveying the action with dull, dusty eyes.

It would all end soon, but for now, they kissed.

Screaming, but not his own, not his, not its. Screaming from without, and it was warmer, and then a jolt that cracked, and it was warmer, warmest, painfully hot. Sudden, violent, an end to the scream: things broke as they hit the world.

The near was the worst.

Berlin pulled himself from the vacuum chair. His wound had freshened; fluid over tacky, still black, still staining.

Task moaned. The nose of the vessel was crumpled into snow.

snow?

Elle had been impaled. Tickings of interior biomechanics: its hands flexed on nothing. It tried to speak, but there was no chest, no throat.

Out of the chair, Berlin braced himself between wall and ceiling. Gravity, but it felt like floating. He maneuvered hand-over hand to Task’s cockpit bubble. There was blood.

The air burned.

“What—”

“Don’t try to talk.”

“Elle—”

“It’s dead.”

The pilot’s face collapsed into an emotion. “Let me—”

“You don’t want to see it. How badly are you hurt?”

“Legs are broken.”

“Okay.”

The cant of the vessel would make the extraction difficult. Berlin stood precariously on the ceiling of the cockpit, Task locked into the chair above him.

“Get ready.”

“For what?”

Berlin palmed the release mechanism and Task fell into his arms in a ball of misshapen limbs and his own screams. Berlin caught the smaller man, lowered him to the floor as quickly and gently as possible. The tears streaming down Task’s face indicated nothing of speed or tenderness.

“We’re upside down.”

“No shit.”

“Are you sure Elle isn’t—”

“I’m sure.”

As if to prove the point, sparks ignited on the shattered chestplate of the near. There was fire.

“God damn—”

“This will hurt.” Berlin hefted Task over his shoulder, the pilot biting his lower lip and trying to muffle the agonized wail between the thin flesh of his cheeks. He struggled over ceiling-mounted displays to the chamber exit.

“Will the belly port work if we’re upside down?”

“It should.”

“Well, we’re on fire. It’d better.”

They abandoned the vessel and the artificial co-pilot to flames.

The siege machines opened fire, and the planet below was raped of atmosphere.

Just a tiny vessel, just a sliver of silver and black. The children were terrified, or as terrified as they could be given that they could not understand what was happening. Lily felt them, far away, yet the closest minds she could touch. There were other consciousnesses buried in the vessel, but she knew that they wouldn’t wake up until it was safe and they were far away from the enemy fleet.

Fighters scrambled from the worldships, but too late. The escape ship phased and it became

cold, the coldest, if she could still feel, and she knew she could, although she didn’t know where she was or how she had gotten there. The containment sphere had solidified into metal and she had been launched from Hannon’s globe.

collision with..?

Snow.

She sat up. The sky was blue. When had she last—

Black smoke from across the ice plain. A vessel embedded into white. A figure on top, hunched over, pulling at something…Two figures. Fire spread.

Maire looked at her own personal space. A Maire-shaped imprint sat within a larger melted circle. She stood.

The fire and the vessel and the fire within the vessel weren’t far away. She walked.

She paused, tried to find that [something] within, but it was gone for now. Hiding the silver in the host body had been an accomplishment of great beauty. Unfortunately, she was tapped for now. She couldn’t kill.

She walked.

It fell into the tube. Heaven was below. Stranger had been talking.

“You’re Hannon, aren’t you?” Zero asked.

Stranger said nothing.

The vessel slowed in the pipeline. There was a great hiss as it cracked in half, shielding realigned. The cockpit chamber ceiling lifted from the walls and slid back, revealing the now-vertical nacelles, the tube stretching forever above them.

how long?

The landing platform approached.

“Are you?”

“I’m not going to—”

“Jesus Christ—”

Stranger/Hannon’s face went blank. “Who?” Innocent. Unwashed.

“Show me.”

“Show you what?”

“Your chest.”

Hannon nodded, undid the clasps on the front of his uniform. Pulled the sides back. Turned to Zero.

you took the blue out of the sky my whole life changed when you said goodbye