‘General, you don’t understand.’
‘Tamane.’ The gun bites into my skin. ‘They told me what you did. I knew you were a killer and a traitor, but that… Thousands, Low. All of them young. More left sick for life.’
‘Please.’ I try to turn around. ‘Gabi—’
‘Ortiz!’
The voice comes from everywhere at once, magnified over the roar of the ships.
‘Ortiz!’ the voice barks, louder this time. ‘Stand down. That is an order.’
Automatic cannon beams break through the dust to fix upon targets. Rat and Bui raise their hands, staring up at the crafts above with hatred. Peg kneels by Falco, sobs shaking their chest.
We are surrounded.
Finally, the noise of the engines lessens as the lead fighter lands. A figure climbs from the hatch, followed by three elite soldiers. A woman with grey, tightly curled hair and the uniform of the Accord High Command.
Commander Beatrice Aline.
‘General Ortiz,’ she calls across the distance. ‘I hereby order you to stand down.’
I feel the gun tremble. ‘Gabi—’
‘I said don’t move!’ the General barks. ‘Commander Aline, this is the traitor Life W.P. Lowry. She’s the one who stole the formula used on Tamane.’ Her voice cracks. ‘Do you even know how many you killed, Low?’
Bodies beneath the sand, each one a line carved in the metal cell wall. Each one unable to be measured.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I do.’
‘I propose an accord,’ the General shouts. ‘I will give up Low, and you will revoke whatever termination order there is upon me, allow me to live freely, for however long I have left. You’ll let me look for a cure.’
Commander Aline smiles pityingly. ‘You are not in much of a position to negotiate, Ortiz.’
‘You want her alive.’ Desperation creeps into the General’s voice. ‘And she knows things, about the Seekers and the forces here that people are afraid of. She can control them!’
Fear, greater than the threat of the gun sweeps through me. ‘No,’ I begin.
‘Landgrubber stories,’ Aline dismisses, but beneath the cool expression is another, one of intense interest, almost hunger. The General’s instincts are right. The military know about the Ifs. And they want to know more.
‘Grant me clemency,’ the General says, ‘or I kill the traitor and everything she knows goes with her.’
Slowly, Commander Aline inclines her head.
‘Very well. I am willing to talk terms at least.’ She motions two of the soldiers forwards. ‘Stand by while we secure the prisoner.’
With a strange noise the General removes the gun from my skull. ‘You’ll live. You’ll be a prisoner, but you’ll live, damn you.’
I turn to grab her but beyond the two soldiers, I see Commander Aline raise an army revolver and know – too late – what is about to happen.
‘No!’ someone screams as she pulls the trigger.
* * *
I open my eyes. Yellow light falls thick into my vision, like bitter honey, illuminating endless sand and a heavy, unchanging sky.
There was somewhere else, before I was here. A place of terror, the sound of a ship crashing to earth, a scream. I feel my skull. My hand comes away coated with blood, but there is no pain.
The General… As I think her name there’s movement, a grey shape shifting in the distance. I walk towards it. With each step, hands worm their way out of the sand to collect the blood that drips from my skull. They are welcome to it.
At first I think the shape is Moloney trapped in his endless parade, but I stumble over a leg protruding from the edge of the dune and realise there are others here. I bend down and brush at the sand, uncovering black hair matted with blood, a face that saw too much too soon. The General.
I shake her, wanting her to wake up, to blink and laugh at me for crying, but she is gone. Through tears, I look up. The Charis is a wreck, shot to earth. As I watch, another piece of trash flutters through the shattered windshield. Silas is there, dead.
Further away, half-buried in the stained sand I find Rat and Bui, and Pegeen and Falco lying close together, as if in sleep.
Something kindles at the back of my mind, like the first wisp of smoke before a conflagration. Those lives, so bright, so vivid, tearing through the world like comets and this is their end?
And where are they? I start to shake. They have haunted my steps, they have knotted and unravelled the paths of my life, for this?
I scream for them to answer and the Charis catches fire. I scream again and the sand flames, turning to dark glass beneath my feet, and through it I see them all, the fallen of Tamane. When I look up, the yellow light is almost gone.
‘No.’ I stumble away. There are other paths, a hundred other choices, realities that are not this one. I don’t want this one. ‘No!’ I yell, as the light fades.
I stagger and fall. Hands catch me before I hit the ground. Hands that are gloved in blood.
The thing with my face stares back at me, her eyes like the web of matter between the stars. Every inch of her skin bears a line, bears a life. Slowly, she raises her hands, palms up. In one of them, Esterházy’s scalpel gleams silver. In the other is a small, bloodied bone dice.
There is always a choice.
I look into her eyes and understand. The lines are not lives taken, not a debt subtracted from the world. They are different realities, a thousand versions of every life, a line for every choice. No one could see all that and hold on to themselves.
There is a price, the Seeker said.
I take the scalpel.
Hel smiles, and rolls the dice.
* * *
The bullet strikes.
The world is still, as if embedded in the yellow light of the Suplicio. Then, with a cry, the General falls.
I look down, the light of the bullet still streaking my vision. She lies
