Lightless (39 page)

All up and down the hallway the holographic terminals had started to glow red.

“What's the point?” Ivan asked, and Althea dared to take her attention from Mattie to glance over at him. He looked exhausted, on the verge of collapse, and it was clear that Mattie was the only thing holding him up, but she saw sympathy in his face—sympathy for her.

“Althea,” he said, his voice nearly gentle. “The System is gone. The crew is dead. We're the only ones left. You, me, and Ananke. Ananke wants you to let us go. There's no more System to obey and no more crew to be loyal to.”

She did not lower the gun, but she listened. Ivan lied, and Ivan manipulated. She knew it was true. But she, too, was very tired.

“I know you weren't aiming for my heart before,” Ivan said. “You only grazed me on purpose.”

Mattie had not said a word. Althea knew that that was another sign of a con, that Mattie was waiting for his partner to do his work, not interfering. Or perhaps this wasn't a con at all and Mattie's silence was respect for Ivan, who knew Althea better than he did.

For a moment Althea weighed things, on one side loyalty to the System, revenge for Domitian and Gagnon and Ida Stays, and all the things Althea had lost, and on the other no more corpses on the
Ananke,
and no more blood on her hands, and Ivan, somewhere, safe and alive.

Althea lowered her gun.

“What do I do now?” she asked. She did not care that she sounded lost, because she was.

“You have to stay with Ananke,” Ivan said, and Mattie glanced sharply at him but did not say anything. “Ananke needs someone with her. Someone to guide her.”

“Someone that isn't you,” Althea said with bitterness, but Ivan accepted it.

Althea looked up into Ananke's camera. She could not help it, nor could she stop the sudden surge of fear.

Ananke was her creation. She should not be afraid of her own creature. She should love Ananke. And she did. And Ananke could not be left alone.

“Of course,” Althea said, and prayed to whatever god could hear that Ananke would not hear the fear in her tone. “I'll stay with Ananke.”

Ivan knew what she feared, of that much Althea was certain. She could see it in his face.

Mattie had put his gun away. He shrugged Ivan's arm up higher on his shoulder, and when it became clear that neither Althea nor Ivan had anything more to say, he started forward with a muttered “Come on.”

Althea pressed herself against the wall to let them pass and stood at the door to the docking bay to watch as Mattie guided Ivan past the disemboweled and dead
Annwn
and into his ship. She stood in the hall and watched them go, watched them through the doors of the docking bay as their ship lifted off and out of Ananke, stood and watched until they were gone.

The holographic projectors had all been turned on, and when Althea turned around, she saw that Ananke had placed one image of herself in each one of them, the mixed features of Althea and Mattie with Ivan's eyes standing at even intervals up and down the hall, all facing Althea.

Ida's body was rotting in her quarters, Domitian's body still bled in the white room, the thin shredded remains of Gagnon still appeared to circle Ananke's black heart, and Althea stood in the ship's spine all alone, standing with Ananke's thousand deified eyes all trained on her.

She took a deep breath and made her voice even.

“It's just us now,” said Althea, and Ananke said,

YES.

I'd like to thank everyone who offered me support and friendship while I was writing this novel, whether because they knew what I was doing or because they simply accepted that I did things like lock myself up alone in a room for hours at a time and this was probably normal. This gratitude especially extends to my family and my college housemates, Margaret, Lorraine, Jack, Kaitlin, and Fiona, who have a much-appreciated and very healthy respect for my shut door.

Thanks to everyone who helped me in the creation of the book: my sisters and my parents, especially my mother, who taught me so much about writing; Ryan, Shanelle, and Naomi, who let me talk at them about what fresh terrible things I was going to do to imaginary people; Sarah, who is smart and talented and absolutely not standing behind me with a gun to my head as I type this; my agent, Hannah; and my editor, Tricia.

Thanks also to the professor of my thermodynamics class in sophomore year. Without the confusion and crippling existential despair I felt during this class, Ananke would not exist. (Which is to say, professor, that I enjoyed your class a lot.)

And lastly, I'd like to extend my sincere thanks to the government organizations monitoring my Internet usage for not arresting me for extensively Googling “how many nuclear bombs would it take to make the Earth uninhabitable,” “death by cut throat,” and “psychology of early childhood development” all in one very ambitious afternoon.

C. A. H
IGGINS
writes novels and short stories. She was a runner-up for the 2013 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing and has a B.A. in physics from Cornell University. She currently lives in New Jersey.