Stardust

I’m a murderer, even when I play. Peter would be proud of me.

—Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

     The DC safehouse location was, as best as July and Cass’s map triple-checking could determine, a small house on the very outskirts of DC. It was unassuming at first glance; a single-story affair with a cleanly-swept porch and ambiguously tan vinyl siding, set deep into a private driveway and sequestered from its neighbors by a large, empty grass lot.

     July, after checking the house number with Cass one final time, strode up the front steps and rang the doorbell three times in a row. From inside, a dog started yapping in a squeaky frenzy, followed by a loud scattering sound and several thumps.

     “It’s three in the morning,” Jasper pointed out from behind her.

     “So?”

     “So, they’re probably not—“

     Whatever wrong assumption he was about to express, it was cut off by someone from inside shouting “Who is it?” The dog had shut up, thankfully.

     “We’re from the Resistance,” July said.

     There was a long pause, long enough that July started to sweat over whether she’d gotten the wrong house. Then the person inside said “No, you’re not.”

     “Yeah, I am,” July said indignantly. With effort, she began wracking her brain, sifting through the dregs of Tyler’s brief back on the Amsterdam platform, and rattled off “14, 32, 80, red, blue, 50—“

     The door opened. Illuminated by a halo of fluorescent lamplight, a dark-skinned woman with an oddly familiar angular face stood in the doorway, cradling a small, white, fluffy dog against her chest like an infant. She was wearing a baggy t-shirt full of holes and a satin bonnet, and when she saw the ragtag group awkwardly loitering on her doorstep, her eyes narrowed in a way that set July’s anxiety skyrocketing again.

     “Come in,” she said, short and clipped, and they did.

     Once the door shut behind them, Cass, always the suck-up, saluted and said “Private Trehan, first-class, squadron 13B. Is Captain Testa available?”

     “They’re not here,” the woman said. Before anyone could respond, she turned on her heel and disappeared through a doorway on the left of the hall, leaving them to lurk aimlessly in the entrance.

     Lake began taking his shoes off, looking like an ungainly flamingo as he teetered on one foot to pull off the too-small sneakers he’d snagged from their pit stop. July quickly looked away from him before they made eye contact, and instead cast her desperate gaze toward Cass. She was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, and her stony demeanor did not break when she met July’s eyes.

     “What should we do?” July murmured, but Cass did not respond, just quirked her eyebrows slightly in toward her nose, eyes flitting toward the doorway the woman had disappeared through.

     Just then, Lake brushed past her and disappeared through that very same doorway.

     Heart racing uncomfortably, July looked back and forth between Cass and Jasper (who was also taking his boots off), desperately trying to send psychic cries for instructions through sheer force of will alone. When she continued to receive no help to speak of, she steeled herself and marched through the threshold.

     The room she entered was a small kitchen, featuring clean white marble countertops, bright red walls, and a black-and-white tile pattern on the floor; Lake was sitting at a stool by the island in the middle of the room, while the woman hovered over a shiny squat stove. A bright red kettle sat on one of the burners, occasionally spurting small wisps of steam from its spout.

     From somewhere out-of-sight, the sound of little doggy nails clacked against the tile. A fluffy muzzle poked around the corner of the island, followed quickly by the rest of the dog, which trotted up to July’s boots and began sniffing them enthusiastically.

     “Private Wright,” July managed lamely, with a halfhearted salute. The dog continued to whuffle at her feet.

     “Olive,” the woman responded. “I’m not going to call you ‘private.’”

     “That’s fine,” July said. And it was fine—she felt oddly pleased at the statement. She didn’t even mind the dog, even though it smelled like wet farts.

     The kitchen was untidy but clean; various pieces of art lined the walls, photo collages and messy abstract paintings and framed documents July didn’t have the time to read, and the gleaming counters were scattered with knickknacks of all kinds—a wooden block holding a good dozen large knives, two small figurines of wrinkled dogs that proved on a second glance to be saltshakers, a painted wooden rack holding dozens of spices, a bright red toaster that exactly matched the shade of the kettle, various pot holders in different colors and patterns (many of them also dog-themed), and a good number of shiny metal implements that July could not determine the use of.

     Despite the clutter, there wasn’t a hint of dirt or a single crumb to be seen. With some embarrassment, July looked down at her boots, which were already shedding dried mud onto the sparkling tile, and her ears went hot.

     Cass and Jasper eventually filed in after her. The dog clacked its way across the tile to enthusiastically give them a good sniff as well, just as the kettle started whistling loudly and Olive took it off the stove. She poured its contents into a series of mugs sitting on the island and scooted one toward Lake, who cupped his hands around it like he was hiding a flame from the wind.

     Olive came around to hand each of the other three a mug; July’s was pastel pink and shaped like a cartoon cat, with two triangles coming off the edge to serve as ears. They poked into her face when she tilted it up to drink; the liquid in the mug was scalding hot and she quickly flinched away.

     “Has the strike team not arrived?” Cass said. July found it incredibly funny to see her standing to attention, ramrod-straight spine and ten seconds away from saluting, speaking in her most professional tone, all while awkwardly clutching a kitschy mug shaped like an owl.

     A loud, scraping noise rang out as Olive pulled one of the stools out from the island and perched on it, holding her own mug. She patted her lap; instantly the dog broke away from its mission to smell every inch of their clothes and jumped up into her lap, wiggling slightly as it settled. Her lips were pursed. “No. Do you have any idea what’s been going on this week?”

     “That’s a very broad statement,” Cass said, in a measured tone that July knew took a significant amount of willpower to maintain. “We have been traveling for several days now.”

     The two women maintained eye contact silently for several long moments. Behind Cass, Jasper coughed and shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.

     July cleared her throat and went to sit at the island across from Olive, making sure to keep at least one chair between herself and Lake. “You do work for the Resistance, right?”

     “I worked with them, yes.” Olive idly scratched behind the dog’s ears.

     July looked back at Cass. “There’s no point in being cagey.”

     It looked as though Cass was in severe pain. She drew her shoulders back, her lips pressed into a line so thin and tight her lips went pale and bloodless, but she did come to sit in-between July and Lake (thank fuck) and placed her mug on the counter in front of her before opening her mouth to speak.

     “There was a Dusty attack on our base,” Cass said. “We escaped during combat and have been attempting to reach the strike team ever since.”

     Olive nodded and took a long sip of her drink. (Experimentally, July brought her own mug back to her lips—the thin brown liquid inside had cooled slightly. She took a sip; it tasted like watered-down peppermint, but warmth spread through her chest as she swallowed, so she kept drinking it.)

     After a tense few seconds, Olive set her mug back down and said “Are you aware our government has cut off power to most of New York City in the wake of the attack?”

     “They what,” Lake said flatly.

     July’s heart dropped all the way down somewhere by her feet. Clumsily, feeling half-detached from her limbs, she pressed her fingers against the side of her mug, willing the warmth to creep from the cheap ceramic into her fingertips.

     “Power and water, yes,” Olive was saying. “That on top of the bombing—the op-eds have been scathing. No arrests have been made publicly, and very little information has come out of the blockade—“

     “The blockade,” Lake repeated, just as Jasper made a noise that reminded July of a horse. It would have been funny in any other situation.

     “A blockade is within expectations,” Cass said grimly. “Cutting off power to civilians, though—“

     “Human rights organizations are very concerned,” Olive said, voice oddly dry, “for what that’s worth, which isn’t much. There is a press conference scheduled for tomorrow morning, which I suggest we all watch together to determine next steps. I need to go back to bed.”

     As Olive gathered up her dog and her mug and excused herself, July felt very far away. She didn’t even bother to thank Olive, for either the information or the drink; she just sat there, dumbly, staring at the stove on the other side of the kitchen as if it held the secrets to the universe.

     “Sleep wherever you’d like,” Olive said just before she left.

     July was dimly aware of the others muttering in undertones and moving around the room, but she continued to stare into space without acknowledging them. At one point, someone touched her shoulder gently and said something, but she did not respond. The room eventually emptied.

     She sat there, in the dull, vacant silence, thinking very carefully and intentionally of nothing in particular, until her mug had gone entirely cold.

###

     When you returned to the endless corridor of doors, your sister was no longer there, nor was anyone else; it was your own kingdom once again, one that you roamed with a restless fervor, pacing along the cool floors in bare feet, up and down, up and down.

     You didn’t care to examine any of the doors at the moment, not the shining metallic ones that slid into the wall with a smooth click when you came near, not the beaten-down wooden doors peeling with chipped white paint whose doorknobs rattled loosely in worn-down cavities, not the twisted masses of wires that shied away like a living thing when you brushed by, and certainly not the wrought iron gate that followed you no matter how far down the hall you strode, pitted black metal reappearing cruelly in the corners of your eyes every few lengths.

     In your fretful haze, you almost missed it when you came across something you had never encountered before: a branch in the hallway.

     Ahead of you, the hallway continued as normal, stretching off into the horizon; to your side, in-between a glimmering brassy metal door with a carved lions-head handle and an unassuming plywood door painted dingy pastel blue, there was an archway.

     Beyond the arch was seemingly an extension of the very same hallway, a featureless tunnel lined with doors precisely like the one you stood in; the arch itself was a simple wooden construction, but on a close look, it was covered with tiny carvings that seemed, to your eye, very like words. When you tried to make them out, they slid off your mind with the feeling of a stunned bird slowly sliding down a glass window. You could not even tell what alphabet they were in.

     Perhaps it was its own kind of door, you thought. The hypothesis was weak, but you could not be expected to do any better.

     You squared your shoulders and walked through the arch.

     Very quickly, you came to another decision. This branch of the hallway ended abruptly; you hadn’t gone more than a few feet before you were confronted by a wall. A door was set into the dead end, a cool, entirely black plane, so dark it seemed to draw all light around it into itself, so black you could not make out anything on its surface apart from its endless void.

     With trepidation, you reached out and brushed your fingers against the black door; it was frighteningly chilly and creaked open at your touch, no need to find a doorknob.

     Without any understanding of how it happened, you realized you were on the other side of the doorway.

     Behind the door was a blank, featureless white room, and in the room was a man.

     The man had clean, slicked-back silver hair and a face that, to your eyes, was distinctly European in form; his cheekbones were high and striking, his nose was thin but prominent, and his light eyebrows all but disappeared into his skin. The sockets of his eyes were deep-set and lined with crows feet, and to your distress, the eyes set into them were entirely black, sclerae indistinguishable from pupil.

     Without quite meaning to, you took a step closer to him. He looked surprised.

     “Mary?” He tugged on the cuffs of his suit—a pure white affair, from the undershirt to the tie to the shoes—and straightened his jacket before taking a second look at you, those pits in his face narrowing slightly. “No. Forgive me, you look like someone else.”

     “I’m July,” you said, thoughtlessly.

     A tight-lipped smile spread across his face. Something about the way he did not show his teeth was disturbing to you, maybe more disturbing than if he had fully grinned. “I see,” and the deep, primal satisfaction in his voice made you think that he did see, and in fact, he saw something that you did not.

     “I—” you said, but there was no end to that sentence. You looked wildly over your shoulder, searching for the door you came through, but it wasn’t there. There was only the featureless, blindingly pure white walls of the room, no exits, no architecture of any kind.

     “It’s alright,” he said, his voice horrifyingly close; when you whipped back around to face him, you discovered that he was a hair’s breadth from you, so close you had to crane your neck back to look in his eyes.

     That was a mistake. When you met his eyes, you found yourself unable to look away, even as his cold fingers stroked the side of your cheek, a chilling wave of nausea radiating through your skin out from where he touched you.

     Up close, his jaw was covered by a thin layer of silver stubble, and the craters of his eyes were heavy-lidded and lined with even more wrinkles than you’d seen initially. There was a thin layer of silver hair dusting the back of his hand and disappearing up into the cuffs of his suit. His voice was breathy and low, almost comforting. Almost seductive.

     “You may call me John,” he said, “for now.”

     With that, he cupped your face in both hands. It sent shivers of disgust rolling through your body, made your hands tremor helplessly at your sides.

     “I want to go home,” you said, voice breaking in a way you found profoundly dysphoric. You could not understand, could not even begin to understand, why this man whipped your nervous system into an absolute frenzy. You could not even untangle what you were feeling in the moment.

     After a long stretch of gazing at your face, while your heart banged frantically against your ribs and cold sweat beaded from every one of your pores, he released you in more ways than physical. Gasping, you whipped your head around to search the walls, but they were still blank, still a featureless prison.

     “You may go,” he said, and suddenly his hands were on your shoulders and he shoved you to the ground. Laid flat out on your back, your head spun, your heartbeat skyrocketed; you tried to scramble to your feet immediately, but the floor was soft and tacky like warm putty, and it pulled and sucked at your limbs as you struggled.

     You were sinking.

     The warm, soft mass of the floor enveloped your body, pressing up against every private cranny of your flesh, crawling under your clothes and nestling against your skin as the nausea rose once again. You fruitlessly fought against the intrusion, but it crept into your ear canals, weighed down your limbs, pried your mouth open and packed it with shapeless weight, wiggled under your eyelids even as you squeezed them shut.

     Just before it fully claimed your face, you heard John say “But do come back soon.”

###

     July slept fitfully and terribly. She woke up in the bathtub, where she’d dragged herself a handful of hours prior in a miserable stupor, and found that her whole body ached and throbbed like an open wound.

     Wincing, she sat up and rubbed the back of her neck; after gingerly prodding it with her fingers, she determined there was a knot the size of a golf ball in the muscle at the base, just above where her shoulders met.

     She got up, took an excruciating piss, rinsed her mouth out, and went through a set of warm-up stretches, determinedly casting aside scattered mental images of doors and rooms and the man in the white suit that set her stomach churning. Nightmares were an everyday occurrence for her. It shouldn’t have been difficult to ignore them. She ended up needing to fixate on the framed cross-stitch on the bathroom wall to keep her mind occupied; it said “You Can't Tell Me What To Do… You're Not My Dog!” surrounded by little paw prints. There were an awful lot of rows of stitches, which she attempted to count as she went through her stretching routine, but kept losing track around the ninety-something mark.

     After a good fifteen or twenty minutes, July felt better. Not good, and in all honesty she probably needed like six more hours of sleep, but better. She rolled her shoulders one more time, gave her dog tags a quick rub with her thumb, and followed the sound of voices into the living room.

     The small room was packed. It took July several seconds to register there were more people squeezed onto the single couch and squatting on the thick patterned rug than she’d expected; in those few seconds, while the gears of her brain were still struggling to click forward a few notches, Axel sprung from the floor and accosted her with a massive bear hug and a squeal of her name at top volume.

     “Oh,” she said faintly, before he grabbed her face in both his hands (she flinched) and planted a passionate, wet kiss on her mouth.

     Everything was happening very fast. There were aliens on Olive’s couch—Aston curled up against Sage’s side in a way that seemed awfully childish, and even a little cute—and her captain was sitting on the living room floor, eating cereal out of a plastic bowl with cartoon characters on it.

     She could feel Cass’s eyes boring into her from across the room, and she didn’t even want to think about how Lake was reacting—she kept her eyes very carefully averted.

     Axel was chatting loudly in her ear while he clung to her, but she couldn’t bring herself to listen. She met Cass’s eyes over Axel’s shoulder, and Cass was holding Jasper’s hand, and Cass’s face was a stony mask—and July grabbed Axel’s shoulders and pulled him back somewhat to make eye contact with him.

     “I think we should talk somewhere else,” she said, very fast and very high-pitched. He looked thrown, but immediately shook it off with a wide grin.

     “Press conference is in twenty,” Olive said. She was sitting on the floor next to Teiddan with her own bowl of cereal, dog lying silently in her lap, and she looked entirely unconcerned.

     “I can make it quick,” Axel said, tossing July a wink, and she almost screamed in frustration. Instead, she yanked him after her by the hand, dragging him into the kitchen, and took a long, deep breath.

     July didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She wasn’t even sure what her goal was. Unfortunately, she was saved from having to consider her feelings and desires by Axel cupping her face with one hand, kissing her forehead gently, and immediately launching into conversation.

     “I missed you,” he said, still bearing that stupid, goofy grin. “We got here this morning, hell, only an hour ago? They said you were sleeping, I wanted to wake you up right away.”

     “Glad you didn’t,” July said quietly.

     He pulled her in for another hug, burying his face in her hair and taking a deep, heavy breath. “You smell good.”

     July doubted this. She carefully extricated herself from the hug and leaned against the island awkwardly. “I thought you might have… died.”

     “What?”

     She looked down at the countertop, tracing one gray marble swirl with a fingertip. “When you didn’t come back on time.”

     That got a laugh; July didn’t see what was so funny. “No, we got the wrong train. Aston spun us up about how he’s smarter than us and shit, but between you and me, if he had two brain cells he’d be twice as thick. Landed us in fucking Detroit, of all places, and then he broke into a goddamn train station to get the right schedule, and we had to drive to another station entirely to…”

     She was only half-listening, fixated on Axel now here and in the flesh—Axel with his ever-present smirk, his shock of bright-red curls fluffed up like a bird’s plumage and his mottled patches of freckles all over his body. One time, a couple of years ago, she’d gotten a marker and connected them like constellations as they lay in bed naked together, and they’d named every one. She couldn’t remember any of the names.

     There was a loud clatter from the other side of the kitchen. July glanced over, startled, and immediately regretted reacting; June was sitting with her back against one of the cabinets, beaming widely over a pile of jacks she’d just dumped on the floor.

     Axel didn’t seem to notice her jump—he was still going, talking about something Teiddan had done in Detroit. It didn’t matter. July was rapidly coming to the conclusion that none of this mattered, whatever “this” was.

     “I don’t think this is going to work,” she said, so lightly and evenly that she wasn’t even sure if she’d said it.

     She must have, though, because Axel stopped chatting and gave her a quizzical look. “This? Like, the mission?”

     “No.” A tired sort of headiness descended on July. She felt exhausted and dizzy and disconnected from her body; her mouth just kept on opening and spilling words out in a distant, quiet monotone, independent of her will. “You, me. Us. I don’t think this is working.”

     “Us,” he repeated, the grin slowly sliding off his face.

     There was a small thump, exactly like a rubber ball bouncing on linoleum. “Onesies,” June said.

     “I don’t think I want to be your girlfriend anymore,” July said.

     “Right.” His face was cool and emotionless. It was incredibly uncharacteristic for him, and she gnawed on her lower lip as she watched his face, anxiety rising in her gut.

     The silence was long, stretching out into multiple minutes, unbroken even by June’s nonsense; after a while, a small bud of relief began to bloom in her chest with the thought that maybe the worst was over. Maybe she’d said all she needed to say and they could part ways from here, Axel could nurse his wounded pride, and in weeks, months maybe, they could be friends again.

     This hope was soundly dashed when he finally said “You know, Cass said I should ask you about Lake.”

     “Twosies,” June said, accompanied by a giggle.

     July looked back down at the countertop, continued tracing the marble. Her head hurt. “I wish she hadn’t.”

     “Did you…” He trailed off, watching her face closely. She tried not to react, even when he made an illustrative lewd gesture, but it was hopeless with Axel. He knew her too well. “Fucking hell, July, you did. You did. How could you do that to me?”

     “I thought you were dead!” And she hadn’t, not really, but she hadn’t thought anything in the moment, not really. One hand drifted to her neck, gripped her dog tags and squeezed; they felt cool and damp in her palm.

     With a short, sharp, humorless bark of laughter, he flipped her off. “Oh yeah, real great fucking way to honor my memory, sleeping with the first guy you—“

     “No!” July stumbled over herself in her haste to get the words out, unsure what she even wanted to express to begin with. That it wasn’t like that? That Lake was a good guy, that nobody had been thinking of Axel at all? That it was all alcohol and adrenaline and the feeling of being a woman, a real one, a pretty girl in a pretty dress with a tall handsome stranger?

     It was pointless. Axel wouldn’t understand any of that. Feeling lame and helpless, squeezing her tags so tightly their blunt edges dug into her skin, July said “I didn’t… I was drunk.”

     “Great. Now you’re a fucking alcoholic and a slut.” He spat out that sentence with the most venom she’d ever seen from him. Even Dusties didn’t get that level of cruelty. It made her feel sick, and more than that, it sparked something truly incandescent in her gut.

     “Oh, fuck you,” July said, giddy with rage. “Fuck you! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—“ With each “fuck you,” she advanced on him slightly, her hackles raised, pouring poisonous fury into every syllable, until they were nose-to-nose, and that was when Axel shoved her.

     “Threesies!” June squealed.

     On some level, July had been waiting for this all conversation. It didn’t take any thought whatsoever; she tackled him to the floor and started trying to hit every inch of him she could reach, eyes burning and bile in her throat. Somehow, almost instantly, Axel rolled them both over so he was on top and pinned her to the floor by her wrists.

     This was unacceptable. July jackknifed up and smashed her head into his face; she felt something crunch against her forehead and he shouted “Fuck!” and wheeled back, clutching his nose, which spurted jets of bright red blood out from between his fingers.

     “Foursies,” June said; in the ringing silence that followed, Axel staring at her wordlessly as he panted and gripped his nose, the rubber ball hitting the floor was audible again.

     It had been ages since touching Axel made her feel this alive. She realized, with a vague detachment, that she was grinning manically as she watched Axel’s fingers drip with blood.

     “Fuck,” he repeated. July was breathing heavily, sitting up now; there was a deep heat in her gut and everything felt strangely sharp, like a weird clarity had descended over her. She didn’t feel calm. She felt vital. She felt vibrant. She felt like laughing.

     Axel got to his feet, still clutching his nose. “Fucking crazy bitch,” he spat, and then he left. From somewhere in the back of the house, July heard a door slam.

     The ball thumped against the floor again, followed by June grumbling “Aw, shoot.” July turned her head to look at her; the kid was pouting, having fumbled the round. June tossed the jacks, bright pink and shiny, back to the floor with another loud clatter.

     It would probably be the sane thing to regret that interaction.

     June, as July watched, tossed the ball to the floor and easily scooped up a jack before its bounce ended. “Onesies.”

     Hell, it would probably be the sane thing to go to Axel and apologize, not just for the broken nose, but for the broken trust.

     “Twosies,” June said, easily scooping up her double.

     The sane thing, if July was being extremely honest with herself, would probably involve getting back together with Axel and repairing all the damage she’d caused—he was a good guy.

     “Threesies.”

     July touched her face. When she brought her fingertips down, they came away red and wet. She popped one into her mouth; it tasted like iron, cool and tangy and delicious.

     June finally noticed her staring; she waved at July, all childish smiles and sticky-mouthed innocence. Despite herself, July waved back.

     June preened visibly as she tossed the ball again. “Foursies.”

     She’d need to get up soon. Everything was falling apart around her, and she needed to watch that press conference, to understand how fast it was unraveling and what she needed to do. But for the moment, July just wanted to sit with the memory of her dead sister and watch her play jacks.

     June bounced the ball and, with a grin so wide it must have hurt her face, scooped up all five remaining jacks in one go. “Fivesies!” she crowed, raising her fistful of jacks in victory.

     It wasn’t the sane thing, but July was starting to doubt that the sane thing was all it was cracked up to be.