Stardust

     Regrettably, the stars aligned in such a manner that, following their extensive morning conversation, Cas did not manage to eke out another moment alone with July for the rest of the day—in fact, when the pair wrapped up aforementioned conversation and relocated to the kitchen for the arduous ordeal of breakfast, her thrice-damned sister appeared nigh-instantaneously and began clinging to her side like a particularly sexually-charged limpet.

     June's arrival was Caspian's cue to make their escape and begin preparing arrangements for that evening. On an even more regrettable note, they encountered the inscrutable and elegant Nea in the doorway of the common area; she didn't seem to notice when they blanched at the sight of her, just cast them a dreamy smile on her way to the kitchen.

     It was unsettling to leave July alone with those two, particularly given the information Cas had become privy to; July may not have recognized the significance herself, but Cas was certainly suspicious of the motivation behind a high-ranking member of the federal government funding her day trips. Putting the matter of her long-lost twin aside, the unrelated members of that family taking such a personal interest in July raised a veritable parade's worth of red flags.

     Still, there were responsibilities to handle, routines to keep up, and plans to set in motion. Everything went by fairly quickly; between their physical exam and blood draws with Matt, their violin lesson with Axel, their shift on laundry, meal prepping with Micah, and a whole host of hushed coordinations with Nina, the day was rather packed.

     Evening found Cas lingering in the kitchen just before lights-out, on the pretense of unloading the dishwasher—a pretense they did not need. Just as they'd predicted, this floor's well-established routine worked in their favor; once the last patient had returned from their blood draws, there was no sign whatsoever of Matt nor of Ophelia, just the low crackle from the speaker in the corner of the common room announcing ten- and five-minute warnings til lights-out.

     Finally, the speaker piped a cheerful “Lights out, ducklings!” and the lights dimmed, plunging the common area into an ambient tenebrous twilight. Cas conscientiously finished placing the last of the silverware in a drawer before ducking into the gym. It was quite the gloomy sight at night, the corners of the room shadowy with piles of mats and shelves of equipment, the treadmills along the back wall forming strange branching outlines in the queer gray half-light.

     Nina was already there, perched sideways on the very end of the single weight-lifting bench on the left wall. She offered Cas a meager half-smile as they entered.

     There was a plasticky rustle and Caspian's head whipped around to catch the nearest haphazard pile of vinyl mats shifting. There turned out to be no need for panic—July's bedraggled ponytail popped out from the pile, followed by the rest of her clambering laboriously from the sticky heap.

     “Smells like feet in there,” she hissed.

     Nina clamped both her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound of her sudden cackle.

     Cas rolled their eyes, fully aware the chances of either girl noticing this motion in the relative dusk were very low. They were developing the distinct impression that their well of patience bordered on saintly. “You realize, of course, there was no need to subject yourself to this to begin with.”

     “I needed a good hiding place,” July said cheerfully.

     It proved a touch more difficult for July to wiggle through the gym window than it was for Nina or Cas; the frame pressed into her shoulders and left pale pink scrapes on the surface of her skin, and when they grabbed her under the armpits and hauled her bodily onto the fire escape, she gave a pained yelp. July spilled onto the rickety floor and clambered to her feet with a rather petulant expression, both hands gingerly cupping her breasts without a hint of shame.

     “Fucking window scraped me,” she grumbled. A flash of something resembling horror crossed her face as she glanced over at Nina, who didn't seem to notice—the girl was deep in concentration, white-knuckle-grasping the railing as she awkwardly side-stepped over the chain blocking off the stairs.

     “You can swear in front of her,” Cas said quietly. This was, of course, a direct contradiction of Jasper's failing agenda petitioning for “clean language” around the children, but they frequently flouted that request to his face. Blatant relief washed over July's expression and she gently slugged Cas on the arm; their stomach did a single flip in response.

     The trio began making their way down the rachitic staircase, clutching tight to the wire-thin rail; when Cas pulled a sore hand from the railing to check their palm for splinters and scrapes, they made out a streak of rusty-red debris ground into their skin. Below, the city-fleet sprawled out, barely visible through the unending murky gloom—the single time Cas dared to lean over the rail and peek into the depths, they could make nothing out but vague shapes, even straining their eyes until the muscles in their sockets ached, and everything was so small, so far down, an instant wave of vertigo hit them in the skull and they needed to pull themself back posthaste.

     The stairs themselves were steep and slim, thin panels of metal grate bracketed by yawning gaps between each step. Cas was forced to descend sidelong, individually placing their feet on each stair in stilted, careful motions, for fear of slipping and tumbling down into the bottomless void.

     After what felt like at least half an hour's worth of ungainly climbing, enough to cause their calves to burn and their palms to leave trails of chilly sweat on the rail, the staircase opened out onto a landing—a wide, circular platform of metal grate with three walkways branching off, one covered, the others open to the air. The trio stepped over another chain-and-padlock blocking off the stairs; right beside it, a large, bright red plastic square was stuck to the stair rail, covered with black, chunky shapes arranged in parallel lines, resembling those Cas sometimes saw on Ophelia's desk screen and on the books in her office.

     Cas reached into the pocket of their jacket (bulky, comforting in its weight, with pockets large enough to house several water bottles and then some) and retrieved their sketchbook. They flipped it open to the bookmark they'd left earlier, hastily scribbled down some approximate replications of the Dusty script on the sign, and then began puzzling out their thin, scratchy linework from their last map-making attempt.

     As best as they could tell from above, this staircase led directly down to a singular covered walkway; there were no other connections above to confuse the matter, and the walkway itself quickly ended at another building, represented on Caspian's map by a large square. They frowned.

     “I told you it changes,” Nina piped up. “It's like when we go to appointments.” She was hovering just by Caspian's arm, craning her small face over their shoulder to look at their sketches with interest.

     Their lips tightened. They snapped the book shut with an audible huff and said decisively: “We will take the covered path.”

     “We could also split up,” July said. Her hands were shoved in her pockets, her shoulders loose and her weight canted ever-so-slightly to one side; for all intents and purposes, she appeared as though she was simply hanging out. “Three of us, three paths.”

     “If the fleet does, in fact, change around us, we would have no way to rendezvous—we do not have a way to contact each other while separated.”

     The shape of July's mouth took on a profoundly pout-like quality, but she did not argue.

     Mesh grate flooring gave way to riveted metal panels at the entrance to the covered path; Cas stepped lightly, wary of producing the slightest sound. The hall itself was dark—darker, it seemed, than the gloomy twilight that defined the night cycle within the fleet. Rather than extending into a dusky gray corridor, its far end disappeared entirely into encroaching blackness; something stirred uneasily in the back of Caspian's mind, but they had already made their decision. Anomalies were opportunities for investigation, after all.

     The walls of the hallway were abundant with texture and form; clusters of pipes crawled up and down their surfaces, metal boxes and mesh cages of uncertain function dotted between them. Once the darkness reached such intensity as to interfere with navigation, Cas held out one palm to guide them along the wall—and immediately yanked it back with an incoherent hiss. Their palm sank into the warm, oddly wet surface of the wall, like plunging their hand into an open mouth, and as they pulled away, it sucked at their skin with a barely-audible shlock.

     “You good?” July's low voice filtered in from a few feet ahead of them.

     Cas squinted into the obscure morass of shadows, unease transmuting into something deeper, more primal. They could barely make out July's silhouette, a mere inch or two taller than Nina's, both paused in their tracks.

     Tentatively, they reached back to drag their fingertips along the wall. It was room-temperature metal, smooth until they reached the riveted side of a panel, at which point they prodded the clunky seam and thick rivets until they were satisfied that it was, in fact, all metal.

     “I'm fine,” Cas said.

     They pressed their palm back to the wall and resumed walking; after a moment of hesitation, the other two followed suit. The wall continued to be metal—of course, what else would it have been—but as Cas progressed, they were overcome with the queer sense that it was flexing under their touch. No, not just flexing—that it was rhythmically, slowly swelling and receding, that it leaned into their palm and rumbled—purred—nudged up against them in a manner both strange and enticing.

     Cas had never felt anything like it before. That intense, primal feeling swelled through their head, rose in their gut and crackled in their chest; it felt like their nerves were vibrating, like there was some deep, innate instinct within them crying out for release, but even as they tried to pin down the object of their desire, the thing for which their bones sang, it trickled out of their mind like water through their cupped hands.

     Almost as soon as the feeling came, something caught Caspian's eye, distracting them thoroughly—a distant pink light winked at the end of the hall, vivid and stark in the all-consuming black.

     It was a small dot, barely larger than a grain of rice; it would never have been visible if it weren't for the unnatural pitch-black enveloping the hall. Cas sped up to grasp July's shoulder from behind; quietly, they said “Ahead.”

     “Ohh.” Nina's voice came from just by Caspian's shoulder. She looped one sticky finger through their belt buckle. “Let's see what it is.”

     This was not, in Caspian's opinion, the most measured, responsible approach to the situation; that point was moot, as there seemed to be no other options, unless they wanted to turn back entirely. The corridor continued in a straight line, and as they traversed onward, the light grew brighter and brighter, til it bloomed into a pinkish-gold corona that softly illuminated July and Nina's faces. As the light grew, so did a faint, tinny tune at the very edge of their hearing; at first, Cas felt sure they were imagining it, but as it grew in volume, Nina's head cocked to one side, her pace slowing, and she tugged on their belt loop insistently.

     “I hear it,” they said. The notes were short and clunky, as if plucked one-by-one on something mechanical, but nevertheless there was a high, sweet quality to them.

     The hall ended at an illuminated, empty doorway, swelling with such concentrated pink-gold luminescence that Cas was forced to squint as they approached; they could not see through the entrance, even before July shoved in front of them and blatantly clomped her way into the scintillating glow. The music was fully audible at that point, plinking out a staccato tune; with a start, Cas realized Nina was humming along with it as they walked.

     They gave her a sidelong glance and began “Do you—” but they were rudely interrupted by July, just ahead, bursting out with “Holy shit.”

     They were close enough to the doorway to see through the blinding rectangle of light and into the room beyond. It was a circular room of high-vaulted metal ceilings, golden-glowing lanterns of twisted metal dangling by ribbed cables from the panels and beams above, and in the middle of this room stood a carousel.

     It was strikingly small for a construction of its nature; it stood no taller than eight, perhaps nine feet, and its infinite revolutions were completed by a mere three horses, all frozen mid-prance on tacky gold vertical bars, bobbing slowly out of sync with the music—which, it was now clear, emanated from this structure.

     Stacks of overflowing chests dotted the circumference of the room, crates and boxes with lift-up lids, painted in soft pastels, haggard limbs of stuffed toys and swatches of cheap glittery fabric poking from their tops; several pitch-dark corridors branched off the main room, each very similar to the one the trio just emerged from, and off to one side, a derelict and cobweb-covered popcorn machine stood on massive, skinny wheels, just beside a table covered with a floor-length pale pink cloth.

     As Cas took a few tentative steps into the room, their boot sank—infinitesimally, but still sank—into the floor; looking down, the surface was made of the same riveted metal panels as the floor of the hallway, and yet it yielded beneath their boots nonetheless.

     Nina was walking toward the carousel, and before Cas could get a word out, she reached out one hand toward it—not quite touching it, hovering just a few inches away—and it paused. Its slow spinning ground to a halt, a horse dipping to rest at the lowest point of its arc just in front of her.

     “I think this is for me,” Nina said, her voice strange and faraway.

     “I don't—” July started, but the child whirled around to look at them both with intense, wide eyes, an odd smile playing on her small mouth, and July seemed to lose her voice.

     “It's mine,” Nina said again. Then: “My music box—I lost it when Stacie sent us back. Baz won it for me at a church fair.”

     Cas looked at the carousel again, its pink-and-white striped canopy, the horses baring their teeth in poorly-carved ecstasy that read more as rage, gilt trim dotting their saddles and lining the canopy overhead; they could not explain its presence, so unmistakably and unbearably human, but simultaneously, they could not explain Nina's assertion, and it caused their guts to writhe with a vengeance.

     Nina raised one finger to the sky, head tilted to one side, and bobbed her finger in time with the music. “Cielito Lindo,” she said. “It's my music box.”

     And with that, the child hooked a foot over the pedal extending from the side of the horse and flung her thin frame up to straddle its bulk. The golden pole slowly rose up, then there was a heavy clunk and the entire platform began to revolve again. Nina clung to the pole like she was hugging a beloved friend, the side of her face pressed up against it, a beatific smile smothering her visage.

     You did not understand, because it was not your story.

     Off to the right, July had knelt on the floor by a chest—painted in pale yellows and blues, its front inscribed “Libros” in glittery pink script—and was rummaging through it. Cas came to kneel beside her and peer into the chest themself; inside were stacks of slim paperback books, “First Reader” novels and picture books, in both English and Spanish.

     “I think all this is hers,” July said, sotto voce. Cas cut a glance behind her to check on the child; she was still peacefully bobbing up and down in a slow circle, eyes half-closed and seeming, for all intents and purposes, to be dead to the world.

     They matched July's undertone. “It makes no sense.”

     She sat back on her heels, a curious frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. The lid swung shut with a soft, cushioned thud. “I don't know… it feels like my dreams—like the Dreaming, I mean.”

     “And yet, we are quite obviously awake.” Still, they had to concede her point—it matched unnervingly with July's descriptions of the remixed personal Hell she'd been through last year, and even more unnervingly with Sage's reports on intentionally navigating that environment—scraps of memory, of history, of personal symbology, repurposed into an environmental collage.

     July craned her head back to watch Nina's endless ride; she was frowning in earnest at that point, her brow furrowed deeply.

     Cas followed her gaze. “I think we need to remove her from the carousel.”

     Her head snapped around to stare at Cas; she gaped wordlessly, her mouth opening and closing several times in a row, as if she was a fish out of water.

     “I did not think that would be a particularly controversial idea,” Cas said.

     “No, it's—you—how did you do that?”

     “What?”

     “The—” July appeared to be struggling very badly. “Your voice. You—I can't describe it, do it again.”

     “Do what again?”

     “When you said—”

     But whichever trick she wanted Caspian to perform, it was not meant to be; Nina's voice speared through the air, high and clear, before the two could finish muttering behind her back. “I want to bring Baz here.”

     Cas stood up, July following suit immediately. They eyed the girl; her horse had come to a stop once again, but she was still astride its back, face arranged mulishly. “That may not be achievable.”

     “I want to try.”

     “Perha—”

     Their conversation was interrupted by July abruptly slamming her palm over Caspian's mouth; she made a zipping motion across her lips in Nina's direction, eyes nearly bugging out with the intensity of her gaze. Nina, who suddenly bore the facial expression of a frightened meerkat, sat frozen, gripping the pole in front of her.

     July tilted her head to one side. She met Caspian's eyes and used a finger to gesture by her ear; Cas closed their eyes and focused. The music was still plinking out its repetitive single-note melody in the background, but as they listened, they realized there was something underneath, a dull thud being masked by its bright tune—footsteps.

     They opened their eyes. July's hand dropped from their lips and they took the opportunity to hiss “Someone's coming.”

     Nina made an audible, high-pitched noise. Her eyes went even wider as she clapped her own hands over her mouth.

     Everything happened very quickly from there, so quickly Cas didn't have time to think. July grabbed Cas bodily and hauled them to the ground with her; the instant she grabbed them, they let their muscles go limp, hit the floor loose and slack and allowed her to forcefully roll both of them away—the floor still felt soft and flexible under their body, almost warm where it touched their bare skin, but they had no time to process this. A couple of dizzy turns, then July released them and they were lying sidelong in the dark, July's torso hot and sticky against the back of their shirt.

     There was a curtain of fabric a couple of inches from their nose—pink brocade; they were beneath the table, muddy light barely filtering in through the tablecloth, humid breath clogging up the small space, a light coating of dust on the floor tickling their sinuses. Cas breathed as lightly as they could.

     The footsteps grew almost deafening, metallic thuds resonating throughout the room—they were heavy, militant, almost certainly Dusty in origin. Abruptly, they came to a stop—then a voice started speaking in a rough, hissing tone, consonants thick and heavy, and entirely incomprehensible.

     “I—I don't—” Nina's voice was even higher and thinner than normal.

     Without thinking, Cas tensed, about to surge up through the tablecloth—but July wrapped an arm around their waist, strong and sturdy, and brought her lips to the shell of their ear. “Don't.”

     Outside their hiding place, the Dusty was still speaking, louder and more guttural. Nina's voice stammered out an excuse—she was lost—and the music died down, leaving an almost tangible silence in its wake, a silence that rang and whistled. There were more footsteps—more snippets of Dusty language—Nina's voice again, incoherent—and the footsteps began to fade til they disappeared entirely.

     It was a long time, perhaps several minutes, before either of them moved. The floor grew cold under Caspian's hands, the silence bearing down on them oppressively, every tiny breath like a gunshot.

     Then July wiggled, nudged Cas from behind, and the two of them clambered out from underneath the table. The room had gone dark, its contents murky shapes swimming in a sea of black; the air cut a chill through Cas's shirtsleeves and seeped directly into their bones.

     “We should go,” July said, and Cas needed no convincing. The two of them only took a few steps into the dark corridor they came from—then, without any communication necessary, they simultaneously broke into a run.

     The darkness nipped at Caspian's heels, the floor rattling beneath their boots. Keeping quiet no longer mattered to them. It was a frantic pace—heart-pounding, chest-aching, a stitch forming in their side—but they kept on, blindly, almost mindlessly, possessed by the need to go.

     And when they came to the end of the hall, it wasn't a landing open to what passed for a sky in this dimension—it was not a rickety staircase leading up to a fire escape on the highest building in the fleet—it was a door, and the door had a keycard reader, and just over the keycard reader was a label in the queer geometric alphabet of the Dusties, and just over that label was a second label, which said “PATIENT HUB.”

     They didn't ask questions. They dug their patient ID from their pocket—feeling blessed for their foresight—and slammed it against the reader. Its little green bulb lit up, and the door opened, and July and Cas spilled through it and slammed it behind them, and then the two of them stood in the dim half-light, eyes wide and breathing heavy.

     They stood there for a good while, silently staring at each other while their panting slowed and Caspian's pulse slowly acclimated, before July finally said “We'll figure it out in the morning.”

     “Yes,” Cas said with a stiff and heavy tongue. “Yes. The morning.”

###

     The moulin tugged at your heart, slipped in through your ears to slide over your brain, and it was more enticing than ever.

     Your palms pressed to its slick azure edge. It sang—it sang—its blue-black depths called out in joyous kinship, pulled you in til your torso was hanging half-over the hole and your head dangled down.

     And then, overcome with the vastness of your desire—the frustration that niggled at the base of your skull, the itching that crept under your skin, the buzzing in your nerves—you pushed off the edge and fell.

     Pure blackness enveloped you instantly. It was the deep navy-black of the bottom of the ocean, the kind of black that cradled you, held you, caressed you. Saltwater sunk into your skin, seeped into every crack and crevice, and began to sing; the song pressed against your body, stroked over your bare flesh, and you opened your mouth.

     Darkness packed itself into your throat. It crammed its way into your ears and pressed against the drums, filled your head with the white-hot seeds of life; it crawled into your throat and slid smoothly against your tongue; it branded the knowledge you'd long since forgotten on the inside of your skull, and you cried out for the heat of it.

     You were filled—drained—filled again—your body shook and burned, ice-cold shocks ripping through you from the inside out, so frigid it turned your organs to fire—and Cas was screaming. Cas knew they were screaming, because they could hear themself, and their voice was raw and ragged, a bloody, broken-glass kind of scream.

     They could not see. The blackness was unending, it was perfect, and on some level, they did not even particularly care. They listened to themself scream with a curious detachment, a feeling they were somewhere other than their body altogether.

     There was a voice, and it said “Oh, no—oh, no, Caspian, hush—”

     And someone bundled them away, murmuring quietly to them the whole time. They had a vague awareness they were being carried, then there was silence, then there was nothing.