Beneath the Guarding Stars Read online

  She jumped up when she saw me. “Almost midday.”

  Midday?

  She smiled. “You slept all night and all morning. You were tired.” She smoothed her clothing and I saw that she’d changed into a black dress that matched her hair. Of course she had. It was tomorrow already.

  My stomach jumped. I was supposed to join the dance troupe that afternoon, and after the welcome Seth had given me, I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  “Here,” she said. “I made you lunch.”

  As I sat down, she peered at my face and tut-tutted at it. “I want you to stop by the medical unit on level nineteen on your way to dance class. They’ve been developing a cream to assist with wound care. It’s for the slower healers, but should work on you too.”

  I nodded and gobbled the sandwich and juice she offered as she kept talking.

  “The dance troupe doesn’t have a dress code, but I’ve taken a guess at your size and got you some clothes—leggings, jeans, t-shirts. A couple of sweaters. A handbag. I’ve put them in your closet. I’m sure you’ll want to get your own though. Tower Sixteen next door has a great shopping mall. I’ll arrange a charge card so you can go shopping as soon as possible. Tomorrow, I think. Not today. You don’t want to be late right now.”

  “Thank you, but … I don’t have any money. I can’t repay you.”

  The flicker of a real smile touched her lips. “You can repay me by dancing your heart out.” She cleared her throat. “There’s a regional train every five minutes that will take you to each tower in the region, so you can head down any time and catch the next one south to Tower Fifteen.” She added, “There are inter-regional trains too, but they only run every half hour. I’ll make sure you have access to this level of the building by the time you get back for dinner.”

  “What time do you want me back?”

  “The dance troupe should break at five o’clock. Come straight back here, please.” Her eyes drilled into mine as though she thought I might disappear on her. “After dinner you can head to the gallery in Tower Sixteen to meet the others—same tower as the shopping center. There are other meeting places around the region, but that’s the group Michael’s brother goes to, so I’m sure he will too.”

  I finished eating and Ruth didn’t seem to want to say anything else, so I nodded and headed back to my room to change. She’d made a good guess at my size and I chose a sports top with a loose-fitted t-shirt over it and black leggings. I pulled on a pair of ballet flats I found at the bottom of the closet. They were a half-size too small but they’d do until I could buy my own.

  Leaving Ruth’s apartment, there was only the one elevator door in the entryway. Butterflies invaded my stomach as I stepped inside, a strange mix of happiness that I might see Michael and fear of going anywhere near the scientific unit.

  At level nineteen I was greeted by a corridor with a door at either end. I approach the one with the glass panel in it, surprised when it slid open on its own. Inside was the smallest room I’d encountered so far, barely bigger than a booth, with a counter behind a wall of glass. It was unmarked, pristine, not even a poster stuck to the wall. I stared through the glass to the countertop, hoping for a bell of some kind to raise attention. That’s if I was even in the right place…

  A woman appeared on the other side of the glass behind the counter. She wore the same blue vest and black pants of the medical staff. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail.

  “Ava, what can I do for you?”

  It was Agatha, the woman we’d met the day before. I was surprised when her voice projected through the glass so easily. I pointed to my cheek.

  “Ruth sent me to get this checked out.”

  There was the barest flicker of contemplation in her eyes, then she said, “All right. One moment, please.”

  She disappeared through a door at the side, and within moments a seamless panel slid open beside me and she emerged with a small tube, like a mini-toothpaste, in her hand.

  “This will help. Or at least it should.” She held it out to me. “You only need a little.”

  I didn’t take it. “Show me.”

  She paused. Opened her mouth. Closed it again. “Okay. You don’t trust me. I get it. Why should you? Here…” She slid off the lid and smeared a very small amount onto the back of her hand. It was skin-colored and smelled like lavender.

  “It won’t do anything to me because it has nothing to heal. But at least you can see it isn’t hurting me.” She held it out to me again, and this time I took it.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have a mirror, but take a look in the glass,” she said, gesturing at the counter.

  Dabbing the smallest amount onto my finger, I focused on my reflection in the glass and smeared some of the cream onto my cheek. I sensed it seal against my skin, and in an instant the burning stopped. I tried not to let her see my relief.

  “We make it skin colored so it doesn’t show. You’d be surprised how many kids are born with slower healing these days. It happens more often than people think. Most of them have a tube of this handy so people don’t stare at them. You can keep it.”

  “Thanks.” I dropped it into my bag, feeling as though I’d misjudged her. She was trying to help people. But Michael’s dad had talked about helping people too.

  “Is Michael here?”

  Again with the slight narrowing of her eyes, the moment of thought before she spoke. “He’s getting some tests done.”

  “What tests?” My guard shot up again. I calculated the thickness of the glass, searched for the sensors above the concealed door, analyzed my options in case I needed to get to him fast.

  “Relax,” she said. “He asked us to check out his back where the mortality ampule was implanted, to make sure there was no lasting damage. That’s all. You’ll see him tonight.”

  Everyone kept telling me that. I frowned at her. Her expression had turned clinical. Distant. There was more. My instincts screamed at me that she wasn’t telling me everything, but there was nothing I could do. Storming the medical unit didn’t seem like the smartest move right then. Michael was strong, resilient. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt him, not ever again. The only time he’d placed himself in harm’s way was for me and, right then I was in no danger.

  I had to believe he was okay. For now.

  I shot a final glance around the room before I left, not realizing until I was back inside the elevator how much the medical unit had smelled like a swimming pool. Like chemicals. I took deep breaths of chilled air as I exited the tower, taking comfort in the lovely shades of cherry tree blossoms, and strode toward the platform to wait for the next train. There had to be a way to stay in contact with Michael. Maybe he and I could get hold of phones—or whatever they used to talk to each other in Starsgard. At least then we could call each other, text, anything to break the silence.

  That’s if Starsgard even had phones. I eyed the people walking past. At home in Evereach people on the street would be tapping away and somehow managing to avoid obstacles at the same time. Here, they appeared intent on getting where they needed to go, not a single communications device in sight. I guessed they took the whole no-electricity thing pretty seriously. I wondered if that was why Ruth had told me to come straight home. It wasn’t like I could call her if I was late.

  The platform held a crowd of what appeared to be post-lunch workers in different-colored uniforms, waiting to get on the train, and I ended up squeezed in near the door, trying to keep my mind clear, hoping the train didn’t make any sudden stops, since there was nothing to hang onto. Not so different to Evereach, after all.

  At least I seemed to disappear into the crowd this time. Unlike the bottom of Tower One, nobody here seemed to know, or care, about me.

  Tower Fifteen was both alike and different to my home Tower Seventeen. The outlying towers we’d seen from Evereach had appeared earthy, like part of the mountain. But the inland towers like Seventeen and Fifteen were glittering masterpieces. Fifteen was white steel the col
or of clouds, with a statue of a giant planet outside it and starry walls within the foyer.

  Inside the elevator, the objects behind the glass glowed incandescent silver and deep blue. I maneuvered around a tall woman to hit the button for level forty-five like Seth had said, and waited for the doors to open at my floor, my hands suddenly warm with worry.

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm the swirling in my stomach as the doors opened into another starlit foyer.

  Several steps to the left led me to a directory, indicating the dance room was studio fifteen. At least it matched the tower number. Trying to remember all the numbers for the towers, levels, and rooms was starting to hurt my head.

  I followed the hallway around to a set of solid double doors with the number “15” painted on them in big space-age-like figures, similar to some kind of airplane hanger. The push-handle door on the right opened into a room that made an airplane hanger seem small. This room alone was bigger than Ruth’s apartment and made me wonder whether she really did have a quarter of the top level like she said she did.

  Every wall was plated with mirrors, a warm-up bar situated on only one of them. The ceiling imitated a cathedral, painted black and so high above me that I couldn’t tell how far it ascended.

  “It’s so the knives don’t stick,” said a male voice to my right.

  I stopped gaping and cast around for my informant. A boy a little older than me, judging by his bundled, brown hair, rose from a hamstring stretch. His mouth lifted into a smile, lighting up his brown skin with brilliant white teeth.

  “Or, if they do stick, at least we can’t see the damage.”

  I allowed the door to close behind me, wondering what on earth he was talking about. If the room hadn’t been set up exactly like a dance studio, the talk of knives would’ve told me I was in the wrong place. My entrance disturbed a number of other dancers stretching nearby, who all cast curious glances at me.

  “You’re Ava, right?”

  For the first time, I realized that the boy’s palm was outstretched, as though he wanted to shake hands with me, and I attempted a smile, shaking his hand as the others looked on. There was no sign of Seth, but there were a lot of dancers gathered on the other side of the room where he could be waiting.

  “You’ve arrived just in time,” the boy said. “Seth’s already choreographed the dances for the mid-summer festival in a month’s time. We’ve got our work cut out for us.” His eyes flickered up and down from my head to my toes, but not in a bad way, rather in a just-judging-your-weight-and-height way, as though he expected he’d have to lift me at some stage.

  “I’m Luke,” he explained. “Your dance partner.” He shrugged his shoulders as if he was suddenly self-conscious—probably since I hadn’t said a word yet. “I don’t normally lurk by the door but Seth told me to wait for you. Come on, he’s over there. He wants to talk to you before we get started.”

  Finding Seth in the crowd of dancers proved easier than I thought it would be. The group at the other side of the room turned out to be a circle of people congregated around him.

  “Here she is,” he said, coming forward to draw me into the center, his composure a far stretch from his threatening stance the day before. I wondered if I’d passed some kind of test and now he was my friend. Rather than put me at ease, the sudden turnaround made me wary, and I told myself to stay focused, be ready.

  Right as he made to position me front and center of the hundred or so dancers, he paused, frowning at me. It took me a second to work out he was staring at my hair—that he was taking a second to reassess.

  His eyes went from my head to my face and back again. Within moments, his hand dropped from my arm and he took a small step away from me, creating distance between us.

  It looked like Ruth was right. Long hair led to confusion. For the first time, I was glad she’d cut it.

  “This is Ava Holland. She comes to us from Evereach. She’s already proven that she can dance and she’s offered to contribute to the arts here. The Council have accepted her.”

  It sounded as if he was reading from a script so he didn’t slip up and say what he really thought. I glanced at his eyes, trying to see behind them, but it was as though the threat he’d shown earlier never existed.

  “As you may have heard, Ava isn’t like the rest of us.”

  There it was. The threat. My guard flew up.

  Seth smiled. “Ava’s mortal.”

  I expected outbursts, anger, outrage, shouting, people coming at me, demanding I be sent away, and could they catch it, too?

  Instead, there was silence and … pity.

  Of all the reactions, that was not the one I expected. All of them looked at me as though they felt sorry for me, as though I was the most miserable thing they’d ever seen.

  Out of the blue, Luke caught my eye and winked. He shrugged a shoulder as if to say, who cares? No pity there. I wondered if that was why Seth chose him as my partner.

  “That means particular safety rules will need to be observed,” Seth said. “No sharp objects near Ava, no throw-downs, no crazy flipping.” Was he glaring at Luke at this point?

  My new dance partner looked innocent.

  “All weaponry will be contained to your area of practice and put away securely afterward. Clean up after yourselves. Am I clear?”

  Again with the mention of knives. Seth leaned in close, for the first time breaching the distance between us. “You’ll see,” he said, as though that explained it.

  He returned to his upright stance, feet apart like a Hazard Police Officer addressing his troops. “Understood?”

  There were general nods around, then Seth dismissed everyone. The crowd dispersed into various parts of the room. Only Luke remained, hovering nearby.

  Seth was suddenly too close, and my uneasiness returned in full force. He flipped the strands resting on the top of my shoulders. “Ruth cut your hair.”

  “It was never supposed to be that long. But I didn’t have a pair of scissors on me for a while there.”

  He drew back. “They say you were followed by drones. And Bashers. Pretty much everyone wanted a piece of you.”

  I tried to smile, inching backward, putting as much space between us as I could. “Literally.”

  Luke seemed to have become tired of waiting, and I was glad for the interruption. “I bet you want to know about the knives,” he said, copping a glare from Seth for butting in. “Come and see.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me along as if I was a little kid, and I let him, happy to get away. Seth’s eyes followed me as I went.

  A few feet away, Luke let go of my hand. “Sorry. I thought you could do with some space.”

  I shot him a grateful smile. “Yeah, a bit. Thanks.”

  “Don’t let Seth get to you. He’s just protective of the dance troupe. He only took over a year ago and we’re not the biggest group, so they’re always talking about funding cuts. He argued pretty hard for you to be sent north to one of the other troupes, but Councilor Ruth demanded you stay here. Looking after you is a problem he didn’t want right now.”

  He glanced an apology. “No offense.”

  “None taken, I guess. At least that explains his attitude.”

  “Hey, don’t worry, he hates everyone.” He inclined his head toward the side of the room. “Except those two.”

  I craned to see past all the dancers as he pointed to the far side. “Who?”

  “This way.”

  As he led me on a zigzag path toward the back of the room nearest the door, I realized that the entire area was divided into separate sections with markings on the floor. Stripes of different colors marked out large squares of at least fifteen feet each side, with walkways in between them. It reminded me of martial arts tournaments I’d seen on the air screen at home. Worse, it reminded me of some of the combat rooms I’d seen broadcast of the Terminal, Evereach’s lethal games facility where patrons could kill and be killed, just for the fun of it, and the place where Michael’s dad and Office
r Cheyne had held me.

  I needed to know. “Is there a place here in Starsgard where people go to kill each other? For fun?”

  “Are you kidding? What would we do that for?” He blew an unimpressed raspberry into the air. “You have a place like that in Evereach?”

  “It’s called the Terminal. Michael’s dad ran it. Runs it.” I wasn’t sure how to explain all that.

  “Michael Bradley? Helen Bradley’s son?”

  “Yeah.” I stopped walking, snagging his arm. “So, you know about Michael’s family, but I’m kind of wondering how much you know about me.”

  “Fair question.” He sized me up again, and for whatever reason his assessment didn’t bother me. “You’re Ava Holland, sixteen, mortal. You fled your home country because of political persecution and made it to Starsgard with Michael’s help. You’re lucky to be alive, the way I hear it. But you’re not the only lucky one.”

  I waited for him to explain. While the dancers around us started practicing their moves, the room became very quiet. We were the only ones talking. The soft swish of dancing feet and moving bodies scraped my nerves.

  Luke’s face took on an edge. “That guy, Michael. He’s lucky you forgave him for killing your brother.”

  I swallowed. The quietly moving bodies around me had become eerie. So silent, they could have been ghosts, their shadows casting across the floor where we stood. I blinked back the burn behind my eyes.

  In the last two days alone I’d fought off murderous moss, destroyed a mortality weapon, danced with a man who hated me, had my hair cut, and faced the possibility that Michael’s life would lead him far away from me. There was no way I could explain to this stranger why I’d forgiven Michael for Josh’s death, how I’d reconciled that act and put it away from myself, or how Michael had saved me a hundred times since.

  “Where’s the music?” I asked instead.

  Luke glanced around at the moving, concentrating dancers practicing in their allotted squares. “See the earpieces? No, wait, they’re too small. This is mine.” Luke tipped his head and produced a small green object, shaped like a new leaf. “The same music is playing for each group—whatever their chosen music is. It allows us to practice together in the one room. Seth will get you one that syncs with mine.”