Once & Future Read online

  “If they weren’t suspicious of us before, they are now.” Kay punched the speed while the floating mall shrank behind them, far enough to show off the threateningly large Mercer fleet orbiting the stationary starship.

  “Are they following?” she asked.

  Kay stared at the rearview screen. And stared. “No.”

  Ari scrubbed her face and let out a little scream.

  “What happened, Ari? Or do I not want to know?”

  She weighed her options. It didn’t seem like the right moment to admit she’d found out that their parents were alive, but she’d never been good at right moments. “I’m not… sure?”

  “My gods, you’re the worst liar in the history of lies. Oh, here they come!” Kay throttled up while the rearview filled with Mercer pursuit cruisers, sirens blazing. “And the first thing they’re going to do is hack the hard drive…” Kay’s voice took on a sarcastic lyricism when he was riled, and now he was nearly singing. “I’ve got to drop her offline or we’re going to be Mercer’s ugliest new puppet ship!”

  He thrust the steering console to the side—in front of Ari—and began digging in the wires under the panel. Ari reached for the controls, watching the Mercer vessels grow ever closer in the rearview. Too close. They’d overtake Error. Imprison Kay. Lock Ari away for merely existing in their galaxy without their permission.

  No way.

  She stopped staring at the rearview and looked ahead—at the blue-and-white marbled planet. Ari throttled all the way, beyond the red zone, leaning into the burst of speed.

  Grunting, Kay slammed into his seat. “What are you doing? We can’t outrun them!”

  “We’re not going to outrun them. We’re going to hide.”

  “Where?” he yelled. Ari pointed through the windshield, where the blue planet grew larger with swift brilliance. “Earth? Even if we survive landing, Mercer will kill us!”

  “Mercer won’t follow. They can’t. It’s completely out of their jurisdiction. Earth is a protected nature preserve, predating Mercer’s existence.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I read it on the freakin’ observation deck!” Ari had to grit her teeth against the speed as their ship passed into the upper atmosphere and began reciting its own name.

  “ERROR! ERROR!”

  Kay hammered at the controls, yelling over the stilted voice of the ship’s mainframe. Ari tried to slow them down with every trick, but they were hurtling through the cloudy atmosphere of the retired planet, rattling from the strain on the ship’s joints. The view from the cockpit was all crystal-blue ocean and green, white-capped mountains.

  Until they passed through a gray cloud, a digital smokescreen, and were suddenly looking at the rusted, burnt-out shell of a wasteland. The whole planet was a garbage heap forgotten about long ago—apart from the dark strips where the land had been cleared to the bedrock.

  “What the…” Ari mouthed, just as Error moved on to a new warning complete with flaring lights.

  “ILLEGAL TRESPASS! ILLEGAL TRESPASS!”

  “Sweet girl, gimme a break!” Kay yelled. He pounded the silencer, but the red alarm lights continued to wash the cockpit with chilling incandescence. Ari tightened her chest restraint as the smog gave way to a jungle mass of crumbling cities.

  Kay took the controls back. “If I hit the emergency parachute, they’ll know exactly where we land. If I don’t, we have a tiny chance.”

  “Don’t hit it,” she said.

  “We could die.”

  Ari gripped her brother’s arm so tightly she wondered if their bones would fuse like melted plastic when the ship turned into a ball of flames. It made her feel better. There were worse ways to go than side-by-side with Kay.

  He steered them toward a feral forest. The trees grew closer, and Kay managed to level out the ship, skipping across the canopy. Every single bash nailed Ari’s teeth together, and yet they were slowing—sort of—until Error nose-dived into a break in the trees, plummeted through branches, and slammed into the ground. The viewscreen was filled with smashed earth until the ship’s back end succumbed to gravity, falling with metal shrieks.

  In the new quiet, Kay looked at Ari. “Hey, cheers. We’re alive!”

  Ari couldn’t help herself. “They’re alive.”

  “Who?”

  “Our parents. I used some Mercer couple’s watch to look up their status. They’re alive, Kay. I don’t know where, but they’re still out there.”

  Kay unstrapped, shaking his head while his face turned a red shade of punched. His gray hair flopped in his face and he had to pull it away with both hands to stare at her. Ari needed him to say something. Instead he closed his eyes. “Okay, I’m not mad.”

  “Really? ’Cause you look mad.”

  “That’s because I am mad. I told you not to do anything, so you leaped into Mercer’s files. Then you crashed us on the birth planet of all humanity, and you damn near killed us.”

  “But you’re also… not mad?”

  “Let me have two feelings right now.”

  “No problem.”

  “They’re both alive?” His eyes were still closed tight. “Are they together?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kay’s painful sigh ached through Ari. He shouldn’t have to go through this. There had to be some way to make a stand against Mercer. To find their parents. To free them. To have hope.

  “Thank the celestial gods.” Her brother turned his glare at her, his voice rising sharply. “But the next time you want to wave your renegade flag and yell ‘na-na-na-boo-boo,’ could you please wait until after I’ve picked up supplies? Even if Error is in good enough shape to get off this rock, where are we going to go? We don’t have food, Ari. Do you know what happens to people in the void without food? They eat each other.”

  “You can eat my left arm. I don’t use it much.”

  “Ari.”

  “Can’t we stop somewhere else? How about that lively moon up there?”

  “Which will be overrun with Mercer patrols in less than a day. Patrols looking for us after you flagged our moms and we evaded arrest.”

  “Don’t forget about the parking ticket,” she added. He gave her a hard I’m serious look. “So we’ll be discreet.” Ari unstrapped her chest harness and unlocked her magboots. “Do you think Mercer will be able to locate us down here?”

  “They won’t catch our flight signature. We’re too insignificant in this mess. Hopefully.” He squeezed the command chair—Captain Mom’s old chair—and Ari wondered if he was thinking about how she used to say, Hope is the food of the foolish. Eat up, kiddos.

  Ari walked through the main cabin, toward the back of the ship, passing a half-smooshed cake in its box. Kay and Ari stopped, staring down at it. “I’m still eating it,” her brother said. “Happy ten-year anniversary of being my pain in the ass. I mean, sister.”

  “Thanks.” She tried not to laugh… or grimace. They crossed the cargo bay, and Ari hit the door release. Rotting dense undergrowth instantly wafted into the ship. “Gross. What the hell is going on with this planet? It didn’t look this torn up from Heritage.”

  “No. It didn’t.” Kay stared at the foul, dead forest, skeletal skyscrapers lining the distance like broken teeth in a monster’s mouth. His face turned dark before he pushed his feelings away. “Whatever is going on here is none of our business. Check the ship, especially the heat shields. I’m going to get the hard drive back online. If we have to run for that cheap excuse for a moon, we better do it before Mercer has taken over every square inch looking for us.”

  Ari stepped out onto surprisingly spongy ground, and Kay slapped the door closed behind her. She didn’t blame him for being mad; her timing was historically the worst, her impulses a series of epic mistakes. Ari being adopted by Kay’s family had only seemed to tear Kay’s life apart, and yet he still wanted her around. He still loved her like family. She had to work harder to make it up to him.

  She walked around Error, wh
ich wasn’t in terrible shape for having dived through a hundred half-dead trees. For once, Error’s first life as a galaxy-class cruise ship lifeboat served her well; she was designed to crash.

  Ari searched the skies for the off-white, boxy Mercer vessels that would arrest them on the spot, but the clouds were a solid dark gray. There was no Mercer. Her gamble had paid off. She needed to rub that in Kay’s face—once they were safe, of course.

  Ari stepped deeper into the forest, her curiosity piqued. The gravity on this planet was heavy, and her whole body felt dense and stiff. The undergrowth thinned as she neared a clear-cut section, peering out at the madness of screeching, smoke-belching machines. No humans in sight.

  Old Earth was supposed to be preserved. Who was leveling these trees? There wasn’t even soil left, just strips of gray bedrock, which was also being laser-cut into cubes and hauled away by unmarked factory tanks with too many robotic arms. Someone was deforesting Old Earth, skinning it to its bones and then sucking out the planet’s marrow.

  Oh, who was she kidding? It was Mercer. It was always Mercer.

  So they had crash-landed in the middle of a secret exploitation of the ancient home of all humanity. Great. Like she needed another reason for Mercer to come after her.

  Ari took a few pictures with her watch and was about to double back to Error when she spotted a gorgeous stone wall. The machines were close. They would overtake it soon. She walked along the edge, brushing her fingers down the smooth, fitted rocks. So much had fallen—entire cities, mountains, countries—but not this. People had created it with their hands, bearing stones in their arms, leaving a mark on their world that lasted hundreds of years longer than any corporation or words or courage.

  And the machines were about to eat it.

  “Don’t do it, Ari,” she said in the same moment that she reached for the top of the stone wall, hauling herself up and over. She dropped down in a graveyard. Marble and granite headstones lay helter-skelter, mostly fallen, some crookedly half-sunk. And at the center of the darkly magical sight? A gigantic, ancient oak. Its gnarled arms were held up against the sky like a tribute to death. Ari jogged closer, her curiosity rewarded by an even stranger sight.

  Buried in the trunk of the thousand-year-old oak was a sword.

  “What the…”

  Her eyes trailed along the silver pommel and the intricate crossbar. Unlike the sword on Heritage, this one looked real. She walked all the way around it. The shining point glinted on the other side like a question.

  There were things in this universe that Ari didn’t understand. Space travel for one, the segregation of Ketch for another, herself for the grand finale. But this sword—it needed to be set free. She’d never felt anything so strongly in her whole life, almost like someone was nudging her toward it. Almost as if that someone had been nudging for a lot longer than the last few minutes, and only now were they willing to tip their hand. She got her hands around the hilt and gave it a good tug.

  The sword budged.

  She tossed her long black hair behind her shoulder and set her stance wider. And pulled the sword. The blade came free with a ringing sound that didn’t seem possible, and even though it had been lodged in that tree for however long, it was sharp and clean.

  And no doubt worth a lot of money. Their parents’ savings were running lean these days. Selling this sword could solve several problems.…

  “You’re pretty enough to pay for a whole host of repairs to Kay’s baby. Not to mention all the snacks his heart desires.” Ari swung it with a loose wrist. It had the perfect weight. Like it was made for her. Already, she didn’t want to trade it for tortilla chips, no matter how many it could buy. “Bad idea,” she muttered, putting on her best Kay impression. “So now you’ve got an impulse control problem and a sword.”

  A cracking shriek sounded from the oak. Ari turned as the trunk gave way, a crumbling dark heart of bark where the sword had been. She ran as it snapped, snarled, and cascaded into a heartless fall.

  Ari had to dive out from under the whipping branches. Rolling onto her back, she breathed in gasps on the soft ground, cradling her new treasure. “What are you?” she found herself mumbling, running her fingers over letters etched above the hilt. It wasn’t in Ari’s native tongue, but it was the same alphabet Mercer pumped through the galaxy along with their crappy goods. The only language she’d spoken during the decade she’d been forcibly separated from her home planet.

  Ari thought she recognized the word. It was so regal she whispered the name aloud.

  “Excalibur.”

  Merlin woke up.

  The ceiling of the crystal cave glimmered. He could make out, in a fuzzy way, points that stabbed the air high above his head. He reached for his glasses, smacking around on the cold floor until he found the thin wafers of glass, the horn-rims. He settled them onto his face and everything danced into focus. Merlin sighed. He didn’t know why he bothered correcting his eyesight when there was no one to look at.

  At this point, he preferred his nightmares to being awake. Waking up meant caring about things like Morgana and magic. It meant the hamster wheel of tragedy was spinning, and it wouldn’t stop until Arthur died—again.

  The chivalrous fool must have pulled the sword out of something. It wasn’t always a stone. Once it had been a sewer grate, another time, a beanbag chair. Let no one say that Morgana lacked a sense of the absurd.

  And now that he was awake, it was time to work. Merlin had to go through the same steps he did in every cycle. Find Arthur. Train Arthur. Relieve his bladder of centuries of pressure. Not in that order.

  He stood up, knees springy. When he looked down, his skin was wrinkle-free and baby fresh. He caught sight of himself in the nearest crystal. He was no longer old and venerable, or even middle-aged and respectable. Merlin’s cheeks were round, his glasses set over eyebrows that had been stripped of their bushy character. His lips frowned back at him, the color of English roses in springtime.

  The glory of his beard? Reduced to a scratch of stubble.

  “Stop,” he muttered to his body. “Stop doing this.”

  Merlin remembered taking Arthur 37 to a Mexican restaurant for his thirteenth birthday, when over fried ice cream Arthur shouted that he, like Merlin, intended to get younger every year. Merlin had wanted to throttle that particular Arthur, in a friendly and informative sort of way.

  Everyone assumed Merlin had done it on purpose, but he’d never asked to age backward. And now he was sliding into adolescence, with a sickening anticipation of what must be in store. How old would he be when he woke up for the next cycle? Ten? Five? Would Arthur listen to a tiny child who claimed to be his mentor?

  And afterward—after babyhood—would Merlin merely blink out of existence?

  He moved with a stewing sense of anger. He couldn’t decide if the fuming was meant for Morgana, who kept them trapped in this cycle, or Arthur, who had woken it up. Again.

  Merlin found an out-of-the-way cluster of crystals to use as a toilet before he made his way through the many paths of the cave. They all led one way. Out. Away from his hibernation spot and into the world—such a terrible place, the world, always needing to be saved.

  When he reached the cave’s entrance, the portal appeared like always, as reflective as a mirror, oily black instead of silver, ready to send Merlin wherever he needed to be. He touched his fingertips to the surface. It swirled like troubled ink. “Where are you, Arthur 42?”

  That number. Merlin tried not to feel the weight of forty-one Arthurs, all dead before they fulfilled their great destiny. Mankind was never truly united. And so Merlin kept spinning through the cycle, hoping that the newest incarnation of an ancient king would do the job.

  Merlin hummed a calming tone and sent his mind careering toward whatever came next. Being able to sense the vague shape of the future was one of his gifts. An ill-gotten one. He shook off thoughts of the past and tried to peer forward in time, but he couldn’t see himself locating Arthur or the
sword.

  He tried clearing his mind like a junk drawer, rattling everything out. He hopped on one foot to regain equilibrium. He even ate a sandwich, which required an enormous amount of magic to summon. “Nothing worse for future workings than low blood sugar,” he muttered, devouring the ham and cheese, mustard, bread, tomatoes, and pickles with wild abandon.

  But when he’d done all of that, he still couldn’t see a single tiny prophetic thing. Just the back of his own eyelids, which turned out to be a boring wash of reddish black. “Is this what normal people see when they close their eyes?” he muttered. “Ridiculous.”

  Merlin had gotten used to having a sense of the soon-to-be, even if he couldn’t fill in the details. It kept him one step ahead of the story, always able to help Arthur. In the end, though, it came back to stab him in the eye. Because eventually Merlin saw the end of the story and could do nothing to stop it.

  Merlin ran his fingers over the surface of the portal. He had no idea where it would send him, and that was the first new thing he could remember in ages. The next breath he pulled in shivered with possibilities.

  If Merlin couldn’t see anything about this cycle, did that mean the ending was unwritten?

  What if this Arthur finally united mankind, and brought the cycle to a close, ending the story as triumphantly as Arthur 12 had killed that giant with three eyes, or Arthur 40 had stopped the cyborg uprising?

  Then—maybe—Merlin would be free.

  Stranger things had happened.

  Merlin cleared his throat and hummed a special set of notes. He would have to track Excalibur the old-fashioned way: using his magic to call out, waiting for Excalibur to respond, then going to fetch the sword and the young boy carrying it.

  The sword hummed back, and Merlin smiled. “This time is different,” he whispered to himself. “This time is ours.”

  With a purposeful wave, he drew the darkness like a curtain. Testing the ground with his slipper, he stepped out, inside the circle of a stone wall, facing a downed oak tree that had the same quality as a freshly robbed grave. Excalibur was gone. Arthur 42 had taken the sword. Morgana had fled, most likely while he’d been eating that sandwich. Typical.