Van Terra

The long, shining white halls of the Governor’s Palace didn’t offer many places to hide. Grace pressed herself against a wall near an intersection, as close to the gold-laced marble as she could manage. Her wings prevented her from resting completely flat against it, but they folded up tight enough under her jacket for her to largely ignore their presence. Across the hall, a massive window offered a glimpse of the countless skyscrapers sprawled across the city-planet’s surface. Above them stretched a dark sky barely touched by the morning light of the closest sun.

It felt wrong to be sneaking around her home like this. Though, even after four years of shelter here, it was hard to feel completely at home in the palace. She rarely saw the governor, the very man who’d taken her in. Her tutors and guards were swapped out every season. And security kept her as far as possible from the prying eyes of the public, from the reporters snooping around for news on the hero that had saved their governor’s life.

Grace’s personal staff were the source of her current predicament, actually. Her math tutor had failed to show up to her room for the morning’s lesson, and she had received no answer when she tried calling the palace secretaries. She’d exited her rooms to find her usual guards missing from their post by her door.

In fact, this entire section of the palace seemed deserted. Grace couldn’t help but assume something was seriously wrong, but no emergency alarms had gone off. There wasn’t so much as a distant shout or footsteps.

She took a deep breath and forced herself around the corner. Another quiet hallway greeted her. She began to walk, resisting the urge to call out.

Most doors were closed, but an open one at her right led into a conference room. Grace paused. The room was empty of people, but a smartsphere sat on the table, projecting a holoscreen into the air. A news broadcast played quietly.

“—scene of the robbery. Several shots were fired, but no injuries have been reported.”

Grace found herself staring at a photo of the infamous Van Terra, standing atop a convenience store roof, holding a blaster aimed toward the security camera the image had come from. The villain’s black coat billowed in the wind around her. Her ponytail of long, black hair whipped about similarly.

Grace shuddered. There were a lot of villains stalking Kronos’ streets, but Van Terra seemed the most interested in making people afraid of her.

“Hey, Grace.”

Grace whirled around and found herself facing a semi-familiar face. Pale skin, lighter than Grace’s light brown. Straight blonde hair pulled back in a short ponytail. And a simple black and white suit that was standard for a diplomat. The material had a glossiness that was exaggerated by the lights above.

An ambassador. One of many that came in and out of the palace. This woman was human, like Grace. And if she remembered correctly, the woman actually had been born on Earth. In Earth years, she looked to be in her late forties, far older than Grace’s nineteen.

“Uh, hi?” Despite the woman’s non-threatening appearance, Grace found herself taking instinctive steps backward. She racked her brain for the woman’s name. “It’s…Callisto, right?”

“Kara Callisto,” the woman confirmed with a warm smile.

And then, behind her, at the other end of the hall, was a far more familiar face: one of Grace’s bodyguards that had actually been kept in her rotation for more than a few seasons. A tall, bald, and bulky man with skin so pale it was practically white. His irises glittered like opals. He was a member of the Starr family, distantly related to the governor.

What was his name again? Coron? Caro? He never spoke to Grace, only followed silently like a shadow. She opened her mouth to call out to him. Maybe he knew what was going on.

Blindingly fast, the bodyguard drew a gun and took aim. Kara’s instincts were much faster than Grace’s, and the next thing Grace knew, she was being yanked sideways. The bullet missed her by inches, striking a wall somewhere behind her with a loud crack.

A flash of light warned of another shot. This time, the weapon that fired was the one in Kara’s hand, a blaster with the same silver-white metal casing that most standard blasters had. Its yellow beam of energy pierced the bodyguard’s chest, and he collapsed.

Grace was too stunned to make any sound, though her mouth hung open and her chest squeezed with the urge to scream. Dark blood pooled on the marble floor beneath the guard.

Kara grabbed Grace’s arm. “Time to run.”

Grace didn’t protest as she was dragged around the corner into the next hallway, though she had a million questions, starting with What on Kronos is happening? and Oh god, am I going to die?

Instead of asking any of those, she went with, “Why did my bodyguard try to kill me?” Her voice trembled so badly that it would be a miracle if Kara understood her.

“Long story,” Kara replied.

“Why are you helping me?”

“Longer story.”

Grace didn’t try saying anything else until Kara led her into a storage closet.

“Take a moment to catch your breath,” Kara told her as she set to work removing a ventilation grate from the wall.

Grace rested a hand on a shelf of cleaning supplies and realized how badly she was shaking. Hoping to distract herself from her shock, she asked, “Why did he use a gun and not a blaster? I’ve never seen a gun on anyone in the palace.”

“It would divert suspicion from the staff when news got out,” Kara replied as she leaned the grate against the wall. She reached into the bag at her side. “Everyone on Starr’s security team uses blasters. With a gun as the murder weapon, they could blame gangs. It would also give them an excuse to increase police patrols.”

Grace’s brow furrowed. Kara removed a large metal hook and fastened it to the top of the vent shaft.

“Wait,” she said, a new wave of fear snaking its way in. “Wait, wait, where are we going?”

“I’m getting you somewhere safe.”

“But—I live here—I—”

“Grace,” Kara said, her voice sympathetic but firm. “Do you realize what’s happening?”

“My bodyguard tried to kill me.”

“The governor tried to kill you.” Kara glanced up at Grace.

Grace’s heart stopped in her chest. “But—but he took me in. He let me stay here, gave me tutors—”

“I’m sorry, Grace, it’s complicated.” Kara removed a coil of rope from the bag and began tying it to the hook. Once it was secure, she rose to her feet. “I promise I’ll explain more when we’re out of here.”

After that, Kara explained how they would be taking the rope down the shaft to the bottom of the palace, where they’d be able to exit and drop into the city below.

Ordinarily, a height like this wouldn’t bother Grace, but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about how if she slipped, she wouldn’t be able to get her wings out in such a tight space. There was no point in taking off her jacket to free them.

Kara hooked them to the rope via belts, and they went in, Kara first. The elaborate hooks on the belts were set up in a way that allowed the two to drop in a freefall at a pace just slow enough to prevent injury when they stopped at the bottom.

Despite claiming she’d wait until they were safe to elaborate on what was happening, Kara did offer Grace one more tidbit of information on the way down, explaining why the section of the palace around Grace’s room had been so empty.

“Things have been rearranged over the past few months to empty that entire floor without raising suspicion. No one knows that everyone else has been rerouted or scheduled elsewhere. It would have been chalked up to an unfortunate accident.”

Grace tried to focus on the facts Kara was laying out, hoping to distract herself from her growing nausea. All that trouble just to kill her. She was grateful to be rescued, but… “Why were you watching me in the first place?”

“When you first made the news, we matched your name and face to a girl who was abducted from Puerto Rico—that’s a place on Earth. Though, there’s a bit of a…timeline issue with that. But we can sort it out later.”

At the bottom of the shaft, Kara blew open the grate leading outside with her blaster. The two descended farther on the ropes, into the air beneath the palace. Four steel pillars held the palace in the air far above Kronos’ tallest skyscraper, and one of those four stood only a few feet away, offering a small amount of cover.

“We have to get to the subtrains,” Kara said. “We’ll take them to my safehouse, and I’ll call for pick up.”

“Pick up?” Where were they going afterward? Were they…leaving Kronos?

More pressing than that question was the mention of the subsurface trains. Grace had never been on the subtrains. In fact, since being taken by the governor, she hadn’t even been to the city’s lower streets. But she’d heard about the subtrains, about how they were full of criminals, thieves, muggers waiting to harass people on their way to work. About how gang members hung out down there, trading weapons and guns…

Kara glanced up briefly before she went back to fiddling with the section of rope still coiled at the end of the line. “You look scared. Well, more than you already did.”

“I haven’t heard great things about the subtrains.”

Kara lifted an eyebrow. “They’re not as bad as the people up here make them out to be,” she said. “And, well, Starr could solve the problems that do exist if he’d direct more funds to public transportation.” With another glance up, she added, “You have nothing to worry about as long as you’re with me.”

Kara let out the last of the rope, and the two dropped onto the roof of the skyscraper below. Kara broke the lock on a service door leading inside. From there, they used a few different elevators to get down to street level. It was apparently common for a single elevator to only cover either the upper, middle, or lower districts, with maintenance and private elevators being the exception.

Once they were done with elevators, Kara led an anxious Grace down a set of stairs into a dim underground. Crowds pressed in on them from all sides. Grace lifted the hood of her jacket to hide her face.

Would anyone really recognize her, even if they did get a good look? She’d been fifteen four years ago. Her face had changed since her rescue of Governor Starr hit the news. Sure, photos of her did get out every time she left the palace, rare as those occasions were. But she wasn’t interesting.

They navigated a maze of wide corridors and train platforms. When they stepped onto one of the trains, Grace noted that it was headed north. Her next thought was that that information didn’t help her at all. She was familiar with Kronos’ geography in relation to the upper districts, but the planet’s surface was an entirely different beast.

As the train pulled out of the station, Grace racked her brain for questions she could ask Kara. Kara might not want to share her entire story until they got to their destination—wherever that was—but maybe Grace could at least get a few more pieces of the puzzle.

“So, you work with a group of people, then?” Grace asked. “Is it like the Interstar Council?”

“A bit. We’re not a government, though, so we can act where the council can’t.” A bitterness crept into those last few words. Grace got the impression that Kara wasn’t the council’s biggest fan.

“And we’re going to your…base?”

“We’re going to one of our ships,” Kara answered. “I doubt we’ll go directly to our base, after that. It’s…pretty far from Kronos.”

Grace glanced around the crowd, heart skipping whenever she noticed someone looking even slightly in her direction. Logically, she knew it was unlikely anyone was actually focused on her, but it was hard not to assume otherwise.

The train jerked to an abrupt stop, sending Grace stumbling forward. Her already-racing heart skipped another beat as the neon green tunnel lights flickered outside the train windows. Murmurs spread through the crowd of passengers.

A hand grabbed Grace’s arm to steady her. “You okay?” Kara asked.

“Yeah.” Grace adjusted the hood of her blue jacket to better hide her face. “What’s happening? Does this have to do with us?”

Kara didn’t respond. The tunnel lights flickered twice more before going out entirely. The train’s interior followed.

“What do we do?” Grace pressed.

“It’s going to be fine.” Kara sounded more like she was trying to reassure herself than Grace. Her grip on Grace’s arm tightened.

The subtrain intercom clicked on. “Callisto,” a deep voice said. “Kronos police have you surrounded. We know you’ve kidnapped Grace Alvarez. Turn yourself in now and we’ll spare your life.”

“Why are they saying you kidnapped me?” Grace whispered as loud as she dared.

“You’re proof of Starr’s secret lab experiments,” Kara replied. “If I can get you to Earth, we can persuade the Interstar Council to help us stop him.”

Grace’s blood went cold. That was right. She’d escaped from a lab. It was easy to forget, when her memories of all but those last few steps out the door were gone. Wiped on purpose, according to the scientist who’d helped her. He hadn’t made it out.

The first part of Kara’s sentence finally wriggled its way into the forefront of Grace’s thoughts. “Wait, Starr’s lab?”

A thud came from the back of the train car. Its metal doors let out a terrible screech as they were forced open. Flashlight beams passed over the crowd, offering brief glimpses of the other passengers, a blend of aliens from all over the Kronos system and beyond. Light illuminated skin in every color, scales and fur, antennae, animalistic ears and eyes, and a handful of people who looked as human as Grace and Kara. Or, nearly as human, in some cases.

Regardless of what planet they were from, everyone in the train looked somewhere between confused and scared.

“Grace,” Kara whispered. “If something happens to me, you have to keep going. Get off Kronos, get out of the Janus system, get to Earth.”

“Earth?” Grace’s chest constricted. Breathing now felt like an impossible task. How was she supposed to get anywhere near the Solar System?

“You need to find other people from Earthguard,” Kara continued. “The Kronosian government has been experimenting on abductees, and we need you as proof to get the council to act.” Her head turned, and she gave Grace a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you farther. I knew from the start this mission would probably be my last. But we expected Starr to get rid of you soon, and I had to take the chance to save you.”

A flashlight beam blinded Grace. “Found them!” a Kronosian police officer shouted. Grace squinted as his silhouette raised a blaster.

“Get ready to run,” Kara whispered. Without waiting for a response from Grace, she lifted her arms and stepped forward. The simple black and white clothes she’d worn to disguise herself as a diplomat were stained with blood and grime. Stray pieces of blonde hair had fallen from her ragged ponytail. “I surrender.”

A blaster’s blue laser struck her chest.