Phantom song, p.1
Phantom Song, page 1
part #2 of Toccata System Series
Phantom Song
(Toccata System, Book Two)
Kate Sheeran Swed
Copyright © 2019 by Kate Sheeran Swed
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover by miblart
Interior graphics by Chace Verity
Created with Vellum
To Mom and Dad
I’m still working those music chops!
Contents
1. Claire
2. Claire
3. Isabelle
4. Isabelle
5. Claire
6. Claire
7. Claire
8. Sam
9. Isabelle
10. Claire
11. Claire
12. Isabelle
13. Sam
14. Claire
15. Claire
16. Claire
17. Claire
18. Sam
19. Isabelle
20. Claire
21. Claire
22. Claire
23. Isabelle
24. Claire
25. Claire
26. Claire
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Kate Sheeran Swed
1
Claire
Interplanetary Transport A90D
With all the various ways to die in space, Claire Leroux considered it a gross miscalculation that the only method of traveling through it was in a souped-up tin can that smelled like feet and French fries.
She’d never wanted to travel in a spaceship, ever. And yet here she was, standing at the window of a passenger transport, heart sizzling with anxiety as the ship navigated Landry’s forest of satellites.
Claire liked to watch the satellites. From the ground. She did not like standing face to face with them, close enough to count their ugly tubes and solar panels. It was too easy to picture one—or all—of those complicated apparatuses breaking free to zoom through the vacuum and puncture her face. There was simply too much to live for, like music and kissing and Landry City’s signature dark chocolate croissants, for her to be comfortable risking her butt up here. And all for the sake of Dad’s company trip to Marya.
The crinkly standard-issue spacesuit she wore over her clothes felt like poor armor against the many, many dangers of space travel.
Claire hummed a tune under her breath to calm herself, an aria she’d been preparing for the upcoming round of summer theater auditions. Sebben crudele, mi fai languir. Her parents might force her into the black, and her girlfriend might encourage her to be more adventurous, but at least Claire could trust the opera—which was ancient, by the way, no change necessary—to provide an appropriately moody soundtrack. Cruel love. Languishing hearts. Betrayal, with a side order of doom.
The transport rockets fired gently, vibrating the floor, and Claire edged away from the glass. Surely people would start screaming if the movement were out of the ordinary. She darted a glance at the attendant who stood by the doors to the passenger lounge where everyone else was relaxing. He yawned.
Maybe she ought to call Iz, just in case. She didn’t like the way they’d left things, that the last words she’d said to her girlfriend were that they were too different to make it work. Claire didn’t believe that. She couldn’t even picture a trip to the corner market without Iz.
If Iz were here, she’d point out all the good stuff. She’d describe the beautiful lakes on Marya and get Claire excited about toasting marshmallows or chasing birds, or whatever people did on other planets.
Claire had never left Landry before in her life.
The lounge doors opened, and Claire jumped. The attendant raised an eyebrow.
It was just Mom. She had her blonde hair tied back in a long ponytail, and Claire knew she was wearing blue jeans under her suit even though the rest of the passengers had dressed up for the trip. Claire regularly waffled between pride and embarrassed frustration at the level of her mother’s confidence.
“There you are,” Mom said. “Aren’t the satellites gorgeous from up here?”
“I like them just fine from Landry City.” Claire heard the sulk in her voice. She didn’t care. Iz would tease Claire into cheerfulness. But Iz wasn’t here, and Claire was stuck with her own grumpy devices.
Mom set a hand on her shoulder, the suit crackling as she moved. “We’ll be back in two weeks. In the meantime, let’s enjoy our adventure.”
So far, adventure smelled like musty cheese and stale air. Also, there weren’t any snacks. Not that her anxiety-squeezed stomach could take food at the moment, but it was the principle of the thing.
Claire was still trying to decide how to word her complaints when a loud blast echoed from inside the lounge. “Was that—?”
The attendant straightened and flew toward the lounge, then crumpled with a spray of blood as another figure flashed by the doors, too quick for Claire to see.
Gunshots.
The attendant’s blood seeped into the grated metal floor. Claire wanted to help, or maybe just to look away, but all she could do was stand there in horror, staring at the perfectly round puncture in the man’s forehead. Too late. Too late.
Mom shoved her against the window, cutting off her view. Even with one ear pressed against the plasticky fabric of her mother’s suit, Claire could hear the startled passengers crying out from the lounge. She gagged, imagining she could smell the attendant’s blood, though that might have been an illusion. The panic she’d contained since boarding the transport surged electric through her chest, and it took a concerted effort to clamp her mouth shut and stay silent.
Of all the disasters she’d expected today, a hijacking—or whatever this was—hadn’t even entered her mind. Who would start a gunfight on a Landry transport? It was unheard of.
“This company left me with nothing,” a voice boomed out of the lounge. Claire craned her neck despite Mom’s hiss of protest, catching sight of a huge figure through the doorway. A bright green mask covered his face, the eyes flashing electric red. A shell of green-tinted armor protected the rest of his body, reaching up the neck and over the hands, revealing not a single sliver of flesh.
His feet were filed into blades.
Claire didn’t recognize his voice, but Mom gasped as his raving speech continued and tugged her farther down the passenger bridge toward the emergency pod bay, still shuffling alongside the windows. Clearly this man was familiar to her.
Maybe it was the man’s impossible size, or the mercenary shadows that flashed by behind him with weapons primed, but the sight of him sent a surge of primal terror rushing through Claire’s veins. As if she were facing down a predator in the wild. When it came to fight or flight, Claire’s body seemed determined to choose option three: freeze like a terrified rodent and avoid the eye of a hawk.
Mom, however, was in flight mode. She pulled Claire along the window toward the entry corridor. The man shouted something about debts, and then they were running.
“Who is that?” Claire asked. “What’s happening?”
“He…I think he was injured in one of the factories last year,” Mom said. “They saved his life, but it was via… They used implants.”
“Implants? Like they made him a cyborg?”
Cyborgs weren’t treated very well in the Toccata System. Not that she’d heard of many incidents in Landry City, but there’d been that one incident on one of Marya’s moons last year, where a cyborg entered a bank and the teller assumed she meant to hack into the system. Three security guards stunned the cyborg at the same time, frying her circuits. They hauled her off to jail before anyone realized she’d only been looking to make a deposit.
The bank wasn’t even held responsible for the damage to the cyborg’s systems. And when people talked about that day, their surprise centered around the fact that the cyborg had enough property to store in a bank at all. Jobs for cyborgs? They were nearly nonexistent. No wonder the bank officers had misinterpreted the situation, people said.
Dad thought it was wrong, that cyborgs were human beings with rights. Claire thought it was just the way things were. And yet Dad was the one trapped in the lounge with the mad cyborg, while Claire ran away. All because she’d needed a few minutes to sulk.
Mom pulled her along faster. “We need to get to an emergency pod, now.”
“What about Dad?”
The lights went out, and Claire stumbled. Reflections from the satellites outside illuminated Mom’s back in uneven strobes as they ran through the hall.
Claire asked about Dad again. Mom didn’t answer. Claire had dragged her feet down this corridor less than an hour ago, surrounded by rolling suitcases and voices chattering excitedly over the rustling of spacesuits and automated safety announcements. The crowd had moved slowly, and in her mind, Claire compared them to cattle.
Now the corridor was empty. No matter how fast she sprinted, her churning adrenaline made it feel like she was moving through a vat of honey.
Seconds blurred, and they burst through a set of double doors, nearly colliding with a pair of men in full fatigues. Claire would have thought they worked for the transport company, except for the guns holstered at their hips. They shouted in surprise. Mom didn’t pause.
Ahead, the emergency pod arches glimmered.
Mom caught her wrist and pulled her forward. Claire stumbled again and nearly fell, catching herself on the floor with one hand. Something in her wrist sent a painful jolt up to her shoulder, but she scrambled to her feet and kept moving. The pods seemed impossibly far away. Footsteps hammered behind them, and Claire shut her eyes, her uninjured hand stretching for safety.
She inhaled metal, and sweat. The footsteps pounded closer.
Her fingers brushed the frame of the first pod, and she opened her eyes.
Someone grabbed Claire’s hair from behind, pulling her back so hard that she lost her footing. She tried to brace herself with the injured hand and cried out as pain radiated through her wrist. Broken, a still-functioning part of her brain whispered.
A scream ripped through the bay, and Claire twisted her head despite the hand in her hair. Her mother ran toward them, roaring like she meant to take the place down with her voice alone, a trio of men at her heels.
“No,” Claire choked, but it was too late.
Mom slammed into Claire’s captor, knocking him to the ground and forcing him to let go of Claire. Her head slammed against the floor, but she righted herself, ready to rush to Mom’s rescue. Before she could blink, Mom had the soldier’s gun in her hand. She fired.
Still gripping the gun, Mom scooped Claire up and shoved her into the E-pod. Despite the pain that radiated up her arm, Claire tried to hold onto her mother’s hand, but Mom wouldn’t let her. Instead, she secured the straps over Claire's body and shoved an O2 helmet on her head, twisting to attach it to the suit.
And then she pulled away.
“What are you doing?” Claire said as the suit built gloves around her hands, an automatic reaction to the addition of the helmet.
Mom blew her a kiss and shut the pod door. She hit the button to pressurize.
“What are you doing?” Claire cried, but her mother couldn’t hear. She faced the soldiers, gun outstretched.
She was giving Claire a chance to get away.
To hell with that.
Claire reached to unbuckle the safety strap.
The pod pressurized with a beep, giving her only a second’s warning before it detached from the transport and shot away.
Claire screamed at her mother’s silhouette through the firing of rockets. She saw Mom drop the gun, the men leading her away. Hand shaking violently, Claire placed that call to Iz. Some rational corner of her mind told her to phone the atmo guard, the police, someone in authority. But it was too late. There was nothing they could do.
Claire needed Iz.
The connection failed. Claire tried again, her breath heavy in her ears, eyes burning as she kept her attention locked on the transport. There was a cylindrical ship attached to the main airlock, and as she watched, it peeled away from the bigger ship, wheeling around to drop toward Landry like a tumbling meteor.
Claire surveyed the E-pod’s controls. The mercs—or revenge seekers, or whoever they were—had gone. If she could figure out how to work the controls, she could get back to the transport. Find Dad. Hug Mom, and yell at her for not taking the pod’s empty seat.
Flying was Iz’s territory, but this was a standard E-pod. How hard could it be? Throwing a blanket of false confidence over her panic, Claire forced herself to look carefully, to think. In a few minutes, she’d be back onboard. No problem.
The lumbering transport exploded, snakes of fire curling inward toward the only available oxygen, and snuffing out as that gas leaked into the blackness.
Claire stopped breathing, hands still poised over the controls.
The tab connection clicked. Iz said, “Hello?”
She sounded worlds away.
A rainstorm of shrapnel fired out of the transport’s center, a thousand bullets spinning toward her through the blackness.
Sebben crudele, mi fai languir.
Claire cut the connection to Iz and let them come.
2
Claire
Trigin-North Medical Center
Marya Moon Triginti
When Claire regained consciousness, it felt like her body was encased in flame. She lay flat on her back, a light above her shining so brightly that her right eye squinted, streaming tears of protest.
When she tried to blink, her right eye closed. Her left didn’t.
She tried again. Nothing.
Her left arm wouldn’t move, either.
Claire swallowed a bitter wad of panic and forced herself to breathe. Her lungs worked. That was something.
Still staring at the offensively bright light, she twitched her right foot, and then her left. Knees, check. Thighs, good. Hips, all set.
Torso.
Chaos.
The left side of her upper body refused to move. Heart skittering, Claire tried twitching her elbow, her shoulder, her fingers. She squeezed her stomach muscles and tried to roll, but it was as though she’d been pinned down. For a hysterical moment, she pictured butterflies trapped in shadow boxes, their wings spread in a permanent death display.
Disoriented, she tilted her head, trying to get a look at the room. Even that movement felt strangely heavy, the left side of her face dragging her back toward the sheet.
She’d been in an emergency pod.
There’d been a fire.
Her mother…
Claire swallowed again. She breathed. She wasn’t in a pod now; she was lying flat, with a firm mattress behind her back. She opened her mouth to call for help.
Before she could make a sound, something soft landed on her stomach. A bag.
“Your medications,” someone said. “You’ll be immunosuppressed for a month, so don’t go licking any sidewalks.”
Claire blinked—her right eye, anyway—and a nurse came into focus. She wore blue scrubs, a cap perched on top of graying curls, and a paper mask hooked over the bottom half of her face.
“I don’t understand,” Claire said, her voice rough. “Where’s my mother?”
Fire and gunshots crackled in the back of her mind, whispering the answer. She shoved them away.
“Apparently she wanted this for you,” the nurse said, a scowl fixed across the half of her face Claire could see. Claire imagined the woman’s lip curling in disgust.
This.
Claire tilted her chin again to look down at her body.
Metal and wires. Bolts and gears
Cyborg.
No. No, that couldn’t be right. Claire’s family was dead. They couldn’t have given the instructions to turn her into… They couldn’t have. Because they’re dead, her brain buzzed, repeating the refrain as a frantic mantra. Shouldn’t she be upset? Crying? She couldn’t feel. She didn’t feel anything.
Shock, a calmer voice interceded. You’re in shock.
The second voice sounded like Iz. Claire forced herself to draw breath.
The nurse stood over her, staring. Waiting for a response. When Claire said nothing, the nurse rolled her eyes. “You’re fixed,” she said, enunciating slowly. “You have thirty minutes to clear the premises.”
Claire swallowed. Her throat felt like glue, but she didn’t dare ask this woman for water. “I can’t move.”
“That is your affair.” The nurse swept out of the room, and the door slid shut behind her with a clatter.
Hateful as she was, Claire wished the nurse would have stayed. There was no one else.
And no wonder. A cyborg. Claire was a cyborg now, like the man who’d destroyed the transport.
With that thought, memories crashed through the dam of her shock, vibrating her eardrums with phantom gunshots and screams, the pressure in her chest squeezing painfully as she watched her mother being marched away.
