“Unsurprising,” Val says, making Clarke smile. “Tell me everything.”
25
Matthew releases his statement, explainingthat the article misrepresented what he said and he loved working with Clarke. Elemental releases their statement, explaining that Clarke is only tolerable so long as she’s producing results. Clarke’s being hounded for comments she refuses to give everywhere she goes. Her address on Luna isn’t public record, but Elemental HQ’s is, and there’s a gaggle of people just past the property line every morning when she arrives and every evening when she leaves. She doesn’t go anywhere besides work, which feels more hostile than ever, and her house, which feels emptier than ever. She cries about it, then feels stupid for crying about it. She’s in what would be the menstruation phase of her cycle if she didn’t have an implant that keeps her from menstruating, though, so she thinks the extra emotion can be forgiven (this phase is carefully scheduled to occur during each month’s bye week, of course).
She talks to Julian every day. He is supportive and steady. He listens when she rants and when she gets quiet. It helps so much that she’s almost embarrassed by it. She has Julian, and the meeting with Atreus, and Graham’s party to look forward to. Her stomach is a mess of excitement and anxiety, but there ismore to life than Elemental Machines, and Clarke is bound and fucking determined to remember that.
On Saturday, she takes her hovercar one city over to a dock for privately owned ships making the hop between Earth and Luna. She waves her cuff at a turnstile near the dock’s entrance and is given instructions to a specific berth. The path takes her deep into the dock, past rows and rows of slumbering ships in varying shapes and sizes, and her mind drifts.
She hasn’t told Julian about this meeting. She’s thought about it half a dozen times, but kept holding back. Chronicle and Provenance are rivals, the contention between them thick and historied, and Clarke and Julianjustgot back to a good place. She wants to protect that. If he’s not happy for her, if he sees it as her setting herself against him…shethinkshe’ll understand. She thinks he’ll be able to see what an incredible opportunity this is. But if he doesn’t, she doesn’t want to know ahead of time. It would shake her, and she needs to be solid for this.
She’ll tell him when it’s a done deal, she decides as she nears Atreus’s berth. That way, she doesn’t have to face telling him that it didn’t work out, if it doesn’t. Not that it’s not going to work out, but—
The sound of a ship’s hatch opening startles her. She ducks reflexively, concealing herself behind the loading dock of the neighboring ship.
“—next season,” someone says.
It’s Atreus, his voice familiar after years of watching team principal conferences. He’s speaking to someone at the entrance of his ship. He must’ve had a meeting before Clarke’s, and is walking that guest out. Clarke feels better about her silly instinct to hide. No one can know that she’s talking to Provenance, even for a preliminary discussion. She stays where she is.
“Still, you have to know that I’m flattered,” says another voice, and surprise and confusion root Clarke to the spot.
What’s Julian doing here?
“Any pilot would be,” Julian goes on. “It’s an honor to be considered by Provenance.”
Clarke’s heart falls off a precipice. That almost sounds like—is he—Atreus made Julian an offer? Julian wants to leave Chronicle? Since when? Why hasn’t he told Clarke? For the same reasons she hasn’t told him, or—
“Of course,” Atreus says. “I can only hope the other talent in the field agrees with you.”
“Right, other talent.” Julian sounds…weird. Uncertain. That could just be the roaring in Clarke’s ears, though. The knots in her stomach are weaving a tapestry, and shereallydoesn’t like the picture that’s forming. “Are you talking to Clarke, then? And St. Sebastian? They both have expiring contracts.”
“St. Sebastian, no. He’d resent being Delphine’s secondary even more than Oliver does. I’m trying to solve a problem, not re-create it. I do have a meeting set up with Clarke, but it’s a formality. She’s not Provenance material. I’m sure you agree?”
Clarke sucks in a breath that doesn’t make it to her lungs. Tears burst against the backs of her eyes. All the hope she’d been carefully stockpiling for this meeting gets torn down in an instant, leaving only embarrassment and dejection in its place. But Julian—surelyJulian will defend her? He’s called her one of the best pilots of their generation, said that she’s magic on the track.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Julian says. He still sounds odd. “She’s no champion. She’s just not good enough.”
Clarke accidentally brushed her hand against a ship’sunshielded kickdrive once. Hearing Julian say those words reminds her of the fraction of a second she’d had before the surge blew through her: long enough to acknowledge that she got too close to something exceedingly dangerous, but not long enough to do anything other than brace for the pain.
She braces. She’s already crouched; now she wraps her arms around her head, pressing her face against her shoulder. It doesn’t help, but at least it keeps her quiet as devastation tears through her mercilessly. She sobs silently into her elbow. She trusted him. Aftereverything, she chose to trust him, and—
Anders thinking Clarke’s not good enough hurts. Julian thinking Clarke’s not good enough shreds her into pieces so small that she knows she’ll never be the same, even if she manages to put herself back together.
“It’s a shame, really.” Atreus sighs. “She seems like a nice girl. Someone should’ve stopped her from dreaming this dream years ago, to spare her the pain.”
Julian takes a long time to respond. “She can take it. She’ll be fine.”
Atreus makes an unconvinced noise. They leave it there, trading goodbyes and see-you-at-the-next-races. Two sets of footsteps: Atreus’s receding as he goes back into his ship to wait for Clarke, Julian’s approaching as he walks up the aisle toward the exit.
He passes her hiding spot. He’s walking quickly, head down, typing furiously on his cuff. Clarke watches him go, a yawning emptiness expanding in her chest.
A mad sense of urgency grips her. She has to get out of this. She can’t go into this meeting and act like everything’s okay and listen to Atreus let her down gently.
She’s been digging her fingers into her shoulder blades sohard that blood rushing back into the indentations when she lets go is painful. She gets her cuff in front of her face and writes a rough message to Rhynn, asking them to reschedule with Atreus. She holds her wrist with white-knuckled fingers, still crouched, still compressing her body like she can minimize the emotional fallout through physical containment.
She can’t. Betrayal defies containment. It’s bleeding out, everywhere.Clarkeis bleeding out everywhere.
Rhynn writes back within a minute.Done. Is something wrong?