All the Stars Left Behind Read online

  Nils remained half-hidden behind Uncle Arne, his gaze locked on Roar. Roar glared at Nils. A muscle jumped in his jaw; his hands formed tight fists at his sides. No one moved. No one spoke. Leda could almost hear the hands move on Uncle Arne’s watch. Sweat glittered like pin-sized diamonds on his brow, making his peach freckles stand out.

  Grams called a ten-minute warning for supper, her words cutting through the intense silence. Roar grabbed a broom and began sweeping the floor.

  “I should go,” Nils practically whispered.

  Spider’s web lines pulled at the corners of Uncle Arne’s eyes and a smile hid in the scruff of his beard. “Come by tomorrow afternoon for pizza and a Zombie Island marathon. Leda brought the entire series with her.”

  Nils perked up. “I think Leda just became my favorite person.”

  She smiled at him, ignoring the strange pulsing in her brain that seemed to insist she look at Roar again. “I’ll remember that when school starts.”

  “For sure!” Nils moved with Arne to the door. He smiled at Leda over his shoulder, avoiding Roar, and then he jogged off in the dim twilight. All scarecrow and mismatched and awkward.

  In coordinated silence, Roar and her uncle tidied up the shop. All signs of Nils’s near-death experience were swept away. As they worked, Leda was acutely aware of Roar’s movements in the shop, though she didn’t dare look at him. The swish of wood shavings with each sweep. His breath a whisper on her skin whenever he came close. He invaded her—there was no other way of putting it. Made her forget about everything but him.

  Roar finished sweeping and replaced the broom. His eyes found hers across the shop. The air between them suddenly felt tissue paper-thin. She drew a breath with the feel of something heavy on her chest, a weight pressing down like a fist. It didn’t last this time, though, thankfully. After a jolted nod to Uncle Arne, Roar ducked outside. Then he was gone. He left the same way he arrived: lightning fast and without a word.

  “Dinner’s ready!” Grams shouted.

  Uncle Arne dropped a sawdust-coated hand on her head and ruffled her hair. “Better get going.”

  “Wonder what we’re having.” Leda shuddered, recalling the meal on the flight from Iceland to Norway. She’d gone vegan after a class trip to a dairy farm in the eighth grade. All those cows, trapped, because of what they were, what they produced. Used—that resonated with her. It had become her biggest fear: not being good enough for anything but what people thought she should be. The cripple. Useless. Discarded. Overlooked.

  She wouldn’t do that to anyone—or anything.

  “Fiskeboller, by the smell of things,” Arne said.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Ew, fish balls?”

  Uncle Arne inhaled a deep breath through his nose. The knit on his sweater pulled so tight, Leda thought the wool might snap and unravel around him. “I smell fresh-baked flat bread, too.”

  She sniffed the air, then frowned. “All I smell is wood.”

  A deep belly laugh erupted from him. “Come on.”

  It was over an hour later before she realized that this was the first time in those seconds, minutes, hours, and weeks that she’d been able to think about anything other than her father.

  Who are you, Roar?

  Chapter Two

  Roar kept his senses alert as he stalked the Woede boy called Nils across the island. The moment when their eyes met in Arne’s shop played on a loop in his mind. Something in Roar’s chest had splintered—his stomach wound tight, his head throbbed. Memories clashed in his mind. Death; destruction; total annihilation.

  The Woede are here on Earth.

  And this boy was one of them.

  The universe never gives you more than you can handle.

  What a load. Roar had been through a hell of a lot more in his seventeen years than most dealt with in an entire lifetime. Left his home world in the middle of a war? Check. Pilot an untested ship with a mismatched crew across the universe? Check. Find the mysterious weapon and save his people? That’s why I’m here.

  If only Equinox’s cloak and shield had been complete when the Elders had shoved Roar and the three others onto the ship and sent them away during the Woede siege on Aurelis, they might have slipped past Earth’s satellites undetected. Unfortunately, that hadn’t happened. Then again, no one had planned the emergency launch of an unfinished ship.

  No Aurelite wanted this war. So Roar had come up with a spur-of-the-moment cover story when the humans made contact with Equinox: the four on board were the sole survivors of a cataclysmic disaster that destroyed their planet. He’d rather lie and work with the humans than become like the Woede.

  Like the one I just saved.

  He should have let the boy die. He should have enjoyed watching light fade from Nils’s eyes, color drain from his face. Instead, Roar had reacted without pause and saved his enemy’s life. The Woede never hesitated before they attacked, never wondered about the lives they took or those left behind in the aftermath.

  They destroyed my family.

  He repeated the words in his mind, a mantra, as he followed the Woede boy up Kirkegata and out of Vardø town center. North on Per Larsens Gate until the paved road ended and a trampled footpath began. Nils bobbed with each step up the skinny finger of land pointing toward the North Pole, like gravity didn’t affect him.

  They destroyed my family.

  Nils stopped near the end of the path. Roar waited to see what the Woede’s next move would be. For a long moment, he stared at his enemy’s back. Imagined every which way he’d end this life. In the space between a human’s blink, he could crush Nils’s windpipe, tear it from his throat. Cut the Woede boy’s heart from his chest and throw it into the sea.

  Cold sweat trickled down his brow and fogged his vision. Roar wiped the sweat with a fist. His fingers fused to his palm. Conflicting thoughts tornadoed in his head as he edged closer to Nils.

  The Woede had murdered Roar’s parents. But this Woede in front of him was too young, he couldn’t be responsible. Weren’t they all the same, though? Kill first, don’t bother asking questions, find the next target. Kill. The Woede were killers. And what better way to beat your enemy than becoming them? To stop a thief, you had to think like a thief. What if, to stop a killer, you had to become like the killer?

  At least that was the message his people had pushed into him.

  This isn’t you. His mother’s voice hummed on icy winds that sliced down to his bones. He shut his eyes and focused every thought and emotion, every single molecule of his being. For a moment, he could almost hear the words she half whispered, half sang to him, a hypnotic chant. Words he hadn’t remembered until this moment.

  Here beneath the setting sun, the day complete and night begun; in the æther, both together, hold my hand dear, can you feel it? You and me, we’re both the same, we live as one and die as one; we need each other, friends or lovers, one won’t survive without the other.

  The words and his mother’s voice, both faded in the brisk evening air. Roar opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was Nils. A burning hatred simmered under his skin. The Woede took her from me.

  Nils had been choking. All Roar would have had to do was hesitate and there’d be one less Woede in the universe. Instead, he’d saved the boy. He wanted to be the hero who saved his people. And in his own way, he guessed he would be. But he wasn’t the weapon. He was only meant to find it.

  Then something happened. Something he couldn’t figure out. In his mind, he saw the girl with the crutches. Leda. Just like before, when he stood with her in Arne’s shop and held her hand, Roar’s entire world centered; a cosmic flash deep inside his gut. He only saw her. Smooth brown skin and silky black hair that swished around her waist, a curtain of secrets. Long lashes framed deep, smoky eyes with feathers of gray, and when she looked at him, at his Dravu and the stupid shirt he’d thrown on this morning, he couldn’t hear his own breaths. Looking at her made his neck burn, his hands slick.

  “That’s far enough,
Herr Bakke,” a voice boomed in Norwegian. It was Chief Inspector Sørby.

  Nils spun around lightning quick, his eyes wide with shock. The boy’d had no idea he was being followed.

  “Go on home, Nils,” Sørby said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Nils spared a confused look at Roar on his way back toward the town.

  Sørby turned to Roar, holding a blue card with the Norwegian coat of arms in gold. She flipped it over. On the other side, it said POLITI and displayed her name and photograph. “I think it’s time you and I had a little chat.”

  The Chief Inspector was a severe, stout woman stuffed inside a police uniform. She reminded Roar of a sausage bursting from its casing. The navy fabric of her jacket stretched taut across shoulders far too broad for a woman. She wore her silvery-blond hair short and with a blunt fringe hiding her leathery brow. Sørby looked Roar up and down, like she was checking to see how much trouble he’d be. But the message in her eyes was clear: she knew what he was, and she preferred the Woede boy.

  “I might as well drive you back home,” she said. “Tell your friends to meet us there, and we’ll discuss how it’s going to be while you’re in my town.”

  Four Aurelites and two humans sat around a table. The Chief Inspector accepted a cup of coffee from Dr. Charles Paunovic, Roar’s government assigned guardian. In the middle of the table was a thick folder stamped with the words Eiendommen av Norske Myndigheter—Property of the Norwegian Government.

  Roar flicked a faster-than-light glance at each member of his crew. If it wouldn’t make a scene and cause heaps of trouble for them, he’d remove the self-imposed ban on use of their not-so-human capabilities and get the hell out of here. Not knowing what the weapon looked like, or exactly where on Vardø he’d find it, posed a massive problem. Aurelites were faster, stronger, and some were capable of things humans made movies about, but they weren’t immortal. Roar needed time. Playing by the rules gave it to him.

  Sørby drew in deep on her cigarette. “Aliens,” she said with a snort, a puff of smoke wreathing her head. “Lots of them. Here on Vardø. Never thought I’d see the day.”

  Not quite knowing what to say, Roar firmed his lips. He wanted to ask questions, like, How many aliens are here? But he had a feeling Sørby wasn’t in the mood for question-and-answer time. At least the translation implants held up.

  One last draw, and Sørby crushed her cigarette butt on the plate of cookies next to her mug. “I have some documents for you, Roar.” She opened the folder and handed him an envelope.

  Roar accepted his packet. Inside he found an official Norwegian passport with his name inside, printed next to a startled-looking likeness of him, a birth certificate, and bank card.

  Sørby moved to Petrus next. Roar’s best friend since childhood wore his usual expressionless mask. Petrus was physically unable to speak and used Norsk Tegnspråk—Norway’s very own sign language—to thank her, while Roar did the talking. That’s the way it had been, even on Aurelis, for as long as Roar could remember.

  The Chief Inspector turned her attention across the table. “Stein.”

  A compact, stocky, blue-eyed boy of seventeen, Stein glared hot daggers at Sørby and snatched his envelope. Bloodshot eyes, swaying in his chair; Stein was drunk. Roar didn’t even know where he’d gotten the alcohol from. Fortunately, Sørby didn’t notice—or pretended not to notice.

  She came to the fourth and final member of the crew. “Oline.”

  Oline offered the barest hint of a smile as she rifled through her envelope. She held up the passport with pale, slender fingers, and examined the photo in detail. A sudden jolt, so fast the humans never registered it. She tossed her shocking white hair over a bird-like shoulder. “I suppose it’ll do.”

  “Mm.” Sørby pinched her gaze and looked the four Aurelites over. “You’ve been given a second chance. I hope you’ll respect the guidelines you agreed to. The idea here is to blend in.”

  Like they needed to hear another speech about the “importance of blending in” on Earth. Oline gave Roar an appraising look, followed by a cynical grin. He felt her gaze tracing the visible parts of Roar’s Dravu—the markings on his throat, shoulder, bicep, and chest that developed at birth on males from Aurelis. Similar to tattoos, with one major exception: the Dravu was alive. A swirling vine of color stretching over his torso.

  “And let me make one thing clear. Nils is a good boy,” Sørby went on. “Part human. He was born on Vardø, and we consider him one of our own. I read your files, and let me tell you, Herr Bakke, I don’t want any more trouble than I’ve already got to deal with. Do I make myself clear?”

  Roar dipped his head in agreement.

  “What happened to your lot is more than just unfortunate.” She made a disgusted sound, no doubt recalling the cover story Roar came up with. “The most we can do is give you a fresh start. Which we are, aren’t we?”

  Oline met the Chief Inspector’s steel-trap glare. “Yes.”

  “A healthy stipend, nice houses, relative freedom. Mostly, you’ve got the same rights as an asylum seeker, and in Norway, that’s better than in other countries.”

  Also true.

  Sørby turned in her seat, the wood creaking beneath her. “The four of you can make it work here, but I need you all to make a promise.”

  Roar knew what was coming; he knew three of the four would agree.

  “Keep your hands off of Nils, or we’ll give you over to the Americans. At this stage, the Norwegian government is all that’s standing between you and a lifetime of experiments.” She shuddered, and Roar figured it wasn’t for show. “I’ve seen evidence of the way they treat their ‘guests.’ Guantanamo, for instance. And that’s not even the worst of it. You’d do well to follow my rules, Herr Bakke. There aren’t many of them, and they aren’t that difficult to follow. If you stay in line, life here can be pleasant for all of us.”

  Sørby straightened her uniform and pushed her chair back, signaling an end to the discussion. She delivered a final statement from the front hall. “I’m watching you four. One step out of line, one reason to doubt you, that’s all I need.” The door clicked shut behind her.

  The weight of what Roar had almost done an hour ago pushed down on Roar’s shoulders. Emptied his lungs. Added to the ever-increasing pressure scratching under his skin. He was meant to save lives, not take them. Killing Nils changed nothing—Aurelis was still under the Woede’s control. Millions of his people relied on him keeping a level head and getting the weapon back to where it belonged.

  Charlie broke the stillness with a sigh as he raised his mug. He looked right at Roar, the exact color of his eyes hidden by stringy brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. “Don’t forget, we have a scheduled video check in with Gitte, your integration coordinator, tomorrow afternoon at three. Make sure you’re home then.”

  “I have to be at work at a quarter to three.”

  A deep groove formed between Charlie’s brows. The lights reflected off his glasses. “Maybe see if you can work earlier? Or later? It’s kind of important, you know, to show you’re willing to compromise and work with the government, yes?”

  Petrus shot Roar a warning look. His eyes read: don’t kick the hornet’s nest.

  “You’re right,” Roar said, his gaze locked on Petrus. “I’ll swing by after breakfast and talk to Arne.”

  Oline turned to Charlie. “Are we free to go now?”

  “Of course. Just remember to be here for the check-in. You, too, Stein.”

  “Sure. What’s one more thing I don’t give a shit about but can’t say no to?”

  “Stein,” Roar cautioned.

  Charlie just grabbed the coffee thermos and headed for his ground floor office, already distracted by the numbers, letters, and symbols scrawled on the whiteboard walls. The moment Charlie turned his back, Stein got up from his chair, a determined set in his jaw. Roar knew what he planned to do next—and no one could stop him. A quick twist, like the beginning of a tornado, then Stein seemed to fold
in on himself until he vanished from sight. The only sign he’d been there at all was a faint silvery flash that dimmed and faded to nothing.

  Chapter Three

  Three mysteries weighed on Leda’s mind at “are-you-freaking-kidding-me o’clock” the next morning.

  The door in the kitchen.

  Roar—or more importantly, why she seemed incapable of not thinking about everything about him, from the totally nutso-bonkers and instant connection/attraction she couldn’t explain, to the feel of his hand on hers, and the impossible way he moved when he saved Nils from choking.

  And her (so far) futile attempts with the Riemann hypothesis.

  Maybe she was crazy for even trying to figure out one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems in mathematics. If anyone ever solved it, the Riemann hypothesis would have extensive implications in number theory, particularly in relation to the distributions of prime numbers. Maybe if she did something extraordinary, Mom might notice her existence. She might even, someday, grow to love Leda.

  The ever-present kernel of doubt lodged in her mind expanded at the thought. Maybe this was another monumentally ridiculous waste of time. Mom cared about one person: herself. Nothing Leda did was good enough. Once, during the many times she heard her parents arguing, she’d listened from the other side of their door in hopes she’d hear why, and maybe she could fix it. She was eight when she heard Mom admit that she didn’t want a family, or a daughter. Especially a cripple, she’d said. Everything about Leda disappointed her.

  A few traitorous tears escaped and Leda wiped them away in haste with the back of her sleeve. Trying to impress her mom made about as much sense as planting a garden on Vardø. This far north, the ground retained a permanent frost layer. Kind of like Mom’s heart.

  Ugh, just stop moping already and do something! Maybe she should go for a walk. Dad always said that going outside would help her when she needed a solution to an impossible problem.