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Morning mist is still curling low over the ground, three pale moons barely visible in the dark-blue, post-dawn sky above, as Murphy crouches at the edge of the tree line, turning the bomb carefully around and around in his hand. He's taking shallow breaths, the fingers of his other hand pressed into the dirt—ready to launch himself forward, tense and waiting and ready—
Ahead of him, the Guard claps his hands to his ears, doubles down, brought almost to his knees by searing pain.
That's the cue.
Murphy launches the bomb, as hard and as far as he can—explosions of pink smoke burst ahead of him, and to the right, and left—he narrows his eyes and ducks his head and starts to run.
The Better Half
Murphy's girlfriend works the assembly line: a tiny cog in a machine, putting together mystery objects, the final version of which she'll never see and whose purpose she'll never know. A deathly boring job. Whoever assigned it to her was a fool. Give a woman like that too much time to think and you're asking for trouble. She's got a mind sharp as a pickaxe, fast and bright as a shooting star, running at five hundred while the rest of them struggle to reach a three or four—and she's so goddamn beautiful on top of it. When she sits on the edge of his bed in the morning, with her hair flowing down over her shoulders, and he's watching the outline of her in the bright rays of sun through his window, watching the stretch of her back and her arms up over her head, he has to crawl his way to her, across the sheets and rumpled blankets, and kiss along her vertebrae, slow and tender like worship, all the way up to the back of her neck.
He hears her smile in the outtake of her breath. She reaches back, her fingertips blindly touching his cheek.
They met in the rec room of Common Building 3, in the last late days of spring, two years ago. Sunset came late enough by then that the light beyond the bank of windows was still golden and soft, even after first shift. Lit her up like a goddess as she walked across the room. He remembers every moment perfectly. She was wearing her work uniform, with the jumpsuit unzipped and the arms tied around her waist, a gray tank-top underneath, a sheen of sweat visible along her forehead and neck. And Murphy's own body so spent, so tired and aching, sunk into the cushions of the overstuffed couch, that he felt he had no body, and no mind, only eyes with which to gaze upon her, and the distant wisp of a thought, floating: is this LOVE?
The others groaned and shouted, threw up their hands, as she briefly blocked their view of the TV. Murphy was embarrassed to be associated with them, to look like just one of a rowdy, dirty group of miners, too obsessed with the latest broadcast of gossip from The Jewel. (Chancellor Griffin's daughter Clarke, a.k.a. The Princess, goes through another messy breakup, continues to buck expectations that she will settle down—la di da.)
He sat up straighter against the arm of the couch, put his filthy boots down on the floor. She sat down at a small table by the window. Turned to him and caught his eye.
Now she's making coffee in his kitchenette, barefoot, wearing his shirt, while he stands at the window and looks out at the skyline of the city. He's on the tenth floor, got a great view of the huddle of buildings around him, the mines off to the left, the forest sweeping away to the right. And in the center, a tall billboard set like the face of God above the rest.
WELCOME TO FACTORY 6
ENJOY YOUR STAY
He's lived on this planet twenty-five years, his whole life, hasn't enjoyed a bit of it—but then the sign isn't meant for him. It hovers over the shuttle pad outside the city, and until a year ago, its markings were no more to him than inscrutable patterns of pixels on a screen.
The image disintegrates and reforms, now announcing the TIME AND WEATHER in both pictures and words. A clock pointing to the twelve and seven. A cheery sun with waving rays.
An arm curling around his waist, making him jump.
"Hey," Raven murmurs, and presses a kiss to his cheek. He turns his head, kisses her mouth.
"I got you something," she says, and pulls a slim paper volume from behind her back. When she sets it on the windowsill, leaning against the pane, he sees that the cover is half-torn and colored with mysterious stains. "Technically, it's for both of us. But I want you to read it."
"The War of the Worlds," Murphy reads. He picks it up, flips through the pages briefly. "You really think I can get through all this?"
"I think we can."
Easy for her to say: she's a better reader than he is by miles, taught him everything he knows in painstaking lessons at the kitchenette table, or huddled in bed in the circle of light from his bedside lamp, stolen books and pamphlets and primers propped up against their bent knees.
"It's about aliens," Raven says, "and invasion, and survival." She reaches out and rubs at a smudge of dirt on the cover, a sort of reverence in her touch. "I think you’re going to love it."
Part One: Finding the Princess
Elites from The Jewel only visit the resource planets on official business, not to mingle with the workers. Still it's not unusual to see them in the underground clubs, at the warehouse parties, sticking out in their fancy clothes—sticking out even worse in their borrowed Factory clothes. Undisguised, familiar faces from the big screens and the gossip circuits. Celebrities doing shots, dancing, flirting—pretending they are who they are not, even as they bask in recognition.
"It's because we throw the best parties in the galaxy," Jasper declares, as he takes a long drink from the bottle that's being passed around, slams it down. Rumor is that Clarke Griffin will be making an appearance tonight. They snagged a table for four with a good view of the warehouse entrance, though, and there's been no sign of her yet.
"How would you know?" Monty counters. He's leaning in low over the table, carefully rolling a joint with nimble fingers. "Bet they don't party like this on The Jewel, though."
"They don't need blowouts like this on The Jewel," Raven says, dismissive and low, as she glances fast over her shoulder. Her voice drops down again, barely audible over the pound of the music, slick and sharp like a warning. "Got her. Pink dress, three o'clock."
Murphy's gaze flicks to the door, then away. He focuses on the jump of flame from Monty's lighter, instead of the doorway, or Raven’s face. Her hand is squeezing hard just above his knee.
"Got her," he mumbles.
Got her, can see her now making her rounds, through the crowd, into his field of vision: a glow of blonde hair and flashing white teeth. He lets himself watch her. She settles at the bar and orders a drink, then spins around, takes in all the people staring at her. She'll notice him soon.
Raven's hand slides up his leg, discreetly, invisibly, beneath the table.
"Having second thoughts?" Murphy asks, out of the corner of his mouth. "Getting jealous?"
"No." He can't tell if she's lying, but she grabs the bottle that Jasper hands her, takes a swig then holds it with both hands. "Just don't fuck this up."
Murphy's caught the Princess's eye, now, and there's no time to tell Raven that he has this, they're good, before he's sliding out from behind the table, and clearing a path across the dance floor to her.
The Scavenger
Murphy meets Emori in the cafeteria of Common Building 3, at the height of the dinner rush. She carries a toolkit, which she pushes toward him with her foot, under the table, as they talk.
"That's the last of it," she says, without a hint of weariness, though she's made a dozen trips for him on this job alone. Maybe if he were smarter, he would have used more than one scavenger, split the task up among them and not let any of them know enough to piece together the plan—but Emori is the best there is. She knows the tech wasteland better than anyone else on the planet, and he knows her. They used to work together in the mines, before her accident. For a while there, they were even in love.
He doesn't bother with any of the usual questions, the assurances that it's all there? As she used to tell him, the trust is either there, John, or it's not. And he knows she'd double-cross just about anyone, even him. But history counts for something, too.
"I like your ink," he says, instead, and gestures to the new tattoo she has, snaking together and intersecting with the scars across the side of her face.
"Thanks." She taps the three remaining fingers of her left hand against the table, an out-of-place gesture of nervousness that does not sit well on her. He wonders if she thinks she's been followed, or if they're being watched.
"Price still the same?" he asks.
Her eyes snap to his again. "Yeah. Get me a ticket and we're square." Then the corner of her mouth lifts up, a half-smirk that reminds him, for a moment, of how beautiful a proper smile can be. "A hundred ration points if the plan falls through."
"If the plan falls through," he answers, "I'll be shot on sight."
Emori grins at that, leans back in her chair with her arms crossed against her chest. "In that case, I'll take everything you've got."
Part Two: Distracting the Princess
Clarke doesn't like being referred to as Princess, he learns early, when he accidentally lets the nickname slip. They'd been dancing, close and slow despite the uptempo beat of the music, her arms around him and her face tilted up to his. The plan unfolding, neatly—then that scowl, out of nowhere, souring the expression on her face.
"What?" he asks. "Don't like being treated like royalty?" He pulls her a little closer, let his hand fall down below her hip and gives her leg a rough squeeze.
"Not at all. Can’t stand it. Maybe if I had some real power—" She cuts herself off, shakes her head. "No. We're not talking politics tonight."
"Yeah? Then what do you want to talk—"
She pulls him down, breaks off the question with a hard and ungraceful kiss. Unprepared, he doesn’t think to kiss back. He only swallows the rest of his sentence with a low grunt, caught off guard by the way her hands squash the sides of his face and her teeth clack against his.
"No talking," he murmurs, against her lips, when she pulls back. "Got it."
The second kiss is better, slower, her mouth opening against his and the hot-slick press of her tongue—but it's the thought that Raven must be watching them that lights a fire in him. He tangles his fingers roughly in the soft, blonde waves of Clarke's hair, lightly tugs. He can feel her moaning, like a buzzing against his lips, and when he paws at her hip with his rough and calloused hand, he imagines that he's the first man from the outer reaches to ever hold her in his arms like this.
"Hey," he whispers, between obscene, open-mouthed kisses, between flutters of tongue. "Hey—I have a confession."
Her smile flickers like something wicked in the pulses of light above. "A confession? Let's hear it."
He tugs her head back with a fist in her hair, so she has no choice but to look at him. "I have a girlfriend," he says. Gestures back behind him with his chin, but keeps his eyes on Clarke. "She's over there."
What he expects, exactly, he's not sure, but in a moment, Clarke has freed herself from his embrace, spun him away from her and into the crowd, then pulled him in once more. His back is pressed against her chest, one of her arms around him like a vise. In her heels, she's tall enough to look over his shoulder and catch Raven's eye.
"That her?" Clarke whispers, and pulls on Murphy's earlobe with her teeth. “Watching us?”
He nods. "Love of my life."
"That's sweet." She wiggles the fingers of her free hand, a subtle little wave.
Raven waves back, and smiles.
"So am I going home with both of you?" Clarke asks. "Is that your master plan?"
He twists around in her arms, just enough to kiss her again, an almost-kiss that lands on her top lip. "Guilty. Consider it your warm welcome to Factory Six."
The Haircut
Through the open window come the sounds of voices and traffic, the riot of shift change in summer, and a hot breeze that warns of a season at its peak. But inside the kitchenette, the hum of silence is interrupted only by the metallic snips of Jasper's scissors and the intermittent, soft thuds of hair falling to the floor.
"Why do I trust you to do this again?" Murphy asks. His voice is sharp and skeptical, but the question means no more than any old habits do.
"Because I'm a man of many talents," Jasper answers. "And I know what I'm doing.”
Murphy's known Jasper a long time. They were little kids together, lived across the hall from each other in the same apartment building, the sons of parents who worked in the Forest Resources Division where Jasper works now. Murphy even half-lived at the Jordans' for a while, after his father died and his mom started to drink.
"Do you think about it much," Jasper asks now, "about what life is like on The Jewel?"
"Not that much," he answers, which is both the truth, and the worst sort of lie. The kind of lie Jasper will see right through.
But he doesn’t call Murphy out on it. "I think about it all the time,” he says. “Monty wants to see what kind of tech they have out there. But I just think it must be fucking beautiful. No one crowded in on anyone else… I’ve heard they have gardens. And beaches. Museums. Libraries."
The words sound like imports from a foreign tongue, not quite right, and the concepts they name form in only hazy, half-remembered fragments in Murphy's mind. He feels lost in them, like he does when Raven talks about her programs and her machines.
"You sound like you're short-circuiting back there," he says, and Jasper laughs.
"You sound like Raven."
He's finishing up now, running his fingers through Murphy's hair to check the length.
"We're all set on my end, by the way," he adds. "I only had enough material for five, but—"
"And they'll work?" Murphy asks, turning half-around in his chair, raising his eyebrows as he catches Jasper's eye.
"They'll work," he answers simply, with a grin, and imitates a large explosion with his hands.
Part Three: Stealing the Key
Murphy wakes with his nose pressed against soft, warm skin, the hollow indent right beneath the ribs. Raven, he thinks. But the image of her is like a scrap of dream, already fading: he knows it is not real, even before the rest of the night returns to him.
He picks himself up slowly, and finds Clarke Griffin underneath him, splayed out on her back in the middle of his bed. Her mouth is open. Raven is already awake, propped up against the pillow on Clarke’s others side. For a moment, before she notices that he’s begun to stir, and turns to him, he watches her in profile: the bend of her leg, the messy waves of her hair, the play of shadows and moonlight on her skin.
He must not have been asleep long. The sun has not yet risen, the night pitch-dark, without even the haze of pre-dawn in the sky.
"She's totally out," Raven says. Her voice sounds dull, and distant, and she won’t quite look at him. "I'll distract her if she wakes up. You need to go."
Murphy nods, then slides himself carefully out of bed.
Finding Clarke's ID card isn't easy: her dress has no pockets, not that he would expect to find anything of value in such an insecure place, and he has to grab around the fabric for long moments that feel like frantic hours before he stumbles across it, sewn into a hidden pocket at the hem. He yanks it out without grace. Then he dresses quickly, and settles in to guard the Princess while Raven throws on her own clothes, puts up her hair.
They lock the door behind them. To neither's great surprise, Clarke still hasn't closed her mouth, still hasn't stirred.
The Machine
Murphy has seen tech before: a few machines in the mines, officially sanctioned because their use benefits the people of The Jewel; the TV screens in the common areas; the radio systems for official pronouncements from on high—and some low-grade contraband shit that his friends and neighbors have put together, usually poorly, from the scrap dumped out in the wasteland. But never anything like this. Never anything like the blocky, monstrous, unstable looking creature that Raven and Monty have built, and hidden away in the abandoned Forest Resources cabin at the edge of the woods.
"There's no real way to test it," Monty murmurs, as his fingers hover across the knobs in front. "I wish we had one of their earpieces... I don't like just relying on your intel."
"It's the best we've got," Raven snaps. She's been pacing back and forth for a while now, while Monty sits focused and still in front of the machine, and Murphy hangs back in the doorway, an idle lookout. Raven's nervous energy makes him nervous, like he can feel the exact same anxious vibrations that she feels, reverberating right through the air from her to him.
"Miller's dad works security for the Griffins," she adds. "He's a solid source."
"And you trust him?"
"He owes me."
"Hey."
Murphy turns lazily toward them, swinging his body around in the doorway, his back against the frame. His stomach's all hard knots, but he doesn't let it show.
"Anyone want to explain this part of the plan again?" he asks. "In language an illiterate like me can understand?"
"You're not illiterate," Raven mumbles, angry and low.
"A tech illiterate," he amends.
Monty sighs, and says, "It's pretty simple. The Guards at the shuttle will all be wearing earpieces, to communicate with each other. We use this radio jammer to disrupt their frequency, and all they'll hear are some high-pitched noises right in their ears. That will help disorient them—"
"So we can get past," Murphy finishes. "Got it."
"You should be here," Monty adds, looking up at Raven. "Sending the signal. I'll be with the others in the woods."
"You sure?" She crosses her arms tighter, her eyes narrowing. "It's just as much your project as mine."
"I'm sure. You'll be able to find the right frequency faster. It's the right call."
"Okay."
Murphy's turned away again, searching out the possibility of movement in the trees, in the stillness of the humid summer afternoon. But he can hear the way that Raven sighs, can picture the uneasy drop of her shoulders and the way she nods her head. He can feel the way she's watching him.
"And remember, Murphy, you'll have the key, so—"
"Run fast," he says, and cranes his neck to look toward the sky. "Don't worry. I'll run like the devil's on my heel."
Part Four: Taking Over
The shuttle looms larger than Murphy had expected, a shine of pristine silver shaped and patterned by the pink and orange lights of dawn. If that's the ship-to-planet transport, he thinks, what must the ship itself look like? He pictures it, planet-sized, a world unto itself.
He crouches down low at the edge of the trees, one of Jasper's bombs in his hand, his breath shallow and hot in his lungs. Tells himself to stay completely still. From this distance, he can just make out the tiny little earpiece, like a button, nestled in the Guard's ear.
The sky lightens, and the moons turn pale.
And when he thinks he cannot wait a moment longer, anticipation acrid like steel in his mouth, the Guard drops to his knees, hands over his ears and shoulders rounded up with pain, and Murphy no longer has the time to worry or even to think.
Just has to throw the bomb out ahead of him and watch as clouds of pink smoke bloom, simultaneously, in front of him and off to his right and his left.
He pulls his shirt up over his mouth and holds his breath, and runs, pauses only long enough to grab the Guard's weapon from his limp hands before he dashes up the ramp to the shuttle door. The metal clangs and vibrates beneath his feet. The knockout gas behind him is spreading, curling out and out, smudging his sight. He can hear loud footsteps stomping toward him across the dirt—the others, he can only hope, as he fumbles for the card in his pocket.
He catches a glimpse of her face, smiling and serene, on the tiny picture in the corner, before he swipes the card through the lock. My my Princess Griffin, how you've changed, he thinks: a mildly delirious joke, perhaps the onset of madness because, somehow, this is real.
This is real.
He's stepping onto the shuttle.
The inside gleams white and perfect and pristine. He lets his arms fall to his sides and the Guard's gun drop to the floor. His mouth opens and he breathes free.
Behind him, the deep cacophony of footsteps sounds closer, the quaking of the ramp beneath many sets of boots, and when he looks over his shoulder, still dazed, he sees Jasper, Monty, and Emori shoving their way in. They are armed too, and gulping in deep lungfuls of air.
"Where's Raven?" he asks, half-tripping over his own feet, pushing past them to look out through the door.
"She has farther to run," Monty reminds him, still bent over with his hands on his knees. "She'll get here."
"She fucking better."
He leans out, dizzy from the smoke, the clutch of his heart in his chest. His fingers grab at the doorway—the metal edges cutting into his palms—and his eyes search for any sign of movement through the thick haze, out at the edge of the trees.
The Evening
The hour feels later than it is, with the sky darkened by deep-gray clouds, the air shimmering and hissing with the sound of fast-falling sheets of rain. Raven has draped herself across his chest, the warm and familiar weight of her over his lungs, grounding him; she's lazily tracing patterns across his ribs. He paws his hands through her hair, lets his fingers tangle up in the strands.
They've kicked the blankets and one of the pillows down to the end of the bed, and when he stares down at their bodies, he can follow every curve and dip and angle of her, and the way the light from the streetlamps outside picks out highlights on her skin.
"What do you want, Murphy?" she asks, her voice only a shade above the rain.
"Mmm—this right here isn't bad." He lets his arm fall down around her waist, pulls her closer against him, as if perhaps, he might never need to let her go. True enough, in the moment: in this life without peace, with exhaustion where rest should be, peppered with distractions that keep him stagnant and dull, she is the oasis. The blissful well of feeling in him. The humanity in him.
"No, I mean—" She pulls herself up, so she's leaning over him, her gaze steady on his face. "I mean what do you want more than anything?"
She settles her palm against the side of his face. The slight bend of her fingers makes his breath catch.
"What do you?" he asks.
And even though she asked him first, she answers, "I want to be human. Completely human, not just a drone, serving people I've never even seen."
What this must be, now, this reckless rush of desire, this urgent need, this terrifying fire in his chest—it must be love. He is in love. He might have known before but not with such certainty, not as he does now, thinking that he would give up anything of himself, for this, for her to have what she deserves.
"You should have been born on The Jewel," he says, without thinking.
Raven laughs, light and humorless, and leans down and kisses him.
"We should take over The Fucking Jewel," she answers, on an exhale, as she rolls back into the space by his side again. A hint of bite to her voice, despite the distant sigh of it. She's staring idly at the ceiling; he knows she's seeing lightyears of space and stars.
"Just take a ship and fly out there ourselves," Murphy says.
Raven smiles, reaches out for his hand and squeezes tight. But he's not joking. He drops his head down until his forehead rests against her shoulder, closes his eyes. His hand is still gripped in hers, the press of her fingers so tight that he knows she's thinking it too: together, they could.
When he breathes in, his lungs shake. How wrong it is, he thinks, that someone like Raven should be tied to only one planet, and worse, to such a one as this.
Part Five: Taking Off
She's running full speed with her jacket pulled up over her mouth, ricocheting up the ramp, into the shuttle. "Close the door, close the door," she wheezes, as she leans all her weight against the wall, half bent over, and wipes at her eyes, and somehow, the door behind her starts to close. One of the others must have gotten it, Murphy thinks, because he doesn't give a shit about the door.
"You okay?" he keeps asking, instead, his arm around her, as she grabs at his leg and the hem of his shirt.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she says, though she's still coughing, and it takes her a long moment before she can stand up straight and look around at last, her eyes still tearing.
Her gaze flicks from one face to the next, then around the ship. "Everyone made it?" she asks, and everyone nods.
"Made it," Emori echoes. "Now which one of you knows how to fly this thing, so we can actually get out of here?"
"Shouldn't be too hard to figure out," Raven answers, already staggering her way to the pilot's seat. Murphy follows at her side, Jasper and Monty and Emori just behind.
At the head of the shuttle, the body narrows into a pointed cockpit, two chairs in front of a long window and a complicated dashboard of buttons and levers. Murphy takes one look and grimaces, hides the sinking feeling in his stomach with a deadpan remark: "Looks like our escape plan just hit a snag."
"Oh, ye of little faith," Monty answers, and slides into the co-pilot's chair.
"Yeah, I though you knew who you were dealing with," Raven adds, and flashes him a grin over her shoulder.
"And if we do make it to the ship?" Emori asks. "How will we get past the Guards with only four weapons? What about navigating?"
"Most of the Guards will have been down here," Raven answers, as she examines the control panel. "Maybe all of them. They're not anticipating any danger up there." She exchanges a look with Monty, flips a couple of switches, then settles her hands on the main steering wheel.
The shuttle lurches—Murphy reaches out to steady himself against the wall, his other hand on the back of Raven's chair—then starts to rise.
"And the ship should—uh—have an autopilot," Jasper says. He's nearly caught off balance himself. Outside the cockpit window, the ground drops away beneath them, and he turns faintly green, his eyes fluttering shut. "For a—journey that long."
"And if it doesn't, we'll figure it out," Raven adds.
And Murphy smiles.
Etched into the main wall of the shuttle, the first thing he noticed when he ran in, is a large mural: the nine planets of their home solar system, arrayed out from the sun. His lungs still burning, the caustic after-scent of smoke in his nose and his throat, he'd stopped and caught his breath and stared at it, entranced and deeply moved, in a way he'd never felt before and would not have been able to describe. Deeply shaken by the elation of homecoming, perhaps, or the taste of hope.
For a moment, he even imagined he could see it, as it really was: their origin and destination, a distant planet of green and blue, pristine land and sea and sky—
A vision from a dream, or another life.
The life he always should have had, on Earth.