Zodiac (Zodiac, #1)(6)

“Yes, ma’am.” I bow my head, hoping she’s right.

“You have talent, Rho, and we don’t mean to discourage you.” She moves closer as she speaks, until we’re face to face. “Think of your drums. You first had to master the basics before you could compose your own riffs. The same principle applies here: If you practice daily on your tutorial Ephemeris with an Astralator, I’m certain you’ll see vast improvements in your arithmetic and technique.”

The compassion in her eyes makes me feel ashamed that I’ve put no effort into getting better with an Astralator. It’s just that her insistence on daily practices reminds me too much of Mom, and I like to keep those memories walled off.

But disappointing Instructor Tidus hurts as much as remembering.

? ? ?

I race to my dorm-pod to change, too crunched for time to find the Lodestar and return his Astralator. I’ll have to search for him after the celebration.

The door unlocks at my touch, and I swap my Academy blues for the brand new space suit—black and skintight—I bought myself as an early birthday present. Nishiko is going to flip when she sees me.

Before heading out, I consult my Wave, a small golden device shaped like a clam. Cancrians believe knowledge is like water, fluid and ever changing, so we carry with us a Wave—an interactive way of recording, reviewing, and sending information. The moment I open it, holographic data blooms out and streams all around me: news headlines, messages from friends, updates to my calendar.

Earlier, when Instructor Tidus turned off her Ephemeris, I caught only a brief glimpse of the holograms in her room. But it was long enough for one of them to register.

“Where do we come from?” I ask.

The large holographic diagram from earlier materializes in the air, larger than all the others. It represents an ancient exodus from a world far away and lost to time, a world called Earth.

Archeologists think our earliest ancestors came from there, and the drawing depicts them arriving at our galaxy through Helios—though no one believes that’s really how they got here. As the Wave runs through our history, an image of the twelve constellations materializes. Only in Instructor Tidus’s hologram, there weren’t twelve.

There were thirteen.





2


“RHO!” NISHI’S FACE BLASTS THROUGH all the data, and I jump back a few feet.

“I know, I know, I’m coming!” I call back.

She reaches her hands out like she wants to strangle me, and she looks so real I almost duck—but her holographic fingers go right through my neck.

The Zodiac’s traditional hand-touch greeting evolved when it grew hard to tell hologram from human. Our teachers are always reminding us that holograms can be manipulated and forged, and those who have fallen victim to identity fraud have lost fortunes, even lives. But it’s such a rare crime that the axiom Trust Only What You Can Touch has become more superstition than real warning.

The holograms disappear as I stuff the Wave up my glove, grab my instrument case, and pull on my helmet. When I leave the Academy, I’m semi-weightless in a subzero climate, facing a dusty gray expanse where a crowd is beginning to form around a crystal dome stage. The crystal is pitch-black, so no one can see inside yet.

I look up at the sky; our three other moons are lined in a row, bright as beacons. My vision from the Ephemeris still haunts me, and for a moment Thebe’s light seems to flicker. I shake it off and make for the dome.

In our moon’s weak gravity, I bounce out in long, flying leaps. The crowd around me is a sea of shapes and colors, an array of space suit fashion on full display. There are designer suits that sparkle with precious stones, gimmicky suits that do things like project holograms into the air, functional suits that light up in the dark, and more.

The farther I get from the compound, the thicker the night grows, its blackness interrupted only by the glimmer of glow-in-the-dark fabric or a holographic helmet. I steel my gaze on the crystal dome ahead, dazzling like a half-buried diamond. Once I’ve reached the small side door, I Wave Nishi to let me in.

“Helios, can you breathe in that thing?” As soon as I cycle through the airlock, Nishi holds me at arm’s length to scan my outfit. “It’s about time your body came out of hiding and saw some action.”

I take off my helmet and shake my blonde curls loose. Deke whistles appreciatively from the other end of the dome. “Show the men of the Zodiac what we’re missing, Rho.”

I blush, already wishing I was back under the helmet’s shell. “I date.”

Nishi laughs. “If by date you mean endure a male’s company for fifteen minutes of stuffing your faces before you’re already Waving one of us to come rescue you—”

“Yes, that’s exactly what a date—”

“We get it, Rho, no one’s good enough for you.”

I stare at Deke, my mouth half-open with indignation, but he ignores my glare and turns to Nishi, holding something out to her. “I got them.”

“You didn’t!” Nishi springs over and inspects the four finger-sized bottles of bubbling black tonic in Deke’s hands. “How?”

I recognize the Abyssthe immediately. It’s a drink the Zodai take to improve their performance in the Ephemeris.

Centering requires an extreme amount of concentration and consumes a ton of mental energy because it requires a person to reach down into her innermost self and listen to the thing that connects her to the stars—her soul. Abyssthe helps lengthen the feeling so that a Zodai can read the Ephemeris for a longer stretch of time.