The-Infinite-Sea-Pdf

11
FROM THE TIME I could barely walk, my father would ask me, Cassie, do you want to fly? And my arms
would shoot over my head. Are you kidding me, old man? Damn straight I want to fly!
And he would grab my waist and toss me into the air. My head would snap back and I would hurtle
like a rocket toward the sky. For an instant that lasted a thousand years, it felt as if I’d keep flying until I
reached the stars. I would scream with joy, that fierce roller-coaster-ride fear, my fingers clutching at
clouds.
Fly, Cassie, fly!
My brother knew that feeling, too. Better than me, because the memory was fresher. Even after the
Arrival, Dad was launching him into orbit. I saw him do it at Camp Ashpit a few days before Vosch
showed up and murdered him in the dirt.
Sam, m’boy, do you want to fly? Lowering his voice from baritone to bass like an old-time carny
hustler, though the ride he was selling was free—and priceless. Dad the launching pad. Dad the landing
zone. Dad the tether that kept Sams—and me—from hurtling into the nullity of deep space, a nullity
himself now.
I waited for Sam to ask. That’s the easiest way to break horrible news. Also the lowest. He didn’t ask,
though. He told me.
“Daddy’s dead.”
A tiny lump beneath a mound of covers, brown eyes big and round and blank like the teddy bear’s
pressed against his cheek. Teddy bears are for babies, he told me the first night at Hotel Hell. I’m a
soldier now.
Burrowed in the bed next to his, another solemn, pint-sized soldier staring at me, the seven-year-old
they call Teacup. The one with the adorable baby-doll face and haunted eyes who doesn’t share a bed
with a stuffed animal; she sleeps with a rifle.
Welcome to the post-human age.
“Oh, Sam.” I left my post by the window and sat beside the cocoon of covers swaddling him.
“Sammy, I didn’t know how—”
He slugged me in the cheek with a balled-up, apple-sized fist. I never saw it coming, in both
meanings of the phrase. Bright stars exploded in my vision. For a second I was afraid he’d detached my
retina.
Okay. Rubbing my cheek. I deserved that.
“Why did you let him die?” he demanded. He didn’t cry or scream. His voice was low and fierce,
simmering with rage. “You were supposed to take care of him.”
“I didn’t let him die, Sams.”
My father bleeding, crawling in the dirt—Where are you going, Dad?—and Vosch standing over him,
watching my father crawl the way a sadistic kid might a fly that he’s dewinged, grimly satisfied.
Teacup from her bed: “Hit her again.”
Sam snarled at her, “You shut up.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” I whispered, my arm wrapped around the bear.