Dr. Eusta’s hologram moves through the Ephemeris like a pixilating shade. “Yes. And so is this.”
Agatha rests her hands on the head of her cane and locks eyes with me. “Holy Mother used to say the future is a house of a million windows. Every Zodai sees a different view of the stars, so everyone’s reading is different. Some readings conflict. Some are wholly wrong. And some . . . may be deliberately misleading.”
“We want to hear your reading of what happened to our moons,” says the blinking hologram of Dr. Eusta.
“You want me to read Holy Mother’s Ephemeris?” I ask. The amazement in Agatha’s tone was nothing compared to mine.
I can’t believe they’re asking for my interpretation. “I’m not well trained—I don’t use an Astralator. I was the only one in our year who failed the Academy’s test—”
“Take all the time you need,” says Agatha, like she hasn’t heard a word of my protest. She and Admiral Crius sit back and wait, while the holographic Dr. Eusta floats around, like another celestial body on the spectral map.
I blow out a hard breath and look around. I’ve never seen the Zodiac in such detail before. The soft glimmering lights rotate through the air with much higher resolution than even our planetarium’s Ephemeris at the Academy. Black holes, white dwarfs, red giants, and more, all shining in brilliant definition.
It’s only now, inside this luminous representation of our world, that I realize I never lost my Center. Like Mathias said—Cancer sustains us.
Home is within me, no matter where I go, no matter what happens to our planet or our people. As long as my heart is beating, it’s playing a Cancrian tune.
Always.
The thought fills me with such a strong sense of self that I feel large and invincible. In spite of everything the universe strips from me, it can’t take what’s inside my head and in my heart. Those things are mine forever.
The room grows so quiet, I can hear my exhalations. I stare at the blue orb of Cancer, its surface bluer than in any Ephemeris I’ve looked through before, and I keep staring until I feel my soul drifting skyward. In the astral plane, I see the rubble field where our moons once orbited. And as I’m watching, the debris begins to flicker.
My pulse picks up as I move closer. This map is so large that it’s the first time I can see what’s really happening when a moon flickers. It’s not fluctuations in the Psy Network, like I’d secretly hoped.
In fact, the moons aren’t even flickering. I wasn’t seeing them vanish—I was seeing them get swallowed by something black and writhing, something thicker than Space. The tarlike substance is still there, guiding the rubble’s movement, like a puppeteer pulling invisible strings.
It’s Dark Matter.
“No meteoroid did this,” I whisper.
“Of course not. That was only a rumor,” mutters Dr. Eusta. “Our astronomers have already confirmed no foreign body struck our moons. No telescope or satellite registered any object. We can’t find any data because as soon as the explosion happened, every device in Thebe’s vicinity stopped working . . . which you know, since the power outage even reached Elara.”
The pink space suit burns in my mind. Like it’s been branded there.
I let the pain scorch my brain, welcoming it. I never want to forget the people we lost tonight. They are why I need to help, if I can. I take a few steps back, looking at the Zodiac as a whole instead of focusing on one constellation at a time.
The first thing I notice is a flickering in House Leo. Then I notice another flickering in Taurus. These flickers are feeble, though. They don’t seem like threats—they’re more like ghosts of flickers past. The Psy Network is showing me that Dark Matter touched those Houses, too.
“It’s a pattern,” I say, piecing it together out loud as I go. “The Leonine fires, the mudslides in House Taurus—these tragedies . . . they’re all connected.”
At these words, my interrogators lower their eyes, and I get the sense they’re communicating with each other silently. They’re going to dismiss my readings as nonsense, just as the dean did. Only I won’t let them. Nishi was right: I can’t ignore my visions if there’s a chance they can help.
“We are not asking about the past,” says Admiral Crius, once they’ve finished conferring in the Psy. “Now answer our question: What caused our moons to collide?”
I force myself not to flinch at the violence in his voice. Then I say, “Dark Matter.”
They don’t bother with the niceties of hiding their disbelief—this time, they say what they’re thinking out loud, to my face.
“Dark Matter!” Dr. Eusta sounds halfway hysterical. “Are we done here now?” he asks the other two. “She’s wasted enough of our time, don’t you think?” Admiral Crius seems inclined to agree.