For two hard heartbeats, Sedgewick fronted the pack, flying across the ice like something unslung. The second impact nearly took his legs out from under him. He staggered, skidded, regained his balance, but in that split second Petro was past him. And Anton, and Oxo, and Oxo, Brume, Fletcher last.
Sedgewick dug deep for every shred of speed. The ice was nowhere near smooth, scarred with pocks and ridges and frozen ripples in the methane, but the others slid over it like human quicksilver, finding the perfect place for every footfall. Modded, modded, modded. The word danced in Sedgewick’s head as he gulped cold glass.
The green light swelled again, and he braced before the third frostwhale hit. The jolt shook him but he kept his footing, maybe even gained half a step on Oxo. Ahead, the race was thrown into relief: Brume’s broad shoulders, Anton’s thrown-back head, and there, sliding past gangly Petro for the lead, was Fletcher. Sedgewick felt hot despair churn up his throat.
His eyes raised to the pylon and he realized they were over halfway across. Fletcher pulled away now, not laughing, with that crisp bounding stride that said I can run forever. Then he glanced back over his shoulder, for what, Sedgewick didn’t know, and in that instant his boot caught a trench and slammed him hard to the ice.
Sedgewick watched the others vault past, Anton pausing to half-drag Fletcher back upright on the way by. “Benga, benga, extro!”
The fourth frostwhale hit, this time with a bone-deep groaning crack. Everyone else had overtaken Fletcher; Sedgewick would in a few more strides. Fletcher was just now hobbling upright, and Sedgewick knew instantly he’d done his ankle in. His modded eyes were wide.
“Sedge.”
All the things Sedgewick had wished so savagely in the night — that the doctor had never pulled Fletcher out of his vat, that Fletcher’s pod would fail in transit to New Greenland — all of those things shattered at once. He swung Fletcher up onto his back, how they’d done as kids, and stumped on with lungs ragged.
The fifth impact. Sedgewick’s teeth slammed together, and fissures skittered through the ice. He spared only a moment to balance himself then stumbled forward again, Fletcher clinging fierce to his back. At the far pylon, the others hurtled to the finish, whooping and howling from a dozen meters away now, no more.
They all seemed to turn at once as the sixth impact split the world apart and the frostwhale breached. Sedgewick felt himself thrown airborne in a blizzard of shattered ice, felt himself screaming in his chest but unable to hear it, deafened by the shearing boom and crack. Some part of Fletcher smacked against him in midair.
Landing slammed the wind out of him. His vision pinwheeled from the unending black sky to the maelstrom of moving ice. And then, too big to be real, rising up out of the cold methane sea in a geyser of rime and steam, the frostwhale. Its bony head was gunmetal gray, the size of a bus, bigger, swatched with pale green lanterns of pustule that glowed like radiation.
Cracks webbed through the ice, and something gave way; Sedgewick felt himself slanting, slipping. He tore his gaze from the towering bulk of the frostwhale and saw Fletcher spread-eagled beside him, a black shadow in the burning lime. His lips were moving but Sedgewick couldn’t read them, and then gloved hands gripped the both of them, hauling them flat along the breaking ice.
Oxo and Oxo made sure they were all pulled past the pylon before anyone got up off their belly. Sedgewick, for his part, didn’t even try. He was waiting on his heart to start beating again.
“Sometime six,” Anton said sheepishly, crouching over him.
“Go to hell,” Fletcher croaked from nearby, and in a moment of weakness Sedgewick choked up a wavery laugh.
They washed home on a wave of adrenaline, caught up in the rapid-fire conversation of the New Greenlanders who still seemed to be rehashing how close Sedgewick and Fletcher had come to getting dumped under. Every single one of them needed a send-off handshake at the living quarters, then they slunk off in one chattering mass.
Sedgewick couldn’t keep the chemical grin off his face, and as he and Fletcher snuck through the vestibule and then ghosted back to their temporary shared room, they talked in a tumble of whispers about the frostwhale, about the size of it, and about the ones that had surfaced afterward to suck cold air into massive vein-webbed bladders.
Sedgewick didn’t want to stop talking but even when they did, climbing into their beds, the quiet felt different. Softer.
It wasn’t until he was staring up at the biocrete ceiling that he realized Fletcher’s limp had swapped sides on the way back. He swung upright, unbelieving.
“You faked it.”
“What?” Fletcher was rolled away, tracing the wall with his long fingers.
“You faked it,” Sedgewick repeated. “Your ankle.”
Fletcher took his hand off the wall, and the long quiet was enough confirmation.
Sedgewick’s cheeks burned. He’d thought he had finally done something big enough, big enough to keep him on the greater side of whatever fucked-up equation they were balancing. But it was Fletcher feeling sorry for him. No, worse. Fletcher making a move. Fletcher manipulating him for whatever kind of schemes floated through his modded head.
“We could have both died,” Sedgewick said.
Still turned away, Fletcher gave his perfect shrug, and Sedgewick felt all the old fury fluming up through his skin.
“You think that was a fucking hologame?” he snarled. “That was real. You could have deaded us both. You think you can just do anything, right? You think you can just do anything, and it’ll fucking work out perfect for you because you’re modded.”
Fletcher’s shoulders stiffened. “Good job,” he said, toneless.
“What?” Sedgewick demanded. “Good job what?”
“Good job on saying it,” Fletcher told the wall. “You’re ashamed to have a modded brother. You wanted one like you.”
Sedgewick faltered, then made himself laugh. “Yeah, maybe I did.” His throat ached. “You know what it’s like seeing you? Seeing you always be better than me?”
“Not my fault.”
“I was six when they told me you were going to be better,” Sedgewick said, too far gone to stop now, saying the things he’d only ever said alone to the dark. “They said different, but they meant better. Mom couldn’t do another one freestyle, and to go off-planet you’re supposed to have them modded anyway. So they grew you in a tube. Like hamburger. You’re not even real.” His breath came lacerated. “Why wasn’t I enough for them, huh? Why wasn’t I fucking enough?”
“Fuck you,” Fletcher said, with his voice like gravel, and Sedgewick had never heard him say it or mean it until now.
He flopped back onto his bed, grasping for the slip-sliding anger as it trickled away in the dark. Shame came instead and sat at the bottom of him like cement. Minutes ticked by in silence. Sedgewick thought Fletcher was probably drifting to sleep already, probably not caring at all.
Then there was a bit-off sob, a sound smothered by an arm or a pillow, something Sedgewick hadn’t heard from his brother in years. The noise wedged in his ribcage. He tried to unhear it, tried to excuse it. Maybe Fletcher had peeled off his thermal and found frostbite. Maybe Fletcher was making a move, always another move, putting a lure into the dark between them and sharpening his tongue for the retort.
Maybe all Sedgewick needed to do was go and put his hand on some part of his brother, and everything would be okay. His heart hammered up his throat. Maybe. Sedgewick pushed his face into the cold fabric of his pillow and decided to wait for a second sob, but none came. The silence thickened into hard black ice.