Unravel by Imogen Howson Page A

Lin had hold of it with more strength than Elissa would have thought she could spare. She swung around, pulling Elissa with her, to look back up at the sky, to find the ship.
    No. I won’t let it happen. I won’t make the link. I won’t—
    A jerk. Too late. Just like before, the link clicked into place. She was looking through Lin’s eyes, experiencing the world in Lin’s body.
    She was shaking, her legs trembling beneath her, her lungs burning as they tried to pull in more air than they could manage. She was looking at the sky through a haze of red. Her hand— Lin’s hand —clenched tight around her sister’s, grasping it with every last reserve of the strength left in her body. Her thoughts— Lin’s thoughts —burned in her mind as her breath burned in her chest. She has to do this with me. She has to.
    She scanned the sky, then focused on the ship that had nearly—twice—escaped her. Sent her mind along the electrical connections, forcing the power up, up, up, feeling the circuits heat and heat and break like tiny explosions.
    And then another explosion, a huge explosion, like fireworks in her brain, behind her eyes.
    Flames in the sky. Falling metal. Smoke and dust and gouts of liquid fire—the fuel burning as it fell.
    Elissa snapped back to herself, a scream bursting against the inside of her head, her throat throbbing with the silent sound. Once again there were flames and smoke all around the Phoenix . But this time she’d done it. This time she’d felt , not just seen, it happen. Felt, too, that firework burst of triumph. Lin’s emotions, not hers, but it didn’t matter. She’d felt it. Felt triumph, delight, in doing something that had killed someone.
    Lin, white with exhaustion, crumpled to her knees in front of her. Blood was smeared across her face—her nose was bleeding. For the first time Elissa saw her sister looking hurt, vulnerable, and her immediate instinct wasn’t to help or comfort.
    You did that to me. I can’t believe you did that to me.
    She didn’t know if the thoughts showed in her expression, but she could see when Lin’s eyes dropped from her own.Ivan’s face, immobile with shock, turned from one of them to the other.
    Then, as if from far away, only just penetrating through the feeling of cotton wool in her ears, Elissa heard the beep of the com-unit. And Cadan’s voice—alive, unhurt, for that moment the only good thing in the whole world—saying, “Attention, Phoenix . It’s over. Two attackers down, and one in retreat. It’s done. It’s over.”

“I HAD to,” said Lin.
    They were standing outside the Phoenix , amid a nightmare jumble of blackened, twisted metal, of still-burning fuel puddles. The reek of rocket fuel and smoke and dust coated the inside of Elissa’s nose, bitter at the back of her throat.
    Not far away, metal against metal whined and screeched as the hull of a third downed craft was cut open. It had been hit, and had crashed, but miraculously, unlike the first two, hadn’t burst into flames, so there was a chance the pilot was still alive. Cadan was over there, and Markus. Felicia had joined a small extinguisher-wielding ground crew, and Ivan had disappeared the moment they exited the Phoenix .
    â€œLissa, please. Look at me.”
    Elissa turned her head. Something even bitterer than rocket-fuel fumes dried the inside of her mouth, made her throat and chest and stomach tighten as if there weren’t enough oxygen in the dirty air around her.
    â€œI had to,” said Lin again. “Lissa, please, say you understand.”
    â€œI don’t.” The words came out in a thread of sound, as if her throat could only open enough to let just that much of her voice out. “I don’t understand.”
    â€œLissa . . .”
    Once she’d said those words, she could manage to follow them with more.