Chapter 26 HUNTER
HUNTER
MY SISTER HAS HER feet up on the chief engineer’s desk. I have a moment to study her as Nico shoves me through the door.
Her thick curls are pulled back into their usual braid, and for the first time in our lives, her skin is a little paler than mine – she hasn’t been outdoors without a pressure suit in over a year.
Atmosphere aside, Martian radiation is no joke.
She’s leaner too, maybe down a little muscle in the lighter Martian gravity.
She’s wearing the same slim cuff on one wrist as I was until I left the greenhouse, but hers gleams, and the display it’s projecting into the air is bright, buzzing with numbers.
This must be a new Graves prototype – it looks similar to mine, but based on the specs I can see dancing in the air, this is definitely my cuff’s big sister.
I’ll bet its system access is much slicker too. I want it because I want it – because it’s the kind of tech I was raised to play with – but I also want it because whoever has that thing owns Pax Station, I’m sure of it.
‘Mmm?’ She doesn’t look up from her work, levering her feet against the edge of the desk to tip the chair onto its two back legs.
Nico pauses behind me, one hand on my shoulder, probably realizing in this moment that he doesn’t actually know why he brought me in, except that Cleo told him he should. ‘This one …’
He trails off, and that makes Marguerite look up, her brow creasing in the start of a question. And then her gaze lands on me.
I’ve never seen my sister shocked like this, not in all our eighteen years. She nearly tips the chair over backward, then scrambles to recover, surging to her feet as it thumps into place. Her cuff’s display flares wildly, then goes dark.
‘What are you …?’ But her words die out as suspicion kicks in, her green eyes turning wary.
‘I checked him for weapons,’ says Nico, who still has no idea what’s going on.
‘And scars?’ she snaps.
‘What?’
‘She wants to know if I’ve been surgically altered to look like her twin brother,’ I supply.
This is how they taught us to think, growing up.
For a moment, I even consider going that route – but though I don’t know what my reception’s going to be as Hunter Graves, I’m pretty sure it’d be worse as an impostor.
‘What?’ Nico manages, but both Marguerite and I are ignoring him now.
I sigh. ‘In the middle of the night before our fifth birthday, we got out of bed and snuck down to the kitchen and ate our birthday cake.’
Her lips part and then she shakes her head – and she’s right. Someone could have got that out of one of the staff. Or our dad could have told someone – he thought it was hilarious. Mom didn’t.
‘And I told you we had to finish it, because if you leave out an unfinished meal, it attracts ghosts,’ I continue. ‘So we both kept eating until we nearly threw up.’ That part only the two of us could know. Marguerite stares at me, and I give her some jazz hands. ‘Surprise?’
‘You’re meant to be on Earth,’ she whispers. For my sister to say something as bleedingly obvious as that, she must be rattled. ‘Nico,’ she snaps. ‘Out.’
‘Marguerite,’ he says, his tone a warning all by itself.
‘Out,’ she says again, not taking her eyes off me. A moment later, I hear the door close behind him. Damn, that guy moves silently.
‘I know I’m meant to be on Earth,’ I say. ‘I wanted …’ But I fall silent instead of finishing my sentence. I wanted to force a confrontation. To elbow her aside and slot myself into her place as Mom’s heir. Power, in my own right. I sure didn’t come to play happy families. I’m a Graves, after all.
Marguerite has spent five years and more cementing herself as Mom’s sidekick. If she ends me now, her competition will be gone and nobody will ever have to know.
But something strange is happening. Her expression starts to soften, the crease between her brows smoothing away, one hand coming up to hold the end of her braid, like she did when we were kids. ‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ she whispers.
And then my sister practically vaults the desk, throwing herself at me, wrapping her arms around me, burying her face in my shoulder. Bewildered, I lift my arms and wrap them around her carefully in return.
I dreamed of this for years – of being together, of being two halves of the same whole. And now she’s here again. She’s real.
‘You should have told me you were coming,’ she mumbles into my filthy shirt. ‘I could have helped.’ Keeping hold of my shoulders, she draws back to look me in the eye. ‘But … you didn’t trust me?’
Of course not! Mom abandoned me and you never once reached out, so clearly the situation suited you fine.
You made yourself her only child and now you’re ready to steal my half of our inheritance.
But this isn’t the moment for truth. I don’t want to risk a lie, though – that’s dangerous, around someone who knows me so well.
‘It was hard to know what to think,’ is where I settle.
‘Please.’ She snorts. ‘Hunter, I never left you. They’re the ones who separated us. And I told her that with Dad gone, you were alone. I told her you had to come here.’
My brain’s slowly folding in on itself and I don’t know how to make words right now. She’s pleased to see me?
Marguerite squeezes my shoulders, drinks in my face. ‘You didn’t think you’d be welcome,’ she says softly.
‘No, I asked,’ I say quietly. ‘I asked Mom to let me come here, over and over, even before Dad died. She said no.’
‘Because she’s good at business, but she’s terrible at family,’ Marguerite whispers. ‘I hate that you were alone back on Earth. Hunter, it was never me who shut you out.’ She’s fierce as she speaks. ‘That was all Mom.’
‘Why did she do it?’ I hate how pitiful that question sounds. But I know I was as capable as Marguerite when we were young. I’ve never understood why my mother would just discard me, and now, faced with the chance to ask …
‘I think you reminded her of Dad,’ Marguerite says, still gazing at me, as though she’s looking for that resemblance.
‘Hunter, I begged her to let me see you. For years. I know what she is as well as you do. But if we work together, Graves can be ours. There’s room for both of us in this. You’re my brother.’
‘Marguerite, I—’ My heart strains and contracts almost painfully, my tiredness washing over me in a wave. I’m so tired. I don’t know what to believe. ‘That time in London, I was miserable without you, and you …’
A shadow crosses her face, like clouds across the sun. ‘Wait,’ she says slowly, her grip on my shoulders tightening. ‘Wait, Hunter. No. You thought it was me? That I was cutting you off?’ Her eyes widen in visible shock. ‘That one time we talked, you hung up on me!’
‘You were partying in a hotel suite!’ The words burst out of me.
‘What, I was supposed to be dead?’ she snaps.
‘I was trying to be normal. I was trying to show Mom I was fine, so she’d give me more freedom, so I could get to you.
’ She shakes her head slowly. ‘Hunter, you’re my brother.
And I was a kid when she yanked me away.
It wasn’t like Dad was willing to let go of you.
I would never have left you if I wasn’t forced. Never.’
And now that memory of her in the hotel suite, eyes bright with laughter as she answered the vid call, is dimming alongside the memory of the way they had to peel her off me when they separated us. The way she jumped over the desk just now the moment she knew it was me.
It’s like there are two versions of Marguerite standing in front of me, side by side. There’s the girl I grew up with, and the ruthless creature she became. Or that I thought she became.
But the more she talks, the more that certainty fades away. The easier it is to see the girl who was once my other half.
My brain tells me to go for it – that Marguerite’s standing here, offering me everything I wanted.
My heart’s fighting itself. It tried to love Mom, and she never loved me back. It did love Dad, and then one day he was gone. And outside is Cleo – it tried to trust her, and she lied about who she was.
But Marguerite, maybe … Part of my bruised heart desperately wants to trust my sister.
I lift my hands to rest them on her shoulders in return. ‘Mom’s going to be furious,’ I whisper.
Marguerite’s smile is conspiratorial. ‘We can handle her. After what we’re going to do for GravesUP here, she’ll let us write blank checks.’
A faint strand of relief starts to wind its way through me. Maybe I can have both. Someone who has my back, and the chance to step up at last. To do something worthy of my grandfather’s legacy. There must be a reason she’s here that makes sense. This is my sister, after all.
She sees the moment of decision on my face and nods. ‘I’m glad nobody shot you,’ she says.
The reminder brings me back to the present moment with a jolt.
‘Yeah … can we start with what you’re doing invading the UN?’ I ask. ‘I heard your people talk about upping the oxygen levels and blowing this place up in, what, about two hours?’
‘That’s on the to-do list,’ she admits, finally letting go of me and circling around behind the desk once more to sink into her chair.
I take the visitor’s chair on the opposite side, and at exactly the same time, we rock our chairs back to rest our boots against the edge of the desk. Some stuff is just genetics, I guess.
‘This is the UN,’ I point out. ‘I mean, at risk of stating the obvious.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ she agrees. ‘Have you been in the system?’
‘Sure. I saw your people going through the registers.’
‘Huh.’ She’s thoughtful. ‘They should have seen you. Did you see what we’re spoofing? Orbital thinks this place has completely vented and is repressurizing now.’
There’s a glee to her tone that worries me, and I’m trying and failing to think of any scenario in which, based on what she’s just said, GravesUP aren’t the bad guys. But the fact that I haven’t thought of it doesn’t mean it’s not there somewhere.