Wattys shortlist 2021. One morning the sun rises a few hours early, striking levitating skyscrapers in Soliara ahead of schedule. People in the streets stop to look up at the sky and then down at their watches. Most of them, puzzled but disbelieving...
When he stepped out of the link from the library into the dark solarium, the solarium was mysteriously empty. He should link somewhere far away, but his head was foggy. Somehow the guardia stayed on his heels whether he ran or linked to safety. He stopped thinking and kept running.
Everywhere he ran to, someone ran after him.
It was storming outside; above and around the solarium's dome, the cascades of turbulent snowflakes spiraled and pelted the glass like bullets before melting, distracting Cristo for a second, and as he looked up, the sky was illuminated by one lightning strike after another.
The thunder cracks came more and more quickly, and he stood watching the world end feeling responsible, though it was such a smaller sin than murder.
The snowflakes turned to ice and shot at the dome, slightly terrifying in the dark under panes of breakable glass. For purposes of self-preservation he turned to leave. Cristo turned back to the doors through which he had come, and a guardia in uniform came in with his gun drawn.
Following his instincts to flee, not the logic to use his gnomon to teleport, Cristo didn't get a chance to turn around and run; the thought of flight only just occurred to him before someone — an unseen guardia, some other shooter — fired into his back.
From behind the bullet of starlight punctured his jacket, shirt, skin, entered flesh, the momentum spun him off, punching through muscle, grazing possibly vital organs, and erupted through the front of his body, where blood began to blossom, glinting shiny on his black jacket and dark on his white collared shirt, and he threw himself forward in a lunge to keep from falling, hand inside his jacket pocket, left leg holding him up as he continued to careen forward and had to take another step with his right.
He looked forward, leaned forward, faced Laio Cytheria seeing her holding the fired gun aloft. Cytheria, he saw, was the shooter. More shots rang off, and the woman in black dress ran toward him, shooting, in long rapid strides, angry vindication twisting her old stoic face into an apathetic mask, and Cristo's hands snapped together, the gnomon clasped in his left, unable to move either as if they were tied to the wrist, and then his legs snapped together by the ankles, he started to fall backwards and finally he linked while falling over and when he finally hit the ground, landing on his back, it was on the floor of Stephen's living room, where Aurelian Stephen Potestas stood over him.
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I couldn't believe it. It felt as if the stars had brought me a present, even though I had never seen flawless experimental evidence to support scientifically the existence of that kind of divine intervention or destination.
Cristo lay at my feet, Nova's murderer, allegedly, tied up and already bleeding to death on my floor.
I didn't mind that he was bleeding all over the carpet. It was too perfect.
