Bianca couldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t call the delirious, loopy daze she’d fallen into sleep, not at all, not with her skin so hot and her gut so tight. The cot was uncomfortable. Her clothes were itchy and filthy. The Phage hissed in her head, on and on with its hatred and its threats, wanting her to get up and kill all of them, because the damn thing was convinced they would rip her to shreds, so it just made sense that she had to murder Rylee’s family first. She gritted her teeth. Squeezed her eyes shut. Clutched onto her hoodie that she’d turned into an uncomfortable pillow, and tried to ignore Frankie, who she could tell was crouched beside her bed, scribbling something down.

  And then she felt a pencil poke her nose, and that shattered the thin veil of sleep she was hiding behind. Real life was dull and poorly lit, filled with quiet muttering in a language she couldn’t understand. Real life was hungry and cold and dirty and smelt like blood. And Frankie, crouched right where she thought she would be, was holding up a tiny notepad to Bianca’s face. It was a shitty drawing of several stick figures holding hands. Rylee was the most obvious one, with the big lightning bolt on her stick figure body, next to Bianca’s purple stick figure, and what must be Frankie and the rest of the Arkathians. Bianca stared at it, then looked at Frankie. The girl grinned.

  “Like it?” she asked, stuffing her colored pencils into her overall’s pockets. “I drew it myself.

  Bianca sighed through her nose and rolled over, facing—

  Thalia sat on the cot beside her, elbows resting on her knees, watching her like a hawk.

  Anddd there goes any hope of getting any sleep, she thought. She stiffly sat up, massaging the ache out of her neck and wincing as her tender stomach tensed. Hungry. Again. This time for some real food. Maybe something filled with chili, cheese and some meat. But there wasn’t a fridge in sight, and the shelves were filled with files and vials and beakers of strange liquids. A cockroach scurried across the floor and vanished inside a crack, and Bianca was almost jealous of the tiny thing, because Thalia hadn’t stopped staring, and now Frankie was climbing onto the cot and perching herself right beside Bianca. Her skin was cold. Her hair reeked. Her fingers quickly curled around Bianca’s wrist and raised her arm, then she poked her bicep with the pencil’s lead tip. Bianca flinched and stood.

  “What the hell was that for?” she said, massaging her arm.

  Frankie said, “I want to see ‘em, the worms. C’mon, show me.”

  “I’m not showing you anything,” Bianca muttered, holding herself. “God, it’s freezing in here.”

  “Really?” Frankie said. “It feels perfectly warm to me.”

  Because you’re a walking, talking corpse, Bianca thought.

  “Sorry,” Icarus, the boy with glasses, said from across the room. At some point, he’d shuffled his way toward the work bench, where he’d been deathly focused on pieces of metal for several minutes now. “Arkathians rarely feel temperature changes. Our bodies are pretty good at acclimatizing to different environments, so we don’t always know when something’s cold or not. Rhea will be back soon, hopefully with something hot for you to eat.”

  The girl with the soft face muttered, “I hope she brings the rest of us something warm, too.”

  “Earth food tastes horrible,” grunted the larger boy. “No offence, of course, Artemis.”

  She shrugged. “None taken. But it’s not all bad, I guess.”

  “No, it’s quite literally poisonous to them,” Frankie said. “I mean, sure they can nibble on it, but their bodies aren’t anywhere near used to our nutrients. They really like oranges for some reason, though. Kinda weird.”

  “They almost taste like skalr fruits,” the girl with the soft face said, almost dreamily. “Back home, my father is a skalr farmer, and every morning he’d hide a few slices in his coat and we’d share them before harvest.”

  Bianca raised an eyebrow. “Harvest? You’ve got farmers? I thought you were all—”

  “Murderers, war mongers, intergalactic criminals?” Icarus asked over his shoulder.

  She scratched the back of her head. “I… Is it racist to say yes? I feel like it is.”

  Frankie tsked and shook her head. “Stereotypes aren’t nice, wormy.”

  “Would you stop calling me that?”

  “Why?” she said. “I think it’s pretty cool that you’ve got a bunch of maggots inside of you.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t. It’s not like I wanted them in the first place.”

  “Vessels rarely ever do,” Thalia said quietly. “They’re many times ceremonial, or given to people who’ve done horrible things and need to, like Rebecca said, atone for what they’ve done. Their sacrifice is commendable.”

  “I thought you said your people hunted them down.”

  Thalia shrugged one shoulder. “Their deaths are a commendable feat for us, too.”

  Bianca massaged her face. She wanted a bath filled with bubbles, where she could dunk her head under the water and not come up until her lungs were screaming. Her teeth were grimy and her mouth tasted flat, but she figured it wasn’t the time to start moaning about being comfortable. She’d always thought superheroes lived it up. Glitzy parties, million-dollar condos and billion-dollar contracts. They’d stop a purse snatcher and beat up a couple of thugs, and suddenly you’ve got your own state-wide holiday and a burger named after you. Just not…this. Dirty. Cold. Hungry. Exhausted. She sat back down on the edge of the cot, slowly massaging the back of her head, feeling the worms scurrying just underneath her skin. It wasn’t happy that she’d stayed, least of all having Thalia so close to her. She felt less intense. Like Rylee. The others, especially Rhea, felt like she was chewing electrical cables.

  A part of Bianca would much rather do that than sit here, feeling so prickly and angry.

  “So,” she said, interrupting the silence and looking up from her hands. “Um…aliens.”

  “You’re alien to us,” Thalia said.

  “Fair enough,” Bianca muttered. “Before Rhea left, she said something about the guy who attacked Ry.”

  “Lord Gayne,” the larger boy rumbled, laying down on his cot, arms behind his head, eyes shut. “If the king sent him, then he was sent with intent. To make a statement. The Lords of Power don’t leave Arkath easily.”

  “Why not?” Bianca said. “Is it some kind of, like, rule or something?”

  “Because if the Lords left Arkath,” Icarus quietly said, hunched over the work bench, deathly focused on singing some kind of microchip, “it would mean devastation to whichever poor planet they were sent to visit. Our society is built on…well, I guess humans would say a caste system. The Royal Bloodline remains untouched at the very top, followed by the Lords of Power. Houses of Power also exist, and stand alongside the Lords. Your girlfriend once had family that ruled portions of Arkath, but the House of Korr was executed years before any of us was born.”

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  “But…” Bianca frowned. “Doesn’t that mean Zeus and Titan were…?”

  “They lost their status’,” Thalia said quietly. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Bianca the entire time. Her arms were toned and thin black lines ran from her fingers to her forearms, all the way to her shoulders. “They slaved from the dregs of Arkath back to Legionnaires on their own. I suppose it’s part of the reason Rhea and Ry’ee were raised the way they were. Not all parents on Arkath are ruthless. Lord Zeus and Lord Titan had to be, because a single failure, even from their offspring, would result in their termination, and also their return to where they had been banished to, and trust me, there aren’t many places in Arkath that being banished leads to a comfortable life.”

  “This whole time,” Bianca said slowly, “I thought…” She shook her head. “Rylee grew up with Zeus. I know you guys might know him as some kind of Lord, or whatever, but he’s probably the greatest superhero ever.”

  Silence lingered inside the room. Icarus lowered the microchip. The larger boy opened his eyes.

  “Ry’ee has suffered at his hands,” the soft-faced girl whispered. “Rhea told us not to tell, but…”

  She looked around. For once, none of them wanted to look at her. A pit grew in her gut. “What did he do?”

  “Whatever he could to make her stronger,” Thalia said simply. “Arkathians grow more powerful through hardship. Olympia, on your planet, is leagues beyond anyone around her. She’s held back by her humanity, by her inability to accept her other half. She wants so badly to be human that she doesn’t let herself grow, because even with half her father’s blood in her veins, she could reshape this entire continent before they stopped her. But then you’d strip her of her home, of everything, and for a warrior whose own motherland told her she was not worthy of her own flesh, that would leave her vulnerable, but most importantly, also dangerous. Violent. Nothing to lose.”

  Bianca shifted uncomfortably, kept massaging the back of her neck. “But Rylee’s…good. And I get that people don’t like how she deals with problems, but she’s the only superhero out there who actually does do it.”

  “It’s commendable,” the large boy grunted. “Praiseworthy. I fear, though, that she has her grandmother’s—”

  “This is so borringggg,” Frankie moaned, flopping onto the cot. “God, who cares about some stupid alien empire, anyway? We all know how this is gonna go, too. All of you guys are gonna get snatched back up and made to swear your allegiance, or whatever, then they’ll kill Olympia because she’s a freak, and then we all die horrible deaths. The end.” She rested on her elbow and looked up at Bianca. “So, you and Goldie. What’s the situation?”

  “We’d be executed right alongside you,” Icarus murmured, still focused.

  Frankie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure. Aliens together, or whatever your motto is.”

  “The House of Korr were executed for the same reason as us being here,” the larger boy said, turning his head to look at Bianca. “Great Conqueror Leona, Olympia’s grandmother, got very close to toppling the crown.”

  “What?” Bianca said, leaning forward. “But I thought the Royal Bloodline was also really strong.”

  The boy partially smiled. “You underestimate what it means to be from the First House, Artemis. Without the House of Korr, Arkath wouldn’t be anywhere near as powerful as it is. According to some rumors, they’re bastard descendants of the Royal Bloodline, but that’s mostly just talk from the skalr farmers. Maybe just a few wonderful stories the crown enjoys spreading to make it seem like just about everyone on our planet is secretly special. It means many of us grow up thinking we’re better than our peers. It leads to egos. Fighting. Many children die young because they believe in their false superiority, but in any real sense, it’s probably all just that—a story. Nothing more than whispers that make the lives we live less grueling to endure. In truth, Olympia might have a claim to the throne.” He paused, considered something as Bianca’s head spun, then said, “I suppose that makes you her consort.”

  “Hold on a minute!” Bianca said, shaking her head. “You said way too much. What do you mean—”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Icarus said, turning around on his stool. “He enjoys stories like that, but none of it is actually true, because that would just sew revolt through their ranks, and the Empire hates in-fighting more than it does lesser species. Olympia might be strong, yes, but in contrast to, say Rhea?” He shook his head. “Rhea is pure blooded, fated to be a Lord of Power from birth. She’s an exceptional fighter. And unlike Ry’ee, I doubt she has any issues with clinging to morals she’s never grown up with, either. Alongside Europa, Ry’ee is good, strong enough, yes, but biologically?” He smiled at her, tilted and tired. “It’s a miracle she survived her encounter with him.”

  Bianca’s mouth was dry. So, so dry. “I’ve watched Rylee split supervillains in half.”

  “And as easily as she did that,” Icarus said, “an adult Arkathian can do that to her.”

  “Now this is interesting,” Frankie said quietly.

  “What’re you even saying right now?” Bianca asked. “That she’s got no hope of beating them?”

  “Oh, Gods no,” Icarus said, chuckling. “If there’s anyone that can, it’s her.”

  “But you just said—”

  “She reminds me of our grandmother.” They all turned as the cellar doors groaned shut, a plastic bag fat with something mouth-watering clutched in Rhea’s hand. She dumped it beside Icarus and said, “And Leona was just about the most stubborn, willful, arrogant Arkathian I’ve ever met, and I only saw her once. Briefly. Before she was sentenced to death. Fuck, she even looks like her. And sometimes that’s what scares me the most, that they’ll see her face and slaughter her just the same for the crime of imagined revolt. Rylee is dangerous because she’s herself. Her face alone would probably spark something violent back home. And for some reason, they let her live.”

  Frankie hurried across the room and tore open the plastic bag, rummaged through it, and then tossed Bianca a brown paper bag crammed full with fries. “You’re the best, Rhe-Rhe. I could kiss you right about now!”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Thalia said.

  “Feisty,” Frankie muttered, sitting down as she peeled plastic wrap off a burger.

  Bianca looked at Rhea. “I heard what he said, Lord whatever, when he fought Europa.”

  “Fought isn’t a word I’d use for their encounter,” Rhea muttered, sitting beside Thalia.

  “About some kind of revolution she ran away from?”

  “She chose to survive. Europa is powerful in her own right, probably the most powerful person to walk this planet in decades.” Decades? Was she stronger than— “But she’s also a nomad. Her family was executed when she joined the rebellion. She was around the same age I am right now, and it changed her. You might think family isn’t much to us, but a lot of the time, family is all an Arkathian has that separates them from being banished, or pulled apart by the Lords. But, like all things with Arkathians, its violent beginning mirrored its violent end. Its liberation efforts were quick and successful. And then the Lords were sent after them.” Rhea leaned back on her hands. “It quickly concluded, and the king made sure we understood what it meant to follow orders. For our own good.”

  “So…” Bianca pushed her fingers through her knotted hair. “Can we…does Earth survive this?”

  Does Rylee? she wanted to ask.

  None of them spoke. None of them met her eyes.

  All of them had the same look on their faces.

  No, it doesn’t.

  “Fuck,” Bianca whispered, the world slipping past her lips.

  “We have a story,” the large boy said, slowly sitting upright, “of a hero who liberates us. It’s a story not many of us get to hear, and even fewer of us believe. A warrior who comes from the stars and shatters the chains put around our throats, who takes the crown and rids Arkath of its false royal family.” This time, Icarus said nothing. He only looked at the boy, just like all of them did. Even Frankie. “Torchbearer, is their name. A loose translation. Fists of light. Eyes like suns. A heart that bleeds gold when it's cut from their chest. And onward they’ll march, taking us to new planets, new dawns, righting our species’ wrongs, all on their own. The story varies depending on which mouth you first hear it coming from, but from the moment I met Olympia, something struck me as…right.” He smiled and stood, casting a long shadow across the floor. “I firmly believe in fate. Everything always leads to something. And for a girl whose life was deemed as nothing by the Royals, I suppose she can do anything, too.”

  Then he clapped his hands and said, “Now, I’m starving. Are there oranges in the bag?”

  Frankie tossed him a couple.

  And Bianca could only look past him, heart beating slowly, wondering…

  “Did the hero live in the end?” she asked quietly. “Did they survive?”

  “No,” Rhea said, standing. “Because the hero isn’t real. We’ll fight them as best as we can. For now, we have our own battles here on Earth. Five minutes, and then we’re leaving, before a clone of this hero leads us right into the jaws of death, and I, for one, am not looking forward to dying again. I think we’ve done enough of that.”

  “Hear, hear!” Frankie said through a mouthful, then swallowed. “Now, let’s go clone hunting.”

  “Yeah,” Bianca whispered. “Let’s go clone hunting.”

  God, Ry. Just get back here already, wherever you are.

  Because Sophie wasn’t their hero, she could feel that in her chest. Or maybe it was stupid, hopeless love.

  But the Earth needed Rylee, and seemingly, so did the entire universe.