Aetherbound - E.K. Johnston Page 0,3

said, and passed her a four-gram protein cube.

Extra food was unheard of on the Harland. If Pendt was eating it, that meant someone else was not, and there were only so many calories given to a person every day. As captain, and because her work took so much out of her, Arkady received the largest share. She must always have calories to burn, because she must always use the æther to know where they were and where they were going. Pendt received enough to make sure that she grew, and nothing more. She wanted to eat the protein slowly, to savour the treat, but something in the atmosphere of the bridge told her that this was not the time to dawdle. The older cousins were disciplined, of course, but she could still feel them watching her.

Pendt put the cube on her tongue and then ground it between her teeth as quickly as she could. She swallowed, and for the first time in her short life, felt the whisper of potential in her mind.

“Pendt”—Arkady’s voice had changed. Now she was the captain entirely, and this was a command, not a request—“I need you to make your eyes blue.”

All of her siblings had blue eyes, and most of her cousins did too, except for Tanith, whose eyes were brown. Pendt’s eyes were green. She usually did her best not to think about them. She only saw her reflection briefly every day when she brushed her teeth. On a ship where everyone important had the same utilitarian haircut and variations on the same genetics, green eyes were enough to mark her as an outsider within her own family, and she had never liked that feeling. Still, she couldn’t imagine why the Harland needed her to have blue eyes. She knew she owed the ship already, even if she was only small. If she could help, she would.

It was like Spark, a bit, only instead of looking at circuits for a match, she was looking at a code, and the code was inside of her. She had never understood the game the way her brothers explained it to her, but this made much more sense than their muddled attempts to include her in their play. She saw the paths of light, the same as they described them. There was even a touch of electricity to it, but there was something else too, something that Pendt knew in her heart even if she couldn’t put a word on her lips.

She found the part of the code that made her eyes green, and focused on it. She knew what blue looked like, both in someone’s eye and in the code, even though no one had ever explained it to her, because her blue-eyed cousin was standing close by. She reached for that blue, strengthened by the four grams of protein, and wrote it overtop of her own green code. It felt as natural as breathing to do it, but experiencing the change made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t articulate. How could something so easy feel so wrong? Was she going to be the same person after this? What right had she to do it, and what right had her captain—her aunt—to ask.

She opened her eyes, and Lodia gasped, a soft sound that might have been a sob, except Harlands didn’t cry. The captain’s face hardened.

“Pendt, you must listen to me,” she said. Her tone was unmistakable now. Arkady had stopped thinking of her as Family and saw her only as part of the Harland.

“Yes, sir,” Pendt said.

She didn’t know what she had done wrong. She had done exactly as Arkady asked. Maybe it was the wrong shade of blue. She couldn’t see her own eyes, of course, but Pendt was sure she’d matched her cousin’s eye colour when she’d changed the code. Maybe she should have gone with Arkady’s shade instead. Maybe her aunt had wanted her to be more creative. Pendt tried reaching for the blue again, and she could see it just as clearly as before, but something inside her knew that if she tried again, without the protein, it would only hurt her in the long run.

“You must never use your gene-sense again,” Arkady said, giving name to Pendt’s curse. “Do you hear me? Never use the æther, unless I have given you permission.”

“You mean until I get lessons?” Pendt asked. Surely there was a version of Spark for her to play, now that she knew what she could do. The