THE ASTRONAUT'S FORBIDDEN GIRL
Chapter Eight: Fracture
Selene Vantage did not show up for the mandatory pre-finals briefing, and by the time anyone in an official capacity noticed she was missing, Wren had already spent four hours quietly panicking about it in a way she hadn't expected to feel toward the girl who'd spent three weeks calling her scrapyard tourist.
"She's not answering her comm," Wren said, pacing the length of Doyle's office. "Nobody's seen her since yesterday's hearing."
"That's not automatically a crisis," Doyle said, though his tone suggested he didn't fully believe it either. "Her mother is currently the subject of a Combine oversight investigation for stealing a junior technician's credentials to sabotage four matches. If I found out my mother had done that, I might disappear for a day too."
That was true, and Wren knew it was true, and it didn't make the knot in her stomach loosen at all. She kept thinking about the version of Selene she'd met in the registration line three weeks ago, all sharp edges and inherited certainty, and trying to square it with the version she'd glimpsed since, brittle underneath the polish in ways Wren hadn't let herself notice until it was too late to pretend she hadn't. It was an uncomfortable thing, worrying about someone who had spent weeks trying to make her feel small. She didn't have a tidy explanation for why she was doing it anyway.
This part of the story had actually begun the evening before, after the hearing where Selene's mother's name had come out into the open. Wren had gone looking for Selene, not entirely sure why, following some instinct she hadn't fully examined, and found her alone in the sponsored pilots' lounge, a room Wren had never once been allowed into, sitting very still with her hands folded in her lap like she was waiting for a verdict.
"Come to gloat?" Selene had asked, without looking up.
"Came to see if you were okay. Which, in hindsight, might be a stupid reason to walk into a room I'm not technically allowed in."
"You're not allowed in here because I complained about scrapyard pilots contaminating the sponsored lounge's aesthetic during my second week on the circuit," Selene said. "For what it's worth, I regret saying that. Somewhat."
"High praise."
"Don't push your luck." Selene had finally looked up, and the composed, cutting persona Wren had spent three weeks sparring against was almost entirely gone, replaced by something raw and much younger looking. "My mother used my sponsorship access to frame you for something my own family did fifteen years before I was born. I've spent my entire life being told I was the next champion because the Vantage name demanded it, and it turns out the Vantage name has been sitting on a buried research crime the whole time, and I never knew, and somehow I'm still the one everyone's going to look at differently now."
"That's not fair to you."
"No," Selene had agreed, bitter. "It isn't. I've spent this entire competition treating you like a threat to something I never actually chose for myself, and it turns out the real threat to everything I built my identity around was sitting in my own house the whole time. I don't know what to do with that information yet."
Wren hadn't had a good answer for that. She still didn't, standing in Doyle's office the next day with Selene nowhere to be found.
It was Kai who finally tracked her down, three hours later, not through any Institute system but through an old habit neither Wren nor Doyle had thought to check: the underring race circuit's private comm channels, the same ones Wren had used for a year before anyone from the Institute noticed her.
"She's at the old transit platform above the Lower Ring scrapyards," Kai said, breathless, having clearly run the entire way from wherever he'd been when the location came through. "The unofficial race spectator deck. I don't know how she even knew that existed."
"I do," Wren said, already moving. "I mentioned it once, during the Partnered Trial. I didn't think she was listening."
They found Selene sitting on the edge of the platform, legs hanging over a drop that would have terrified Wren on her first day in the Lower Ring and had long since stopped registering as dangerous, watching the scrapyard lights flicker below in the dark.
"You came all the way out here," Selene said, not turning around. "In sponsored shoes. I'm almost impressed."
"You mentioned once that you'd never actually seen where I grew up," Wren said, sitting down beside her, carefully, at a distance that left room for Selene to bolt if she wanted to. "Figured this was as good a time as any."
"I'm not running away, if that's what everyone's assuming. I needed somewhere nobody would look for the Vantage-Hale golden girl. Somewhere that felt like it belonged to someone who hadn't already decided who I was supposed to be before I was old enough to have an opinion about it." Selene's voice cracked, just slightly, on the last few words. "I don't know if I even want to compete in the finals anymore. Everything I've ever won, every match, every sponsorship renewal, I don't know how much of it was actually mine and how much of it was my mother making sure the family name stayed protected."
"For what it's worth," Wren said, "the way you flew against me in that first match wasn't bought. Nobody's mother can teach someone to read an opponent's weak side in real time. That part was you."
Selene was quiet for a long moment. "Why are you being kind to me? I spent three weeks trying to make you feel small in front of every camera in this arena."
"Because I know what it's like to have people decide what you're worth before you've had a chance to prove it yourself," Wren said. "Just usually from the other direction. Turns out being underestimated and being over-defined are both just different ways of never getting to actually be seen."
That landed somewhere Wren hadn't expected it to, Selene's composed mask cracking further, something like the beginning of real tears held back through sheer stubborn will.
"My mother is going to be formally charged," Selene said. "Compliance told me an hour ago. Endangerment of minor competitors, falsification of Institute records, unauthorized access to restricted technology. Vantage-Hale's board is already discussing whether to keep sponsoring me at all, now that the family name is this contaminated." She let out a short, humorless laugh. "Turns out being the golden girl only works as long as the gold underneath you is actually clean."
"Do you still want to compete in the finals?"
Selene considered that for a long moment, looking out over the scrapyard lights instead of at Wren. "I want to find out, for the first time in my life, whether I'm good enough on my own, without my mother's name doing half the work. I don't know if that's the same thing as wanting to compete. But I think I need to find out either way."
"Then compete," Wren said. "Beat me clean, if you can. I'd rather lose to someone actually trying than win because your mother handed you a disadvantage before either of us even reached the field."
Selene turned to look at her properly for the first time since they'd sat down, something new in her expression, cautious and unpracticed, like a person testing whether an unfamiliar shape of kindness might actually be safe to accept. "You're a strange person, Wren Kessler."
"I've been told."
Kai, who had hung back near the platform entrance to give them space, finally stepped closer as Selene stood, brushing off her sponsored clothes with the first hint of her old composure returning, thinner now but real.
"I'll be at the briefing tomorrow," Selene said, mostly to Kai, since it was clear she wasn't ready to say the next part directly to Wren yet. "Tell Achebe I wasn't running. I was thinking."
"I'll tell her," Kai said.
Selene paused at the edge of the platform, looking back once. "Kessler. For what it's worth. I hope whatever's buried inside your Frame doesn't get you killed before we get our rematch. I'd like it to be a fair one, this time."
She left before Wren could answer, disappearing back down the access stairs toward the transit platform below, and Wren sat there a moment longer, feeling the shape of the season shift under her in a way that had nothing to do with sabotage or containment logs or buried corporate secrets at all.
"That went better than I expected," Kai said, settling down beside her in the space Selene had left.
"Everything's been going better than I expected lately. It's making me nervous."
"Why?"
"Because the last time everything felt like it was finally coming together," Wren said, "my Frame woke itself up in a containment locker with the power cells removed. I've stopped trusting good momentum."
Kai didn't have an answer for that, not immediately, but he didn't move away either, and the two of them sat together at the edge of the platform in the dark, watching the scrapyard lights below, neither of them mentioning how close together they were sitting, both of them entirely aware of it anyway.