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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

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Outsmart Your Enemies. Outrun the Galaxy.

Buckle up your seatbelt for a thrilling YA sci-fi adventure set against an intergalactic war—read an excerpt from Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders, available now from Tor Teen.

Tina never worries about being ‘ordinary’—she doesn’t have to, since she’s known practically forever that she’s not just Tina Mains, average teenager and beloved daughter. She’s also the keeper of an interplanetary rescue beacon, and one day soon, it’s going to activate, and then her dreams of saving all the worlds and adventuring among the stars will finally be possible. Tina’s legacy, after all, is intergalactic—she is the hidden clone of a famed alien hero, left on Earth disguised as a human to give the universe another chance to defeat a terrible evil.

But when the beacon activates, it turns out that Tina’s destiny isn’t quite what she expected. Things are far more dangerous than she ever assumed—and everyone in the galaxy is expecting her to actually be the brilliant tactician and legendary savior Captain Thaoh Argentian, but Tina….is just Tina. And the Royal Fleet is losing the war, badly—the starship that found her is on the run and they barely manage to escape Earth with the planet still intact.

Luckily, Tina is surrounded by a crew she can trust, and her best friend Rachel, and she is still determined to save all the worlds. But first she’ll have to save herself.


 

 

Saturday morning, the sunlight invades my tiny curtained-off “bedroom” and wakes me from a clammy bad dream. Even awake, I keep remembering Marrant’s creepy voice—and I startle, as if I had more layers of nightmare to wake from. My phone is jittering with all the gossip from Waymaker fandom and random updates about some Clinton High drama that I barely noticed in the midst of my Marrant obsession… and then there’s a message from Rachael on the Lasagna Hats server.

Monday Barker. It’s happening: disco party! Coming to pick you up at noon. The Lasagna Hats started as a backchannel group for Waymaker players— until the game had one gross update too many, and then we started just chatting about whatever. And somehow it turned into a place to organize pranks and disruptions against all of the world’s scuzziest creeps.

I grab my backpack, dump out all my school stuff, and cram it full of noisemakers, glitter, and my mom’s old costume stuff. I’m already snapping out of my anxiety spiral.

The back seat of Rachael’s car is covered with art supplies and sketch pads, and I can tell at a glance that she’s leveled up since I last saw her works in progress. As soon as I get in her car, Rachael chatters to me about Monday Barker—that online “personality” who says that girls are naturally bad at science and math, and women should never have gotten the vote. Then Rachael trails off, because she can tell I’m only half listening.

“Okay,” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”

I can barely find the words to tell her I’ve started having hallucinations about an alien serial killer.

The artwork on Rachael’s back seat includes a hand-colored drawing of a zebra wearing a ruffly collar and velvet jacket, raising a sword and riding a narwhal across the clouds. Somehow this image gives me the courage to explain about Marrant.

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Victories Greater Than Death

Victories Greater Than Death

“Pretty sure these were actual memories from… before,” I say. “I think this means it’s going to light up soon.”

“That’s great.” Rachael glances at my face. “Wait. Why isn’t that great?”

“It is. Except… I’ve been waiting and dreaming for so long, and now it’s suddenly a real thing. And… what if there’s nothing out there but the evil murder team? What if all the friendly aliens are dead? Or don’t bother to show up?”

“Huh.” She drives onto the highway and merges into traffic without slowing down. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

I close my eyes, and remember that oily voice: You were always doomed to fail.

“Maybe I can’t do this.” I suck in a deep breath through my teeth. “Maybe I’m just out of my league and I’m going to die. Maybe I’m just not strong enough.” Rachael glances at me again, and shrugs. “Maybe,” is all she says.

She doesn’t talk again for ages. I think this is the “working something out in her own head” silence.

We make a pit stop at a convenience store, and Rachael pauses in the parking lot. “Remember when you decked Walter Gough for calling me an orca in a smock?” (It wasn’t a smock, it was a nice chemise from Torrid, and Walter deserved worse.) “Remember the great lunch lady war, and that Frito pie costume you wore?”

I nod.

“The entire time I’ve known you, people have kept telling you to stop being such an obnoxious pain in the butt,” Rachael says with a gleam in her eye. “But here you are, preparing to put on a ridiculous costume and prank Monday Barker. This is who you are. So… if some alien murder team shows up to test you, I feel sorry for them.”

Rachael smiles at me. Everything suddenly feels extremely heavy and lighter than air, at the same time.

“Oh my god,” I say. “Can I hug you? I know you don’t always like to be touched, but—”

Rachael nods, and I pull her into a bear hug. She smells of fancy soap and acetone, and her arms wrap around me super gently.

Then she lets go of me, and I let go too, and we go to buy some extra spicy chips and ultra-caffeinated sodas, the perfect fuel for confronting ass hattery (ass-millinery?). I keep thinking of what Rachael just said, and a sugar rush spreads throughout my whole body.

I feel like I almost forgot something massively important, but then my best friend was there to remind me.

Monday Barker is scheduled to speak at the Lions Club in Islington, and we’re setting up at the park across the street. Bette and Turtle have a glitter mist machine and a big disco ball, and a dozen other people, mostly my age, have brought sparkly decorations. I wander around helping people to figure out the best place to set up, since this “disco party” was sort of my idea.

“We got this,” says Turtle, buttoning their white suit jacket over a red shirt. “Why don’t you get yourself ready?” They’ve put pink streaks into their hair-swoosh.

In other words, Stop trying to micromanage everyone. Message received.

I retreat to Rachael’s car, where I rummage in my knapsack and put on a bright red spangly tuxedo shirt and a big fluffy pink skirt I stole from my mom, plus shoes covered with sequins.

Rachael sets to work finishing some signs she was making, which are full of rainbows and stars and shiny Day-Glo paint. I pull out the tubes of glitter-goop I brought with me, and she lets me spread some around the edges using a popsicle stick.

I coax Rachael into telling me about the comic she’s working on right now. “It’s about a group of animals living on a boat. They thought they were getting on Noah’s Ark, but the guy they thought was Noah skipped out on them, and now they’re just stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean alone. There’s a pair of giraffes, and a poly triad of walruses. They have to teach themselves to sail, and maybe they’re going to become pirates who only steal fresh produce. Once I have enough of it, I might put it online.”

“Hell yeah,” I say. “The world deserves to learn how excellent you are.”

She just nods and keeps adding more sparkle.

I wish the bullies hadn’t driven Rachael away from school. She just made too easy a target for ass-millinery: her parents are nudists, she’s a super introvert who sometimes talks to herself when she gets stressed, and she wears loose rayon clothing to hide all her curves.

The rich kids, whose parents worked at the tech campus, took her picture and used filters to make her look like an actual dog. Kids “accidentally” tripped her up as she walked into school, or shoved her in the girls’ room. One time, someone dumped a can of coffee grounds from the teacher’s lounge on her head. I tried to protect her, but I couldn’t be there all the time.

So… homeschooling. And me never seeing Rachael during the week anymore.

Soon there are about twenty of us across the street from the Lions Club, everybody feeding off everyone else’s energy and hoisting Rachael’s glorious awning. And a pro–Monday Barker crowd is already gathered across the street, on the front walk of this old one-story brick meeting hall with flaking paint on its wooden sign.

A town car pulls up, and Monday Barker gets out, flanked by two beefy men in dark suits holding walkie-talkies. Monday Barker is about my mom’s age, with sideburns enclosing his round face, and a huge crown of upswept hair. He waves in a robotic motion, and his fans scream and freak out.

Someone on our side fires up a big speaker on wheels, playing old disco music. The handful of cops between us and the Lions Club tense up, but we’re not trying to start anything. We’re just having an impromptu dance party.

The brick wall of the savings and trust bank seems to shiver. I catch a glimpse of Marrant, the giant with the scary-perfect face and the sneering thin lips, staring at me.

But I remember what I said to him in that vision: There are victories greater than death. I can see justice coming. And then I think about Rachael saying, If an alien murder team shows up, I feel sorry for them.

The throbbing grows stronger… but Marrant is gone. The brick wall is just a wall again.

The Monday Barker fans—mostly white boys with bad hair—are chant ing something, but I can’t hear them over our music. Rachael and I look at each other and whoop. Someone starts the whole crowd singing along with that song about how we are family. I know, I know. But I get kind of choked up.

We keep on, chanting disco lyrics and holding hands, until Monday Barker’s supporters vanish inside the Lions Club to listen to their idol ex plain why girls shouldn’t learn to read. Out here, on the disco side of the line, we all start high-fiving each other and jumping up and down.

Afterward, we all head to the 23-Hour Coffee Bomb. Turtle, Bette, and the others all go inside the coffee place, but I pause out in the parking lot, with its scenic view of the wind-beaten sign for the Little Darlings strip club. Rachael sees me and hangs back too.

“I started to get another one of those hallucinations.” I look down at the white gravel. “During the disco party. Snow-white serial killer, staring me down. And this time… I faced it. I didn’t get scared. And I could feel the star ball respond to that, like it was powering up.”

“Hmm.” Rachael turns away from the door and looks at me. “Maybe that’s the key. That’s how you get the rescue beacon to switch on.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. Makes total sense. When you can confront that scary vision of your past life or whatever, then it proves you’re ready.”

She comes closer and reaches with one hand.

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

“What, now?”

“Yeah. I want to be here to see this.” She grins.

I swallow and shiver for a moment, then I clasp her hand and concentrate. Probably better to do this before I lose my nerve, right?

I remember Marrant and his bottomless dark eyes, and the exploding spaceship, and that curdled blob of helplessness inside me. And I catch sight of him again, striding across the road with his death-cannon raised. The icy feeling grows from my core outward, and I clench my free hand into a fist.

Then… I start to shake. I can actually see the dark tendrils gathering inside that gun barrel. Pure concentrated death. My heart pounds so loud I can’t even think straight. I couldn’t even help Rachael feel safe at Clinton High. How could I possibly be ready to face Marrant?

“I can’t,” I choke out. “I can’t. I… I just can’t.”

“Okay,” Rachael says. “Doesn’t have to be today, right? But I know you got this. Just think of disco and glitter and the look in Monday Barker’s eyes when he tried so damn hard not to notice us in all our finery.”

She squeezes my hand tighter. I look down at the ridiculous skirt I’m still wearing. And I focus on the person I am in those visions—the person who can see justice coming, even on the brink of death. That’s who I’ve always wanted to be.

I’m ready. I know I can do this.

I growl in my throat, and feel a sympathetic thrumming from the top of my rib cage.

The parking lot and the strip-club billboard melt away, and I’m once again standing on top of a spaceship, and my free hand is cupped around a warning that we’re about to blow up. The stars whirl around so fast that I get dizzy, and Marrant is aiming his weapon at point-blank range.

But I can still feel Rachael’s hand wrapped around mine.

I gather myself together, step forward, and smile.

I can’t see what happens next, because a white light floods my eyes, so bright it burns.

Rachael squeezes my hand tighter and says, “Holy bloody hell.”

A million stars flow out of me, inside a globe the size of a tennis ball. I can only stand to look at them through my fingers, all of these red and blue and yellow lights whirling around, with clouds of gas and comets and pulsars.

Way more stars than I’ve ever seen in the sky.

All of my senses feel extra sharp: the burnt-tire smell of the coffee, the whoosh of traffic going past, the jangle of classic rock from inside the café, the tiny rocks under my feet.

Everybody inside the coffee shop is staring and yelling. I catch Turtle’s eye, and they look freaked out. Rachael has her phone out and is taking as many pictures as she can.

As soon as the ball leaves my body, it gets bigger, until I can see more of the individual stars. So many tiny hearts of light, I can’t even count. The sphere expands until I’m surrounded. Stars overhead, stars underfoot. This parking lot has become a planetarium.

I can’t help laughing, yelling, swirling my hands through the star-trails. Feels like I’ve been waiting forever to bathe in this stardust.

 

Excerpted from Victories Greater Than Death, copyright © 2021 by Charlie Jane Anders

About the Author

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Charlie Jane Anders

Author

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of the young-adult trilogy Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness, along with the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. She’s also the author of Never Say You Can’t Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She co-created Escapade, a trans superhero, for Marvel Comics, and featured her in New Mutants Vol. 4 and the miniseries New Mutants: Lethal Legion. She reviews science fiction and fantasy books for The Washington Post. Her TED Talk, “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future” got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
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