I need to get three hallways along to my right, then take a left and keep going, though with the crowd growing louder and more unstable by the minute, it’s going to take a while. I make it to the first hallway, passing by the doorway that leads out to the observation deck. I glance out sideways through the door.
I know what the view’s meant to be—and it’s not like this. The stars beyond the clear screens blur, then lurch, then come back into focus.
They’re not the long, graceful lines that should be visible in dimensional hyperspace. They’re in focus for a moment, white pinpoints of light, then long blurs again. I’ve never seen a view like this before—it’s as though the Icarus is trying, and failing, to claw her way back into hyperspace. I’m not sure what will happen if she’s torn out prematurely, but I’m pretty sure nothing good.
For a moment something huge and metallic is visible out the corner of the observation window, and then it’s gone. I crane my neck, trying to catch sight of the object again. It’s so massive that it would have its own significant gravitational field, enough to pull the Icarus out of her flight path.
I turn back to work my way through the crowd toward my pod. The press of bodies is too thick, and I duck to the side to slide along the guard railing. On these back passages, the railing is all that stands between us and a nasty drop, all the way down at least a dozen levels. As I turn the corner I collide heavily with someone smaller than me, and I’m instinctively putting my arms out to keep the person from toppling over.
“Excuse me!” says a breathless voice. “Sir, watch where you’re going!”
No. Oh, hell no.
A pair of blue eyes meet mine, flashing shock—then outrage—before she’s shoving me away with all her strength, staggering back against the walkway railing.
I unclench my jaw with an effort. “Good evening, Miss LaRoux.” Drop dead, my tone says.
In spite of everything—the screaming of the crowd, the jostle of bodies, the blaring of the ship’s alarms—I take a moment to savor the shock and dismay on the faces of Miss LaRoux and her companions as they register my sudden reappearance. I’m not expecting the surge of people that comes flooding from a side passage.
They knock me off balance, but the crowd is so dense that I don’t fall. As if I’m caught in a violent river current, it takes me a moment to get my feet onto the solid floor again. I catch a glimpse of Miss LaRoux’s friends as they’re swept down the corridor. One of them is trying to battle the crowd, make her way back toward me, shouting Miss LaRoux’s name and slamming into people right and left. I realize she’s had training—not just another pretty face. A bodyguard? But even she can’t make any headway. The others are already almost out of sight.
I see one of them scream—mouth open, sound drowned out—in the same instant I realize Miss LaRoux’s not with them. I shove my way through to the railing, trying to catch a glimpse of that brilliant red hair.
This panicked crowd is enough to trample the unprepared. With a wall on one side and the balcony railing on the other, they’re channeled wilder and faster every moment, like beasts in a canyon. I see people lifted off their feet, slammed against the wall. She’s not here. I’m about to stop fighting the crowd and follow the current when a cry pierces the chaos.
I shove my way toward the sound. I’m in time to see a flash of green dress and red hair and white face vanish over the railing, as some frantic man twice her size goes barreling down the walkway.
I’m moving before I have time to think. I swing out over the railing, shifting my grip so I can angle my momentum toward the floor below mine, and jump after her.
“So you knew which escape pod was yours?”
“Yes.”
“Did she?”
“Know which was mine?”
“Know her own, Major. Please cooperate.”
“I suppose she did. I don’t know.”
“But neither of you ended up where you were supposed to be.”
“Some of the passengers didn’t handle the evacuation well.”
FOUR
LILAC
PAIN LANCES THROUGH MY SHOULDERS, and I taste blood as I bite the edge of my tongue—but I’m not falling anymore. I’ve hit another railing, the bar catching me under my arms. I have no breath, no strength. The crowd surges past, paying no attention. Spots dance before my eyes as I try to force my lungs to work before my grip gives out.
I can’t have fallen more than a floor or two, or surely I wouldn’t have been able to catch myself without jerking my shoulders out of their sockets. Below me stretches a drop that will shatter my body beyond any surgeon’s ability to repair it.
A ragged cry tears out of me as my lungs finally expand and contract, but nobody hears. The people around me are a blur of color and sound, the smell of sweat and fear, the feel of hips and elbows connecting with my face and arms. They’re too terrified to even dodge the girl clinging for her life to the railing—much less help me. “Swann!” I scream, trying to make my eyes focus on anything long enough to recognize faces, but it’s all moving too quickly.
And then a voice snarls at them to keep back. Not Swann. A male voice.
Strong hands wrap around my arms, pulling me from the railing back onto the catwalk. Someone hurries me down the walkway, moving with the flow, his body between mine and the screaming people scrambling for safety. My feet don’t even touch the ground.
He jerks me into a side corridor free of traffic and sets me on my feet. All I can see are brown eyes staring into mine, stern, urgent. With an effort I recognize him.