Many long years have passed since the blue-eyed man came to me, but now he has come every day, wild-eyed and gaunt. “Where is she?” he asks, pacing circles around the rift, stopping just short of slamming his fists against the machinery. “The ship went down—God knows where. I know you can find her. You have to find her. Damn it, there has to be a way to…I won’t lose her too!”
If I could speak I would tell him I sense nothing, because of the prison that holds me. If I cared to tell him anything at all.
Then I do feel something: a surge of power so strong I sense it even through the total emptiness surrounding me. The final gasp of my brethren in the original thin spot—a flood of joy, release, gratitude so strong I almost forget my own despair. Until it fades, leaving me alone once more.
No…not alone. I can still feel something, the remnant of what my brethren did. A vessel exists now, somewhere across the galaxy, a connection to my world. They brought something back. Someone.
Her.
I will stay still, and I will stay quiet.
And I will wait for my chance.
“NOT AN OPTION.” JUBILEE’S VOICE is sharp, and she lurches to her feet.
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Sanjana retorts, her own voice quickening. “But it’s the only answer I have.”
“Find another one!” Jubilee’s shout echoes back from the shattered marble walls, leaving a quick, poignant silence behind.
Sanjana takes a slow breath. “It doesn’t work like that. You can’t just decide the variables aren’t true, that the evidence isn’t what you want it to be—I can’t just invent ways to change physics, Captain.”
I take advantage of that brief lull to rise to my feet, ignoring the swell of dizziness that comes with exhaustion. “We should get some rest.” I keep my voice even, warm. Listen to me, latch on to this voice. I’m on your side. It’s a voice that always worked on the soldiers on Avon, always worked to calm my contacts. And it only works as long as you keep talking, so they don’t realize I can’t possibly be on everyone’s side. “We can’t change what’s happened—and if she’s protecting the rift, then she won’t do anything to draw attention to it. We have time, and we need to give Gideon a chance to fix our shields before we risk being seen. We can afford to sleep on it. We have to sleep on it—we’re out on our feet.”
Wearily, the others spread out a little, finding spaces in the various storefronts to stretch out. Jubilee tosses another flare from her pack to Gideon, then retreats to follow Flynn to the shadows near the rubble blocking the other end of the arcade. Gideon helps Sanjana to her feet, lending her some support as they duck inside a nearby jewelry store. I know Gideon wants to discuss this theoretical hack on the rift, where Tarver won’t hear, and won’t get his hopes up again. But Gideon lingers by the store’s archway after he’s got Sanjana settled, and I catch a flash of his eyes moving toward me before I drop my gaze. I can feel him watching me, feel the weight of all the things I wish I could say to him.
He and I haven’t talked to each other since the Daedalus, not really. There’s been no time for it, no space for us to be alone. But I can see the shock in his eyes when he saw me pull out the plas-pistol as clear as if it were only five minutes ago, and each time I relive it something twists a little more deep inside me. I want to apologize and I want to defend myself—I want to tell him I’d choose him over revenge if I could do it again, and that I’d still fire at LaRoux again if I could—I want to trust him and I want him to leave and never look at me like this again. I want to rail at him for lying to me about the Knave and about growing up alongside the daughter of my enemy, to remind him that his side of the ledger has its fair share of deceit.
I want him to know that the only reason I didn’t tell him about my plan to murder Roderick LaRoux is that I knew he’d try to talk me out of it, and that, somewhere deep in my heart, I knew he’d succeed. I want him to know that I wish he had. I want so badly to trust him enough for that. And yet my lips won’t move, my voice won’t come.
When I manage to lift my head again, the doorway is empty, and I can hear his voice, low, mingling with the scientist’s.
Tarver and I are alone. He’s been on autopilot since the crash, chasing one distant glimmer of hope after another. It doesn’t take an expert to read the emptiness in his face now. I have no idea if he even knows I’m still here, if he’s aware enough of his surroundings to register me.
Then he speaks, voice rusty. “The first time I lost her,” he says, “I was going to kill myself.”
I swallow, unsure whether he thinks he’s talking to himself—until his head lifts and his eyes flicker over toward my face.
“I don’t know how I carried on. I don’t know what kept me from pulling that trigger.” He leans back slowly against the wall until he can tilt his chin and look up at the ceiling. “I don’t care, now.”
My heart tightens, making it difficult to breathe. There’s always a certain amount of guilt involved, doing what I do—using people always leaves wreckage in its wake, for me and for them. But it’s never been anything like this, a crushing, suffocating weight forcing its way deeper and deeper inside me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I never meant to—” My mind replays the moment Lilac fell, like a photo looping over and over. “I’m sorry.”
Tarver lifts a hand to wipe it over his face, as though he can wipe away his reaction to my voice. “It’s not your fault.”
“I shot—”
“Maybe you shortened the fuse,” he interrupts, looking back down and across at me. “But the blast was already coming.”
It shouldn’t make me feel better—and yet, in some horrible way, it does. I take another breath, but I can’t think of anything to say.
“The past year…” Tarver shakes his head. “She’s still Lilac—she was always still Lilac. But she’s been different, too. She could feel them, the whispers, no matter how far away we went. She has dreams. She wakes up in the middle of the night crying. She’ll drift off sometimes, having conversations with people who aren’t…” He gives his head another shake, swallowing. “I think they were always coming for her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He glances at me again, the helplessness in his gaze so at odds with the smiling, commanding presence he has in all his HV interviews and photo shoots. “The beings we met on Elysium wouldn’t do this. I wouldn’t say they were good—I’m not sure they even had a concept of ‘good.’ But they weren’t evil—they weren’t cruel. There was a sense of fairness to them, I suppose. That thing that took Lilac, when she kissed me…” His face ripples, then tightens. “That thing was cruel.”
I can’t think of anything to say, so we sit in silence for a time, saying nothing, not watching each other from our opposite edges of the room. There’s an odd comfort in being here, with someone as bruised and hurt as I am. For once, I’m not more broken than the world around me, and it’s horrible and healing all at once.
“You were right,” Tarver says softly, interrupting the quiet after a while. “We should get some rest while we can.”