I HAVE TO LOOK AWAY. I can’t let Lilac follow my gaze and spot Gideon, and I can’t let Jubilee or Flynn see him either, in case they panic and try to shoot Lilac. But I can’t tear my eyes from his, the blue light of the rift bathing his face.
I can feel Lilac’s eyes on me, the weight of her hatred nearly dropping me to my knees. There’s nothing there, no hint that the girl I met on the Daedalus is still in there. Then she turns and sees Gideon, half hidden behind the rift.
In a heartbeat, everything unspools frame by frame—Tarver diving for Lilac, desperate to give Gideon a chance with the virus—Jubilee grabbing for Flynn’s weapon and rolling to find cover—Lilac thrusting out a hand to shove Jubilee, and the fallen block of marble she’s hiding behind, against the far wall—Flynn giving a wordless scream and sprinting toward Jubilee, who lies motionless now…
Lilac turning toward Gideon. She roars her fury, tearing an impossible sound from her human lungs, lifting both hands as the ship around us starts to scream in duet, metal twisting and wrenching at the seams. A shudder runs the length of the floor, and the ground beneath Gideon bucks violently, sending him tumbling from his place by the rift.
He seems to hang in the air forever, and my heart with him. Then he’s crashing to the ground, the thumb drive flying from his hand. He scrambles on all fours, lunging after it—and I scream a warning as a piece of the roof shears away, tumbling down to crush the drive, grinding it into the floor. It grinds every last hope we had into the floor, and I’m reeling, the breath driven from my lungs.
A great chunk of the ceiling drops onto the broken chandelier where it lies on the floor, sending up a spray of glittering glass, and I dive for cover as the deadly shards arc through the air.
“Lilac, please!” Tarver’s shouting, fighting his way toward her as she turns for the rift, which is now pulsing brighter than ever, casting blue light over every inch of the wrecked ballroom. I can’t see Flynn and Jubilee anymore, or Monsieur LaRoux.
Lilac doesn’t even bother turning. She simply lifts one arm, and Tarver goes flying—he connects with the wall with a sickening smack, his gun tumbling from his hand. It ricochets off the heaving floor, skittering across to land at my feet. As he staggers upright, his gaze is fixed on me.
The gun is within reach. The virus might be gone, but there’s still a chance. All I have to do is stoop and pick it up. Aim it at Lilac’s heart. She’s facing the rift. I could move before she can turn.
This instant hangs suspended, the energy from the rift lifting the hairs on my skin, crackling against my face, filling my mouth with the taste of metal.
Gideon staggers to his feet, and our eyes lock. I told him he didn’t know me, so he couldn’t love me. Couldn’t trust me, so couldn’t love me.
But it was never about that. It was never about Gideon, or wanting to let him in, or believing he was the kind of person who could love what he found there.
It was always me. I’ve spent so long convincing others to trust me that I no longer trust myself. My own heart. My own instincts and faith.
My choice.
My muscles tense, ready to move. I meet Gideon’s eyes again, the warm hazel-green flashing with blue light.
This much I know: I love him.
This much I trust.
I’m not the thing LaRoux made me. I’m not the girl I was on the Daedalus anymore. I choose who I am, every day. And I’m choosing now to be me.
In this moment I don’t need to read Gideon’s mind to see into his heart, to share his thoughts—he loves me. All of me. The good, the bad, the struggle between the horrible impulses I can never share and the glimmers of hope for things I’m too frightened even to whisper—he sees all of me.
They’re trying to come through, Lilac said, and in this instant—which stretches to an eternity—I know what to do. I know that what Gideon and I imagined in the arcade is true—they can see us, they know us. Lilac’s whisper said it herself:
You were meant to show us whether you were worth knowing.
The other whispers, in their universe on the other side of the rift, have been watching us. Judging us, testing us, setting us up like pieces on a board to see who we are. And if Gideon can know me, love me, trust me, and I can learn that lesson in return—if we and all our friends and allies can make choices and sacrifices that come from our hearts—then I’m ready for us to be judged.
I’ll let the whispers through. I’ll short-circuit the rift, just as Tarver and Lilac did once before. I’ll make my leap of faith—and trust in their choice.
It’s as Gideon holds out his hand that I realize he understands my intention—and that, in every way I could ever have imagined, he’s with me.
I leave the gun and everything it made me behind. I break into a run, dimly aware of Tarver’s voice shouting something; of Lilac’s outraged shriek as she fights him off; of the fact that she ought to be able to crush him with a thought and yet she’s struggling, pushing at him with her hands, screaming to be let go. Of the fact that I must be beyond the range of the shields now, and yet my mind’s my own. I stumble over a pile of debris and scramble, scraping my palms and knees and using the jolt of adrenaline pain brings to move that much faster. I throw myself forward and feel Gideon’s hand wrap around mine, the warmth of his touch more real than anything else.
I choose you.
Our fingers interlock, made for each other, like two halves of the same pendant—and together we leap into the rift.
The others, the children we were meant to watch and judge, swarm around me in a futile attempt to either kill Lilac or save her, but they mean nothing now. I have seen humanity. If my brethren have not yet learned how to make choices, then I will make the choice for us all. And those who are not killed when their link to our world is severed, I will seek out myself and destroy.
It is so easy, now, to see the choices these five souls will make. Some will choose to try to kill me—some will try to save me instead. Whichever they choose, they will fail.
But then I see two of them sprinting toward the rift itself, moving too quickly for me to stop. A choice I did not see—a decision I could not have predicted. I reach out to rip their minds away only to have something pull me back, a force coming from within me, a voice saying,
NO.
LILAC.
It comes like a light in the dark. Not a voice, not a thought, but the brush of something intangible, like a warm breeze…though there’s no air, no warmth. Only that sensation: Lilac.
I cling to it, desperate for this one glimmer of something in a world of nothing, and it leads me onward through the emptiness until I feel another touch, and then another, and then suddenly I’m surrounded by others like me, overwhelmed by being a part of them again.
I’ve been here before.
Yes.
On the planet…when I was something else. Someone else.
Lilac LaRoux.
I remember. You…
We are the… Their name for themselves comes not in words but in a rush of feeling—of a billion minds together, infinite thoughts, combining like every color in the universe to form a blinding white truth that, had I breath or voice to do so, would make me cry out. We have brought you home.
Home?
When we gave you life, we told you it wasn’t time for you to join us. Not yet. But we have seen what we have done to you, and you may remain with us if you wish. Become one of us.