I wait for an answer, but get no reply. I feel their minds pulling away from mine, and an insistent tug that I instinctively know is my tether to my own world, my own body. For a moment I want to cling to this world, to the shards of another kind of existence that no human could ever hope to truly understand.
But I have to let it all slip away and fade back into the light, wrapping myself once more in the roaring quiet. Into my thoughts creeps a single image, a pair of clasped hands—and with it, a single voice, saying, I choose you.
I will not go back. The pain is all there is—all I am, all I have to give. I am no longer one of you, and I cannot become part of you again. I cannot go home.
We are a part of you. You have been alone so long, but you will always belong with us.
Not anymore. I am vengeance. I am fear. I am everything you should leave behind.
We will learn to bear the darkness. They will show us how.
You cannot understand. I…I will not bring this pain to you. I could not bear to see it shared. Please, just let me go. Let me die.
If that is truly what you wish, that choice is yours to make. But we have seen how brightly light shines in the dark, how sweetly music fills the quiet. All these years you have known only shadow and silence, and we have so much to show you. To save you.
I am not worth saving.
We are all worth saving.
How can you know?
We cannot ever know, not truly.
But we have faith.
SOMETHING STIRS AGAINST ME, AND as I blink my eyes open, blue sparks still playing across my vision, I register Sofia’s warmth against my chest. Are we in my den? Did she crawl up to my end of the bed?
For a moment I’m in an impossibly vast place, my thoughts expanding with infinite speed—and then, an instant later, that space is contracting, flying back toward me until the world is the right size and shape again.
Like a bucket of cold water, the truth splashes over me, electrifying and sudden. We’re lying on the ground, piled on top of the rubble by the rift like so much debris, and Sofia’s wrapped in my arms.
“Did it work?” she whispers in an exhausted rasp. Then, almost as an afterthought, she adds, “Are we alive?”
My ribs are bruised, my shoulder aching where I think I landed on it, but I push upright, looking around for some sign of the others.
I see Flynn and Jubilee immediately. She’s muttering a curse in another language she must have learned from him, judging by the way he seems to understand it. I make eye contact with Flynn, and he lifts a hand to signal that they’re okay.
I follow his gaze across to where Tarver sits in the center of the room, curled in on himself. He starts to straighten, moving like every part of him is in pain. Like an old man.
“…the hell was that?” Jubilee groans.
“Disrupting the rift sets the whispers free,” I say, trying to climb to my feet and failing. “It worked on Elysium when Tarver and Lilac jumped. It worked on Avon, for you. She said they were trying to come through, and since she didn’t want them to…we thought maybe they would help us stop her.”
Beside me, Sofia sucks in a breath as I say Lilac’s name. “Gideon, where’s Lilac?”
“She just…” Flynn’s voice dies away. “She vanished. Pulled into the rift with you.”
My gaze sweeps the room frantically, and I try to climb to my feet again, staggering and crashing back down onto one knee as my legs give out. No. No, no, no. I felt her in the rift. In the instant we passed through that infinite space, I sensed her there, I know it.
Early morning sun’s creeping in through the tears in the Daedalus’s hull now, chasing away the shadows, and there’s nowhere she could be hiding. Her father lies in one corner of the ruined room, gazing at the rift as though conducting some mental calculation or conversation.
As I force breath into my lungs, grasp helplessly for what to do next, the light abruptly changes. The lazy blue sparks of the rift grow frantic and the room darkens, as though all the light is being pulled from our surroundings into that one focal point.
The soft electric hum of the rift rises without warning, and as the sparks grow unbearably bright, it lifts to a high-pitched scream, building in pressure every second.
Across the room, Lee’s screaming something at us, but I can’t hear her over the noise. I make out the words at the last instant—get away. Moving as one, Sofia and I scramble over the mound of debris, throwing ourselves down the other side as Tarver dives for the edge of the room, and Flynn and Lee roll together behind a block of stone. My heart’s racing, my ears are ringing, my lungs are constricting as the room trembles—it feels like any second the Daedalus will disintegrate around us.
A deafening roar swallows up the scream of the rift, and as I close my eyes, my last glimpse is of the metal frame containing the light exploding into a thousand glittering shards, hanging in the air like stars. The blue sparks snake outward in a frenzied dance, splintering all around us.
And then there’s silence. Perfect silence.
Sofia moves first, crawling back up the pile of debris that sheltered us, and reaching back to offer me her hand. I take it, curling my fingers through hers as I scramble up beside her to prop myself up on my elbows. The others are creeping out from their hiding places to stare too—the light is still there, once more coalesced into the tall oval shape of the rift. But where it was once a cold, pale blue glow, the rift now shines with a golden light, shimmering and rich.
And the machinery containing it—the cage—is gone.
For several long seconds we all simply watch it, trying to force our exhausted brains into action one more time, trying to understand what to do next. Then the frame of the Daedalus gives a shuddering groan, and it’s as if we’re startled back to life.
Tarver climbs to his feet, stumbling two steps forward, as if he’s going to walk straight into the rift. But he stops short, simply staring at it as the light plays over his haunted face.
There’s a figure crumpled at the base of the rift, and gingerly it pushes up to its feet, sending up a cloud of dust that settles slowly back to earth once more.
White dust clings to the hem of her black dress, and her hair’s half undone, falling down her back. She’s no longer flawless—she’s splendidly, gloriously, imperfectly human.
It’s Lilac.
She’s shivering as if with sudden cold, dust turning her red hair the color of ash. Only the steady warmth of Sofia’s hand in mine tells me I’m not dreaming or hallucinating. Lilac’s eyes rake the room, darting from person to person, but it’s who she doesn’t look at that stands out—she’ll look anywhere but at the ex-soldier by the fallen chandelier, whose eyes won’t leave her face.
No one speaks, too afraid of what her response might be—no one wants to break the spell, the hope, that her mind is her own again. In the silence there are a million possibilities, and for this brief instant she can be just Lilac again, even if the next brings all of it crashing down again.
Finally, she’s the one to shatter the quiet. “Somebody say something,” she murmurs. “Please?”
“Oh my God, it’s her.” That’s Jubilee, who comes lurching to her feet and breaks into an unsteady jog toward the girl in the rubble, Flynn a step behind her.
Lilac’s blue eyes, round and haunted, flick toward her. She swallows, fearful, and for a moment I can feel her uncertainty like my own. How does a girl begin to apologize for attempting to destroy mankind? But before she can speak, Jubilee, unhesitating, throws herself at her friend, pulling her into a hug and squeezing free a laugh that’s only slightly hysterical with exhaustion and release, and Flynn’s arms wrap around the both of them.