I take a slow breath. “She’s family,” I reply. “And LaRoux’s taken her too.”
I can feel Gideon’s fingers curling against my back, tightening into fists around the fabric of my sweater.
I turn my head, so that my voice will carry through his chest. “Let’s not let him take anything else.”
A test, then.
We will watch them. We will follow them, through the thin spots and through the images and words that stream through our world and in the brief moments we can escape the confines of the blue-eyed man’s cages.
If we are to decide whether to become individuals ourselves, we must understand what it is to be human. We must know them, every atom of them, every spark of what makes them who they are. We must narrow our focus, find a chosen few whose lives contain pain and joy together. A chosen few who could become anything—who could fall into darkness and hatred and vengeance, or who could use that pain to become something greater.
We will start with the little peach-haired girl whose eyes are so like those of our keeper. She laughed once, and showed us love.
MY HEART’S TRYING TO FORCE its way up through my throat as we run together down the street. My legs feel like they’re weighted down, and I’m half stumbling as my breath turns ragged. There’s no point in trying for stealth—we’re in the family-friendly suburbs, and there’s no crowd to hide us, no alleyway to slip down. We’re exposed, in every possible way. I always told Mae that made it dangerous up here. She laughed, and told me it suited the kids.
The kids.
My mind spirals down after that thought as my feet hit the pavement, distress turning to rage, seizing on something easier than the hurt. Who holds children hostage? If it was just me, I’d have traded myself for them, but Sofia and I are all that stand between LaRoux and the horrors that rift could bring about. The thought of Mae standing there behind us, utterly alone, sends a jagged bolt of pain through me, and my breath turns strained, like someone’s got a grip around my throat.
Sofia yanks on my hand as we hit an intersection with a larger street, and finally there are a few people, a few hovercars, a chance at blending in. Our fingers are twined together, and though I know I should let her go, I can’t find it in me to give a damn. She’s all I’ve got now.
Just Sofia, and the purpose that’s burning inside me, hotter than ever.
LaRoux did this—he took my home, he took Mae—and he’s not taking anything else from me. Not from anyone. Not one thing more.
We need to get as many levels down as we can, as quick as we can. We need to find somewhere nobody knows to look, a place we can disappear. A forgotten place.
Sofia squeezes my hand as we turn together for the nearest elevator, and I squeeze hers back tight, a tangle of fear and anger, pain and hurt. We’re in this together now, and I’m not losing her.
So we run.
Down.
Down.
Down.
To hide in the dark.
The boy, the one on the gray world with the sister full of fire. She has made her choices, and we can see her future, where all her paths will lead—to a life cut short. Too short for us to read, to understand.
But the boy’s future is still dark, as hazy as the clouds that shroud this planet. We cannot see where he will go, what he will become. His sister’s death will change him forever, plant the seeds of vengeance and forgiveness together deep in his soul—but which he will choose, we cannot say.
We will watch him too, this green-eyed boy, this child of the water and the reeds and the infinite gray sky.
WE CROUCH TOGETHER, SHIELDED FROM the street by the bulk of a disposal unit, in an alley a few kilometers from where Gideon’s den was. Down here it’s impossible to say how much time has passed, but my body says it has to have been hours—dusk would be approaching, up above. Gideon still hasn’t let go of my hand, and I haven’t tried to free it. Despite the sounds of the undercity moving and breathing all around us, the silence is tight and hot and unrelenting. I close my eyes.
“We have to go there ourselves.” Gideon breaks the silence after an interminable wait.
I lift my head, focusing on his profile with some difficulty. “Where?”
“To the Daedalus.” His fingers shift, tightening slightly around mine. “Going to the authorities got us nothing but more heat. We have to stop him ourselves. Destroy the rift or disable it somehow, prevent him from taking over the senators on the Council.”
Everything in my nature screams against doing just that—shining a light on LaRoux means shining a light on myself, on Gideon, on my past. And even if we win, even if we stop whatever’s about to happen, LaRoux will never really pay, not truly.
But he will be there, himself, aboard that ship.…
A part of me wants to confess to Gideon, to tell him that stopping LaRoux’s plan is all well and good, but all I really want is for LaRoux to pay for what he did to my father. To me. I swallow. “It’s a huge ship. If he’s hiding the rift from the guests, how are we supposed to find it?”
“I can handle that,” Gideon replies, finally turning to look at me out of the corner of his eye. “The rift uses up a huge amount of energy—the day we met at LRI Headquarters I was starting to look at some weird energy spikes. I didn’t know the rift was in the same room as us, but I’m sure that’s what it was. If I could just get aboard, I could track the ship’s power usage. But they’ll have eight different layers of security—I’d never be able to sneak us in.”
My thoughts are shifting already to my contacts, separating out those least likely to have been compromised already, which ones I can still use. “I can get us to the ship,” I whisper.
“Sofia,” he murmurs, after a moment’s hesitation, “I know it’s—this isn’t what we do, either of us. But I don’t know who else will stop him.”
I speak carefully, trying as hard as I can not to let him hear the weight in what I’m about to say. “I wish someone would just…put an end to it. To him.” My heart pounds in the silence that follows those words. It’s the closest I’ve come to telling Gideon what my ultimate goal is, and I can’t be sure whether he’d be with me or revile me for even thinking of revenge.
Gideon sighs again and leans his head back against the imitation brick of the building at our backs. “That wouldn’t solve anything. There’d be half a dozen lieutenants in his company to take his place and pick up right where he left off. It’s the company, not the man, we need to stop.” His grip around my hand finally eases a little, like he might pull away.
I let my eyes close again. I think of the gun still on the floor of my apartment—I think of my father’s face, his blank eyes, right before he walked into that barracks—I think of Flynn the last time I saw him, the boy I once knew so utterly destroyed by all LaRoux had done to him, and to our home. What does the company matter, if the man behind it all never pays for what he’s done?