“Why…What’s with all the…” But I can’t remember the words I need, can’t make my lips shape them.
Flynn follows my gaze to the emergency lantern on a packing crate next to my cot. His eyes flick back toward mine. “How much do you remember? We had to put you under to treat your hand. We didn’t have a choice, you kept—” He swallows, his face grim and eyes a little wild. “We had to knock you out.”
I swallow, my voice raw and shredded like I’ve been shouting. Or screaming. I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath. “I remember the Daedalus.”
Flynn finds the fingers of my good hand and wraps his around them, squeezing. “The impact knocked out power for kilometers, at least. Communications are down, HV networks, everything. Gideon can’t even get to the hypernet, though that’s what he and Mori are trying to do now.”
“What about…” But my voice sticks when my memory conjures up the image of the LaRoux heiress, smiling at us with those black eyes. I can’t even make myself say her name. “L-L-LaRoux? What about LaRoux?”
“We don’t know. We don’t know much of anything yet.”
I suck in another breath and then try to sit up again, pushing Flynn’s arm away when he moves to stop me. “Flynn, I tried to—” My voice cracks. “LaRoux was standing right there. I couldn’t let him live. I couldn’t—”
“Shh, I know.” Flynn looks older, more than he should after only one year. The green eyes are the same, and the dark wavy hair. And yet, he seems somehow more real than he was before, solid, warm—and the pain in his gaze, the sympathy, is as deep as it ever was. “I know, Sof.”
“This is my fault,” I whisper, too numb and too groggy to cry. “If I hadn’t—”
“None of that,” Flynn interjects. “From what we got out of Tarver, this has been a long time coming. That whisper’s been trying to reach Lilac ever since she and Tarver were stranded on that planet together. I think the pain just interrupted her concentration—it would’ve gotten her eventually anyway.”
But it wouldn’t have been onboard the Daedalus. The thousands of people, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands by now—they would be alive if I hadn’t tried to murder Roderick LaRoux.
“I want to see Gideon,” I hear myself saying, to my surprise. “Is he…”
But before I can finish the question, Jubilee’s striding in through one of the doorways, with Gideon and a woman with short black hair and a kerchief around her neck. Kumiko, my brain supplies. Corporal Mori. The trodaire who shot Garret O’Reilly in the street and broke the ceasefire. But then, my father killed far more than one man because of LaRoux’s Fury, and his explosion started a war. My thoughts are so tangled with anger and grief that I don’t know what to think, looking at the ex-soldier next to Captain Chase.
Gideon veers off from their path, his feet curving toward my cot before he lifts his head and sees me sitting up—his steps falter for a second, then quicken as he jogs over. Flynn glances at me, the corner of his mouth quirking as he pulls back, making room for Gideon to crouch down beside me.
“Hey, Dimples.” There’s visible relief in his eyes, in his voice—and yet, still, something reserved, held back. There’s a war going on behind the look he gives me, his hand twitching as though he’d like to reach for me but can’t. This isn’t you, he’d said, while I pointed a gun at LaRoux. I know you.
“Hey,” I whisper back. You never knew me.
I didn’t think I’d ever have to face him after he found out I was never working with him to expose LRI, that I was only ever trying to kill Roderick LaRoux. I thought I’d be dead.
And for the tiniest moment, I wish I was.
Jubilee, standing by Kumiko some distance away, clears her throat. “We’ve got a net connection,” she announces gently, breaking the silence between Gideon and me. “Flynn—you should come see this.”
“I’m coming too,” I say, before anyone has a chance to leave me in the cot.
Gideon glances at Flynn, who no doubt has a lot more experience with field medicine than he does—and Flynn just shakes his head. “I gave up telling her what to do when we were kids,” he says, stepping back toward me and offering me a hand.
Gideon backs up a step, glancing from me to him, then turns to rejoin Jubilee and Mori as they head into the room next door. Whatever they used to knock me out is still with me—my steps feel rubbery and slow, my muscles not responding right to the commands from my brain. Flynn’s forced to duck down so I can put an arm around his shoulder as we move next door.
“Luckily, Mori’s been siphoning off surplus military supplies,” he murmurs as we walk. “She’s got a dermal regenerator. Your hand should be fine in a day or two—probably won’t even have scars.”
I hate myself for the tang of relief that surges through me—I should bear the pain, the scars, as reminders of what I tried to do. Of what I did do. Of the hundreds of thousands of people in this city dead now, because of me.
“Whoops, hey…” Flynn’s arms tighten around me as I sag, the medication threatening to rob me of consciousness.
“I’m fine,” I reply though gritted teeth, getting my feet back under me. As much as I try to focus, somewhere at the back of my mind, I keep seeing Lilac cry out and fall, keep seeing the blood on her arm, keep seeing the inky darkness bleed into her gaze as she lay on the floor.
The doorway leads to a smaller room, maybe intended to be an individual’s office, with windows on two of the walls. Though they look out only at the buildings next door, the air is hazy and the light a vivid red-orange that makes my heart constrict. I’ve seen too many things on fire not to know what this is. Corinth is burning.
There’s only one other person in the room, and as the glow lights his face, my heart shrivels the rest of the way. It’s Tarver, sunken into a folding chair, eyes fixed out the window. He doesn’t look over when we enter.
Flynn finds a chair for me, hastily depositing me into it and then heading for Jubilee. He glances from her to the ex-soldier by the window. “Is he…”
Jubilee’s expression flickers, and I’m surprised by the depth of emotion I see there, in this face that was always so stony, so implacable, on Avon. “He won’t talk to me,” she murmurs back. “He’s—” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what to do.”
Flynn doesn’t answer, instead reaching out to take Jubilee’s hand and draw her close, pressing his forehead to hers. I find myself staring at them as her fingers twine through his, the unlikely sight of Flynn embracing the most notorious soldier we’ve ever had on our part of Avon striking me all but senseless. I knew he had feelings for her, but…
“I can’t help him.” Her voice is barely audible.
“One step at a time,” Flynn replies, with the same patient determination that saw him through the years after his sister was killed.
My gaze slides sideways, finding Gideon—but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are on Tarver, by the window. And far from showing the same bitter dislike I’d seen onboard the Daedalus, when he spoke of Tarver having replaced his brother, his face holds only grief now. As though he shares some of what’s rendered Tarver Merendsen all but catatonic.
As I watch, he sucks in a deep breath, visibly pulling himself together. “We’ve got a signal,” he says, voice bracing as he pulls out a palm pad and crosses to a battered table not far from the window. “Most of the news sites haven’t posted anything local since before the crash, and we’ve got to assume that those headquarters that weren’t hit are still trying to find power.”
“But some have?” Flynn lifts his head, eyes tracking Gideon as he sets the palm pad down on the table, setting up the holo-projection interface.