There are husks everywhere. Like insects pouring from a nest, they clamber over the broken landscape, thick between us and the gashes in the ship’s side that will let us inside the Daedalus. My knees nearly give as a wave of nausea pushes its way up my throat—if I thought fear was losing its hold on me, I was wrong.
My mind jumps to the shield Gideon built, tucked inside Flynn’s vest. It might protect us from becoming one of them, but it won’t protect us from being ripped apart. Not once they see us. Did Gideon and Tarver emerge from beneath the ground in the hours since I left him, to find this same sight before them?
“How the hell are we going to do this?” Jubilee murmurs, echoing my thoughts.
“We need a diversion.” Flynn’s voice is heavy, as exhausted and heartsick as I feel, at the sight of this impossible task. “I could—”
“No.” Her voice is a slamming door, cutting off the idea before it’s born.
But the truth is, neither she nor I has a better idea, or any other idea. We’ll be swarmed before we make it a quarter of the way to the wreck.
I watch, my throat dry, heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my temples, as a fresh wave of husks crest the top of a broken building to our left, starting the climb down the other side into the newly created valley below. They’re led by a blond woman, hair caught back in a ponytail, balancing herself with one hand as she grasps something black and rectangular in the other.
Then I look again. She’s not moving properly. Or rather, she is moving properly, not in the loose-limbed shuffle of the husks. She’s scrambling down, and others are cresting the hill behind her, sliding down through the debris on her tail.
Oh my God.
Recognition hits me in the gut, familiarity sliding into focus in one breathtaking instant.
It’s Mae.
Gideon’s friend is at the head of the group, and as I make a strangled, wordless sound, batting one hand against Jubilee to draw her attention, Mae lifts her hand and fires a Taser at the nearest husk. It drops like a stone.
“Who the hell is that?” Jubilee whispers, going perfectly still.
But before I can answer, a new group crests the ridge, and Flynn’s gasping. “Sanjana’s here!”
The scientist’s dead cybernetic hand is bound across her chest in a tight sling, and she’s using her good hand to fire her Taser. All around her are bedraggled figures in LaRoux Industries uniforms, merging with Mae’s crowd—they’re forcing back the husks, dropping them one by one.
“Damn, Flynn, that’s Mori.” Jubilee’s animated now, and the same energy—the same hope—is surging through me. From the other side of the valley come Mori and at least twenty-five of her black-clad ex-soldiers, scrambling over the ruins to take on the husks. It’s like the first ray of light shining into a darkened prison cell—the hope I thought was gone infuses me, straightening my back and lifting my head as Mori drops a black-eyed husk in the remnants of a business suit. Taser at the ready once more, she lifts her head to scan the remains of LaRoux Headquarters, eyes on the horizon.
“She’s looking for us.” The words burst out in the instant I realize it, and I’m scrambling forward. “They know we’re here—they’re clearing us a path. Let’s go.”
We plunge forward together, debris giving way under our feet as we half run, half fall toward the rapidly clearing courtyard below. Mori bellows a command in a voice worthy of a battleground, and the soldiers surge toward us. Up close I can see some hold palm pads in one hand, some have them strapped to their belts, and others have the square shape of them pressing through their clothes—Sanjana’s taught them how to rig shields. Enough to keep their minds safe, as long as their batteries last.
“We’ll hold them as long as we can, Captain,” Mori calls as we hit level ground.
“How the hell did you get here?” Jubilee swallows up the distance between her and her former corporal in a few long strides.
“Dr. Rao told us where you were headed when we picked her up,” Mori replies, turning to take in the fight underway further up the courtyard. She stands at the ready, Gleidel raised, and lifts her voice to shout over the laser shrieks of the guns, the guttural buzzing of the Tasers. The husks are moving more quickly now, perhaps as Lilac’s whisper turns its attention to the source of the disturbance. “Rao’s got a bunch of LRI’s people with her—most of them are pretty damn horrified to learn what their boss has been up to.” Mori pauses, catching her breath. “And the blonde up there was watching networks, trying to get a handle on where the Knave ended up. She found us, once she found him. She’s got a bunch of hackers I don’t think ever saw daylight before, and the Corinth Against Tyranny conspiracy crowd, and those guys are pissed.” Mori shakes her head, but she’s grinning—despite the wreckage around us, some part of her is enjoying this. “Guess they finally found somebody who really is out to get them.”
But as Jubilee’s opening her mouth to reply, a new wave of husks appear to our right and to our left, shuffling into view with a grim determination, yanking us back to reality. There must be hundreds of them. The brief hope that had taken root in my chest flickers, then dies. There’s no way Mori and her crew can hold this back.
“Go, they’re in there,” Mori barks. “We’ll buy you as much time as we can. Good hunting.”
Jubilee grasps for her hand, clasping it in both of hers for an instant before Mori lets go and turns back to the fight.
From a distance, our entry point into the Daedalus looks like a crack only barely wide enough for someone to slip through, but the scale of this thing defies understanding—the gash in its side is wide enough for us to run through without needing to duck. We have to climb past several layers crushed into unrecognizability before we find an area clear enough to move through, as the sounds of the battle fade behind us. Then it’s quiet, and we’re in our own, silent world once more.
The gash opens up onto a maintenance deck, sparsely furnished. The metal grid of the floor is tilted at a steep angle, forcing us to brace our feet in the corners and cling to the window frames lining the wall as we inch our way inside.
The ship is so vast that under normal circumstances, we’d have no hope of finding Lilac and the rift inside it—but even the husks wouldn’t have been able to move the massive rift far inside, over this kind of terrain. They have to be close.
My nose, half-numb from the stench of burning chemicals, pricks as we locate a staircase leading down further into the wreck and a new odor assaults me. I choke, reeling back a step and running into Flynn, who grunts and grabs onto a railing to keep from slipping.
“What is that?” I mutter, lifting the edge of my T-shirt to cover my nose.
Flynn just stares at me, equally baffled—but Jubilee shakes her head, her eyes grim. “Blood,” she says shortly.
It’s only then that I see a heap of dark something at the foot of the staircase above; it’s only then that I see a flash of pink, and realize it’s a high-heeled shoe, and that the heap is a pile of bodies. Visions of the colorful passengers dancing in the ballroom loom up in my mind’s eye, and I have to clamp my lips together to keep from retching.
A hand, I don’t know whose, wraps around my wrist, drawing me down the stairs and away from the bodies. I try to breathe through my mouth, and keep moving.
The staircase leads to a lush carpeted hall I do recognize from when I arrived with Gideon. The carpet muffles our footsteps, making the silence complete. The husks are mostly outside the wreck, held there by Mori, Mae, Sanjana, and their allies, but we stumble across them here and there inside. Each time we pull back, duck for cover. Lilac must know we’re inside the ship somewhere, but if we can avoid a husk seeing us and reporting back, we’ll still have some element of surprise. The way they’re moving, in concentric, tightening circles, we’re pretty sure the rift is below us somewhere. But it’s not until a light blooms in the darkness, so faint I feel my eyes must be playing tricks on me, that I know our guess was right.