“You don’t know?” Tarver’s brows lift. “You can’t just scan my thoughts, see my every plan?”
“Not with that nasty little trinket in your pocket,” she replies, as if she’s commenting on a fashion faux pas. “But I know you, and I don’t imagine you came alone without a plan. I don’t think you left all your friends outside.” Lilac’s eyes sweep the shadows, and for an instant she grimaces, but it seems she can’t quite find Gideon either—or us. “They’re not doing very well out there, by the way. The numbers are against them.”
Tarver’s jaw squares, and he visibly forces himself to relax it, pushing his shoulders back.
Lilac laughs, soft. “I can see how hard you’re trying. I’m sure you think you’re going to somehow ‘save’ me at the last minute.”
“Not you,” Tarver murmurs. “Lilac.”
But she continues like he hasn’t spoken, like she fails to acknowledge any difference between what she is now and who she was before. “It’s not going to work, though—and you know why? I’ll tell you the secret, if you like.” She steps closer to him, halting a few steps away, just out of arm’s reach.
Tarver says nothing, staring into her face. He’s armed, I can see the weapon in its holster, but his hand is nowhere near it.
“You can’t save me,” Lilac says, leaning in as though sharing some deep, profound secret in a stage whisper, “because I’m already dead.”
Tarver’s fingers curl at his sides, tightening into fists. The light from the rift throws his features into sharp relief, outlining in shadow the lines of muscle as he clenches his jaw. Lilac just laughs, the same, sweet, silvery laugh I recognize from HV celebrity shows and press conferences, and pats his cheek.
She turns away, and that’s what makes Tarver move again. The step he takes after her is halting, jerky, but his voice is quick. “Wait. I know you’re in there. Lilac, listen to me. I know you can hear me. Keep fighting—hold on.”
“How sweet.” Lilac doesn’t seem at all perturbed, but she does halt, and I see Tarver’s weight shift as she turns back toward him. He looks almost…relieved.
A tingle runs down my spine as realization dawns: Tarver’s distracting her. Buying Gideon time, wherever he is, to attempt their plan. Which means we might have only moments to act, before they risk blowing the rift wide open and giving Lilac access to all the power she could ever need.
I glance over at the others as Flynn silently pulls the shield from his pocket, handing it to Jubilee. Her mouth twists, agonized, as she stows it inside her vest. We don’t know how far its protection reaches, and if we get separated, we can’t lose our crack shot. Then, at Jubilee’s nod, we all creep out from behind the pillar. Tarver and Gideon’s plan isn’t all that different from ours—only it’s Flynn and me distracting her from Jubilee, rather than Tarver buying Gideon time to reach the rift, plant the virus.
Lilac’s back is to us, but Tarver has an easy view, and the second we move, he’s alert. Now his hand goes to the gun at his hip, eyes scanning back and forth across us. Lilac turns, moving as gracefully as the real Lilac ever did. She couldn’t be more unlike the husks creeping through the wreck.
Flynn’s quick to lift his hands, and I follow suit. “We’re unarmed,” I say, letting my voice shake.
“It’s a party,” Lilac murmurs, one reddish-gold brow lifting in amusement, though even distracted as I am, a part of my mind notes that her smile is just a fraction off, strained. “I’m curious—what is it you think you can accomplish? I can move faster than any of you, and I’m smarter than all of you. I’ve had years to study your kind.” Her gaze fixes on Flynn, lips quirking. “What’s your problem, anyway?” One perfectly manicured hand lifting so she can point a finger at him. “You’ve still got that one.” And unerringly, her hand swings around to point at Jubilee, where she was making her way along the wall in almost perfect silence.
Jubilee’s lips draw back into a snarl as she freezes in place. I don’t know if she’s trying to distract Lilac from the gun in her hand, or if her rage is real. Both, perhaps. “What’s his problem? You have the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on your hands. You don’t even pretend to care! November is burning all around us, and—”
“This is Corinth.” Lilac interrupts her smoothly, sounding bored, if anything. “November was years ago.” She pauses, and then her lips part and curve into a smile. “Oh, I see now. You didn’t arrive with my Tarver—you’re here for something different. You came to kill me? My, your little group falls apart easily, doesn’t it?”
“Easily?” I find my voice, forcing the words out—I have to drag their attention back to me. “The death of whole city sectors is nothing? Just an inconvenience?”
Tarver’s eyes move back to me, as do Lilac’s, and beyond them, I can see Jubilee lifting the gun. I know the instant the tiniest flicker of my gaze gives me away. Lilac’s gaze starts to swing toward Jubilee, and I know that once she sees her, she’ll be able to knock her aside as easily as she did Tarver on the Daedalus. My senses are keyed up to almost unbearable intensity, my world narrowing down to one movement as Jubilee’s finger curls around the trigger.
One shot, Sanjana warned us.
Then the explosion of a shot fired shatters the air and my ears, and I’m back onboard the Daedalus after firing the plas-pistol, I’m on Avon right beside an explosion, throwing myself to the ground.
It’s not until I drag myself upright again that reality reasserts itself, and I look up to see Tarver standing braced, arm outstretched and holding a gun—the old kind, the kind that fires a bullet, that must have come from the undercity—pointed straight at Jubilee.
The shards of her Gleidel lie scattered around her feet, and she’s cradling her hand, shocked still. Some detached part of my mind tries to calculate the odds of someone making that shot—of firing across the room and hitting the gun out of someone’s hand as they’re still moving.
“Are you okay, Lee?” Tarver’s voice is low and tight, and for a moment we each stare stupidly at him, trying to understand the question. “Your hand.”
She nods, ashen-faced, then glances toward Flynn, who’s still armed with the second of our two guns, pulled from beneath the shop’s counter.
Tarver follows her gaze, his own eyes falling on Flynn. “Would you care to try?” he asks him, voice still quiet, still eerily calm. But Flynn just shakes his head, unable to take his gaze away from Jubilee, still huddled on the floor amid the pieces of her gun.
My body’s still tingling with shock, my ears still ringing from the gunshot. For a brief instant I think my mind’s giving up entirely, as a patch of shadow somewhere beyond and above the rift swims, blurs, shifts. Then I realize what I’m seeing.
Gideon.
He’s climbing down, slowly, from the jagged hole in the roof, harness and rope allowing him to rappel silently. I can’t see his face from this distance, but he pauses partway down, and somehow I know he’s looking back at me, lying in a heap on the floor. I jerk my eyes away before anyone else can see what I saw, and pull myself up with an effort so he’ll see I’m okay.
Tarver’s got Lilac’s attention on him—everyone’s attention on him. I try as hard as I can to keep my eyes on Tarver—but though I’ve always been able to control even the most minute variations in my expression, suddenly it’s a struggle not to reveal anything by watching Gideon. Trying with all my heart to make sure I don’t draw attention to the boy creeping quietly through the dark, carrying a virus that’s either our last hope of stopping her, or the end of the world.