I see one of them scream—mouth open, sound drowned out—in the same instant I realize Miss LaRoux’s not with them. I shove my way through to the railing, trying to catch a glimpse of that brilliant red hair.
This panicked crowd is enough to trample the unprepared. With a wall on one side and the balcony railing on the other, they’re channeled wilder and faster every moment, like beasts in a canyon. I see people lifted off their feet, slammed against the wall. She’s not here. I’m about to stop fighting the crowd and follow the current when a cry pierces the chaos.
I shove my way toward the sound. I’m in time to see a flash of green dress and red hair and white face vanish over the railing, as some frantic man twice her size goes barreling down the walkway.
I’m moving before I have time to think. I swing out over the railing, shifting my grip so I can angle my momentum toward the floor below mine, and jump after her.
“So you knew which escape pod was yours?”
“Yes.”
“Did she?”
“Know which was mine?”
“Know her own, Major. Please cooperate.”
“I suppose she did. I don’t know.”
“But neither of you ended up where you were supposed to be.”
“Some of the passengers didn’t handle the evacuation well.”
FOUR
LILAC
PAIN LANCES THROUGH MY SHOULDERS, and I taste blood as I bite the edge of my tongue—but I’m not falling anymore. I’ve hit another railing, the bar catching me under my arms. I have no breath, no strength. The crowd surges past, paying no attention. Spots dance before my eyes as I try to force my lungs to work before my grip gives out.
I can’t have fallen more than a floor or two, or surely I wouldn’t have been able to catch myself without jerking my shoulders out of their sockets. Below me stretches a drop that will shatter my body beyond any surgeon’s ability to repair it.
A ragged cry tears out of me as my lungs finally expand and contract, but nobody hears. The people around me are a blur of color and sound, the smell of sweat and fear, the feel of hips and elbows connecting with my face and arms. They’re too terrified to even dodge the girl clinging for her life to the railing—much less help me. “Swann!” I scream, trying to make my eyes focus on anything long enough to recognize faces, but it’s all moving too quickly.
And then a voice snarls at them to keep back. Not Swann. A male voice.
Strong hands wrap around my arms, pulling me from the railing back onto the catwalk. Someone hurries me down the walkway, moving with the flow, his body between mine and the screaming people scrambling for safety. My feet don’t even touch the ground.
He jerks me into a side corridor free of traffic and sets me on my feet. All I can see are brown eyes staring into mine, stern, urgent. With an effort I recognize him.
“Major,” I gasp.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
My shoulders are shattered. My tongue is bleeding. I can’t breathe. I gasp for air, fighting the surge of nausea that threatens to overcome me. “I’m okay.”
Major Merendsen leans me against the wall like a sack of laundry and goes to the mouth of the corridor, where the crowd whizzes by in a blur. As we watch, a man in an evening coat goes down, pushed by someone behind him; in an instant he’s gone, before the major can even reach for him.
This isn’t a crowd—it’s a riot. And a deadly one. Swann might be able to take care of herself in this chaos, but—“Anna!” I cry out abruptly, lurching away from the wall. I lunge for the crowd. I only know I need to find them.
The major grabs my arm with an iron grip. I beat at his hand, but he pulls me away and swings me around before letting me go, sending me staggering backward, heels skidding. “Are you insane?” he gasps.
“I have to find them.” I raise a hand to my lips, wiping away the hint of blood from my tongue. I recognize where we are now—a maintenance corridor, one of the many that thread through the private areas of the ship. “They’re out there—I need to make sure they’re—”
Major Merendsen blocks the way between me and the torrent of people rushing for the lifeboats. The ship lurches again, the floor buckling and heaving beneath us, throwing us both against the wall. The sirens start up, and we have to raise our voices to make ourselves heard over the urgent wailing.
“There’s nothing you can do for them,” he says, when he’s regained his balance. “They’re two decks up and half a klick away by now. Can you walk?”
I inhale sharply through my nose. “Yes.”
“Then let’s move. Stay between me and the railing. I’ll try to keep them from flattening you, but you have to keep your feet under you.”
He turns toward the crowd, squaring his shoulders.
“Wait!” I stagger forward and grab his arm. “Not that way.”
He sucks in an irritated breath, but he stops. “We have to get to an escape pod. Much more of this shaking and she’ll tear herself apart.”
I’m still struggling to breathe, and it takes me a moment to get enough air to reply. “I know this ship,” I gasp. “There are pods for the crew nearby.”
He stares at me a moment, and though I know he must be debating, struggling, none of it is written on his face. “Then let’s go.”
The service corridor is empty, only the emergency lighting strips along the walls to tell of any problem. The crew must be at their stations, assisting the passengers into their pods before heading for their own. Or else there’s no way for them to get back here, all pretense of civilization gone.
The major follows me in silence, though I can feel his tension. For all he knows, I could be leading him to his death. I’m sure he doesn’t want to follow me anywhere. But he doesn’t know this ship like I do. He didn’t spend his childhood in her skeleton as she was being built.
We turn down a maze of branching corridors. I head for a door marked Authorized Personnel Only and shove it open with a slight whine of unused hinges. My shoulders still ache, but I can use my arms—maybe I’m not so shattered after all. The door opens onto an escape bay, a five-seat pod waiting with open door for its refugees.
“Thank you for the escort, Major,” I say crisply, stepping over the lip of the entrance and turning to face him. He’s just behind me, stopping abruptly to avoid running into me. I want to burst into tears, thank him for what he did, but if I do, I’m not sure I’ll ever stop crying. And he doesn’t know what it would mean for him if we got picked up in the same pod. My father would never believe there was an innocent explanation.
“Excuse me?”
“There’s another pod a little ways down the corridor. It won’t take more than five minutes to reach it.”
The soldier lifts both eyebrows. “Miss LaRoux, there are five seats in that pod, and I mean to use one of them. We may not have five minutes. It seems like something’s pulling the ship out of hyperspace before it’s supposed to.”
For a moment fear freezes me. As my father’s daughter, I know better than most what happens when the fabric between dimensions is disturbed. I take a deep breath and step back so as not to have to crane my neck. “Major, if they find you alone in a pod with me when the rescue ships arrive—”
“I’ll take my chances,” the major replies through gritted teeth.
He doesn’t want to be in this pod with me any more than I want him to be. But the ship gives another horrible lurch, sending me crashing into one of the chairs. The major braces himself in the pod doorway. From somewhere in the distance comes a terrible metallic shrieking.