This Shattered World

by Amie Kaufman

  The shaking of the shuttle threatens to wrench the controls from my hands, and I clench my fists around them as tightly as I can. My harness is cutting into me as momentum crushes us down against our seats, making my whole body ache. I wish I could check on Flynn; this would be enough to make a seasoned veteran start praying to any gods who’d listen, and it’s Flynn’s first time up. But I can’t, because if I make one wrong move, if I misjudge this maneuver, the shuttle will break apart and we’ll both be dead in an instant.

  Without the viewport, I’m forced to rely on the digital imaging screen on the dash. I’m looking for the lines to shift, indicating we’ve reached the cloud layer; I’ve never been so glad to be on Avon, where there are clouds everywhere. The clouds are where I’m going to lose our pursuers.

  The second we’re in, I jerk back on the stick. The shuttle screams a protest, and I’m slammed down into my seat so hard by the g-forces that my vision blurs, my peripheral sight going dark. I struggle for air, easing up on the stick enough that I can breathe. With any luck, the fighters, unable to track us in the clouds, have zoomed right on past toward Avon’s surface. We level out, my vision returning and my temples pounding with light-headedness, and I immediately roll off to the right until I’m headed east. No rebels out there, no military patrols; only the island where Flynn’s secret facility used to be. That’s where I’m aiming.

  My ears recover, and I can hear rapid, panicked breathing; when I try to speak, I realize I’m the one hyperventilating. I shoot a quick glance over at the copilot’s seat.

  “Flynn? You alive?”

  He doesn’t answer immediately, and when I take another look, he’s got his head pressed back against the seat and both hands gripping the armrests, white-knuckled. “I hope not,” he gasps, closing his eyes more tightly.

  The laugh that escapes my lips is only a little hysterical. “We’re not down yet,” I warn him. “And we can’t land at the base.”

  “Can you land this thing in the swamp?” he manages, voice choked.

  “More or less,” I reply through gritted teeth, trying not to let him hear my own fear. A trained pilot could do it. But I’m a combat specialist, and this…no one trained me for this.

  We stay in the clouds for a while, the turbulence throwing us around nearly as badly as the descent did. I can’t see any sign of the fighters on my screens, but that’s because Avon’s atmosphere makes the scans almost useless in the air. The same thing I’m counting on to hide us will keep me from knowing if we’re still being pursued.

  I keep my eyes on the topographic map scrolling by on the left side of the dash until I start to see familiar patterns. I shift our course to take us wide of the military base, making for the island to the east instead, the one place I know there’s some solid ground to retreat to. I can’t land on the island itself; without a paved landing pad I need soft ground to avoid a crash. But I can set the shuttle down in the swamp a few klicks away, and we can abandon the ship and make for the island before the military shows up at the crash site.

  It’s not my most graceful landing ever. The ship ends up at a slant, the landing pads half submerged on one side. I want to see if Flynn’s okay, but I can’t make myself let go of the controls. I can’t take my eyes from the instruments. In the end, Flynn has to unbuckle and come get me, wrapping his hands around mine.

  “Jubilee—we’re down. We’re here, we’re fine. You can let go.” He pulls my hands away, massaging life back into the whitened knuckles.

  I wrench my eyes from the screens. “Are you okay?”

  He nods, though I can see his face is bone-white in the gloom of the cabin. “Just don’t make me leave the ground again any time soon.”

  Together we stumble toward the back of the shuttle, and I hit the door control. The gangway comes down at an angle sharp enough that its hydraulics can’t compensate, making it rattle when it splashes into the water. The shuttle groans as it continues to settle into the swamp’s thick muck, confirming that we’re never taking off in this thing again. I close my eyes, letting the damp, swampy air caress my face. Night has barely fallen, only a tiny bit of light left on the horizon to mark the last remnants of day.

  “That was incredible,” Flynn says softly.

  I shake my head. “If I were a pilot it would’ve been smooth as butter. It was stupid, is what it was. We’re lucky we didn’t break apart.”

  “How far are we from your base?”

  “Three, four hours by boat. Quicker if they spotted our descent and send a chopper or a skimmer. The shuttle’s too easy to spot—we can’t stay here.”

  Flynn doesn’t answer right away, gazing out into the darkness. His body’s angled toward the distant hideout that shelters the Fianna, where he’s lived for the last ten years. I want to touch him, show him somehow that he’s not alone without them. But before I can, he gives a sharp exhale and a nod. “There’s a dugout not far from here, totally invisible from the air. There’s a few days’ rations, a med supply kit; it’s supposed to be a hideout if any of us get separated and can’t make it back to the caves. We can hole up there until they stop looking for us.”

  I glance at him, even though his features are concealed by the gloom. “Seriously? God, Flynn, how many of these secrets do you have tucked away that the military doesn’t know about?”

  This time I can see his smile in the glow of the emergency lights, tired and grim. “At least one more, luckily for us.”

  It takes only a few seconds for the runabout to auto-inflate, but we take the time to stock up on the emergency ration bars from the shuttle and raid the first aid kit for anything useful. The footing is treacherous on the wobbly, unlit gangway, but we can’t risk a light that could carry for klicks and betray our position. The only illumination is from the emergency exit lights on the shuttle. I’d shut those down if I could, but they’re designed to stay lit no matter what.

  It’s only after we’ve got everything I can think to grab on board that I pause for a breath. I can see Flynn only as a silhouette in the dim, reddish glow of the emergency lighting. He comes closer, reaching for me—it’s as much to be sure where I am as to take my hand.

  “Ready to go?” His voice is quiet, though there’s no one to hear him but me.

  “I’m ready,” I say, but I can hear how very tired I sound.

  His fighters, my soldiers; there are enemies on every side, and none of them know what’s really happening. They’re all pawns in this sick experiment of LaRoux’s, and these whispers, these tortured, vicious things, they’re making it happen.

  He lifts my hands in his, ducking his head to touch his lips to them. “We’ll get through this. We’ll disappear into the swamp if we have to, we’ll search this place meter by meter until we find proof.”

  Even here, in the middle of the swamp with no hope, his voice carries a certainty he can’t possibly feel, a fire that starts to banish the icy dread in my heart. This is the same passion his sister used to incite a war. I’m glad he’s on my side.

  “Let’s get…” I start, but the words die in my throat. Over Flynn’s shoulder, out in the darkness of the swamp, is a light.

  It’s so faint at first that I almost believe my eyes are playing tricks on me. Too small and pale to be running lights on a military launch, but too steady and green-white to be the lamps used by the rebels. It reminds me strangely of the phosphorescent algae in the rebel caves, as though it took wing and followed us out into the swamp.

  Memory unfurls, no more than a single thread unraveling from my subconscious. It carries no image, no event, only the certainty that I’ve seen this before. The natives call them wisps, but I…I called it something else.

  Flynn sees my expression and turns, his breath catching as he sees it too. He steps back, body tense with fear. I know I ought to react, ought to tense as well, let my training and caution win out. But the little ball of greenish light holds me transfixed, calling to a memory long, long forgotten.

  Flynn’s talking, shoutin
g in my ear; when I can’t answer, he draws his own gun, the one taken from the unconscious soldier at the spaceport, and aims it at the light. “Jubilee, snap out of it!”

  “Wait.” I gasp the word, shaking myself free of my memory’s spell. “Flynn—stop. I’ve seen this before.”

  “Avon’s wisps?” His voice is short, tense. The gun doesn’t waver; he may not be prone to violence, but he handles the weapon with confidence, with ease.

  “No.” I reach out, laying my hand on his arm. “Not here on Avon. I’ve seen this on Verona.”

  Flynn’s eyes finally snap to mine, away from the wisp bobbing gently in the air. “There were wisps on Verona?”

  “In November,” I reply. “I’d forgotten them, until now. But I…I know this thing. I called it my ghost….”

  But the wisp is answering me, dipping in time with my words, sweeping a glowing path through the night as though dancing with my memories as I try to piece them together.

  “It could…create things,” I murmur. “Paint pictures in my mind.”

  “Lilac told us the creatures—the whispers—can make you see things that aren’t really there.” Flynn glances from me to the wisp, the gun lowering, though he keeps both hands firmly in place. “And that LaRoux Industries had brought them to Verona.”

  My thoughts are spinning, trying to piece together fragments of memory, things I’d long dismissed as childish imagination. I take a step forward and the wisp leaps up, darting away, then pausing—then darting again. “It wants us to follow it,” I gasp. But before I can move again, the wisp is gone, its glow flickering once, then vanishing. “Maybe Lilac was right, maybe they’re trying to help.”

  “Unless LaRoux knows we know. If Avon’s wisps have been Lilac’s whispers all along…this could be a trap.” Flynn slowly tucks his gun back into his waistband, and when he speaks again, his voice is shaky. “I’ve caught glimpses of the wisps, but I’ve never seen one so…My cousin Sean said he saw one once, that it tried to lead him away through the swamp, to the east.”

  “To the east?” My skin prickles; to the east lies the spot where Flynn’s vanished facility stood. Commander Towers’s words ring in my ears. We find them out there sometimes. Soldiers taken by the Fury. Drowned or buried in quicksand or dead with guns in their hands and bullets in their brains. They go east, into no-man’s-land, if there’s no one nearby to kill when they snap. They’re looking for it. They’re looking for the place.

  My eyes are still searching the horizon, afterimages taunting my sight. I keep thinking I see the wisp, only to blink and find darkness. “Flynn,” I say slowly. “You mentioned Lilac—she said not to trust what we see.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, if these whispers can make you see things that aren’t there, what’s to say they can’t keep you from seeing things that really are there?” I turn away from the black swamp. “Flynn, we walked around that island. We never walked across it. Something kept us to its perimeter, and we never noticed.”

  “The facility was never moving.” Flynn’s eyes lift, fixing on mine. “It was there all along, being hidden by the whispers.” For the first time in what feels like centuries, I see a flicker of hope there. It’s like surfacing after a long dive and tasting oxygen again. “Forget the hideout—that’s where we need to go.”

  Before I can reply, a distant shout makes us both jerk our heads up. We freeze, listening hard.

  There are voices out there in the fog—too far away to be clear, but there’s an unmistakable note of urgency in them. Whoever’s out in the swamp, whether military or rebel, they’ve seen us. And they’ll be coming our way.

  I hit the button to retract the gangway and follow Flynn down so we can jump off into the boat. The emergency lights cut off as the door closes, leaving us in utter blackness. Flynn grabs for the oars stashed along each side of the runabout. They won’t work as well as the rebels’ clever poles, but they’ll get us moving without the noise of an engine.

  Flynn settles in to row, leaving me free to cover our retreat if necessary. I touch his shoulder to get his attention, since he can’t see my face. “The shuttle’s pointed north, and we’re about half an hour west of the island. Can you find it again in the dark?”

  “I can navigate Avon with my eyes closed.” I can hear the smile in his voice. The same arrogance that used to drive me up the wall is now making my own lips twitch. We have a plan, a destination; we’ve got hope.

  “Good. Maybe we can lose them in the fog. But if not…”

  Flynn reaches up to squeeze my hand. “If not, we just have to hope we find our proof before our people find us.”

  There are engines echoing through the swamp, and distant lights, and the splashing of poles and oars—in the dark, without any reference points, it feels like both armies have us surrounded. I let Flynn guide us, trusting his almost supernatural ability to navigate without stars, without compass, without anything except the bond he shares with Avon. His adjustments to our course are quick and sure.

  We slip through the reeds in tense silence, waiting. Watching. I keep my hand on my gun, always. Now and then I think I see the wisp, a dim flicker of light out of the corner of my eye, always dancing out of reach, but I can never be sure. My mind is still surging, confused. Fragments of the little girl I was keep surfacing, pulling with them flashes of pain, of happiness, of despair, all the colors in my mind I’ve been ignoring since I was eight years old.

  It’s well into the night when the boat finally crunches up against solid ground. Flynn jumps out, landing knee-deep in water, and steadies the boat as I climb after him. We operate in total darkness, not able to risk a flashlight, moving by feel and keeping track of each other by the sounds of our breathing. I hear Flynn turn away to face the center of the island.

  “Flynn, wait.” I reach out and touch his shoulder. “LaRoux’s been able to force these creatures to do terrible things. They’re responsible for the Fury. They’re what took over Commander Towers’s mind right in front of me. They’re what sent me to your caves when McBride massacred those people.”

  “I know.”

  I can’t stop the fear coursing through me, no matter how I try to shove it down. I can handle getting shot, blown up, beaten to a pulp while tied to a stake, because through all of that, I’m still me. “We’re walking into the center of it all, into a place that’s already taken over my mind once. What’s to say they won’t do it again?” If I wake up someplace again, covered in blood, with no memory of what happened…

  “I won’t let it happen.” Flynn’s voice is hard.

  “You can’t stop a thing by willing it not to happen.” I can’t help the note of fondness that escapes alongside my exasperation. “Flynn—promise me something.”

  “What is it?” He sounds wary. I think he suspects what I’m about to ask.

  “If—if it happens again, just know that it’s not me. I’m not in there. That—that person who ordered us to turn ourselves in wasn’t Commander Towers, and I had to disobey her. And if it happens to me, then it’s not…It’s okay.”

  “Okay?” Flynn’s voice is stiff. “Okay to shoot you, you mean.”

  My heart tightens. “I don’t know. Maybe.” I can feel his anger and frustration radiating through the darkness, and part of me longs to reach out for him. If our positions were reversed, I don’t think I’d be able to listen to this either. But it has to be said. “Yes,” I whisper. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Then I can’t promise you that,” he says tightly. “And don’t ask me again, Jubilee.”

  “You can’t afford not to! This isn’t about us, this is everyone, all of my people and all of yours. This is worth dying for, Flynn, this chance to save Avon. We can’t afford to let anyone stop us. Even if that someone ends up being me.”

  Flynn doesn’t answer in words. Instead he reaches behind his back to pull his stolen Gleidel from his waistband. Then there’s a loud thud as he tosses the gun into the bottom of the boat.

 
“Flynn, you can’t—”

  “I’m going in there,” he says, as fierce as he’s ever been. “But I’m not shooting you, no matter what happens.”

  I want to argue, I want to tell him he’s being sentimental and foolish, that this is what I was trying to avoid when I stopped him that night in the back room of Molly’s. That choosing me over everything else is weakness. A few weeks ago, that’s exactly what Captain Lee Chase would’ve told him. But I can hear the strength in his voice, and in the choice he’s making. Because it’s not that he’s choosing me, a girl he met less than a month ago—he’s choosing a world in which no one has to die.

  I want that world to be real. I want it so badly my pulse quickens, the air sharpens. Captain Lee Chase never goes anywhere unarmed; it’s against her nature. My hand’s gripping my Gleidel so tightly I’m half afraid my skin’s going to fuse with the metal.

  Lee doesn’t leave her gun behind—but maybe Jubilee could.

  I exhale slowly, easing my Gleidel out of its holster. It fits so easily in my hand, its cold weight so comforting, so familiar. I swallow, then toss it down with Flynn’s.

  When I lift my eyes again, Flynn is no more than a silhouette. He moves toward me, taking hold of my arm and pulling me in against him. He doesn’t speak. Our brief time together, the extraordinary circumstances that made us allies—there aren’t any words to give it shape. He could tell me he loves me, but he doesn’t know me the way a lover would; he knows the shape of me, though, the curve of my heart, as I know his. He could tell me he doesn’t want to lose me, but we’re both already lost, and only the tether between us keeps us from drifting out into the black.

  I hear him draw a quick, shaking breath, and then his mouth finds mine. His kiss is fierce, his fingers splaying across my back, pressing me close. His lips this time ask for nothing, no demand for fire or for possession, nothing like the way he tasted in the back room of Molly’s, turning my bones to ash. He’s just kissing me, holding me, searing me into his memory. I lean into him, making his arms tighten around me in response, and we stand there, the water quiet around our ankles, as though all of Avon is holding its breath.