by Amie Kaufman
When we let each other go, we don’t speak. Instead Flynn braces his foot against the edge of the boat and shoves, sending it drifting back out so anyone who finds it won’t know where we are. I watch it cut through the mist until the fog closes back up around it and it’s gone.
She’s had this dream before, too. This one starts with fire, but she’s not afraid. It sweeps through the shop like it’s alive, but when it reaches her, it feels like nothing more than a summer breeze, pleasant and warm. She can control the fire, she can make it go where she wants, and she can keep it from consuming a single mote of dust in her mother’s shop.
She tells the flames to pull back, to return to being a merrily crackling fire on the hearth. But this time the fire doesn’t listen.
The girl tries again, and again nothing changes; the fire flares instead, and this time it burns her hands. She feels no pain in the dream, but she’s afraid. She knows she has to run, but the fire is all around her now, and there’s nowhere to go.
Her only choice is to let the fire take her.
THERE’S NO WAY BACK NOW. I know that as the boat vanishes. For an instant my heart tugs me after it—a place to hide, to hold Jubilee and be held. I can still feel her against me, and I cling to that warmth, pushing from my mind the possibility that I’ve kissed her for the last time.
I turn toward the seemingly empty muddy island before us. “How do you find something you can’t see?” I keep my voice low—out in the swamps I can still hear the subtle sounds that tell me there are Fianna hunting for us.
She squints toward the center of the island. “We know it’s there. Now that we understand what we’re looking for, maybe we can bypass whatever the whispers are doing to our heads to conceal it.”
I scan the flat expanse of mud. “All right,” I murmur. “Come on, let’s see you.” I pull up the memory of the facility I saw. I’m looking for straight lines on a landscape that’s all curves. Walls, corners, a chain-link fence. There’s a dizzying compulsion to look away, and I narrow my gaze and try again.
It’s only when Jubilee grabs my chin and turns my face toward the center of the island that I realize I’d turned away after all. She has a sympathetic grimace, and we link hands to keep ourselves from moving apart. Our fingers wind tightly together as we edge forward, pausing every step to check we’re still moving toward the center.
The air shimmers before me, and I let myself close my eyes for just a second, pain creeping in at my temples. My whole body’s starting to protest, shoulders aching where the harness cut into them, gut still settling after our wild ride. I wait until the pain dims a couple of degrees.
Don’t trust what you see, Lilac LaRoux said. I dredge up the memory of the facility again. Then I open my eyes and there’s a chain-link fence a foot in front of me.
I jerk to a stop, and a second later Jubilee walks face-first into it. It clangs and rattles, shedding droplets of condensed fog in a glittering shower. We both freeze, waiting for a sound in the swamp behind us or a shout from within the compound. Seconds tick by, and as though we’ve turned a key, the rest of the fence slowly materializes, and a clump of prefab buildings behind it. The shimmering’s gone, and the air in front of us is clear.
“Son of a—” Jubilee swallows down her protest, lifting a hand to swipe the water from her face. “Stopped just in time, but you couldn’t warn me?” But her mouth’s quirking, and despite everything, I want to snicker.
I take a step back, trying to follow the perimeter of the fence in the darkness. “That tower—is it a security checkpoint?” I point to a low, squat blackness some distance away.
Jubilee shakes her head, eyes lifted. “It’s a communications tower—see the satellite dishes? But they’ll have an alarm system there too, and there are floodlights on every fence post. We go near that tower and get spotted, they’ll light this place up like a parade route and we’ll have nowhere to run.”
“I could try to make a hole up here, then, the way we do on your base to sneak in.”
Jubilee just rolls her eyes at me. She drops my hand and takes three steps back, staring up at the fence, which has to be at least four meters high. Then she runs at it, using her momentum to clamber to the top in seconds, swinging a leg over and leaning down to wink. “Hurry up, then. Need a hand?” Faced with a task she knows, she’s every inch the soldier, grinning and self-assured. I would have hated her for it such a short time ago, but now her smile’s familiar.
My grin matches hers as I climb up after her, and for a moment it’s like being with my friends when we were kids, seeing who could scale the highest spire of rock. We get only a few seconds to revel in our small victory. Then there’s a sharp whistle out in the fog, and my heart leaps. “That’s the alert,” I say, translating the Fianna’s signal for her. “They’ve found our boat.”
Jubilee’s smile vanishes, and once more we’re fighting for our lives. “Let’s go.”
The facility seems to be almost empty, at least from the outside. Once we see a figure in night vision goggles disappearing around the corner of a building, but though we crouch and wait, the guard doesn’t return.
Keeping to the shadows, we make for the nearest door to the main building, only to find it locked tight. If this were a normal facility it’d be print-coded with the latest security—but print-coding would leave a record of the people who’ve accessed the place. Instead the handles are the low-tech kind, requiring manual keys. I feel around the door frame, but we’re not lucky enough for someone to have stashed a key somewhere. Instead we’re forced to make our way along the wall, testing the windows until we find one that Jubilee’s able to pop open with a dull thunk of her elbow against the frame.
The small room we climb into is empty but for a few supply cabinets; we’ve entered through some kind of storeroom. When we slip out into the hallway, muddy footprints mark the floor, telling us people were here recently. Beyond the room is a series of hallways, but a faint trail of dirt shows which path is most traversed. Jubilee takes point down the corridor, and I move silently after her, ears straining for any sign of life. My heart’s beating too fast, and I can feel a corresponding pulse in my head. There’s no sign of the wisp; our guide, for better or for worse, is gone.
Jubilee stops at the first corner, easing her head out to check that the way ahead is empty. Lifting her hand, she jerks two fingers to bid me follow and eases forward again.
The facility is laid out like a maze, but the paths and doors are labeled. We reach a branching corridor, and I tap my finger against a sign with an arrow that reads MAIN CONTROL ROOM. Jubilee nods; from there we might be able to get an idea as to the layout of this place and find some sort of records room or computer access.
A few doors feature glass panes, revealing unrecognizable equipment and fully stocked laboratories beyond them. Some are occupied by white-coated scientists, and we’re quick to move past those. True, we could grab one or two of them to interrogate, but there’s no guarantee that they even know who they’re working for. We need hard evidence.
On one group of researchers, my eyes linger. They’re gathered around a man’s body laid out on a table. He still wears his camouflage trousers and military boots, and the scientists are gathered around his head. When one of them moves to retrieve a tool from a nearby tray, I can see that the whole top of his skull has been removed; the scientists are carefully removing pieces of his brain, laying them out in a neatly labeled row. A glance at Jubilee tells me she’s as tense as I am, her shoulders drawn in tight. But we can’t help him now, we both know that.
Our path leads to a door marked MAIN CONTROL ROOM, and Jubilee pauses to look back at me. I’m watching her eyes, checking her pupils, looking for that vacant hint that will tell me she’s under the influence of the whispers, but I’ve never seen it happen like she has. I don’t know what I’m looking for, and it’s keeping me sick with tension.
Then abruptly the door opens, and we’re face-to-face with a startled man in a white coat.
Now she and I move as one—I get my hands under his arms and she grabs his legs, and we haul him back into the room. A quick look over my shoulder shows it’s empty, and we’re alone save for a long bank of computer screens and an unconscious scientist.
I crouch to take a look at him, and as I peel back one of his eyelids, all I can see is the white of his eye. “You really had to hit him?”
Jubilee’s standing by the door, listening for trouble. “What else could I do? I didn’t hit him hard, he’ll be fine.”
“You really have to start thinking laterally.” I roll the man onto his side so he doesn’t choke on his own tongue while he’s out.
“Not my forte.” She shrugs, abandoning the door to prowl the room. “This is monitoring Avon’s climate,” she says after leaning down to study a screen. “It’s got terraforming data displayed here for the last two decades. Far more detailed readings than what we get sent by TerraDyn.” She falls silent, but I know we’re both thinking about Merendsen’s theory that Avon’s progress, like the progress of the planet LaRoux destroyed, is being tampered with.
I stay by the scientist’s side, and he doesn’t stir as I check him for weapons, then push aside his white coat to make sure there’s nothing clipped to his belt. All I see is an ID badge, and I’m about to drop the fabric when a glint flashes through the plastic cover of the pass. Sitting alongside a card showing a serial number—no name or photo—is a tiny ident chip. It’s exactly the same as the one Jubilee found on our first visit here, right down to the tiny lambda. The room spins a little and I rub at my eyes, trying to remember when I last had more than a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. “LaRoux Industries,” I say, pushing slowly to my feet.
“That won’t be proof enough,” says Jubilee with a grimace. “They try to stop it, but head down below street level in Corinth and you can get anything on the black market. A raider ship could outfit themselves with old LRI ident chips with enough credits; LaRoux could easily say these were stolen, especially since they’re so antiquated.”
The man at my feet gives a tiny groan, and I glance at him before saying, “What about the computers? There has to be something incriminating there.”
“They’ll be encrypted, for sure.” Jubilee turns back to me, drawn by the signs that the scientist is coming to. “Unless we have someone with the password.”
At my feet, the white-coated man moans again, rolling over onto his back and lifting one hand to claw at the air, as though he can grab something and pull himself closer to consciousness. Jubilee’s at my side so fast I barely see her move, but I reach for her shoulder before she can grab him. “Let me,” I murmur, and she scowls her acquiescence, muttering under her breath. The guy on the floor flinches at her tone and opens his eyes.
I look down at him. “Took a fall there, friend. What’s your name?”
“Carmody.” He’s still confused. “Dr. Terrence Carmody. Who are you?”
“I’m the one who wants to talk to you,” I say quietly. “She’s the one who wants to break your legs. Let’s start with the talking.” I keep my eyes on his, gazes locked. Now that the adrenaline of breaking into the facility is starting to recede, my body feels leaden. I focus, reaching down inside to pull up a version of me I barely remember. Confident, imposing myself on others by sheer will. I can do this.
“We know what you’re doing here,” I start, and panic flickers across his face. “You’re going to tell us everything about LaRoux Industries, and where you’re hiding the creatures he’s using.”
“Please,” the man gasps, stuttering. “I-I’m just a researcher. I don’t know anything, I swear.”
“Your password, then,” Jubilee interrupts, her voice quick with tension. “For the computers.”
The man swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing frantically. “I’m only cleared for this level—I’ll give it to you, but it’s just climate data, it’s only what you see here. I don’t know what you’re talking about, with LaRoux Industries.” He looks too terrified to be lying.
I meet Jubilee’s eyes; I can tell from the tension in her gaze that she believes him too. But even if he doesn’t know about the whispers, maybe he can still help us find proof of LaRoux Industries’ involvement here.
I open my mouth to press him for more, but I’m cut off by a long, low blast of sound from speakers set up in the ceiling. The blood rushes in my ears, every ounce of adrenaline flooding back in and leaving a metallic taste in my mouth. The alarm is followed by a man’s voice, quick and urgent.
“Attention all nonessential personnel: facility security has been compromised. Repeat: facility security has been compromised.”
The girl is home again, in a shop, in a city called November, on a planet named Verona. Her mother is calling her and her father is washing his hands and his arms in the kitchen sink. The girl runs to her cave, the nest she’s built under the shop’s counter, and folds herself inside.
The green-eyed boy is there, somehow, though the space is only big enough for the girl. “You keep coming back here,” he whispers, a terrible sadness in his voice. “After all these years.”
“I was safe here,” the girl whispers back.
“What’s the real reason?” asks the boy, and when he looks at her, she knows she can’t lie.
“Here,” says the girl, “I’m not alone.”
The boy takes her hand, and the girl notices the way their fingers interlock, as if they were meant to fit that way. “I thought you were supposed to be brave.”
“I’m not brave enough to die alone.”
I GESTURE AT THE RESEARCHER, warning him to be silent without a word, but he’s too busy trying to cram himself in under one of the consoles, as though that might hide him from whatever punishment we have in mind for failing to help us. I inch toward the door and press my ear to it—I can’t hear anything, no sounds of rushing security guards, nothing that sounds like a response to the alarm, which has gone silent again now. It’s as though the place is abandoned.
A whispering rises all around me, as though I’m standing in a windstorm—but the air is utterly still. And I know what it is. Swallowing the metallic taste of blood in my mouth, I only have time for a glance down at my hands, searching for the palsied shakes that I know are coming. Except my hands are steady, but for the faint tremor of panic.
Before I can process what’s happening, a groan from behind me shatters my heart. Oh God, no.
I whirl to find Flynn leaning with one hand braced against the console, his face white, gaze fixed on the floor. “Jubilee—” He gasps my name as though it’s with his last breath.
I throw myself back, reaching for Flynn, as though his touch might banish the sudden razor-edge of fear slicing down my spine. “Talk to me!”
But he can’t answer; he sags back against the wall, and for an instant his head lifts enough for me to see his gaze, his dilated eyes, the terror as he fights the thing that’s happening to him.
“No—no, I can’t—” My heart snaps, and with it the fear holding me hostage, and I stagger half a step toward him.
It was supposed to be me.
I swallow my fear. “We’re getting out of here, now.” Whispers be damned—Avon’s fate be damned. I cannot watch Flynn’s soul, his heart, vanish in front of me.
“Actually, you’re not.” I’d almost forgotten the researcher—Dr. Carmody—cowering on the floor. I turn to snap at him, and freeze.
He’s got a weapon aimed at me; he must have had it hidden underneath the console. I should have been watching, I should have tied him up. I should have had Flynn…I choke, unable to focus on the man’s gun. All I can see is Flynn, half-curled against the console
, trying to fight the whispers.
“Fine!” I snap at Carmody, lifting my hands. “Arrest me, shoot me, I don’t care. Just let me help him—” I take a step toward Flynn, but Carmody thumbs the switch on the side of the gun. Its whine as it charges rings in my ears, and I stop again.
“You can’t help him,” replies Carmody, sparing only a glance for Flynn before pinning his gaze back on me. “He’s already gone.”
I open my mouth, trying to find words to deny what he’s said. But before I can, Flynn’s moving. He’s quick, so quick my eyes can barely follow him. He slips behind Carmody, grabbing his arm and jerking it up. The gun fires; not a Gleidel, this one leaves a smoking hole in the ceiling and sends plastene shards raining down onto the floor. Before I can take a step to help him, Flynn’s other hand wraps around the back of Carmody’s neck and slams his head down into the console with a sickening crack. He doesn’t pause, but slams the researcher down again, and again, and again, until blood coats the controls and I cry out, still rooted to the spot.
Flynn, only his profile visible to me, releases the dead man and lets the body slump to the floor.
It’s all happened in the space of a few heartbeats, so quickly I haven’t drawn breath. Spots swimming in front of my eyes, I gasp for air. “F-Flynn?”
It takes an eternity for him to turn around, in which I imagine him a thousand times with his usual smile, his cocky air, the depth of his green eyes. He’ll be standing there as though nothing has changed; he’ll tell me he learned self-defense from me; he’ll turn around and look at me and he’ll be whole.
But instead he stands a few feet away, his face empty, the green eyes seared into my memory gone. In their place is nothing more than black glass, reflecting my own face back at me.
