by Amie Kaufman
But I can barely keep Jubilee and Flynn within line of sight with the jostling and milling of the frightened crowds—Gideon and Tarver could walk by ten meters away and we’d never see them.
Abruptly a hand closes on my arm and jerks me back, my lips forming a half scream before I can stop it. I’m whirled around to see a middle-aged woman with a curtain of dried blood down one side of her face—her pupils are dilated, and for a moment I’m certain it’s one of Lilac’s husks. But the woman’s eyes search my face vaguely, and I realize: she has a concussion. She must’ve been struck by a piece of debris.
“Mandy?” she’s asking. “Mandy, is that you?”
“N-n-no,” I stammer, my mouth dry and heart pounding. I cast a frantic look around, but Flynn and Jubilee have vanished in the press of the crowd. “Sorry, I don’t—”
“Mandy?” the woman asks again, drawing me closer; her fingers tighten painfully when I try to pull my arm away.
Then Jubilee appears again, elbowing her way back through the crowd. No sign of Flynn. “Let her go,” she orders, voice quick and sharp, hand on her gun.
“It’s fine,” I gasp, prying at the woman’s fingers. “She’s confused. Not dangerous.”
“I’m just trying to find my daughter,” the woman moans, before her hand slides away from my arm.
Jubilee pulls me away, dodging the crowds. “Too many people,” she says in my ear, over the noise of voices and sirens and destruction. “We’ve got to find some place to hole up until night, when it’s safer to move. We’ll get trampled if we don’t.”
I glance over my shoulder and see, for a brief, frozen second, the woman standing still where we left her, hands clasped, confused gaze sweeping back and forth; then the crowd swells, and closes around her, and she’s gone.
We barricade ourselves inside what had been a restaurant before looters got to it. There’s no food left, and most of the chairs and tables are gone, or in pieces. The front part of it was little more than a stall, but farther back the door is still sound, and the kitchen’s one of those hole-in-the-wall places with a metal security gate. It’ll hold for now, especially since there’s nothing left inside worth stealing.
Flynn and Jubilee are efficient, working together like they were born to it, moving tables and chairs toward the door, searching for other exits—one leads to the back alley but has a deadbolt strong enough to suit them. It isn’t until the work is mostly done that I see Jubilee’s hands are shaking where she’s dragging furniture, and that her face looks ashen despite her darker skin. It’s Flynn who finally puts a hand on her arm, saying something in her ear that makes her nod and take a breath. “We’ll have to stay until nightfall,” she says quietly. “It’s chaos out there.”
We settle in to wait in silence, taking cover behind the counter and trying to get some rest. They’ve gotten new flashlights from an abandoned stall, and set them up like lanterns in the shelter of the countertop so we won’t have to wait in the dark. We find another gun under there, jammed in where its former owner could pull it out in case of a holdup. I wonder what happened, that they didn’t have time to bring it with them when they fled. It’s probably a certifiable antique, but since Sanjana’s EMP fried our cutting-edge weapons, this antique is looking pretty good.
As we wait for the noise outside to ebb, and I try to force down a handful of crackers and peanut butter from our supplies, my mind drifts back to Gideon and Tarver. Somewhere above us, they’re surrounded by husks. “Do you think Lilac’s aware of it, in there? Do you think she knows what it’s doing?” I hear myself ask.
“She could be.” Jubilee’s voice is quiet. “I grew up on Verona and had quite a few encounters with the whispers there, though I was just a child. I met the same one again on Avon.”
I drop the handful of crackers, crumbs scattering across the floor. “You talked to one of them? The whispers?”
Jubilee’s lips twitch as she glances at Flynn. “In a manner of speaking, yes.” She sees my expression and raises her eyebrows. “They’re not all bad. What LaRoux’s done to them—he’s been torturing them. Turning them into weapons.”
My throat feels tight, forcing me to swallow before I can speak. “The right kind of pressure can turn anyone into a monster.” The sound of the gun going off. Lilac falling. Tarver’s face as he looks at me. “Anyone.”
Jubilee’s eyes swing toward me, and though I could be imagining it, for a moment I think I almost see sympathy in her face. She nods. “The one I spoke to…it hadn’t given into that rage. It was—it was my friend.” Her voice grows rougher, and she’s forced to clear her throat after she finishes.
“On the Daedalus, the whisper said it wasn’t just the last one left—it was also the oldest one. The first one he started experimenting with.” Flynn’s voice is quiet. “He’s had a long time to twist that creature into something evil.”
“But they’re not human,” I protest, mind spinning. “Sanjana said they were entities of pure energy. Concepts like vengeance and pain and hatred…For all we know, they don’t even feel emotion.”
“They do.” Jubilee’s quick to contradict me. “They may not have started out understanding emotion, but the one I knew…it did. It felt everything. It died to save us from the other whispers on Avon.”
“That doesn’t help us now.” I let my head fall back against a shelf with a thump. “Lilac is the only whisper left on this side of the rift, so we’re on our own. We don’t have others of its kind willing to help us. And if Lilac is still in there somewhere, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything she can do.”
We all fall silent after that, and I only wish I could silence the one thought circling around and around in my head. Gideon’s still up there.
And if he’s still alive, he’s getting closer and closer to the whisper.
It’s only when I lift my head, blinking away sleep, that I realize I somehow managed to doze. Jubilee’s asleep, or at least pretending to be, her head in Flynn’s lap. He’s gazing down at her, and his hand keeps making the same small gesture, fingertips stroking the hair at Jubilee’s temple. I swallow and he lifts his head, blinking once and then looking at me. His lips twitch a little into a faint smile. But there’s something in the back of his gaze that tips me off.
“Is she okay?” I whisper, glancing at Jubilee, who doesn’t move.
Flynn nods, eyes following mine and lingering on the girl asleep in his lap. “She’s tough.”
I find my own lips twitching. “That’s not what I asked.”
Flynn looks back up at me, exhaling a faint laugh. “Forgot who I was talking to.” He leans his head back against the shelves behind him. “This is bringing back bad memories.”
“Verona?”
He nods again. “She grew up there. Her parents were killed during the riots following the bombing attacks. Shot in front of her.”
My heart flinches, squeezing tight and twisting. “I had no idea.”
“Me neither, until—well, might as well call a spade a spade. Until I kidnapped her from the military base.”
“Someday you’re going to have to tell me the whole story of what exactly happened between that and…well, this.” I nod my head in their direction, something in my head still objecting on an instinctive level to the sight of my friend Flynn, leader of the Fianna, with his arms around a trodaire. If Gideon and Tarver fail—if the whisper ends up with the power to cut us off from hyperspace completely—we’ll be trapped together here on Corinth. Being an Avonite won’t mean anything anymore.
Flynn huffs another laugh, dropping his voice again when Jubilee stirs. “Got a few days?” He sobers, watching me. “Thank you, by the way. For what you did on the shuttle back on Avon, when Jubilee and I were on the run—thank you for distracting the soldiers so she and I could get away. I know you had no reason to trust her.”
“I trusted you,” I reply instantly—then halt, thoughts grinding together. Because I did trust him, completely. How could it have happened that in a single yea
r I forgot how to do that? Why should I trust Gideon any less than Flynn?
Because he lied to you.
Well, I lied to him. What else you got?
“Are you okay?”
I open my eyes to find Flynn watching me, concern all over his expressive features. I start to reply, halting with my lips parted, voice sticking in my throat. “I’m tough, too,” I say finally.
One corner of Flynn’s mouth lifts. “That’s not what I asked.”
I shut my eyes, wishing I could shut my ears as well. Despite my conversation with Tarver, every part of me is screaming that this is still somehow my fault. It was one thing to be at peace with the idea of becoming a murderer, of killing an evil man responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It’s another to be at peace with causing the end of the world.
“He’ll be okay.” His voice is quiet.
“Is that even what I’m supposed to hope for?” I whisper. With my eyes closed, I can hear sounds still echoing in from outside, though the crowd has thinned out to almost nothing.
“Of course it is,” Flynn replies. “Look, I haven’t seen Merendsen in action, but I’ve seen Jubilee. She swears he taught her what she knows, and is even better than she is. And while I find that difficult to believe, it does suggest that he knows what he’s doing. Gideon’s as safe with him as he’d be here.”
I shake my head, as much to dismiss the concern as to try to shrug off the burning in my eyes. “Gideon made his choice.”
“As you made yours, up on the Daedalus.” I open my eyes to find Flynn gazing down at Jubilee as she sleeps. “Funny thing, how we let our choices define us.”
As much as I love Flynn, a philosophical discussion is the last thing I want right now. I grind the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to clear them and marshal my thoughts, and remain silent.
He doesn’t seem to notice. “Back on Avon, it seemed like every choice I made turned me into more and more of a traitor. Sometimes I thought I was doing what was best for the Fianna—sometimes it felt like I was lying to myself, and it was all for her.”
“And now?” I eye him sidelong, watching his profile as his head dips.
“I was trusting my heart.” Flynn meets that sidelong look for a moment, then exhales in a sigh. “Doesn’t mean your heart can’t be conflicted. But at least for me, and for Jubilee, and for Avon—it turned out I was right to trust it.”
I echo that sigh of his, mine sounding more like a huff of laughter. “Follow your heart? Seriously? That’s your advice? I’m pretty sure I read that in a fortune cookie once.”
Flynn grins at me. “Where do you think I got it?” But then his grin softens and he gives his head a little shake. “It’s simple advice. But probably the hardest to follow. It’s always easier to do the expected thing than the right thing.”
“If you’re trying to thank me for attempting an assassination, you’re doing it in a roundabout way.”
“You think shooting at LaRoux was the right thing?” Flynn raises an eyebrow. “The thing your heart was telling you to do?”
I want Gideon to know that the only reason I didn’t tell him about my plan was because I knew he would try to talk me out of it. And I knew he’d succeed.
My jaw tightens. It doesn’t matter. Gideon’s gone. I let my gaze skitter away from Flynn’s, seeking out something, anything, that isn’t his look of empathy, of concern, of caring. The floor is strewn with garbage and broken bits of glass, and cards with the restaurant logo printed on them. My heart gives a sudden lurch as I reach out to pick one up—MRS. PHAN’S, it reads, next to the scan code to pull up the menu.
We’ve holed up in the restaurant where Gideon went to grab us dinner the night we spent in the arcade. The night before I found out he was the Knave. The night we—My breath chokes itself in my throat, sparking tears in my eyes as I try to keep from coughing.
“Sof?” Flynn’s voice is alarmed. Jubilee stirs, mumbling something that sounds like a question—half-asleep, she reaches for her hip, where her gun is.
“No—I’m fine.” I shove the card into my pocket.
“I wasn’t trying to upset you, Sof.” He fixes me with a searching look for a moment, and then Jubilee shifts in his lap, and he’s distracted.
“I’m fine. I…I’d really like to get some air, if that’s okay. It sounds quiet out there.”
Flynn rubs his hand up and down Jubilee’s arm, and she settles back again. “Are you sure? It’s not exactly safe out there.”
“Come on. It’s me.” I flash him my old smile, still easy to locate, despite everything. “I can take care of myself.”
Flynn’s still hesitant, craning his head back as though he’d be able to see whether the streets are clear.
“If the world’s ending tomorrow,” I add, voice dry, “I’d like to get to stretch my legs one last time.”
“Give her your gun,” mumbles Jubilee, without opening her eyes. “’S quiet out there now.”
Flynn’s mouth twitches, and he looks back up at me as he reaches for the pistol he set aside. “You heard her.”
I make sure the gun’s safety is on before I tuck it into the back of my pants, set the whisper shield down quietly so Flynn won’t notice, and argue, and get unsteadily to my feet. There are so many people down here that there’s no reason for the whisper to pick me out of the teeming crowds of refugees, and I desperately need a moment alone to breathe. Grabbing one of the flashlights, I slip toward the back exit and glance over my shoulder to catch a glimpse of Jubilee sitting up sleepily and laying her hand against Flynn’s cheek. He’s leaning toward her, but the door closes between us before his lips touch hers.
I shiver, though it’s not just from the chill. It is colder, though—all the machinery and cars and people and vendors and life that heat up the undercity are silent now, and without the sun above, the temperature is falling in a way it never could normally. If this is the place Gideon went to get us food, then it’s not far from the arcade. And without making any conscious decision, I find that’s where my steps are leading me.
It takes me a few minutes to get my bearings, searching my memory banks for the landmarks I saw at the mouth of the alley. Without the lanterns overhead, and only my flashlight to guide my steps, it all looks different. But eventually I find the faux-brick façade I remember, and find the loose one Gideon used to open the crack in the wall to slip through.
The space beyond is dark, but the sound of my footsteps changes, echoes speaking of the vastness of the hidden arcade behind the wall. In my memory, I hear the sound of a switch flipping, see the neon lights snapping into existence once by one, their milky reflections sweeping across the dusty marble floor. I can hear the Butterfly Waltz, and taste Gideon’s kiss.
I swing the flashlight around, my hand shaking—and my heart sinks.
Half the storefronts here are gone, piles of brick and stone and broken glass in their place. The few neon signs still visible are smashed to pieces—even if there were electricity, none of them would be shining now. I let the flashlight’s beam fall, my gaze following. The marble floor’s been shattered, the dust disturbed by showers of debris from high above that must’ve been dislodged when the Daedalus hit a few blocks away. I can’t even see where our footprints had been, the patterns we made while I taught him to dance.
I step back and scan the flashlight along the wall until I see the tangle of blankets where we slept. It’s all still there, as though Gideon left in a hurry after I ran from this place. The footprints are long gone, but I can still see the shape of us in the blankets, two bodies curled against each other, like interlocking commas—like yin and yang pendants. The cheap plastic kind that always break.
“Hey, Dimples.”
The voice shatters the silence and sends me stumbling backward with a gasp, flashlight swinging wildly until I can see who’s there—even though I already know, even though part of me isn’t even surprised. The night before battle, the calm before the storm—w
here else would we come, but the last safe place we knew?
Gideon’s got his hands in his pockets, leaning against the doorframe, head down so that when the flashlight beam falls on his face, it doesn’t blind him—and it also means I can’t read his expression. How well he knows me. “I didn’t think you’d ever come back here.”
I’m still trying to catch my breath, to coax my heart back down out of my throat—adrenaline sings through my muscles, keeping them tense. “T-Tarver?”
“He’s fine.” Gideon glances up for a moment, blinking in the light. His eyes are bloodshot—he looks exhausted. “Well, not fine. But he’s not hurt. He’s asleep, or at least resting, few blocks from here. Everyone else?”
“Same.” I can breathe again, but my heart’s still thumping, its pounding in my ears keeping time to the distant wail of a siren “Are you hurt?”
“Just tired.” I can hear it in his voice—the exhaustion, that he’s hanging on by his fingertips. He tries to hide it, but the glimpse I catch is enough to make me want to throw down my flashlight and go to his side.
Instead I tighten my grip on it and fix my eyes on the wall beside him. I can’t sit here and make small talk with him like everything’s fine, like we’re meeting for coffee somewhere and chatting about our days. “The reprogramming of the rift, can you do it?”
“I’m close,” he replies. “I’ll get there. The code is beautiful, so complex. I’ve never seen anything like it. If you separate it out from its purpose, just look at what they’ve made, it’s…it’s art.”
“But you can’t separate it out,” I point out, my voice hard in my ears. “It’s not just art, Gideon, it’s not some puzzle you have to solve to prove the Knave’s the best at what he does.”
“I know.”
And his voice is so small, so tired, that I relent—or perhaps it’s just that if we fight about this, I’ll shatter into a thousand pieces. “Gideon, why are you here?”
