Their Fractured Light: A Starbound Novel (34 page)

LaRoux’s eyes widen even as his brows draw together, and he takes a step back toward the transport behind him. The handful of husks still remaining draw closer around him, clearly ready to shield him if Tarver’s finger tightens on the trigger.

“You’re wrong,” LaRoux snaps, baring his teeth in a rictus that might have once been a smile. “You just can’t stand that she chose
me
. She’s just the first—the whole galaxy will learn to love me as she does now, again, the way she’s supposed to.”

Tarver shakes his head, just a tiny movement. “The tragedy is that she did. She did love you. Despite everything you did to her, to Simon, to me, to Avon, to the galaxy—you were her father, and she loved you. She took a bullet for you. She’s perhaps the only person, the last person, in this existence to care for you at all.” Tarver pauses for the span of a breath, and then slowly the gun lowers, to dangle at his side. “And you sold her soul to play house for just a little bit longer.”

LaRoux’s lips open like he has to gulp for air. “No,” he retorts, gasping. “No. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. She loves me. She knows what I’m doing is right, and just. She’s my girl.
Mine
.” The husks move in to surround him, and as he struggles, it becomes clear he’s not the one controlling them after all. They drag him back toward the shuttle, their jostling dislodging the device over his ear so that it clatters to the pavement at their feet. LaRoux doesn’t even seem to notice; his wide, staring eyes are fixed on Tarver right up until the husks close in around him and bear him back into the craft, where the door hisses closed after them.

The engines kick in, LaRoux’s transport and the other orbital shuttle lifting up off the ground. Jubilee shakes free of whatever spell of anger and fear kept her still, and darts forward, raising her gun—only to have Tarver grab at her arm, jerking the barrel down again.

“We have to stop him,” Jubilee gasps, furious, tearing her arm away from her former commanding officer.

“We will.” Tarver’s voice is finally showing his strain, shaking now as he watches the shuttles lift higher, jets starting to turn in preparation to fly away. “But he’s right—his death would stop nothing. Too many senators are already on their way back to their planets with the rift blueprints.”

I move away from Sofia’s side in silence, striding over to the spot where LaRoux stood so I can retrieve the device that shielded him from the whisper’s influence—for all the good it did him. The whisper didn’t need to touch his mind in order to make it snap like a twig. But for the rest of us—if I can figure out a way to replicate the technology here, then it might give us a fighting chance against the whisper.

“We can’t do
nothing
,” Sofia breaks in. I look over to find her face wet, but there’s so much to read in her expression that I can’t tell if her tears are from rage or grief or fear or all of those combined.

“I know.” Tarver watches the shuttles kick into gear—one angles up, toward the upper atmosphere, as the other bolts off over the city. He eases his gun back into its holster, and I see now that his knuckles are white from gripping it so hard, that he’s forcing himself to let go finger by finger. “We can’t stop them. We have to go to her—to Lilac. And I know where she is.”

“Where?”

“Where all the husks are going—where it all started.” He lets his breath out slowly. “The
Daedalus.
”

The green-eyed boy is on the run, hiding from those who would take him from the gray world to live among other children of war. His sister’s execution years ago has filled him with a certainty we envy, and as soldiers close in around him at the edge of town, we gather all our strength and reach out across the darkness.

Our pale light flashes amongst the reeds, and the soldiers veer off to investigate it, leaving the green-eyed boy free to run the other way. He turns and comes face-to-face with the girl with the dimpled smile, who has just stepped out of her house.

They used to be friends, long ago, before rebellion tore them apart. Now they stare at each other, silent, until the distant sound of a dog barking startles the green-eyed boy and he takes off into the night.

Later the soldiers will ask the girl what she saw, and she will stare at them with wide, gray eyes, and say, “Nothing.”

TARVER’S MOVING BEFORE THE REST
of us have time to recover. By the time we follow him back into the LaRoux mansion, he’s in the kitchen, tossing supplies onto the counter—bread, peanut butter, cheese, pieces of fruit.

I hesitate, glancing at the others. If LaRoux was clearly mad, half-incoherent as those things dragged him back onto the shuttle, then Tarver…He’s not that far behind. He’s got a recently dislocated shoulder held together with strapping tape and painkillers, he hasn’t slept, and the more time passes, the less emotional he seems. He ought to be breaking down—the girl he loves is quite possibly gone forever, and a monster is wearing her face while she destroys humanity as we know it. And yet he’s calmly rummaging through the pantry for supplies.

Jubilee’s the one who moves, finally, taking a cautious step toward her former captain. “Sir,” she says softly. “We need to take a break.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, well
I’m
not.” Jubilee’s voice is tense, wire-thin. She sounds like I feel—on a razor’s edge. “And neither is anyone else.”

“And I’m going to need some time to look at this thing,” Gideon breaks in, LaRoux’s earpiece in his hand. “Without its protection we might as well go in waving a white flag.”

Tarver ignores Gideon, gesturing to the food. “Eat,” he says, tilting his head. “There’s no time to sleep, but eat something and that’ll keep us going.”

“I know that, I learned that from you.” Jubilee pauses, watching Tarver—then, gritting her teeth, she leans forward and shoves him, hard, into the edge of the refrigerator. “
Sir.
You have to stop! You have to take a breath.”

“I
can’t
!” he replies, voice cracking, the veneer of calm slipping for just one, vital instant, in which I can see the anguish behind it. “I can’t, Lee. If I stop, if I think, I’ll—it’s
Lilac
. I can’t think. I can’t stop. I can’t lose her. You don’t know what—” He shudders, pushing Jubilee away and staggering a step. “We just need to move.” He gets his balance and starts for the hallway, and the entryway beyond.

Jubilee’s right. We can’t storm the wreck of the
Daedalus
with no idea what we’ll find. The place will be crawling with husks, and even if it weren’t, the thing in Lilac’s body could kill us all without breaking a sweat. She only let us live this long to see us suffer, but if we become a genuine threat…But I know this panic of his, I know this desperate focus. Logic won’t reach him. He can’t let it reach him, because if he does, it’ll break him.

I summon the dismissive tone of voice I know I’ll need. “So you’re really
that
eager to kill the love of your life?”

Tarver skids to a halt—I catch the look Jubilee throws me, her brows shooting up, eyes flashing with an intense are-you-completely-bloody-insane kind of look. When Tarver turns, I find myself taking a step back from the force of his gaze. “Excuse me?”

“That’s your plan, right?” I swallow. “We already know you can’t talk her out of this, you tried that on the
Daedalus.
LaRoux’s certainly not going to help you—he’s clearly lost whatever marbles he had left. And if Gideon can’t replicate that tech, there’s nothing to stop the whisper from taking us over. We’ve got no other ideas, nothing else up our sleeves. I’m just surprised you’re so anxious to get there and kill her.”

For a moment, Tarver’s right hand twitches by his hip. I grew up on Avon, surrounded by soldiers with that same instinct, the same fight-or-flight responses. And I know, because I saw, that the safety’s off his gun. But despite the hammering of my heart, my fear isn’t of him. He may be half-mad with grief and panic, and I may have only known him for a day, but it only took me about ten minutes to know who this man was. And he’s not going to hurt me, no matter how badly he needs to find someone to blame.

Still, my breath catches.

Then he sags, turning and staggering back until he hits the wall, eliciting a grunt of pain as it jars his shoulder. He drops, sliding against the wall until he’s sitting on the marble, elbows on his knees and fists balled against his eyes.

Jubilee’s eyes go from Tarver to me, and this time that look says something altogether different. She nods, and though it’s the smallest of gestures, it’s like that tiny grain of respect gives my lungs permission to work again. She and Flynn cross toward the foyer, joining Tarver on the floor. I run a shaky hand through my hair, trying to fight the urge to look back at Gideon. I can feel him watching me. I took his hand out there as LaRoux spoke, finding myself unable to watch that flood of anger and despair across his features—but now there’s distance again.

If none of this were happening, if he were just a hacker and I were just a con artist…would anything be different? Would we be any more able to trust each other?

He moves past me, gathering up some of the food Tarver pulled out, and heads over to join the others. I follow, sinking down onto the floor. I’m expecting cold marble, but instead I discover that the floors are heated—a luxury I never even knew existed. For a wild moment I want to lie down, face against the warm stone, and sleep. Gideon’s already pulling tools out of his bag, tiny screwdrivers and wire strippers, disassembling the earpiece bit by bit.

“We destroy the rift.” Tarver’s ignoring Jubilee’s not-so-subtle attempts to shove a granola bar into his hand.

Flynn’s voice is musing. “He was telling the truth about that much, in his announcement—the rift machinery is what connects this world with the whispers’ world. They live in hyperspace, and if we destroy that connection, we destroy the whisper.”

Tarver nods. “It worked the first time around, and it worked on Avon.”

“She could have destroyed us, or taken us over, on the
Daedalus
.” My voice sounds tired even to my own ears. “Why didn’t she?”

Tarver’s expression twitches as he shoves Jubilee’s hand away. “She—it—wanted us to suffer. Wanted
me
to suffer. Can’t suffer if we’re dead, or if we have no minds left to feel it.”

Jubilee gives up, tossing the granola bar on the ground and leaning back against the wall. “Even if we could get to the rift before she squashes us—and that’s a big ‘if’—I’m not so sure destroying the rift would work this time around. I’ve seen these things, seen what a person is like when a whisper’s controlling them.” Her eyes are on Flynn’s, her voice low. “Lilac’s…different. With the others, the husks, the people being controlled—they’re like marionettes, all empty shells being made to dance.”

“And with Lilac…she’s
real
. Like she’s actually become this creature.” Flynn’s nodding. “Bringing down the
Daedalus
, tossing Tarver like a rag doll…That’s not normal.”

“Is any of this normal?” Gideon’s voice is dry.

“Point.”

My mind feels sluggish, turning over thoughts at half speed. There’s something I know, something I remember, that’s vital…but I can’t find it. I clear my throat. “Why Lilac?”

Tarver’s head lifts. “What?”

I glance at him, but he seems to have forgiven me for accusing him of wanting to kill Lilac. I chew at my lip, trying to sort out my thoughts. “Why her? I mean, it’s LaRoux the whisper hates, isn’t it? Why not take him over? He’s the one with the power, the influence, the ability to make the senators and their staffs go back and build rifts all across the galaxy—and it needs those, if it’s going to punish the whole of humanity, not just us. Why take Lilac, behind the scenes?”

“To…watch him, to hurt him from the outside?” Gideon’s thoughtful too, eyes flicking up from his study of LaRoux’s device to meet my gaze briefly. “To take away the thing he cares about the most?”

“Except she’s pretending to be the real Lilac, at least enough that he’s managed to make himself believe it.” I rub at my temple with my fingertips. I’m not even sure anymore what day it is—was it really less than twenty-four hours ago that I was dancing with Gideon in the ballroom of the
Daedalus
? “There has to be some reason why Lilac is special, why it didn’t take over LaRoux, or one of the scientists working with it, once it could get free. Some reason why the whisper’s chosen her, needs her.”

No one has an answer for that, exhausted silence punctuated only by the faint crinkle of wrappers here and there, as we try to choke food down throats dry with fear and weariness.

“We lost my canteen.” Tarver’s the one who breaks the silence, hoarse. All heads swivel toward him, but he doesn’t look up. “On Elysium, where Lilac and I were stranded. That’s what the scientists who died there called the planet, did you know? It was an ancient name for a place in the afterlife, where heroes went. After what happened to the researchers there, they thought it was appropriate. Anyway, we lost my canteen in a rock fall. We needed it badly, to filter water, to carry water. The next day, we found a perfect replica, right in the middle of our path.”