This Shattered World (10 page)

“I noticed.” Her voice is flat.

“Anything happens to him, or he finds a reason somewhere, and his people would blame your people, and that’d be the end of the ceasefire. Your nightmares about bombs in your hospitals would become a reality.”

She tries to sit up again, hissing between her teeth but managing to lift her head enough to look at me squarely. “Funny how kidnapping doesn’t seem to bother you, but bombs do.”

Irritation kindles once more, too quick and sharp to be ignored. “You lock me up, and there’s nobody standing between McBride and all-out war. Look, there aren’t just two sides to this thing.”

She doesn’t respond right away, but when she does, her voice is quiet again. “There are never just two sides to anything.”

They’re not words I would’ve expected from a soldier—especially not one with Jubilee’s reputation. I tear my gaze away from her face and look up at the ceiling, cast into uneven shadow by the bioluminescence. “Listen. Your people won’t deal with us for you. If I can’t convince the others you can offer something in return for your passage out of here—”

“I know,” she whispers. “Are you only just now working that out?”

My temper snaps. “What are you
doing
? You’re not even going to
try
to save yourself? If you want to be a martyr, this isn’t the way. They’ll dump you somewhere, nobody will know. Nobody will remember you for it.”

She lifts her chin, stubborn, her eyes flinty hard. It’s like she doesn’t understand what’s happening—like she doesn’t understand she’s signing her own death warrant.

“Listen, don’t you have a family?” I can hear the desperation in my own voice. “You should at least try to get out of this alive, for them.”

“Everything I do is for my family.” Her voice is sharp—I’ve hit a nerve, and it costs her. One hand presses to her side as she gulps air against the pain of her broken ribs. Looks like Captain Lee Chase has a weak spot after all.

I don’t know what I expected her to be like, but it wasn’t this. The stories about her say she’s made of steel—she volunteered to come to Avon, the planet that drives men mad. She never runs, never hides, never loses. Stone-faced Chase, inhuman and deadly.

But she’s lying here, half-curled up on the bare mattress, her eye swelling and her lip oozing blood. She doesn’t look like a killer—she barely looks like she’s going to survive the night. I know some of what they say about her is true. Deadly, certainly. Made of steel, probably. But inhuman?

“Jubilee, please.” She looks at me, her jaw clenched, lips pressed into a thin line. “Just give me something. A tiny, insignificant thing. Something I can bring to them to show you’re working with us. Something to keep you alive.”

Jubilee swallows. I can see her throat move, see the way her fingers curl more tightly around her own arms. And in that moment I know I was wrong. It isn’t that she doesn’t understand. She knows she’s going to die if she doesn’t give in. She knows—and she’s choosing death. Her gaze is steady, fixed on mine. Her mouth relaxes, trembles the tiniest fraction. Even now, with that deadly grace muted by her injuries, I could watch her for hours. I was wrong, when I thought she couldn’t feel fear. She’s terrified.

She lifts her chin. “What’s your name?”

I have to clear my throat, my voice rasping. “I—told you. I can’t tell you—”

“Romeo,” she interrupts gently. For all her flippant remarks about death, I can see it in her face, her dark eyes, her lips as they press together. She’s afraid. “Come on.”

The silence of this cell is oppressive. It’s separated from the rest of the base enough that you can’t hear the sounds of life—it’s as though this tiny hole in the rock is all there is. This hole, the ratty mattress, and the girl looking death in the face. I know why she’s asking. Because it won’t matter if I tell her.

“Flynn.” It comes out as a croak.

She lets her head rest against the stone at her back, one corner of her mouth lifting a little in a smile.

I try again, and this time my voice is a little steadier. “My name’s Flynn.”

“Sit still, it’s your own fault you have to wear these bandages.”

“Mama, are there ghosts here in November?”

“Where did you get that idea? Did your father tell you that?”

“I saw one. Right before the firecracker.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts, love. You saw the flash from the explosion, that’s all.”

“Then why make firecrackers to scare them away?”

“Because—because our ancestors did. Because lighting the fireworks helps us remember everyone who came before us.”

“If I was a ghost, firecrackers wouldn’t scare me.”

“Why were you playing with them in the first place? You could have been very badly hurt.”

“The boys were doing it. I’m braver than them.”

“Letting yourself get hurt isn’t brave, love. Brave is protecting others from hurt. I’m disappointed in you.”

THE CELL THEY’VE GOT ME
in isn’t that big. Only about two meters by three, and most of the floor space is taken up with a saggy mattress that smells like mildew. The door is steel, no doubt salvaged from commandeered military equipment. When I can make it to my feet I try forcing it, hard enough to make me gasp from the pain in my ribs, but it doesn’t budge.

I spend a while stretching, testing out my muscles. I can’t do much about my abdominals, what with the broken ribs and the gunshot wound, but my arms and neck and legs all still work. Romeo might think I’ve given up, and that’s fine. When they come for me, I’ll be ready for them. Because the last thing people will say about Lee Chase after she’s gone is that she just rolled over and died without a fight.

The bioluminescence—the wispfire—washes the cave with an eerie, soft light. Unsettling, but beautiful too. When I tilt my head back, my vision is flooded with blue-green stars, filling me with a strange, sweeping vertigo. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the stars that these seem brighter, more real. But at least I remember stars. At least I’ve seen the sky.

I jerk my eyes away. I should be trying to find a weapon. The madman McBride was sporting a military-issue Gleidel, no doubt looted from a fallen soldier; if my hands had been free, maybe I could’ve gotten it from him. With one shot, I could’ve gotten justice for the murders he’s committed over the years since the last open rebellion. But since they haven’t fed me yet, I don’t have so much as a spoon to work with. I ease down onto the mattress, too exhausted to think. It’s only then that it occurs to me: mattresses have metal springs.

I let myself have a minute to sit there, unmoving, gathering my strength. Then, muffling the sound of tearing fabric with my body, I rip open the corner of the mattress farthest from the door. Before long my hands are aching, cramping, but the sharp spring I’m trying to work loose is moving more freely. If I bend it back and forth enough, the metal will fatigue to the point where it snaps.

I’m stretching my fingers when I hear footsteps. I slide onto the mattress and put my back to the wall, facing the door. I interlace my fingers behind my head, making my ribs burn in protest.

Nothing to see here, assholes.

“You’re not going to try and kill me through the grate, are you?” Romeo. How familiar that voice is becoming. I wonder if it’ll ever
not
make me long to punch him—though I have to admit it’s better than isolation.

“Can’t make any promises,” I call back. A lantern abruptly casts light into my cell from the grate, and then his face is there. His eyes look so familiar—even more so with the bottom half of his face concealed by the steel of the door. I’ve seen those eyes somewhere before.

“Still alive?”

“For the most part.” I lower my arms carefully. Hurts too much to keep them up. But I don’t really want to give away how badly I’m aching from McBride’s attack. “You can come in, you know.”

“Trying to lure me in so you can hit me over the head and steal the keys?”

I wonder if I’m as irritating to him as he is to me. Maybe it’s easier to feel charitable toward a dead girl walking. Abruptly I’m too tired to make another joke. “Maybe I don’t want my last words with another human being to be spoken through a prison grate.”

The amusement in his eyes dims. His humor is just like mine. A defense. I let mine down, he responds in kind. If only I’d learned it sooner, maybe I could’ve gotten more out of him, information I could use in the future back on base.

What future?

He continues to hesitate, though I hear him take a step closer to the door. “Fine. I brought you some soup anyway, hard to feed you through the grate. Stay back there, will you?”

Part of me finds it funny that he thinks I’m in any shape to do anything to him at all. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The lock slams back and the door screeches outward, awkwardly set on its hinges. Romeo hovers in the doorway, carrying a bowl in one hand and a lantern in the other.

Even knowing his name, I can’t think of him as Flynn. His first name feels too strange, too intimate. I’m not going to be one of those prisoners who starts thinking of her captors as anything other than enemies. This is the guy who’s killed me. Whether he delivers the final blow or not, he’s the one who dragged me here, made it impossible for there to be any other outcome. I have to keep telling myself that.

“So, Romeo.” I lean my head back, waiting for him to make some move farther into the cell. “Why do you keep coming back here to see me? Can’t get enough, huh?”

“Never,” he replies easily enough, stooping to set the bowl down on the floor inside the door. My heart sinks a little, ready to watch him retreat now that he’s delivered the soup. Instead, to my relief, he straightens and leans back against the wall. “I suppose I keep coming back because you’re my responsibility.”

“Your responsibility as in, you’re gonna be the one to bash my head in when the time comes?”

His face shuts down, muscles tensing. He really doesn’t like it when I mention violence—an odd trait for a rebel. “You really are screwed up,” he mutters.

“You’re the one who knocked me out and carried me off into the swamp. If that’s not screwed up, don’t know what is.”

“I don’t know why I’m bothering.” He pushes away from the door, pacing the few steps from one side of the cell to the other.

I look past him at the hallway. It’d only take a few seconds to rush him. A few seconds of agony, with my ribs, with my gash, with my spinning head and rebelling stomach. But then I’d be free. And alive. Just rush him.
Just do it.

But one body can only handle so much abuse, and I can only ask so much of it. Maybe I could have done it when my anger was fresh. But I’m tired. I’m so tired, and there’s no one here to know it if, for one moment, I rest.

“Listen,” he says, coming to a halt between me and the door. “I’m talking to them. I’m trying to convince them it’s not worth military retaliation if they kill you. Some of them are listening to me, at least hesitating.”

“Sure.” I snort. “You’re going to single-handedly convince the whole rebel base
not
to kill such a high-profile prisoner?”

“Yes.” He speaks simply, his eyes on me.

That brings me up short. The smug assurance is gone, the mocking half smile, the arrogant set to his jaw. Instead he looks determined. Resigned. Oddly strong, for someone so goddamn pretty.

Then it hits me.

“Flynn,” I echo. “Flynn—
Cormac
? Orla Cormac’s brother?”

Orla Cormac, leader of the Fianna during the last uprising on Avon, long before my time. Orla Cormac, the woman responsible for organizing and establishing the base, the one who gave the townie criminals a place to hide. Orla Cormac, executed ten years ago by military personnel acting on behalf of the Galactic Council.

Survived by her only remaining family member, a little brother ten years younger. A boy named Flynn, who fled to the swamps to avoid being shipped off to an orphanage off-world.

And I’d recognize Orla’s face anywhere—we all learned about her in basic training. How to stop someone like her from ever happening again. No wonder I thought Romeo looked so familiar.

He’s quiet, watching me put it all together. “A pleasure to meet you, Jubilee Chase,” he murmurs.

I haven’t just been captured by an idiot with a charming grin. I’ve been taken by the only surviving family of Avon’s most infamous martyr. My hand itches, my hip aching with the absence of my gun against it. If I could have one shot, just
one
shot, I could put an end to this revenge cycle right here, right now.

Except if what he’s saying is true, and he’s the only thing stopping McBride from whipping the rebels into all-out war, then killing him would solve nothing.

“I’m talking to them,” Cormac continues when I say nothing. “But you need to give me some time.”

“I’m supposed to believe that you, the brother of the woman we executed, actually want to get me out alive?”

“
You
didn’t kill her,” Cormac replies quietly. “I’m not saying you and I are ever going to be friends, but even if you had signed her death warrant, this isn’t the way toward justice. It didn’t work ten years ago, and it’s not going to work now. I know we need a different way.”