This Shattered World (37 page)

The rest of Lilac LaRoux’s message is talk of parties again, rambling on as though fashion is her only care in the world. Jubilee lets her hand drop, the page resting against her thigh.

“Why is he doing this?” I can’t think, the background hum of the engines shattering my thoughts. “What does this man have against Avon?”

“It’s not Avon itself,” Jubilee says quietly, lifting her eyes to meet mine. “Avon’s convenient. Far away from the galactic center, too young for anyone to be watching it. An endless war, providing an endless supply of test subjects.”

“Test subjects for
what
?” Frustration makes my voice crack. “What good does it do him to make people snap with the Fury?”

“Lilac said it was a side effect of whatever he’s doing. Maybe he just hasn’t perfected it yet.” She draws a shaky breath. “I didn’t have time to tell you before, but something happened to Commander Towers, just before—just before everything with Molly.”

The raw fear in Jubilee’s eyes makes my mouth go dry, forcing me to clear my throat. “She snapped?”

She shakes her head. “No, it was something else. She was telling me that LaRoux Industries has been here for years, studying us. They told her and her predecessors that they were studying the Fury, but…” She looks down at her hands, and I know she’s thinking of the bloodstains I washed clean. “She didn’t snap, didn’t attack me. She just
stopped
. Went back to work. Like something just…took over.”

“Like something was controlling her?” I’m trying not to acknowledge the chill running through me, my conversation with Sofia coming back to me. “My friend in town, the one who helped hide me—Davin Quinn’s daughter. She said her father was vague for a week before the bombing, distracted. You said the Fury is always quick and brutal, but that’s not what happened to Davin, who would have needed time to make and plant a bomb. Or Commander Towers. Or—” My voice gives out.

Jubilee’s nodding, her face ashen in the glow of the control panels. “Or me.” The background hum of the engines and life support is thick and heavy. Jubilee’s voice is quiet, as though to speak the words too loudly might make them true. “Maybe Davin was a test run. Maybe Towers too, to stop her from revealing his secrets. But what wouldn’t a man like Roderick LaRoux do to wield the ability to control people’s minds?”

Sometimes the girl dreams in colors. Her classes at school are the yellow of butter and flower petals, and her books are the rich blue of the deep oceans she reads about. Her mother is warm red-orange, and her father is a lighter peach that highlights it, mingles with it to turn them both the color of sunrise.

But her dreams always fade, and she can never tell what color the orphanage is, or the training base on Paradisa, or the bar where she goes when she’s off duty. She exists there in a colorless world—not black and white, but a muted, faded gray. She doesn’t even know to miss the colors, as though someone has reached into her thoughts and pulled out the memory of what color is.

The girl knows that the boy is looking for her. And when he finds her, his eyes will be green, and she’ll remember.

“NO SIGN OF EIGHT-ONE-NINE YET
. Scans continuing. Traffic control on alert, orders to fire at will. Traitors on board.” The comms chatter is all about us. I’ve set the comms headset floating a few inches from my face, which is buried in my hands. With a groan, I thumb the mute button, and we’re left in abrupt silence. The heat shields are all still closed, and without the vastness of space around us, I can almost imagine us back in Flynn’s hideout, trying to wait out our pursuers.

I don’t know what to do next, and that’s killing me. I lift my head to see Flynn watching me, his expression unreadable. “I’m so sorry, Flynn. I never meant to take you away from your home.”

He shifts in his seat, running a finger underneath one of the straps of his harness. “It was my call,” he says quietly. “I could have tried to run. I chose to come.”

He’s as tense as I am, maybe even more so, but it’s so hard to reconcile that with the serenity of weightlessness. His faux-blond hair is floating out away from his head. He’s wearing a worn, much-mended, and too-large shirt his friend in town must’ve found for him, to help him blend in. He looks nothing like the Romeo who dragged me off the base, nothing like the Cormac who threw himself between his own people and me. It’s like that guy’s gone, and I killed him.

“I’m sorry anyway,” I mutter. “God, why is everything so fucked up?”

“Because we make one hell of a team,” Flynn replies lightly, his voice a strained tease. I notice his hands are gripping his armrests, and as he shifts I can see the faint outlines of dampness beneath his palms against the plastic.

It’s with a jolt I remember he’s never been in space before—he’s never even been off the ground before. And he’s trying to relax
me
.

“Hey,” I try, leaning out as far as my harness will allow me, my hair drifting after me in slow motion. “Do you want to see the stars?”

He blinks, his false bravado falling away as he stares wide-eyed back at me. “The—the what?”

“The stars.” I gesture to the covered viewport in front of us. I could tell him that this might be his last chance to see them, but he already knows that. “They’re right out there. Normally we keep the heat shields on, but there’s no actual need for them out here, only when we’re going through atmo. Want to take a peek?”

He swallows, fingers tightening around his armrests. I want to tell him he’s got nothing to be afraid of—for now, we’re safer up here than we ever were on Avon’s surface. But I know telling him will do no good, because it’s not a rational fear. Even I feel a surge of primal adrenaline when I get up here, every time.

It’s like underwater diving, part of the training all soldiers get during basic. The moment the water closes over your head and you take your first breath through the respirator—your body tells you it can’t breathe, that it’s falling, that you’re going to die. And no amount of logic can stop the feeling, you just have to let it course through you and sweep on past. You have to embrace it. I hold my own breath, watching Flynn.

Slowly, he nods.

I lean forward in my harness and reach for the shield controls, hitting the release button with a light thunk. There’s the hum of the shield mechanism, and then the thick sheet of metal dilates outward—and the sky is full of stars.

The air leaves Flynn’s lungs in an audible rush, and he presses himself back in his seat. I look over to see his eyes flicking this way and that, and I reach out to grab his hand. His fingers wrap around mine with the grip of a drowning man.

“Hey, I’m right here.” I shift my hand so I can weave my fingers through his.

Just let the water close over your head and trust your respirator. Don’t fight it.

Gradually his breathing slows and his painful grip eases. I watch his face as the fear fades and his eyes focus. There’s nothing but stars as far as the eye can see, except for the sliver of Avon at the far left, little more than the gentle blue-gray glow of its constant cloud cover. It’s enough to illuminate Flynn’s features, though, as he leans forward against his harness.

He can’t take his eyes off the stars, but I can’t take mine off his face. I can see the stars reflected in his eyes, can see the wonder of it in the way his mouth opens but no sound comes out. His eyes, his face—they’re beautiful.

My eyes start to burn, and abruptly I let go of his hand. Clearing my throat and ducking my head so I can fumble with my harness, I manage hoarsely, “You hungry? We might not get a chance to eat later, and there should be an emergency pack or two somewhere.”

Flynn has to hunt for his voice too, but when he murmurs, “Sure,” he gives no sign that he noticed my inexplicable surge of emotion. Maybe I’m just remembering the first time I saw the stars from space. That’s what I fight to tell myself, anyway.

I shove the straps of my harness away and let myself rise out of my seat, using the handles to gradually walk myself back into the small cargo area. On the big passenger ships and space stations, they use rotating rings to generate gravity, but on the shuttles, we’re stuck dealing with weightlessness.

I turn back to find Flynn watching me, studying the way I move in zero-g. I reach the lockers and hook my toes under the handles on the wall there. From his perspective it’ll look like I’m standing on the wall, but from mine, the lockers are now sunk into the floor and much easier to access.

There’s a full emergency pack in the first locker I try. Two of them, I discover as I pull the first out. “It’ll be freeze-dried rations,” I warn him. “You can come back, if you move slowly. Tiny movements go a long way. Don’t overcompensate if you find yourself moving in an unexpected direction, just let your hand or foot graze something lightly to correct it.”

Flynn unbuckles his harness and pulls himself along with exaggerated care, his face a study in concentration. “Just like poling a boat through the swamp.” His grip slips a little, and I reach out with my free hand to grab a handful of his jacket to steady him. “Well, mostly.”

He’s doing what all the new trainees do, trying to keep the “floor” of the shuttle below his feet, though there’s no gravity to hold him there. I want to laugh at him—but I’m forced to admit he’s doing okay.

I toss him one of the ration bars and then take a few bites of one myself before shoving the rest into my back pocket for later. Flynn looks as worn down as I feel, exhausted and restless at the same time. I know we need to find a way back down to the surface, but now that I’m able to breathe, I’m realizing how tired I am.

I have to keep moving or I’ll never get up again. “Wonder what else we’ve got up here,” I muse aloud, reaching for the next locker over and finding more of the emergency packs, all with their seals unbroken. “Each of these is designed to keep a pair of soldiers alive for a fortnight, with the ship’s H
₂
O recyc system.”

“That’s months’ worth of food,” Flynn replies, finishing his bar and popping open a few more lockers, all stuffed with the emergency packs. “Or even years.”

“There are dozens of them.” My mind is turning over slowly, inching around an idea, unwilling to look at it directly. “It must’ve been set up for a transport mission, so it could take a shuttle full of soldiers somewhere remote.”

Flynn’s turned to the other side of the shuttle to see if there are more of the packs in the rest of the lockers. But I can’t stop looking at the one I opened. Months’ worth of food for a platoon.

Years, for two people.

“We could just go.” The words come out in a whisper, and as I say them, I find I can’t look up, can’t see Flynn’s face. I can’t bear to know his reaction.

Still, I can feel him turn toward me. I can feel the air move as he makes his way back. He ducks his head to try to see my face, but I still can’t look at him. No matter what he’s about to say, I don’t want to hear it. Hearing it will make what I’ve just said real.

“Never mind,” I say sharply. “I was just kidding.”

But I wasn’t.

“Jubilee.” He’s got one hand wrapped around a handle to steady himself, but the other reaches for me, his fingers tracing the outline of my face.

“Just drop it, Flynn. Forget it.”

He’s silent for a few seconds, speaking only with the weight of his eyes on me. I can feel my face flushing hot with shame, with guilt, under his gaze. “Where do you want to go?” he asks finally, a smile in his voice.

I glance at him and then away again. “What do you mean?”

“Where do we go? Anywhere in the galaxy. Where does Jubilee Chase want to live?”

This time I look at him longer, properly, scanning his face for some sign of what he’s thinking—some judgment, some hint of blame or guilt that I’m standing there, talking about leaving his people and mine, about abandoning our whole lives. About running away. But he only smiles at me, his fingers sliding from my cheek to twine around a floating lock of hair, making it spiral slowly in midair.

“Not Corinth,” I say finally, my voice emerging somewhat hoarsely. “Too busy, too many people. But not any place too new either. Maybe Patron, I liked it there. Haven’t been any rebellions for quite a while now.”

He grins, his smile easing away some of my horror at my own impulse. “As long as there’s a sky there, like this one, I’m game.”

“It’s not quite like this, the air gets in the way. But we could find ourselves a mountaintop where the air’s nice and thin, and it’d be awfully close.”

Flynn shifts, sliding his foot more firmly under the handle bracing him. “And what does Jubilee Chase want to do with her life, if she’s not hunting down rebel leaders and skinning them alive?”

“I don’t know. Something extremely boring. I could go to night school and learn dentistry.”

That makes him laugh, a quick burst of a chuckle that makes my own lips curve. “Oh, God no. No way could you be a dentist.”

“I could! I’d be a damn good dentist.”

“Lots of call for dentistry on deserted mountaintops, eh?” He’s watching my face, eyes tracing over my features like he’s trying to memorize them.