This Shattered World (18 page)

She blinks at me once, and then comes alert faster than seems possible. She clears her throat. “He’s dead. The bomber. Died in the blast.”

I force myself to breathe in slowly. The air reeks of disinfectant, sharp on my tongue. My mind seizes on that fact, putting off learning what I don’t want to know. It could be anyone from our camp. I don’t want it to be anyone I know, not even the worst of them. “Was it—” My voice is still a rusty whisper.

“McBride?” Jubilee interrupts, saving me from speaking further. “No. There weren’t any usable fingerprints left, but the dental records say it’s a man called Davin Quinn. There aren’t any arrests on his record, not so much as a fine. He lived in town.”

She pauses to let me absorb the significance of that. In town. Not a rebel, not a soldier with the Fury. And I knew Davin Quinn, I know his daughter. He’s not even a sympathizer. He’s nothing to do with us.

She continues, frustrated and bewildered. “He was only in the system because he got a tooth pulled a couple of years ago. How did your people drag a man like him into this?”

It’s a ridiculous reaction, but I want to laugh, disbelief still crashing over me. “We didn’t. Quinn was about as likely to blow up this place as you. He must have had other business on the base. It wasn’t him.”

“It was.” She leans in closer, keeping her voice down so the others in the ward won’t overhear us. “He had the detonator on him. We’ve got security footage showing him talking to a girl as if nothing was wrong, then turning around and walking into the barracks a minute or two before the blast.”

“Then somebody made him do it,” I tell her. “He has a daughter my age.” Sofia Quinn’s face as it was when we were children swims up in my mind too, smiling in my memory. I wonder if she’s the girl he was talking to on the security footage. “He wouldn’t do this to her, Jubilee. He had no reason.”

“Mori had no reason to fire on a civilian in the town,” she says quietly.

“But that was the Fury,” I press. “This is completely different. Your soldier was an off-worlder; Davin was born here. No native’s ever snapped from the Fury.” But something icy stirs inside me at the thought. I never doubted our belief that the Fury was a trodairí excuse until Jubilee looked me in the eye and swore it was real. But Davin Quinn was a man of peace, a man with no battle to fight and a daughter to live for.

“You’re right about one thing. This wasn’t the Fury. When our people snap, they grab the nearest knife and stab their friends and anyone else near them, Cormac. They don’t build bombs.” Her voice comes quick and sharp, and it’s only after glancing over her shoulder at my unconscious roommates that she takes a breath and quiets again. “Building a bomb takes time, planning, deliberation. The Fury is…savage. Brutal. As quick to strike as it is to pass again.”

I shake my head, gritting my teeth. “It wasn’t
him
. I’ll swear it on my life. Something, or someone, must have made him do it.”

Jubilee gives a frustrated sigh, scrubbing her hand across her face. I can see she’s troubled; it gives me hope that perhaps she believes me, perhaps there is something more to what happened on the base tonight. But then I realize she’s watching me, her expression tight. I’m coming to see her better, to understand the nuances of her closed-off face—and I know this isn’t the only news she came here to share.

“Just tell me.” My voice won’t come out right. The smoke I inhaled has turned it to a raspy parody of itself.

Her brown eyes fix on mine for a brief moment before flitting up to focus on the wall beyond my head, expression registering a fleeting but intense struggle. I’m afraid speaking will cause her to shut down again, so I wait, and let her fight her battle alone.

“You have to understand, Cormac. You’re my enemy. I don’t share information with rebels.” She unzips her combat suit enough to reach into her pocket, hand emerging with her fingers curled tightly around something. “I was focused on escaping back to base—” Her voice breaks off abruptly, and instead she just holds her hand out to me.

I reach out automatically, and she drops the object into my palm.

“I found it when you brought me to the facility out to the east.” She won’t look at me. “The one that wasn’t there.”

I ought to be furious—I ought to want to punish her somehow for deceiving me. But I’m holding proof I’m not insane, and I can’t find the anger anywhere. It’s an ident chip, a little like the kind the soldiers carry embedded in their gear. Proof, surely, that
something
was there at one point. One side is covered with foil circuitry, and I turn it over in my hands, taking in the bar code on the other side. I wish I had a scanner. “Is this military?”

She shakes her head. “Ours are newer. This one’s old, maybe twenty years out of date.”

“You’re telling me I somehow stumbled across a twenty-year-old facility that vanished a few hours later?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs, watching me. “But I will say that while the older models don’t carry as much information, they’re more easily encrypted. This one would require a very specific scanner, one we don’t even carry anymore. There’s no way to scan this and figure out whose it is.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because this is what you’ve been looking for. Proof. And I’ve been hiding it from you.”

I try to read her face, but she’s watching the wall now and I can’t meet her eyes to decipher her expression. “Jubilee—”

She interrupts me with a shake of her head. “I saw something there; a flash, a vision, like the memory of the facility that used to be there. I don’t know how, if it’s gone now, but I did.”

Hardly able to believe what I’m hearing, I drop my eyes to the chip, turning it over and over in my hands like I might be able to divine a new clue from it, some explanation for what’s going on or where to look next.

“Wait—stop!” Jubilee lurches from her chair, her fingers closing around my wrist. I freeze, but her eyes are on the chip. “Turn it over.”

I do as she says, and her fingers guide me, turning my hand just so. I see a flash as the foil catches the light. She makes a small noise of shock and then leans down so she can bring her line of sight alongside mine.

For a moment I’m utterly distracted by her closeness, despite the soot and the smell of burned chemicals. Then she’s angling the chip so I can see what she saw, and all thoughts of her face next to mine vanish.

There’s a letter hidden in the circuitry, visible only when the light hits the reflective surfaces the right way. It’s a
V
, and we both stare at it, trying to figure out what it means.

“VeriCorp?” I whisper. But the logo for VeriCorp is both a
V
and a
C
, and they’re not a big enough corporation to have their own ident chip manufacturers.

Jubilee’s breath catches, and she reaches out to take the chip from me. Before I can protest, she’s twisting it in her fingers—turning it upside down. Abruptly, it stops being a
V
. There’s not a soul in the galaxy who doesn’t know that symbol. A lambda.

“LaRoux Industries.”

I want to ask her what it means and whether the military knows something we don’t about why LaRoux Industries, which has no terraforming stake here on Avon, would have constructed a secret base out in the middle of the swamps. But I can tell from her expression she’s as confused as I am.

Before I can speak, the com-patch on the sleeve of her combat suit buzzes to life. “Security to Captain Chase,” it hisses, Avon’s interference rendering the voice unidentifiable.

Jubilee looks at me for a split second and then turns away, but not before I see the alarm in her gaze. She lifts a hand to the patch, activating it from her end. “Chase here,” she replies, ducking her head a little to bring her voice closer to the receiver.

“Can you report to the security office, sir?” It’s not an order, but a request; I can see her shoulders relax a little.

“I’m a little busy,” she replies, tweaking the blinds over the window with two fingers so she can peer out at the base outside. “Is it more info on the bomber?”

“No rush, but we could use your eyes, since you were there. We’ve got the guy who abducted you from Molly’s.”

The words wash over me like fire, and I start coughing, my abused lungs refusing to cooperate. Jubilee whirls, her gaze landing on mine as though she half expects me to have vanished into military custody. She waits until I’ve got my cough under control before thumbing the com-patch again.

“Say again?” she says, her voice as cool as stone. “Some interference on my end.”

“The kidnapper from the bar,” comes the voice. “It took a lot of combing through security footage, but we’ve got some now that’ll help us identify him.”

Jubilee’s confusion is draining away into dread. “And? Who is he?”

“Well, the footage is pretty grainy, there’s a lot of static interference. We’re trying to clean it up now.”

“You stay on the bombing,” Jubilee snaps. She swallows, and when she speaks again, her voice is calmer. “Whoever the guy in Molly’s was, he’s long gone by now. We need to know more about the attack on the base, and whether Davin Quinn was acting alone.”

“Well, sir,” the voice on the com-patch replies slowly, “I’ve got most of my people on the bombing, but for base security we’ll need to know this guy’s face so we can identify him if he tries again.”

Jubilee’s gaze sweeps across the room’s other few occupants, unconscious, unresponsive. “Okay,” she replies. “I’ll come by later and see if I can help.” She lets her arm fall back down to her side, eyes returning to meet mine as the com-patch goes silent.

All I can do is stare at her, the bottom falling out of my stomach. The only sounds are the gentle beeping of the monitors and the muffled sounds of the base outside—vehicle engines, snatches of conversation, the whine of a shuttle landing in a launch bay on the other side of the base. It’s impossible to forget where I am: in the middle of enemy territory.

With an effort, I wrench myself out of my exhausted stupor and shove the blankets aside. Then I’m trying to sit up, pushing through the dizziness and the nausea. I’ve got to run.

“Hey—stop that!” Jubilee reaches out, grasping my shoulders and pushing me back down. Right now, she’s a lot stronger than I am, and I’ve got no choice but to let her. “If they were on their way here to grab you, do you think I’d be sitting here looking at you? I’d be dragging your ass out the back door by now.”

I can’t answer, my throat catching and drawing up a racking cough.

Jubilee waits it out with her hands still on my shoulders, bracing me. When I’m finished, she pulls them back slowly. “We’ve got a little time. Your lungs won’t take a long trek through the swamp.”

I swallow, making sure my throat’s clear before I try speaking this time. “How long do I have?”

“I don’t know.” Jubilee paces a few steps to the foot of the bed. “Yesterday it would’ve been top priority, but now they’re a little distracted. You can thank your man Quinn for that. I need to think.” She closes her eyes, lips pressed tightly together.

“They’re going to figure out that you haven’t told them everything.”

Jubilee’s jaw tightens, and she makes a slicing motion with her hand. “For now they believe Commander Towers that it was trauma, and that’s why I couldn’t remember your face despite talking to you for a good ten minutes before you dragged me out of there.”

“Tell them you got hit in the head—tell them it’s amnesia or something. Be careful. If I lose you—”

“I know.” Her voice is clipped, bitter. She hates herself for being here. For helping me. “You lose me, you lose your direct line into the military’s plans.”

My brain can’t get past the
if I lose you
. I want to correct her, but I haven’t worked out yet what the real end of that sentence is.

She sucks in a bracing breath. “Listen. I’m going to get back out there, but if I’m not back by morning, you need to find a way out of here on your own. Steal a boat if you have to.”

I can’t read what’s going on behind her calm expression. But an edge in her voice is ringing an alarm. “What do you mean, if you’re not back?”

She frowns, but doesn’t skip a beat. “They’re probably going to put me on duty soon. If it’s the dawn patrol, I won’t make it back, and you’ll have to get out on your own. What is it your people say? Clear skies.”

Those words, coming from her, slice at my heart. She doesn’t give me a chance to reply and stalks toward the door. She pauses, bracing one arm against the door frame.

“Why couldn’t you have just stayed away?”

“We told you,” says the girl’s father, “we weren’t interested.”

“Noah,” whispers the girl’s mother, “look at their eyes.”

“Last chance,” says the man with the marble eyes. The girl is watching through the crack in the counter and sees him lift his tunic to reveal a gun tucked into his pants. “Hate to go back and tell everyone you’re a Lambda family.”

“We don’t support either side,” says her mother. “We want no part of this.”

The girl moves until she can see her parents instead, standing together in the front hall of the shop. “Please,” says her father. “We have a daughter.”

The world slows to a crawl. The girl hears the telltale click of the pistol being cocked, and her training kicks in. She dashes from the space under the counter; she pulls out her Gleidel; she throws herself between the gunman and her parents; she takes out two of them before the lead gunman can aim her way. It only takes a few seconds before she’s got them all on the floor, disarmed, harmless.

Except it didn’t happen like that.