This Shattered World (44 page)

THIS FEELS LIKE THE TIME
Sean shoved me off the top of the lookout rock when we were eleven. Every bone in my body aches, pain lancing along my ribs as I inhale. I grope my way toward consciousness, white lights exploding against my closed eyelids.

Then there’s something touching my fingers—it’s another hand, squeezing mine. “Flynn?” Jubilee’s voice is ragged. I open my eyes to find myself in a dimly lit room with a domed roof. What light there is comes from the hallway outside. I squeeze her hand in return and hear her gasp a sob as I concentrate on breathing, and wait to understand.

Between one blink and the next, I remember the passengers in my mind, and the conversations between myself and Jubilee that I watched through a gauzy veil, too slow and stupid to remember how to reach out and speak my own thoughts. I remember the wrench of separation, and what it was to die, and my breath catches in my throat.

I blink again, and as I manage to focus my gaze, our eyes meet. For an instant I see it all in her eyes as she looks back at me—the pain of bearing witness, the last vestiges of her fear. Her sadness. Her hand shakes as she reaches out to touch my face, to see the way her touch affects me; her relief swells, and when I try to smile at her, a weak fragment of a thing, she lets out a harsh, wrenching sound, head dropping.

She stays that way for a heartbeat, letting out a breath. When she lifts her head again, I see her soldier’s mask slide back into place, despite the tears still wet on her cheeks. But there’s something different about that shield now, a warmth I can’t identify until she looks at me once more, and I realize her heart is still in her eyes. “Can you move?” She’s speaking as she climbs to her feet, taking my hand to pull me with her. “There are monitors everywhere—LaRoux will know what we’ve done.”

“The comms tower.” I stagger upright, keeping hold of her hand. “Like Lilac said, a galaxy of witnesses, so he can’t destroy Avon. So he can’t silence us.”

“The military and the Fianna are out there.” She shakes her head, gasping the words as she shoves the gun she took from the whisper into her holster.

“A broadcast is the only way to keep Avon safe.” I squeeze her hand, knowing what I’m asking. The odds that both of us will make it through the chaos of open war unscathed are almost impossible. “If I can make our people hear me too, maybe we can end this.”

Jubilee gazes back at me for a long moment, then tightens her hand in mine. “Then let’s go.”

The facility is chaotic. Mercenaries freed from their trances stagger from room to corridor, trying to understand where they are and why. Scientists and researchers in white coats lie still where they fell, though I can’t tell if they’re dead or unconscious. Perhaps it’s LaRoux’s last fail-safe, part of whatever he did to their brains, a way to make sure they couldn’t talk.

We work our way up staircases and through hallways, climbing to the surface. We’re just two more bodies in the chaos, and I keep my head down, hand wrapped tight around Jubilee’s as we race down the hallway. With every step my energy’s returning, hope surging through me. The fight’s not over yet. My head’s clear, my lungs are working more easily. By the time we reach the door to the compound, I feel better than I have since we climbed onto the shuttle to head for the spaceport. I feel alive. Now all we have to do is stay that way.

Outside it’s still dark, dawn at least an hour away. There’s a faint light to the east, enough to make out the silhouettes of people running everywhere. This facility, hidden until now, has become a battlefield. We stare out of the open doorway until, with a low cry of warning, Jubilee yanks at my arm to pull me down to the floor. Half an instant later, a laser ricochets off the metal door frame inches from where I’d been standing.

The muddy smell of swamp seeps in to overtake the filtered air of the facility, carrying with it the acrid stench of burning from laser and gunfire. Somewhere on the other side of our building I can hear McBride roaring like a man possessed, bellowing orders. Through the crack in the doorway, I see Pól and Liam O’Mara dash past, faces visible for an instant in a flash of light as half a dozen Gleidels go off at once. My heart clenches, but neither of them stumbles.

Jubilee’s face lights in a flash of laser-fire. Her eyes are wide, gaze scanning the battlefield like she’s trying to find openings or search for patterns. “This is suicide,” she breathes.

I scan the chaos as her soldiers gain ground against my Fianna, breaching the fence here and there and pinning them against the building we’re hiding in. I trace the line of the fence until I reach the comms tower, studying it through the muted light. There’s a door at the base, but it’s closed, and for all I know it’s locked. There’s a maintenance ladder running up the outside of the building, though; rusted, rickety, but it looks like I could climb it, maybe.

“We have to try.” I flinch as one of the Fianna goes down with a scream. I don’t recognize the voice, but my gut clenches at the sound. “Can you get me to the tower? If you can hold them off, I think I can still stop this.” The guns are roaring outside, lasers screaming and lighting up the compound in quick flashes. More every second, louder every minute. I glance at Jubilee as her eyes sweep across the battle, taking stock of all that’s happening. I can see her mind working, trying to figure out how fast we can run, whether we’ve got any chance of making it before someone shoots us. She draws in two long, slow breaths, easing her gun out of its holster. I hope her aim is good enough to avoid killing anybody—neither of these armies is our enemy anymore. Then she nods, saying nothing, but there’s determination in her gaze.

Sheltering behind the cover of the doorway, I reach for her to tug her in closer, until we’re a hand’s breadth apart. Beyond, I can hear the shriek of Gleidels and the crack of the Fianna’s ancient weaponry—then the ground beneath our feet shudders with the force of an explosion. Heart thumping, I look across at Jubilee, and despite the low light, I can see the lines of her face—her lips, her cheekbones, the swoop of her lashes. “Hey,” I murmur. I don’t know what I want to say, but I have to say it before we walk onto a battlefield, into the path of two armies that both want us dead.

“Hey,” she whispers back, close enough that I can see the tiny shifts in her eyes as she studies me. She’s tracing out the lines of my face, just as I’m drinking in hers, memorizing her features. “Flynn—I’m glad you ruined me.”

Her voice stabs my heart, because I recognize that tone. I’ve heard it before. “Don’t start with the good-byes,” I say. Her lips twitch in a tiny smile, and I drink it in. My voice shrinks to a breath as I remember what she said when I was only a passenger in my own body, when the whisper asked if she loved me. “I want us to have the chance to find out, too.”

She recognizes her own words echoing back to her, and her lips quiver, her eyes fixed on mine.

I brace my shaking hands against the floor. “Ready?”

She nods, gaze swinging away to lock on the comms tower. “Ready.”

We burst from the doorway and run.

The girl pushes through the last of the stars, scattering them into glittering dust that settles on her skin and glimmers as it sinks through the water. All that’s left is darkness, and there’s no sign of the November ghost.

The green-eyed boy reaches out and touches her cheek, his movements slow and deliberate in weightlessness, in water. The light from above filters down through the water, dim and green, illuminating his face.

Then he looks up—and when the girl follows his gaze, she sees something shining, up above water, glimmering just out of reach. She gasps, and swims for the surface.

WE SPRINT THROUGH THE PREDAWN GLOOM,
making straight for the comms tower, ducking low as bullets fly over our heads. We don’t bother to dodge or weave; there’s so much gunfire in the air, it’d be pointless. Trying desperately not to slip on the marshy ground, I strain my eyes in the darkness, but the world is full of shadowy silhouettes—soldiers repositioning themselves and trying to gain ground, the Fianna darting in and out of the battle to move wounded.

We reach the comms tower, and I smash into the door an instant before Flynn. We flatten ourselves into the shelter of the door frame, and he grabs at the handle, twisting and yanking it with white-knuckled urgency. It doesn’t give.

Flynn lowers his head to shout in my ear. “We have to climb!” He grabs at the rusted maintenance ladder to the right of the door and ducks out of the doorway a beat ahead of me to start climbing. My muscles scream a protest as I follow, grabbing the rungs to pull myself up after him.

Four or five meters up, something invisible slams my shoulder against the tower. I try to force my hands to grip the ladder harder before I’m knocked free, but only my left hand tightens. There’s a spatter of blood on the cement wall that wasn’t there before, and I stare at it, uncomprehending. My right hand’s letting go, fingers unpeeling from the bar in slow motion. I feel nothing, no pain, only confusion when I realize I’m falling.

I hit the ground, the impact driving the air from my lungs just before the pain explodes, screaming up my right arm to my shoulder, down my elbow, fire erupting inside my veins.

Her November ghost is waiting for her when she reaches the surface. It lights the way for her as she climbs back into the boat and stands there, dripping, strands of stardust in her hair. She can’t wait any longer, words tumbling out of her.

Where have you been?

The November ghost is no more than a whisper, but when the girl closes her eyes, she can hear it:

Looking for you.

I’M SCRAMBLING, BULLETS PINGING OFF
the ladder around me, when suddenly Jubilee’s not below me anymore. I nearly lose my grip, grabbing for a rung as I twist to see where she’s gone, fear singing through me.

She’s on the ground.
Oh God, she’s on the ground.
And even in the dark, even in the mud, I can see she’s been hit, blood flowering out across her arm.

“Jubilee!” My scream is hoarse, barely audible even to me over the gunfire. My muscles start moving, sending me sliding and stumbling back down the ladder; I can’t see anything other than her body.

Then she lifts her head, and my heart nearly gives out with relief. She starts to move, getting her left elbow underneath her, then falling back into the mud once more. It takes me a long moment to even realize her mouth is moving, and I can’t hear what she says as she stares up at me, but I can read the word on her lips.
Go.

I hang from the framework, helpless—hope above me, my heart on the ground below. Then she screams at me again, and this time I can hear her shout.
“GO!”
I can see what the effort costs her.

So I do the only thing I can. I force my arms and legs to move against the frantic orders my heart wants to issue, and I scramble up, grabbing each handhold and hauling, muddy feet sliding off rungs and finding new purchase. There’s a window at the top—it serves as a lookout tower too, perhaps—and I turn my face away and smash my fist against the pane. It shatters, and I smash out the pieces, making a hole I can scramble through, landing in a muddy heap on the floor of the empty tower.