Sanjana hesitates, sympathy in her gaze as her head turns back toward her old friend. Her hesitation lingers, as she clearly wants to ask him about Lilac—she might be fooling her father and the public, but Sanjana knows something’s not right. “Right. Well, then you know what they can do. Cause muscle spasms, pupil dilation, a taste people describe as metallic—”
“Tastes like blood,” mutters Jubilee as Flynn finishes wrapping medical tape around the pad against her palm.
“I’d describe it more like the sensation you get when you lick a battery, but I suppose that’s accurate. Under the right circumstances, they can even cause auditory and visual hallucinations—the whispers Lilac was hearing. And in the most extreme cases, they can control a person’s motor functions completely.”
“But what does this have to do with the EMP grenades?” Tarver’s voice is quick, carrying far more animation than before Sanjana’s arrival.
“Well…the whisper’s abilities all have to do with ‘hacking’ the electrical impulses in the brain. My theory was that a large enough electromagnetic pulse might interfere with that control long enough to sever the connection. I grabbed these from the lab when I got your text—I was working late, that’s the only reason I was even at LRI when the Daedalus went down. I couldn’t get you on the phone and knew you’d be walking straight into…well, that.” She tilts her head toward the opening of our makeshift cave, where moments before we’d been running for our lives.
“You came to find us without knowing whether those things would work?” Flynn’s eyebrows go up, clearly impressed.
“It wasn’t much riskier than staying where I was. Half the trauma center had fallen to those things already, I wasn’t about to stick around and become one of them. I rigged my palm pad in line with the instructions you sent, and I’m not a husk yet, so I’m guessing it works.” Sanjana rubs at her arm, just below the elbow. I’d thought she was wearing some kind of metallic mesh glove, but as she massages the spot where the “glove” begins, I realize what I’m looking at—it’s a cybernetic prosthesis. And the EMP grenade knocked it out just as surely as it knocked out the husks—that explains why she couldn’t afford to test her theory before she found us.
“You gave up the use of your hand to save us?” Sofia’s been quiet during all of this, but her eyes are on the same movement I noticed.
“I owe Tarver a lot,” Sanjana replies quietly. “I’d have lost much more than a hand if it weren’t for him.”
When Tarver doesn’t answer, Jubilee clears her throat. “She’s one of the survivors from the outpost on Patron that Tarver liberated. In a way, she—that outpost—started all of this. Tarver never would’ve been on the Icarus in the first place if that operation hadn’t landed him on a publicity tour to make people feel all warm and fuzzy about the military”
“Full circle,” Sanjana murmurs.
“The EMP, though.” Tarver’s insistent, cutting through the discussion with a grimace, as though they’re discussing his failings rather than his heroism. “It did work. And those people—they’re alive? They’re not hurt?”
“They should be fine,” Sanjana replies. “Theoretically, they’ll wake up with not much more than a bad headache. And whatever injuries they’d already sustained, of course—wait, where are you going?”
Tarver’s moving before Sanjana can finish, reaching out for her satchel. “How many of these things do you have left?” he asks urgently.
“Two more—why?”
“This is how we save Lilac.” Tarver pulls out one of the grenades, a spherical object the size of a tangerine. His eyes flick up toward Sanjana. “The whisper has her, too. She’s the one doing all this—or rather, the whisper’s forcing her to do all this.”
“Tarver—I know. I saw her.” Sanjana reaches out with her good hand, resting it on Tarver’s arm to stop him from getting up. “She’s at LRI Headquarters. Tarver…”
“We use one of them to get through the husks to where she is, then we use the other one on her—free her—then destroy the rift.”
But Sanjana’s shaking her head, pain written clearly across her features. “Tarver, stop—no. Those others, they’re just being controlled. Like puppets, or androids all running on the same programming. Lilac…” She swallows, some of that pain shifting into fear. “Lilac is different. I saw her, just before I got out. She’s not being controlled, some mindless shell.…She is that entity. I saw what she could do. I don’t know how it’s possible, or why it is, but she’s different, and that entity is wearing her like a costume. I don’t think that EMP will have any more effect on her than it would on you or me. That thing’s a part of her.”
Tarver’s eyes stay on her for a long, tense moment, his hand tightening around the grenade. Then he lets it fall back into her satchel, shoulders sagging as he sinks back down onto the cracked floor. “What about the shields? If we got one of those close enough to her, for long enough…?”