“Dr. Rao told us where you were headed when we picked her up,” Mori replies, turning to take in the fight underway further up the courtyard. She stands at the ready, Gleidel raised, and lifts her voice to shout over the laser shrieks of the guns, the guttural buzzing of the Tasers. The husks are moving more quickly now, perhaps as Lilac’s whisper turns its attention to the source of the disturbance. “Rao’s got a bunch of LRI’s people with her—most of them are pretty damn horrified to learn what their boss has been up to.” Mori pauses, catching her breath. “And the blonde up there was watching networks, trying to get a handle on where the Knave ended up. She found us, once she found him. She’s got a bunch of hackers I don’t think ever saw daylight before, and the Corinth Against Tyranny conspiracy crowd, and those guys are pissed.” Mori shakes her head, but she’s grinning—despite the wreckage around us, some part of her is enjoying this. “Guess they finally found somebody who really is out to get them.”
But as Jubilee’s opening her mouth to reply, a new wave of husks appear to our right and to our left, shuffling into view with a grim determination, yanking us back to reality. There must be hundreds of them. The brief hope that had taken root in my chest flickers, then dies. There’s no way Mori and her crew can hold this back.
“Go, they’re in there,” Mori barks. “We’ll buy you as much time as we can. Good hunting.”
Jubilee grasps for her hand, clasping it in both of hers for an instant before Mori lets go and turns back to the fight.
From a distance, our entry point into the Daedalus looks like a crack only barely wide enough for someone to slip through, but the scale of this thing defies understanding—the gash in its side is wide enough for us to run through without needing to duck. We have to climb past several layers crushed into unrecognizability before we find an area clear enough to move through, as the sounds of the battle fade behind us. Then it’s quiet, and we’re in our own, silent world once more.
The gash opens up onto a maintenance deck, sparsely furnished. The metal grid of the floor is tilted at a steep angle, forcing us to brace our feet in the corners and cling to the window frames lining the wall as we inch our way inside.
The ship is so vast that under normal circumstances, we’d have no hope of finding Lilac and the rift inside it—but even the husks wouldn’t have been able to move the massive rift far inside, over this kind of terrain. They have to be close.
My nose, half-numb from the stench of burning chemicals, pricks as we locate a staircase leading down further into the wreck and a new odor assaults me. I choke, reeling back a step and running into Flynn, who grunts and grabs onto a railing to keep from slipping.
“What is that?” I mutter, lifting the edge of my T-shirt to cover my nose.
Flynn just stares at me, equally baffled—but Jubilee shakes her head, her eyes grim. “Blood,” she says shortly.
It’s only then that I see a heap of dark something at the foot of the staircase above; it’s only then that I see a flash of pink, and realize it’s a high-heeled shoe, and that the heap is a pile of bodies. Visions of the colorful passengers dancing in the ballroom loom up in my mind’s eye, and I have to clamp my lips together to keep from retching.
A hand, I don’t know whose, wraps around my wrist, drawing me down the stairs and away from the bodies. I try to breathe through my mouth, and keep moving.
The staircase leads to a lush carpeted hall I do recognize from when I arrived with Gideon. The carpet muffles our footsteps, making the silence complete. The husks are mostly outside the wreck, held there by Mori, Mae, Sanjana, and their allies, but we stumble across them here and there inside. Each time we pull back, duck for cover. Lilac must know we’re inside the ship somewhere, but if we can avoid a husk seeing us and reporting back, we’ll still have some element of surprise. The way they’re moving, in concentric, tightening circles, we’re pretty sure the rift is below us somewhere. But it’s not until a light blooms in the darkness, so faint I feel my eyes must be playing tricks on me, that I know our guess was right.
The light flickers, unsteady, but it shines blue against a tangle of metal protruding through the wall. In a heartbeat I’m back inside LRI Headquarters, watching the rift spring to life in front of my eyes.
“We’re close,” I breathe, touching the arm of the person nearest me—Flynn, it turns out—and gesturing toward the light. “This way.” We can only hope our friends outside can hold off Lilac’s army a little longer.
The hall leads around a corner and into what would’ve once been a beautiful foyer, the light growing stronger. We’re forced to scramble to keep our feet on the once-polished marble floor, using the giant jagged cracks in its surface to find purchase as we make our way across to the half-collapsed archway at the opposite end. We pull ourselves up against it, and in the faint blue glow emanating from the space beyond, I pause to scan the features of my companions.
No one’s thought of a way to save Lilac. Jubilee’s face looks ashen, even more so in the blue light.
She doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, fixing her gaze on the wall behind me, where the real wood paneling has buckled and splintered in a line running from floor to ceiling. “He’ll never forgive me,” she whispers, pressing the palm of her hand flat against her leg, as if willing herself to reach for her weapon, and being unable to.