I GESTURE AT THE RESEARCHER, warning him to be silent without a word, but he’s too busy trying to cram himself in under one of the consoles, as though that might hide him from whatever punishment we have in mind for failing to help us. I inch toward the door and press my ear to it—I can’t hear anything, no sounds of rushing security guards, nothing that sounds like a response to the alarm, which has gone silent again now. It’s as though the place is abandoned.
A whispering rises all around me, as though I’m standing in a windstorm—but the air is utterly still. And I know what it is. Swallowing the metallic taste of blood in my mouth, I only have time for a glance down at my hands, searching for the palsied shakes that I know are coming. Except my hands are steady, but for the faint tremor of panic.
Before I can process what’s happening, a groan from behind me shatters my heart. Oh God, no.
I whirl to find Flynn leaning with one hand braced against the console, his face white, gaze fixed on the floor. “Jubilee—” He gasps my name as though it’s with his last breath.
I throw myself back, reaching for Flynn, as though his touch might banish the sudden razor-edge of fear slicing down my spine. “Talk to me!”
But he can’t answer; he sags back against the wall, and for an instant his head lifts enough for me to see his gaze, his dilated eyes, the terror as he fights the thing that’s happening to him.
“No—no, I can’t—” My heart snaps, and with it the fear holding me hostage, and I stagger half a step toward him.
It was supposed to be me.
I swallow my fear. “We’re getting out of here, now.” Whispers be damned—Avon’s fate be damned. I cannot watch Flynn’s soul, his heart, vanish in front of me.
“Actually, you’re not.” I’d almost forgotten the researcher—Dr. Carmody—cowering on the floor. I turn to snap at him, and freeze.
He’s got a weapon aimed at me; he must have had it hidden underneath the console. I should have been watching, I should have tied him up. I should have had Flynn…I choke, unable to focus on the man’s gun. All I can see is Flynn, half-curled against the console, trying to fight the whispers.
“Fine!” I snap at Carmody, lifting my hands. “Arrest me, shoot me, I don’t care. Just let me help him—” I take a step toward Flynn, but Carmody thumbs the switch on the side of the gun. Its whine as it charges rings in my ears, and I stop again.
“You can’t help him,” replies Carmody, sparing only a glance for Flynn before pinning his gaze back on me. “He’s already gone.”
I open my mouth, trying to find words to deny what he’s said. But before I can, Flynn’s moving. He’s quick, so quick my eyes can barely follow him. He slips behind Carmody, grabbing his arm and jerking it up. The gun fires; not a Gleidel, this one leaves a smoking hole in the ceiling and sends plastene shards raining down onto the floor. Before I can take a step to help him, Flynn’s other hand wraps around the back of Carmody’s neck and slams his head down into the console with a sickening crack. He doesn’t pause, but slams the researcher down again, and again, and again, until blood coats the controls and I cry out, still rooted to the spot.
Flynn, only his profile visible to me, releases the dead man and lets the body slump to the floor.
It’s all happened in the space of a few heartbeats, so quickly I haven’t drawn breath. Spots swimming in front of my eyes, I gasp for air. “F-Flynn?”
It takes an eternity for him to turn around, in which I imagine him a thousand times with his usual smile, his cocky air, the depth of his green eyes. He’ll be standing there as though nothing has changed; he’ll tell me he learned self-defense from me; he’ll turn around and look at me and he’ll be whole.
But instead he stands a few feet away, his face empty, the green eyes seared into my memory gone. In their place is nothing more than black glass, reflecting my own face back at me.
“No,” he says in a calm, collected voice. There are flecks of Carmody’s blood on his neck and chin. “Not anymore.”
I stand there, unable to move, unable to breathe as he stoops, collecting the gun from Carmody’s lax hand. He inspects it, not bothering to keep an eye on me. When he looks up, there’s nothing in his face but blank serenity.
“It was supposed to be me,” I whisper.
“We need you,” says the thing in Flynn’s mind. “We feel you are the better choice.”
My legs tremble—with anger, with fear, with exhaustion—and I reach out for the wall for support. “What does LaRoux want with me?”