“Our keeper’s mistake was in creating a prison powered by our own energy. We are a part of it.” Flynn takes a step toward me. “Destroy the machinery holding this place together and you will destroy us with it. And without our interference, forced to keep this world secret, always hidden, you can broadcast your story to the stars. Begin your healing, perhaps. Prove your species deserves life.”
“But all those things you said were good about this universe. The things you could experience. Light and—and touch…” My voice gives out.
Flynn’s shaking his head slowly. “We have no desire to live without hope of returning home. I wish…to rest.”
“All right,” I whisper. “I’ll help you.”
Flynn beckons me closer and we kneel together on the blinding white floor. He shows me the nearly invisible seam in the floor and the faint outline of a human hand—a scanner, meant to unlock the control panel beneath.
“It merely requires a hand,” he tells me. “Anyone’s hand; a deft way of keeping us, we who cannot touch anything. We’ve tried to lead others here before, but our keeper seems to take pleasure in our failures.”
“Lead others…” But before I can ask, realization courses through me. “The will-o’-the-wisps.” The locals were right. The wisps were leading them somewhere.
“The others tried for years,” the whisper continues. “But when I realized that what I wanted was different, I—I was afraid.”
I search the lax features for some sign of that fear and find none, from this creature with no way to express itself. “Afraid of what?”
“Of dying alone.” The whisper, behind Flynn’s face, meets my eyes. “Of dying without meeting you.”
I gaze back, my heart thumping with grief—for me, for Flynn, for this lost creature huddled inside him. Before I can speak, a ripple runs through Flynn’s features, making me jump.
“You must hurry,” the whisper gasps. “The others will not stay quiet for long; I cannot hold them.”
I gulp back a sob and fit my hand to the indentation, trying not to flinch at the tingle of current that courses through me in response. The scanner beeps and flashes green, causing a section of the floor to rise upward, up and up, until there’s an eight-foot column of circuitry and wires towering over me. Destroy this and the whispers die.
I can feel the whole thing humming with power, so strong it sets my teeth on edge, makes my hair lift as though a lightning bolt were about to strike. It won’t be hard to overload it all, with that much power coursing through it.
Flynn staggers, but catches himself before he can fall. His voice is a rasp, but for now, he has control. “When it is done, you must go and stop what is happening outside.”
“Outside?”
“Your people, his people; this prison has become a battlefield.”
The bottom falls out of my stomach. We knew the Fianna were close behind us when we found the facility, but the military must have been tracking us too. Two armies, converging; there’ll be a battle raging above, fueled by deaths that mean nothing, no chance of realizing they should all be on the same side against a sadistic madman worlds away. It’ll be a bloodbath.
This creature, who claims it cannot understand death—its compassion has robbed me of breath. With that realization comes another, and I swallow hard. “It was you,” I whisper. “You took me over the night of the massacre, not the others. You brought me there to the caves.”
“This vessel—this person—his pain is yours; you share it the way my kind shares everything. You would grieve for those deaths as he would. But I brought you there too late to stop it.”
I was there to save them. Even through its anger and its pain, this creature whose kindred sent my friends mad one by one had tried to save Flynn grief.
The whisper waits patiently until I look back up, then speaks. “I have answered your questions. Will you grant me something in return?”
“What is it?” My voice cracks.
“May I…touch you?”
I blink, eyes snapping up to meet his. “Uh—excuse me?”
“We cannot experience physical sensation in our world, and in this universe we have been always alone.” Flynn’s face looks so young.
I swallow. “Okay. Okay, sure.”
Flynn’s hand slides forward, reaching for mine. I let him take it, his fingertips grazing my skin as he turns my hand over. His knuckle brushes across my palm—his eyes are fixed on our hands, wonder transforming his features.
“In our world,” he whispers, “we are always together, completely, utterly. We are all a part of each other.” He exhales slowly, his breath puffing warm and gentle across our hands. “But it means we never know how precious it is to be able to do this, to be apart and then come together.” He weaves his fingers through mine.
I half expected his hand to be clammy, or to tingle to the touch. But his skin is warm, and familiar, and our fingers interlock as though our hands were designed to do it.