We speed toward the exit, but the rebels have found boats themselves, and they’re in pursuit. Too close for us to lose them in the swamp beyond the harbor. Close enough to shoot us—and close enough to be shot at.
Flynn jerks his eyes away from me as I lift my head, looking for a clear shot. I’m not killing any more people today, not when I’m me, myself. Not even if they’re shooting at me first. But they’ve got the searchlights pointed at us, and I can’t see.
My eyes lift, seeking a break from the blinding white light in front of me, and I see the ceiling of the harbor. Rough stone, naturally striated and dripping with condensation. The Gleidel won’t touch the stone, but it’ll vaporize the water seeping through the cracks. I lift my gun and brace myself against the bench so I can shoot over Flynn’s head, placing myself in clear view of those firing at us. Flynn shouts at me, but I can’t hear him as my world narrows, focusing on my target.
The Gleidel leaps in my hands and I throw myself down again before the rebels can get me in their sights. Its scream echoes back at me from the cavern, followed by the crack of stone split by steam, and then the roar of boulders striking the water. Then the frantic revving of motors thrown into reverse, as the rebels zigzag wildly in an effort to avoid the stones now jutting out of the shallow water at the mouth of the harbor.
I lever myself up again in time to see the mouth of the harbor retreating away from us, half lost in the spray of our wake, and the cluster of boats attempting to navigate through the new maze of boulders trapping them.
I glance down, and Flynn’s eyes flick up from mapping our route to meet mine for a split second. We’re out.
We don’t speak. There’s nothing to say anymore, even if we had the strength to shout over the roar of the motor. I look back at him once and see a jumble of white face, red-rimmed eyes, tears mingling with the spray from our bow wave—and look away with a jerk. I don’t try to look at him again.
The sky’s just beginning to shift from ink to charcoal by the time the distant lights of the base rise, mirage-like, from the horizon. Flynn shifts the motor down, its roar muted to a purr. We weave our way through the corridors of water until the bow of the boat slides up onto mud with a sickening lurch. The motor cuts out.
The silence rings in my ears, like afterimages hovering after being dropped into sudden darkness. There are no frogs, no insects on Avon, nothing to color the quiet. I stare at the lights of the far-off base until my vision blurs.
“Where will you go?” I ask in a whisper that splits the silence.
“I don’t know.” His voice is rough. From disuse. From cold. From grief. I can’t tell which. “I’ll find somewhere.”
I reach for my jacket, abandoned in the bottom of the boat, and press it into his hands. He’ll need it more than me, out here with no shelter and no heat. “Molly, the barman. He can get a message to me if you—” My voice tangles and sticks in my throat. If you need me.
He nods, but I’m not sure he really heard me. I can feel shock trying to grab hold of me again, cold fingers sliding up my spine and seizing my muscles. My training didn’t prepare me for this. Nothing prepared me for this.
If it were only me, I could just lie here until the boat rotted through and sank and the muck claimed my bones. But I can’t. I swallow hard, pushing it away with every ounce of strength I have left. Flynn was right—I’m the only one who can get onto our base and try to find out more about what’s happening to Avon.
I force my stiff muscles to move and carry me over the edge of the boat, to land in hip-deep water. I grab the gunwale to steady myself as my knees threaten to buckle in the cold.
“Flynn.” It ought to feel strange to say his name. I avoided it for so long, striving to keep a distance between us. But instead I find I’m absorbed by the way it affects him. He’s less guarded, though the sadness in his eyes doesn’t recede; he looks back at me again, jaw tight.
“Flynn—I want you to know I never would have done that. To your people.” I keep my voice low, too afraid to say these things loudly. It comes out tight, fierce. “I would never. I’d die myself first.”
He watches me in silence while my heart pounds in my chest, painful, too large. When he does speak, his voice is low to match mine. “I know that, Jubilee.” He levers himself up onto his knees so we’re eye to eye. “I know who you are.”
He knows. He knows, I believe that. But he can’t even bring himself to look at me for more than a few seconds.
And I can’t look away. “Don’t give up.” The words are as much for me as for him. “All you need is one true thing to hold on to. Something real in all of this.”