Their Fractured Light
Page 25

“Let’s go,” I say, and he stops staring at the trapdoor and instead hauls it open. I start down the ladder it reveals, then pause. “We need to get the rug back over the trapdoor somehow, or they’ll just figure out where we went.”
“They’ll have other things on their minds,” Gideon says grimly. “Hurry.”
The ladder leads down into what must be an old, forgotten sewer from when the undercity of Corinth was the only city. Now it’s dry and empty and, when Gideon slams the trapdoor closed above us, utterly pitch-black. I freeze, trying to remember if I shoved a flashlight into the pack of gear on my back, but before I can start to look, a soft reddish glow illuminates the tunnel.
I glance back to see Gideon clipping an LED lamp to his collar and tossing a second one to me. Smart—the red light is the part of the spectrum least likely to ruin our night vision. If we have to shut off the lamps and hide, we’ll still be able to see as well as anything else down here.
“We have to keep moving,” says Gideon, his voice still strained, making my heart ache. I did this to him.
“Gideon, I’m so sorry. I never meant—”
“It’s not your fault,” he interrupts, before lifting his gaze to meet mine. The red light drains his face of any other color, leaching the sandy brown from his hair, the hazel from his eyes. He takes a breath, and when he speaks again, he sounds a little more like himself. “I can start over. We’re in this together.”
I swallow, and while I wish I could think of something to say, there’s no time for that. Despite Gideon’s promise, I’m expecting those goons to pull open the trapdoor at any moment. I take off down the tunnel again, Gideon’s footsteps right behind me.
I can hear him counting under his breath as we move, but not at the right pace to be keeping time—he’s counting out our steps. I’m about to ask why, when he reaches one hundred and pauses. I turn to see him holding something, about the size of a thumb drive or a gambling chip. He sucks in a breath and glances at me. “Brace yourself.”
I don’t have time to ask for more details, because he’s pressing a button on the object and then a sound blasts down the tunnel, making me cry out in spite of myself and clap my hands over my ears. A shower of dust and cobwebs and other things I don’t want to know about patters down onto my hair and shoulders, and I have to fight the impulse to throw myself to the ground. I know that sound. I know it so well it echoes in my nightmares, makes my shoulder throb with remembered pain.
An explosion.
The echoes of it through the tunnel die away, leaving me gasping, shaking, staring at Gideon, who slips the device back into his pocket. “What the—you said—”
He shakes his head, speaking softly. “The echoes make it sound bigger than it was. The charges were just to destroy anything left on my drives. Even if they were already inside, the worst they’d get would be some ringing ears and maybe some bruises if the force knocked them back.”
My mouth tastes bitter, and though I’m trying to make myself move again, my muscles are tense and shaking. Through the dim red light of the LEDs I can almost see the first responders at the base on Avon running toward the flames, can almost smell the acrid smoke and chemicals, can almost hear the shouts and screams of wounded soldiers beginning to fill the air.
“Hey,” comes Gideon’s voice, much closer to me. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I should’ve warned you—I promise we’re okay down here. This place could take a dozen blasts like that and survive.”
I blink, trying to clear my eyes of smoke that doesn’t exist, and realize he’s taken my arm, his hand warm and real, unlike the remembered heat of a barracks on fire. “I’m fine,” I gasp, unable to stop my voice shaking. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s go.”
Gideon hesitates, eyes on my face until I turn away. If I tell him about my father’s so-called suicide, he’ll be able to figure out who I am the second he gets access again to the hypernet. And while he says he doesn’t still work for the Knave, I have no way of knowing how close his ties are, or whether he’d turn me over if he knew I was the thing the Knave had been chasing for the last year.
I start moving, pulling away from his hand on my arm, and after another second of hesitation, his footsteps start up again behind me. A few jogging steps and he catches up to me, clearing his throat.
“We’ll head to Mae’s,” he says, causing a ping of relief somewhere amidst the fog of memory in my head that he’s not pushing the issue. “She’s an old friend, and if anyone on the net has heard rumors about something bad going down at the Daedalus gala, she’ll know about it.”
“Can we trust her?”
“Absolutely.” Gideon glances at me, flashing me a smile in the dim red glow of our LED lamps. “She’s one of the only people on this planet I actually do trust. I knew her for years through the hypernet before we ever met in person. She’s good people. And she’s got a good rig, so we can use her place to regroup.”
I let out a slow breath. It’s hard enough teaching myself to trust Gideon—secondhand trust is even harder to accept. But I nod, reminding myself that even though he trusts her, I don’t have to. I can still run, if I need to. I still know how to disappear.
“Where is she?”
“She actually lives in this sector, on the north side. Mid-level.”
“Oh—perfect.” I try to bite back my surprise. Mid-level means money, at least enough to afford a decent place, a hover, a steady lifestyle. I was expecting the female version of Gideon, and had been bracing myself for another lair. “But Gideon—what do we do then? If something’s going down on the Daedalus, that doesn’t give us much time to stop LaRoux.”
Gideon runs his hands through his hair, a gesture of frustration that’s becoming rapidly familiar the longer I know him. “I know. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we should tell the police—it’s not like we’ve got proof, but maybe if they launch even a halfhearted investigation, it might be enough to throw a wrench in LaRoux’s plans.”
The police? I swallow hard, exhaustion making it harder for me to remember what I’ve told Gideon and what I haven’t. He knows I’m a con artist, knows I’d have no particular desire to bring the authorities into this. But he doesn’t know all the reasons why I really don’t want the police’s attention on me. Attention that could lead to questions like “Why do you own an illegal firearm?” and “What are you doing with the blueprints to LRI Headquarters?” and “Why are you hiding your genetag and your identity?”
“Surely LaRoux’s got people in law enforcement,” I say finally. “Not to mention that the sector relies heavily on LaRoux’s private security force, and as much fun as it was dancing with them last time, I wouldn’t mind avoiding their eye this time around.”
Gideon’s shaking his head, his eyes distant and his lips thin, his expression so clear I can almost feel his distress like it’s my own. Losing his den means a lot more to him than losing my apartment did to me.
I soften my voice. “Can we really trust them?”
“We’ve got to trust someone,” Gideon says finally. “We’ll keep it anonymous. We don’t even need to say it’s LaRoux—maybe even just a bomb threat, something mundane, something they have to look into. Anything to get their eyes on the Daedalus, because I don’t know what else we can do.”