Their Fractured Light
Page 40

Eyes burning, I try to block out the smells, the noise, the scratchy mattress and the odor of mildew wafting up from the fabric.
Here at the bottom of the city, no one cares when you start to cry. Half the people in this room are suffering from some kind of withdrawal or another, and the rest know to leave well enough alone. You don’t come here seeking comfort. You come here to disappear.
The squalor should make me long for the penthouse. I should be imagining the cocktails the SmartWaiter can produce, remembering the feel of Kristina’s soft sheets, closing my eyes and seeing the false stars emerging on the windows in my mind’s eye.
But instead the only thing I can think of, the only thing I hear as I muffle the sounds of my weeping against my arms, is the Butterfly Waltz playing over and over in my mind.
When morning comes, my eyes are dry again. Sleep, if only in drips of a few minutes at a time, has brought me back to myself. I recognize last night’s storm for what it was: a panic attack. I haven’t had one for months, but they used to leave me shattered and empty all the time in the weeks following my father’s death. But even shattered and empty, I can keep moving.
I have to get onboard the Daedalus tonight. Nothing’s changed because of Gideon’s betrayal except that now I have nothing to lose, nothing sparking even a scrap of guilt. Even if he decides to go to the Daedalus on his own, to disable the rift without me, it doesn’t matter. It’s not the rift I’ll be aiming for. Gideon will be watching, certainly, waiting to see if I show up, but I don’t care that he’ll know where I’ll be. He’s proven that it doesn’t matter where I go, who I become—he’ll always find me. Whether he’s working for LaRoux Industries or has his own sick reasons for hunting me across the galaxy, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter if he finds me on the Daedalus, because by then I’ll have my shot, the moment I’ve been working toward since I fled the orphanage shuttle that took me from my home.
Tonight I’ll be in the same room as the man who murdered my father. And if the Knave finds me there on the Daedalus, so be it. Nothing he can do to me could be worse than watching my father die. Let him take me. Let him kill me if that’s his ultimate goal. I’ll be dead by the end of the night anyway, one way or another. If I’m caught, LaRoux Industries will have my existence quietly erased from the world. And if I succeed, if I get my moment, the security guards will kill me anyway.
Because tonight I’m going to put a bullet in Roderick LaRoux.
On the gray world, it is so easy to find despair and anger. Their pain burns so hotly sometimes it blinds us to anything else. But there are moments, rare flashes of light in the darkness, joy so bright we cannot help but see it.
There is a little girl on the gray world whose father is teaching her to dance. Her steps are all wrong but she is laughing anyway, and so is he, and we feel, just for an instant, his heart filling at the sight of her dimpled smile.
Then the music stops, and the lights too, and darkness sweeps across the gray world as it often does when their machinery fails. Everywhere we feel fear and anger rising like hot spikes, but in the little girl’s heart she feels only contentment, as her father carries her to bed. We cling to that tiny light as the darkness closes in all around.
I’M AN IDIOT.
That doesn’t do it justice. I’m dumber than every mark I ever laughingly hacked, I’m below basement IQ, and I have no idea what to do about it. I’m stuck helplessly watching everything I planned and everything I wanted spiral beyond my reach.
She told me over and over not to trust anybody. I can still hear her voice.
If you never give someone a weapon, they can never use it against you.
But I did all that and more. She knows my face, she knows my real name. She knows I’m the Knave. Stupid move after stupid move.
But none of them were the dumbest thing I did. That honor doesn’t even go to the moment I forgot to dim my screen, so she could see her own file there when she woke. It doesn’t go to every moment I ignored the signs that should have told me that my quarry wasn’t Towers.
The gold medal goes to the moment I knelt there like an idiot, speechless, while this girl I’m falling for walked out of my life. I should have said something, anything, rather than just watching it happen.
There’s no way I can justify what I did, no way I can excuse what my obsession turned me into—but I should have tried. I should have apologized. I should have begged.
I tracked her palm pad after she left, watching her icon move up the levels on my screen, heading to her old apartment. I watched until it suddenly started to move too fast, and then the surveillance cameras showed me she’d dumped it on a courier. A little after that, she was simply gone.
If I can’t find her tonight, then I don’t know if I’ll ever find her again. Not without tracking her—and after what I’ve put her through, I couldn’t bring myself to betray her that way, not even for the chance she’d listen to my apology. I just have to pray she’s where I think she’ll be, and I’m willing to risk the police—I’m willing to risk LaRoux himself—for a chance to see her one more time.
Because I know what I owe her. And even if I lose her forever, I want to deliver on that debt.
I’m waiting at the shuttle dock in one of the tuxedos all the guys are wearing. I could have fed ten families for a month on what it cost, but this isn’t the time to skimp on expenses and give someone a reason to look at me twice. With what the Knave earns for elite hacking jobs, my credit balance can take it. If I pull this off, I’ll be helping out a lot more than ten families by bringing down LaRoux Industries.
And I’ll be helping Sofia.
I know I’m focusing on the way the jacket constricts my movement and the shoes don’t have proper grip, because I don’t want to think about the fact that she hasn’t shown up yet. She has to come. Not just because this is her best and only chance at finding dirt on LaRoux, not just because I don’t think I can bluff my way in without her, but because…she has to come.
The words take up residence in my head, echoing around my skull in a quick, relentless drumming rhythm. Please, Sofia. Please, Sofia. Please, Sofia.
My breath catches every time a car door opens, tiny shots of adrenaline firing through my system, sending shivers down my spine every time I catch a glimpse of a new dress, a hint of whoever’s inside. Then comes the crash, every time a new face emerges and it’s not her.
Please, Sofia. Please, Sofia.
When she steps out of a sleek black autocar, one of the last to arrive, my heart dances a staccato beat—then nearly stops completely when I register what she’s wearing. Holy hell, Dimples. She’s in a long, slinky lavender dress lined on the inside of the skirt with electric lights, which flash and twinkle through a slit that runs all the way up her thigh every time she moves. It’s cut low and fitted, with layers of fringe that hearken back to the old-fashioned flapper dresses on ancient Earth. Her dress shines amethyst on the pavement below her when she walks, and she’s in a pair of heels that would make a runway model blanch. She must be nearly as tall as me in those things.
The fiber optics are woven through her hair as well, which is still white-blond—she’s not trying to hide. Either she didn’t think I’d come—or she knew I’d come and doesn’t care. I’m not sure which option is better. The lights peek out through her curls and cast shadows across her flawless skin. She’s holding a small purse, pulling her invitation from it as she makes for the entry line. My mouth’s completely dry, and I can’t even pretend to myself that it’s all nerves. She looks incredible.