Their Fractured Light
Page 84

The rift itself dominates the cavernous ballroom, almost as though the machinery has grown to accommodate the room around it—blue light cascades off every twisted surface, reflected a million times over in the shards of the mirrors that once lined the far walls. The dais where Lilac and Tarver stood at Roderick LaRoux’s side is smashed, scattered in pieces across the pit before us. Overhead, the vast windowed ceiling that once looked out into space is gone, leaving a jagged, empty hole that shows nothing but the dull reddish blackness of the Corinthian night sky.
The voice we’d heard continues, one long stream of syllables that only resolve into words as we draw closer, taking cover behind a fallen pillar.
“…thought a picnic might be nice, like we used to have, like your mother used to love. Just you and me, my darling girl…Nothing has to change. Nothing ever has to change now.”
My eyes pick out a dark silhouette to the left of the rift, and as the light from the rift rises and falls again, I make out his features: Roderick LaRoux. He’s huddled on the floor, still clad in the grimy, torn, sweat-stained eveningwear he sported the night of the gala. For a confused moment it seems as though he’s speaking to the rift itself, until a second figure emerges from behind it.
Lilac, too, is still wearing what she wore the night the Daedalus crashed. But where her father’s clothes are filthy, hers are as spotless as if she’d only just gotten ready for the gala. Her black dress falls in sleek folds, moving like silk as she passes her father without giving him a second glance. Not a hair is out of place; a single ringlet falls, styled just so, across her neck.
“Of course, Daddy,” she murmurs, her voice echoing strangely, as though coming from more than one place. “After we help everyone else.”
“Of course,” he repeats. “Of course, of course…rifts…make everywhere safe. Never lose anyone again.” His mumbling continues, subsiding once more, and over my flare of hatred and disgust comes something so surprising it steals my breath for a moment, makes me sag down against the pillar.
Pity.
There’s a soft click beside me as Jubilee takes the safety off the gun. My heart’s pounding, my stomach sick, and I can hear her breath shaking. I don’t know Tarver or Lilac, not really. I hated them both, because they were part of LaRoux, attached to the thing I wanted to hurt most in the entire universe…but I hated them from a distance, the way you hate the rain or the traffic. I never really hated them. Not the reality of them. In the brief moments on the Daedalus before everything shattered, I actually found myself liking them; Tarver’s quiet humor, Lilac’s quick wit. Their devotion to each other.
But now we have to destroy them both.
“Daddy,” comes Lilac’s voice suddenly, cutting through the unintelligible monologue coming from the floor. “We have guests. You sneaky thing.”
My heart seizes, my eyes meeting Jubilee’s, then Flynn’s, where we’re concealed behind the column. I’m about to lift my head and look over the column and try for a distraction to give Jubilee the time she needs, when a third voice drags me to a halt.
“I wasn’t trying to hide,” comes a voice from the opposite side of the room. When I peek over the edge of the column, I see Tarver picking his way down into the sunken ballroom, boots sending trickles of dust and debris raining down below. Mori’s words come back to me. They’re in there. She didn’t just mean Lilac and her father. Tarver’s voice is low, almost conversational. “I’m not smart enough for that.”
“Just a big, dumb soldier?” Lilac speaks the words like they have significance, and I can see her smile from here.
Tarver flinches, skidding to a halt in the bottom of the ruined ballroom.
My eyes scan the darkness beyond them, hope and fear sending my blood into a panic as it rushes past my ears—but I see no sign of Gideon anywhere. Maybe they’ve given up their plan to shut down the rift. Maybe…I hold my breath.
“Why are you here?” Lilac asks, turning to face him and smoothing a fold in her dress, a movement so human, so habitual, that it makes me shiver to see it combined with the look on her face. No human hates like that.
“You don’t know?” Tarver’s brows lift. “You can’t just scan my thoughts, see my every plan?”
“Not with that nasty little trinket in your pocket,” she replies, as if she’s commenting on a fashion faux pas. “But I know you, and I don’t imagine you came alone without a plan. I don’t think you left all your friends outside.” Lilac’s eyes sweep the shadows, and for an instant she grimaces, but it seems she can’t quite find Gideon either—or us. “They’re not doing very well out there, by the way. The numbers are against them.”
Tarver’s jaw squares, and he visibly forces himself to relax it, pushing his shoulders back.
Lilac laughs, soft. “I can see how hard you’re trying. I’m sure you think you’re going to somehow ‘save’ me at the last minute.”
“Not you,” Tarver murmurs. “Lilac.”
But she continues like he hasn’t spoken, like she fails to acknowledge any difference between what she is now and who she was before. “It’s not going to work, though—and you know why? I’ll tell you the secret, if you like.” She steps closer to him, halting a few steps away, just out of arm’s reach.
Tarver says nothing, staring into her face. He’s armed, I can see the weapon in its holster, but his hand is nowhere near it.
“You can’t save me,” Lilac says, leaning in as though sharing some deep, profound secret in a stage whisper, “because I’m already dead.”
Tarver’s fingers curl at his sides, tightening into fists. The light from the rift throws his features into sharp relief, outlining in shadow the lines of muscle as he clenches his jaw. Lilac just laughs, the same, sweet, silvery laugh I recognize from HV celebrity shows and press conferences, and pats his cheek.
She turns away, and that’s what makes Tarver move again. The step he takes after her is halting, jerky, but his voice is quick. “Wait. I know you’re in there. Lilac, listen to me. I know you can hear me. Keep fighting—hold on.”
“How sweet.” Lilac doesn’t seem at all perturbed, but she does halt, and I see Tarver’s weight shift as she turns back toward him. He looks almost…relieved.
A tingle runs down my spine as realization dawns: Tarver’s distracting her. Buying Gideon time, wherever he is, to attempt their plan. Which means we might have only moments to act, before they risk blowing the rift wide open and giving Lilac access to all the power she could ever need.
I glance over at the others as Flynn silently pulls the shield from his pocket, handing it to Jubilee. Her mouth twists, agonized, as she stows it inside her vest. We don’t know how far its protection reaches, and if we get separated, we can’t lose our crack shot. Then, at Jubilee’s nod, we all creep out from behind the pillar. Tarver and Gideon’s plan isn’t all that different from ours—only it’s Flynn and me distracting her from Jubilee, rather than Tarver buying Gideon time to reach the rift, plant the virus.
Lilac’s back is to us, but Tarver has an easy view, and the second we move, he’s alert. Now his hand goes to the gun at his hip, eyes scanning back and forth across us. Lilac turns, moving as gracefully as the real Lilac ever did. She couldn’t be more unlike the husks creeping through the wreck.