For a moment, Tarver’s right hand twitches by his hip. I grew up on Avon, surrounded by soldiers with that same instinct, the same fight-or-flight responses. And I know, because I saw, that the safety’s off his gun. But despite the hammering of my heart, my fear isn’t of him. He may be half-mad with grief and panic, and I may have only known him for a day, but it only took me about ten minutes to know who this man was. And he’s not going to hurt me, no matter how badly he needs to find someone to blame.
Still, my breath catches.
Then he sags, turning and staggering back until he hits the wall, eliciting a grunt of pain as it jars his shoulder. He drops, sliding against the wall until he’s sitting on the marble, elbows on his knees and fists balled against his eyes.
Jubilee’s eyes go from Tarver to me, and this time that look says something altogether different. She nods, and though it’s the smallest of gestures, it’s like that tiny grain of respect gives my lungs permission to work again. She and Flynn cross toward the foyer, joining Tarver on the floor. I run a shaky hand through my hair, trying to fight the urge to look back at Gideon. I can feel him watching me. I took his hand out there as LaRoux spoke, finding myself unable to watch that flood of anger and despair across his features—but now there’s distance again.
If none of this were happening, if he were just a hacker and I were just a con artist…would anything be different? Would we be any more able to trust each other?
He moves past me, gathering up some of the food Tarver pulled out, and heads over to join the others. I follow, sinking down onto the floor. I’m expecting cold marble, but instead I discover that the floors are heated—a luxury I never even knew existed. For a wild moment I want to lie down, face against the warm stone, and sleep. Gideon’s already pulling tools out of his bag, tiny screwdrivers and wire strippers, disassembling the earpiece bit by bit.
“We destroy the rift.” Tarver’s ignoring Jubilee’s not-so-subtle attempts to shove a granola bar into his hand.
Flynn’s voice is musing. “He was telling the truth about that much, in his announcement—the rift machinery is what connects this world with the whispers’ world. They live in hyperspace, and if we destroy that connection, we destroy the whisper.”
Tarver nods. “It worked the first time around, and it worked on Avon.”
“She could have destroyed us, or taken us over, on the Daedalus.” My voice sounds tired even to my own ears. “Why didn’t she?”
Tarver’s expression twitches as he shoves Jubilee’s hand away. “She—it—wanted us to suffer. Wanted me to suffer. Can’t suffer if we’re dead, or if we have no minds left to feel it.”
Jubilee gives up, tossing the granola bar on the ground and leaning back against the wall. “Even if we could get to the rift before she squashes us—and that’s a big ‘if’—I’m not so sure destroying the rift would work this time around. I’ve seen these things, seen what a person is like when a whisper’s controlling them.” Her eyes are on Flynn’s, her voice low. “Lilac’s…different. With the others, the husks, the people being controlled—they’re like marionettes, all empty shells being made to dance.”
“And with Lilac…she’s real. Like she’s actually become this creature.” Flynn’s nodding. “Bringing down the Daedalus, tossing Tarver like a rag doll…That’s not normal.”
“Is any of this normal?” Gideon’s voice is dry.
“Point.”
My mind feels sluggish, turning over thoughts at half speed. There’s something I know, something I remember, that’s vital…but I can’t find it. I clear my throat. “Why Lilac?”
Tarver’s head lifts. “What?”
I glance at him, but he seems to have forgiven me for accusing him of wanting to kill Lilac. I chew at my lip, trying to sort out my thoughts. “Why her? I mean, it’s LaRoux the whisper hates, isn’t it? Why not take him over? He’s the one with the power, the influence, the ability to make the senators and their staffs go back and build rifts all across the galaxy—and it needs those, if it’s going to punish the whole of humanity, not just us. Why take Lilac, behind the scenes?”
“To…watch him, to hurt him from the outside?” Gideon’s thoughtful too, eyes flicking up from his study of LaRoux’s device to meet my gaze briefly. “To take away the thing he cares about the most?”
“Except she’s pretending to be the real Lilac, at least enough that he’s managed to make himself believe it.” I rub at my temple with my fingertips. I’m not even sure anymore what day it is—was it really less than twenty-four hours ago that I was dancing with Gideon in the ballroom of the Daedalus? “There has to be some reason why Lilac is special, why it didn’t take over LaRoux, or one of the scientists working with it, once it could get free. Some reason why the whisper’s chosen her, needs her.”
No one has an answer for that, exhausted silence punctuated only by the faint crinkle of wrappers here and there, as we try to choke food down throats dry with fear and weariness.
“We lost my canteen.” Tarver’s the one who breaks the silence, hoarse. All heads swivel toward him, but he doesn’t look up. “On Elysium, where Lilac and I were stranded. That’s what the scientists who died there called the planet, did you know? It was an ancient name for a place in the afterlife, where heroes went. After what happened to the researchers there, they thought it was appropriate. Anyway, we lost my canteen in a rock fall. We needed it badly, to filter water, to carry water. The next day, we found a perfect replica, right in the middle of our path.”
“You never mentioned that in your debriefing interview,” Gideon says. When Tarver’s gaze snaps toward him, he flinches, realizing that he’s not meant to have seen that footage.
But Tarver just shakes his head, bowing it once more. “They created a new one out of nothing, the whispers. And then—” His voice breaks, and I see his knuckles whiten as he grips handfuls of his hair, mastering himself. “Lilac was killed.”
Stunned silence sweeps across us, every gaze locked on him now.
Jubilee speaks in a whisper. “If Lilac was killed, then who…what…”
“Days after I buried her,” he says, toneless, “they brought her back to me. I don’t know how—I don’t want to know how. But it was her, it was my Lilac. Her thoughts, her voice, her memories. Her heart.”
“That’s impossible.” Jubilee’s face is drawn, confused. She only ever knew Lilac after the Icarus crash, and I know what she’s thinking—I can’t help but think it myself. Did any of us ever know the real Lilac? Except…my gaze creeps back toward Gideon. He knew her as a child, growing up. And he never seemed to notice there was anything different about her.
Tarver glances at Jubilee, his own gaze troubled. “She’s had a connection to them ever since. She can sense them. After the rift on Avon was destroyed, she could feel this last whisper, alone in this last rift, reaching out to her in her mind. And though the whispers we met on Elysium were peaceful, we learned after Avon that her father had made the others twisted, angry. Dangerous.”