Jubilee’s still staring at Tarver, something like accusation in her gaze. “You told us the whisper was affecting her, that we needed to destroy the rift that we thought we’d find on the Daedalus. Why not tell us the whole truth?”
“Because no one can know,” Tarver blurts, frustration in the snap of his voice. “She’d become part of the experiment, something to be studied. She’d be kept safe somewhere in a facility, away from me, away from anything resembling a real life.” He closes his eyes. “I guess that’s all over now.”
“So…” My mind’s spinning, trying to make sense of all this. “If Lilac isn’t human, not really—”
“She is.” Tarver’s quick to interrupt. “She’s real, she’s alive, she’s human. She’s Lilac. She’s just…”
“Just a little bit different,” I finish for him, trying to make my voice conciliatory. “I didn’t mean she wasn’t real. But if she’s not—if her body is something created by the whispers, created by that energy from their side of the rift…”
“Then that’s why the whisper needed her.” Gideon’s reached the same conclusion I have. “If she’s made of the same energy they are, no wonder the whisper could take her over so completely. Like slipping on a glove made to your exact measurements.”
Jubilee grimaces. “Then it doesn’t seem likely that the same tactics that worked on Avon and Elysium are going to work here. We have no idea what we’re dealing with.”
“We need to know more about the rift.” Flynn crumples up his granola bar wrapper and tosses it aside. “Gideon?”
Gideon’s shaking his head. “LRI doesn’t keep any of its classified or proprietary documents on servers connected to the hypernet. No company would, it’d be an invitation for someone like me to walk on in. I’d have to go to LRI Headquarters itself, and…”
“And it’s basically a pile of rubble, infested with whisper-controlled husks.” Flynn mutters a curse.
I find my voice. “I…I think I might know someone who can help us.”
“Go on,” Gideon says, stripping another piece of wire and laying it in the pile of parts he’s pulling together for our makeshift shields against the whisper’s influence. He can’t make up six earpieces, so he’s jury-rigging a couple of palm pads to emit the same field as LaRoux’s device—right now they’re both in pieces, their insides spilling out like entrails.
“She’s the contact I made within LaRoux Industries who was willing to leak me information. She’s the one who told me the rift technology is the same as the new hyperspace engines. That’s why we thought LaRoux had moved the rift to the Daedalus. I was at LRI Headquarters a couple weeks back to meet her, but—it’s a long story, but that’s the day I met Gideon, and the day we found out about the rift at LRI. A riot broke out, and she went back underground.”
“Can you trust her?” Gideon’s voice is soft and his gaze steady—looking back at him, I can see the bitterness there. Trust. Such a simple thing. Such an impossible thing.
I swallow. “I don’t know. She could very well be dead, for all I know, or they might have caught her when they came after me. But if she’s still out there…if she was debating whether to help then, maybe she’d be willing now. She’s our best chance of finding out how to destroy the rift and set Lilac free. I’ll need your help, though, to track her down. The address I had for her doesn’t work anymore. She burned it when she—the time you came to get me.”
“What’s her name?”
“Rao.” I press my palms against the floor as Gideon starts moving already, setting aside LaRoux’s device so he can pull out a palm pad and get to work, searching every available network for the name. I swallow, continuing to explain. “Her name is Dr. Rao, and she’s with the theoretical res—”
“Rao.” The interruption is soft, but jolts me silent—Tarver hasn’t said a word since he told us about Lilac’s death, and the whispers who brought her back to him. He lifts his head, reddened eyes fixed on me. “Did you say Rao?”
“Yes, Dr. Rao.”
“Dr. Sanjana Rao?”
My stomach lurches. “What—how do you know that name?”
Tarver’s eyes close, and for a moment he almost looks peaceful, resigned. Then he gives a short, sharp laugh, eyes opening again. “What short memories everyone has. Patron was only three years ago.”
Jubilee’s breath catches in a gasp. “I knew I’d heard that name before—she was one of the researchers on Patron. One of the VeriCorp scientists you helped escape from raiders, the whole reason you were given that medal and sent to the Icarus on that press tour in the first place.”
Tarver nods, leaning forward so he can rest his elbows on his knees. He looks tired, older, with none of the easy charm and boyish good looks that made him such a media darling. “Except she wasn’t working for VeriCorp, and it wasn’t raiders who attacked them. That was all a cover.”
“She was working for LaRoux Industries,” I whisper.
Tarver’s eyes flick toward me for the briefest instant and then jerk away. “Yes. And she was on a secret project then, I barely understood it. Sofia’s right—she’s the one person in the galaxy who might actually have the answers we need.”
“Found her,” says Gideon, voice tinged with triumph. But his quick smile falters, his eyes on the palm pad’s screen, as whatever he’s found registers. “She’s…she was hurt when the Daedalus hit, she’s checked into a trauma center. Inside the crash site.”
The crash site, several kilometers of destruction, every inch crawling with husks. Dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of them by now—and if Lilac’s whisper decides we’re a threat, we’ll be no match for their sheer numbers.
The urge to lie down returns, that longing to just let the warm marble claim me almost overpowering. I can see my thoughts mirrored in the faces around me—even Jubilee, the notorious Captain Chase, looks like she’d rather drop.
But then I meet Gideon’s gaze, and those hazel-green eyes lock onto mine, and for a moment our mistrust is set aside, and we’re simply together. Just one piece of me, the smallest kernel, calms, and I can breathe. Then his mouth twitches, and he winks. It’s enough.
I move, pulling myself up inch by inch, and that brings the others to life. They rise, coming to their feet, checking the charges on their guns, scrubbing at their faces with their hands as if they can wipe away the tiredness. One by one, they glance at me. So I suck in a deep breath and nod toward the door. “Let’s go.”
We have been waiting for so long, here in the place where the blue-eyed man first found us. The researchers all vanished long ago, but not before their minds crumbled, leaving us in an empty building filled only with the ghosts of madmen. We wait, growing weary, growing weak.
Then the silence is shattered, a great tearing in the sky that breaks the very stars—a ship appears where before there was only the remnant of the blue-eyed man’s experiments.
The ship is falling, and we are too weak to stop it. It carries thousands of souls, any one of whom could free us from this hell—and they will all die.