Defy the Worlds (Defy the Stars #2)(50)

Hope animates Gillian’s face. Regardless of what her father said, she still holds on to some belief that Simon might be saved. “Yes, we have to do that. We should get started.”

Some of the passengers have already brushed themselves off, getting ready for action; these few are hardier than their privileged lifestyles would suggest. They’re ready to follow as soon as they have a leader—and somehow, that leader is Noemi.

“Abel might still make it,” Mansfield murmurs. “He’s smart enough. Curious enough.”

Noemi shakes her head.

“That’s what you want to believe, I’m sure. But Abel has a fate,” Mansfield says, maddeningly calm again. “I know that. I designed his fate for him, wove it into his very DNA. His fate is in every strand of his hair and every cell of his skin. His fate is fixed. In the end, he’ll always return to me.”

“Like he always obeys your orders?” The last direct order Mansfield gave Abel was a command to shoot Noemi in the chest. She’s still alive and well.

“If he won’t come for me,” Mansfield says, “he’ll come for you.”

“He’s not coming.” Not even Abel could follow a trail this obscure.

“Miss Vidal,” Mansfield rasps. “You’re giving up hope. I haven’t.”

“You’d better.” She says it savagely, to herself as much as to him.

Gillian puts one hand on Mansfield’s forehead. “Father, don’t strain yourself.”

“I’m all right.” His eyes, frosted by old age, fix on the broken tank. “Can’t we find my things? I’d like to have them about me, if—I’d like to have them.”

Things, Noemi thinks. Not people. I wonder if you’ve ever really loved anyone. He doesn’t even look up at his daughter.

Oblivious to Noemi’s reaction, he continues, “Really, I should’ve brought the Kahlo. Abel would’ve enjoyed seeing it again. He always liked that painting so.”

He can look at Abel, see that Abel loved a piece of art—behold an impulse that intelligent and human and alive—and still want to use Abel up and throw him away like a piece of trash.

Noemi’s unsure of Second Catholic Church doctrine, sometimes; she’s still discovering her individual faith. As she stares down at Mansfield, though, she realizes at least one thing the Church taught her is utterly true: There are worse fates than death. One of them is to live without the capacity for love.

Abel could never have saved you, she thinks. If you’d ever seen him for what he is, you might’ve saved yourself.



Noemi fans out with the other passengers, doing what they can to secure the area once more. Force fields still work and can be activated to cut off various corridors; Noemi’s able to plant a few homemade incendiary devices in some key locations, including an auxiliary fuel gauge. She notices that the passengers never leave her completely alone. Maybe they think she’ll abandon them the first chance she gets.

But where’s she supposed to go? To Remedy? They know her as the maniac who threatened to kill them all earlier today—

—no, yesterday. Isn’t it? Everything’s blurring together. Her body ran on pure adrenaline for hours and hours, but has now run out.

Just get back to the mech area, she tells herself. Simon has to be captured, but she’s in no shape to do it. Remedy has to be negotiated with, but first they’ll have to reestablish contact; with comms damaged if not destroyed, that next contact seems likely to be a while away. If the force fields hold long enough for them to regroup, they might be able to devise a strategy to take the ship back from Remedy, and then—

Better to ask that question later, assuming she ever gets the chance.

Noemi stumbles over something on the floor-ceiling, glances down, and sees that it’s a chandelier. Or it was a chandelier. Now it’s just an etched-crystal hazard underfoot. Who puts chandeliers in a spaceship?

Irritated, she turns the corner that leads back to the cargo bay. In the distance, she can just make out a small huddle of passengers under one of the emergency lights. They can’t see her at all. One of them whispers, “How much longer is this going to take?”

“Two days, maximum,” says Vinh. “That’s what I was told, pre-treatment.”

Treatment? And how much longer is what supposed to take?

“So we wait, then,” says the first speaker. “How do we stop that Genesis girl from going after Remedy in the meantime? It’s a risk we don’t have to take.”

Vinh shakes his head. “I doubt we’ll have to worry about her much longer.”

Noemi knew the passengers didn’t much like her. She hadn’t guessed they were counting on seeing her dead.





18



ABEL CANNOT EVALUATE ENOUGH VARIABLES TO DETER-mine how probable, or improbable, this circumstance might be. However, it is not impossible.

“Identify yourself!” shouts the same voice he’s heard before.

From the place where he huddles behind a chunk of wreckage, he checks the timbre and inflections against his memory banks, rechecks them, and nods. “My name is Abel,” he calls. “And yours is Riko Watanabe.”

Footsteps come closer—just one person, small of build. A few people mutter, “What are you doing?” and “Come back!” but she doesn’t stop until she sticks her head through the door. Despite the tan fatigues and goggles she wears, he identifies her easily. It is indeed Riko.