Defy the Worlds (Defy the Stars #2)(72)

“What do we do?” she says. “Literally everyone on this ship is trying to capture us. There’s no safe space.”

“We have to leave the Osiris, and Haven, as soon as possible. The corsair is approximately two kilometers away—”

“Okay, great. We get outside and run for that,” Noemi pants. “We have to find an air lock.”

Under such stress even an experienced fighter like Noemi can make an error in strategy. “They’ll check the air locks first. I believe there’s a breach in the hull not far from the theater. We stand a better chance of escaping through that breach than through any of the doors.”

Noemi is wise enough not to ask the exact probabilities of their success. “Let’s go.”

Abel calibrates his running speed to match Noemi’s. Once they’re on more even footing, he’ll simply pick her up and carry her. “If I’ve calculated Haven’s diurnal cycles correctly, it should be nighttime outside. We’ll have cover of darkness and should be able to get back to the corsair.”

“Without a scratch?” Noemi quips. “Promise?”

“We can take scratches. The corsair must not. I suspect Virginia would refuse to give us a ride back to the Gate. She’d take the Persephone as her bounty.” He means to joke, but the possibility is in fact plausible.

“Wait.” They pause at a sharper bend in the corridor. Abel thinks Noemi’s only catching her breath, but she asks a question. “Virginia Redbird came with you?”

“You know how she loves a mystery.”

She laughs in apparent surprise. She leans against the wall, clearly gathering her strength for their next run. Although Abel should be focusing nearly all his conscious attention on plotting their course, he nonetheless registers that her jumpsuit is extremely low-cut, revealing the curves of her breasts, which rise and fall with her rapid breathing. This should be irrelevant but somehow is not.

Swiftly he comes up with a reason for observing her wardrobe. “You’ll be inadequately protected against the cold.” He gestures at his own white hyperwarm parka. “Once we’re outside I’ll give you this.”

“I found a coat earlier and left it behind, like an idiot. Won’t you get cold, too?”

“I can endure it for considerably longer than a human, more than long enough to reach the corsair. The flight back to the Persephone will also be cold, but should take no more than twenty-nine minutes depending on Virginia’s orbital status.

“I’m calculating our path to the corsair,” he says quickly, turning his head to gaze at a broken light fixture instead of Noemi’s chest. “I should have it in another few seconds.”

Noemi glances at him sideways. “The Persephone? That’s what you renamed the ship?”

“Yes. In Greek mythology, she’s the wife of Hades, the daughter of Demeter. She spends half her time in one world, half in another. In each world she’s a goddess, but there’s no one place she will ever belong.”

“…Oh.”

When he turns to her again, Abel can see realization dawning in her eyes. He’s betrayed his feelings. When will he learn not to do this? Love has to be buried even deeper than he realized.

In a small voice, Noemi says, “You saw that.”

He doesn’t know how to reply except to say, “I know you.”

Noemi shakes her head—not denying him, but as if in wonder. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve gone my whole life just waiting for someone to see me. And you do, Abel. You might be the only person who ever has.”

“Now you know how I felt the day you told me I had a soul.”

Their gazes meet in the darkened room, and Abel realizes he’s holding his breath, which is highly counterintuitive. Yet the impulse is undeniable.

“Running,” Noemi says abruptly. “We should be running.”

“Agreed.” With that they resume their haste, Abel bewildered by his own reordering of priorities. Escape must be their first and only goal.

The ambient temperature drops a full degree Celsius, then lowers still further. Their destination must be within proximity. At last he makes out lighting at the end of one long corridor that has a blue tint rather than the orange of emergency lighting. When he magnifies this sector in his vision, he detects a few stray snowflakes.

In 3.6 seconds, Noemi sees it, too. “The hull breach. We’re almost there!”

Assent seems pointless. Abel runs faster, pushing ahead of Noemi to scout the area. Every meter brings more brightness and sharper cold, until he finally rounds the final turn—

—and stops just short of tumbling down a hundred meters, which even for Abel would be fatal.

He stretches out one arm, which Noemi runs into just after. She gasps in shock. “Oh, my God.”

Even for a soldier of Genesis, that’s only an expression. However, the physical devastation of the ship could well have been wrought by a vengeful deity. The entire Osiris hull has cracked—opening a sort of canyon almost forty meters wide, one that runs almost the length of the ship. From where they stand on the ragged edge, he and Noemi can see nearly an entire cross-section of the ship—each deck its own layer. Dangling sections of wall, flooring, and wires cover the side as though they were vines. Exposed above them is Haven’s night sky, brightened by six of its moons; below, at the floor of this artificial canyon, are drifts of freshly fallen snow.