Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(81)

I thought about that. My fingers tingled, and light pulsed around the outline of them in his skin. It was a healthy gold, which meant he was feeling far better now.

“One more question?” I asked it very quietly. I felt the silent pulse of his assent. “If the Leviathan don’t use those weapons on each other, then who are they meant for?”

He went still. Very still. And his answer was more ominous than anything I could have predicted.

“We’re only told they are necessary for the Journey.”

What was truly chilling was that I knew, through the link we shared, that he was telling me the absolute truth.

I rolled onto my side, but sleep was impossible. My thoughts churned in a single direction—escape. If there were aliens, there should be a space equivalent to the Zone, where refugees could elude the authorities. If there was a civilization, there had to be those who wanted out of it or didn’t fit in; that was just part of natural selection, wasn’t it, that nature was always pushing out to the edges? It was critical that we get free before the Gathering.

Eluding Typhon presented a monumental challenge, but evading a whole pod of Leviathan? Impossible. We’d be obliterated.

I dozed fitfully and dreamed. Nightmared, really, about being strapped down in a shadow-blurred church by an angel in white, of my father’s hands holding me down for the knife. Of running, always running. Of suddenly stumbling into Derry—thinner, eyes dark-ringed and dull. His fingers jittered like he was shooing invisible insects. He gave me a hollow grin that didn’t strike me as handsome or charming anymore.

“You’ll be back soon, Z. You can’t quit me. You know that, right? The Zone is the only place you’ll ever call home.” With no transition, we were standing in Conde’s shop, and he was holding me, and I heard the whirr of the drone overhead, and then everything was burning. Derry was burning, his face peeling away to become a bloody skull. But he was still holding me, no matter how I screamed and fought to get free.

A cold sweat bathed me when I woke, like the Lower Eight had spectral fingers wrapped about my ankles and could tow me back down. But it was Nadim caught on Typhon’s hook. My head felt scrambled, like somebody had stirred my brain with a stick.

“Who is Derry?” Nadim asked.

Shit. My mental shields came up with a decisive, instinctive slam while I tried to figure out how to respond.

“In our time together, you’ve asked many things that I couldn’t answer . . . or didn’t want to. You’ve never refused to answer me before.” He sounded . . . puzzled. Not hurt.

“Why are you asking about Derry?”

“You were speaking to him.”

“Well, he was important to me. For a while.”

“Not anymore?” Nadim asked.

“No.” I’d let go of Derry for good when he sold out to Deluca; for old times’ sake, I’d saved his life, but that was all. Forgiveness wasn’t my strong suit in the first place, and he sure didn’t deserve any, after how he’d played me.

“Ah.” That sounded . . . neutral.

I decided not to follow up. With a groan, I checked our status—still tethered and unable to flee. After a quick shower, I had some food and did a few rounds in the combat sim. My inability to impact our dilemma made me especially ferocious; I beat a new level of difficulty by dislocating my shoulder during a particularly brutal hold, and I was still sore from putting it back in place when I went looking for Beatriz.

Found her, under the console, again, trying without much luck to get it back online.

“We’re going to need full capabilities,” I said.

She squirmed out and stared up at me. “I know,” she said, and knocked what looked like an expensive laser soldering tool into the metal top of the console in frustration. “Convince Elder Typhon to turn the energy tap on. I can’t wire around a problem I can’t even reach! I don’t know how he’s done it, but the power just won’t flow. It’s in the cables, but there’s some kind of bio-interference that’s inhibiting it from reaching the human components.”

“But the air and lights are on.”

“Kitchen’s got full capability; so does the media room. I’ve checked. But this? No. I can’t understand how he’s done it. It’s like a Leviathan version of malware, sealing up a very specific function. I can’t slice it, and I can’t work around it. There’s nothing I can do.” Her voice faded, but her eyes went bright and distant.

I knew that look. Sometimes, if I talked to Bea about the problem, she talked herself right into an answer. So I waited, and she thought.

Then she smiled. It was a delighted yet purely evil sort of expression.

“What—”

She held a finger to her lips and pointed up, circling it around. I understood what she meant; it was possible—probable, even—that Typhon had his Honors listening in. She dropped the soldering gun back into a portable toolbox and took out another tool: a simple wrench. Under the console again, working fast, and I caught the component—the main input screen—as she loosened it. Bea twisted up and grabbed it and ran out of the room. I took the toolbox and dashed after her. No idea where she was going, but it still came as a surprise when I found her in the kitchen.

She gestured impatiently for the toolbox, and I set it on the counter and watched in bemused fascination as she pulled out connections and rapidly connected the data input screen into . . . the reheater? “I’m hungry,” she announced. “Do you want something?”