Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(22)

But the truth is that even if I told them what really happened, even if I gave them his name and the icon on my computer I used to send that desperate distress signal, they wouldn’t have anything they could use to track him down. I doubt “Gideon” is the hacker’s real name, and even if it were, one first name on a planet of twenty billion people wouldn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know.

So why don’t you just give it to them?

I swallow hard as the man sighs, straightening up and moving away to speak to one of his partners in a low voice. I want to strain to listen, but I can’t make myself focus. It’s all I can do to remember the story I gave them well enough to stick to it.

Ordinarily, I’d know what happens next. With no witnesses and no record of this interrogation, they’d take me someplace quiet and have me killed, and I’d simply vanish. If it were any other company, any other organization—I’d die. But this is LaRoux Industries, and the things they could do to me are far, far worse.

I can see my father’s face in the gloom, exhaustion making the shadows swim and wriggle into familiar patterns before my eyes. I can see him in the moments before he turned and walked into the barracks on Avon—I can see his pupils dilate, swallowing the clear blue of his irises, I can hear his voice go cold, I can see his muscles seize up and propel him away from me. It’s always that moment that I relive, not the explosion itself. I see my father’s soul vanish again and again. I see the moment he died, seconds before he was blown to pieces.

I force my terror down away from my heart, force myself to breathe. Panic will only make me slip. My eyes search the perimeter of the room, difficult to make out past the lights blinding me. I know what’s through a couple of these doors, from the floor plan I memorized. But I’m betting I can’t use the same escape route twice, even if I could get past these guys. Even if, after hours of sitting here, I could manage to run faster than my captors.

Maybe if I were braver, I could do it. Maybe if there was any part of myself worth saving, beyond the need for vengeance. But…I don’t want to die. I can’t die. Not when I’m so, so close to reaching Roderick LaRoux.

One of the men—the one who fought me—pauses abruptly, signaling for the others to quiet. He presses one finger to his ear, and I realize someone’s giving him orders through a micro-earpiece. “Yes, sir,” he says, spine stiffening even though whoever he’s speaking to can’t see him. “I understand, sir.” There’s a long pause, in which the man listens. Then he nods to one of the others and gestures back into the shadows, in the direction of the ring. “Yes. Yes—understood. Thank you, monsieur.”

My body stiffens. Only one man’s arrogant enough to resurrect a dead language just to come up with a unique title for himself. This man’s orders are coming directly from Roderick LaRoux.

“It’s your lucky night, sweetheart,” the man says, pulling off his earpiece. “I’ve heard it doesn’t hurt a bit, and you don’t even know it’s happening. You just—pop,” he says, miming a tiny explosion with his fingers by his temple, “and you’re gone, replaced by something much easier to deal with. This is a much more humane way to get answers. Though much less fun.”

No. God, no. I can feel the ring’s vibrations through the floor, traveling up the chair legs, as the machinery begins to turn on. I can feel the floor moving the way the ground moved beneath me when my father turned himself into a bomb.

The man who was speaking to me replaces his comms device with something else, another bit of electronics that hooks over his ear. “Suit up,” he orders the others, who dutifully outfit themselves with similar devices with the air of workers donning their helmets or surgeons pulling on gloves.

As the men turn their attention to the metal ring dominating the middle of the room, I try to look around, try to see if there’s any way out. The exits will be locked, and even if I could get them open, I’d never make it there before they grabbed me. They’re too far for me to grab a weapon off them without them noticing me getting up from the chair. I’m rooted here, just as surely as if they’d bound me to it.

I’m staring so hard through the gloom that at first, I don’t register when something changes. A tiny light comes on in the darkness, a single green LED that winks once, twice, then steadies. I stare at it blankly, reminded absurdly for a moment of the will-o’-the-wisps back on Avon. And then, all at once, in the same instant that my interrogator turns to come back toward me, I realize what it is.

One of the cameras just turned itself on.

I jerk my gaze away, shutting my eyes so they can’t see where I was looking. I don’t even care that they jolt my chair again to prevent me from resting. It’s a foolish hope, a wild hope—for all I know, it could be LaRoux, turning them on so he could watch what’s about to happen.

“I have permission to make you an offer,” says the leader of the men, watching my face. “If you know of some way to contact the young man you encountered at LRI Headquarters, and if you can convince him to meet you at a specific time and place, we’ll let you go.”

That brings me up short, the adrenaline surge in my body flatlining. “Let me go?” I whisper, caught off guard. “No—it’s a trick.” The words come out before I can remember the role I’m supposed to be playing. They’ve planned this perfectly, waiting until I know what’s coming, what will happen to me, to give me this way out. Alexis should’ve jumped at the chance.