Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(34)
“Hey,” comes Gideon’s voice, much closer to me. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I should’ve warned you—I promise we’re okay down here. This place could take a dozen blasts like that and survive.”
I blink, trying to clear my eyes of smoke that doesn’t exist, and realize he’s taken my arm, his hand warm and real, unlike the remembered heat of a barracks on fire. “I’m fine,” I gasp, unable to stop my voice shaking. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s go.”
Gideon hesitates, eyes on my face until I turn away. If I tell him about my father’s so-called suicide, he’ll be able to figure out who I am the second he gets access again to the hypernet. And while he says he doesn’t still work for the Knave, I have no way of knowing how close his ties are, or whether he’d turn me over if he knew I was the thing the Knave had been chasing for the last year.
I start moving, pulling away from his hand on my arm, and after another second of hesitation, his footsteps start up again behind me. A few jogging steps and he catches up to me, clearing his throat.
“We’ll head to Mae’s,” he says, causing a ping of relief somewhere amidst the fog of memory in my head that he’s not pushing the issue. “She’s an old friend, and if anyone on the net has heard rumors about something bad going down at the Daedalus gala, she’ll know about it.”
“Can we trust her?”
“Absolutely.” Gideon glances at me, flashing me a smile in the dim red glow of our LED lamps. “She’s one of the only people on this planet I actually do trust. I knew her for years through the hypernet before we ever met in person. She’s good people. And she’s got a good rig, so we can use her place to regroup.”
I let out a slow breath. It’s hard enough teaching myself to trust Gideon—secondhand trust is even harder to accept. But I nod, reminding myself that even though he trusts her, I don’t have to. I can still run, if I need to. I still know how to disappear.
“Where is she?”
“She actually lives in this sector, on the north side. Mid-level.”
“Oh—perfect.” I try to bite back my surprise. Mid-level means money, at least enough to afford a decent place, a hover, a steady lifestyle. I was expecting the female version of Gideon, and had been bracing myself for another lair. “But Gideon—what do we do then? If something’s going down on the Daedalus, that doesn’t give us much time to stop LaRoux.”
Gideon runs his hands through his hair, a gesture of frustration that’s becoming rapidly familiar the longer I know him. “I know. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we should tell the police—it’s not like we’ve got proof, but maybe if they launch even a halfhearted investigation, it might be enough to throw a wrench in LaRoux’s plans.”
The police? I swallow hard, exhaustion making it harder for me to remember what I’ve told Gideon and what I haven’t. He knows I’m a con artist, knows I’d have no particular desire to bring the authorities into this. But he doesn’t know all the reasons why I really don’t want the police’s attention on me. Attention that could lead to questions like “Why do you own an illegal firearm?” and “What are you doing with the blueprints to LRI Headquarters?” and “Why are you hiding your genetag and your identity?”
“Surely LaRoux’s got people in law enforcement,” I say finally. “Not to mention that the sector relies heavily on LaRoux’s private security force, and as much fun as it was dancing with them last time, I wouldn’t mind avoiding their eye this time around.”
Gideon’s shaking his head, his eyes distant and his lips thin, his expression so clear I can almost feel his distress like it’s my own. Losing his den means a lot more to him than losing my apartment did to me.
I soften my voice. “Can we really trust them?”
“We’ve got to trust someone,” Gideon says finally. “We’ll keep it anonymous. We don’t even need to say it’s LaRoux—maybe even just a bomb threat, something mundane, something they have to look into. Anything to get their eyes on the Daedalus, because I don’t know what else we can do.”
And the problem is, he’s right. We’re days out from the gala on the Daedalus, and our arsenal is down to a backpack of whatever we could grab before he reduced his hideout to rubble. We have nothing. I swallow against the bitter taste of adrenaline still lingering in my mouth, and let Gideon lead me on through the darkness.
We wait on the gray world, and look for worth in the hatred and mistrust among its people but find little. Their moments of bravery and heroism are buried in the lust for violence and revenge that tears them apart.
There is a girl with fire in her blood stirring the others with the same magnetism of the blue-eyed man, making others follow her with nothing but words. They rebel against their leaders as we once tried to rebel against the man with blue eyes.
But it is the little boy often at her side who draws our notice most. These creatures cannot see into each other, or see ahead into the infinite branches of possible futures. But we can.
And this green-eyed boy will be important.
THE SOUND OF OUR FOOTSTEPS is muffled by the soft sand under our feet, and I can hear my breath in my ears, too loud and rasping for the speed we’re running. But of course it’s not the running that’s got my heart trying to thump its way out of my chest. I’ve got a chorus of voices echoing around my head, just to add to the noise.