Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(52)

She stands nearby, and she’s dressed, and she’s holding my lapscreen.

I forgot to close it down before I fell asleep.

Lit ghostly pale by its light, she’s letting it dangle from one hand, so I can see the dossier I pulled up using her genetag number. I see her ID picture, her real ID picture. I see the folder of files on her father; criminal records, medical reports, employment records. Autopsy.

My heart clenches, mind shutting down. I have to find an excuse, tell her the truth, say something. But I just freeze.

Then her gaze drops, and I see what lies at her feet. My book. My ancient, priceless copy of Alice in Wonderland. My lucky charm, my token from the life I used to live. It lies open, and there, sitting on top of it, is the final nail in my coffin. A single playing card, from the old-fashioned deck my brother and I used to use.

My heart’s hammering. My mouth is dry.

It’s the jack of hearts.

The knave.

“Was all this just a game?” I expected coldness, emptiness—instead Sofia’s voice is bright and hot with fear, with betrayal. In this moment she can’t put up a front. “Was any of it real?”

My thoughts are still stuck, the torrent of everything I should say building up like water behind a dam. “Sofia—” I stammer.

With that, she’s moving, dropping the lapscreen, backing away from me toward the door.

I want to reach out and grab her, make her stay, make her listen. If I could just make her listen. But I can’t force her to stay. I can’t chase her, after all of this. Not anymore. “Please wait,” I manage instead. “Please—let me—”

She pauses in the doorway just long enough to glance back at me. “You come looking for me again,” she says tightly, “and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

I stare at her from where I kneel, my words lost.

And then she’s gone.

Their words fly through our world like waves, and we learn to catch hold of them and ride the messages they send to one another. The casualty letters from their wars are easiest to follow, leading us to grief and anger, emotions so strong we can cling to them and experience their world just a breath longer, the strength of their feelings tangible through the invisible walls between our universe and theirs.

There is nothing remarkable about the one that leads us to a little cottage surrounded by flowers. There is no reason to linger, nothing that should make us pause. These humans’ grief is no different from that of any other we have tasted.

And yet we find we can stay, drawn inward, pulled through the fields and up the hilltops and to a tree in whose branches huddles a little boy, clutching a notebook to his chest. He keeps his words on paper, so we cannot read them through their hypernet, but for just an instant we can feel them in his soul.

Then the poetry fades away, and we’re left waiting for the next wave of words to carry us closer to understanding.

JUST KEEP MOVING.

The words echo over and over in my mind, drowning out my other thoughts, keeping time with my footsteps. The background patchwork of noise from street vendors and traffic fades into a dull, throbbing hum beneath the roaring in my ears. I want to run, to put as much distance between me and the Knave of Hearts as I can—but running draws too much attention. I can’t look over my shoulder, I can’t duck low. I have to walk like I belong here. Pilfer a hat from this newsstand, a pair of smog glasses from that one, hide my face from any cameras LRI might be monitoring with facial recognition. I have to look like I haven’t a care in the world. If it weren’t for the steady staccato of words marching through my head like a drumbeat, I’m not sure I could.

First I need to get to my old apartment before he does. Get the gun, get my father’s picture. If I don’t get them now, I can never risk it again. I can’t think past today to the Daedalus—there is no Daedalus anymore, not with Gideon—but I have to get my things. It’s all I know. And after that, to my ID guy in the southern district for a new name, a new ident chip. Gideon—the Knave—knows Alexis. And he knows Bianca Reine—the White Queen. God, he gave me that name. I’m an idiot.

And, worst of all, he knows Sofia.

I let him kiss me. I let him touch me. I let him—my eyes burn, behind the protective sheen of my smog glasses. I let myself think that maybe I wasn’t alone after all, that maybe I didn’t have to stay alone. That maybe my life wasn’t just going to be hatred and grief and revenge. And as a result, I let myself run straight into the arms of the person who turned the last year of my life into a nightmare. Heartbreak and sorrow and hatred tangle as they sweep across my body, making me shudder, making me want to find a shower, a real shower with water like they don’t have down here, and stand there for hours, for days, until I’ve washed away every skin cell that ever touched the Knave of Hearts.

Even by the time I reach the elevator to the other levels of the city, my skin hasn’t stopped crawling. The smog fades, gives way to sunlight, to clarity, and I barely notice. I remain on foot, remembering how easily the Knave tracked me when I was in LaRoux’s custody. My lungs ache—no, my heart aches.

Just keep moving.

My mind grabs only snapshots of the minutes, the hours, that follow. I know I have to focus, I know I can’t fall apart. Not yet. But the only fragments that stick with me are the ones that hurt, the ones that penetrate the thickening fog of panic. My fingernails catching on the loose brick in the alley where I keep my emergency glove, the key to Kristina’s apartment. My legs aching and heavy as I sneak past the doorman in my old building while his head’s turned. My hands shaking so much that I almost can’t use the key-coded glove to send the elevator to the penthouse suite. My eyes blurring and stinging as I scramble through the bedroom in search of the gun, praying LaRoux’s heavies didn’t return for it. The surging of my heart in my throat when I find it hidden beneath the duvet I pulled off the bed during my struggle. The line of fire along my index finger as I smash the glass of the picture frame concealing the drawing of my father. The sick nausea in my belly as I ransack Kristina’s jewelry box, grabbing the strings of diamonds and pearls I never touched in the three months I lived here. The stabbing of my heart as I wait for the elevator back down, dread rising with each beat that when the doors open, Gideon’s face will be there on the other side.