Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(79)
Instead he dives deeper into the web of data and information streams, and she pulls back, to skim the surface of the world. He stays low, in the darkness and shadow, leaving no trace of himself where he’s been; she lights up the world, seen by all and known by none.
They are both so alone.
THE UPPER CITY IS ALL but abandoned, even after dawn starts creeping up the streets between the buildings. The sun seems to rise more gradually than usual, filtered through Corinth’s smog and the smoke above us now, not purified by Sofia’s smartglass windows. Slowly, it’s oozing down the streets and turning the white stone ruins of the huge mall before us a pale gold, and with the faraway sirens finally silent, there’s a sense these buildings fell centuries ago, not just last night.
Some seem utterly fine, unaffected—others have suffered structural damage even this far out from the crash site. Everyone who can evacuate already has. It’s like walking through the set from a disaster movie, the postapocalyptic landscape of a city after a volcanic eruption has covered the world in ashes. There are surprisingly few bodies—Jubilee’s the one who explains to me in a whisper that they’ll be mostly inside the buildings, buried under debris. There’s an eerie beauty to it, a sense of waiting, as though the people will step out from behind the cardboard sets any moment—like visiting a school after hours or breaking into an amusement park during its off-season.
Except, of course, the only people we see are still, never to move again, or they’re the whisper’s husks—and we only see those from a distance. But all of them are heading in the same direction: toward the wreck of the Daedalus, and the rift.
The LaRoux estate occupies an area covering at least ten city blocks, and even after catching a ride with some of Kumiko’s soldiers, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Thankfully they had the spare supplies to outfit us—otherwise we’d all be trying to infiltrate the LaRoux estate in battered formalwear. As it is, seeing Sofia clad in black cargo pants and a military-style vest and boots is strange enough to do my head in.
The massive wrought-iron gate at the street entrance is mostly for show—the air shines with the telltale glimmer of a security field. Tarver punches in a string of numbers that makes the field shimmer, then vanish.
“Lilac’s code,” he murmurs. “No one’s bothered to change it.”
Beyond the gate stretches a field of lush, green grass, and gardens planted with dozens upon dozens of pale pink roses. Lilac’s favorites, according to the gossip columns and architectural magazines that interview the family. We pass a bench shaded by a weeping willow that makes Tarver’s jaw clench. Something about it is familiar, nagging at me until it clicks. This is the garden where their engagement photos were taken.
The grounds, like the city outside, are eerily empty. If there was to be a summit here, even an informal one, there should be…people. Valets, servers, bodyguards, staff…Instead all is still, and silent, like the castle in a fairy tale abandoned for a hundred years. I half expect to find servants and cooks asleep at their posts. Instead there’s only us, our footsteps in the grass and on the stones, like the five of us are the only people left in the world.
Us, and the ghost of Lilac LaRoux.
I’ve never been to the LaRoux estate on Corinth. Simon and I used to go after school to their mansion on Paradisa, one of their many vacation homes, and play—Simon played, anyway. I’d spend my afternoons watching them through the banister of the loft over the playroom, which was as far as I was allowed to come before Simon would chase me off. I remember them giggling over electronics as Simon showed her how to rewire the automatic cleaning bots to play music at random intervals or start eating all the fringe on the rugs. I’d watch, longing to be included with the big kids when they set off firecrackers in the tennis courts with Lilac’s cousins, or, later, as they’d watch movies in the den, carefully sitting a hand’s breadth apart. I remember watching that distance close, week by week. I remember thinking—as my big brother watched her out of the corner of his eye instead of the movie, gathering his courage to put an arm around her shoulders—that I’d never end up like that, terrified of a girl.
And now Sofia can pretty much stop my heart with a glance.
Tarver steps off the path and leads us around toward the east wing of the house, where a servants’ entrance might give us more cover as we break in. Despite the emptiness of the grounds, there’d surely be guards on the front door—if nothing else, the bodyguards brought by the various senators and their delegations. I catch glimpses of the house through the windows as we go. A grand piano here, a sun-filled solarium there. Every room empty.
The servants’ entrance has both a keypad and a hand scanner, and while the system cheerfully accepts the code Tarver enters, it offers up only a blaring tone and a flash of red when he places his hand on the scanner.
“Did they know we were coming?” murmurs Jubilee, reaching—unconsciously, I’m sure—for the gun strapped to her hip.
Tarver tries a second time, with the same result, expression grim. “Hard to say. He could’ve easily revoked my access a week ago, just to piss me off. We’re not exactly father and son, LaRoux and I.” He moves off to the side to cup his hands around his eyes and peer through a window.
Sofia glances at me, and I know why—I give my head a little shake. “I might be able to hack the security pad, but it’d take me a while, probably a couple of hours. It’d be different if I’d had time to plan ahead, but…” I grimace.