Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(83)
Tarver ignores Gideon, gesturing to the food. “Eat,” he says, tilting his head. “There’s no time to sleep, but eat something and that’ll keep us going.”
“I know that, I learned that from you.” Jubilee pauses, watching Tarver—then, gritting her teeth, she leans forward and shoves him, hard, into the edge of the refrigerator. “Sir. You have to stop! You have to take a breath.”
“I can’t!” he replies, voice cracking, the veneer of calm slipping for just one, vital instant, in which I can see the anguish behind it. “I can’t, Lee. If I stop, if I think, I’ll—it’s Lilac. I can’t think. I can’t stop. I can’t lose her. You don’t know what—” He shudders, pushing Jubilee away and staggering a step. “We just need to move.” He gets his balance and starts for the hallway, and the entryway beyond.
Jubilee’s right. We can’t storm the wreck of the Daedalus with no idea what we’ll find. The place will be crawling with husks, and even if it weren’t, the thing in Lilac’s body could kill us all without breaking a sweat. She only let us live this long to see us suffer, but if we become a genuine threat…But I know this panic of his, I know this desperate focus. Logic won’t reach him. He can’t let it reach him, because if he does, it’ll break him.
I summon the dismissive tone of voice I know I’ll need. “So you’re really that eager to kill the love of your life?”
Tarver skids to a halt—I catch the look Jubilee throws me, her brows shooting up, eyes flashing with an intense are-you-completely-bloody-insane kind of look. When Tarver turns, I find myself taking a step back from the force of his gaze. “Excuse me?”
“That’s your plan, right?” I swallow. “We already know you can’t talk her out of this, you tried that on the Daedalus. LaRoux’s certainly not going to help you—he’s clearly lost whatever marbles he had left. And if Gideon can’t replicate that tech, there’s nothing to stop the whisper from taking us over. We’ve got no other ideas, nothing else up our sleeves. I’m just surprised you’re so anxious to get there and kill her.”
For a moment, Tarver’s right hand twitches by his hip. I grew up on Avon, surrounded by soldiers with that same instinct, the same fight-or-flight responses. And I know, because I saw, that the safety’s off his gun. But despite the hammering of my heart, my fear isn’t of him. He may be half-mad with grief and panic, and I may have only known him for a day, but it only took me about ten minutes to know who this man was. And he’s not going to hurt me, no matter how badly he needs to find someone to blame.
Still, my breath catches.
Then he sags, turning and staggering back until he hits the wall, eliciting a grunt of pain as it jars his shoulder. He drops, sliding against the wall until he’s sitting on the marble, elbows on his knees and fists balled against his eyes.
Jubilee’s eyes go from Tarver to me, and this time that look says something altogether different. She nods, and though it’s the smallest of gestures, it’s like that tiny grain of respect gives my lungs permission to work again. She and Flynn cross toward the foyer, joining Tarver on the floor. I run a shaky hand through my hair, trying to fight the urge to look back at Gideon. I can feel him watching me. I took his hand out there as LaRoux spoke, finding myself unable to watch that flood of anger and despair across his features—but now there’s distance again.
If none of this were happening, if he were just a hacker and I were just a con artist…would anything be different? Would we be any more able to trust each other?
He moves past me, gathering up some of the food Tarver pulled out, and heads over to join the others. I follow, sinking down onto the floor. I’m expecting cold marble, but instead I discover that the floors are heated—a luxury I never even knew existed. For a wild moment I want to lie down, face against the warm stone, and sleep. Gideon’s already pulling tools out of his bag, tiny screwdrivers and wire strippers, disassembling the earpiece bit by bit.
“We destroy the rift.” Tarver’s ignoring Jubilee’s not-so-subtle attempts to shove a granola bar into his hand.
Flynn’s voice is musing. “He was telling the truth about that much, in his announcement—the rift machinery is what connects this world with the whispers’ world. They live in hyperspace, and if we destroy that connection, we destroy the whisper.”
Tarver nods. “It worked the first time around, and it worked on Avon.”
“She could have destroyed us, or taken us over, on the Daedalus.” My voice sounds tired even to my own ears. “Why didn’t she?”
Tarver’s expression twitches as he shoves Jubilee’s hand away. “She—it—wanted us to suffer. Wanted me to suffer. Can’t suffer if we’re dead, or if we have no minds left to feel it.”
Jubilee gives up, tossing the granola bar on the ground and leaning back against the wall. “Even if we could get to the rift before she squashes us—and that’s a big ‘if’—I’m not so sure destroying the rift would work this time around. I’ve seen these things, seen what a person is like when a whisper’s controlling them.” Her eyes are on Flynn’s, her voice low. “Lilac’s…different. With the others, the husks, the people being controlled—they’re like marionettes, all empty shells being made to dance.”