Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(91)
Normally, carrying Sanjana would be nothing—she’s not very heavy, and there’s two of us—but by the time we ease her through the gap in the façade, I’m ready to drop myself. I stumble and let her go a bit too abruptly as soon as we’re inside, making Tarver sag under the sudden additional weight, and we all end up sinking to the dusty, cracked floor in a heap.
The only light’s coming from the partially blocked entryway, and Sofia—also on the floor, I didn’t even notice her drop—groans and drags her pack over to rummage for a flashlight. Nothing happens when she flicks it on. I can see her profile backlit by the sun on the street outside, see her stare blankly at the flashlight as though its failure has turned her brain off, too, and this last obstacle is too much to bear.
“EMP blast,” Tarver rasps, voice hoarse with exhaustion and catching as he chokes on the dust stirred up by our entry. “Don’t know why it hurt them, but that was that pulse out there. Flashlight won’t work. Guns either. Nothing that runs on power.”
Sofia drops the flashlight with a clatter and slumps back over on the floor, defeated. If my leg wasn’t pinned under Sanjana’s half-conscious body, I’d drag myself toward her to make sure she’s all right—but I can’t even tell if I’m all right. My muscles keep shaking, which suggests that at least all my limbs are still attached. Unless they’re phantom twitches. Isn’t that what they call it, when you lose an arm or a leg, and you still feel like it’s there? Phantom twitches—phantom exhaustion—phantom sensations from bits that aren’t there anymore…a laugh that even I recognize, dimly, distantly, as somewhat hysterical, whispers out of my lips before I turn my face against the stone floor, not even caring as the dust sticks to my sweaty brow.
There’s a crack, a whoosh, and then red light blossoms against my closed eyes—my eyes are closed? When? I force my lids open to see Jubilee’s face glowing. Then she’s moving, and my tired brain makes sense of what I’m seeing—it’s an emergency flare, something she must have had in her pack. She hands it to Flynn, sitting beside her, who tucks it in under a rock, shielding the glow so that it offers us only a little light. Hopefully, it’ll be invisible from the outside.
Most of the arcade has collapsed—though the wreck of the Daedalus is still a few kilometers away, the shock from its impact has leveled over half the buildings in the city this far out. A few storefronts are still intact, promising high-end shopping experiences that their battered, darkened interiors certainly can’t deliver. A jewelry store’s security grate has been smashed apart by a fallen column of marble; the fact that the dust and rubble on the floor have been undisturbed makes my skin prickle. Under normal circumstances, even in the upper city, this place would’ve been picked clean by looters.
The weight on my leg shifts, yanking me back to the present, and I remember Sanjana. I sit up, reaching out to ease my foot out from under her as she lets out a groan. Tarver bends over her, brushing her hair out of her face so he can scan it.
“You okay?” he asks, intent. “Sanjana?”
She groans again, as though protesting the need to reply, but then opens her eyes and struggles up onto her elbows so she can eye Tarver wearily. “You do keep saving my life, Captain.”
“It’s ‘Major’ now,” notes Jubilee, glancing up from her torn-up hand, which Flynn is inspecting in the unsteady light of the flare. “He got promoted after Patron.”
“Actually, it’s just ‘Tarver’ now,” corrects the ex-soldier, the grim line of his mouth finally easing into something almost like a smile. “And to be honest, I’m pretty sure you just saved our lives. How’d you do that?”
Sanjana grimaces as Tarver helps her up into a seated position, easing back to lean against a block of stone. “Electromagnetic pulse. I was pretty sure that the rift entities’ seemingly supernatural abilities are actually directly linked to the power differentials between their dimension and ours, and that their method of control is nothing more than an electrical interception of the signals firing in a person’s neural path…ways…” She trails off, eyes flicking from Tarver’s blank face, then across to Jubilee’s, then across what can be seen of the others in the dim light. “Huh. Wrong audience.”
“No, I get it.” My weariness is fading, making way for a spark of curiosity. I’ve got no idea who this woman is, beyond someone Sofia was trying to reach at LaRoux Industries, but whoever she is, she’s brilliant. “They’re hacking people’s brains, essentially.”
Sanjana’s lips twitch into a smile, eyes meeting mine. “Not really how I’d put it, but that’s more or less right.”
What she’s saying makes perfect sense—it fits with LaRoux’s little devices, explaining why the electromagnetic fields our shields produce would hide us from the whisper. And then I see something else, something more urgent, and I scramble to rip my vest open, and pull my kit out from inside it. “Oh, hell.”
Six sets of eyes swivel to me, and I point at Tarver, then Flynn. “We just fried them. I don’t know how quickly the whisper can find us, but it won’t need a husk to lay eyes on us anymore. Our minds are unprotected.”
Soft curses echo around me, horrified glances are exchanged, and then Tarver and Flynn are both scrambling to pull the palm pads from inside their vests, sliding them across to me. “Can you fix them?” Jubilee asks, pressing down on the folded bandage Flynn had been using to stop the bleeding on her hand. “Did the EMP fry your equipment, too?”