Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(97)

“It’s not nothing,” Sanjana argues, voice sharpening as she glances at Gideon, then back to me. “He’d have to actually be there, at the rift. It’s not on any kind of network. LaRoux’s far too smart to leave something like that accessible remotely. Gideon would have to write his virus and then deliver it personally, physically, plugging it directly into the rift machinery.”

I lean back, letting the pillar behind me take some of my weight off my weary feet. “We’d be there too—we’d help him fight past the husks.”

“That’s not the danger I’m talking about.” Sanjana scrubs a hand over her eyes, and I realize she’s as exhausted as the rest of us. “I’ve explained that the whispers manipulate neural energy, that that’s how they do what they do. The rift is the source of that power. Gideon would have to come in contact with that rift to access it, which risks flooding his mind with that power.”

Gideon’s not looking at me, instead busy with organizing the printouts, leafing through them and neatening the stack of papers. I swallow. “What would that do to him?”

“Maybe nothing,” Sanjana replies. “But it could kill him, too. It could drive him mad. It could erase every memory and thought he’s ever had. It’s impossible to predict.”

My mouth’s gone dry. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I know the reason that we don’t dare attempt this is that if something goes wrong, it could give Lilac even more power; it could lead to the destruction of this world as we know it, the destruction of humanity. But here, now, all I can process is that attempting it might destroy the boy sitting a few feet away, fidgeting with a stack of paper so that he doesn’t have to look at me.

I can’t take my eyes off him, though his face is still angled down and away, where I can’t see what’s going on inside him. No, I want to say. Not in a million years. It’s too dangerous. It’s asking too much. I don’t care if he’s the Knave, I don’t care if there’s no one else. I won’t let him.

Sanjana breaks the silence, clearing her throat. “I’m going to try to get some sleep,” she says, and when I look up, I see her gaze swing between the two of us. She holds out her good hand to forestall Gideon as he starts to offer help, adding, “I’m okay. I’m not running any marathons anytime soon, but a few cracked ribs won’t stop me from finding a place to pass out.” She offers up a weak smile and slowly makes her way back out of the shop.

I stare down at Gideon, able to see only the fall of his hair, face shadowed and angled away, until I can’t stand it anymore. I shove away from the pillar at my back and drop to the floor beside him. “You can’t do this,” I blurt, voice cracking with exhaustion.

His eyes flick up, expression unreadable—not because there’s no emotion there, but because his features are so conflicted I can’t tell one flicker of thought from another. “It’s only a theory,” he replies softly. “Useless, unless we figure out a way to make sure nothing goes wrong. We can’t risk making Lilac strong enough to wipe us out, or cut us off.”

I swallow, trying to soothe my dry throat, leaning to the side until I come up against the wall with a thump. My eyes close, as though by shutting him out I might shut out everything else, too.

“How’s your hand?” Gideon asks in a low voice.

Startled, I open my eyes and look down, where the bandage on my hand is grubby and half-stripped away after our near escape in the streets. I used it to grab him, when Tarver and I pulled him free of the husks, and I didn’t feel a thing. I flex my fingers, a dull ache throbbing through where the burns had been, the only reminder of the choice I made on the Daedalus. The exploding plas-pistol could’ve easily killed me, and instead, Mori’s dermal regenerator’s left me without so much as a scratch.

“Better,” I whisper.

The quiet, punctuated only by the faint sound of Tarver shifting in his sleep in the next room, settles in like a tangling vine—the longer it grows between us, the harder it is to break through it. I want to say something, but I don’t know what—that I’m sorry, except I’m not, because he was deceiving me too, as I was deceiving him. Gideon and I were a house of cards, nothing more. We were always going to fall apart eventually.

I shouldn’t mourn the loss of something that never existed. And yet, sitting here in the dark, fighting the urge to turn toward him and reach for him and throw myself into his arms and tell him—tell him anything, everything, whatever I can—it’s taking all the strength I have.

My self-control crumbles a little and I find my head turning, my eyes seeking his profile—but he’s already looking at me, his eyes glinting in the glow of the flare. He reaches toward me and I hold my breath. His fingertips touch my cheek, tracing a curve down toward my jaw and then lingering there, as though loath to pull away.

“Was any of it real?” he whispers.

And I don’t know if he’s really asking for truth or only echoing my own words back at me.

My head tilts a fraction, in spite of myself, unable to resist leaning into his touch. “I don’t know.”

Gideon’s breath catches, and there’s just enough light from the flare for me to see his lips hint at a smile. “I don’t believe you.”

My heart’s pounding, aching—the only thing worse than sitting here, unmoving, would be to crumble and lean into him and feel him recoil. Or to pull away myself. I want to kiss him, to wrap myself up in him, but everything I feel for him is so confused that even that instinct might be a lie.