These Broken Stars (Starbound #1)(92)

I shake my head, find my voice. “I don’t know what I am or why I’m here, but until I do, I’ll do what she would’ve wanted. Which is to get past that door, power the signal, and get you home.”

“Get us both home. I’m not leaving without you.”

“My father is a powerful man, but we’re talking about a corporation powerful enough to bury an entire planet. He may not even know what’s happening here, and if someone else is the one to discover what’s happened here—you think they can’t bury us? I was dead…you think they’re going to just let me walk back into a normal life?”

Tarver’s jaw clenches. “They’ll never find out what happened here. We’ll lie.”

I stare at him, my heart aching. “Tarver,” I breathe. “You can’t lie. They’ll know. They’ll run tests on me and find out. They’ll court-martial you. You’ll lose everything.”

“Not everything.”

He watches me calmly. Now that he’s made up his mind about what I am—that I am his Lilac—it’s as though nothing else matters. He looks so tired. If only he would sleep.

“She loved you so much,” I find myself whispering. “I wish you could have heard it from her.”

It isn’t until later, when I’ve changed for bed and he’s cleaned up the few dishes from dinner, that he speaks to me again. He stands in the doorway, watching me open the window shutters so I can look out at the night.

“Do you really imagine yourself staying here if they come for me?” he asks.

“No. But I know I’m here for you. They didn’t bring me back to be nice—they brought me back because they need us both to get past that door and do what they’ve been trying to get us to do all along. Without you here there’s no reason for them to sustain me.”

I keep my eyes on the night outside, trying not to let him see how afraid I am.

“It’s not that I imagine myself staying here when you go,” I say softly. “I imagine myself ceasing to exist. You have to let me go, Tarver. You can’t…”

“I can’t what?” His voice is lower, tightly controlled. I’ve never heard him sound like this before. I turn to find him clutching the door frame, his grip white-knuckled, every muscle tense.

I swallow. “Lose yourself in a ghost.”

For long moments he’s quiet and still, the silence drawn between us as tightly as a wire. At any moment it will pull me from my spot at the window and draw me toward him at last.

I can’t keep this up.

But he breaks first, and vanishes from the doorway. I hear his footsteps, angry and quick, crunching over the debris in the mudroom as he heads out into the night. The tension drains and I find myself falling, hitting the ground with bruising force, my skin fragile and paper-thin now. I can barely summon the energy to drag myself to the bed.

I can’t—

I have to get past that door, and for the first time, as my eyes light on the LaRoux lambda embroidered on the blankets, I think I know how. I have to do it soon. I don’t think I have much time left.

“This is insane. You’re the one who imagines I’m being less than truthful, then you want me to explain why? You tell me.”

“Perhaps we can both agree, hypothetically, that there may exist some reason for you to conceal the truth.”

“Hypothetically.”

“It means conditionally, conceivably.”

“I know what the word means.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

TARVER

IT’S LATE WHEN I MAKE MY WAY back across the clearing, head clearer, step surer. There’s something about going outside and stretching my legs that helps me line up my thoughts. When I make my way through into the comms room, it’s empty—but different.

The monitors, usually black, are lit up like a city skyline, blinking incomprehensible lines of code at me in vivid red, lights dancing across the controls. We’ve got power. Proper power, not whatever we’ve been squeezing out of the backup power mode.

Hope surges through me. Maybe she found a way to get through the door, into the locked room. I’ve spent every waking moment trying to find a way in, hoping for something behind that door I can use to help her.

But if she got the door open, why didn’t she come find me? My mind keeps replaying one image: the canteen dissolving to dust.

Stay calm. She’s fine. But my heart’s thumping wildly as I swing down onto the top rung of the ladder. I can hear my old drill sergeant screaming in my ear to keep me from trying some stupid, impossible jump to reach her faster. Keep yourself safe, he bellows at me from beyond his grave on another planet far away. You can’t help anybody else if you’re in pieces. Don’t rush in.

But I can’t help it. I scramble down, ignoring the stab of pain as I twist my ankle in my haste. The lights are on, and I hurl myself down the corridors and then the metal stairs, swinging around the corner.

The round door is open.

Lilac must have heard me coming—she stands framed by it, looking out, waiting for me. Her skin is nearly a dull gray, too pale, her eyes lost in the shadows. I can see her shaking as she grips the edge of the round doorway. I slow to a walk as I approach her.

“I guessed the password.” Her whisper rasps.

I want nothing more than to go to her side, but I know she doesn’t want me to, and I hold back with a monumental effort. “How?”