This Shattered World (Starbound #2)(105)
“Are you in love with this vess—this person?”
I gape at him, caught off guard. The absurdity of the question here, in the bowels of a secret research facility, conversing with a creature from another universe, is so striking that I have to fight the hysterical impulse to laugh. But his eyes are so grave, so serious, that the urge fades and I’m left looking at him, my heart tight and painful.
“I—I don’t know,” I whisper. I remember the shape of his heart and mine, and his kiss at the water’s edge. “But I wanted the chance to find out.”
Flynn’s eyes flicker. He’s here now, the creature had said. I swallow, wishing I could shout at him, wanting to beg him to come back to me.
“I do not know how to leave him without destroying his mind. But if you destroyed my connection, our connection, with him…perhaps then he would be left whole.”
“Destroyed,” I echo stupidly. “You mean—”
“I want you to kill us, Jubilee Chase.”
The words knock the air from my lungs, leaving me unable to reply until I’ve gasped a few breaths.
The creature inside Flynn watches me, searching for a sign of my reaction. “I do not wish to become like the others, to fall into violence and despair, into pain. We aren’t built for it. We can’t stand it.”
“And you think we can?” I choke back a sob. “Life is pain. We’re all in pain, all the time.”
“There are other things this universe has to offer,” says the creature. “Light. Life. Touch. Sensation. The way you are all made of the same pieces, the same fragments of stardust, and yet you are all so different, all so alone.”
“You think being alone is a good thing?”
“For us it’s agony,” he says simply. “For you, there is strength in individuality. We admire it. But we were not made to emulate it.”
I gaze back at him, trying to see traces of the creature inside Flynn as he bows his head. But all I can see are Flynn’s cheekbones, his mouth, his hair tumbling over his brow. There’s nothing about him that speaks of the passenger inside him except for the emptiness in his eyes. I bite my lip, mind turning over. “Are you sure?” I say softly. “Maybe there’s some way to set you free, to let you go so you can…” But my voice gives out. I can see the creature’s answer in Flynn’s features.
“Our keeper’s mistake was in creating a prison powered by our own energy. We are a part of it.” Flynn takes a step toward me. “Destroy the machinery holding this place together and you will destroy us with it. And without our interference, forced to keep this world secret, always hidden, you can broadcast your story to the stars. Begin your healing, perhaps. Prove your species deserves life.”
“But all those things you said were good about this universe. The things you could experience. Light and—and touch…” My voice gives out.
Flynn’s shaking his head slowly. “We have no desire to live without hope of returning home. I wish…to rest.”
“All right,” I whisper. “I’ll help you.”
Flynn beckons me closer and we kneel together on the blinding white floor. He shows me the nearly invisible seam in the floor and the faint outline of a human hand—a scanner, meant to unlock the control panel beneath.
“It merely requires a hand,” he tells me. “Anyone’s hand; a deft way of keeping us, we who cannot touch anything. We’ve tried to lead others here before, but our keeper seems to take pleasure in our failures.”
“Lead others…” But before I can ask, realization courses through me. “The will-o’-the-wisps.” The locals were right. The wisps were leading them somewhere.
“The others tried for years,” the whisper continues. “But when I realized that what I wanted was different, I—I was afraid.”
I search the lax features for some sign of that fear and find none, from this creature with no way to express itself. “Afraid of what?”
“Of dying alone.” The whisper, behind Flynn’s face, meets my eyes. “Of dying without meeting you.”
I gaze back, my heart thumping with grief—for me, for Flynn, for this lost creature huddled inside him. Before I can speak, a ripple runs through Flynn’s features, making me jump.
“You must hurry,” the whisper gasps. “The others will not stay quiet for long; I cannot hold them.”
I gulp back a sob and fit my hand to the indentation, trying not to flinch at the tingle of current that courses through me in response. The scanner beeps and flashes green, causing a section of the floor to rise upward, up and up, until there’s an eight-foot column of circuitry and wires towering over me. Destroy this and the whispers die.
I can feel the whole thing humming with power, so strong it sets my teeth on edge, makes my hair lift as though a lightning bolt were about to strike. It won’t be hard to overload it all, with that much power coursing through it.
Flynn staggers, but catches himself before he can fall. His voice is a rasp, but for now, he has control. “When it is done, you must go and stop what is happening outside.”
“Outside?”
“Your people, his people; this prison has become a battlefield.”
The bottom falls out of my stomach. We knew the Fianna were close behind us when we found the facility, but the military must have been tracking us too. Two armies, converging; there’ll be a battle raging above, fueled by deaths that mean nothing, no chance of realizing they should all be on the same side against a sadistic madman worlds away. It’ll be a bloodbath.