This Shattered World (Starbound #2)(106)
This creature, who claims it cannot understand death—its compassion has robbed me of breath. With that realization comes another, and I swallow hard. “It was you,” I whisper. “You took me over the night of the massacre, not the others. You brought me there to the caves.”
“This vessel—this person—his pain is yours; you share it the way my kind shares everything. You would grieve for those deaths as he would. But I brought you there too late to stop it.”
I was there to save them. Even through its anger and its pain, this creature whose kindred sent my friends mad one by one had tried to save Flynn grief.
The whisper waits patiently until I look back up, then speaks. “I have answered your questions. Will you grant me something in return?”
“What is it?” My voice cracks.
“May I…touch you?”
I blink, eyes snapping up to meet his. “Uh—excuse me?”
“We cannot experience physical sensation in our world, and in this universe we have been always alone.” Flynn’s face looks so young.
I swallow. “Okay. Okay, sure.”
Flynn’s hand slides forward, reaching for mine. I let him take it, his fingertips grazing my skin as he turns my hand over. His knuckle brushes across my palm—his eyes are fixed on our hands, wonder transforming his features.
“In our world,” he whispers, “we are always together, completely, utterly. We are all a part of each other.” He exhales slowly, his breath puffing warm and gentle across our hands. “But it means we never know how precious it is to be able to do this, to be apart and then come together.” He weaves his fingers through mine.
I half expected his hand to be clammy, or to tingle to the touch. But his skin is warm, and familiar, and our fingers interlock as though our hands were designed to do it.
A droplet splashes onto the back of my hand, and my gaze snaps up. Flynn’s eyes are wet, and as I watch, another tear slips free and tracks halfway down his cheek before dropping away. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Jubilee Chase, I wish—”
His voice cuts out abruptly as his fingers tighten convulsively around mine. His eyes snap back up. This time I can see the panic there, an almost-human desperation reaching out through those blank, black eyes.
I cannot hold off the others forever.
“Wait!” I cry, my heart pounding with sudden fear. “Just—just hold on. Please, there has to be a way to…”
To save you.
There’s only a flicker of grief—of true despair—on his features before blankness sweeps across them. The change in Flynn, inhabited by my November ghost, had been so gradual that I almost hadn’t noticed how unlike the other whispers he was. But this coldness, this blankness—it calls up an answering chill from the pit of my stomach. My November ghost is gone.
It takes the Flynn-thing only seconds to focus on my face, a jolt running through me. I left the gun on the floor; it rests between us, and he sees it too. The instant I move, he will too—I’ll only have one shot.
One shot.
I wrench my hand from his and throw myself forward as both of us dive for the gun. My hand wraps around the grip as I hit the floor and roll, certain I’m going to feel the creature’s inhuman grip crushing my ankle or my windpipe at any moment. The air grows thick with whispering voices calling to me, visions of loved ones long dead flickering in front of my eyes as my mouth floods with the taste of copper. I blink frantically as I come back up on my knees, dizzy and blinded by the false messages the creatures are sending my mind. I swing the gun around, drawing one breath, time slowing to a crawl. Then I let out the breath and fire.
A circuit board among the machinery explodes into fragments, sending a shock wave of electricity through the wiring. The entire room flickers wildly, the core of machinery flashing through the dark like a strobe. The whisper, inches away from grabbing me, suddenly drops to the floor with a scream. I can see Flynn’s dilated eyes fixed on mine, lips parted in pain.
The power crackles and surges, building to a roar that sends me crashing to the ground. I crane my head, trying to see Flynn—trying to see the creature inside him, the creature that’s dying—but I can see only his outline silhouetted by the sparks and surges. I shout, but I can’t hear my own voice over the roar. I reach for Flynn, trying to drag myself upright, but just as I’m about to take his hand, the entire core blows with a force that sends us both flying, and the room goes black.
The girl reaches out her hand. The stars are so close she can graze them with her fingertips, but each time she touches one, it shatters into a thousand pieces. The girl hangs suspended, her hair floating in Avon’s currents, water and darkness and space no harder to breathe than air, and searches for the November ghost. She knows it’s here, hidden—and she must ask why it left, why it abandoned her in the moment she needed dreams most.
She pushes through the broken stars, which shatter and fall around her like curtains of rain, vanishing into the bottomless waters, down into the heart of Avon.
THIS FEELS LIKE THE TIME Sean shoved me off the top of the lookout rock when we were eleven. Every bone in my body aches, pain lancing along my ribs as I inhale. I grope my way toward consciousness, white lights exploding against my closed eyelids.
Then there’s something touching my fingers—it’s another hand, squeezing mine. “Flynn?” Jubilee’s voice is ragged. I open my eyes to find myself in a dimly lit room with a domed roof. What light there is comes from the hallway outside. I squeeze her hand in return and hear her gasp a sob as I concentrate on breathing, and wait to understand.