This Shattered World (Starbound #2)(59)
I know he won’t get my message; I know he’s on the run and this base is the last place he’d return. But leaving word is solace, somehow. Hope. A sign I haven’t given up. That if he comes back…
But he’s gone now. I’m alone.
“Xiao jie, mei kan jian ni lai guo zher.”
The voice stops her short—it’s been years since somebody spoke to her in her mother’s language. She turns to see an enormous, intimidating mountain of a man covered with tattoos standing behind the bar. It’s her first night off duty since she was transferred, and now she’s wishing she’d gone straight back to the barracks.
“Sorry,” the girl shoots back automatically. “I don’t speak Mandarin.” It’s not a lie. She hasn’t spoken it since her parents’ deaths.
“Right,” the bartender replies, his grin friendly, but knowing, like he can read her thoughts. “Well, I’m Molly. Welcome to Avon.”
The girl can’t stop staring, too confused by how strange his friendly voice feels against the backdrop of tattoos and muscle.
He laughs, as though he’s used to people misjudging him. For a moment he looks a little like her father, though they’ve nothing in common. “We’ve all got pasts,” he says, lifting an arm and indicating the tattoos, which seem to shift and change as she looks at them. “But here you get to choose what you hold onto.”
THE PATROLS HAVE TRIPLED IN the last few days I’ve been hiding out in no-man’s-land, and I suspect every one of them has been issued a picture of the rebel who abducted Lee Chase from Molly Malone’s.
What they don’t know is that sooner or later McBride and the Fianna will strike back in retaliation for Jubilee’s massacre—an act of war the military don’t even know took place—and when that happens, hunting for me will be the least of their priorities.
I’ve been careful to keep on the move, never too close to the perimeter, never too far away. The military base is like a squat, sharp monster crouched on Avon’s horizon—Avon, a world of gently curved waterways and slow-moving clumps of algae. Against its foggy backdrop the prefab buildings are unnatural, made of right angles and rusted metal and plastene. I’ve always imagined the base like a scab needing picking away, full of booted feet treading the ground into bruise-colored slush. When I was little I always half imagined the scab would fall away one day and there’d be Avon again underneath, shiny and new and healed.
I give it a wide berth before finding a place near solid ground to hide my boat. A half hour later, I’m slipping between two buildings on the outskirts of town, avoiding the searching eyes of the soldiers on guard duty.
In the security footage from the bombing, there was a girl with Davin Quinn right before he used the detonator. I need to know if it was his daughter, Sofia. We played together as kids, and I think maybe, just maybe, she’ll trust me still. I have to find out if she knows anything about what turned a peaceful man like her father into a killer. What turned Jubilee into a killer. That question—and the image of Jubilee’s face, her eyes black like they were on the island, her features blank—has been my constant companion the last three days.
The town is a grid of worn prefab buildings divided by dirt roads, street signs showing only numbers. Normally there’d be people about, but this place is mostly locked down. A combination of curfew and caution. I wish I could say they were only afraid of the military’s heavy hand, but more townspeople have been caught in the crossfire than anyone on my side would care to admit. I hurry past shuttered homes, head down, the collar of my borrowed jacket up to hide my profile. Clad in gray, I’m just one more shadow.
A dog comes skittering past me, hurrying for home or some bolt-hole. I turn my head automatically to check the way it came from, and freeze. Something’s moving back there, something too large to be a dog. My heart kicks up a notch, and I force myself to move slow and smooth as I melt back toward the street beside me and the shelter of the buildings. That’s the key—no quick, jerky movements to draw the eye.
There are three figures making their way up the street, and they’re not trodairí. They don’t step in time, beating Avon down beneath their feet. But they do move carefully, stealthily, and I recognize that movement an instant later: they’re Fianna. McBride leads the way, flanked by two others; one of them I don’t recognize, but I know at a glance who’s walking on his left. It’s Sean.
I ease back against the wall of a house as they approach the crossroads, bowing my head so my gray coat blends with the walls—in the dark, holding still is my best chance.
McBride stalks along like he owns the town, the other two close on his heels. He’s headed away from the base, toward the edge of town; whatever his business was here, he’s concluded it. Sean’s hood is drawn, but I can see his always laughing, smiling mouth—now a grim line, jaw squared. Without Fergal, without me, he has no one.
I ache to reach out for him—I can imagine myself stepping forward, calling out—and I hold still, curling my hands to tight fists as the three of them disappear into the gloom. My heart tugs me after Sean, but I force myself to turn away. I came here for a reason, and if I want to help him—help all of them—I have to keep moving.
I nearly step straight into the path of a trodairí squad. They’re still a block up, but with my mind squarely on my cousin, I spot them only seconds before crossing the street. Mentally cursing, I sink back into the shadows, watching as they approach. They move differently than the rebels, purposefully, and in that instant I understand they’re moving after the rebels. They’re following Sean and McBride.