Chapter 36
TO FLORIDA AND BEYOND
I gulped a deep breath and leaned forward to flatten my hands on the dashboard. Mainly to stop myself from sliding limply right down onto Sky’s floorboards.
“Holy shit,” I managed to force out.
Sky thought I was the key to saving his people.
Lightning flickered blue through the watery sheen and condensation gathering inside the windows. We’d been sitting here long enough for the car to grow stuffy. Hot.
Or maybe that was the gravitas of his confession.
Suddenly, that icy cold rain beating down outside was looking real good again.
“You think I can get you home,” I whispered, staring at the smeared, fogged-up glass.
“I’m sorry.” I could feel Sky looking at me, and his quiet tone was just as apologetic. Like he knew what he’d just thrown my way. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I know it’s a lot.”
A lot. So much. Swallowing hard, I twisted my head to look at him, wide-eyed. “And the Enil? Why are they chasing the halix?”
“That one is a little more complicated,” Sky said, leaning back against the door.
He was still watching me closely, like he, too, was wondering if I was going to throw myself out of the car and run screaming into the night.
A distinct possibility. “We aren’t entirely sure why they’re chasing it.
We think they’ve figured out we’re after it—clearly, since they’re scanning for its signal—but we’re not sure if they know why.
The Enil aren’t stupid machines. There’s a chance they’ve put it together, and they’re hoping to get their hands on the info cache first.” He gripped the steering wheel with one hand, biting the inside of his cheek.
“Which would be very, very bad. Right now, they don’t know where our home world is.
And if they did, if they found Pladia first, after how brutal this war has been and how we technically started it… ”
A new kind of dread crept in, and I sat up. He was worried they’d wipe out his whole world. It wasn’t only about getting back to his planet. It was about potentially saving it.
This kept getting better and better.
He tracked my movement—and the understanding that I knew had dawned on my face—adding grimly, “We don’t even know if Pladia knows what happened out here, since we have no way to communicate. They’d have no warning.”
Blood roared in my ears, and I pressed my fingers into my temples. My head ached, and I didn’t think it was only from headbutting the vending machine.
He wasn’t kidding when he’d told me this was bigger than I could imagine. Talk about out-of-this-world stakes. He’d basically just plopped a whole planet on my shoulders.
This was it. His mission. He was here to save his people—possibly his whole damn world. No wonder he was stressed out. And so desperate to protect the map to his world that he thought was inside my brain.
A map. I rolled the idea around in my head. The shapes I’d been seeing. That constellation I’d recognized at Dustin’s. The things I’d doodled on the test.
The test! I’d completely forgotten about it.
“Sky!” I bucked my hips up and tried to jam my hand into the pocket of my wet pants. Waterlogged jeans were the worst. Groaning in frustration, I wiggled my fingers, forcing them deeper. “Damn it.”
Sky’s grip slid from the wheel as he reared back, frowning in confusion. It only deepened when I produced a sodden, crumpled piece of paper and shoved it across the center console at him.
“Look at this.” I shook it.
When he only stared at it, I clicked my tongue and tried to peel it open, ripping part of it in the process. Sensation hadn’t completely returned to my cold fingers—especially after all he’d just revealed.
“I wrote it during the test. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Like I was in a trance. But…”
I unfolded it enough that a few of the smudged symbols became visible. Sky’s eyes flared wide, and he snatched the paper from me, tilting it so the dash’s light washed the waterlogged page. He muttered a word that didn’t sound like English.
“What’s it say?” I asked, leaning closer. Close enough that our shoulders touched.
“It’s hard to tell.” His brows pinched. “What I can read looks like ancient Pladian. Like the symbols on your palm. Another part of the greeting.”
He looked up. Our noses nearly brushed, and I started to pull back, cheeks heating.
He stopped me by tucking his knuckles below my chin, tilting my face up. I let him because his fingers were warm, and his touch felt more real than really anything right now.
“This means I was right.” His words whispered over my lips. He lowered the paper to his lap without looking away. “You’ve got to believe me now. After what happened at TWU. And this.” His eyes skimmed between mine. We were sharing air. “The halix did something to you, Rae. The map is in there.”
In my brain.
God, this was overwhelming. The pressure, what it meant. Being so near him. That earlier panic threatened to creep back, tightening my chest.
But he was right; I couldn’t deny it. I couldn’t keep lying to myself.
Something had happened to me when I’d decided to manhandle that stone tablet.
When I’d touched the crystal slab beneath.
The white-hot light that’d followed. I could dismiss each individual symptom—the dreams, the weird reaction to his hypnosis, my mindless doodles—but together?
Together, they were too much of a coincidence.
And whatever it’d done put me in danger. Me—and anyone around me. It’d nearly gotten Sky killed today. I could be responsible for other people getting hurt.
What would I have done if it’d been Amelia? Or Dustin or Lisa?
I’d never forgive myself.
My stomach plunged off the edge of an invisible cliff. The growing lump in my throat ached.
There was no going back. Not yet. Not now.
I couldn’t even say goodbye, because how was I supposed to explain any of this?
As if Sky had seen that acceptance, and the cold, harsh slap of reality that came with it, his expression softened. “I’m sorry. But we can fix it.” He let go of me. He didn’t pull away, though.
I didn’t move either—or bother to hide my shaky laugh. “How the hell do we fix this? We tried your suit powers, and it nearly melted my brain.”
He winced a little at the reminder but shook it off, fixing me with an imploring look. “Come with me. Let me take you to Bast. He’s a god with technology, and we’ll figure out a way to extract the halix’s data from you. Safely,” he added when I flinched.
“Stop saying extract,” I muttered, pulling back. I raked my fingers through my hair, getting tangled in the remnants of my braid. It was drying in a frizzy mess.
“Fine,” Sky said, breathing a chuckle. “Remove, then. We’ll find a way to safely remove the signal—the map. The information the halix gave you. And then you can go back to…to a normal life.”
Right. Because normal was possible after finding out he was an alien in a human skinsuit and there was a whole galactic war happening somewhere overhead.
I couldn’t help my snort. “Normal,” I whispered, glancing outside. “Sure.”
“Something like it, yeah.”
Even if we managed to do what he was proposing, things would never return to normal. I would never be the same. Not knowing all I knew.
I turned back to him and raised my brows. “Nothing says normal like defeating alien robots from outer space, right?”
Sky’s mouth curved upward, flashing that damn dimple. His hair was beginning to dry, too, but in tousled waves and curls. Even drained, dripping, and looking like he’d been through a tornado, he was still unfairly attractive.
Flushing, I dropped my eyes, but then my heart stopped when he leaned forward. I sucked in a sharp breath and tipped my face up. Our faces were kiss-close.
Intensity had replaced his smile, and for a wild moment, I thought he’d do it. That he’d kiss me again. I wanted him to. Badly. If only to make me feel something besides the sensation of falling.
But he didn’t. He fixed me with an entreating look instead. “I asked you before, Raven. I’m going to ask you again: do you trust me?”
It was barely louder than the rain. A soft question.
One that felt rhetorical at this point, because somehow, despite the hidden truths, the revelations, despite the fact he wasn’t even human…I did trust him.
After today, after seeing him nearly die defending me—even if it was just because I might be carrying the salvation of his race—how could I not? He’d still risked his life. He’d risked everything.
Hell, I trusted him more than I trusted myself lately, when it came to life-and-death decisions. I felt safest when he was there.
But because I couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell him any of that, I cleared my throat and asked, “Exactly where is Bast?”
“Florida.” Sky shifted back a little. I had the overwhelming urge to chase his heat. Hope lightened his expression, like he knew I’d already made up my mind. “Is that a yes?”
“Your super-secret alien base is in Florida?” I deadpanned.
Sky’s grin bloomed, a little lopsided. “I wouldn’t call it a super-secret alien base, but yeah, I guess so. For now, anyway.”
Florida, of all places. I would’ve loved to say it was surprising. But it kind of made tons of sense.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, serious again. “Will you go with me? We’ll have to move fast and keep our heads down. That means going dark for a few days. I don’t know how long that cuff is going to work, and I have a feeling what happened at the university is going to attract more than the Enil.”
I didn’t doubt it. I’d already seen those people in suits once, after the lab incident. Kelly’s FETR friends thought the government was involved, too. I absently twirled the metal encircling my wrist.
This rabbit hole was getting deeper. A hell of a lot more crowded, too. It wasn’t going to be easy, making it all the way to Florida with both Enil and—if Kelly’s information was right—License 16 after us.
Us.