Chapter 33
We find our way into The Bargainer’s command center.
The other nine Sixers are standing around looking anxious (minus Illiviamona, who is gazing dazedly out the front window, and Avi, who’s contentedly picking soot from under her nails).
Avi glances up at our entrance and asks, “So who’s the old guy? ”
Vera is still too out of sorts to scold her. She blows her nose into a tissue.
“I am a friend of Keller’s,” Master Ira says.
“A friend?”
“Master Ira took me in when my mom left,” I explain. “I lived at his children’s home on Venthros until I ran—um—went to the Academy.”
“But then how’d he end up on The Parallax?”
“And what happened while you were in there?” Toph adds, leaning heavily against the arm of his koala chair.
“All we know is, not long after you left, our half of the keening wilted like it was dead, and Lament started demanding we find a way to get to you. Then it turned into a space battle, and now”—he motions around—“we’re here. ”
I explain everything. The meeting with Nina, breaking into the simulation room that was actually a laboratory, confronting Doc Min, getting thrown into a cell that happened to contain my long-lost mentor.
I describe how the Determinists captured Master Ira for his knowledge regarding Mount Kilmon, how they’ve used that information to plant voroxide inside capsules hidden within altered heat collectors.
“And now,” I summarize, “the Venthrothians really will succumb to the gas unless they pledge their allegiance to Doc Min in exchange for his neutralizer.”
“Bartenders out of beer?” Caspen asks from her spot near the controls, wringing her freckled hands.
“She’s wondering how the Determinists will be able to continue with their scheme,” Youvu Hum says, “given The Parallax was sucked into oblivion. Surely the heat collectors didn’t survive…?”
“No,” Master Ira says grimly, “but Ran Doc Min’s inner circle—those who know the truth, which includes himself, Trey Morton, Nina Hartman, and a few others—have been working on this plot for months.
They’ve already installed several altered collectors inside the volcano.
Some of them detonated prematurely and had to be removed.
Without the force of the eruption, the voroxide won’t spread properly, but there’s at least one collector left, which is all they need for their plan to work. ”
“That explains the blue-eyed apes from the forest,” Youvu Hum says.
And the mist leaking from the volcano’s peak, Jester agrees.
“I still can’t believe FPS is a hoax,” Vera mutters from behind her tissue. “Like, I can’t believe it.”
“The evidence was always there,” Youvu Hum says. “We just didn’t see it.”
“No need to rub it in,” Avi grumbles.
“We have to warn people,” Vera asserts. “We need to out Ran Doc Min for the villain he is.”
“We can’t,” I growl, in a surge of frustration.
“It’s too late. We can’t go to NewsNet—Rivon is their top correspondent, and he’s a Determinist. We can’t go to Sergeant Forst—she’s under Trey Morton’s control, and he’s a Determinist. We could try to appeal directly to the public, to prove the Determinist leader is a fake, but we just destroyed Doc Min’s laboratory, and with it, all evidence tying the altered collectors to the Determinists.
Besides, we’re deserters now. We stole three Legion ships and fled our detachment without leave.
Who is going to believe anything we say?
The whole story sounds like a conspiracy theory. ”
“And the best way to support a conspiracy,” Toph adds, “is to try to disprove it.”
“Could we remove the remaining heat collector?” Vera asks.
“And do what with it?” I return. “If the gas capsule is rigged to open on the day of the eruption, we can’t just throw it away. It will spread through space. It could hurt another planet.”
“I could explode it,” Avi offers hopefully.
Jester shakes his head. There’s no way blow up the collector without releasing the voroxide inside.
“And you should be warned,” Master Ira says, “that voroxide is fueled by fire. That’s one of the main reasons Doc Min chose an eruption as its catalyst.”
Avi spreads her hands. “I could Extra Super Big explode it?”
“And risk another black hole?” Vera gives a short laugh. “No.”
“I could…” Avi’s voice takes on the tone of someone who is now completely stabbing in the dark “… push the collector into the volcano’s magma?”
“That may work,” Master Ira says. (Avi gives another madwoman smile.) “The lava would absorb the voroxide before it leaks into the air. But you’d need to do it at the height of Mount Kilmon’s eruption when the lava pools are at their deepest. The odds of making it out alive would be zero.”
An actual suicide mission, Jester emphasizes.
“So that’s it,” I say numbly. “Game over. I’d tell you all to go home, but we can’t even do that.”
Ran Doc Min has us cornered, Jester agrees, briefly lifting his visor to rub his eyes. He’s probably had his whole takeover plotted from the beginning.
“He knew to start small,” Avi says. “Back in his early days, he made sure his predictions were easy to pull off. He foretold that forest fire on Planet Llyria, remember?”
“Which he probably started himself,” Toph adds.
“Then there was that broken dam on Planet Marus.”
“And the swarm of crop-eating beetles on Planet Eridonus.”
“As each ‘prediction’ came true,” Avi continues, using air quotes around prediction, “Doc Min’s following grew. With more followers came more donors, like the Vinicchis, and more money, and more power to pull off bigger and bigger hoaxes.”
“And to recruit more powerful allies,” Master Ira agrees.
“Trey Morton is the mastermind behind not only the voroxide’s invention, but the neutralizer, too.
It’s a stroke of terrible genius, and it won’t be easily replicated.
Trey spent over two years developing that gas-neutralizer combo.
That’s months of trials, hundreds of tests… ”
“Does that mean Lament was right about the cave raptors?” I ask. “Morton needed to test his new weapon before putting it into practice, so the raptors were an experiment?”
“They were,” the Master confirms. Toph whistles. “That there’s some real evil.”
“That’s probably how that raptor ended up on Skyhub,” Vera says. “It unknowingly hitched a ride with Morton on his way back.”
“But…,” the other Youvu Hum starts, then hesitates. “But what about Bast, then? He wasn’t on either Venthros or Purvuva when Moon Dancer flew through that cloud of voroxide in space, nor were they anywhere near The Parallax. So how did he get tied up in all this?”
“It was likely a mistake,” Toph suggests. “Some of the voroxide could have escaped into space, and Bast was unlucky enough to inhale it.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” Lament says quietly from his spot off to the side, slightly apart from the rest of the group.
Everyone’s eyes jump to him. Vera frowns. “It … wasn’t?”
“No.”
I try to read Lament’s face for clues, but I’ve got no idea what he’s talking about. “Care to explain?”
“It’s like Jester said. Ran Doc Min had this whole takeover plotted from the beginning. Our lives have been in his hands for years.”
“My life, maybe,” I say. “I’m the lucky child sacrifice, remember? But not yours.”
“You sure about that?” Lament lifts his brows, his most sardonic gesture. “You don’t see it?”
“What am I supposed—?” And like that, it snaps into place. “Oh.” I drop back a step. Like, physically recoil, as if I’ve been punched. “But … no. That’s not—it can’t—”
“What?” Vera has turned so pale she looks almost angry. “What are we realizing?”
My throat tightens. “Lament thinks Bast’s death was contrived by the Determinists.”
“Contrived?” the Youvu Hums repeat in unison. “As in, Ran Doc Min murdered him?”
“To open a spot in the Sixth,” I whisper, “so the Determinists would have a place to plant me.”
I feel like I’m dissolving. Or … like I want to dissolve. I lock eyes with Lament, see the hollowness in his expression. I can barely breathe.
“If that’s true,” Vera says shakily, “it would explain why the Legion didn’t want to conduct a real investigation into Bast’s death. They already know why he died. They’ve been covering it up.”
Lament gives a single nod. “Exactly.”
My hands curl into tight, powerless fists. My heart is a fucking mess. “Lament…”
“Excuse me,” he says, and strides out of the room.
For a long moment after, I just stand there in the awful quiet, staring at the door he disappeared through.
The knot in my chest—the one that’s been there ever since I first stepped foot on The Parallax—is tightening into something so hard and painful it makes me want to double over.
My brain feels broken. Like there’s a gap in its center and I can’t get the separate halves to align.
Bast Vinicchi. An innocent bystander, dead because he was in the way.
Lament, his scars, his anger, his wounds.
For what? A scheme. Someone else’s game.
And me. The trigger on this deadly, loathsome weapon.
“It’s not your fault, Keller,” Vera says softly, making me flinch.
I’m standing halfway between my chair and the stairwell to The Bargainer’s upper rooms, staring at the door as if I can melt it with my eyes.
Vera moves to set a gentle hand on my arm, warm but hesitant, like she’s not sure if I’m okay with being touched right now. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Doesn’t change that Bast is dead.”
“Keller, please…”
My skin is made of rubber. I’m too cold, then too hot. I stumble past my shell-shocked fleetmates into The Bargainer’s kitchenette, turn on the faucet, shove my head under the water. It spills down my cheeks and over my mouth. I close my eyes, taste its mineral tang.