Chapter 37
We’ve been tricked.
My gut seems to understand this before my mind does.
I feel queasy as I stare at my mother there in the middle of the cargo hold, dressed in the Determinist colors gray and yellow, her face streaked with dirt, hair out of place.
Professor Trey Morton stands to her right, looking nervous and uptight in a rumpled plaid suit.
Around us, the roguish thugs tighten their circle.
I don’t know how many there are. Twenty?
Thirty? They look nothing like the uniformed soldiers from The Parallax, probably because there are no more uniformed soldiers from The Parallax.
Instead, these men (and one woman) are greasy, dressed in mismatched armor, and carrying an array of weapons that makes me wonder if the Determinists didn’t hire them right off the street.
“It’s you,” Lament says. He’s never seen Nina before, but it’s not hard to guess who she is. We have the same brown hair, the same broad nose and shoulders.
“I had so much hope for you,” Nina tells me.
She has tears in her eyes, which makes me unaccountably furious.
Like, who is she crying for? She literally tricked us onto this ship and then ambushed us with an army of rogue gangsters.
How did she think this was going to end?
“I wanted you to join me. I wanted us to be a family again—”
“I really don’t care.” I need her to shut up.
My heart is going a mile a minute as I glance at the thugs, cataloguing their weapons, their positions.
The room’s single door hangs open, but given our odds of escaping unscathed, it might as well be nailed shut.
“Where is it?” I demand, hand on my ray gun. “Where’s the neutralizer?”
“Not here.” Nina wipes her eyes on the back of her wrist. “After you destroyed the BlackWing, we were in a dangerous position. You saw his laboratory. You escaped with your old Master, who undoubtably revealed the rest of our secrets. Ran suspected you might try to infiltrate this A-Line like you infiltrated The Parallax, so he changed the plan.”
“And you’re okay with this?” I ask. “You’re okay with tricking millions of people into pledging their lives to your leader and just murdering anyone who doesn’t?”
“I believe in Determinism,” Nina says. “I believe our movement has the power to change this galaxy. But being a Determinist has never been easy. The Legion mistrusts us. Oh, they’ve allowed us to practice, but only within the bounds they set.
They uphold the law, but they also make it. And our movement suffers as a result.”
“Your movement is a lie.”
“Just because FPS isn’t real yet,” comes the voice of Ran Doc Min, “doesn’t mean it never will be.”
We all spin to see the man himself striding into the room.
Ran Doc Min is still in that absurd cape, his expression supervillain evil, his hair done up with so much gel it looks like it might crack.
To my right, I can feel Lament brace. Behind me, Vera lets out a small breath; Jester and Youvu Hum shift on their feet.
“Nice slogan,” I drawl. “Not real yet, but maybe one day!”
“Laugh all you want,” Doc Min returns. “I stand by my beliefs.”
“Does this mean you’re still going to destroy the galaxy?”
“I am not going to destroy it. Once again, you have not been listening. I have a vision.” Doc Min’s face smooths, his eyes going glassy.
I can practically feel a monologue coming.
“For too long, the Legion has held total sway over Romothrida and its inhabitants. I believe our galaxy is ready to usher in a new era. One united under a single basic principle…”
He keeps talking, but over his shoulder, I’m distracted by movement just beyond the open doorway. A flash of red hair. The swing of a ponytail.
“You are still not listening,” Doc Min snaps.
I jerk my eyes back to him, heart fluttering. “I’m listening fine.”
“You insist on misunderstanding our aims.”
“Not much to misunderstand about genocide.”
“It is not genocide. As I have made clear…” He returns to his monologue, but I’m back to watching Avi through the corner of my eye.
She pokes her tongue between her teeth as she drags a full-size mortar into the doorway (not one for subtlety, Avi) and gets it into position, securing the baseplate and producing a projectile missile the size of her forearm.
Toph appears behind her, meeting my eye through the doorframe.
He flashes his fingers: fifteen seconds.
Slowly—as slowly as we possibly can—Jester, Vera, Lament, Youvu Hum, and I start to inch backward.
“—and today is just the start,” Doc Min is saying, really getting into his speech now.
Nina’s eyes are glued to him, as if he’s the center of her universe.
Trey, too, has lost some of his anxious energy and is gazing at his leader along with the rest of the thugs.
“You had a chance to join us, Keller. It should have been a great privilege. But you declined.”
Avi finishes lining up her shot. Even from here, I can tell the angle isn’t perfect, but it’ll do the job. She holds the torpedo-shaped bomb over the mortar’s barrel and watches Toph’s countdown. Six, five, four …
“That is your choice,” Ran Doc Min says, oblivious to the scene playing out behind him, “and as with all choices, you must bear the consequences.”
“So must you,” I say.
Avi releases the projectile. The Sixers duck as it drops into the mortar’s barrel, hits the base, and blasts back out again.
There’s a BAM. A flash of silver metal. The bomb flies toward Ran Doc Min, who turns and gapes, but at the last second a force field appears around him.
It’s a blue-glowing dome of protection, automatically shielding their group from the attack.
Crap. They’re wearing Shield Rings.
Probably should have seen that coming.
The bomb detonates in a blast of fire. I cover my head, brace against the wave of heat from the explosion. My ears are ringing, and my eyes burn, but I pull my ray gun off my hip and start firing before the smoke clears.
The Determinist thugs have the same idea. Spurred by the explosion, they’ve opened fire, the cargo hold devolving into the chaos of ray beams and stunner ammo and yelling. “Move!” I shout at the others, and they duck for cover behind the crates. Vera, Jester, Youvu Hum …
But not Lament. He’s gotten close to an opponent and is fighting the man hand to hand. The soldier pulls out a gun. Shoots. It’s nearly point-blank range, and I let out a stunned NO, but somehow, the ray beam misses.
It doesn’t make sense that the ray beam misses.
Lament disarms the man, takes the weapon for himself.
The movement is so perfectly practiced, and Lament’s face is easy, and okay, he can fight?
My stomach lurches even as he slams the enemy in the temple, watches him go down.
When Lament spins around, his headset is skewed around his neck, my lifestone illuminating his face with bright green light.
I dart forward to cover Lament, taking out two more armed soldiers before grabbing Lament by the shoulder and hauling him behind the nearest stack of crates. “What are you doing?”
“Fighting,” he breathes.
“You can’t just stand out in the middle of enemy fire!” My hands are trembling. My voice is ragged, like I’ve swallowed fishing net. Lament glances at his lifestone, then back at me.
“It’s not armor,” I snap, though in truth, I have no idea what a lifestone can do. Everything I know has only ever been in stories. “You can’t be a bonehead about it.”
“Hey. That’s my line.”
“Doc Min is wearing a Shield Ring,” I say. Behind the crate, shots continue to fire. The air smells like metal and electricity. “They’re powerful, but they have a limited charge. If he takes enough hits—”
“It’ll wear down the force field,” Lament finishes.
I nod. “We’ll take turns.”
Lament and I switch off peeking out from behind our cover and blasting enemy fighters.
The Youvu Hums (including the other Youvu Hum, who arrived with Toph and Avi) are engaged in another hand-to-hand fight with a nearby cluster of Determinists.
Avi has entered the room and is pulling missile-like grenades from her hip, throwing them at random, letting off small but powerful blasts.
Doc Min and Morton and my mother are standing out in the open, their Shield Rings flaring each time a shot comes their way.
I think about Mount Kilmon. Master Ira’s School for Children. Longji is built in the volcano’s shadow. There is at least one altered heat collector still in place. If there are children living in the home, they will be some of the voroxide’s first victims.
I look at Lament. He’s fully on, a cut across one cheek, hair flying as he lets off another blast from his stolen ray gun. Here, with the fight raging around us, he looks strong and determined and beautiful. So beautiful. I never got the chance to say it.
He ducks back behind the crates. There’s a lull in the fight, and for a moment it’s just the two of us here, protected in this temporary bubble of stillness. Lament notices the way I’m looking at him. Hitches a breath. “Keller—”
I kiss him. Because I am the chief of bad timing. And my heart is full of him. And we might be fighting for our lives right now, but I can’t stop myself.
This time, Lament doesn’t freeze. He just …
unfolds. Into me. Like he’s been waiting for this, expecting it, wanting it, too.
His free hand fists the front of my jacket and his mouth is warm and he’s everywhere, everywhere, yet somehow I still need more, because this kiss isn’t an until-next-time kiss.
It feels like I’m sorry.
It feels like Goodbye.
Pulling away is hard. Fucking impossible. But I do, releasing him, moving back. The lifestone is a blaze of green. Lament looks totally dazed.
“It can’t always be about science and logic,” I say, touching the place where the lifestone rests against his heart. I hear Toph give a war cry, gunfire starting up again from behind the crates. “There has to be hope and love and fate, too.”
He looks like he can’t catch his breath. Like I’m not making any sense. “What are you—?”
“Everything will be okay,” I say, kissing him one more time, hard and rough, because I have to. Then I tear away and bolt for the open door. A fresh stream of ray beam fire follows, blocking Lament from chasing after me.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, walking away from him.
As I fly out the door, I look back at Nina Hartman standing behind her protective force field next to Morton and Doc Min.
Their eyes are elsewhere, but Nina’s gaze latches onto mine.
For a moment, time slows. Her mouth pops open in surprise, then settles into sadness.
I expect her to point at me, to sound the alarm, but when I continue through the door and out of the ship, Nina says nothing.