Chapter 44 #2
Clarke doesn’t let herself react. Doesn’t let herself process what Val is saying.
She can’t fly if she’s distracted, not in this ship and this environment.
She puts herself in that headspace from right before a race starts, where nothing matters but the track.
She rotates over her left wing, gritting her teeth when the ship judders.
Graham gives an instruction. Clarke adjusts. The shaking stops. Clarke inches forward, perpendicular to the floor, threading her way between columns.
“If she’d died, I would’ve been nonfunctional,” Julian says. Clarke hits open air outside the building, rotates flat, and accelerates as fast as she dares. A blue marquee light turns on in her mind. “I would’ve quit on the spot.”
Sara’s cameras, locked into following her at the distance set by her last gestured command, trail as Clarke swings wide around the bulk of the palace.
Apollo is beyond the bend and up, perched atop the second-highest hill, set off on its own across a bridge like Ares.
She banks into an ascent, giving the ship more power to compensate for—
The ship jumps forward hard, slamming Clarke back in the seat. Her vision goes snowy for a terrifying fraction of a second.
“What the hell was that?” Graham demands.
“Sorry,” Clarke croaks. “Used to losing power on that type of climb.”
“It’s an Elemental special,” comes Amira’s voice, joined to the call now. Clarke chances a glance at her cuff; Amira, Maki, and Sara are all on the line.
“Clarke, I can show live feed from the cameras to the screen in Zeus,” Sara says. “Yes or no?”
“Yes. And can you send one of the cams on ahead? I hate not being able to see what’s happening.”
“On it.” A black dot whizzes past as Sara takes control of one of the flock. “It’ll take a second to get there. And you won’t be able to see the feed unless you get your holoscreen up, which—”
“Yeah, no,” Clarke says, fighting the ship through another curve. It’s a great ship, an amazing ship, even, but Clarke’s having to use every bit of strength and focus she has to manage it in normal grav. “Just tell me.”
“Don’t,” Julian says, a hint of panic in his voice. “Val, don’t.”
“You’re forcing my hand,” Val says, sounding genuinely sad about it. “Tell me who else knows.”
There’re a few seconds of silence from Julian’s end, weirdly placed for the conversation he and Val are having.
It’s only when a grunt of pain breaks through that Clarke realizes they’ve been fighting on and off this whole time—she just hasn’t been able to hear it over the ship.
Short scuffles, trading blows, then breaking apart.
The fear is expected, and she dispels it how she always dispels fear when she’s in the seat.
She’s not expecting the wrath. There’s no fuse left to burn, no cooling-off period to leverage.
Clarke’s used up all her self-restraint.
Anger washes everything else out as she approaches the Temple of Apollo.
The hill is tall and thin. Clarke slows and keeps close to it as she climbs, coming up from underneath, staying out of sight as blue lights continue to turn on in her head.
They’ll hear her coming, obviously, but it’s possible Val will tune it out.
A lifetime spent in the paddock means that you don’t hear engines unless you’re listening for them.
“We’ve got visual,” Sara says. “Clarke, you need to get up there. Now. She’s got him right at the edge.”
“Everyone’s going to know,” Julian says. The words are halfvoiced, garbled. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Tell her that everyone already knows, Julian!” Graham groans. “Don’t make yourself the one thing standing between her getting away with it and—”
“The point is to get them to react badly,” Clarke says, quoting herself from a few hours ago. The blue lights go out, and the reds start to shine. “I know what he’s doing.”
“I didn’t want this, Julian,” Val says. Clarke creeps closer, slowing further, hugging the hill so tightly that there will be grass stains on the belly of Julian’s ship when this is over. There’s a thud, an oof, the sound of a body hitting the floor. “You were supposed to be our champion.”
Julian coughs. It’s wet. “If I don’t win it honestly, there’s no point in winning it at all.”
“Noble. Endearing. And no longer your concern,” Val says.
Clarke can’t take it anymore. She takes one hand off the control deck and swipes her holoscreen open. The camera feed comes up.
The portico: A porch of sorts, with the exterior wall of the temple on one side and a row of columns on the other. There’s nothing past the columns except a sheer drop, three kilometers to the city beneath.
Julian: On his hands and knees, bleeding from the mouth, breathing ragged. Between two columns. Half a meter between him and the drop, if that.
Val: Standing over him, not a shred of emotion on her face. Asking, casually, “Do you think Clarke will take your seat, if I offer? There’s something horribly romantic about the idea.”
Julian staggers to his feet. One of his heels brushes through thin air. He has to put a hand on the closest column to stay standing. “I think most people who underestimate Madeline Clarke get their asses handed to them sooner or later. I look forward to watching it happen to you.”
“Clarke,” Graham says, a warning and a plea.
“Not yet,” Clarke breathes. She’s close enough now to hear Val and Julian with her own ears, her engine just a dull hum as she lurks beneath the portico.
She waits, because you have to wait for the exact right moment to make a move like this.
Even when it seems impossible, you have to wait until that feeling in your gut tells you to go for the overtake, the inversion, the open throttle.
Her pulse is hammering everywhere—her fingertips in Julian’s gloves, her bare toes against the pedals of the ship, her spine and her skull and her belly—but she waits. Five red lights, all across the board.
She trusts Julian. She trusts herself.
“A pain in my ass until the very end, I’ll give you that,” Val says, taking three steps forward. She puts a hand on Julian’s chest. “Goodbye, Julian.”
Julian falls. The reds go out.
“Clarke!” Sara screams, but Clarke’s already moving. She throws the ship forward, bones shrieking at the brutal acceleration, praying—
Julian lands on the nose of the ship.
You can’t just toss an extra seventy-odd kilograms at an F0 ship and expect it to function normally, especially when that weight hits far from the ship’s center of balance.
Especially when that ship’s already flying in gravity it’s not built for.
The nose drops hard, and there’s nothing for Julian to grab on to that far forward.
He starts to slip. Clarke pulls up, heaving on the control deck, jamming her toes against the pedal for pitch so hard that she feels something in her foot snap.
The ship whines in protest, Graham shouts corrections, and Clarke’s heart almost rips through her ribs during the interminable half second where nothing happens, but then it works.
The ship levels out. Clarke cajoles it to tilt farther back.
Julian slides along the nose until he bumps into the safety bars. He latches on with both hands.
He looks at her. Up close like this, the blood on his mouth is startlingly red, and she can make out popped vessels in his left eye.
He double-checks his grip as Clarke slowly brings the ship back into balance, then uses one hand to unmute Clarke’s end—everyone’s end, now—of the call on his audio loop.
“Circumstances being what they are, I’m going to overlook the fine for you touching my ship,” he says.
Clarke’s going to explode, that’s how relieved she is. How euphoric she is, that this is over. How in love she is, with this idiot perched on the hood of her stolen ship, grinning at her like she’s the best thing he’s ever seen.
They have a lot to talk about. Julian’s going to remember to be pissed that she didn’t bring up her concerns about Val’s potential meddling earlier, and Clarke is already pissed that he ran off on his own to confront Val with only a call to Clarke and faith in his friend as a safety net.
His team principal, someone they both trusted, tried to kill them.
Elemental and Chronicle are going to be scrambling to recover from this. The damage will be extensive.
But they’re okay.
“Very considerate of you,” she says, voice thick. She clears her throat. “Graham? Got somewhere for me to set this ship down, or do we think I should just park on the roof of the Temple of Zeus and call it a day?”