Chapter 9 #5
I grab his shirt, bunching it between my fingers, forcing him to listen to me. ‘I asked my mother to set up a video call. I was there when she called your mum. She said I was beneath you. I heard her.’
Mace’s eyes widen. And then he swears beneath his breath. ‘Fuck.’
A million thoughts cross my mind. Is he going to say something? Am I? A world of hurt lies at our feet, and I don’t know which way to go.
I blow out a breath and lean my forehead on his shoulder. ‘I missed skating with you,’ I say, even if it’s the most irrelevant thing possible right now.
I bring my hand to his cheek and turn his head towards me.
I feel the rough stubble under the pads of my fingers, the full weight of his attention, his gaze dropping to my lips.
Heat settles deep in my belly. His breath skates across my cheek.
It’s Mace. The Mace that I’ve been dreaming of for so long, but so much more.
He whispers into my hair, ‘I never skated again, Ellie.’
I tilt my head back, the magnitude of what he’s saying settling in my chest. But then he blinks and takes a step back. I can almost see that wall between us again, rising brick by brick.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he says, stepping further away from me.
‘Doesn’t it?’ I curl my hands into fists, missing his closeness. Why? Because I am beneath him, as his mother said I was?
Mace ruffles his hair, hesitates for a second before walking out of the bathroom. Taking the coward’s way out.
I don’t get it.
Afterwards, with our five bedrolls crammed in the same, tight space, things are tense. I can’t even duck and make a decent escape, and Mace is talking too brightly to Julian, avoiding my gaze.
Allen needs about a millisecond to pick up on the weirdness and looks at me with raised eyebrows. What happened?
I shrug, which could mean, I have no idea, or I don’t want to talk about it – same difference, in the end.
‘Why don’t we get some sleep?’ Xandra says, and Mace quickly agrees with her.
‘We should.’
I turn my back to them, feeling flushed with embarrassment.
If things are going to be this uncomfortable between us for the next few weeks, I’m fucked.
So I do what I do whenever I’m feeling lonely: I hide in the bathroom again and summon Main Stella.
She appears as soon as my magic echoes through the sensors.
‘Good evening, Ellie,’ she says, standing a few feet in front of me.
‘Did you see what happened in the cave today?’ I ask in a low voice. What I mean to ask is, Are you aware that we saw that footage of Franka and Stu?
‘There was a … glitch,’ she says carefully. ‘A ten-minute period that I have no track of. No recordings of.’
So I did manage to block her connection to the cave.
That block of information, that cave version of Stella that we stumbled upon must still be walled off from The Citadel, as I suspected.
Which means that the two Stellas, the one in the cave and the one at The Citadel, are two separate entities.
This is why this Stella doesn’t seem to know what we stumbled upon. And not only her.
If Central Command doesn’t know what we know, I shouldn’t be the one to inform them. I realise I need to tread carefully. ‘I think we found something you’ve once mentioned.’
When we trained for the last time before the Ball, Stella told me that there was information she couldn’t access.
‘Over time, I’ve sent different teams during the Test Missions to that cave. Central Command never worried, because of the protections put in place there. Does Central Command have reasons to worry?’ she says now.
The question is full of implications. ‘Oh, not at all,’ I say brightly. Would they worry if they knew we defeated those holograms? I bet they would.
Do I have any reason to make them think that we found out anything?
Of course not.
‘Did you download any information to your ART?’ she says, and if I’m not mistaken, she sounds a bit eager. ‘Can you return it to my mainframe?’
Does Stella want to recover the information that was put aside? But if she does … doesn’t that mean going against what Central Command did, by breaking off these blocks of information? What did we really stumble into?
‘We did not, I say. But?—’
‘Best we don’t mention it then,’ she cuts me off quickly. ‘After today, Central Command has expressly forbidden for me to send you to similar locations during the Test Missions.’
My spine stiffens. So even if Central Command can’t confirm that we found something without the footage of what happened while I blocked the sensors, they don’t want us sniffing around. Or for Stella to provide us with that opportunity again.
This means, undoubtedly, that Central Command have something to hide.
Goosebumps explode on my skin.
Stella is also trying to prevent us from getting into trouble. Whether it’s because of my ability to block her sensors, or because it’s connected to what we’ve seen, I don’t know.
‘I understand,’ I say.
Stella nods and vanishes.
I shiver.
I don’t know what to do – but one thing is certain: I have to tell my team about this.