This Shattered World

I ease back against the wall of a house as they approach the crossroads, bowing my head so my gray coat blends with the walls—in the dark, holding still is my best chance.

McBride stalks along like he owns the town, the other two close on his heels. He’s headed away from the base, toward the edge of town; whatever his business was here, he’s concluded it. Sean’s hood is drawn, but I can see his always laughing, smiling mouth—now a grim line, jaw squared. Without Fergal, without me, he has no one.

I ache to reach out for him—I can imagine myself stepping forward, calling out—and I hold still, curling my hands to tight fists as the three of them disappear into the gloom. My heart tugs me after Sean, but I force myself to turn away. I came here for a reason, and if I want to help him—help all of them—I have to keep moving.

I nearly step straight into the path of a trodairí squad. They’re still a block up, but with my mind squarely on my cousin, I spot them only seconds before crossing the street. Mentally cursing, I sink back into the shadows, watching as they approach. They move differently than the rebels, purposefully, and in that instant I understand they’re moving after the rebels. They’re following Sean and McBride.

I stoop, groping around in the mud until my fingers close over a stone, small and slippery. In a quick movement I send it flying up the side street, withdrawing into the shadows as the trodairí change their course, abandoning the receding figures of the rebels to go after this newer, closer sound. It’s all the head start I can give them, and I hope it’s enough.

I slip away, ducking up the third street along and counting the houses until I reach Davin’s house. Sofia’s, now, though not for long. She’s not sixteen yet, not technically an adult. Odds are they’ll have her on the next transport leaving the spaceport. I square my shoulders and knock quietly, keeping an eye out for more soldiers on curfew patrol.

It takes her a long time to answer—long enough that I know she must have been listening for the sound of my footsteps retreating. Then the door opens a crack to reveal a sliver of the girl I knew, slender and strawberry-blond. She sports a bandage that peeps out of the collar of her dress, and another encircling her wrist, and I’m reminded that the girl in the bombing footage was not far away when the explosion occurred. The pale skin of Avon’s sunless skies is ghostly on her, black shadows standing out beneath her eyes in exhausted half circles. Grief has hollowed her out.

She barely looks at me, her eyes sliding away to rest on the muddy street. “Thank you,” she says wearily, her voice hoarse, “but I really don’t need any more food.” The door starts to shut.

“Good,” I say, pulling my hands out of my pockets to show they’re empty. “Because I don’t have any. Sof, it’s me, Flynn. Let me in before someone sees.”

Her gaze snaps into focus, lips parting in surprise, and for a heartbeat the grief is gone. There’s a code between the people like her family—the townies—and the Fianna. They might not be with us, but they turn the other way when we pass by, and tell the soldiers they didn’t see a thing. Not so secretly, plenty of them would like us to win, and though Davin was a cautious man, I’m desperately hoping the girl who used to steal books from the classroom and then spin fantastic lies to wriggle out of trouble has more fire in her. And that she has any of that fire left at all now.

After a moment that stretches into forever, she leans out to look up and down the empty lane, then steps back to invite me in. The house is small, exactly like all the others in town. You can see Sofia’s little touches here and there—the bright red kettle on the stovetop, a strip of imported silk hanging on the wall. Otherwise the walls are painted the usual calming pale yellow, and the bland furniture is standard-issue. Her father’s waders still hang by the door, along with his testing kit. Before his new job in the base warehouse, Davin scooped samples for a living, bringing them back to the labs so the technicians could confirm that, as ever, Avon is missing most of the bacterial life she needs to become a proper world. The small table in the center of the room is piled high with dishes and pots, offerings left by neighbors and friends with no other way of showing their sympathy for Sofia’s loss.

She closes the door behind me, then turns to face me. Last time we spoke we were almost the same size, and she was trying to wrestle me to the ground in the muddy school yard. Now I’ve got a good three or four inches on her. I’m searching for words, some way to show her I’m sharing her pain, but she speaks first.

“What the hell happened to you?”

To my surprise, I laugh. And though it’s a soft, sad sound, my chest loosens. I haven’t spoken to another human in three days. “The swamp happened to me,” I say, and her mouth quirks a little. “I’m so sorry, Sof. I wish there was something I could say that would make a difference. I know there’s not.”

Her mouth tightens to a thin line as her eyes slide away. She looks so tired. “You shouldn’t have come here, Flynn. Your face is on every holoboard in town. Kidnapping an officer? What’s going on?”

“It’s an incredibly long story. Listen, Sof, I’ve got nowhere to go. I came here because…because I thought you might understand.”

“Nowhere?” Her brow furrows, and I realize no one’s told her about the massacre, about my choice to save Jubilee. “But the caves…”

I swallow hard. Three days, and I still can’t speak about it. “McBride and the others want me even more than the soldiers do. I made a choice, and they don’t understand why.”