This Shattered World

God, I hope I’m right about that.

“And sir.” I turn to face Merendsen. “He’s—Flynn isn’t…” I struggle, searching for some way to explain my connection to Flynn in a way that makes sense. That doesn’t sound like I’ve completely lost my mind.

Who says you haven’t?

“He’s not what you would think,” I say lamely. Next to my testimonial to Merendsen’s worth as an ally, it’s a sad, sorry statement. But how can I begin to describe what Flynn’s come to mean to me? My mind shies away from that thought, that truth it’s been avoiding for days. For once, I’m glad I don’t dream, for fear of what my dreams would say of Flynn. I shiver. “Will you guys promise not to kill each other long enough for me to explain what’s been happening here?”

Merendsen’s the first to answer, straightening a little and leaning back against the wall. The pose looks nonchalant, but my trained eye can still pick out signs that he’s alert, still ready for action. “Of course,” he says.

Flynn’s attention jerks back from Merendesen to me. I can see the hurt in his gaze, the anger there at being left out of my plans. Even though both of us know we were supposed to never see each other again.

“Fine,” he mutters.

I take a deep breath. “Okay. Sir, you might want to sit down. I’m pretty sure you’re going to think I’ve lost my mind, but I promise you I haven’t. Well. Not in the last day or so, anyway.”

I start with the night I met Flynn, and I stabbed him in the leg with a cocktail skewer, and we went in search of a secret facility that doesn’t exist.

The girl stands in front of the classroom, and all eyes are on her. The students sit in rows, and the walls are decorated with posters colored by hand. This week it’s the girl’s turn to talk about her family. Her mother gave her a silk jacket, but she hid it in the bottom of her bag and has a holo-picture instead. It shows the three of them, the girl standing between her mother and father, smiling and waving as the picture loops over and over.

“But who is that?” the teacher asks, pointing at the photo, and when the girl looks at it again, there are four figures. A boy has appeared, dark-haired and handsome, with dog tags gleaming around his neck.

“Who is that?” the teacher repeats, and the girl stares at him, willing the answer to come, wanting to be sure she gets a good mark. It’s not the green-eyed boy. This boy has brown eyes.

The boy stands between the girl’s mother and father, and suddenly she remembers.

“He’s my big brother,” she tells the class.

“I’m not her brother.”

She looks up, and the boy is sitting in the front row of the class.

He shakes his head. “I’m not her brother. Don’t you know what she did?”

She casts her gaze down, burning with embarrassment, and finds the photo in her hands is bleeding, the red trickling down her fingers to her knuckles.

I CAN’T STOP WATCHING HER body language as she talks to him, leaning in to drink in his every reaction, eyes locked on his. I don’t want to see it, but I can’t look away. Watching them, watching her, is a torture as unbearable as listening to my people fighting without me. She’s not alone anymore, surrounded by her platoon, her commander, her old captain. She’s found her way out.

But I still need her, and I hate myself for it.

She starts with the night we met and talks him through our attempt to find the vanished base, her escape, then Davin Quinn’s suicide. She’s quiet, objective—she gives me more credit than I expected, and she holds it together to give a military-style report. That is, until she catches up to the night I left the hospital and she ended up out in the swamps. Then her voice gives out, and I see an echo of her shell-shocked horror when she woke to find herself surrounded by death.

I can barely stand to hear her tell it, and I turn away, gripping the shelf I’m leaning against until my fingertips ache. The grief in her voice should help, should remind me she hasn’t forgotten; but all it does is make me long to touch her, to find stillness and quiet in the way our wounds mirror each other’s. She hasn’t been out of my mind the last few days. Hiding out in the swamps, holed up in town with Sofia, Jubilee’s been my constant companion.

I thought it would be better once I saw her, but it’s still here, this tug-of-war between wanting her, and just wanting her gone.

She stops trying to explain the massacre of my people and finishes abruptly. “And then Flynn helped me get back here. He’s been in hiding since then, because his own people will kill him for protecting me, and I’ve been here, trying to find some trace of what’s happening. That’s why I called you. Because you’re close to LaRoux Industries, and you’re the only one I know who won’t think I’ve simply cracked. You’re the only one I know who won’t kill him on sight.” She nods at me for that.

“He’s thinking about it.” I can hear the edge in my voice, sounding like everything I try not to be. Combative. Like McBride.

He shrugs. “If you needed killing, Lee would have taken care of that.” He finds a crate to haul up and sit on. “All right, so the Fury is getting worse. Taking people like Lee, who used to be immune, and civilians, who were always safe before.”

“And we think it has something to do with LaRoux Industries.” Jubilee’s focused on Merendsen. “They shouldn’t have any interest in Avon, but they have a presence here for some reason. Or had, anyway. The ident chip I found won’t be enough proof for the higher-ups, but it’s enough for me.”