This Shattered World

Because what if the answer is no?

Merendsen’s watching me. “You want to know if they could be the cause of the Fury?”

I don’t answer—I can’t, my throat so tight I can barely breathe. I want to look at Flynn, to see if there’s any chance this would change things between us. But I know it won’t. It was still my hand. My gun.

Merendsen sighs. “They didn’t do that to us. But we did find a…a record of sorts, of what happened to the original research station near where we crashed. And yes, Lee. It looked very much like the Fury.” His tone is quiet, even gentle, but I know him too well to believe it. There’s a steady anger hidden deep in his voice that makes me wonder what happened to him on that planet that he’s still not telling us. “Whatever LaRoux is using them for, perhaps the Fury is a side effect. Either way, LaRoux’s experiments didn’t end on that planet.”

I turn away, eyes sliding past Flynn until I can fix on the door instead, hands curled tightly against the lid of the trunk. I can still feel him there, the weight of guilt strung between us like a cord; bound together, held apart.

“Lee, give me your gun.” Merendsen’s on his feet, one hand extended to me. Soldier or not, it’s an order, and I comply, pulling it holster and all off my belt and handing it to him. He pulls the Gleidel out, as familiar with it as I am, and turns it over so he can reach the access panel. Flipping the cover up, he hands it back to me. “Take a look at the readout. When was this last discharged?”

I let my eyes fall to the display. “Four days ago. I shot at the ceiling to cause a rock fall to give Flynn and me time to escape.”

“And before that? How many times was it fired?”

My heart shrinks. “Please—sir, I can’t look, you don’t understand—”

“That’s an order, Captain.”

I force myself to drop my eyes and scroll the button backward, expecting to see twenty, thirty shots registering on its record. Instead there’s nothing. Not for days and days, and after a while I stop scrolling, and my hand falls into my lap, numb.

He leans over to rest his hand on mine. “A whisper may have brought you there, but it wasn’t to kill anyone. You never fired your weapon.”

My mind is reeling. “I didn’t kill those people.” I can’t think, can’t process. I’m struggling to breathe. All I know, all I can think of, is Flynn. I lift my head with an effort to find him looking straight at me, his face pale. I’m caught by that gaze, my blood thundering in my ears, frozen where I sit.

He tears his eyes away and stumbles to his feet. I want to speak, but I can’t, and he turns swiftly for the door, fumbling for the latch. He’s gone before I can speak, and I’m left sitting there staring after him, still trying to find my equilibrium.

Merendsen drops down into a crouch on the floor in front of me, reaching over to gently guide my face back toward his. He’s treating me the way we’re taught to treat disaster victims reacting in shock. Some detached part of my mind recognizes the training.

“I can’t believe you didn’t think to check its memory,” Merendsen says quietly, a smile in his voice. “You haven’t changed. Always looking forward, never back.”

“You weren’t there.” My voice breaks despite my attempts to find calm. “You didn’t wake up with no memory of how you got there, covered in blood. You didn’t see the—”

“Hey, shh.” Merendsen gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Now you know. And so does he.”

I glance toward the door, though Flynn’s long gone. “He left.”

“He needs time to understand.”

I shake my head. “Him and me both.”

Merendsen sighs. “You know he’s falling in love with you, right?”

My head snaps up, my eyes finding him again. If he wanted to cut through my shock, he certainly managed it. “Don’t be ridic—”

“Come on,” he interrupts.

I swallow, thinking of the night Flynn told me he could prove I had a soul, that I wasn’t heartless; the night he kissed me. I think of the way he washed the blood from my hands even when he knew he’d likely never see me again. I think of his face, standing in the back doorway of Molly’s, watching me with Merendsen.

“They all think they’re in love with me at some point or another,” I say finally, uncomfortably. There’s a difference between the way Flynn acts and the way the new recruits act when they first start taking orders from me, but I’m not ready to analyze that. “He’ll get over it.”

“And he’s like all your rookies?”

My heart pounds in the silence, stomach twisting. I feel sick, a hollow grief welling up inside me. “It doesn’t matter if he’s different,” I whisper. “We’re on opposite sides. We’re enemies, he and I.”

Merendsen’s mouth shifts to a faint smile. “You’re talking to the guy marrying Lilac LaRoux,” he points out. “Nothing’s insurmountable.”

That, at least, makes me smile a little in return. “I hardly think class differences are quite the same as ‘my people try to kill his people and vice versa.’”

His smile fades. “I said I couldn’t tell you everything that happened to us on that planet. Believe me when I tell you it wasn’t just that she was rich and I was poor.”

I swallow, dropping my eyes. “You didn’t have to wash the blood of your people off her hands. Some things you just can’t live with.”