This Shattered World

She continues, frustrated and bewildered. “He was only in the system because he got a tooth pulled a couple of years ago. How did your people drag a man like him into this?”

It’s a ridiculous reaction, but I want to laugh, disbelief still crashing over me. “We didn’t. Quinn was about as likely to blow up this place as you. He must have had other business on the base. It wasn’t him.”

“It was.” She leans in closer, keeping her voice down so the others in the ward won’t overhear us. “He had the detonator on him. We’ve got security footage showing him talking to a girl as if nothing was wrong, then turning around and walking into the barracks a minute or two before the blast.”

“Then somebody made him do it,” I tell her. “He has a daughter my age.” Sofia Quinn’s face as it was when we were children swims up in my mind too, smiling in my memory. I wonder if she’s the girl he was talking to on the security footage. “He wouldn’t do this to her, Jubilee. He had no reason.”

“Mori had no reason to fire on a civilian in the town,” she says quietly.

“But that was the Fury,” I press. “This is completely different. Your soldier was an off-worlder; Davin was born here. No native’s ever snapped from the Fury.” But something icy stirs inside me at the thought. I never doubted our belief that the Fury was a trodairí excuse until Jubilee looked me in the eye and swore it was real. But Davin Quinn was a man of peace, a man with no battle to fight and a daughter to live for.

“You’re right about one thing. This wasn’t the Fury. When our people snap, they grab the nearest knife and stab their friends and anyone else near them, Cormac. They don’t build bombs.” Her voice comes quick and sharp, and it’s only after glancing over her shoulder at my unconscious roommates that she takes a breath and quiets again. “Building a bomb takes time, planning, deliberation. The Fury is…savage. Brutal. As quick to strike as it is to pass again.”

I shake my head, gritting my teeth. “It wasn’t him. I’ll swear it on my life. Something, or someone, must have made him do it.”

Jubilee gives a frustrated sigh, scrubbing her hand across her face. I can see she’s troubled; it gives me hope that perhaps she believes me, perhaps there is something more to what happened on the base tonight. But then I realize she’s watching me, her expression tight. I’m coming to see her better, to understand the nuances of her closed-off face—and I know this isn’t the only news she came here to share.

“Just tell me.” My voice won’t come out right. The smoke I inhaled has turned it to a raspy parody of itself.

Her brown eyes fix on mine for a brief moment before flitting up to focus on the wall beyond my head, expression registering a fleeting but intense struggle. I’m afraid speaking will cause her to shut down again, so I wait, and let her fight her battle alone.

“You have to understand, Cormac. You’re my enemy. I don’t share information with rebels.” She unzips her combat suit enough to reach into her pocket, hand emerging with her fingers curled tightly around something. “I was focused on escaping back to base—” Her voice breaks off abruptly, and instead she just holds her hand out to me.

I reach out automatically, and she drops the object into my palm.

“I found it when you brought me to the facility out to the east.” She won’t look at me. “The one that wasn’t there.”

I ought to be furious—I ought to want to punish her somehow for deceiving me. But I’m holding proof I’m not insane, and I can’t find the anger anywhere. It’s an ident chip, a little like the kind the soldiers carry embedded in their gear. Proof, surely, that something was there at one point. One side is covered with foil circuitry, and I turn it over in my hands, taking in the bar code on the other side. I wish I had a scanner. “Is this military?”

She shakes her head. “Ours are newer. This one’s old, maybe twenty years out of date.”

“You’re telling me I somehow stumbled across a twenty-year-old facility that vanished a few hours later?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs, watching me. “But I will say that while the older models don’t carry as much information, they’re more easily encrypted. This one would require a very specific scanner, one we don’t even carry anymore. There’s no way to scan this and figure out whose it is.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because this is what you’ve been looking for. Proof. And I’ve been hiding it from you.”

I try to read her face, but she’s watching the wall now and I can’t meet her eyes to decipher her expression. “Jubilee—”

She interrupts me with a shake of her head. “I saw something there; a flash, a vision, like the memory of the facility that used to be there. I don’t know how, if it’s gone now, but I did.”

Hardly able to believe what I’m hearing, I drop my eyes to the chip, turning it over and over in my hands like I might be able to divine a new clue from it, some explanation for what’s going on or where to look next.

“Wait—stop!” Jubilee lurches from her chair, her fingers closing around my wrist. I freeze, but her eyes are on the chip. “Turn it over.”

I do as she says, and her fingers guide me, turning my hand just so. I see a flash as the foil catches the light. She makes a small noise of shock and then leans down so she can bring her line of sight alongside mine.