“They’re never going to stop looking for us now,” Sofia murmurs. Our narrow escape is on her mind too.

“At least not until LaRoux Industries carries out whatever it’s planning to do with that rift.”

Sofia lifts her head, glancing at me with uncharacteristic hesitation. “Well, if you won’t say it, I will. Everyone’s heard the Avon Broadcast. That’s what Flynn—Flynn Cormac, the guy on that recording—that’s what he was talking about. Creatures that can affect minds.”

It sounds insane. Beyond insane. And if I hadn’t seen what Tarver and Lilac went through, if I hadn’t been tracking the woman who helped LaRoux cover up the Avon conspiracy, I’d politely show this girl the door and get back to my screens. “Yeah,” I say instead, my voice sounding papery and thin even to my own ears. “‘Whispers,’ he called them. He said they were whispers from another universe.”

“Surely there’s some way to just cut our universe off from theirs, so that LaRoux can’t use the whispers.”

I’m quick to shake my head. “They come from hyperspace. If we shut the door on their universe, we’d be left without the ability to jump through their dimension from place to place. There’d be no faster-than-light travel, no hypernet communication between planets.”

Sofia grimaces. “Okay, let’s not do that then. So how do you fight something that can get inside your mind, control your thoughts?”

I wish I had an answer, but instead the silence draws in around us again, thick and smothering this time. I don’t know how to fight the whispers. It’s why I’m trying to fight LaRoux himself, to drag him into the light. Despite the short time I’ve known her, it’s strange to see Sofia at such a loss. I take a deep breath, and say something out loud I’ve never told anyone but Mae. “We fight him instead. His company.”

Her eyes flick up from the floor again, brows lifted.

I indicate my screens with a jerk of my chin. “There’s nothing we can do against beings that can reach inside your head, but we can stop what they’re being used to do. Whatever it is. Avon’s people managed to stand up to LaRoux, despite these creatures being there. And—” My words come up short, and I almost choke with the effort to halt my momentum. “And I think the Icarus survivors encountered them too,” I finish finally. I’m not ready for her to know about my connection with the youngest LaRoux.

Sofia frowns. “How could you know that?”

“It’s a long story,” I reply. “But I’ve been looking. For years now, I’ve been digging into LaRoux Industries. I told you I had my own reasons for wanting to take them down.”

Sofia leans back, resting her shoulders against the wall next to the bed. She takes her time responding, and I can feel those gray eyes on me like a tangible weight. “I showed you mine,” she says softly. “You don’t think I should know why you’re in this? Why I should trust you?”

In an instant, my brother’s face is there in front of me. I’m always looking up in my memory; he was older, though these days I’m taller than he was when he died. Freckled, grinning, he’s always laughing in my imagination, though I never remember the jokes. The sort of things brothers laugh about, stupid kid jokes that make no sense to anybody else. Grief wraps around my throat, tightening like a hand, making it hard to swallow. “Because the LaRoux family killed my brother.”

Sofia’s silent for a time, but I can still feel her watching me. “I’m so sorry,” she says finally, and for now, that’s enough.

I cough to clear my throat, straightening in my chair. “Well, we’re safe here for now. No one’s ever found this place and I’ve been here for years. We can regroup, figure out our next move. Wait a few weeks, see if the heat dies down.”

“A few weeks…” Sofia echoes my words, suddenly not looking at me anymore, but rather gazing past me with a troubled look on her face.

“What is it? I know it’s no penthouse, but it’s better than—”

“No, no, this place is fine,” Sofia says dismissively. Now I know she’s distracted. “I’m remembering what one of those guys said, back at LRI Headquarters, right before you got there. Something about having a week to fix the rift and make sure it was working right.”

“So…what’s happening in a week that’s so important to LaRoux?”

Sofia’s eyebrows lift. “Seriously? You don’t know?” One side of her mouth lifts, drawing the faintest ghost of a dimple and banishing the lingering remnants of grief. “Do you ever come out of those screens?”

“There are a lot of things happening in a week, Dimples. I probably know about more of them than you do.”

“Maybe. But quality over quantity, my good man. Run a search on ‘Daedalus.’”

The name sends a jolt through me. I don’t have to search the phrase—the entire galaxy knows about the Icarus’s sister ship. “Oh, holy shit, you’re right. The grand opening of the Daedalus museum is happening soon.”

“And the opening-night gala is doubling as a welcome bash for all the planetary envoys visiting for the peace summit.” Her mouth twists in a way completely unrelated to a smile. “To discuss those pesky rebellions.”

The ruling senators for every planet in the galaxy, all in the same room, all with their guards down. “Oh, hell.”

“LaRoux wants power,” Sofia goes on. Her face, when she says that name, goes hard as granite. She may be a consummate actress, but she can’t hide her hatred. “If he could do to the senators what he did to the people on Avon, or the people at LRI Headquarters…”

“He’d control the entire galaxy.” My mouth is dry, a deep chill in my gut making me want to shiver. Hard enough exposing LaRoux and his company without the authorities themselves under mind control. “Would he be able to move something as big as the rift we saw? And hide it from an entire ship full of staff and guests, not to mention the media outlets that’ll be swarming the gala?”

Sofia hesitates, glancing at me, then at my screens, then away. “I have a contact,” she says finally, “within LRI. I only got a little from her—we were going to meet that day at the holosuite. But she told me that the technology LaRoux used to create the rifts is the same technology used in the new hyperspace engines, which makes sense given what you’ve just told me about where the whispers come from. My contact understands the rifts—I think she worked on the project, or at least on the new engines, like the one onboard the Icarus.”

“And the one onboard the Daedalus.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where she’s heading, and I’m already itching to get a look at the ship’s blueprints. “There could be a rift there already, hiding in plain sight.”

“And if we don’t get to him first, LaRoux’s going to use it to turn the entire Galactic Council into husks under his command.”

“Oh, hell,” I repeat, shutting my eyes.

“In a handbasket,” she agrees.

“Bring her back!” The blue-eyed man is screaming at us through the thin spot on the gray world. “You brought the scientists on Elysium back, again and again. You drove them mad with it. All I ask is one life, one—” His words fail him.