“Then think about the thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people in the district below. They never did anything to you or your kind, and you’ll kill them all when this ship hits. Do that and you’re no better than LaRoux.”

Lilac’s smile widens a little, and she casts her glance to the side. I’d almost forgotten about LaRoux, that realization jolting through me—I’d almost forgotten about him. He’s still on his knees, where he’d been crouching after his daughter was shot. He looks up at her, face haggard and lined, the blue eyes seeming almost watery, weak, compared to the deepest black of Lilac’s gaze.

“True,” she replies, still looking at LaRoux, her expression a sick combination of loathing and love. “I am, I suppose, what my father made me.” She stoops a little so that she can lay a hand against LaRoux’s cheek, a tender gesture that makes me shudder. “But you are wrong, when you say I’m no better than he is.”

Flynn doesn’t answer, and I know why. He spent a lifetime surrounded by people who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, listen to logic, to compassion, to reason. He knows madness when he hears it.

Lilac waits, and when no reply comes, her smile drains away, leaving something full of steel and fire behind. “Roderick LaRoux is a creature who defines himself by power. And I…I am better than him in every way.”

The ship shudders again, in time with an explosion that makes my body seize, panic and adrenaline sweeping through and dimming the pain in my hand. Every muscle’s screaming at me to run. But run where? To get to the shuttles we’d have to go toward the sounds of destruction—if there even are shuttles anymore.

Lilac looks back down at her father and smiles. “Daddy,” she says softly. “You’ll come with me, right?”

Roderick LaRoux’s lips part, gazing up at the thing that isn’t really his daughter anymore—and, like a switch has been flipped, his face changes. The tension in his shoulders drains, his lips cracking into a tremulous smile. I see him will himself into believing it, with the same conviction that helped him believe the creature in the rift could never hurt his Lilac. “You forgive me,” he whispers. “For Simon, for the Icarus—you forgive me?”

The Lilac-thing reaches for his hand to draw him up to his feet. “You’re my father,” she says, kissing his cheek. “And I’m not done with you yet.”

LaRoux gapes at her for a long moment before a smile slides into place on his features—a deliberate sort of expression, as he chooses blindness over reality. “Oh, my darling.” LaRoux’s voice is muffled, and I’m half expecting his eyes to go black like Lilac’s—but they remain clear and blue. His own willingness to delude himself is all the control Lilac needs. “My heart. Yes. Let’s go.”

Lilac casts one more glance over her shoulder at Tarver, whose arm, the one not supporting him against the wall, is hanging oddly. He takes a lurching step forward, trying to speak, but without another word, the LaRoux heiress and the creature inside her mind turn away, leading her father toward the staircase and up into the destruction.

“Lilac!” Tarver’s scream is hoarse, and suddenly he’s running despite his injury, despite what must be a concussion making his steps falter. “Lilac—”

“Sir, no!” Jubilee’s abandoning her gun, turning to intercept Tarver and put her whole body in between him and the stairs Lilac is ascending. He collides with her hard enough to make her groan for breath, but she doesn’t fall—she wraps both arms around him and hauls back, boots skidding on the metal grille of the floor. “Help me!” she cries, and Flynn’s moving instantly to add his strength to hers in trying to prevent Tarver from following Lilac.

“Let go!” Tarver shouts, struggling, barely sparing a glance for the woman dragging him back. “Let go, let me—I have to—that’s an order, Lieutenant!” He’s stronger than she is, stronger than them both, half-mad with grief and fear and pain, and barely coherent.

She struggles with him, gasping for air and shouting in his ear. “You can’t save her—Tarver, the whisper will make sure she survives this crash, and you can’t save her if you’re dead!”

He roars some kind of reply and tears free of her grip for half a second—and then she’s swinging her arm, open palm catching him on the head and knocking him sidewise. Half-stunned, he staggers against the wall, where Flynn holds him, his own muscles rigid with the effort.

Lee’s eyes snap toward us, and like that look is a jolt of adrenaline, all the oxygen comes rushing back into my lungs. “Can you walk?”

I try, dizzy with confusion and shock, to draw myself up straighter. I nod, and feel Gideon start breathing again at my side. Abruptly I realize that the fingers of my good hand are tangled through his.

“I won’t do this again,” Tarver’s saying, still trying, half-conscious, to push Flynn away from him. “I won’t live without her again. I can’t. I can’t. Lee…please. Please, leave me here. Please, Lee…”

Jubilee glances back over her shoulder at him, and I can see the pain of seeing him like this etched in the tension along her spine. Then she’s moving, joining Flynn, slinging Tarver’s good arm over her shoulder. “Flynn?”

He seems to understand her at a glance and jerks his head toward the far end of the deck. “There have to be shuttles around here somewhere—we’ll never make it up to the ambassadors’ launch pads.”

I raise my voice to be heard over another shriek of metal, shouting, “Maintenance shuttles, they’re along the far wall.” The other side of this huge chamber is half the length of the ship away, barely visible in the dim shadows.

Flashes of memorized floor plans swim up in front of my eyes, too fragmented to be of any use. We were never supposed to spend more than a few minutes here, but I learned this entire deck anyway. Anyone can make a plan—what separates out the survivors is who bothers to prepare for the moment when things stop going according to plan. But the shock’s starting to fade and pain is radiating up my arm, and I can hear whispering voices in my ear, and my fear is too thick, too tangible, to see through.

“We have to go,” Jubilee’s roaring, still wrestling with Tarver. “We have to fall back, sir!”

“Gideon, get her moving,” Flynn shouts, from where he’s on the ex-soldier’s other side, still holding him back.

Gideon pulls me after him as he starts to run, and we both stumble as a wave travels the length of the floor, jolting us off our feet and sending us flying forward. We scramble upright, our hands still linked tightly, and as I glance behind, I see Tarver finally running, flanked by Flynn and Jubilee.

There’s a great, screaming sound above us that sets my nerves on fire, meeting with the agonizing bolts of pain shooting up from my burned hand, scrambling my brain until I can hardly remember how to run. With a deafening slam, one of the workstations bolted onto the walls above us rips away, hitting the floor just meters to our right.

I skid to a halt, so abruptly that Gideon loses his grip on my hand and staggers on a few steps without me as I drop to my knees. The fire in my hand is burning, my ears are ringing. Dimly I can hear his voice calling my name, muffled and fuzzy, as though I’m underwater. The far wall of the huge engine chamber swims out of focus as the ground quakes beneath me. This ship is falling out of the sky, and we’re never going to make it to the shuttles.