Flynn’s quick to lift his hands, and I follow suit. “We’re unarmed,” I say, letting my voice shake.

“It’s a party,” Lilac murmurs, one reddish-gold brow lifting in amusement, though even distracted as I am, a part of my mind notes that her smile is just a fraction off, strained. “I’m curious—what is it you think you can accomplish? I can move faster than any of you, and I’m smarter than all of you. I’ve had years to study your kind.” Her gaze fixes on Flynn, lips quirking. “What’s your problem, anyway?” One perfectly manicured hand lifting so she can point a finger at him. “You’ve still got that one.” And unerringly, her hand swings around to point at Jubilee, where she was making her way along the wall in almost perfect silence.

Jubilee’s lips draw back into a snarl as she freezes in place. I don’t know if she’s trying to distract Lilac from the gun in her hand, or if her rage is real. Both, perhaps. “What’s his problem? You have the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on your hands. You don’t even pretend to care! November is burning all around us, and—”

“This is Corinth.” Lilac interrupts her smoothly, sounding bored, if anything. “November was years ago.” She pauses, and then her lips part and curve into a smile. “Oh, I see now. You didn’t arrive with my Tarver—you’re here for something different. You came to kill me? My, your little group falls apart easily, doesn’t it?”

“Easily?” I find my voice, forcing the words out—I have to drag their attention back to me. “The death of whole city sectors is nothing? Just an inconvenience?”

Tarver’s eyes move back to me, as do Lilac’s, and beyond them, I can see Jubilee lifting the gun. I know the instant the tiniest flicker of my gaze gives me away. Lilac’s gaze starts to swing toward Jubilee, and I know that once she sees her, she’ll be able to knock her aside as easily as she did Tarver on the Daedalus. My senses are keyed up to almost unbearable intensity, my world narrowing down to one movement as Jubilee’s finger curls around the trigger.

One shot, Sanjana warned us.

Then the explosion of a shot fired shatters the air and my ears, and I’m back onboard the Daedalus after firing the plas-pistol, I’m on Avon right beside an explosion, throwing myself to the ground.

It’s not until I drag myself upright again that reality reasserts itself, and I look up to see Tarver standing braced, arm outstretched and holding a gun—the old kind, the kind that fires a bullet, that must have come from the undercity—pointed straight at Jubilee.

The shards of her Gleidel lie scattered around her feet, and she’s cradling her hand, shocked still. Some detached part of my mind tries to calculate the odds of someone making that shot—of firing across the room and hitting the gun out of someone’s hand as they’re still moving.

“Are you okay, Lee?” Tarver’s voice is low and tight, and for a moment we each stare stupidly at him, trying to understand the question. “Your hand.”

She nods, ashen-faced, then glances toward Flynn, who’s still armed with the second of our two guns, pulled from beneath the shop’s counter.

Tarver follows her gaze, his own eyes falling on Flynn. “Would you care to try?” he asks him, voice still quiet, still eerily calm. But Flynn just shakes his head, unable to take his gaze away from Jubilee, still huddled on the floor amid the pieces of her gun.

My body’s still tingling with shock, my ears still ringing from the gunshot. For a brief instant I think my mind’s giving up entirely, as a patch of shadow somewhere beyond and above the rift swims, blurs, shifts. Then I realize what I’m seeing.

Gideon.

He’s climbing down, slowly, from the jagged hole in the roof, harness and rope allowing him to rappel silently. I can’t see his face from this distance, but he pauses partway down, and somehow I know he’s looking back at me, lying in a heap on the floor. I jerk my eyes away before anyone else can see what I saw, and pull myself up with an effort so he’ll see I’m okay.

Tarver’s got Lilac’s attention on him—everyone’s attention on him. I try as hard as I can to keep my eyes on Tarver—but though I’ve always been able to control even the most minute variations in my expression, suddenly it’s a struggle not to reveal anything by watching Gideon. Trying with all my heart to make sure I don’t draw attention to the boy creeping quietly through the dark, carrying a virus that’s either our last hope of stopping her, or the end of the world.

From within my prison, I reach out to the girl they brought back. I catch flashes of her life through her eyes, so brief she cannot know I am there. A sea of faces and cameras as she describes a shipwreck. The glint of a gemstone held between two fingers and a young man’s face looking up at her. A house, half-built in the wilderness, the sky thick with stars.

And the blue-eyed man.

Each time I see him I push harder, but the girl’s mind is strong. She draws nearer and nearer to my prison and still I cannot breach her defenses. All I need is one chance, a single moment to slip inside her mind, escaping my prison forever.

Then, another flash. A blond girl in a ball gown, holding a weapon. A shattering sound. A blinding pain shooting through us both.

And for an instant, Lilac LaRoux’s guard falls.

MY THROAT’S HALF-CLOSED IN panic, and it’s only as Sofia stirs again that I can breathe. I force my shaking hands to still, flex my fingers, and creep forward once again.

“Lilac, darling,” Monsieur LaRoux says from his place on the floor. “Can’t you just get rid of them all?”

I’d forgotten he was there, and so had the others, judging by the way their heads snap around.

“Their little toys make it so hard to see where they are,” Lilac replies. So the shields are reaching far enough to protect me—to protect all of us, since nobody’s eyes have turned black just yet. “We’re still missing Giddy,” she continues, and behind that smile, that nickname that infuriates me coming from her, there’s a note of steel in her voice that sends a bolt of ice straight down my spine. Prey, that voice says. That’s what you are. And I want to play with you.

“Bloody Marchant boys, always late,” LaRoux mutters.

“My father doesn’t understand,” Lilac says, addressing Sofia, who stands her ground—albeit swaying slightly—meeting her eyes. “He’s chosen to see what he sees now. How could he ever face the truth? He took my freedom from me. My life. My death. He took everything, for his own gain.” For a moment it seems she’ll say more, but her eyes close, and her shoulders round, tension singing through her frame. A ragged breath later, she’s straightening once more.

“The others,” Lilac continues, “they don’t understand either. The rest of my kind, on the other side of the rift…They wanted to find out if humanity is worth knowing, worth learning from. We’d been alone in our universe until your ships started ripping through it, and we thought there was something to be gained from reaching out to you.” She breathes out, sharp, disgust in her eyes. “They know nothing. I’m the one who’s been here since the start. I’m the one who’s seen what you really are.”