touched …”
Closer.
“… it’d create a nuclear reaction… .”
“That sounds dangerous,” I whisper, searching her eyes.
Closest.
“Very,” she breathes.
Our lips meet, and our fires collide, and in that instant, all and everything is utterly right. There is no ship. There is no Fold. There is only this girl in my arms, and the Pull in my core, and the press of her mouth her hands her body to mine. She surges against me, breathless, hungry, seeking that same solace I feel, the shelter of oblivion, the everything of us and the nothingness of everything else. Her tongue brushes mine, and she guides my hands to where she wants them to be, and though I know in some part of me that what she said is true, that we are not truly touching at all, for a moment I fear we truly are, that the heat between us has become some nuclear fire that will consume us both.
She pulls away from me after an eon. Looking up into my eyes with something close to the adoration she must see in mine. She presses her fingertips to my face, my ears, my lips, her touch incandescent on my skin.
“You are the fire I long to burn inside,” I tell her.
She takes my hand.
She leads me to her bed.
She draws me down with her.
“Let’s burn together,” she breathes.
21
TYLER
It’s cold in this interrogation cell.
The troopers who escorted me from the detention level ignored all my protests, all my challenges to the lunacy of what they’re caught up in. Good soldiers don’t listen to terrorists, I know. Good soldiers don’t think. Instead, they just marched me into this room, bound me to a chair in mag-restraints, and, with a series of crisp salutes, tromped right back out again.
Leaving me with them.
I look the three figures over, picked out in the spotlights overhead. Their breath hisses, slow and hollow. They have identical mannerisms, identical mirrormasks, identical charcoal-gray uniforms. Apart from the one leading them, of course, who’s clad head to foot in pristine white instead.
“GOOD EVENING, LEGIONNAIRE JONES,” Princeps says. “WELCOME ABOARD THE KUSANAGI.”
I look at the figure where I guess its eyes must be. Imagining the face hidden behind that featureless facade.
“Nice to see you again, Zhang Ji,” I say.
The name of Aurora’s father. The name of the shell this thing stole and now wears like a cheap suit. This thing that’s slumbered for a million years, wounded, hiding in the shadows, wanting to be unseen, undiscovered, unknown.
But I know its name.
“Or should I call you Ra’haam?”
I look among them, bristling with anger. Waiting for an answer. A reaction. Something. But they just stare, silent and still.
“I know what you’re doing,” I spit. “You’re starting a war between Terra and the Unbroken as a smoke screen. Buying yourself time until your nursery planets are ready to bloom. But millions of people are going to die. Maybe billions. You know that, right?”
The two gray GIA uniforms take up position on either side of me. The one to my left reaches out with gloved hands and slips a pain collar around my neck. I flinch at the touch of cold metal. I feel the tiny trode slip out and press against my spine.
“Use of pain collars is outlawed under the Madrid Conventions,” I say. “They probably should’ve written something about being possessed by alien parasites in there too, but you get th—”
“WHERE IS AURORA JIE-LIN O’MALLEY?” Princeps asks.
I square my jaw, look into that blank, mirrored face. “Under Aurora Legion protocols, I’m permitted only to give you my name, rank, and squad number.”
Princeps tilts its head. “WHERE IS AURORA JIE-LIN O’MALLEY?”
I lick my lips. Brace myself.
“Tyler Jones. Alpha. Aurora Legion, Squad 312.”
A bolt of agony rockets up the back of my skull and explodes inside my head. I gasp as every inch of skin bursts into flame, as every nerve is stripped raw and dragged through broken glass, as my eyes burst inside my skull and acid is poured into the sockets, eating through my sinus cavities and dripping down my thr—
It stops. Shut off with a flick of Princeps’s finger. I drag a shuddering gasp through my teeth, sweat stinging in my wounds. It only lasted a few seconds, but that was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life, up to and including that time in sixth grade when I caught myself in my zipper.
Princeps opens one white-gloved hand, shows me the pain collar’s control. The settings range up to 10. It’s currently set to 1.
“WHERE