hard as she could, she took her index finger off the trigger. Then her middle finger. The gun was heavy, but she gritted her teeth and focused. She removed her ring finger. Then—taking a deep breath—her pinky and her thumb.
The gun hovered in the air.
Cora was so shocked that she nearly forgot to breathe. “You see?” she hissed. “I do have abilities! I can fire this gun too; and I will, unless you get us back on course.”
Bonebreak let out a surprised grunt, and her fears thundered in her ears. Did he sense the bluff?
The ship was silent, save for the sounds of Nok’s labored breathing and a hum of machinery. Cora’s blood pulsed harder. It took every ounce of her concentration to keep the hovering gun aimed at Bonebreak. Her attention was slipping. Cassian said she needed to be able to levitate an object for thirty seconds, but only five or ten had passed, and her mind already ached. She couldn’t hold on forever. . . .
Bonebreak sat heavily in the captain’s chair. He cracked his knuckles, then wiggled his fingers in the air, getting ready to operate the controls. When he spoke, his voice was light and jovial, as though all this had been a prank.
“Earth?” he said. “No problem. I wanted to go to Earth anyway—didn’t I mention that?”
Cora reached out for the gun a second before it fell. Her mind let go all at once, and she slumped over, trying hard not to reveal how much it had cost her. She wiped her wrist under her bleeding nose and collapsed in the second pilot’s chair next to Bonebreak, trying hard not to think about the boy on the floor.
“Then get us out of here. Now.”
42
Cora
THE SHIP GAVE A low rumble as it glided through space. For hours as they flew, the same image showed through the viewing screen: blackness with stars in the distance, the halo of a nearby moon on the right side of the screen.
Bonebreak worked the controls wordlessly, lazily spinning a finger on a trace pad, occasionally flipping levers with his mind. If he was furious, it didn’t show. Everything is a whim for them . . . betraying a promise or keeping it, Cassian had warned. Cora just hoped Bonebreak’s calm lasted until they reached her solar system. In her own heart, calm was the last thing she felt.
Once the others had realized that Lucky had died, they’d all fallen into denial, and then a sort of shock. Nok had helped her clean up the blood and drape a tarp they found in the ship’s facilities room over his chest. Now they all huddled near the captain’s chair, faces expressionless, no words exchanged. Cora stroked Lucky’s dark hair, picking out the dried crusts of blood, trying to ignore how cold his skin had grown.
“How long until we get to our galaxy?” Rolf asked Bonebreak quietly.
Bonebreak flipped another lever. “Settle in. I hope you brought snacks.”
Rolf’s fingers tapped anxiously against the floor. “This trip is very risky, when we do not even know if our planet is there.”
“It’s there,” Cora said softly.
“How are you certain?” Rolf asked.
“A boy named Chicago overheard the Kindred talking about the algorithm having been changed. Cassian looked into it for me.” She pressed her lips together, thinking of that awful scene of him tortured. “He said there’s almost a seventy percent chance humans haven’t destroyed Earth.”
Rolf reflected on this for a moment. “Almost seventy is not one hundred.”
Nok placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes it’s not about the numbers. It’s about faith.”
Cora kept stroking Lucky’s hair. She still clutched the gun in her other hand—just to remind Bonebreak who was in control. The tear in the back of her head was throbbing, low and dull, but persistent. She glanced over her shoulder. Mali had laid Anya flat and was rubbing the girl’s feet with a circular motion that she explained promoted blood flow. Leon had removed his Kindred uniform and managed to reset his shoulder himself, and was now sewing up a wound on his arm with the Mosca’s black thread.
Cora kissed Lucky on the forehead and then drew the white tarp over his face. She scooted back against the wall and squeezed his journal tightly.
Mali watched her from across the room.
“Did you know about this?” Cora asked, holding up the journal.
Mali nodded. “I hear him writing sometimes. At night. It was a gift from Dane.”
Cora sat in the second pilot’s chair, ignoring Bonebreak’s smell that kept