Jo was too stunned to do much more than gasp, but at least one or two of the men behind her shouted Takako’s name, demanded she lower her weapon, even moved to act. To which Snow merely held up a hand in their direction, keeping them from interfering.
To his credit, Snow seemed completely calm in the face of Takako’s assault, eerily so. In fact, he looked as though he were about to have a normal conversation with the Japanese woman, as if she wasn’t currently pointing a gun right between his eyes.
“Get out of my way,” Takako demanded, thumb reaching over to unclick the safety. In the near-oppressive silence of the briefing room, with nothing but their breaths playing shaky accompaniment, that single click was deafening. “You know I won’t miss.”
Jo wasn’t even sure if Snow could be killed by a bullet; she didn’t know if he could be killed at all, if any of them could be anymore. What did immortal spirits have to fear from death? But in that moment, all that mattered was that Takako believed in her threat and, as she took aim, it was obvious she intended to test that theory.
Before she could pull the trigger, however, Snow took a step away from the table, gathered his height, and stared down the nozzle of the gun. He took another step forward and Takako’s steady hold on the gun began to waver. Snow reached out, grabbing the muzzle in a display of both confidence and fearlessness.
“Stand down, soldier,” he said, almost gently. “This is a battle with no winner.”
For a second, Takako didn’t respond, gun still poised to fire. Jo held her breath, the whole room seemingly waiting at the edge of a proverbial cliff, wondering if they were going to fall off completely or simply stumble away from the ledge.
Then, as if a switch had flipped, Jo watched the tightness of Takako’s back loosen, the straight line of her arms sag a bit at the elbows. Without a word, she re-engaged the safety on her gun, pulled it from Snow’s grasp, and returned it to its holster.
“My apologies,” she said, bending forward into a deep and rigid-looking bow. When she raised herself back up and turned towards the group, it was without an ounce of expression on her face.
They didn’t even need to be asked; Eslar and Wayne stepped to one side and Jo and Nico to the other, letting Takako pass. She did so without a word, movements borderline mechanical.
It wasn’t until Takako had disappeared from sight that Jo felt she could breathe again, and even when she did, her inhale was shaky, scraping at the back of her throat and burning deep into her chest. Takako’s words still rang in her ears.
That’s what we do, isn’t it? Save people?
How were they supposed to do that when their hands were shackled by wishes that weren’t even their own?
Chapter 5
Mugicha
SNOW ROUNDED THE table and started for the door, pausing briefly to utter a command directly to Eslar: “Look after her.”
Jo kept her eyes pinned to the Door on the opposite side of the room. The steel was as cold and inflexible as Snow’s words; neither had any heart. She clenched her fists, feeling like she was made of fire in a room that was now colder than ice.
“Understood,” Jo heard Eslar say, though it sounded like he was now on some distant planet far, far away from where she stood.
She listened to Snow’s footsteps as they left: boots clicking on the obsidian floor of the briefing room, muffled weight on the carpet of the hall, and eventually, nothing at all. Even if she could understand him, even if shewantedto understand him, she couldn’t. What Snow had done had been in Takako’s best interest, hadn’t it? Yet if that were true, why did it feel so heartless?
Jo still couldn’t erase the anger she felt at the nearly militaristic way it had all been handled. People were dying—no, more than that; Takako hadn’t joined the Society that long ago, which meant herfamilywas likely dying. If there was any time for compassion in their operation, it was now. Yet all their leader seemed to give them was the bitter reminder that they were nothing more than slaves to the circumstances of their existence. Would it have really done so much damage to let her go through the Door?
A hand fell on Jo’s shoulder, jolting her back from her thoughts.
“Coming?” She could tell Wayne was repeating himself, though how many times he’d addressed her was a total mystery.
“Where?”
“We’re going back to watch the news,” Nico said softly.
“No.” Jo swallowed back the bile that rose up in her throat at the mere idea of sitting there again and watching the carnage. Turning her eyes away wasn’t going to help, but neither was watching it. She was useless to everyone if she let her sanity crack now.
Out of the millions who needed it, there was only one person Jo could help right now. It was almost nothing, in the grand scope. But at least helpingsomeonewassomething.
“You guys go on ahead,” she encouraged.
“I don’t want to leave you alone.” Wayne, well meaning and thick-headed as always.
“I’m not going to be alone,” Jo corrected him.
“Then who—”
