Wayne paused, finally, at that.
“There’s more to this,” Jo insisted, regaining her mental footing. “There’s something here we’re not seeing. It’s like . . . it’s like . . .” Her eyes drifted back to the captain’s desk, almost entirely forgotten. “It’s like the Bone Carver.” Her voice had dropped to a hurried whisper. “There’s a pattern here, there’s someone pulling the strings.”
“Jo—”
“And I would bet you anything that we both know who it is.”
Wayne opened his mouth to speak, and then slowly closed it, opting instead to just stare at her. Jo held his gaze; she would devour him with a look if she could. She needed him to see what she saw, what was wearing her down time after time—what had been haunting her from the first moment she’d stepped in the Society, whether she’d realized it or not.
“Even if we did . . .” There was a conspiratorial edge to what he was saying, a sort of harmony to the buzzing in her. She was winning; he was opening up to her line of thinking. “What could we do about it?”
“I don’t know yet. But I plan on finding out.”
“You couldn’t do anything if you tried.” Fear settled over him, Jo could practically smell it. It rattled in him and made his hands tremble—barely, but she didn’t miss it.
“I can, and I will,” she vowed.
“How?”
“I’ll do research. I can get information from Snow.”
“That won’t work.”
“Has anyone ever tried?”
Clearly no one had, given how quickly he dodged the question. “I think all your focus should be on this wish.”
“And wait for another one of us to be killed?” Jo grabbed his arm, tilting her head slightly to look up at the man’s eyes.
Had Wayne always looked so tired?It was like he kept trying to find his resolve and build himself up and she just kept tearing him down.
“Wayne, we can’t just keep spending our energy on this wheel, again and again and again, letting Pan toy with us like the puppet master we all know she is.” His eyes widened at this so Jo pressed further. “It’s her. . . we all know it. There’s a feeling about her, and her power to kill us.”
“She’s trapped just like we are.”
“How do we know that? I’ve thought it too, but. . . how can it not be her? Listen,listen. Did you really hear her in the briefing room? Not only did she say dismantle the Society, but she said you, not us. She doesn’t see herself in danger. There’s a way out and she knows it. There has to be.”
“So, what do you propose?” There was a glimmer of something more there, a diamond in the dark coal mine they were all waiting like birds to suffocate in: hope.
“Let’s stop it here. Let’s break this cycle of world-rebuilding and free ourselves instead.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m not. This is the first sane thing we’ve done.”
“We’re just trying to stay alive and you want us to upend the system that keeps us existing? You don’t think that sounds a little insane?” He was raising his voice again as he shielded himself with anger.
“I think it sounds like the only sure-fire method for survival.”
“You’re talking about destroying our home.”
Why wasn’t he listening? Why couldn’t he just understand?
“The only thing I want to destroy is the cycle we’re chained to!” Jo slammed her palm down on the desk. . .
And the impossible happened.
In three seconds that felt like forever, several things occurred, almost all at once.
