“I came back.”
“Vera, no—”
“I already told you.” She cuts him off impatiently, like this isn’t up for debate. “We’re not leaving you behind.”
“Lament.” That’s Avi’s voice, sounding somehow even younger over the headset. “You have sixty seconds before that Time Stopperunstopsand we all get sucked into a voidless pit.”
“Iknow that.”
“How’s that hyperspeed button coming?”
“Still broken.” Lament takes a hard left to avoid an incoming Buzzard. I aim with my Halobringer, using the crosshairs on my monitor to lock onto the next target, but they’re already out of range. “I think it’s jammed.”
“So hit it with something heavy.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said,hit it with something heavy,” Avi repeats. I spot the Sky Runner through my window. Vera’s piloting, Jester riding passenger, Avi in the back seat. “It works inFrog Smasher.”
“This isn’t a game!”
“If you can’t get it fixed in the next fifteen seconds,” Vera interrupts, “we’ll fly within range of the pressure bubble and pull you into the Sky Runner. Then we can all escape together.”
“We’d need a ceasefire for that to work,” Lament argues, shifting gears as we blow past another band of Buzzards. “Otherwise, they’ll shoot us down as soon as we stop moving.”
“We’ll find an opening.”
Except we never get the chance, because The Parallax starts deploying their forces in earnest, and everything turns to chaos. Suddenly, six enemy Buzzards becomes twelve, becomes eighteen. Moon Dancer’s engines flare blue as Lament cuts a turn to avoid a collision with another spacecraft.And again, to dodge a stray ray beam. And again, to shake an approaching Buzzard. I fire at every opportunity, though I have to be careful—Halobringers respawn their ammo, but it’s not instantaneous. If I shoot too quickly, I risk running empty.
Lament points us into a stream of fire trailing a downed enemy ship. It looks like a shooting star. He sets me up for another shot with four fighter ships ahead.
I punch a single shot through them all.
We blast through the smoke and sparks of the downed chasers. There seems to be some friendly fire happening on the Determinists’ side, because Buzzards are exploding faster than I can hit them. That’s when I notice machine ray guns have appeared along the sides of The Parallax and are shooting haphazardly, taking down everything within range, including their own soldiers.
Vera’s voice sounds distant, like her microphone has been knocked away from her mouth. “Lament.”
Time warps. It’s nothing but explosions and ray beams, Lament at the controls, Moon Dancer weaving and fighting for position. Lament sets up shots and I take them. My heart is pounding but my hands are steady, and space is a black canvas dotted with lights, and maybe we’re doomed, but so is Ran Doc Min. Trey Morton. My mother. They don’t realize what’s awaiting their ship. They don’t know that once Avi’s Time Stopper wears off, everything within a hundred solar masses of this place will be condensed into nothingness. As we fly past a row of windows alongside The Parallax, one thought overtakes all the others:I hope Nina is seeing this. I hope she realizes what side I’ve chosen. I want her to know who I’ve really become.
And then—like my thoughts have the power to summon reality—shedoes.
At first I think my brain is misfiring. I feel like I did back on Skyhub after Rudy Rivon tricked me at the museum, when I was so befuddled I thought I was seeing Nina’s face in the faces of other people. But this time it’s really her, on a platform outside The Parallax, getting into what lookslike an escape pod with Trey Morton, a band of fellow Determinists, and Ran Doc Min.
He’s unmistakable, even from this distance. His height. His cape. He looks up at Moon Dancer as we soar by. Seems, for a fraction of a second, to meet my eye through the gunner’s window. His gaze sharpens. His face is a wall of fury.
I look down on the group as they vanish into an escape pod and blast into hyperspeed, zipping off to safety.
“Twenty-three seconds.” Vera sounds breathless over the headset. She’s dodging the Buzzards just like Lament, but in her unarmed Sky Runner, she has no way to fight back. “I don’t see an opening to get you in here, but maybe…”
“There isn’t going to be an opening.” Lament is back to mashing Moon Dancer’s hyperspeed button. There’s a sheen of sweat across his brow. His nostrils flare as he says, “Vera, listen to me. You need to leave now, before this thing blows.”
“I already told you—”
“You have Avi with you. She is achild.”
It happens in slow motion. I spot Vera one last time through the Sky Runner’s window as she soars past us, looking determined and heartbroken and terrified. She’s got her lips pulled between her teeth. She speaks into her headset, a single, broken word: “Lament.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. I release my controls and turn around in my seat. He looks at me, and I see him as I never have before: with all his walls completely down. “I’m sorry.”
