“Why’s Graham here?” Clarke asks.
“Julian sent me with them,” Graham says, looking confused. “They didn’t even let me finish watching the video. Holyshit, Clarke, are you okay?”
Amira talks over him. “We found the FIC reviewer. Well, Maki did, but—”
“I know someone who can reverse-search Link IDs,” Maki explains, like that isn’t a crime in most planetary jurisdictions. “We got in touch with the reviewer, told them what was happening, said we’d vouch for them helping if they told us who accessed your ship’s systems during the blind period.”
An FIC official sprints past, demanding to know where Yves is. Clarke points to the stairs. They keep running, others following close behind. “It was Val, wasn’t it?”
“Wait,what?” Graham exclaims. “What are we talking about? What did Val do?”
Amira has no time for Graham to play catch-up. She talks over him again, focused only on Clarke. “You already knew?”
Engel said something to Clarke once, during press. He said that there wasn’t a line Val wouldn’t cross to beat Atreus Skordi.
“I…suspected, maybe?” Clarke says, rubbing her forehead as her glow starts to fade. She got what she wanted out of Yves and Anders, but there are still parts of Val’s involvement she doesn’t understand. It comes out in a single, rambling breath. “She’s been talking to me, and I thought she was my friend, and I didn’twantit to be her. But it had to be someone with the technical ability to mess with my ship, plus enough influence in the FIC to not get reported, and shetoldme she has friends on the board, andItoldherthat I thought Yves was messing with my assessments, so of course she knew exactly whatIknew about parc fermé and where I was likely to look because she’s the one who fucking explained it to me, and she’s a gods-damned engineer.”
“That cleared up absolutely nothing, thank you,” Graham says.
“Why are you even here?” Clarke snaps, drowning in all the emotions that’ve slammed into her in the last fifteen seconds. She feels bad about it immediately, because none of this is Graham’s fault, but he waves it off.
“Julian sent me,” he repeats.
“But why isn’tJulianhere?” Clarke asks, hearing the whine in her voice and hating it.
“We weren’t sure who to go to, when the reviewer told us it was Val,” Maki says. “You and Sara were busy, and we didn’t know who to trust, but—”
“We went to Thierry, who knew literally nothing about anyof this,” Amira takes over. “You havereallygot to work on your communication issues, Clarke. Thierry sent us to Julian. And Julian—”
If you come for someone Julian loves, he’s going to do his level best to make you regret it.
“Julian went after Val,” Clarke realizes, stomach suddenly home to a dozen tiny creatures with claws and teeth. “Where? Where’d they go?”
Amira shakes her head. “We got to Julian barely a minute before Sara started the video. He pulled Val out of the room right when things were getting crazy. We didn’t see where they went.”
Clarke’s audio loop dings with an incoming call. Clarke lifts her cuff to check, heart flipping at the name she sees.
“Julian,” Clarke says when the call connects. “Where are you? What—”
“—incentive, I wouldn’t have had to do it,” comes Val’s voice, a little distant.
“You can’t use other people’s lives as incentive.” Julian sounds as angry as she’s ever heard him. Clarke twists her fingers to bring Sara’s cameras in close and transfers the audio to speaker so the others can listen.
“It’s what you respond to,” Val says. “You got to Formula Zero and choked. All that potential, all that promise, and you were barely in the points your first season. I was going to fire you, that’s how disappointing you were. But then your friend died, and all of a sudden you were flying the way you’remeantto fly. And I couldn’t fire you without looking like a monster, so I kept you around, and you raced the start of the second season like you were born for it.”
“You’re attributing my sophomore year success to Connor’s death.”
“There’s no shame in it. Everyone’s motivation comes from somewhere. You fly better when you’re flying for someone else, not yourself. But then you stopped performing as well, so I had to intervene.”
“Shit,” Graham exhales, eyes wide, and Clarke wholeheartedly agrees. That’s when Val started manipulating Delphine. The tail end of Julian’s second season, a year after Connor’s death.
“How inconvenient of me to work through my mourning so quickly,” Julian says.
“I’m glad we agree,” Val says, amused, and then, “Careful there, Julian. Wouldn’t want you to fall.”
Clarke’s heart stops.
“If you think I’m going to let you walk me off this edge, you’ve got another thing coming,” Julian says.
