Heaven's Queen (46 page)

“Love you,” he said, his hand shooting up for what I thought would be our final touch. But instead of falling gently on my cheek, his clawed hand curled into a fist as he brought it down on the red button on the ship’s hull.

The bomber’s emergency blast door slammed down, blocking the room and nearly taking off my hand in the process. I didn’t care. I was already beating on the wall of metal, screaming, “
Rupert!
”

My answer was the muffled blast of a disrupter shot outside, followed by a sliding, hollow thud I knew I’d hear every moment for the rest of my life. The sound cut me off like a switch. I sat there dumbstruck, my hands pressed against the metal door that was quickly becoming too hot to touch. But even when my hands started to burn from the shot’s dissipating heat, I didn’t move.

Behind me, I could hear the sound of someone throwing switches, and then the bomber’s engine roared to life. In my peripheral vision, I saw Maat’s glowing projection standing over the flight console as the dusty touch screens worked themselves, and then the whole ship started to shake as the hyperdrive coil spun to life.

Outside, something slammed into the emergency door. Caldswell, I thought numbly. Trying to get in.

I knew I should do something about that, but I couldn’t move. For the first time in my life, I was shocked completely still, my mind spinning like a wheel cut loose even as the jump flash washed over the ship, pulling us out of reality. Pulling me away from the world where Rupert no longer was.

And with that, something inside me broke.

I crumpled, collapsing on the floor with a sob so sharp it ached. I didn’t care that Maat was watching, didn’t care that I was weak. I curled up on the bomber’s dusty metal floor and bawled, crying in great heaves until I could barely breathe. But even my lack of air seemed trivial next to the fact that Rupert would never smile at me again, never kiss me again. He was dead, and I’d never even told him I loved him.

That sent me to pieces all over again. Why the hell hadn’t I told him I loved him? How could I have been so stupid? The answer came to me as soon as I asked the question, and the truth was scalding. Even though I’d admitted it to myself, I’d never told him I loved him because that would have given him power over me. So long as he was the only one who’d admitted his feelings, I was safe, in command, my pride protected.

I choked on a sob. What a joke. What a stupid, prideful, childish way to think, and now I’d never get to set it right. Rupert was gone, and even if I said I loved him a thousand times, he’d never hear it.

I slammed my burned fists against the door one last time and rolled onto my side, crying in great heaves until the strain on my abs from the gasps began to make me nauseous. As I tried to get back some control before I made myself sick, it occurred to me that this was exactly why I’d never let anyone in, but I couldn’t even work up the strength to be angry. Grief had filled me to bursting, and there was simply no room for anything else.

I couldn’t say how long I cried like that, curled over in my own blood on the dusty, rusted floor. It could have been minutes or hours. It felt like forever, but when I’d finally managed to cry enough out that a bit of the world could creep back in, the first sensation I registered was a hand stroking my back.

I looked up with a hiccuping breath to see Maat kneeling beside me. The real Maat, not the physical shell we’d stolen. That was still lying motionless on the floor beside me, tiny and pathetic and broken. By contrast, the glowing, semitransparent girl petting my back looked almost normal, her brown eyes brimming with tears as she stared down at me.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Her words triggered an anger so sharp and deep I barely recognized it. “Why are you sorry?” I snarled, pulling away. “You hated him.”

“I did,” Maat admitted. “But you loved him, and you saved me, so for your sake, I’m sorry.”

Her voice was worlds calmer than mine. Calmer than I’d ever heard it, actually. Now that my brain was capable of thinking such things again, I realized she sounded almost sane.

“What happened?” I whispered, pushing myself up. I wasn’t done crying yet. I wasn’t sure if I ever would be, actually, but I never could stand to be in a prone position when other people were over me.

Maat courteously waited until I was sitting with my injured leg propped in front of me before she answered. “The voices are gone.”

“Does that mean you’re sane?” I asked.

She tilted her head and smiled at me. Not a mad smile either, a relieved one, like someone experiencing freedom from pain after years of suffering. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I’m alone in my head for the first time since I can remember. That has to count for something.”

Her answer irritated me. “Where did you go?” I demanded. If she’d been with us the whole time instead of disappearing after the queen ran, Rupert might still be alive. I wasn’t sure how she could have changed things, but I jumped on the possibility with a viciousness that shocked me. I was desperate for someone to blame, someone to hate, and Maat was convenient. But as much as I wanted to make her the outlet of all my loss and rage, I couldn’t, because as soon as I spoke, she started to cry.

“I went to Brenton,” she admitted. “I wanted to help him, but he was already dead. He died standing up, holding the button. Died for me.”

She started crying in earnest after that. Not sure what else to do, I put my hand awkwardly over hers and waited. “I think I loved him once,” she said at last, her voice thick even though she had no body, no throat to contract. “There were so many voices, so many memories, I could never tell which were actually mine and which were stolen. I could never be sure of anything except how I hated them.” She covered her face. “I hated so much.”

“It’s okay,” I said softly, patting her arm. “It’s over now.”

Until the words left my mouth, I hadn’t actually thought about what our situation actually meant. While I’d been falling to pieces over Rupert, Maat had jumped us. We were now in hyperspace, which meant we’d done it. We’d won. I tried to conjure up some pride at that. Happiness, accomplishment, something, but all I felt was tired and lacking, like I’d left something vital behind when we’d jumped, and I was never getting it back.

Despite everything that had happened, though, some things never changed. I’d always used work as a form of comfort and coping, and now that Maat had reminded me of the job left unfinished, my reeling mind grabbed on to it as hard as it had latched on to my vicious anger earlier.

Moving slowly so as not to jostle my throbbing leg, I reached over and grabbed Maat’s body, pulling it into my lap. Maat and I must have been more alike than I’d given her credit for, because she also stopped crying when she saw what I was doing. Her face grew even more determined when I pressed my fingers down against the skin of her cheek where the scales didn’t block me.

“You know,” I said quietly, “you don’t have to die. You seem a lot better out here, and you’re free now. You could take this ship and run, go somewhere and live the life they took from you.”

Maat shook her head. “If I don’t take the virus out of you, you’ll die.”

I sighed and leaned back, wincing when it triggered the throbbing ache in my leg and shoulder, though those were nothing compared to the much greater hurt in my chest. “I’m kind of ready to get off the ride.”

I was, too. I had no illusions about what was waiting for me when this jump ended. If he lived through the phantom’s attack, Caldswell would have me declared enemy number one, Maat’s murderer. He’d probably have a firing squad waiting the second I popped back into the universe. Paradox thought I was dead, so there’d be no running home, and this was assuming there’d still be a Paradox to run home to.

I could see the hyperdrive screen from where we were sitting in the back. Maat hadn’t entered a destination; she’d just hit the button, jumping us blind from a dusty old bay. With so much interference, no gate, and no destination, we were cut free of time completely, and who knew when we’d slip back in. Millions of years could be passing and we wouldn’t even know. We’d be lucky if humanity still existed. But even if we popped back in a minute after we’d left, Rupert wouldn’t be there, and I saw no reason to go back and get executed if I couldn’t even give him a good-bye kiss.

“I can’t tell you what to do with your life from here,” Maat said, reaching down to stroke her own sleeping face. “But I’m not leaving this jump alive.”

I opened my mouth, but Maat cut me off. “I’m tired,” she said. “Every time I made a daughter, I ate her life. Even if the girl didn’t survive the process, I drank her memories. Through them, I’ve seen my parents murdered in front of me hundreds of times, but I can’t remember anymore which of those faces were my real parents. And even after they became my daughters, I was still in them. I felt everything that happened to them, every minute of every day of every year.”

Her eyes drifted shut. “All their humiliations,” she whispered. “I was there. And at the end…” She took a shuddering breath. “I can’t even count how many times I’ve died, but I never got to rest. It was always another life, another’s suffering to eat.”

She raised her head sharply, staring at me until I flinched. “It doesn’t matter that I’m free of their voices here,” she said. “I can never get rid of the memories. Even if you could get my body to function normally again without the machines, the second we go back into reality, all the voices will come back and I’ll go mad again.”

Her lips curled into a snarl. “You can’t make me go through that again. I’ll take the virus from you by force if I have to, but after that I’m leaving, and if you try to stop me, I’ll kill you, too.”

I smiled at her threat. “Then do it, Maat.”

“Enna,” she said, her face lighting up, like she’d just remembered. “That’s my name.” Her smile got wider. “My real name.”

“Enna,” I repeated, holding out my hand.

She took it, grabbing the hand of her poor abused body at the same time. When she motioned, I reached down and took her body’s other hand so that the three of us were a triangle. Then, when we were ready, Maat closed her eyes, and a hand grabbed hold of my spine.

Since the virus entered my life, I’d discovered a lot more than I ever wanted to know about plasmex. I’d been ripped out of my body and thrown into terrifying situations that would probably have broken a more sensitive person. But I’ve always been pigheaded, and I’d muddled through every time. I fully expected to get through this the same way, so even though the ghostly feeling of fingers touching my vertebrae was every bit as unnerving as I remembered, I didn’t worry about it too much until Maat’s hand slid up my neck to grab my brain.

That was exactly what it felt like, too. Like she’d run her hand up my spinal column and was now squeezing my gray matter like it was clay. The only things that kept me from reaching up to yank her arm out of my head were the fact that I knew it wasn’t real and the part where I couldn’t move.

Maat’s touch had paralyzed me. I could feel my body, but I couldn’t so much as twitch my fingers or shut my eyes so long as she was groping around inside my skull. After the lelgis and the oneness, I’d thought the process would be more elegant, but it was almost comically macabre. Across from me, Maat was sitting with her eyes squeezed shut, the tip of her tongue sticking out like she was thinking very hard. But though it felt weird and extremely unpleasant, Maat’s digging wasn’t painful. I was starting to wonder how long this was going to take when Maat’s fumbling hit something I never knew was there, and my mind exploded like a grenade.

But as I was bursting open, Maat was pouring in. Even though she’d told me about the chaos not minutes before, nothing could have prepared me for the onslaught of foreign memories, feelings, pains, entire lives shoved into me like so much flotsam. It was like when Ren had returned my memories multiplied by several powers of ten, only this time there was no Rupert to put things back in order. I didn’t even know if this mess
could
be put in order. I’d decided to focus on just trying to get through alive when the black stain blossomed on my fingers.

Pain came right behind. Before, the stain had felt like the tingling after your limb falls asleep. Now, it was like an entire bed of nails was being shoved under my skin, and it was
everywhere
.

The virus spread like wildfire, consuming my entire body in seconds. The pain alone was enough to shock the air out of my lungs. If I could have moved, I would have been thrashing and howling, but I couldn’t. All I could do was hold on, wait it out, and hope there was some sanity left at the end.

I was still holding when Maat’s grip tightened, and then, without warning, she began to
pull
. And as she pulled, the body between us began to convulse.

From the moment we’d pulled her out of the machine, Maat’s sad, scale-covered body hadn’t done more than twitch. Now, her blind eyes shot open and her clawed hands reached up to claw at her face like she wanted to tear it off. It was like when I’d killed Brenton’s girl back on the
Fool
, only so much worse, because this time I wasn’t just watching. With Maat’s hand pulling in my head, I was plugged into her directly, and I felt her death like it was my own.

But even as I lived her agonizing pain as the virus dissolved her body, I could feel it leaving mine. As the blackness devoured Maat’s hands, mine became clean. As the stain spread up her arms and over her chest, my own skin cleared, and this time, I knew it was forever.

Somewhere in the maelstrom of pain and memories that was raging in my head, I could actually feel the enormous weight of Maat’s plasmex cradling my own tiny spark like a giant holding a grain of sand. I’d been told plenty of times by plenty of people who should know that my plasmex was small, but actually feeling the proof was something else entirely. I felt like a leaf adrift in the ocean of Maat’s power, but even so, she didn’t lose me. Her hand stayed lodged in my mind, patiently teasing out the sickness. And then, when every speck of black had been pulled away, Maat’s presence vanished.