Ivy and I were alone. The entrance to the metal stairs to my right hung with signs showing it off-limits to any but crew.
You work for him, I manage. Terian.
She smiles. The smile is cryptic, but cold. No, she says, surprising me. I work for someone far older than he. Far more knowledgeable than he.
Galaith? I ask.
No, she says, her eyes still on mine. Not him, either.
Who then? I say.
She only smiles, but I feel somehow, that she would like to tell me.
By then, I decide I don’t care.
Clutching the handrail, I look down. The sheer, white hull stretches below to where a row of lifeboats hang over the water. Jumping is not an option.
A whisper-thin thread still holds me out of the Pyramid, but I feel Ivy chipping at it, trying to distract me from it, to convince me it lives somewhere else, inside the silver waves. A part of me has already started looking at the patterns, finding them fascinating again.
It is too late. Revik is gone. Just like mom. Just like dad.
Allie, a voice whispers, and it’s not Ivy’s. No.
It sounds so much like him it stops my heart. But it also snaps me out of that place of no hope. I haven’t used up all my options. I still have one left.
I force my way out of the Barrier...
...and pivoted my body in a fast, hard arc.
My hips snapped with my shoulder. Before I’d let out a breath, my fist hit Ivy in the sternum with a satisfying jar, exactly as Jon and then Eliah had taught me.
Ivy stumbled into the guardrail, nearly fell...and then recovered faster than I would have imagined possible.
Grabbing the top rail with both hands, she aimed a kick at my head.
I avoided it, barely, but it was misdirection; she caught me with a lower, sharper heel to the knee, knocking me into the guardrail by a circular vent. Pain bloomed sharply up from my knee up to my groin, making me gasp, but I didn’t let it drop me. I grabbed slats in the round opening of the vent, managed to regain my balance right before the Rook’s fist came down on the small of my back, half-crumpling me to the deck.
The second shock of pain brought a sharp, white moment of clarity.
I’d reconnected Revik to the Rooks.
I’d just fed him to them.
Pain rose in me, a darker grief that turned into rage.
A scream ripped out of my throat.
Ivy hissed at me like an animal as I turned, back-fisting her face. I broke something. Without stopping, I kicked down, aiming hard for her femur. A satisfying sound brought my other fist around, hitting the Sark in the temple, driving her to the deck.
A sharp stab of pain lit up around my face and neck.
Ivy was going after my light. I threw myself at her as she tried to crawl away, putting all my momentum and weight into a kick to the face.
The seer’s nose exploded in a spray of blood. I grabbed her hair as her light faltered, slamming the back of her skull into the guardrail. Her eyes rolled up and I grabbed hold of her long jacket. Regaining my balance against the railing, I hoisted her up to the top rail.
For an instant I felt the Sark’s light, beyond that of the Rooks.
Looking into the eyes of the girl who’d sent me a pulse of warmth that night in Seattle, I saw a flicker of fear, a deeper understanding.
A half-beat of hesitation made me pause.
Then Revik’s face swam before mine.
My heart clenched into a hard fist in my chest.
I threw Ivy over the railing, nearly going over with her.
She snatched at and grabbed my arm, screaming a terrible sound, like a giant bird. Silver light exploded around my head, and I felt those other beings, beyond the Pyramid itself, something larger, more frightening, like massive clouds of metallic light. I felt them screaming at me, fighting with me, trying to save Ivy from me by threatening me and slamming pain through my light, telling me I would be dead. Agony ripped through my mind as they beat against my aleimi, fighting for her...or maybe through her...
Panting, bleeding on her hands, I wedged my legs against the guardrail. I fought my way free of her attempts to save herself, disentangling her slippery fingers.
A half-second later, the hands were gone.
I watched her fall.
Ivy receded into darkness as the ship slid forward into night, but I saw her body hit the edge of a lifeboat on its way to the water. No screams echoed up as she broke the surface foam. Darkness swallowed the splash and I fell to a crouch by the guardrail, gasping.
The whisper and pound of the ship’s wake was deafening.
They’re coming for me.
I feel it now. I feel all of them.
They fight alone, held together by silver threads. They fight one another, even, but it doesn’t matter...it all serves their greater purpose.
A helicopter approaches, flying low over the water...
...I grasp for him, blind. I can’t see. Darkness spreads over the ship, breathes into my skin. I look up as the Pyramid descends, blotting out the sky. Wire-like strands snake out from all sides. I call for him...