The dining level of the Absence was all glass on the outside, a sixty-five-piece window wall that wrapped around the ship like a waist belt. The only thing that kept passengers from having a full 360-degree view was the circle of conveniences in the middle of the deck—two stairwells, three elevators, four restrooms, and a lumivision lounge.
Somewhere in that cluster was the lift to the kitchen, but Amanda had no idea where. All she could do was lead Zack and Peter on a clockwise path along the curved inner wall. Had she gone the other way, she would have seen Melissa’s Griffin through the far window. Instead, she backtracked through the dining partitions, to the awful place where Bug Sunder had shot her. His body remained spread-eagled on the floor, next to a smiley face that had been painted in his blood.
Peter grimaced at Semerjean’s artwork. “That’s just depraved.”
Zack nodded in dark agreement. “You should see what he did to Mink.”
“For a group of evolved beings, they’re pretty damn savage.”
Amanda frowned at Peter. “I could say the same about your people.”
“I told you—”
“‘They’re not all like Ivy and Rebel,’” Amanda said. “I know. But your clan still supports them. They’re cheering them on from the sidelines, rooting for them to kill us.”
Peter slung Mercy off his shoulder and carried her in his arms. “They’re just scared.”
“And ignorant,” Zack added.
“That can be fixed.”
“You still think you can change their minds.”
“We just have to change Rebel and Ivy’s,” Peter said. “The rest will follow.”
While Zack and Amanda traded a cynical look, Peter noticed the waitstaff elevator nestled snugly between stairwells. “There it is.”
Amanda pressed the call button, then waited restlessly by the door. She felt ridiculously spry for someone who’d just been shot in the back with a 12-gauge. God only knew what insane nanowizardry that Pelletier had put into her body. What if the disc on her spine did more than heal her? What if it gave Esis direct control over her mind, her body, her tempis?
Zack peeked around the stairwell and saw the bobbing black aerovan in the distance. “Uh . . .”
“What?”
“There’s someone outside.”
“Outside.”
“I’m not kidding. Come look. It’s right—”
A gunshot echoed through the dining room. Zack’s throat opened in a gush of blood. He clutched his neck with both hands, gurgling.
Amanda screamed as he toppled to the floor. “Zack!”
Rebel hid behind a partition, his face drenched in sweat. He’d been stalking Zack and the others since they first left the restroom, waiting for the right moment to strike. He knew he had one free shot before he was attacked.
So who do I hit? Rebel had asked the future, and the future said, “Trillinger.” His girlfriend would drop to the ground in a hysterical effort to save him, leaving Pendergen as the only threat. But his portals were useless here, and he couldn’t reach his pistol with Mercy in his arms. Once Zack fell, Amanda and Peter would be easy kills.
Unfortunately for Rebel, human beings were less predictable than bullets. They moved in erratic paths, making split-second turns based on chemical impulses and irrational whims. Rebel looked around the partition only to see his expectations reversed. It was Peter who’d dropped to the ground to save Zack.
It was Amanda who went to war.
Hard, jagged tempis covered every inch of her skin, stretching her clothes in some places and tearing it in others. Her face became a rocky mask. White lips parted to reveal clenched teeth.
Rebel looked down at her huge spiked fists. Suddenly the future had a grim new tale to tell.
Shit . . .
He fired his .44 at Amanda’s left eye, only to watch her block it with her hand. He shot two more bullets at her chest. The impact alone should have brought her to her knees, but she just kept coming.
Amanda grabbed the partition and tossed it to the side. Her voice came out in a guttural rasp.
“That’s the last person you hurt.”
Rebel stumbled backward and raised his revolver again. Amanda knocked it out of his hand with enough force to break two of his fingers. He howled in pain, then reached for a grenade with his mechanical arm.
Amanda gripped him by the neck and raised him off his feet.
“That’s the last person you hurt,” she repeated.
She threw him against a window. His body slammed against the tempered glass before crumpling to the floor. He made a feeble attempt to crawl away, but Amanda grabbed him by the back of his vest.
“That is—”
She shoved Rebel into a partition. His front teeth cracked against the metal edge.
“—the last person—”
She drove him down onto the surface of a table, breaking his nose.
“—you hurt!”
At last, Amanda slammed his body down onto the floor, lacerating his liver and bruising his spleen.
Peter kneeled at Zack’s side and pressed the wound on his neck. Hot blood coursed through his fingers. Zack writhed beneath him, gasping in shock.
“Hold still,” Peter said. “For God’s sake.”
He knew his efforts were only buying Zack moments at best. He was losing too much blood, too fast. Someone had to clamp the artery.
“Amanda . . .”
Amanda watched Rebel with idle curiosity as he writhed across the tile. He struggled to reach his gun.
“I don’t think you heard me, Richard . . .”
She smashed a tempic hammer down on his fingers, reducing his prosthetic to scrap metal and wires. She clutched his head with a tempic prong and raised him back up to eye level.
“Let me say it again.”
Rebel coughed up blood, then bared his broken teeth at her. “I heard you the first time. And I know just who you sound like.”
“Shut up.”
“You are Esis through and through.”
Peter looked up, wide-eyed. “Amanda!”
“Stop!”
The second voice came from the top of the stairwell—a high, piercing shout that turned everyone’s heads.
Ivy stepped into the dining room, her arm wrapped tightly around Liam’s neck. Sweat dripped down the sides of her face as she pressed her pistol against the boy’s temple.
“No!” Peter yelled. “Don’t you dare!”
Liam looked up, his face streaked with tears. “Dad . . .”
“Shut up! All of you!” Ivy gritted her teeth at Amanda. “Get your goddamn hands off Richard. Now.”
Amanda hesitated, conflicted. She had Ivy’s husband at her mercy. A well-placed threat might get her to back down.
But one look into Ivy’s deep brown eyes was enough to see her mental state. She was unstable. Dangerous. Amanda wasn’t about to gamble with the life of Peter’s only child.
She retracted all her tempis, then let go of Rebel. He fell to the floor and shot a tortured look at Ivy. “I told you to leave . . .”
“We’re in this together, love. All the way to the bitter end.”
“Let my son go,” Peter pleaded. “He’s innocent. You know that.”
“I said shut up.” She scanned the area suspiciously. “And you! I know you’re here. Show yourself!”
Amanda and Peter took a puzzled glance around the dining room. Ivy was yelling at empty air.
“What, you killed my brother and now you don’t even have the guts to face me? Come on, Semerjean! Be a man!”
Peter shook his head at her. “He’s gone, Ivy.”
“One more word out of you, and I swear to God . . .”
Amanda stepped toward Zack for a clearer view. Peter was doing an awful job stemming his blood loss. He was too shaken, too distracted. “No!”
Ivy pulled Liam back and repositioned the gun. “Stay where you are!”
“Go to hell.”
“I mean it!”
“Ivy . . .” Rebel coughed more blood. “Let her help him. She’s not . . . she’s not going anywhere.”
Ivy saw his expression and knew exactly what he was planning. He had one last trick up his sleeve. But he needed time to prepare it. She had to keep their enemies distracted.
She flicked a dismissive hand at Amanda. “Fine. Go tend to your boyfriend.”
Amanda kneeled at Zack’s side and took over for Peter. Tiny threads of tempis snaked out of her fingertips, gripping Zack’s severed artery and clamping it shut. But she could see that he’d lost too much blood already. He was on the slow, greasy slide to oblivion, and even her tempis couldn’t save him.
She cradled him in her arms, her voice choked with tears. “Just hang on, Zack. Stay with me.”
Peter climbed to his feet and raised his bloody hands at Ivy. “Look, there’s been enough death today.”
“Oh, really? Who have you lost? Last I checked, the breachers were still alive.”
“Not all of them,” Peter reminded her.
“Right, yes, the Golds.” Ivy laughed. “Funny how the Pelletiers didn’t lift a finger to save them. But they didn’t like what we did that night. Oh boy, were they mad. You know how I know?”
Peter closed his eyes. “Ivy . . .”
“Shut up.” She turned to face Amanda. “He never told you what happened, did he? What your demon masters did.”
Amanda glared at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I was pregnant with twins,” Ivy said. “Two big, healthy boys. You should have seen the echosounds. They were gorgeous. They were perfect.”
Her eyes glistened with tears. Her gun quivered against Liam. “But then my due date came and I couldn’t stop bleeding. Something had gone wrong. Richard rushed me to the hospital but it was already too late. When they pulled my sons out of me . . .”
She let out a cracked, delirious laugh. “They were shiny all over, as if their bodies had been dipped in metallic paint. Can you picture it, Amanda? Can you guess the colors of my sons’ corpses?”
“Look—”
“Silver and gold!” Ivy cried. “Gold and silver! Do you get it now? It was a message from the Pelletiers. They killed my children and desecrated their bodies while they were still inside me.”
“We have nothing to do with them,” Peter said.
“Bullshit!” She gestured at Bug. “My brother’s dead! Semerjean ripped his throat out, all to save this woman.”
Amanda had to fight to keep her tempis from screaming out of her. “We never asked them to help us. We didn’t ask for any of this! We hate them as much as you do!”
“Well, they love you,” Ivy said. “They love you Silvers like their very own children. So you can see what a delicious opportunity this presents for me. I only wish I had some metallic paint for your corpse. That would really make it poetic.”
Peter caught a gleam in the corner of his eye. He turned and saw Rebel fumbling with something, a small, metallic device with a radio antenna.
A detonator.
“No!”
There were three rooms in the Absence that none of the Silvers got to see: a closet on the engine level, a pantry in the kitchen, and the lumivision lounge on the dining deck. Inside each one was a hundred-pound block of cyclotrimethylene putty, a powerful explosive more commonly known as Wild-9.
Rebel had installed enough of the stuff to vaporize the Absence. He’d been saving his present for the Pelletiers, but this seemed a good enough time to use it. If he was lucky, maybe Semerjean was still on the ship somewhere.
Panicked, Peter made a fevered dash toward Rebel. Ivy aimed her gun at him and fired. The bullet cut a path through his shoulder blade. His chest exploded in a fist-size spray of blood.
Liam’s eyes went wide. He broke away from Ivy. “Dad!”
The moment Ivy lost her hostage, Amanda attacked. A tendril of tempis crashed down on Ivy’s forearm, breaking its bones and throwing the gun out of her hand. It skidded across the tile and came to a stop between the unconscious bodies of Zack and Mercy.
Rebel gripped the detonator with his last three working fingers. He flipped the lid with his teeth, closed his teary eyes, then slammed the button against his chest.
And then . . . everything stopped.
Rebel was so wrapped up in his expectations that it took him three full seconds to realize that the Wild-9 hadn’t exploded. The ship was still in one piece, but something had changed. All the partitions had toppled to the floor. The floors and walls stopped vibrating.
The Absence had come to a complete and abrupt halt.
A hundred yards away, the struggling black Griffin shot several yards above the saucer. Theo looked at Melissa, frantic. “What are you doing?”
“It’s not us.” She slammed the air brake, then peered out her window. “It’s them. They stopped.”
“What?” Theo raised Melissa’s phone to his mouth. “Hannah, are you there?”
Hannah sat up in the kitchen and rubbed her throbbing skull. Everything had gone topsy-turvy. All the people in the room, all the Gothams’ fancy equipment, they’d all been thrown to the floor.
She saw her phone on the tile and picked it up. “Jesus. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Theo said. “I don’t like this.”
Heath peeked out of his window, then sucked a loud gasp. Melissa followed his gaze and saw exactly what he was looking at.
“Mother of God . . .”
A dark new shadow filled the dining room. Amanda and the Gothams turned their heads to the east. Two enormous faces peeked in through the nearest windows—a white-haired man with fierce blue eyes, a brown-haired woman with irises as black as tar.
Esis looked down at Amanda, her huge lips curled in a smile. “Hello, child.”