“Listen carefully, Scarlett.”
“Zila, I’ve never flown anything without autopilot!” I cry. “And I don’t know what’s wrong with him, I don’t know med—”
“Scarlett! Listen to me. This is our last chance to get you home. You can do this. You must do this.”
I look to the boy on the deck beside me, struggling to breathe. All of our futures hanging in the balance. Every moment of my life has been leading to this. And I hear his voice in my mind, as clear as if spoken aloud.
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the person holding our whole squad together is you. We need you, Scar.”
And I close my eyes, and take myself by the mental lapels, and give myself a shake.
They need me.
He needs me.
“Okay, go.”
Finian—four minutes remaining
My head’s spinning and my body’s struggling, fighting to drag in a breath, but I’m drowning and there’s nothing to hold on to. I’m trying to climb onto a rock as the ocean pounds at me and grabs me with icy cold hands, every wave pulling me down, and down, and down.
And all I can think is that I can’t let go, I
can’t
let
go.
Not until I’m sure we’re out of the loop.
If I die now, will I start us over again?
I can’t take that risk.
I can’t die yet.
And I’m sinking my fingernails into that rock as the sea washes around me, the waves slamming down, squeezing my lungs, vision spinning.
And I’m so, so sorry that Scar will be alone, that she’ll be the only one left to face the Ra’haam. That the heart of Squad 312 will be the only part left, but maybe heart was all we ever had, maybe love was always the flame we used to hold back the dark.
My vision’s closing in.
I have to hold on.
Just until we get home.
Scarlett—three minutes remaining
“Zila!” I’m screaming, staring down helplessly at Fin as his back arches, his hands make claws. “Zila, he can’t breathe!”
Zila’s voice is calm in my ear. “You must prioritize, Scarlett. Are you still on course for the quantum sail?”
The shuttle is buffeted again, engines straining against the tempest outside. Even on the edge of the storm, the forces at play are crushing, colossal. I glance at the shuttle scopes, look out the viewshield to the massive silver rectangle rising in the dark ahead of us. “Yes! We’re headed right toward the sail! Range ten thousand kilometers!”
“Good. Does the shuttle have a medical kit?”
I lift my head, scan the tiny cabin desperately. I push to my feet, rip open the cabinets, dig through them as supplies cascade around me.
“I don’t see it!” I cry, thumping back to my knees beside him.
His eyes flutter closed.
I can hear the sirens wailing through her mic.
“WARNING: CONTAINMENT CASCADE IN EFFECT. CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT, T MINUS THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING. ALL HANDS PROCEED TO EVACUATION PODS IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IN THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING.”
“If there is no medical kit, then we will work with what we have,” Zila says simply. “Describe his symptoms.”
“H-his lips are swollen, his eyes …” I gasp, squeezing his hand. “He can’t breathe, he keeps scratching at his throat—”
“You are describing an anaphylactic reaction, Scarlett. Probably to the chemicals he inhaled. You must perform a tracheotomy.”
“A what?” I screech.
“His throat has swollen closed. We will make an incision below the swelling so he can breathe. You will need a knife.”
“Zila, I can’t—”
“Scarlett.” Her voice cuts me off. “We have no time. Finian cannot die before the pulse strikes, or else the loop will simply start again. He has a small screwdriver in the right arm of his exosuit.”
My hands are shaking, and he’s not moving anymore, his arm heavy as I lift it, twist it, find the screwdriver nested into its little groove.
This can’t be happening.
“Got it,” I pant, somehow doing this and refusing to believe I’m doing it all at the same time. “Got it, what next?”
“You will need a small, rigid tube, thinner than your little finger.”
“A tube?” I’m screaming, my breath coming too fast, and some people might get unnaturally calm in an emergency, but Scarlett Jones isn’t one of them. “Where in the Maker’s name am I supposed to get—”
“Look around you. There must be something.”
“There’s nothing! Zila, there’s nothing!”
The shuttle rocks around me again, the energies pulsing outside threatening to tear us apart. The utter blackness brightens to a deep somber mauve as a burst of dark energy crackles through the storm around us, and glancing at it through the viewshield, the scope of it, the power of it, I realize I’d be terrified for myself if I wasn’t already so terrified for Fin.
We’re still too far from the sail. He’s going to die before we reach it, he’s going to die right here in my arms.
We’ve come so far. Fought so hard. Lost so much.
A story hundreds of years in the making.
And this is how the final chapter gets written?
And then it comes to me. Like a flash of that awful energy. I shove my hand into the breast pocket on Finian’s suit, fumbling, desperate, and my fingers finally close around it.
The pen.
“Zila, the damn PEN!”
“Hmm.” I hear her say. “Interesting.”
“He bitched about this damn thing every chance he got,” I mutter as I frantically unscrew it, Fin lying motionless as I shout in his face. “Not such a crappy gift now, huh?”
His chest isn’t moving.
His eyes are swollen shut.
I let all the pen’s parts clatter to the floor of the shuttle until I’m holding just the casing. Stainless steel. Bright and heavy. The storm roils around us. Dark energy arcs across the black. “What next?”
“Run your fingertips down his throat,” she says, and she’s still so calm, and I’m clinging to her like a rock. “You will feel two bumps. Between them, make an incision, and insert the pen.”
I force my hand into stillness with pure willpower, fingertips trailing down his skin, once, twice, making sure I’ve got the spot. The storm shakes the shuttle in its rivets, and I tell myself to be still.
To be calm.
To breathe.
And then it’s just me, holding a screwdriver, and Finian’s throat, and oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Why couldn’t this have been anyone on the squad except me?
“You can do this, Scarlett,” Zila says quietly. “You can do anything.”
I take a breath. I mark the spot.
I can do this.
Zila—two minutes remaining
“He’s breathing! Zila, oh Maker, he’s—”
Scarlett’s words vanish into a sea of static as she and Finian near the storm and communications are cut.
I know those are the last words I will ever hear from them.
Nari and I are in our escape pod, watching through the porthole, our faces side by side. The dark of the void around us is lit with hundreds of tiny lights, red and green—other pods blasting from the ruins of the Glass Slipper Station. Beyond, we can see the storm, Scarlett and Finian’s little shuttle hurtling through the inky dark toward its rendezvous with the quantum sail.