‘Eleanor?’ he screamed down at her. ‘What the hell is going on? Is Cripps holding you prisoner?’
She looked up at him, lips set in a thin line. ‘None of this would have happened if you’d just listened to me and talked to Director Lethe, like I asked you to.’
‘Eleanor, you have to listen—’
‘No, Luc, you need to listen to me. I spoke to Lethe on your behalf and told him everything – about what really happened on Aeschere, about the lattice and Zelia de Almeida – all of it. I had to, don’t you see?’
‘I thought you understood,’ he said. ‘I trusted you more than anyone else. Or do you really believe what Cripps just said about me?’
She hesitated for a moment. ‘No, of course I don’t. But we need to find a way to fix you first. Then you can explain your side of things.’
Luc felt like she’d torn him open with claws of steel and left him to bleed to death. He stared down at her, suddenly lost for words.
Hearing a high-pitched beep to his right, he turned to see a Sandoz mechant accelerating towards him.
Instantly he ran, explosive rounds ripping chunks of wood and brick from the walls and shelves behind him, the mechant banging into walls as it came veering after him.
He was running blind now. Incredibly, Cripps still hadn’t worked out he was already long gone.
Turning a corner, he came face to face with yet another Sandoz warrior. The suited figure lunged towards and then
Luc stood where he was and made no effort to escape. There was no point in running any more.
‘Sir!’ the Sandoz yelled, staring around at Luc. ‘It’s a data-ghost!’
Luc ignored him, stepping over to the balustrade. Cripps came darting out of a doorway, pistol in hand, and stared up at him.
‘Very clever,’ said Cripps, his voice echoing as he re-holstered his weapon. ‘But wherever you’re hiding, you must know you’re only delaying the inevitable. You can’t escape through the Hall of Gates now.’
‘Why did you kill Maxwell?’ Luc demanded.
‘Because he’d become too dangerous for his own good,’ Cripps snapped.
Another Sandoz came running over to Cripps and whispered something in his ear. Cripps whipped around to glare at Luc, his face full of hatred.
‘Turn that goddamn flier back!’ Cripps screamed up at him.
‘And get my head blown off like Javier Maxwell did?’ Luc shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Sevgeny Vasili knew who was coming to kill him – and I’m pretty damn sure you’re the one who pulled the trigger.’
Luc dropped the connection before either Cripps or Eleanor could say anything else.
He found himself back in his own body, staring up at the curved hull of the flier’s cramped cockpit.
Eleanor’s betrayal had shaken him to the core. He felt more alone than he had ever felt since he’d lost everything back on Benares as a child. The nearest thing he had left to a friend or ally was Zelia de Almeida, and he still wasn’t sure if that was better than having her for an enemy.
<Zelia,> he sent, <if you’re out there, for God’s sake, answer.>
Still nothing. As he’d expected.
He had gained, at most, a few minutes head-start – and even then, he still didn’t have an answer to the question he’d asked Maxwell: where the hell could he even
He was alone, on a hostile world, with no way home. All he could really do until he figured something better out was find somewhere to hide where Cripps might never find him.
Switching to the flier’s external senses, he saw Vanaheim’s sun burst over its horizon, making the oceans below looks like pools of golden fire, and remembered what Maxwell had said: if his lattice could bypass the encryption on the books in his prison, what else could it achieve?
<Zelia!>
Still no answer.
He had the flier dip back down into the upper atmosphere, soon feeling it shudder around him as it bit into denser air. Before long a steady rumble sounded through the tiny vessel’s hull. He’d picked his next stop at random – an archipelago of islands dense with forest, just off the coast of a minor continent, black smoke trailing from one peak that was clearly volcanic.
Most importantly, the flier’s records indicated the archipelago was entirely uninhabited, and rarely visited. He had no idea whether Cripps or anyone else would be able to track him there, but he was all out of any better ideas.
The flier made landing in a clearing about forty minutes later, dirt and leaves tumbling down after it as it broke through the forest canopy. The soil beneath the canopy was filled with a half-light that filtered down from above.
Sweat prickled his skin the moment he exited the flier. Luc stumbled over to a boulder thick with moss and sat there for a few minutes, trying to will his heart to slow down and his hands to stop shaking. The air was thick with small, buzzing things, and all he could do was hope that none of de Almeida’s surveillance mechants were amongst them.
