Page 44
Author: Rachel Bach
Now that he’d told me, I could see it. If there was one thing Rupert had a surfeit of, it was responsibility. But there was still one thing I didn’t understand. That I’d never understood about Rupert from the moment I’d learned the truth of what the Eyes did. “I get why you wanted to stop the phantoms,” I said. “But how could you do that to those poor girls? How could you use and kill the daughters?”
“Because it was worth it,” he said. “Maat and her daughters are the only weapons we have against the phantoms, and phantoms destroy worlds. When you look at it that way, what is one girl’s life? What is one family’s pain weighed against the potential loss of billions?”
He said this quickly and calmly, like he was simply reciting facts, but I knew Rupert’s bluffs pretty well at this point. I could see the tightness in his jaw, hear the too-quick clip of his words. I knew the truth.
“You hate it,” I said.
Rupert’s eyes widened, and then he dropped his head. “Of course I hate it,” he whispered. “Do you have any idea what I’ve done?”
He stopped, running his hands over his face. Then, quickly, he looked up, meeting my eyes like a challenge. “I’ve killed twenty-two daughters over the course of my career. I’ve stolen girls from their homes and killed witnesses who were too compromised for a memory wipe. I’ve shot parents, grandparents, and children. I killed the man who’d been my partner for fifteen years when I caught him trying to run away with a daughter who’d begun to degrade. I shot him in the head while he was begging me to let him save her life, and then I shot the daughter as well. I didn’t even hesitate. ”
When he’d started, he’d clearly been trying to shock me, but as Rupert listed his crimes, his voice grew thinner and thinner. By the time he finished, he wasn’t even looking at me anymore. He was staring at his hands, which were fisted so tight I was amazed he hadn’t broken something.
“I know it was for the greater good,” he whispered. “That I did what had to be done. But when I look in the mirror, all I see is blood. I don’t think Tanya would recognize me if she saw me now, and even if she did, she wouldn’t call me brother. ”
He stopped there and took a long, shaky breath. His shoulders straightened as he pulled the air in, and I could almost see him pulling the calm back on as well, wrapping it around him like a protective mantle. When he looked at me again, his eyes were clear and still, like the last minute hadn’t happened.
“Someone has to pay the price, Devi,” he said solemnly. “The daughters don’t get a choice, but I did. I chose to become an Eye knowing full well what it entailed. ”
“Because you can’t change the past,” I said.
“Because I can’t let the past happen again,” Rupert corrected.
I looked down at the disrupter pistol in my lap, thinking of my own family, my parents and sister. They’d driven me crazy every day of my life before I left for the army, especially my mom, but the thought of them vanishing, of Paradox crumbling—I couldn’t even imagine it. With that in mind, I could see now why Rupert did what he did. But if the point of Rupert’s story was to make our current situation make sense, he’d failed, because I was now more confused than ever.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I’m the one who can end all of this. ”
“You could,” Rupert agreed.
“Then what are you doing?” I cried, frustrated. “I’m your solution. If this virus can actually kill all the phantoms, that means you’d never have to shoot anyone ever again, so why would you let me run away?”
Rupert dropped his eyes to his left wrist, the one with the tattoo across it dedicating his life to Tanya. “Because I’m done hurting you. ”
I stared at him, uncomprehending, and Rupert sighed. “I’ve lived my whole life looking back at the past,” he said softly. “After what happened on Svenya, I thought it didn’t matter if I lived or died, didn’t matter whom I killed. Even when I knew that what I was doing was unforgivably wrong, so long as I could look back and remember what was at stake, everything was justified. I could do anything, be as terrible as the Eyes needed me to be, and it wouldn’t matter. All the good things in my life were safely locked away in those bright years before I lost my home, and without them, I was empty. ”
A sad smile drifted over his lips. “I liked it,” he said. “Being empty, being cold. It made the hard things easier. But then, this year, everything changed. ”
“What happened?” I asked.
Rupert looked at me like I was crazy. “You did. ”
I jerked back. “Me? What do you mean me?”
Rupert smiled at me, and I nearly dropped his gun, because it was his real smile, the one I hadn’t seen since before that wild kiss in the rain on Seni Major. The one he showed only to me.
“You made quite an impression,” he admitted. “After you put Cotter in his place before we’d even left Paradox, I started watching you. I couldn’t help it. You were the craziest, bravest, loveliest thing I’d ever seen, and I knew at once that I should keep my distance. I even argued with Caldswell when he ordered me to flirt with you because I knew I wouldn’t be acting. ” His look grew sheepish. “I’d never argued with an officer before. ”
I couldn’t help chuckling at that. “Old man should have listened. ”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything if he had,” Rupert said. “I would have done it anyway. ”
He looked down again, and I swore a blush spread over his face. “I invented reasons to spend time with you. Before, cooking was just something I did. But when you watched me, when you told me you liked the food I made, I really enjoyed it. It made me happy. Before I met you, I couldn’t have said the last time I felt that way about anything. ”
He blew out a deep breath. “I was appalled by my selfishness. This life, my life was supposed to be for Tanya. A life of duty to honor what she’d sacrificed so I could live. Before I met you, that’s what I was: an Eye, a soldier. But when we were together, you were what I thought about, and even when you were gone, you stayed with me. ”
He paused, running his hands through his hair. “At first, I couldn’t understand why. You ruined my calm, disrupted me. You even made me lose my temper. ”
As though on cue, we both looked at the dent where his hand had landed earlier, and Rupert shook his head.
“I told myself I should hate you,” he said. “I tried to, actually, but I never could manage it. Even when I was furious at you, you delighted me. I knew I was being unforgivably reckless, that it would be better for everyone if I could just leave you alone, but I kept finding excuses to stay. I wanted to spend more time with you, not less. I wanted—”
He cut off suddenly, scowling like he was trying to find the right words, and even though I knew it was pathetic, I held my breath, waiting.
“You made me want a future,” he said at last. “For the first time since I’d lost my family, I started looking forward instead of back. Even after I took your memories and made you hate me, just knowing you were still there, still safe, it made me hopeful. I didn’t even realize how much until Caldswell put the gun in my hand and told me to shoot you. ”
I winced. Even though I’d been there myself, hearing him say it out loud was like a punch in the stomach. But Rupert wasn’t finished.
“I’ve always believed there was nothing I wouldn’t do to stop the phantoms,” he said. “For sixty-three years, that’s been my pride. The heart of my control. When you were on your knees in front of me, I knew it was the ultimate test of my resolve. But it wasn’t until I passed that I began to realize just how badly I’d failed. ”
Rupert looked at me for a moment, and then he slid off the bench, landing on his knees on the floor in front of me. I still had his disrupter pistol, but he seemed to have forgotten the gun entirely as he bowed down and pressed his lips against the back of my free hand.
“I failed,” he whispered into my skin.
“Failed you, failed the Eyes. I thought I could go back. I thought if I returned to being a good soldier, everything I’d done to you would be justified. A sacrifice to the greater good, just like all my other sins. But I was wrong. There was one thing I couldn’t do to stop the phantoms, one person I couldn’t sacrifice, and I didn’t even realize it until I’d already thrown her away. ”
With each word, his voice got hoarser, and when he finally looked up, there was no trace of his cold mask left. Only Rupert, staring at me like he was trying to make me believe him through sheer will.
“I can’t do it anymore, Devi,” he said. “The moment you jumped off that cliff to get away from me, I finally understood. I don’t care what that virus of yours can do, I don’t care if you’re the one who can save the universe, I can’t hurt you again. That’s why, when the order came down to bring you in, I prepared this ship so you could run instead. I know it’s too little, too late, but I wanted you to have the final choice. ” He bowed his head over my hand. “I wanted to do right by you this last time. ”
I didn’t like the way he said that. “And if I run, what will happen to you?”
Rupert shrugged. “I’m not sure. A court-martial, certainly, though whether or not they kill me after depends on my symbiont. They might decide I’m too expensive to shoot. ”
His calm tone was giving me the jeebies. No one should be that blasé about their own death. But when I opened my mouth to say so, Rupert cut me off with a sad smile.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’d rather die helping you today than live another seventy years knowing I let you down again. ”
He reached up as he spoke, taking my hand just like I’d taken his the night I’d found him drinking alone. “I’d like to look forward with you, even if it’s only for a little while,” he whispered. “But I won’t ever help them take your freedom away again. I’m sorry I did it the first time. I’m sorry for everything. ” He closed his eyes, his face stricken. “I am so, so sorry, Devi. ”
I’m not normally a fan of apologies. I’ve always believed that you should own your actions, good and bad, but this was different. Rupert wasn’t trying to get away with anything. I could hear it in his voice. He truly believed he’d done me wrong. I believed it, too, but I couldn’t work up the usual anger. It was impossible to be angry in the face of such sincerity, but I wasn’t sure what else to do.
Forgiving him felt like a cheat. I’d loved this man, and he’d betrayed me. He’d also saved my life. He’d fought me, but he’d never tried for a lethal blow. In the end, neither had I. Even when the cold rage had me by the throat, I hadn’t gone that far, which was a big deal for me. I’m not exactly known for my mercy or coolheadedness. Even now, after everything that had happened, I didn’t hate him. I couldn’t, because deep down, I’d never really stopped loving him.
That realization came as a shock, though it really shouldn’t have. Love was what had made his betrayal in the woods hurt so bad, and why I hadn’t been able to finish the job even in the cold rage. The more I thought about it, the more I suspected I’d already forgiven him, which was even greater proof of how soft love had made me than my inability to shoot him now. But no amount of softness or forgiveness changed the truth of our situation, or the fact that I could never trust Rupert again.
That said, though, I wasn’t cruel enough to leave him hanging. Especially not when he looked so damn miserable about it.
“Apology accepted,” I said, flipping his disrupter and offering him the grip.
That was clearly not the answer Rupert had been expecting. “But,” he said, “I shot you. ”