Equinox (33 page)

“Is this the part where you tell me you’re thinking of revisiting that deal?”

“How–”

“Because I know you, Black.” He shook his head at her surprise. “You can’t let things go, not where Helios and Pip are concerned.”

Rosie swallowed. “It’s not as simple as you think.”

“Nothing is.” He fingered a few strings. “So what? You’re just going to track her down and say, ‘Hey, sign me up.’ You really think it’s that easy?”

“No, but I still think it’s our best chance to bring down Helios. And I still have the best bargaining chip: the implant. I’m sure I’m the only one with plans for the gate now. And the Pantheon list.”

His mouth twisted at that last comment and he stared down at the guitar. “Yeah, the list with my dear dad’s name on it. Jebediah Curtis, traitor to all that’s good.” He paused. “Rosie, I get it, I know why you want to revisit that deal. I know who you’re doing it for, but–”

“It’s not just for Pip,” Rosie said swiftly.

He narrowed his gaze at her. ‘What do you mean?”

Her chest tightened. “I … It’s for me. The implant’s not working properly.”

“Yeah, we know that,” he said slowly.

“No. When Cassie looked at it with the machine, she found out it was made by Helios. Special tech of some kind, and it’s breaking up. I could go blind or–” She took in a shaky breath. “It could kill me.”

“And let me guess,” Dalton said softly. “Only Helios has the tech to get it out.”

She nodded.

“Are you going to tell Pip?” he asked.

“I can’t.” Rosie pressed her hands together in her lap.

“You mean you’re not going to tell him any of it? Not about trying to remake the deal or about the implant?”

“If I do, he’ll try to stop me.”

“Do you blame him? What makes you think I won’t?”

“Because you’re my friend.” She gave him a desperate, pleading look.

He let out a humourless laugh. “Friend, sure.”

“I’m not even sure I’m going to do it yet,” she said.

“Yes you are.”

She ignored his bitter tone. “If I do, I need you to promise you won’t tell Pip about the implant. Just let him know I’m doing it because it’s the best way to stop Helios for good. And make sure he goes north. Don’t let him hang around trying to rescue me.”

“Sure, anything else?” Dalton’s eyes glittered. “Any other orders before you march yourself off to the firing squad?”

“It’s not like that,” she said.

“How about you promise me something too?”

“What?” Rosie wondered where this was going.

“Promise that if things go bad you’ll find a way to get a message to me and let me help, because maybe I can. Despite what you want to believe, I’m in this as much as you. And I’d really rather you didn’t end up dead.”

Rosie stared at him for a moment. “I promise,” she said. He watched her like he wasn’t sure she was genuine, so she offered her hand across the table. “I promise.”

“Good choice.” He shook her hand, but there was a bleakness in his eyes that worried her.

“You’re not going to confront your dad about being part of the Pantheon, are you?”

His mouth twisted as he said, “I haven’t decided.”

“He might not be as bad as you think,” Rosie said. “I’ll try to find out. Maybe he’s part of the rebellion.”

“I doubt it.” He began playing the guitar again. “He’s a son of a bitch anyway.”

Rosie sighed. “Dalton–”

“You should go find Pip,” he said. “He’ll be waiting for you. He knew you were coming. There’re UV parasols in the gym.”

Rosie hesitated. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m a big boy, I’ll get over it. Go find Pip.” When she still didn’t move, he shook his head and half-smiled, but it wasn’t a happy one. “Make your choice, Pilot Girl: stay here and console me or go.”

She hated seeing him like this. She turned and left, swiping her hand to drop the generated wall of glass, and went out to the deck.

It was bone-drying hot outside, and Rosie fetched a parasol from the gym before she followed the short path to the beach. The swell was low and the waves minimal, just a gentle wash and fall as if it was too hot even for the ocean to be bothered moving. She spotted Pip’s dark silhouette at the water’s edge.

He was not long out of the water, and drops still clung to his bare muscled torso and sparkled in his dark hair. He was wearing nothing but a pair of black swim shorts and Rosie tried not to stare. He watched her approach, hands on his hips. His eyes seemed bluer than the sea today, emphasised by the water and the bare darkness of his skin.

“Hey,” he said as she stopped by him. “Nice umbrella. Very … pink.” His glance was guarded.

“It’s a parasol.” Rosie held onto it, nervous and hot. “Hold it a minute.” She thrust it at him then sat on the sand. She pulled off her boots and rolled up the bottom of her pants.

“Why don’t you go for a swim?” he said.

“I didn’t bring bathers.” She took the parasol back.

“I have no objections to nudity.” He tried to smile but it barely curved his lips. He was trying too hard.

Rosie walked into the water, watching it flow over her toes. He stood next to her and she looked at his bare feet near hers. One of the toenails was missing on his left foot.

Everything she’d just said to Dalton kept replaying in her mind. The things she couldn’t tell Pip. She took in a quick shaking breath. “We heard from Kev.”

She told him what the message had said, how everything had played out. He didn’t say anything or even react much to it and she was left watching him, waiting while he stared at the horizon, squinting against the glare.

“So what do you think? What are you going to do?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going back to Gondwana?”

He didn’t answer right away.

“Pip?” She tried to figure out what he was thinking.

“Is that what you want – you want me to leave?” His voice was tight, quiet and something flinched painfully inside her.

“No, but it’s dangerous for you here.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Are we really going to pretend you didn’t try to make a deal with Sulawayo? I had to force you to leave.”

She swallowed. “It was the only thing I could think of to get you out.”

“Don’t!” he said with unexpected force and took a step back from her. “Don’t say that you did it for me, Rosie.” She stared at him, stunned.

He pushed his fingers through his hair and pressed his hands to his forehead, staring down at the water. All the muscles in his torso tensed like he was trying hard to hold something in. “Don’t you know how much you scared me?” he said in a rough voice. He lifted his head to look at her. “When they took me, I thought you were dead. I thought all of you were dead. She didn’t tell me you weren’t. And then there you were, alive, and it was like someone turned the sun on again.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Then she said you’d made a deal,” he continued hoarsely. “I couldn’t believe it, after everything I told you about them.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He shook his head, looking away over the ocean. “That deal, those plans for me you came up with – to use Helios tech to find a cure. It was exactly what they did to me, making decisions about what I should do without giving me a say.”

He was right. And she hated herself for doing that to him. But it might have kept him safe, safer than he was now.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, but he gave a short shake of his head, like he was shaking off her words.

“I’m just glad we got out of there. I hope Sulawayo doesn’t come after you now. Or the rest of Helios.”

Watching him, Rosie felt like part of her was breaking open. She’d caused him so much pain. And there would be more, because she was hoping that Sulawayo
would
come after her, and that she’d be able to remake that deal. But she couldn’t tell him that. Tears started to work their way from her eyes. She touched him hesitantly on the arm. He looked down at her for a moment, then put his hands lightly on her hips. With a sigh, he leaned towards her.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” he whispered. “I was so scared they’d take you.”

She put her hands on his chest. “I couldn’t leave you there.”

He drew back. “At least it’s over now. We’ll try to find Riley, bring them down some other way.”

Rosie closed her eyes. She couldn’t speak because she was afraid if she did, she’d tell him everything. She felt Pip’s hands on either side of her face and opened her eyes to his bright blue gaze. The unguarded emotion she saw made her tremble.

“Pip–”

He cut off her words with a light kiss, barely a brush of his lips over hers. When he pulled back, even though they were still so close it felt as if there was a gulf opening between them that she didn’t know how to cross.

She was seized by a terrible fear that if she joined Helios she might not see him again. He seemed to sense something because a sad, worried look crossed his face.

“What is it?”

She didn’t know how to answer him, so instead she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him, harder this time, desperately. For a moment he resisted, then he groaned softly and pulled her close, kissing her back. He tasted like salt water and sweat, like home. She wrapped her arms around him, not caring he was wet, just wanting him closer, wanting to shut out the world until it was only Pip and his breath, his skin. She ran her fingers through his salt-roughened hair, over the hard curve of his back. She didn’t know how long they kissed, but the sudden sharp cawing of a seagull made them both start. They pulled apart, breathless.

Pip smiled gently and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “We should get back.”

Rosie felt unsteady, like she might disappear. A light wind had sprung up and she looked around for the parasol. It was bobbing upside down in the wash. Pip retrieved it and brought it back to her, trying to flick the water off.

“Here.” He held it over her head and put an arm around her, pulling her in beside him under its shade.

Rosie picked up her shoes, tying the laces together so she could carry them in one hand, and they began walking back up the beach. She searched for something to say, some safe ground.

“You know what’s weird?” she said. “I don’t even know your last name.”

He looked down at her sideways. “I never told you?”

She shook her head.

He almost smiled. “It’s Ngaru.”

“Ngaru.” Rosie couldn’t pronounce it the same way he did.

“Yeah, I know, it’s different. It an old name from wherever my ancestors came from. My dad always said it meant hero, or something like that.”

Rosie leaned her head on his shoulder. It suited him, that name. Ngaru. Hero. She turned her face and closed her eyes, letting him lead her along and pressing her lips lightly against his skin. She tried hard to memorise this moment, this feeling of being here with Pip, to tattoo it somehow on her heart, because one day soon it might be all she had of him. One day soon she was going to have to finish what she’d started. Deep down was a terrible fear that after that she might never have a moment like this again.

The afternoon sunlight had a brittle harshness that suited Rosie’s mood as she stepped from the shuttle station and stared up at the massive building across from her.

Before she’d left, she’d done what she could to ease Aunt Essie’s panic at finding her gone. She’d sent a message to Dalton, timed for him to receive it two hours from now, asking him to let Essie know what she was doing, asking him to make good on his promise.

Essie would likely try to follow her, stop her, but it would be too late by then. And she knew she could count on Dalton to keep his word. He’d even keep Pip in hand if he had to.

Pip
.

An ache filled her chest as if she felt another invisible scar forming on her heart. She pushed thoughts of him deep down, locked them away. Thoughts like that wouldn’t help her now.

Shouldering the pack filled with her clothes, she walked across Aurora Plaza and through the doors of Senate Prime.

Inside it was the same as before. AI ports, people in suits, hard-eyed guards, the cool, temperature-controlled air. Everything so ordered, so … Senate. How many of them knew the kind of people they really harboured here?

“Can I help you?” the attendant on the front desk asked. Holo patches glittered on both his temples.

Rosie swallowed hard, trying to control the rapid beat of her heart. “I have an appointment with Agent Sulawayo.”

Lara Morgan grew up in the hills outside of Perth, Western Australia but has spent the years since then roaming the world and investigating other hills. She has worked in the arts, at a newspaper and, once, a car wash, but all pale in comparison to being a writer which allows her to work in her pyjamas. She is also the author of a fantasy trilogy called The Twins of Saranthium. The Rosie Black Chronicles is her first series for young adults. She now lives in Geraldton, Western Australia – most of the time. You can visit her online at: www.lara-morgan.com.

The second book in a series can be the most difficult, because it can sometimes become the stagnant dip in what should be an arc toward the excitement of the third. That this book hasn’t suffered that dip is due to the patient, considered cajoling of the recalcitrant author by these wonderful people.