Last Chance to Save the World

Check out our episode here! (and an interview with the author here!)

Last Chance to Save the World by Beth Revis

Last Chance to Save the World picks up right where book two ends, Ada having drugged and kidnapped Rian, but like, not evilly. Rian is sending a secret message to his team with orders not to apprehend Ada until they have completed the edits to the nanobot code even though she literally kidnapped him which is a felony. He knows Ada will probably not fight, unless she's attacking him, and that she will probably try to run and will probably have a great chance of escape, but everyone has to let her update the code first before they move in. He returns to the ship from buying sweets and sending his message. How he doesn't realize Ada definitely knows what he's up to is questionable.

Ada flirts mercilessly with Rian, telling him to imagine all the sex they could have had, gravity-less even, while they were traveling to Earth for an entire week but that they can't have now that they're on the Moon about to end their trip. He seems distraught by this, but there's no time for that now. Being on the Moon for so long, waiting for clearance to be arranged for them to land Glory on Malta, where Strom Fetor’s Fetortech is stationed, is really going to make things difficult for Ada, but she has her plan worked out, ish. 

Ada must use Rian’s contacts and Rian himself to get into Fetortech and be his maybe uninvited guest to be at the presentation and nanobot release, but they've got to be there early enough so as not to be suspicious, but also long enough for her to fix the coding so the nanobots won't immediately break, basically putting the state of the world into Fetor's trillionaire hands. She also had to do something else that Rian doesn't know about, but they should have time.

After burning through the atmosphere, freaking Rian out completely what with the alarms going off and Glory literally being on fire, they arrive on Earth, though they are still waiting for permission to land. Rian knows that Ada does not have permission as he was the one who set up all the restrictions for landing on Malta for the presentation, but Ada gets residency landing approval and they continue on. Rian knows Ada doesn't own or rent property in Malta, but of course she had a plan. She always does. Rian has a backup plan, too.

When they arrive, Ada is greeted at the docks by an old friend, Bruna, who says that Ada has to go see her mother, Jane. Rian is freaking out about all this, and so is Ada. Ada makes sure Rian knows that her mother Jane is Jane Lamarr, not code word for the resistance Jane Irwin. It's a regulation to check in with the place of residency listed in your landing documentation, thanks government, so they gather their supplies, Rian's light on account of the kidnapping, and prepare for the radiation and pollution they will encounter along the way to Ada’s mother’s house. The ferry they have to take has a garbage cutter on the front just to clear a path to get through all the pollution in the water. They will fix everything. They will.

As they rush through Malta, Rian offers to get them a hotel room for the night in New Venice, the ritzy area where the presentation will be, but they have to stay with her mother, who seems to live in an old pirate watchtower. Jane is just as too much as Ada is, stuffing treats in Rian’s mouth and patting him on the head. Ada takes Rian to the roof of the tower and tells him that if he goes to stay in the hotel, she will know that he's set up a trap for her and even though she wants to fuck him, it doesn't mean that she trusts him, and that after they complete the nanobot update, she'll disappear and he'll let her. It really doesn't seem that way though.

Jane comes up to the roof then and coos about her pet pigeons that live up there. She goes on and on about how they were domesticated by their ancestors and then discarded when they no longer served a purpose and Rian seems put off by them, but Ada knows why her mom really keeps the birds. Jane keeps squawking about the pigeons and then they have dinner on the terrace. Ada then takes Rian to her mostly empty bedroom and they talk saucily about what they will do after the nanobots have been updated and everything is over and it involves a ritzy hotel room and peaches, peeled peaches.

Ada goes back to the roof to chat with her mother who yes, is actually the Jane Irwin and is Ada’s contact and boss and everything else. She's been working on healing the earth for a long long time and Ada has been working with her, though demanding she gets paid, which hey, a girl's gotta eat. Jane tells Ada that she received a message that Rian is going to betray her, which she's known since he left the trip for sweets at the very beginning, but she hoped, giving him the opportunity to betray her, he wouldn't.

Early the next morning, Ada and Rian prepare to leave with Jane bustling around doing seemingly mom things but also setting up her own plans. She gives Ada a package that Ada had sent there earlier, not really, but that's what we're pretending is happening. It's a new sun shield to block the sun's radiation but it also shields the wearer from cameras and scanners, which will help Ada immensely. There's a pigeon feather on the package too, which means something, obviously. Ada and Rian also put on secret communication devices and she checks she still has her one earring in. This earring deposits code, which is what she'll use to fix the nanobots, and the other that she left behind in book two collects code, which surely will be important, because why else mention it? 

Ada and Rian head out to New Venice and Ada notices Rian noticing things, but are they thinking of the same ways the city can be destroyed or are they each thinking of their own different ways? They stop and kiss, but they are actually checking each other for weapons or other hidden devices and neither closes their eyes. Decidedly not very sexy.

They arrive at the Fetor building and lay out the pieces of their clever plan, stopping by key people and chatting and not going by any of the parties and passing by all the delicious food before Rian heads to his office on a level Ada does not have clearance for and she waits in the stairwell for him to sneak her in. He received a memo from his message sent earlier that says they can find no evidence of Ada contacting the Jane Irwin group they’ve called Green Rogue or them doing anything at all, which is either because they're not doing anything at all or they are using other secret ways to communicate. 

Rian gets Ada into the server room where the nanobots should be stored but there's a body scanner in there that only allows her to be inside for 15 minutes before alarms will go off and security will come. That may seem like a huge problem because Ada told Rian that she needs about an hour to transfer her code, but there's an even bigger problem. She announces to him that the nanobots are not in the server room. They must have been moved to the roof.

The roof. Where people will be working hard and doing actual things before the bots are released because this is where all the important communication equipment for the entire galaxy is. Hopefully no one will notice them if they act like they're supposed to be there. When they arrive on the roof, there's no additional body scan or anything, so it seems like everything is going to be fine. Then Ada spots the red telephone. The Houston-we-have-a-problem phone she messed with in book two and somehow convinced everyone that Strom Fetor needed to own and keep in this very location. How perfect. While Rian is looking around, Ada toys with the receiver, and then Strom Fucking Fetor arrives. With security.

Strom sleazes up to Ada and we can all imagine that she swallows her vomit before putting on a fake pleased persona, like when someone tells you to smile because you look prettier when you do. Ada stage-whispers to Strom that she only slept with Rian to get here while secretly communicating with Rian that everything is fine while he panic secret-communicates that he can't find the nanobots. Ada strolls around the room with Strom while he points out all the important things that are on the roof and it's clear he only has surface level knowledge of what he's talking about because he's a stupid rich jackass.

They all head down to the party and Ada contemplates unhinging her jaw and drinking an entire chocolate fountain, but she still has to deal with Strom and Rian and the nanobots, which Strom announces will be released soon. Rian corners Ada, fretting about not being able to find the nanobots and the fact that she seems to not be concerned at all. Don't worry Rian! The nanobots were in the server room and Ada took care of everything she needed to while she was in there, but it was challenging to do while the alarms were going off. Rian gets mad … why did they need to go to the roof then?! Of course Ada had other plans, and Rian realizes she's obviously set something else up. And then he realizes her earrings are different. Maybe he realized that she was missing the left one earlier, but he probably didn't realize that while they were moving between the server room and the roof, she was missing both, and now, she's missing the right one. They sexily kiss to cover up the scene they're making, and oh boy, do we all want that to continue. 

An employee of Fetor's walks up and insists that Ada leave because of the sun shield she is wearing, but Rian insists she can just take it off. Ada insists that she'd rather leave, so they leave together. She knows he's going to try to arrest her when they leave the building because she's known all along that he is going to betray her, but she asks if, for the few minutes left before the nanobots are released, they can pretend to be normal people on a date and he agrees. They eat food from vendors and listen to all the people chatting in their native languages and dance and it's beautiful. But then Ada realizes all the faces dancing around her are the same faces over and over again, which should be impossible in a crowd this size, and that one of them is Phoebe. They are all Rian’s associates. 

The countdown begins and as it reaches zero, pigeons arrive. When the pigeons arrive, all the people in the crowd, except for Rian’s people, throw up their sun shields, put on sunglasses and flash lights at each other. The reflective shields blind everyone not involved in this escape plan. Ada takes off and Rian and his people try to follow but she makes it down to the docks. Bruna is there and gives her a helmet and gear to breathe underwater and her own Jaxon jets that she loves so much and used brilliantly in book one and that work perfectly underwater. Ada’s mom speaks to her inside the helmet, asking her if she acquired the coordinates and guiding her back to Glory.

Ada is amazed at how many people her mother has obviously helped or at least given hope to over the years. So many strangers concealed her from Rian so she could escape. Ada takes off in Glory and heads through a portal, coming out near Mars. Along the way, she uses the information she retrieved from her earring that was, yes of course, stored in the red Houston-we-have-a-problem phone. Ada has a lot of information that traveled through Strom’s communications room and she meticulously removes herself and Rian from anything incriminating and does the same with her mother and any informant working for her. Imagine what they'll be able to do with all that intel, especially with all incriminating evidence erased!

Memos and messages from Rian follow and include him trying to find out about Jane Lamarr, aka Jane Irwin, which duh, he definitely should have known that that's who Jane was. It seems that Ada has removed everything involving herself and her mother and anyone else involved with Green Rogue from every single thing that Rian could possibly search. As he's having a private chat with Phoebe, Phoebe is suddenly removed from the conversation and replaced with Unknown, who is obviously Ada. It looks like the chase is going to begin again.