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  “If he says it runs, it runs,” Cassia says. “He wouldn’t trust a faulty ship with his merchandise.”

  “Oh, I’m glad he’s so concerned about his merchandise.” I roll my eyes.

  “You know what I mean,” Cassia says.

  “I don’t like it.” I shake my head and eye the drums. “Did you even ask what he’s having us transport? Or where exactly we’re taking it?”

  “You’ll find out in plenty of time,” Sweetie had told us, but that didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

  “Does it matter?” Cassia crosses her arms. “What happened to all that stuff about trusting each other?”

  I run a hand over my braid. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s only that I’m not too thrilled about doing business with crime lords.”

  “He’s not a crime lord, he’s—”

  “The shateigashira.” I realize I’m probably talking loud enough for Sweetie to hear and drop my voice to a whisper. “I know. I thought he would be a little more helpful since he’s supposed to be your uncle and all.”

  “If he wasn’t my uncle, he would have had us shot on sight.”

  “Ladies.”

  I nearly jump out of my skin.

  “There’s only one more matter to discuss before we conclude our business here,” Sweetie says with a polite grin.

  Cassia pales. “Yes?”

  “I’m in need of some assurance you won’t simply fly away with my little bird here.” He makes a fluttering motion with his hands. “Let’s talk collateral.”

  “Well . . . there’s the shuttle,” Cassia says, sneaking a guilty look at me.

  I press my lips into a line. Just because I agreed to this doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.

  “Ah, yes,” Sweetie says.

  “DSRI issue,” Cassia forges on. “Brand-new, except for the flight over.”

  Sweetie raises an eyebrow, interested. “DSRI?” He looks at me as though seeing me for the first time, as if he’s finally figured out the formula that explains my existence.

  I lean in close to Cassia. “I can’t believe you’re going to trade a new DSRI shuttle for this piece of tatti,” I say under my breath. “There has to be something better he can give us.”

  “It’s not a trade, it’s collateral,” she hisses back, shooting a nervous look at Sweetie.

  “It’s coercion.”

  “I don’t care what it is,” Cassia says. “We’re taking it.”

  “My dear,” Sweetie interrupts, reaching for my hand. “What is your name again?”

  I swallow. Vaat. I should have kept my complaining mouth shut. “Miyole Guiteau.”

  “Miyole.” He rolls the word around in his mouth. He smells like sour milk. “Let me explain. You stole a DSRI shuttle and brought it here, to my operation.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but Sweetie waves me silent.

  “Don’t bother. You wouldn’t have come to me if you weren’t in some kind of trouble to begin with.” He folds my hand tightly inside his. “And now you’ve brought that trouble to me.”

  Cassia looks stricken. “We didn’t mean—”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Sweetie tightens his grip on my hand. “But a stolen DSRI shuttle is useless to me, new or not. Do you see? I don’t need government types scratching too deep around here. If I sold it, it would only be for parts, so be glad I’m even willing to consider it collateral. Now thank me for my generous assistance, and we won’t say another word about it.” Sweetie’s smile stays in place as my finger bones crush together.

  “Thank you,” I say hoarsely.

  “Don’t mention it.” Sweetie loosens his grip and pats my hand before letting go. He turns to Cassia and lifts the back of her hand to his lips. “My dear, a pleasure doing business with your family, as always.” Then he sweeps away, over to the men loading barrels onto our new junker.

  Cassia puts a hand on my arm, and I jump.

  “We’ve got to turn it over,” she says softly. There’s an apology in her voice, but I pretend not to hear it.

  “Right,” I say, and stalk off to the tunnel. If I walk fast enough, no one will see me shaking. We don’t know what we’re transporting or who we’re taking it to, and our only backup option is out of play. In my head, this all went differently. It made sense. It was a calculated risk. But now the variables are multiplying in a way I never factored for, and I can’t go back and rerun the experiment. This is it. This is my life, spiraling into a textbook example of chaos theory.

  Cassia follows, one of Sweetie’s masked guards trailing a few meters behind. No need to keep us under close surveillance now that Sweetie has us where he wants us.

  She catches up to me. “I didn’t have any other choice.” Her voice is smooth, coaxing, now that the deal is done. “This is the only way we can find Nethanel.”

  I double my pace. She may be right, but I don’t have to like it.

  We pass the door to Sweetie’s lair and the hall lined with refrigeration containers in silence. Red eyes follow us. Neither of us speaks until we’re back in the lift.

  “Miyole,” Cassia says, pleading.

  I sigh. “I get it, okay? It’s done.” I’ve known from the beginning Cassia would do anything to find her brother. I just underestimated what anything would be.

  We ride the lift back up to the main hangar. The shuttle is unharmed, except for a patch on the door where someone has scratched the word busu into the shielding. The moment the shuttle hatch slides open, though, I know something is wrong. The lights are all on, clean and bright. I hold out my hand and send Cassia a worried look—careful. The dock’s bustle and roar fades as we creep up the loading ramp. The gurney comes into view. Empty.

  I catch a flash of movement in the corner of my eye and turn just in time to see Rubio swinging an oxygen tank full force at the back of Cassia’s head.

  “No!” I shout.

  Cassia flinches and ducks, but not fast enough to avoid the blow. The tank glances the side of her forehead with an ugly, thick clank. She crumples at the edge of the loading ramp, eyes rolled back in her head and a deep gash opened above her left eye.

  Rubio down stares at her. She isn’t moving. There is no breath in me, only my blood moving in slow motion. Rubio stumbles back, drops the blood-smeared tank, and looks at me. This can’t be happening. Any second she’s going to raise a hand to her head and pick herself up. But she doesn’t. And she doesn’t. The only thing moving is the blood pouring down her forehead and into her hair. Her eyes stare unseeing at the ceiling. Is she dead? She can’t be. She can’t be living one second and dead the next, right in front of me. That can’t happen.

  Rubio bolts. My heart kicks, and time comes rushing back.

  “No!” I scream again. I leap over Cassia and race after him, down the ramp, into the teeming crowd. Rubio glances back and lunges into the tide of close-packed bodies, fighting against the current. I charge in, too, shoving and ducking. She can’t be dead. She can’t be.

  An ice sledge rumbles toward us, cutting Rubio’s path short. He skids to a halt, looks left, then right, and dodges left. I cut across the crowd and dart after him, but he’s faster. He’s not stuck in a steaming-hot pressure suit. He’s going to get away. All that blood . . .

  “Stop!” I shoulder forward and point at his back. “Someone stop him!”

  The woman closest to me glances up briefly and looks away, but otherwise the dock keeps up its chaotic rhythm. The rattle of the air scrubbers and the din of voices drown me out. If he gets away, he’ll alert the DSRI. They’ll lock me away as an accessory, and if Cassia’s dead—she can’t be, she can’t be, but there was so much blood, and her eyes—no one will ever find Nethanel.

  Think, Miyole.

  I look up. One of the rat boys sits on the air duct above me, gnawing on what I hope is a chicken bone.

  “Hey!” I call up. “You!”

  He wipes grease from his face. “Whatcha want?”

  “Help me stop him.” I
point after Rubio.

  He narrows his eyes. “What’s in it for me?”

  My mind races. What would this kid want? What can we afford to give up? “Food,” I say. “We’ve got food.”

  “How much food?” he asks.

  “You’ll never find out if you don’t stop him, will you?” I snap.

  “A’ right, a’ right.” He tucks the bone in his pocket, hops up, and skitters off over the ductwork.

  I follow as best I can on the ground, elbowing my way through the crowd. Above, the boy darts left on an intersecting duct and then leaps over the edge. A shout of surprise rises from the crowd as he drops. I put on a burst of speed. The boy has wrapped himself around Rubio’s leg like a sloth. He bites his shin.

  Rubio cries out and topples over, trying to shake the boy loose. But it’s too late. I leap on top of him, knocking the air from his lungs and pinning him to the wet, filthy ground. The blood, her eyes . . . The rat boy scrambles out of the fray.

  I swing a fist at Rubio’s face. I’ve never hit anyone before. I’ve never needed to. My knuckles connect with his cheekbone and burst with pain, but I don’t care. So much blood, and her skull and her eyes. Lying there bleeding and she wasn’t seeing anything. Somewhere in the back of my mind is Soraya, warning me that violence never helps anything, and somewhere deeper is the sick, trembling feeling I get when I’m about to remember something. I push it all aside and swing again, vaguely aware of the crowd forming around us.

  Rubio blocks my blow. He drives his knee into my side and flips me off him. My ribs flare with pain. I rake my fingernails down his cheek and across his neck.

  “Putamadre!” He clutches his face, and I deliver a swift kick to his testicles. Rubio cries out and doubles over.

  I pick myself up and kick him again, in the stomach this time. The blood, her eyes. She can’t be, but I think maybe she is. My arms might not be as strong as his, but years of walking and horseback riding in Mumbai have given me calves like steel.

  “She’s dead!” My face is wet, and my limbs shake with cold fire. Soraya is gone. Civilization and all the good it ever did me is gone. I’m alone on an outpost with the boy who murdered the one person in a thousand light years who wanted me, who needed me. “You killed her!”

  “Let ’im have it, girl!” Someone in the crowd whoops, and answering calls ripple all around me.

  I pause, panting, and look up. Traffic has come to a standstill, and a ring of people has formed around us. The rat boys perch on the ducts above, looks of animal glee on their faces. I brush the hair ripped loose from my braid out of my eyes. On the floor at my feet, Rubio moans.

  What am I doing? I step back and unclench my fists, all the blood draining out of my chest. My heart beats like a timpani against my sternum. Rubio isn’t fighting back anymore. Am I really going to beat someone to death in front of a cheering crowd? I grab his arm and drag him to his feet.

  “Come on,” I mutter. Civilization might be millions of kilometers away, but there’s still some left in me.

  A groan of disappointment rises from the crowd. The knot of people around us begins to disperse.

  I twist Rubio’s arm behind his back and march him to the shuttle. I need time to think without adrenaline poisoning my judgment. I need time to figure out what to do with him. But in the meantime, he’s going to face what he’s done. He’s going to look at her, and if there’s any decency in him, he’s going to feel all the guilt of it.

  No one pays us any mind, let alone tries to stop us, as I push him back the way we came.

  “How could you?” I speak through my teeth. “You could have run. You could have gotten away. Why did you . . .” I trail off, the words stopped up in my throat. I should never have gotten angry with Cassia, never grudged her anything in the service of finding her brother. Her eyes, the blood . . .

  “I didn’t have time. Besides, she did the same to me.” Rubio reaches up to touch the tender spot at the back of his head. “I didn’t mean to hurt her so bad.”

  “You killed her.” My lungs constrict. The words hurt coming out. “She’s dead.”

  “You don’t know that,” Rubio says.

  I step close, blood welling up in my chest again. “You bashed her head in.”

  “’Ey, miss!” I feel a tug on my sleeve and look down. The rat boy scowls up at me. “You said you had food.”

  I sigh, suddenly tired. “We do. In the ship.”

  The rat boy eyes the hatch suspiciously. “I ain’t going in there. There’s blood, an’ you said he was a murderer.”

  Rubio looks pale.

  “Wait here,” I tell the boy. I grab Rubio’s arm and push him up the ramp. He doesn’t resist, but when we reach the top, where Cassia’s blood pools, he stops cold.

  “What?” I say. “Afraid to look at what you’ve done?”

  But then I move to step around him and see what he sees.

  Cassia, sitting bloody-faced and dazed on the gurney. Alive.

  “Cassia.” I run to her. I want to throw my arms around her and crush her against my body. I want to touch her and make sure she’s real. I want to kiss her. Kiss her with relief and fear and giddy tears, because here she is, alive. But she’s hurt, and I don’t know if it’s what she’d want, so instead I hold her at arm’s length.

  “I’m okay.” She nods, and then catches sight of Rubio standing openmouthed at the top of the hatch. The flesh below his eye has already begun to puff up and bruise, and my scratch marks look more like gouges now. “Can’t say the same for you.”

  Rubio stares at her as if he’s seen a ghost. “I didn’t kill you.” Relief suffuses his voice.

  She touches the open wound on her head. Her fingers come away bloody. “You’ll have to try harder.” She grimaces and glares at him.

  Out of nowhere, he giggles. I stare at him, horrified. I could slap him, except something about the noise he’s making sounds so frightened.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up,” I say to Cassia. “Rubio—”

  He interrupts me with a bout of hysterical laughter.

  “Rubio,” I say more firmly. I don’t have time for this. I point to one of Cassia’s bags. “Look in there and find some rations for that boy.”

  He makes his way to the bag, laughing so hard tears stream down his face. I ignore him and pull a disinfecting cloth from our medical supply box.

  “Aren’t you afraid he’ll get away?” Cassia murmurs as I wipe the blood from her brow, careful of the laceration. The bleeding has slowed, but it hasn’t stopped yet. She was lucky. We were lucky.

  I glance at Rubio as he teeters down the gangway, still laughing to himself. “At this point, I don’t care. I’d like to see him survive on Ceres Station.”

  I raise the cloth again, but Cassia catches my wrist. “Thank you.”

  I look down, away, my face growing hot.

  Her hand gently grazes my jaw. She raises my chin so we’re staring into each other’s eyes. Hers are aquamarine like the Pacific on a sunny day, ringed by lashes as gold as her hair. Her face is pale from blood loss, making her freckles look darker.

  “Thank you,” she repeats.

  I lean my forehead against hers and close my eyes. She works her fingers beneath what’s left of my braid and traces my ear with her thumb. I hold her tight, tight, and a hot tear rolls down over my chin, onto my neck. I could have lost her today. My blood fizzes in my veins, and I know there’s no going back.

  Chapter 11

  The barrels that Sweetie’s minions stacked in the junker’s hold stand four across and fifteen deep. I tilt one up on its rim experimentally. It’s heavy, more so than a simple liquid should be, and yet I can make out sloshing inside. I let the barrel fall back on its base with a heavy boom.

  “What the hell is that?” Rubio stops behind me, his arms full of thermal suits and jackets, his face a purpling mess. He moves stiffly, favoring his right ribs.

  I plant my hands on my hips and blow out a lungful of air. I shake my head. “No te
lling.” I nod at his armload. “What about you?”

  “Gifts from that man, the one with the tattoos.”

  “Sweetie,” I say, and scowl.

  “Right,” Rubio agrees. “He says we’ll stick out like rats at a tea party if we go around wearing our DSRI gear.”

  I nod. He’s right about the clothes, but I have a feeling Sweetie isn’t the gift-giving kind. We’re only adding more favors to his ledger.

  I turn back to the barrels and work the tips of my fingers underneath the closest one’s stopper. The seal is too tight. I only end up lifting one side of the barrel, and then losing my grip. The metal base crashes back down, nearly crushing my toe.

  “You want help?” Rubio asks.

  I look over my shoulder at him, incredulous. “You’re offering?”

  He shrugs and drops the pile of thermal clothes, then climbs on top of the barrel and holds it down with his weight while I try again to pry out the stopper. My fingertips pale with the effort, but I feel it giving, millimeter by millimeter. Suddenly, the seal comes free with a wet, sucking pop that sends me stumbling back. A sharp chemical odor floods the berth.

  “Chaila.” I shake the feeling back into my fingers and pull up my undershirt to cover my nose and mouth.

  Rubio jumps down, and we both lean forward to peer inside.

  “What is that?” I say through my shirt.

  Rubio sticks his hand inside.

  I try to catch his arm. “Don’t!”

  But it’s too late. He draws up a runny handful of translucent yellow goop and sniffs it. “Cryatine.” He slops the handful back into the barrel. It rolls off his fingers as if he never touched it. “Antifreeze.”

  “You’ve seen it before?” I make a face.

  Rubio nods. “You probably have, too, but you didn’t know it.” He looks at the pile of thermal clothes. “They use it in everything. Buildings, pressure suits, ships, anything that needs to withstand the cold. Smells like cat piss, but it’ll keep you warm.”

  I frown. “How do you know so much about it?” Mumbai is too warm to have any use for antifreeze, but I’ve been around ships my whole life and never heard of the stuff.

  “My father.” Rubio shrugs and focuses on shoving the stopper back into the barrel. “He was a foreman at an Apex Group factory that made the stuff. Back on Earth.”