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  “You never ask Rushil to do anything illegal ever again.” Her features were hard in the lamp glow. “Not even jaywalking.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m serious, Mi,” Ava said. “He’s worked too hard to get out. I love you to death, but you’re not putting him in danger again.”

  I looked Ava over. She was shorter than me now, and had been since my thirteenth birthday, but I still hadn’t gotten used to looking down at her instead of up. She was half a mother to me. Or maybe that’s just what older sisters are.

  “I promise.” I put one hand over my heart and held the other up. “No more bothering Rushil.”

  “Good,” she said, and blew out the lantern.

  Rōṛī Island stood in the middle of a soggy wetland to the east of the city proper, a warren of buildings made from modified metal shipping containers surrounded by banyan and mulberry trees. The skeleton of an abandoned high-rise jutted from the middle like an exposed spine.

  Ava and I rented a skiff and poled across to solid ground. A boxy container with its outer doors sawed off served as the island’s entrance, full of buzzing, flickering lights, but otherwise empty. Our footsteps clanged and echoed ahead through the tunnel. My skin prickled.

  “We can go back,” Ava said quietly. “If you’ve changed your mind . . .”

  “No,” I said, and swallowed my nerves. Only another hour or two, and then everything standing between me and my future would be gone. I glanced up at the tiny black bulbs bulging from the ceiling above us—spider-eye cameras. Walking this tunnel in the pitch-dark would have been less terrifying. At least then I wouldn’t have been able to see the walls and ceiling closing in around us.

  A drunk came shuffling the opposite way through the tunnel, muttering under his breath. I moved closer to Ava, who was wearing her jacket open to display the knife at her belt. He passed us with only a dirty look.

  Soon we were out in the open air again, rattling up a metal staircase and across a footbridge to the main floor of the skyscraper. Purple and yellow lights, and electronic bhangra so loud its bass drowned out my own heartbeat, pulsed from the open spaces where the building’s walls and windows used to be. The bottom floor was packed. A bar backed by a wall of glass bottles stood like an island in the center, surrounded by people dancing or grouped around tables in smoky corners. Somewhere in the darkened floors above us, someone whooped, and a beer bottle shattered on the promenade behind us.

  “What is this place?” I shouted over the music. “You’re taking me to a club?”

  Ava didn’t seem to have heard me. “You have to promise never to come here alone,” she shouted as we threaded through the crowd and took a seat at the bar. “And don’t tell Vishva about it, either. She’s not as street smart as she thinks.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. That wouldn’t be a problem, seeing as I hadn’t so much as talked to Vishva in at least half a year.

  Ava leaned in close to my ear. “Put your crow on the counter and hold on to it.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  I took my handheld out of my pocket and placed it carefully on the bar in front of me. Almost at once, a man with a thin shirt and ridiculously defined pectoral muscles appeared in front of us, wearing a smile that had an awful lot to do with his eyebrows.

  “What can I get you, ladies?” He reached for my crow with one hand and brought up two empty glasses with the other.

  I snatched my crow back and looked at Ava.

  “We don’t want a drink.” She placed one hand flat over her glass’s empty mouth. “We need a chat.”

  He stood up straight. His smile disappeared. “About what?”

  “Papers.” Ava tilted her head at me. “For her.”

  He nodded. “Let me make you that drink.”

  I frowned. “We don’t need—”

  Ava put a hand on my arm. “Just wait.”

  My hands were sweating. The bartender filled my glass with a violently blue liquid, then added a layer of something oily and orange to it, and topped it off by dropping in a whole gherkin on a white neon cocktail spear.

  “Take the lift down two floors and turn left. Last door on the right,” the bartender said as he slid the drink across to me.

  I looked at Ava again. “Got it,” she said.

  “And, kid,” the bartender called as I began to walk away. “I wouldn’t drink that if I were you.”

  A man Ava’s age answered the last door on the right. He took one look at the drink in my hand and beckoned me forward.

  Ava moved to follow, but he held out a hand to stop her. “One drink, one visitor.”

  “We come as a pair,” Ava said. “Auntie Rajni knows me.”

  He stared at her, his expression flat. “I said, one drink, one visitor.”

  Ava rested her hands on her hips, drawing back her jacket to reveal her knife. “And I said we come as a pair.”

  “What’s all this fuss?” A woman’s throaty voice called from inside. “Is that a drink for me?”

  The man sighed and turned to reveal a stout woman in an electronic wheelchair positioned near a bank of screens in the corner of the room. “Yes, Auntie.”

  “You stop harassing these nice young ladies and bring it here, then.” She rolled toward us and held out her hand. She wore sunglasses, even in the dimness of the room, and a system of interwoven braids piled on top of her head, with a shock of gray-white hair running through the construction.

  “Auntie Rajni.” Ava stepped forward. “Thank you for seeing us. This is my foster sister, Mi—”

  “Yes, yes.” Auntie Rajni stopped her chair beside me and looked meaningfully at the concoction in my hand. I held it out to her. “We drink first, then we talk.”

  “Of course.” Ava smoothed her hands over her jacket. I knew that gesture. Ava calming herself, getting herself even keel for some difficult business.

  Auntie Rajni fished out the pickle with her thumb and forefinger, then tilted the glass back. No one spoke as she gulped down the whole thing, then popped the pickle in her mouth and crunched it with relish.

  “Now,” she said, gesturing to a purple satin sofa. “We sit, like civilized people.”

  We sat. The guard took up his position next to the door and pretended not to listen.

  “Auntie, as I was saying—” Ava started.

  The woman shook a finger in Ava’s face. “Not you.” She turned to me. “Her. She’s the one with the drink. She’s the one wanting something.”

  I swallowed. I had been hoping Ava would do the talking for me, and all I would have to do was fork over the funds. I rubbed my palms together and wished I had brought a pair of gloves. I had a dozen pairs in blue velvet, faux yellow leather, and plain black smart cotton, but I hadn’t expected to need them for a night at Ava and Rushil’s.

  “Speak up,” Auntie Rajni said. “I have other business tonight.”

  “I, um . . . need some identification work,” I said to the floor.

  Auntie Rajni rubbed her chin. “Someone after you, child?”

  I looked up, startled. “No. No, it’s not that. Nothing like that.”

  “No?” Auntie Rajni raised an eyebrow over her glasses and turned to Ava. “This one’s not like the girls you usually bring. What are you playing here, Parastrata?”

  I darted a look at Ava. Sometimes she would get a message about a runaway girl—a girl like her, who had grown up with the merchant crewes that trawled the Deep—and she would disappear for hours or days. Some of those girls had even stayed with us while Ava tried to find a place for them. Was she bringing them to this Auntie Rajni for fake papers? Rushil did the same for her when we first landed in Mumbai—got her a work permit so we could get by. But why hadn’t she told me what she was up to? I could have helped. I always helped her, especially at first, when it was just the two of us. Weren’t we a team? Sisters? Didn’t she trust me to keep quiet?

  I push the sting to the back of my mind. “I nee
d to be older,” I said. “Eighteen. I need to be eighteen by this spring.”

  I held my breath. That had been far more awkward than it sounded in my head, but at least the words were out.

  Auntie Rajni paused, then pulled off her sunglasses. One of her eyes was a cloudy blue—blind—but the other shone like mercury. A bionic eye. I tried not to stare and bit down my impulse to ask how it worked. I loved biomimetics and prosthetic grafts, but the problem was, they usually came attached to a person who didn’t want to talk about the horrific injury or illness that had made them part machine. Something bad, something violent, must have happened to Auntie Rajni. We could cure most genetic disorders or malformations, but if there was some kind of trauma and the whole body part needed to be replaced . . .

  She turned her quicksilver eye on Ava. “You’re bringing me prep-school children who want a beer and sutta now?” She glared. “Is that what you think I’m about? There are plenty of simpletons running that business down in your Salt. Rundi ki bachi . . .”

  My face burned. “That’s not why.”

  “Oh?” Auntie Rajni’s eye swiveled to me. “Why would a nice little rich girl like you be needing something like that, then? Hmm?”

  “Does it really matter why she needs it, Auntie?” Ava cut in. “It’s not so she can sneak out at night. I promise.”

  “Kṛipayā,” I leaned toward Auntie Rajni. This couldn’t end here. I’d come too far. “This isn’t for show. I need the real thing. Altered immigration papers, my school records, everything.”

  The old woman harrumphed and fumbled her glasses back over her nose. “These things are always a risk. Always. I like to know my customers aren’t going to go pointing fingers if Mummy finds out.” She gave me an acid look. At least she wasn’t calling Ava names anymore.

  “She won’t,” Ava said.

  “Let’s hear it from her, then.”

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  And I meant it. I wouldn’t. Getting aboard that DSRI ship meant everything to me, and I would say anything to get there.

  I bury my face in my hands. Ava will go mental when she finds out what I’ve done. I’m fairly sure hacking into the ship’s communication and security logs and abusing my security clearance—or rather, Jyotsana’s security clearance—to steal a research shuttle counts as doing something illegal. And after the risks she took for me, the promises I made to her . . . once they find out I’m gone, they’ll scour my records for whatever warning signs they missed, and they’re sure to find evidence of the hack then. The only thing keeping me from rubbing holes in my palms is the thought that if anyone understands desperate measures, it’s Ava.

  I check the time. An hour until I’m supposed to meet Cassia. I can’t lie still another moment longer. I power down the handbook, push the bed shroud aside, find my boots, and lace them up as quietly as I can.

  Lian stirs as I creep for the door. “Miyole? What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” I whisper. “Checking on the pollination lab. I think I set the nitrogen levels too high.”

  “Oh.” She rolls back over and drops her head on the pillow.

  I stop in the lab to check on my pollinators one last time. The butterflies’ wings tremor as the lights flicker on inside their biomes. I stand staring at them for a moment, and then step into the air lock that separates them from the rest of the ship. I seal the door, alter the atmospheric pressure to match the enclosure, and let myself in.

  The humid air swallows me. My nose prickles at the hint of rot beneath the bright smell of vegetation. More than the well-kept grounds of the recreation gardens, this place reminds me of Mumbai—its parks after monsoon season and the thick, wet heat of the greenhouses at school. I kneel down slowly beside a young kapok tree rooted in the center of the biome. The butterflies flutter nervously at first, but I take a seat on the damp peat, and within seconds, they’ve forgotten my existence. I check the time again. Three-quarters of an hour to go.

  I lean back against the bark and close my eyes. An hour from now, I’ll either be slicing through the utter darkness of space or sitting in the brig. Either way, I won’t be smelling anything but recycled air for a long time, and I won’t be touching anything as real as damp leaves and dirt.

  Something tickles my hand. I open my eyes. A mangrove skipper, all dusky blue except for a cobalt pattern dappled across its back, balances on my knuckles. I stop breathing. Normally, when I come into the biome, I’m all efficiency and motion, trying to get in and out with the least disturbance to the pollinators. The idea that one of my subjects might alight on me, given enough stillness and time, has never crossed my mind.

  The butterfly flexes its wings. I let out a breath, shaky and soft, trying not to disturb it. Will this creature survive after I’m gone? Will it live long enough to lay its eggs? Or will it end up in one of Dr. Osmani’s acrylic displays? What about me? Out in the Deep, I’ll be as vulnerable as the mangrove skipper. How long will I survive without the Ranganathan to protect me from hull-piercing asteroids and slavers?

  I hug my knees to my chest. I could go back to bed, untie my boots, and sleep until ship’s morning. Pretend none of this happened. Couldn’t I? But Cassia will be waiting for me in the darkness of the dock. Could I live with myself if I knew I had the chance to help her get her brother back, to give Milah her father back, and didn’t take it because I got cold feet at the last moment? Because I let fear get the best of me again? Will I be able to sleep at night, or will I see the dakait’s foot slipping my grasp every time I close my eyes?

  I check my coms again. Fifteen minutes until I’m supposed to be on the dock. My sleep haze evaporates. Time to go. I don’t know what will happen, or if anyone here will understand. Commander Dhar won’t. Dr. Osmani won’t. Rubio will hold court on how he always knew I was mad, and a liar. But that doesn’t change what I have to do. It doesn’t change what’s right. I push myself to my feet. The mangrove skipper flits away, back to its cousins in the tree.

  Chapter 8

  I exit the pollinator air lock and go up on tiptoe to reach the messenger bag I stashed in my alcove. I unstrap my coms from my wrist, zip a simple black jacket over my pressure suit, and power up my crow. Thank the stars Ava uploaded her good-bye message to it. I never would have thought to bring along a device that ran separate from the Ranganathan’s systems otherwise.

  Ten minutes.

  The lights shut off as I seal the lab’s outer door behind me, leaving my coms bracelet blinking red in the dark. In several minutes, Advani-ji will notify security she hasn’t been receiving life signs from my suit, but in the meantime, the ship won’t be tracking me. I start down the dim corridor, night playing above me.

  Five minutes.

  The dock slides into view, quiet and dark. I step off the walkway and into the shadow of some supply crates stacked near the entrance. If the security rotation schedule I accessed with Jyotsana’s clearance is accurate, Cassia and I have a seven-minute window to steal the shuttle after the guard on duty clears the area.

  I catch sight of him on the opposite end of the dock, near the phalanx of fighters primed for duty. His black-gray uniform nearly disappears in the low light, but his coms bracelet gives off a regular blue flash every ten seconds. I count between the flashes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine . . .

  Three minutes to go.

  “Clear.” His voice carries across the silence. “Proceeding to sim labs.”

  Sim labs. My brain takes a moment to catch up. I just came from the sim labs.

  The guard turns in my direction and starts walking.

  “Chaila,” I whisper, and shrink back behind the crates, as far as I can go. I didn’t factor this in when I hacked the security roster. I’m wearing black over my pressure suit and I don’t have my com bracelet to give me away, but the shadows aren’t all that deep. One careful look in my direction, and the guard will spot me. I close my eyes and hold my breath, as if my own blindness will help me stay hidden.

>   His footsteps approach, strong and even. I press my back against the crates. Degree of pupil dilation corresponds to ambient light or lack thereof. . . . He comes up beside me—please don’t stop—and then passes out into the corridor and down the moving walkway.

  I step out from the shadows and wait for my eyes to adjust. After a moment, Cassia emerges from behind her own wrecked ship, two satchels slung across her shoulders and another tucked under her arm. I raise my hand silently and start across the empty floor. She waves back and hurries to me as quickly as she can under the weight of the bags.

  “You made it.” She offers me a fragile smile. Her hair hangs in loose waves, and she’s slightly out of breath. “You came.”

  “I told you I would.” At the sight of her, my fear fades. This is right. I can fix this.

  The corner of her mouth twists up. “I thought maybe I scared you off.”

  “Not yet.” I grin and hold out a hand for one of the bags. “Here.”

  Cassia clutches them tighter to her chest. “No, it’s okay.”

  “You’re sure?” I frown.

  “I’ve got them,” she says, at the exact moment a low, almost inaudible growl escapes the bag under her arm.

  My eyes widen. “What is that?”

  “Nothing.” Cassia pushes past me and starts for the row of shuttles docked on the left side of the bay.

  “Hey!” I hiss. I hurry to catch up to her and grab her arm. We’re wasting precious seconds. Any moment now, someone is going to notice us on one of the hundreds of fish-eyed cameras built into the walls and rafters. “Be serious. What do you have in there?”

  She lifts her eyes to the ceiling and sighs, then slowly pulls back the bag’s zipper. I know I’m not going to like whatever is inside, but I peer in anyway, and come face-to-face with a supremely pissed Tibbet. He glowers at me, his eyes black and dilated, and lets out another low growl that raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

  I look up at Cassia in disbelief. “You brought the cat?”

  She zips the bag partially closed again, leaving enough space to let in air. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.” She turns on her heel and storms away.