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Holter holds up a bag of Richeal’s books. “Nico and Eros are working on one issue, and you and I are going to work on the other.”
“And Castor. I guess you’re stuck with us a little longer.” Her tone is light and warm.
“Indeed I am.” Castor isn’t unhappy about it either. “We’ll find something to do to occupy our time, I’m sure.”
Nico shakes his head. Poseidon needs to wake up and realize he’s not the only god in Sunshine’s life. As long as he can keep his head on straight, that’s the only thing I need him to do right now.
“Take the right around the finance district,” I tell Castor. “You’ll save time.”
Castor turns around and grimaces at me. “Are you backseat piloting?”
“Yes, because you pilot worse than my great-grandfather, and he’s been dead for a long time.”
“Fuck you.” But he cuts around the financial district. And there it is: the dome I thought would be my home for the rest of my life. It doesn’t feel like home to me anymore. Home is where Sunshine is.
It’s so different from Glyden. Like I told Sunshine last night, Zaffiro likes to remodel instead of building completely new. Take my garden dome. It’s been around for a long time. It was my great-uncle’s, and he’s not even the one who built it. It had been around for years before him. The blue and gold shimmers in the light. I guess it’s pretty.
“Pull around to the Zaffiro garage,” I tell Castor.
The Zaffiro airlock looms ahead. Castor positions us in. It’s weird being here without a wait to get into the parking dome.
“Pull into that spot there.” It’s weird here too. The docks are completely full. There are two spots open for my family, but that’s only because my Baba likes to collect older solos and fix them up. He always has a few open spots for extras.
We walk down the long corridor to the elevator lobby that splits into the hallway with the garden domes. It feels like forever and a day ago that Marina bumped into me in the lobby. That was before I mated Sunshine... before Nico came back from the chasm. Before everything.
I open the door. Nico is already wearing the personal cloaking device. Well, almost all of it. We all step inside. Holter pulls the door closed but not shut all the way.
“Turn, Nico.” I jump on Nico’s back. He grunts. Nico opens his palm, and Holter takes the last disc from him and places it on my back.
Nico turns the device on. “How’s it look?”
“It’s darn good,” Holter says. “Maybe there is a little visible on the underside of Eros’s ass.”
“Maybe he should lay off the tots.”
“Just get going. I would carry you if you weren’t such a neanderthal.”
Holter opens the door and steps out into the hallway. He picks up the fob for the omada he dropped.
“Did you find it, Holter?” Sunshine’s voice is bright and innocent.
“Yup, I got it.” Holter holds it up for her to see.
Sunshine keeps the door open, and we slip out. I hear the deadbolts sliding into place as we walk back to the parking dome. I drew numerous sketches to let Nico know which way to go. We also worked out a tapping pattern for directions. A simple right and left. He makes his way to the far side where I keep my government solo with the high-tech cloaking. The one I tried to rescue his sorry ass in. The same one he broke the windshield of.
I double-tap on his right shoulder. He’s standing in front of it. Now’s where there is nothing we can do about it. I’ve got a cover cloth over the top of it, the same type my Baba uses for the solos he’s working on. Nico gives a tug and lets the cloth slowly slide off into the water, the way it sometimes does if you don’t attach it properly. The only thing is this one has been on there for weeks, and there hasn’t been anyone by it to even brush against it. We watch it sink down the side of the solo and disappear into the water at the bottom of the parking dome. I open the door remotely. Nico faces away from the solo and backs into it. There’s nothing to be done about it—if someone is looking on a camera, they’ll see a flash for sure. He sits on me. Also, nothing that could be done about it.
Damn, he’s the one who needs to lay off the hedge-tots. He’s got an elbow in my kidney. I close the door with the remote and hope his feet are out of the way. I reach around and pull the sensor from my back and put it on his. The windows are tinted, but until we have the other cloaking of the solo on, we decided that it was better to keep our guilt to one of us. I engage the cloaking. It’s another spot where we could be caught if someone is looking. But why would they be? Then I start the engines.
I glare at Nico with a silent buckle up. Because I don’t pilot like Castor. Not even close. I move slowly toward the airlock. There are other options, but I’d rather not take them. I’ve left by way of the water filtration system before and cracked a back panel doing it. The fans that push the water out of the bottom of the docking area are no joke. And this solo almost fits between the blades. Almost.
If I can get in position when it’s open from someone coming in, we can sneak out the other way. The system will flush. While we’re not visible to the eye or radar, we’re still displacing water. And the airlock will automatically engage its sensors to equalize, letting us out the other side. I’ve done it plenty of times.
I move toward the wall and hover. It’s a dead spot, where no one would come whipping around a corner directly into us. We sit for ten minutes, then twenty. We’re under lockdown. Reasonably, the lock shouldn’t open at all. But emergency vehicles, to a limited degree, are still out.
The airlock opens, and a small solo with government tags zips to the front entrance. If it were a health emergency, the solo would have gone to the back. Hell, during the mandate from the king, they would just let the person suffer. It makes me wonder if it’s something to do with Michio. But we can’t follow it. This is our opportunity to get out. Without leaving a wake, I move into the airlock. Like every other time I’ve done this, the door closes behind me and gets ready to spit us out.
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