Mila was nearly my age. We never spent much time together, but she knew Natalin well. She was friendly enough with Haven. Otherwise she kept mostly to herself, was never reallyinvolved. Still, our station feels incomplete without her. Even the absence of one quiet person can be devastating, it turns out. Added to the hundred who died before her—
I resist the urge to throw the petri dish against the wall, and only because I don’t need any more messes to clean.
I bury my face in my hands, try to ride out this useless surge of grief. After some time—a few minutes? half an hour?—there’s a knock at my glass.
Leo.
Instead of inviting him in, I join him in the corridor. We walk together, our footsteps and the hum of electricity the onlysounds. I don’t ask why he’s come to find me, and he doesn’t ask anything I don’t feel like answering.
How does he do it? How does he feel so much likehome, like the past I long for but will never reclaim?
And then a thought slips in so suddenly it stops me dead in my tracks: the mutation could take out any one of us. Leo could be next. Anyoneof us could be next.
“So?” Leo says after a while. “How did the call go? Are we good?”
A half laugh falls out of me before I can stop it. “Definegood.”
“Were you successful in convincing him not to flood our station with Vonn’s team?” Leo says, a mix of playful and pointed he’s somehow mastered over the years.
“Good on that front,” I say.For now, I want to add. I don’t feel successful so much as that I simply postponed an inevitable disaster. I only hope my lies have bought us enough time to prove ourselves, if it comes down to defending our worth and right to have a say in our own futures: that we are as capable as any of our parents were at running the station, at keeping ourselves alive. That this may have started as a station full of science experts, but life ran its course and it’s become so much more than that—it’s become ourhome.
I want, desperately, for our home to stay a home. Our home to stayours.
“What’s this look?” Leo asks when I don’t offer anything else. “What’s wrong?”
We’re stopped now, in the middle of a corridor that overlooksone of the common areas. Leo deserves to know the details of that call, probablyneedsto know, in order for us to pull off the fact that I just led Shapiro to believe my mother is alive and well and it’s business-as-usual up here, save for some extended quarantine and a hard hit to the lieutenants who used to run Control.
Once I try to put it into words, though, it doesn’t sound like I’ve done us any favors.
It sounds shameful. Slippery and shameful. Would my mother have done what I did? Would she find it dishonorable that I lied about her death—my own mother’s death!—to her faithful colleague, who knew her well enough to call her by her first name? Who cared enough to sneak luxuries into the shipments for her?
“Just relieved that part is over,” I tell him, forcing a tight-lipped smile. “Everything’s fine.”
Because I had to saysomething. Because I can’t handle a lecture from Leo right now.
I’ll tell him later, when I’m not fresh off the call and another failed round of lab work and have figured out how to say it in a way that sounds like I’ve helped us—which, despite everything, I still believe I have—instead of backing us into a corner. It’s a matter of how I choose to frame it, is all.
Leo glances back at me, clearly concerned. “Are you sure you’re o—”
He’s cut off by a commotion down on the mezzanine. I peer over the railing and see Akello Regulus step between MikkoSørensen and a girl, a girl who is fierce and flailing, practically eclipsed by Akello’s intimidating frame. He towers over Mikko, too, but that doesn’t stop Mikko from trying to get around him at the girl—Cameron Cade, I see, when she darts away from his furious hands, grasping at her shirt like he wants to rip it right off.
“Hey!” Leo calls over the balcony. “Hey.”
His voice is loud in my ear but is swallowed up by the noise. Leo runs to the nearest staircase, takes the steps two at a time, and plants himself in the middle of the fray. I follow, fast as I can.
Two guys drag Mikko backward by his elbows into the small crowd that’s gathered, stunned, because how are they supposed tonotwatch? Akello relaxes, just a little, but it’s a mistake—Cameron slips out from behind him, beelines toward Mikko, and drives her fist dead center into his face. Blood rushes out, even onto her hand, and she shakes it off.
“Everybodystop,” Leo bellows, and this time, now that we are right in the thick of things, a sudden and forceful silence falls all around us. It is a still, silent freeze.
I take the first step, purposefully meeting eyes with Cameron, then Mikko, and back again. Cameron’s always been passionate to a fault, for better or worse: she feels everything and she feels it deeply. If you get in her way—watch out. As for Mikko, he’s an explosion waiting to happen, more agitated and volatile by the day. This collision won’t end well, not on its own. I make myself like a lion, starved and stalkingits prey. Teeth are necessary in this case. This isn’t a Yuki and Grace situation—this is claws out, blood spilled. This is something I need to put a stop tonow.
Mikko glares at Cameron, then shifts his heavy stare to me. I glare right back. At least he’s not struggling against the guys who hold him in place anymore.
“What did youdoto her, Mikko? What’s going on?”
“What didIdo?” His eyebrows shoot so high up they practically jump off his face. “She nearly gives me abrain injuryby breaking my nose, and it’s what didIdo? Why don’t you ask Cameron what she’s hiding underneath her shirt? Why don’t you ask what she broke into my place andstolefrom me?”
“Please,” Cameron hisses. “I didn’t break in and you know it.”
