“You’re staring,” he said without turning around.
“Sorry. I was just...”
“Admiring my devastating good looks?”
“Wondering how you know how to do all this.” She gestured at the bottle, at the makeshift changing station he’d set up the day before. “You said you’ve never had kids.”
“I haven’t.” He brought the bottle over and handed it to her, his fingers brushing against hers in the exchange. “But I’ve spent a lot of time around people who did. You pick things up.”
“What kind of people?”
“The kind who needed help.” He settled back into the pilot’s seat, his expression growing distant. “When I was younger, I spent some time on a refugee transport full of families fleeing a civil war. Lots of children and not enough adults to care for them all.”
“So you helped.”
“I did what I could.” He shrugged, as if it was nothing, but she could see the memory weighing on him. “Most of them made it to safety. Some didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was a long time ago.” He turned back to the console, checking on the diagnostic. “Speaking of safety—the scan’s not finding any tracking devices. Either they’re too well hidden for my sensors to detect, or the Grorn really did just get lucky.”
“Which do you think is more likely?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. And that bothers me more than I’d like to admit.”
She offered the bottle to Ari, who latched onto it with eager enthusiasm. The baby’s eyes closed in contentment as she drank, her small body relaxing against Emma’s chest.
“What about Ari?” she asked quietly. “Could they be tracking her somehow?”
He went still. “That’s... not impossible. If she’s really one of the Keys and the Grorn have been searching for her species, they might have technology designed to locate them.”
“Can we check?”
“Not with the equipment on this ship. But Rjmar gave me some supplies. There might be something useful in there.”
He retrieved the satchel he’d brought aboard and began pulling items out, laying them on the narrow table between the cockpit seats. Identity chips, a portable scanner, clothing in various sizes, medical supplies. And at the bottom, wrapped in faded cloth?—
“What’s that?”
He unwrapped the object carefully, revealing a metallic disc about the size of his palm. Even from where she sat, Emma couldsee the intricate engravings covering its surface, patterns that seemed to shift and move in the dim light of the cockpit.
“Rjmar gave it to me before I left,” he said, his voice hushed. “He thinks it might be precursor technology, which mean it might be connected to the Vault.”
She leaned forward, drawn by curiosity despite her better judgment. The engravings really did seem to move, forming and reforming into patterns that made her eyes water if she stared too long. Geometric shapes within shapes, spirals that led nowhere and everywhere at once.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured. “In a strange way.”
“It’s also potentially dangerous. We don’t know what it does.”
“Then why did he give it to you?”
He flashed her his usual confident smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Because he trusts me. And because he thought I might need it.”
Ari finished her bottle and pulled away, making a satisfied sound. She set the bottle aside and shifted the baby to her shoulder, patting her back gently. As she did, Ari’s head turned toward the disc in his hand, those large dark eyes fixing on it with sudden intensity.
“She’s looking at it,” she said quietly.
“I noticed.”
