Page 283 of Every Almost

"Loading,"Tavi said."And... sent! I see it. It's routing."

"Did she get it?"

"Hold your horses, Captain."

Reyna waited what felt like hours. It was probably only thirty seconds.

"Tavi, did she get?—"

"Cap, I love ya, but for the sake of all that is holy... Please! Just give it a few minutes. I promise I'll let you know."

More seconds went by. More torturous, lingering, pitying seconds.

And then Tavi Breck came through the speakers of the Emberkind's Bridge, his voice warm.

"She got it, Captain."

CHARLIE

The datapad chimed in her thigh pocket.

Charlie was on her knees in some poor colonist's remains of a house with her hands under a beam. She ignored the chime because, right now, there was nothing on that datapad that sheneeded. She'd cut comms. Whatever was transmitting on the datapad was probably just a system notification. Or Tavi could have hacked the system already and found a way to mess with her, or a?—

The datapad chimed again.

"Oh, comeon."

She set the beam down onto its seat, slowly with both hands, and waited to see if it was stable.

It didn't budge.

She sat back on her heels and fished the datapad out of her pocket.

NEW TRACK ADDED TO YOUR LIBRARY VIA TRANSMISSION

Charlie's heart stopped.

Did Tavi send her 'kick ass' music? He'd had never once sent her a song. Nobody had. Since when did his program send songs? But this was her library, she was the only one who added anything to it.

She stared at a notification and could not make her brain produce a single explanation.

Instead, she tapped it open.

"Heroes" — David Bowie.

SENT BY: SOLAS, R.

Charlie was suddenly all the way down in the dirt. It was completely involuntary. Her legs quit and she went down onto the deck plate. But now, she just stayed there, in the dust of a colony that was coming apart around her, looking at a name on a screen.

Months ago, Charlie had sat on the floor of a library and told that woman about a wall.

She'd gotten going, too. Hands out, doing the thing where she talked with them, Berlin and the guards and the guns and somebody drawing a line down the middle of a city to tell every person on both sides of it who they were allowed to love. And then the part about how they went to the wall anyway, because the alternative was living the rest of your life without your person over a line somebody else drew.

Charlie remembered hearing her own voice alter as she said it, about a beat after Reyna did.

In the moment, she'd looked at her hands. But when she looked back up, Reyna's face had changed.

It was gone before Charlie could fully read it. Then Reyna sat back a little and it was over. Charlie thought again now that she'd never found out what it'd been.