“That station last year,” Serpint says. “That one that just… disappeared.”
“That was us,” I say. “My sister Rox, to be exact. But I left. We left. Nyleena and I. We were…” I hesitate, unsure if I should finish the story. But hell, the secret is out now. I might as well just keep going. “We got out by lying, OK? We were told to go to some planet. Earth, or something like that. I don’t really know. I’ve never heard of it. But the ship I was supposed to take was programmed to get us there. Except… I stole a different ship and we got out. That ship was programmed to go to Bull Station. All our ships leave with a destination program because, obviously, they don’t want anyone going somewhere they’re not supposed to be. So I was just gonna steal a new ship on Bull Station and then Nyleena and I were on our way to Angel Station on the other side of Hydra System. That’s where we go to escape. They deprogram us. Mix up the genetic instructions inside us that make us dangerous. So Nyleena and I were headed to there to get the procedure done. That way the Cygnians would have no use for us and they’d leave us alone.”
“Oh, shit,” Serpint says.
ALCOR says, “Oh, shit.”
And then the cyborg master says, “Oh, shit.”
“What?” I ask.
Serpint hesitates for a few seconds, then says, “I think we need to show you something.”
We stand in front of a double-wide frosted-glass door. There’s a digital keypad on the outside, so it doesn’t open automatically when we approach. The cyborg master presses the pad of one of his fingers into a red circle, which then turns green, and the doors part, sliding smoothly open.
The master goes first, then me, and Serpint has his hand on the small of my back as he follows.
In the center of the room is one cryopod and Crux, standing next to it, with his arms crossed. He stares at me with a combination of emotions that I interpret as fear, mixed in with a healthy dose of anger. Obviously ALCOR has filled him in on the situation.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“You tell me,” Crux says.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Lyra,” Serpint says, taking my hand. “Remember when I told you I stole something I shouldn’t have and that’s why Draden and Ceres died?”
“Um… OK. Sure. Yeah. I remember.”
“This is what I stole.”
I look at the cryopod again, trying to fit all the pieces together. “OK. So… who’s in there?”
“You tell us,” Crux says, stepping aside and waving me forward in one motion.
I walk forward to the pod, peer down, then use my hand to wipe away the thick layer of ice over the faceplate window and—
“Oh, shit,” I say.
“‘Oh, shit’ is right,” Serpint says. “I stole your queen. By accident, I swear. I just knew this was Corla, the woman Crux has been pining over for two decades. So…” He shrugs. “So I thought I’d bring him a little present.” He smiles and says to Crux, “Surprise.”
I just stare at Corla, unable to accept that this is really happening. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Obviously we didn’t know she was the queen bomb, or he’d never have brought her here,” Crux says.
“Where did you get her?” I ask Serpint. “She ran weeks ago. I figured she’d be safe by now.”
He shakes his head at me. “She was almost there. I got her in the Cetus System.”
“But that’s—”
“I know,” he says, deflating. “So close to the Hydra System, you can taste it. I took her before she could be… defused, I guess. I was coming back from Hydra System and we stopped on Cetus, and I just kinda… bumped into this situation.”
“And your first inclination was to steal her?” I say, raising an eyebrow.
“I am the Booty Hunter,” he says. “It’s pretty much what I do.”
“Did you open this?” I ask Crux.
“No, we knew there was a tracker on her. We knew it’d be activated if we unfroze her.”
I sigh. “Poor Corla,” I say. “Poor, poor Corla. She got out before we figured out how to deactivate the trackers.
“So she’s a bomb,” ALCOR says. “One that can blow me into the deep dark for all eternity?”
He sounds pissed.
“Yes,” I say. “She is. And if she’s opened up before she gets to Angel Station, you won’t have to worry about a tracker. Because she will detonate. We smuggled her out just after she was activated.”
“Who was the target?” ALCOR asks.
“I don’t know. They didn’t tell me any of that.”
“What was your job back in Cygnia?” ALCOR asks.
Well, here we go. I guess this is it for me. I look at Serpint. Memorize his eyes. The way they glow, the way he looks at me now and all the ways he’s looked at me over the past three days. And regret everything. Ever coming here.