“Josephine Harker was a Walker I recruited and trained, and though she was new to Walking, she was very, very good at it. She used this to her advantage and slipped away while the rest of us were captured. I didn’t sense her, and neither did Lady Indigo. She, along with TimeWatch Agent Avery Jones, came to our rescue. It is because of them that we escaped as we did. However, Lady Indigo formed an energy link with Josephine that would have allowed her to track us here, even through time. We severed that link, which means we are safe from her for now. Unfortunately, Josephine was killed in the process.” As hard as all of that had been to say, it was nothing compared to what I had to get through next.
“Her last wish was to have her spirit used to jump-start this ship.” A murmur went through the crowd from those who hadn’t been present for that discussion; I fought to control the wave of guilt that swept over me, to ignore the voice in my head that told me I didn’t deserve to be standing before them like some kind of leader. I’d let us get captured, gotten several of us killed, and then used my first recruit just like our enemies would have.
Forcing myself to continue, I said “J/O and Jai are overseeing the process of bringing power back to the ship. Once we’re up and running, we’ll see how far the engines will take us. In the meantime, our priorities are twofold. First, we have to get the ship in order. This is our temporary base of operations until we can get back to InterWorld Prime, which brings me to our second goal.
“When last I saw it, InterWorld Prime—or InterWorld Alpha, as I’ve been calling it—had been detected by a HEX ship. They’ve thrown the engines into overdrive and punched it, but HEX is right on their tail. This means they can’t stop, which means they can’t help us. Everyone on that ship, including the Old Man, is trapped until we find a way to help them.”
I let that sink in, already dividing them up into groups in my head, sorting out who would be best for what. It was surprisingly easy; I knew my team and their capabilities, and I was passingly familiar with a handful of the others here. Joeb knew many of them better, so I could work with him to place people into teams. By the time the murmuring had died down again, I’d figured out the people I needed.
“Joeb, Jo, and Josef, with me. Everyone else, get to the living quarters and pick a bunk. They’re all pretty messed up; you’re responsible for cleaning yours out, but don’t just move any junk or debris into another room. Take it all the way out to the courtyard. You three,” I said to Joeb, Jo, and Josef, who’d stepped forward. “The Old Man’s office. You, too,” I told Avery, who had been leaning one shoulder against the wall, arms folded, listening quietly. He fell into step behind us, and as we left I heard the others start filing out toward the living quarters.
It still boggled my mind that people were just . . . doing what I told them. No one had said a word nor asked a
question nor wondered why I was giving orders. Granted, I was the only one who currently knew everything that was going on . . . which led me to the third part of our mission, the one I hadn’t told anyone about. Yet.
I’d chosen the Old Man’s office because it was a secure room with one entrance, one we could see from any angle. I still wasn’t taking any chances with J/O, and I’d already learned my lesson about the possibility of traitors in our midst. The only other one of us I was unsure of was Avery Jones, because he wasn’t one of us, but it was better to keep him with me than let him wander around unsupervised.
“Joey . . .” Jo paused in the doorway to the Old Man’s receiving room. It still existed in my memory as the personalized, semicozy office space the Old Man’s assistant Josetta had always kept, not as the wreck it was now. There had been comfortable, plush waiting chairs and a soft, colorful rug, and Josetta’s desk had been covered with knickknacks and multicolored Post-its. It had been one of the few rooms on base, aside from our own individual ones, that showed any sort of personality.
Now it was covered in a layer of fine dust and ash, the rug long since disintegrated, the desk overturned, and the chairs rotted. Jo stood in the doorway, her wings fluffed up slightly in alarm. “Why here?” she asked.
“Because it’s the closest thing we have to soundproof,” I said, ushering Joeb, Josef, and Avery into the Old Man’s office. “And I have things to say that can’t leave this room. Come on.”
She hesitated a moment more, then visibly steeled herself and crossed the threshold. I knew how she felt; like we were intruding, standing in shoes we had no right to even think of filling.
I’d been feeling like that since I first got here.
“I called in you three for a few reasons,” I began. “First, I trust you. Second, I need you.” I looked at Joeb.
“Joeb, you and Jai are the only senior officers I have, and I’ll need Jai here for a while. You have more experience than any of us with extracting Walkers, and that’s what I need you to do. Put together a team or do it solo, it’s your call, but I need you to go get more of us. As many as you can find. You’ll need Hue to sense them; I’ll show you how.”
He nodded, seeming unsurprised by the request and (to my relief) unbothered by the notion of working with my mudluff friend. Many of us (including myself, not that it had stopped me) had been taught from the beginning that MDLFs were incredibly dangerous, so most of my teammates had never quite grown to trust Hue.
“Josef, you’re in charge of clearing out the debris. We need clear hallways, and access to the equipment lockers. I have no idea what, if anything, is in there; it’s completely blocked, Josephine . . . and I weren’t able to get in.” I paused for a moment, a half second after her name. I couldn’t help it. Maybe if we’d been able to get more equipment out of the lockers, she would have had more of a chance against Lady Indigo. Maybe if I’d done anything differently . . .
Josef nodded amiably, his curly head barely brushing the ceiling. “I can probably move most of it myself,” he said.
“Get J/O to help you if you can’t, as soon as he has the ship up and running.” He nodded again, and I turned to Jo. She was getting the worst job, but I knew she’d be the best at it. She was practical and organized, and sometimes seemed to have more common sense than everyone else put together.
“Jo, I need you to put together several teams in charge of getting the facilities up and running. The kitchens, lavatories, and infirmary are the priorities. We managed with two of us, but there are over twenty now, and with Joeb’s help”—I glanced to him briefly—“there should be more. Soon.” Both Joeb and Jo nodded seriously. As I’d hoped, Jo had accepted the task without complaint. I made a mental note to make it up to her later, somehow.
If there was a later.
“Okay,” I said, taking a breath. “Joeb gets first priority on Walkers, then Josef, then Jo. Work it out.”
They looked at me, then each other. There was a moment of silence, then Jo went back out to Josetta’s waiting room, where I could hear her digging around for anything that might be useful for taking notes. Josef nodded to me and followed. Joeb stopped to give my uninjured shoulder a careful squeeze, then went out after them.
“Not bad,” Avery said. “You almost sound like a leader.”
“Glad you think so,” I replied, “because you’re about to get debriefed.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“You said your people found J/O wandering through the timestream, and you cleaned out the virus and brought him here. Tell me more.”
He folded his arms.
Just when I thought he wasn’t going to answer me (and I didn’t have any idea what I intended to do if that were the case—I could threaten him, but I wasn’t sure I could take him in a fight even were I at the top of my game, which I most certainly was not . . . ), he shrugged and spoke. “My people picked up an anomaly in the navigation system.”