CHAPTER 21

B allga prowls into the sunken oval living space and takes Vince’s vacated seat, so now I’m caught between the captain and his overprotective surrogate mother.

Vince was right. It’s awkward as hell in here. And he didn’t cut the tension by leaving. He escaped before the real drama started.

Granny Cat strokes her brown-and-grey brindle coat with one hand, claws clearly visible, and narrows her eyes. “Maybe you ought to get some rest before tomorrow’s operation, Rich Girl.”

Mitchell shoots Ballga a raised eyebrow, completely unaware that she’s threatened to murder me if I don’t stay away from him.

The memory of Ballga back on Dino Planet with blood all over her mouth flashes before my mind’s eye. I glance at the door, tempted to take her suggestion.

But no. This is ridiculous.

I can’t let Granny Cat cow me into slinking away without the information I need. “Actually,” I settle beside her, as close to those claws as I dare, and smooth down my poofy skirt with both palms. “I need to ask Captain Mitchell a few questions. ”

Ballga can’t possibly consider my talking to Mitchell inappropriate conduct when she’s sitting right here playing chaperone. And if she does, she can go suck a light drive cylinder, because I need answers, and I need them before that appointment.

I’m not going to beat around the bush. I fold my arms, look directly into Mitchell’s stupidly perfect green-brown eyes. “What’s your real name, Captain?”

Mitchell’s jaw tightens. He returns my stare in silence, expression hard as ice.

I keep my eyes fixed on him, waiting.

Finally, Mitchell’s gaze flicks to Granny Cat. “Ballga, would you please check on Sam?”

“I don’t think—”

“I’d like to speak to Gemma alone.”

Oh, Granny Cat is pissed .

But there’s nothing she can do. She has to obey the captain. Ears flattened, hackles up, tail lashing like an angry snake with a mind of its own, she heads for the exit.

I hear the door hiss open—or maybe the hissing comes from Ballga—but I don’t take my eyes off the captain. “Well?” I press. “Is Mitchell your real name, Captain? ”

“Is Gemma yours?”

Shit. He has me there.

“Yes.” I squirm under the weight of my own lie, causing the sofa to squawk. I can’t expect Mitchell to tell me the truth about his name when I’m clearly not being honest about my own. But I sure as hell can’t tell him the truth, either. “No.” I wince. “Sort of?”

Mitchell, whoever he is—the captain—raises an eyebrow.

I sigh. “It’s my real nickname. It’s what my mother called me.”

The captain’s jaw unclenches slightly; the ice in his eyes fractures just a bit.

I’ve never shared this with anyone, but he told me about finding the love of his life in a body bag. I can give him at least one small part of the truth. “Grandfather used to say my eyes were like sapphires. He called me his Little Gem, and it sort of morphed into Gemma over the years. It was before”—I look down, watch my fingers worry a clump of tulle that sticks up from my skirt—“before the drug stains, obviously.”

When I dare to look up, Mitchell’s features have softened and he’s leaning toward me slightly. “It’s a good name for you. Your eyes are beautiful.”

My idiotic heart wants to believe he thinks that, even though he’s just trying to get me off his case about his name. But there’s no way someone like Mitchell could see past the stains written all over me. Especially when they’re still shining bright. Still a part of my present.

He clears his throat and repositions, hooking an arm over the backrest, though his shoulders remain stiff. “Like your name is sort of Gemma, my name is sort of Mitchell. It was my mother’s surname before she married my father.”

I eye him carefully. “Why did you change it?”

“I didn’t just abandon my post when I left the military. I left behind my family responsibilities as well. I was sick of it all. I had come to hate my father and everything he represented. Taking my mother’s name was a way to… disassociate from my father. Dr. Reid’s the one who altered my identification chip.”

Which makes sense of her slipup with his name. But it can’t be the whole story. “Seems like you and Dr. Reid know each other pretty well.”

Mitchell sighs. “We worked together. A long time ago.”

“Like how you and Alice worked together ?”

“Yeah. Wait…” Mitchell’s eyebrows shoot up. “Do you mean like, were we together? ” He shakes his head. “No. Not even close. Dr. Reid was already one of the most brilliant military surgeons in the Federation when I was just a boy on my first tour of duty.”

I look down at my dress and flick an imaginary speck of dust from the tulle I’ve been playing with. “And yet you two seem pretty chummy.”

Mitchell runs a hand through his hair, clearly annoyed. “Gemma, what could you possibly have against Dr. Reid? ”

Besides that she’s mate material and I’m not? Besides that she potentially holds my most intimate secret in her hands? That she could determine my future?

I can’t tell Mitchell these things, so I go on the offensive. “You bring me to her. You offer to pay for the hack job. Like Vince said, how do I know I’m going to come out with all my organs? How do I know you don’t have some deal where you bring her runaways and they’re never seen again and no one ever misses them? How do I know—”

“You know that’s not what’s going on.” Mitchell pins me with his eyes. “You’re worried because she mentioned your tracking chip.”

I stiffen. Consider denying it. But I’m too frustrated to care at this point. I hate this feeling of being trapped with only bad options. I stand and lean toward Mitchell over the coffee table. “What if I am? What if I don’t like being beholden to you? What if I’m worried she’ll let my so-called private information slip to the paying customer who also happens to be her good buddy or whatever you really are to her?”

The ice in Mitchell’s eyes is long gone, replaced by something that burns. I’d say hurt, but I can’t possibly have that power over him. Not me, a runaway rich girl, an addict. An obligation.

Anger, then. It must be anger .

He leans forward. “And… what? You think she’ll tell me your real name and I’ll send you back to the family that hurt you? I won’t do that. I would never do that.” He presses a hand to his temple and shakes his head like he’s at a loss to understand. “I don’t get you, Gemma. You’re so smart, yet you take the stupidest risks. Trust the worst kinds of people.” Mitchell throws his arms wide as his voice rises. “How the hell can you trust Vince , but you won’t trust me?”

“Because Vince is real and you’re a lie!” The words are torn from me of their own accord. Screw it. If Mitchell wants the truth, I’ll give it to him. “I trust that Vince is selfish. I trust that he kills for money. I trust that he wants to use me. That stuff isn’t pretty, but it’s real. It can’t hurt me.”

Mitchell’s looking at me in genuine confused shock, like my crazy is finally starting to show through the cracks, but the dam’s already broken. There’s no stopping this flood.

“You…” I point a shaking finger. “You’re dangerous. You make me feel safe. You make me care . You lull me into believing lies . No one is kind like you. No one is selfless like you. There’s no way you can be real.”

Mitchell stands, which makes the finger I was jabbing toward his face line up with his abdomen. He reaches for my hand, but I shrink back.

“You’re right.” He speaks softly. “That person you think I am? He’s not real. Just because I’m not a selfish, manipulative womanizer like Vince doesn’t mean I’m perfect. I’m far, far from it.” He lets the hand that reached for mine hang in the air for a beat and some idiot part of me wants to take it. But I already resolved that I can’t reach for him again.

I’ve come so close to trusting the captain. Closer than I’ve come to trusting any man since that day. He may not want me, but he’s treated me with kindness and respect. Made me believe there might be some tiny spark of something good in me. But even someone as perfect as Mitchell must have a breaking point. And that breaking point, if it hasn’t been my unwanted advances or my glitches or my stains, will surely be my name.

And any tiny step I’ve taken toward solid ground because of Mitchell’s kindness will fall away all over again when he hears my name and the warmth in his eyes drains away. Turns to disgust. Hatred. Blame.

I can’t do it.

I step back.

Mitchell lets his hand fall, and I really do see hurt in his eyes this time as he searches my face. “Is it so impossible to believe that someone could care about you? Want you without wanting to take advantage of you? Take care of you without taking something from you?”

I shake my head. “I believed in shit like that once. I believed, and it broke me.” My stupid lips tremble when I speak, as if I’m going to cry. But it’s not sadness I feel. It’s rage. It’s that coal in my chest starting to smoke. My trembling lips are the earthquake warning that a volcano’s ready to blow. “I believed all the pretty, artful, fool’s-fucking-gold lies that dripped from my family’s lips. I believed right up until I watched my father murder my grandparents in cold blood.”

Hot tears pool at the corners of my eyes. “That’s when I realized he killed my mother, too. And you know why he did it? Because of me. Because I was the heir, and he wanted me under his control. He killed everyone in my mom’s family who could stop him from using me, including his own wife. The blood, Mitchell, the blood. It’s all over me.” I hold my hands up in front of my body, palms facing him as if to show him they’re coated in red. “It’s the only real thing I have left.” I look from my hands to the green-brown eyes that seem so honest but can’t be . “So no. I don’t trust you. I can’t trust you. I can’t go through that again.”

“Gemma…” Mitchell whispers my name like an apology. He raises his hands at his sides, palms out in an echo of my gesture, but on him it looks like he’s trying to show me he’s unarmed. Maybe even… like he wants to hold me. Comfort me. My foolish heart drums fast, urging me with every beat to throw myself into his open arms and hope he wraps them around me.

That’s why I step back, back, backward up the lip of the sunken living room; backward toward the door, eyes fixed on the captain so he can’t make any sudden moves. I’ll bolt when I get to the door. Run like I always do .

But I’m so distraught that I misjudge the distance and my back hits the wall next to the doorway instead. The automatic hiss and slide as it opens and shuts tells me I triggered the sensor.

But I don’t look at the door. My eyes are locked on Mitchell, because my attempt to flee seems to have triggered something else. Something in his eyes is suddenly… dangerous. Like he might have his own volcano inside, ready to blow.

“You want blood?” He prowls toward me. “You want real?” He steps up the lip into the raised part of the room. “If your trust is bought with blood, then you can trust that I’m drowning in it. Oceans of blood, Gemma. Oceans that make the blood on your hands—or even on Vince’s —look like a puddle in comparison.”

His eyes remain fixed on mine as he draws nearer. I press back hard into the wall, but somehow, I can’t look away.

“Five years ago, if I’d discovered criminals pretending to be Children on my ship, I’d have assumed they were spies and I’d have shot them, Gemma. I’d have shot you . Without hesitation.” He stops right in front of me and braces a hand on the wall beside my head. “Or maybe I’d have tortured you to find out who sent you, what you had planned. I was good at that, back then. Getting people to talk. Your screams wouldn’t have fased me.”

He’s staring down at me and I’m craning to look up, and if I didn’t feel trapped before, I sure as hell do now .

How many times have I wondered about those atlas plugs on Mitchell’s neck, so at odds with who he is here, on this ship, with Ballga and Sam. How many times have I jokingly called him Captain Commando, and yet not truly believed he could hurt a fly. But this Mitchell? With the cold voice and the burning eyes. I can see him in body gear, guns built into his arms, bearing down on the enemy without mercy.

“And that’s not even the worst of who I was and what I did. Not even close.” He leans in, caging me further.

“I’m responsible for millions of deaths.” He pauses to search my face, like he’s making sure the reality of that number sinks in. “Millions. No matter how nice you think I am. No matter if I help tens or hundreds or even thousands of refugees. It will never make up for what I did.”

“I… I don’t understand.” My voice quavers. “I don’t…” The words catch in my throat, and something about that choking sound seems to startle Mitchell.

His eyes jump from my quivering lip to his hand on the wall caging me in, and he immediately lowers his arm. Stumbles back a step.

He shakes his head and looks away, running a hand through his hair. When he looks back, his shoulders have slumped slightly. His brows knit with concern. The hard, cold soldier has melted away .

I shiver. It’s scary, seeing this unknown side of the captain. But it also makes me realize how truly restrained he’s been with me. With all of us.

Mitchell takes another careful step back. He drags a stool over, one of the ones that hover opposite the banquette at the dining table, and lowers himself onto it, obviously trying to make his body smaller and less threatening. “It’s… it’s why I got out. Why I changed my name. How I know Dr. Reid.”

I swallow. “I thought… I thought you got out because of Alice.”

“No.” He looks regretful, maybe even ashamed, as he shakes his head. “The military was my life. My family’s honour. And Alice… it gave her death meaning. I wanted to believe she died for a good cause. When she was killed, I pushed away the doubts and worked harder than ever. Got to be one of my father’s most valuable chess pieces .” He spits the words with disgust. “Until he put me on his pet project with Dr. Reid.”

I search his face. “Pet project?”

He rests his elbows on his knees and places his head in his hands, looking down, scrubbing his fingers over those plugs in the back of his neck. It takes a minute before he sighs and looks up at me. “What do you know about PharmaServe?”

I had taken a half step toward Mitchell, the urge to comfort him almost taking over, but his question throws me back against the wall. PharmaServe. This is not the direction I expected the conversation to take. I force my expression to neutral, press my palms flat against the wall behind me so they don’t shake, and try for the blandest, most basic answer I can give. “They… deliver medical supplies to the war front.”

“You think that’s what they really deliver? Medical supplies?” Mitchell scoffs, but he’s not even looking at me. Almost to himself, he adds, “But that’s the story they sell, isn’t it? And they do it so damned well.”

I blink, not sure how to respond without giving myself away.

“You’re smart, Gemma. You went to Skyside.” His tone is weary, almost sad. “PharmaServe is the most lucrative subcorp of Cruz Pharmaceuticals. In what universe could bandages and suture kits make them that kind of money?”

“Well…” My heart pounds as I choose my words. My palms are sweaty, slippery against the stainless steel wall. I have to put on a good performance here. An act worthy of DJ Rollercoaster. “House de la Cruz and House Medici are allied by marriage. And Medici owns the Delirium mines. So, the money’s in the painkillers, right? Delirium-derived painkillers. To ease the suffering of soldiers recovering from battle injuries.”

I manage to keep my voice steady as I give the generic spiel I heard over and over again growing up. My family always boasted that the company served a great cause. In school, PharmaServe was lauded as a shining example of a business that valued the triple bottom line—not just striving for profit, but also serving the planet and the people. And, beyond that, the whole Federation.

Despite the internal corruption of the Highest House, I’ve always believed that at least one arm of the company was doing something positive.

“That’s what they’d like people to think.” Mitchell breathes in like he’s going to say more, then closes his mouth on whatever words were forming. He searches my face, like he’s not sure he wants to burst my bubble of ignorance. Maybe not sure I can handle whatever truth he’s withholding.

I almost don’t want to continue his train of thought for fear of what I might find. But a few stray numbers surface unbidden. A blurry memory of a holochart floating above a sleek boardroom table.

I was undoubtedly high at whatever meeting my dad had dragged me to for show. But those numbers… The quantities of Delirium being shipping to the front lines… Are there really that many wounded soldiers?

I look up at Mitchell. “But that’s… not the whole story, is it?”

He grimaces. “No. They’re…” He hesitates, but then his expression hardens. He looks me in the eye. “They’re forcing addiction, Gemma. Using Delirium to control the troops. And I was a part of it.”

Forcing addiction ?

I shake my head. Not even the Highest House would do something like that. And Mitchell would never—

But Mitchell’s expression is resigned, like someone forced to break painful but necessary news. “Just an IV connection built into the body armour, that’s all it takes. They start in training camp. Obey an order. Get a tiny hit of Delirium. Obey an order. Get another hit. Until they literally can’t disobey. They’re barely more than kids, the ones it’s forced on. Teenagers turned into dope-whores for the Federation. It’s cheaper and more effective than compulsion mods, and it works off-grid.”

Mitchell has no reason to lie, but…

“They couldn’t,” I say, even as a voice deep inside me asks, couldn’t they? “That… that can’t be legal. People would know.”

Mitchell’s laughter is like a knife turned against himself. “Nobody knows. Nobody knows because none of those soldiers come back. They’re the divisions that get sent to places no one in their right mind would ever go of their own volition. Places worse than the worst hell you could imagine. Soldiers whose lives are intentionally sacrificed for overall strategic gain.”

I don’t want to believe what he’s saying. And yet… it could so easily be another of the gilded lies. Another gold-plated work of art disguising death just beneath the surface.

Even knowing I’ve been fed lies my whole life, I still don’t want to believe Highest House could do something so blatantly evil. I just don’t think I can handle more weight.

“People would see the numbers.” My voice comes out small, choked. “Those kinds of casualties—people would question it. Their—their families. There would be public outcry.”

“Gemma,” Mitchell says it softly, puts his head in his hands again, like it hurts him to burst the little bubble of hope I’m holding onto that our society follows any kind of rules. “They don’t put the soldiers you count in those divisions. They put the ones who have no one—orphans and cheap clones and desperates from the dregs of society. People like Sam.” He looks up and the pain in his eyes is even more striking than the exploding bombs I saw that night in the cockpit. “If I’d placed Sam in an orphanage when his mom died, that’s where he would’ve ended up. Those kids go straight to the front lines at fifteen, and there’s no one to care whether they ever return.”

The weight of guilt, of complicity, presses on my chest so hard I can barely breathe. And the weight says, I know Mitchell’s telling the truth, even though I don’t want to believe it.

“There’s no public outcry. No, the public loves the progress we’re making, pushing into the outer territories like never before, and so few losses. ” Mitchell’s voice drips with self-loathing sarcasm.

I curl my fingers against the slick, tight fabric covering my chest, but I can’t grasp it. I can’t move the weight. It presses me down, down, down. I’m sliding down the wall, ’til I’m crouched on the floor. And still it pushes. I struggle to suck breath into my crushed lungs.

Mitchell’s expression is faraway, haunted. I don’t know if he even sees me slide to the floor.

“My father put me and Dr. Reid on the project, and we couldn’t stomach it. She left first. I followed a year later. The things I participated in during that year of reconciling what I grew up believing with what I was seeing —the orders I gave and the actions I condoned and the things I did with my own two hands—that’s what really keeps me up at night. That’s what your music helps me forget.”

His shoulders slump. All the anger has gone out of his eyes, and he seems… tired. Depleted. He finally looks up at me, seeing.

“Now do you trust me, Gemma? Now that you know I’m one of the worst human beings in the Federation? Is that more your speed? Does that put me above Vince? Will you finally let me help you now?”

Hot wetness trickles down my cheeks. I must be crying. I drag in air, but my breath catches on a sob.

Mitchell half rises from his stool. “I’ll never hurt you, Gemma. That hasn’t changed. I only hoped… hoped I could make you trust me.”

I turn away, press my cheek against the cool metal of the wall .

From the corner of my eye I see Mitchell sink back onto his seat. Put his head in his hands. Maybe he feels rejected. But it’s better that way. I don’t deserve the help he’s trying so hard to offer.

God. I deserve it even less than I ever believed.

All that weight. All those heavy, heavy golden lies. I never knew just how much they’d gilded. Millions of bodies. Bodies of orphans like Sam. I’m the heir to that weight, that rot, that lovely work of art.

Finally I look back at Mitchell, his hunched figure blurry through my tears, shoulders slumped and head in his hands like’s he’s being crushed by a weight just as heavy as mine.

Because… because he is .

The realization hits me like the cold shock of a wakeup alarm.

This whole time, I’ve believed the one thing Mitchell could never forgive me for was my name. My heritage. The sickening role my family has played in the refugee crisis, in Sam’s life, in all the darkness Mitchell strives so hard to relieve.

But all this time, Mitchell himself was directly involved. Maybe… maybe Mitchell could understand. Maybe he could be the one person in the galaxy who might really and truly be able to forgive me. To say there’s worth in me despite my DNA.

Or maybe he’s the one person who truly has the right, the full knowledge, to condemn me. The one person who could see not just an addict, a blue-haired street kid, a spoiled rich girl, but the real evil flowing in my veins. The dark inheritance. The only person capable of seeing all of me and saying with finality that I truly am unforgivable.

I wipe trembling palms across my face, slicking away the blurry wetness, and meet Mitchell’s eyes. He returns my gaze not hiding the sadness, the pain, the exhaustion, the guilt, and yet still somehow seeming open, inviting.

“Do you think…” My voice is a whisper. Terrified but… but hopeful. “Could you ever forgive someone responsible for that kind of evil? That much blood?”

Mitchell looks away, scrubs a hand across his face. When he turns back to me, the light in his eyes has gone dark. His expression has hardened to marble. “No.” He shakes his head. “Never. I… I couldn’t.”

I search his face. But it’s not open anymore. It’s not vulnerable. Not welcoming. I guess… I guess he can’t.

And I finally have my answer.

If the one person who knows the weight of it all can’t forgive me, I really am destined to be alone. I really am going to be running forever.