CHAPTER 5

“F irst time off-planet?” Ballga, the grizzled old mechanic to whom we were introduced during our quick tour, shoots me a grey-whiskered smile as she enters the cockpit. She’s obviously Tileah, though I’ve never met someone from the catlike species before. She slips past me, Tori, and Vince in the passenger zone and straps into a seat with a six-point harness next to the captain.

Her question is rhetorical, I think. A family of our pretended status could never afford even the most basic leisure travel. Or maybe it’s an acknowledgement of the mixture of sickness and terror I can’t act off my face as I adjust the harness around my bulging middle.

“Yeah, something like that,” I manage. The first time in anything less than my own private suite on a luxury cruise liner, anyway. Last time I left the planet’s atmosphere, I was as high as a satellite and tangled in the limbs of some dignitary’s son while our parents schmoozed at the embarkment party without so much as a vibration to ripple the surface of their cocktails.

In comparison, this ship is a tin can strapped to a stick of dynamite. The engines vibrate ’til my teeth knock together. But doubt over the integrity of the vessel isn’t what has me on edge. It’s the knowledge that if we’re discovered, there’ll be nowhere to run.

I glance up from adjusting my harness and start. Ballga’s staring over her shoulder at me with intent feline eyes. I realize my response didn’t exactly sound holy, so I add, “Our safety is in the hands of Nature.”

I hold her gaze even though I’d rather look anywhere but into those canny slit pupils. I need to seem sincere. I dig deep, trying to channel the ghost of a trusting little girl na?ve enough to believe things work out for good. A little girl who had faith in the gilded smiles all around her, long before they turned out to be lies.

But the memory of that child only repulses me. I look away, running my fingers over the coarse-woven fabric pulled taut across my belly.

Ballga reaches back to place a weathered hand over mine. The pads of her palm are rough, and her fingers are tipped with retracted claws that gleam a dull brown. “Don’t fret over your young one, dear. I birthed three litters in transit and every last kit was as healthy as a lion.”

I manage to look up and give her a tight-lipped attempt at a smile. Thankfully, the old female seems satisfied to interpret my anxiety as maternal concern. She pats my hand again, then turns to the captain to report on the status of the engines.

With her eyes off me, my shoulders relax .

Mitchell nods as he listens to Ballga’s report, his fingers flying over a dashboard of blinking touchscreens. He moves like I do when I’m handling my decks, simultaneously entering a separate set of commands with each hand without missing a word of Ballga’s report. He’s clearly modded for multitasking like I am. Surprising, for the captain of such a small, bare-bones freighter.

To Mitchell’s left, Sam monitors a bank of gauges. He keys in a command with a webbed hand every so often, eyes never leaving the dials.

Tori slides her hand into mine and squeezes. She’s shaking, and I don’t think it’s from the rumbling of the engines. She knows as well as I do that Extraplanetary Customs and Immigration is the last obstacle between us and freedom. And the riskiest. I squeeze back.

On my other side, Vince pulls off his prayer cap and musses his flattened locks. He leans over and whispers in my ear. “Not to worry. If anything happens to the bun, your devilishly handsome and virile husband is willing to do all that’s necessary to cook up a replacement.”

I jab him in the ribs with my elbow even as the corners of my mouth curl up. Cocky bastard knows how to lighten the mood, I’ll give him that.

Up front, Mitchell listens as Sam runs through what sounds like a memorized checklist. The kid flips a switch on the dash or keys in a command as he recites each item .

His competence makes me wonder if I’ve misjudged his age. Sam’s a Varun, the same as Sana, and her kids seemed to develop at the same rate as human children. But that could speed up or slow down.

I watch him adjust a blinking toggle. It’s weird that the most elite university-school on Varus never bothered to cover the basic biology of our planet’s native sentients. Nothing about their culture, either. I didn’t realize how one-sided my education was until I lived in the Underground and experienced the other side of life on Varus for myself.

“External indicators,” Sam recites, stretching blue fingertips toward the overhead panel. It’s too high. He clicks out of his harness and jumps but doesn’t quite reach the knob.

Mitchell ruffles Sam’s hair affectionately and reaches up to snap the indicator into position. “Few months and you’ll have it no problem at the rate you’re growing.”

Ballga’s been murmuring into a headset, but she grins and looks over at the two. “And at the rate this kid’s eating , we’ll need to install a second refrigeration unit.” She presses a coarse-furred palm to her earpiece, listens for a moment, and adds, “We’re cleared for liftoff.”

“Strap in, kid,” Mitchell says to Sam. The young captain looks over his shoulder at us and smiles. “Here we go—your countdown to freedom. ”

I search his sincere-seeming expression, trying and failing to figure him out. He’s got to be lab-born. Clearly modded. Got to have come from money. Yet here he is running flights out of the godforsaken Wastes over the Underground. Treating refugees like equals. It doesn’t compute.

He turns back to the dash. “Liftoff in three… two… one…”

I squeeze Tori’s hand and grit my teeth against the increasing vibration of the engines. There’s a sudden jerk, then it’s like an invisible hand mashes me downward, trying to pancake me into my seat at the same time as the seat slams my body skyward. I try not to blow chunks.

The view of the red-sand shipyard has disappeared from the cockpit’s narrow strip of window. Blue and grey and an occasional wisp of white whizz past.

Then blackness takes over.

The pressure on my body vanishes. I’m weightless, floating a centimetre or two off my seat with only the harness keeping me in place. Vince’s discarded hat floats up out of his lap. The hem of Tori’s veil rises.

“Powering on artificial gravity,” Sam says in his checklist voice. There’s a click, a deep hum from somewhere in the bowels of the ship, and my ass is sucked back into my chair.

The blast engines have quieted. My teeth no longer clatter. Everything feels normal.

I exhale and release my death grip on Tori’s hand .

“Just Customs to go,” Mitchell says over his shoulder, “and then we’re really on our way.”

God, Customs. The moment of truth.

I guess my fear shows, because Mitchell adds, “Don’t worry, they couldn’t care less about small-time cargo. I’ve never been boarded in the three years I’ve been on this run. And Ballga’s been—hang on.” He presses his headset to his ear and turns his attention back to the dash.

Sam is already out of his harness. He turns on his knees and pops his head over the back of his seat. “He was gonna tell you Ballga’s been doing this for like a hundred years . She’s really old, and she—”

“I’m not that old, kid.” Ballga reaches around Mitchell’s seat to pop Sam playfully on the shoulder, then turns to us. “But I saw near three decades of refugee runs from the other side of Capital City before I took this job, and I never lost a man, woman, or child to Border Security. They let a lot slide under the radar. These government agencies, it’s not law enforcement they really care about. Their job is to protect the interests of the higher-ups. And we all know what that means.”

“House Medici-Cruz.” Tori almost snarls the combined name of the quadrant’s two most influential Houses.

My eyes shoot to her veiled face in surprise.

Medici Mining and Cruz Pharmaceuticals warred for control of the planet’s most valuable resource for generations, until marriage united them twenty years ago. The union brought stability and prosperity, at least to the higher strata of society. Upper-crusters like Tori’s mother adore House Medici-Cruz.

This is the first time I’ve heard Tori talk politics.

But there’s no time to speculate over why she’s so negative about the ruling House. I need to turn this conversation back to what’s relevant. “Please forgive my lack of knowledge,” I address Ballga in my best Mother voice, “but mightn’t the freighter’s vital signals give our presence away to Customs?”

Ballga waves dismissively. “Not ships out of the Wastes. Not unless they suspect a high-profile criminal might make a break out this way, the kind with a big bounty on his head. But that almost never—”

“That was Customs.” Mitchell’s brow furrows as he pulls off his headset and hangs it around his neck. “Seems they’re on high alert. Everyone entering airspace from within a two-hundred-kilometre radius of the Underground has to wait their turn to be scanned before they’re cleared for lightspeed.”

My stomach drops in a way that has nothing to do with zero gravity. Tori sucks in a sharp breath.

“And… will this scan reveal us?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm.

“We have a workaround for situations like this.” Mitchell seems undaunted by the prospect of increased security.

“A workaround? ”

He grins. “They determine how many people we have on board through a combination of thermal scans and a read on the amounts of oxygen and CO 2 our life support system is processing for recirculation. We put you three in the engine room, and they can’t distinguish your body heat from the heat of the engines.”

“And for the life support readings,” Sam cuts in, bouncing on his knees as he peeks over the seat, “we fake a malfunction.” He looks to Mitchell for confirmation. “Right?”

The captain nods. “They won’t be able to get a satisfactory read on us. We’ll apologize and tell them we’re having a minor issue with faulty output, nothing to worry about, and they’ll shuffle us through.”

Vince and I share a look.

These guys are assuming we don’t have tracking implants. The devices are rare among unskilled labourers and considered an affront to Nature by the Children. Telling Mitchell and his crew could blow our cover. But if we don’t say anything, Customs will pick up the signal when it’s our turn to be scanned.

My mind races for an excuse, but Vince clears his throat. “I’m… afraid we were ashamed to speak of it before, but under the circumstances…” He looks to me, as if silently requesting my permission to speak.

I nod. He’d better have something convincing up his sleeve.

Vince’s features morph into a mask of chagrin. “We were formerly indentured in a household that blasphemed against Nature, demeaning our bodies with tracking chips.”

Good call. I play along, hanging my head and covering my face with my hands, like I’m too ashamed to be seen.

“It was only one of the many ways our unholy masters mistreated us,” Vince continues, patting my thigh as if reassuring his wife that there was nothing she could have done. “We could not allow our unborn child to be corrupted. That is why we fled.”

I allow a false sob to escape my lips, work up some crocodile tears, then uncover my face. It isn’t difficult to make my eyes water when I’m so legitimately freaked out by the situation we’re in. “Please,” I say, turning a desperate look on the captain, “Is there no way we might avoid discovery?”

Mitchell looks between me and Vince, brows furrowed. I’m not sure if he’s going to buy it. The thought of these people realizing the way we’ve played them brings the heat of real shame to my face.

Mitchell’s hazel eyes bore into mine. Finally, he sighs. “Yeah, we’ve got a hiding place for you.”

-X-

I lie on my back in a shallow horizontal compartment beneath the engine room, forcing myself to take slow, deep breaths. The ceiling crowds my vision, so near that its steel surface fogs each time I exhale. The weight of the false belly crushes my abdomen, worsening the sense that I’m not getting enough air.

I might go bat-shit in here.

To my left, Tori drags in a faint breath. She finds my hand and clasps it tight, her palm as sweaty as mine.

On my right, Vince’s bigger body presses into my space, thigh plastered to mine, elbow jamming my side.

This is not how I imagined getting cozy with him.

“We’re sardines.” I worry the fabric of my dress between two fingers. “Dead fucking sardines.” Mr. Lee used to sell them in his shop. I still remember how it turned my stomach the first time I peeled back the lid of a thin, rectangular tin to reveal their tight-packed bodies and round, staring eyes. Now here we lay, packed in metal like dead fish, waiting helplessly for a Customs officer to slide open the secret floor panel and discover us.

“At least they had a place we could hide,” Tori says. She knows how well I cope with stillness and waiting. She’s forcing a cheery tone for my sake, but I’m too familiar with the dynamics of her voice to be fooled. She’s as close to freaking out as I am.

“Every refugee ship out of the Wastes has an insulated compartment like this,” Vince says. “We’re not the first to fly the coop with implants. ”

When Ballga helped us in here, she explained that the space is encased in a magnetic material that trips up sensors, blocking the signal from our tracking devices. Its location, sandwiched below the blast engines and above the magnetic field of the gravity simulator, will disguise the telltale insulation material as well as our thermal imprints.

I can only trust that she’s telling the truth. I hate how helpless I feel. Hate that we’re at the mercy of these people who would turn us over in a heartbeat if they knew who we really were.

Maybe they already suspect. Maybe they saw through our act when we admitted we had tracking devices. Maybe they’re trapping us here to keep us from fighting back while they alert Border Security. And I can’t do a damn thing but lie here and force myself not to lose it to claustrophobia.

Seconds tick by, bleeding into minutes.

Vince tries a few wisecracks, but Tori and I are too tense to take his bait. We fall silent.

Besides the rustle of my right hand incessantly worrying the scratchy fabric of my skirt, there’s only the sound of our breathing. Tori’s breaths are shallow and shaky; Vince’s are slow and deep. The air slogs through my lungs as heavy as syrup. I swear the ceiling drops lower every time I blink. The side panels squeeze in on us .

I’m seriously considering a tiny quarter-dose of Delirium. Just to keep the anxiety from taking over and making me claw my way out of here like a crazy person. Besides the ten larger vials in my luggage, I still have the half-empty one stashed in my bra.

But if Border Security finds me high, I’ll be even more helpless than I already am. A tranquilized animal impounded without a fight.

I shove temptation away.

But once it’s got its claws in my brain, they keep digging in, working to puncture my resolve. The small, hard line of pressure where the vial rests against my sternum is suddenly impossible to ignore. Every time I inhale, the elastic of my bra tightens, imprinting the vial’s cylindrical outline into my skin.

I’m not addicted. Not anymore.

During detox, the medics at the Centre implanted mods to counteract the chemical aspects of addiction. But there’s no easy way to sever the threads of emotional dependence that tangle with my memories and weave themselves into my present, surfacing to remind me that Delirium could lift the weight of guilt, dull the sting of memories, ease anxiety.

I grip Tori’s hand tighter to keep my fingers from straying to the vial. I can’t get sucked in now. Not when we’re so close to freedom.

I tell the thoughts of Delirium to fuck off. I tell myself that even if Border Security isn’t about to discover us, I need to be on my toes so I can keep playing Mother.

But no one would know.

I’ve got experience feigning sobriety while high. I haven’t been clean in my father’s presence since I was thirteen, and he never once found me out. He only chucked me into rehab because a freak blood test at boarding school gave me away. If my own dad couldn’t see the difference, this crew of straightlaced non-users wouldn’t have a clue.

I’ve unconsciously shoved my free hand into the bodice of my dress, and I’m running my fingers along the smooth glass surface of the vial. It’s warm from my body heat. Just stroking it soothes my anxiety. I contemplate pulling the vial out to look at its silver glow.

“Having fun over there, DJ Girl?”

My breath catches and I pull my hand out of my dress. I rotate my head toward Vince. He’s wearing a half-grin as he eyes me.

“I’m not—” A noise stops me mid-thought. A faint tapping that’s growing louder, reverberating through the thick metal above us. My mods allow me to hear it a moment before Tori and Vince do.

Footsteps. They’re coming closer.

Tori stiffens next to me. She hears the sound now, too .

Hopefully it’s Ballga coming to tell us we’re in the clear and let us out of this three-person coffin.

But that can’t be the soft padding of Ballga’s pawlike feet. It sounds like the drumming of several sets of boots, heavy and masculine. Aside from Vince, who’s trapped in here with us, only Mitchell’s walk would sound like that.

My heart is suddenly slamming against my ribs.

We’ve been boarded.