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  My chest aches even more now, but this time it also floods with heat. I turn into him and lay my head on his chest. His heart pounds against my cheek as he folds his arms around me and rests his chin on my head.

  “So you don’t hate me for this…for going to find Liddick?” I say, letting my eyes close like that will somehow create a buffer in case he protests. He chuckles a little instead, then lets out a long sigh.

  “I could never hate you, Jazz. I love you.” He says it like he’s never coming back again, and the warm ache in my chest turns cold and hard and heavy. “I’ve always loved you.”

  Hot tears track my face, and no matter how hard I squeeze my eyes shut, I can’t stop them. My throat swells shut, choking off anything I could think to say.

  He pulls me more tightly against him, solid and steady, and I swallow as hard as I can in an effort to talk, but it doesn’t help. I curl my fingers into his shirt and press into him, wondering how it’s possible he can still smell like the sea…like home.

  He clears his throat and loosens his hold around me, then moves his hands to my face.

  “What?” I look up at him, scanning his face for the source of his sudden urgency. He shakes his head like he’s fighting himself over whether to answer me or not, but then seems to settle it. He takes another breath and brushes his thumbs across my cheeks.

  “Just tell me you love me,” he almost whispers, and it’s the last thing I would have expected him to say right now.

  “Arco, you know I…” I start to say everything in my head at once, scrambling for all the explanations I know he deserves about why I’m going, how it has nothing to do with my feelings for him, but nothing else comes out. There are too many words and not enough all at the same time.

  “He drops his hands from my face and looks back out the window, then crosses his arms over his chest like he’s suddenly freezing. “I wish we never got on that sub…” he says to himself, shaking his head again before he chuckles humorlessly and takes a deep breath.

  “If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t be in a position to fix the world right now.”

  Arco looks at me for a long time as the corner of his mouth tacks to one side.

  “You know something…” he starts, then smiles to the floor. “I’d tear the world apart myself if it meant I could just fix us.”

  The same spike of heat I felt through my chest at The Seam building stabs me again, and I can’t get a breath.

  “What are you saying?” I ask, but the hollow in my chest is all the answer I need.

  “I don’t know how to be this close to you while you’re so far away,” he starts, searching my face for something he lost. He swallows a few times and straightens, pushing a hand through his hair. It falls in a series of small waves as he shakes his head again like he’s fighting against whatever is trying to come out next. “I thought it was Liddick who was always here with you, even when he wasn’t, but you’re the one who’s with him.”

  His words are quiet, strangled, and they burn in my chest.

  “It’s not like that, Arco. If it were you out there—if it were you everyone thought betrayed us, I’d come for you too. I wouldn’t let them write you off like they’re doing now with Liddick.”

  He nods knowingly, and my words just fall around him like so much rain.

  “Jazz, do you really think for one second I’d ever let anything take me away from you like that in the first place? That I’d ever let myself be in a position that would put everything at risk? I’d burn down whole worlds to stay in yours, Jazz. But I can’t make you stay in mine.”

  “Arco, don’t you see I just can’t let everyone believe something that’s not true? What if he’s in trouble? What if he’s hurt?”

  Arco’s expression doesn’t change from absolute conviction. His sharp features cut the shadows made by the muted glow of the port-cloud outside the window, making him look like a statue come to life.

  “Nothing would keep me apart from you,” he says without missing a beat. “Nothing except you always running the other way.”

  “I’m not running the other way! Why is this so black-and-white for you? He might need help. Can’t you see there are some things that are just out of our control?”

  His smile sparks again, just enough to light his sea-green eyes for a fraction of a second before it fades just as fast.

  “I’m still trying to make peace with that,” he says, then gives me a small nod.

  A ring of light begins to glow around the perimeter of the ceiling, illuminating everyone still asleep around the living room of Calyx’s hab. She walks into the room already dressed in her white jumpsuit and long, white coat.

  “Good. You’re up. Rally the others. It’s time to move.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Sojourner

  Arco

  I was awake most of the night with my eyes closed, just watching her breathe through this tracker implant. It puts everyone in a little box in the corner of my vision somehow, just to the left and right. I can minimize each box to the bottom or drag one to the center like it’s all on a screen. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I haven’t decided yet. Arwyn was right when she said it would hurt more. She just didn’t mention when it would stop.

  We’re in coats and moving out the door in minutes. I overhear Liam saying something to Calyx about using the slide, which doesn’t sit well with her at all. They exchange a few more words before he pulls Lyden into the conversation, and I strain to make out what they’re saying. Lyden’s expression tightens, so apparently, he doesn’t like whatever Liam is talking about either. I take a few quick strides so I can hear them better, but Jax walks into my path and then falls in line with me.

  “My dad said Tark has the ships ready. They’re not far from here.”

  “How are they not conspicuous? Aren’t there patrols or something here?”

  “I think so. He said they’re sending one of the B class ships to take us there, and we only have a window of a few minutes before it will have to leave again. Must be weaving through a rotation.”

  I nod to him before he makes his way up the illuminated path to Avis and Ellis, then notice Liam walking a wide line with Vox and Jazz a few steps ahead past the cylindrical buildings in the distance. I watch the gap between them and us grow. I watch her get farther and farther away. Every step I take creates the vacillating feeling of either wanting to run as fast as I can after her, or ripping my eyes away and pushing forward.

  I press my teeth together against the frigid air. The edges of her long, white coat whip behind her as she walks down the glowing white street, the light bouncing off the cylinder buildings like it’s all some kind of perfect virtual reality wasteland. She turns around, and the wind blows her hood back. Her dark hair flies all around her as she clutches the coat around her neck. A breath stops in my chest when she holds up a hand and waves. I almost break away. I almost chase her down just so I can put my arms around her one more time. But I know if I do that, I’ll never let her go again.

  I nod, then force my feet to move in the opposite direction. When I look back over my shoulder after a handful of steps, she’s gone.

  She’s gone, and I let her go.

  “Arco! Helloooo!” Avis chirps at me from somewhere up ahead. “You coming?”

  Everyone is about fifty feet in front of me, and I have no idea when that happened. I jog to catch up and notice Azeris and Zoe aren’t with our group.

  “Where are Zoe and her dad?” I ask.

  “They went back to The Seam building to transfer to Azeris’s hab in the Badlands. Where have you been?” Ellis chuckles, and I feel like a mollusk. Get it together, Hart…

  “The Sojourner will be here in about three minutes. Is this everyone?” Tark says, coming from around the corner of the smooth, cold building to meet us.

  “Azeris took his daughter back,” Calyx informs him. “Everyone else is here, except…Liam took his group to the Slide.”

  “What?” Tark’s expression sh
arpens.

  “I tried to stop him. But in all honesty, it’s the only chance they have.”

  “He went where? Did you say he took them to the Slide?” Jack crosses the room in a few long strides to Calyx and Tark.

  “He’ll handle it,” Calyx tells him, holding up a hand to Jax, Myra, and Fraya so they stop advancing to catch up to Jack again.

  “No, we need to go pick them up right now.”

  “There’s no time. They’ll be all right. Liam has…friends there,” Lyden says.

  “What the hell happened to your checks and balances? We were up all night configuring the workaround specifically to get them into the Mainframe Building and back out. They won’t make the next rally point if they’re not using that!”

  “Liam doesn’t think Liddick is there anymore,” Calyx says. “And Jack, he’s probably right.”

  “That’s not the point! They were supposed to go there just to be sure, then meet us at rally two tonight. That is what he told us they would do if we built that workaround.” Jack’s eyes are wild as blood crashes into his cheeks.

  “He knew you’d stop him from searching if he didn’t agree,” Lyden says.

  Jack rounds on him and grabs his shirt. “You knew about this? You knew he was just letting me think we were designing a simple little out and back, all so he could take my daughter to the Slide?”

  “What the hell is the Slide!?” I shout. My heart hammers in my chest, and suddenly no one looks honest. No one except Tark. I take a few steps toward him and ask again. “What is the Slide?”

  He sighs, then glares at Calyx and Lyden before turning back to me. “It’s the underbelly of the Grid—a port-carnate hub to the deep net. The last access port was configured between the shift tracks here in Admin City, but it always changes.”

  His words just keep slamming into each other in my head, jockeying for position. For meaning.

  “What do you mean, configured? It’s an extension of the deep net or something?”

  “Or something,” Jack answers, then scrubs his hands over his face in obvious frustration.

  “It’s made from syphoned port-cloud atoms, and it’s constantly shifting so the patrols can’t find it,” Tark adds calmly, but Jack is about to pull his hair out.

  “So they’re in danger? Is that what you’re saying?” I ask, trying to get him to spit it out.

  “It’s a slip link from Lima, but—“ Lyden finally says, and that’s all he has to say because that, I understand. Everything in me ignites. Lyden meets my eyes and holds up a hand like he’s trying to walk me back from the edge of a building. I glare at him.

  “You let your mollusk brother take Vox and Jazz to a deep net portal with prisoners from Lima?”

  “Listen, I know it sounds bad, but he has allies at the Slide.”

  “Do I look like I give one fresh pile about your skod brother’s allies!?” I yell, pushing toward him until Jax moves between us. I clench my hands into fists and focus all my energy on swallowing the rest of the bombs exploding in my lungs.

  “We just have to go back and get them,” Jax says, turning to face Tark.

  The tops of two Sojourner ships surface just beyond the illuminated track we’re all standing on. They settle onto it after Tark taps something into the console on his forearm.

  “No time,” he says. “We have sixty seconds to board and sixty to get clear of the reconfiguring perimeter seal before the sweep comes. We’ll figure this out, but not here. Come on!”

  “We can’t just leave!” I shout.

  “They’re already gone, Mr. Hart! We’ll find them, but we have to get out of this sweep path right now!”

  He grabs my shoulder and something in me cracks. “Get off me!” I yell, pushing him as hard as I can.

  He stumbles backward, then narrows his yellow lion eyes at me as he straightens. He puts his hands in the air at his sides, then lowers his voice and angles his head toward the bullet-style mini-ship in front of us.

  “Mr. Hart, you have about forty seconds to get on that bus if you don’t want to end up in Lima yourself.”

  “Good! Then there would be at least one person there who wouldn’t be aiming to sell Vox and Jazz to deep net bottom feeders!” I spit the words at him, moving away again until Jax crosses to block my view.

  “Come on—we can’t do anything here,” he says. “We’ll circle back…”

  I take one step, then another, feeling acid push through my veins. Before I know it, we’re moving quickly down meshed metal steps. Calyx takes everyone down a few more steps, and I follow Tark, Ellis, and Avis to seats near the long, narrow cockpit window. I blink hard a few time to be sure, and then I am sure—Eco is behind the pilot’s console.

  “You?” I say, trying to stare a hole through the center of his light-up head.

  “Yeah, me. You gonna help me fly this thing or what?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Friends in Low Places

  Jazz

  I forgot how cold it was here.

  The wind keeps pushing my hood back and whipping my hair into a frenzy, but if this place is sealed, I’m not sure where the wind is even coming from.

  “What’s this blow about?” Vox asks Liam, likely eavesdropping in my head like she tends to do.

  “Air circulation. This place exists for the servers underneath, not for people,” he answers.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, noticing how he seems to be walking with a purpose. I almost have to jog to keep up with him.

  “A place I know that can help us. We’re not going to find anything going through The Seam’s channels. Just keep up.”

  Vox and I exchange glances. I don’t have a good feeling about this, I think toward her. She raises a burgundy eyebrow.

  What could happen?

  I don’t know. That’s why I don’t have a good feeling about this.

  The streets—or, the wide, illuminated paths that pass for streets up here—are nearly empty. The occasional person with peacock blue or lavender eyes walks by wearing the same kind of long, white coats we are, but there aren’t nearly as many of them as there were when we all first arrived.

  “Where is everyone now?” I ask. Liam looks back over his shoulder at me, then scans the building behind me. He signals at us to catch up to him, so we do.

  “Just keep your eyes ahead of you. Don’t look at me while we talk, OK?”

  “Why not? Where are we going?” Vox asks, not even giving him a second to explain.

  Liam sighs, annoyed. “Because I don’t want to draw any attention.” He looks over his shoulder again at the tall, smooth cylindrical building that’s getting smaller in the distance, then faces forward again. “We’re going to a place called the Slide. It’s connected via slip link to Lima prison.”

  “Wait, what?!” I ask, turning to him abruptly before I remember his instructions to keep looking forward. I jerk my eyes back to the edge of the illuminated path ahead. “And what’s a slip link?”

  “It’s a port-carnate hub with jumping coordinates,” Liam explains. “Untraceable. The whole place is no bigger than an oxygen bar. I know some people there who can help us find who hijacked Liddick’s transfer from Azeris’s hab, then pulled him offline after he reset the Grid server.”

  “Didn’t the people at The Seam already say they traced him back to the Mainframe Office?” I ask.

  “That won’t help us find him—we need to see where he went after he left there.”

  “And we’re supposed to do that how?” Vox asks, trying, like me, to keep up with his long strides. “Does this place close in ten minutes or something? Slow down.”

  “It’s going to move soon. We need to hurry.”

  “Move where? Will you just explain this all at once already?” I ask, hearing the impatience in my voice.

  “Crite, look—the Slide is a big room, OK?” Liam says, now walking even faster. “It’s made from syphoned atoms from the port-cloud. The whole place dissipates, then reconfigures somewhere else abou
t every six hours, which is about how long it takes for all the levels of the port-cloud to cycle, so the regulators never know the atoms being syphoned by the Slide are missing—it’s essentially a place that never exists,” he adds, exasperated.

  “If it assembles and disassembles just like that, how do they have a port-carnate hub there? Those are…complicated,” I ask.

  “You understand Lima is populated by criminal geniuses, right?” Liam clips his words, and I get the distinct impression something else is going on here.

  He’s not telling us something, I think toward Vox. She nods quickly at me.

  “And these are your friends?” she asks.

  “If we hurry. I don’t know who will be there after the coordinates shift, so we need to be in and out before that happens. It’s here—come on.” Liam heaves a relieved sigh, then leads us to the edge of the illuminated street. He turns to face the open black sky, which fades into the gray haze of the port-cloud below. He holds a small, black disk straight out in front of him, then turns it and takes several steps to the right before putting the little disc back in his coat pocket. “OK, we need to jump.”

  I gape at him. “Jump…where? There’s nothing out there!”

  “Yes, there is. There’s an opening in the ion dome here—this section is just a placeholder to keep the atmosphere in check. We can move through it.”

  “I’m not jumping into space, Liam. Are you split?”

  “Jazwyn, we don’t have time for this. Trust me. The Slide is directly below us, and the only way in there is if you jump with me.”

  A stream of heat shoots up from my chest and floods my cheeks. His voice is Liddick’s. So is his face and the set of his mouth when he insists. I shake my head to clear the image and refocus.

  “But then how do we get backup here!?”

  “We—“ he starts to answer, but then stops abruptly when Vox runs past us and leaps off the edge of the illuminated path, hugging her knees to her chest like she’s cannonballing off the rock ledge into the ocean back home.

  “Vox!” I shout after her, but Liam immediately covers my mouth with his hand and pulls me into him, then throws us both over the edge. His hand muffles my scream, and all I can do is grip his wrist as we free fall.