I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t cry from the pain. No way was I going to give Hwan the satisfaction. “If you imprisoned my brother,” I gasped out, “how do I know you won’t do the same to me?”
A memory nagged at me: Hwan’s sword in his office, the scent of my brother upon the hilt, suggesting a secret they had shared. What kind of game had they played at? But it was too hard to think through the searing pain.
“Little gumiho,” Hwan said, and I bristled. “Do you really think you hold a winning hand right now?”
I opened my eyes long enough to shoot a glare at him, although it wasn’t very impressive, because I was curled up on the floor.
“You should accept my offer before my patience wears thin,” Hwan said, “or your brother suffers any longer.”
If he wanted my cooperation, that was exactly the wrong thing for him to say. “Forget it.”
“You’re going to have to learn to control that temper,” Hwan said, as if I was going to listen to him like he was a teacher. “Very well. I’ll leave you until you come to your senses. The guards have ways of making that happen sooner rather than later.”
With that, Hwan turned his back and strode out of the brig.
I listened to his footsteps and cursed myself for not taking the deal, if only to get me out of there. I couldn’t bring myself to shout after him, though, not even when the stakes were so high.
I’d just have to escape some other way.
Despite my shaky limbs and the agony running through my body, I dragged myself up onto the bunk. Falling asleep took forever, partly because of the pain, partly because of the bright light. I shielded my eyes with my forearm, but that didn’t help as much as I’d hoped. Keeping my arm bent at that angle was its own special form of torment, because hitting the force shield had done something to all my muscles. I kept tossing and turning, hoping for a more comfortable position, until I finally drifted off.
“Jang!”
Why was someone calling for me?
“Jang!”
I groaned and turned on my side to face the wall, then regretted it immediately. I had never realized the muscles between my ribs could hurt that badly.
“Go away,” I mumbled, then blinked in confusion. I’d responded to Jang’s name in my own clear soprano pitch.
Then the owner of the other voice penetrated. It was Sujin.
I sat up, moving more carefully this time. Yes? I mouthed, looking around me, wondering if this was a trap.
I saw nothing in the harsh light, not even a shadow out of place. Then I remembered that dokkaebi had invisibility caps, even if I’d never seen Sujin put theirs on before. I couldn’t pinpoint the goblin’s location by smell, so they must have been standing on the other side of the force shield.
“How did—?” I started.
“Shh,” Sujin hissed now that they had my attention. “Can you change into the shape of Lieutenant Hyosu or something?”
I didn’t waste time with questions, like where were we going. I was just grateful that Sujin was talking to me at all.
I called to mind Hyosu’s smiling face. After all the classes I’d had with her, it was a familiar one. But my first attempt to imitate her went wrong, and Sujin cleared their throat in warning. I glanced at my shoulder tabs—by force of habit I’d magicked up the tabs for a cadet, not a lieutenant. Hastily, I concentrated and fixed the mistake.
While I was sorting that out, I heard clicking on the number pad, then a faint thrum as the force shield went down. I didn’t waste any time sprinting out of the cell, pain or no pain. I collided into something that I couldn’t see. The breath whooshed out of my lungs.
“Ouch,” Sujin said plaintively.
“Sorry,” I said. “Why—?”
“No time,” they said. “We’ll talk about it later. As a fox, you must have good hearing. Can you follow my footsteps if I stay invisible?”
“Yes,” I said.
Sujin didn’t speak again while they led me out of the brig. I wondered how they’d gotten into this area—perhaps they’d used their invisibility to slip in during a shift change or something.
I couldn’t make myself invisible, and Sujin needed their cap to avoid arousing suspicion, but I had some tricks up my sleeve. As we approached the exit, I put on a frown and used a little Charm to convince the guards that I—Hyosu—had been sent here on an errand. I also persuaded them not to question the fact that there was no record of the lieutenant having entered the brig. They signed me out without a fuss. My attempt to forge Hyosu’s signature wasn’t very good, but it wouldn’t last long on the screen, and I bet that people didn’t check handwriting very closely most of the time.
We took an elevator up two levels. Several enlisted crew members waited patiently as Sujin and I got out. I admired Sujin’s deftness more and more. Being invisible was handy, of course, but you still had to make sure you didn’t bump into people, especially when they crowded close. In one instance, a corporal wrinkled her nose and glanced around, and I hastily used Charm on her. Whether she was a human with an unusually good sense of smell or someone with supernatural heritage, I didn’t care. I had to make sure no one caught Sujin helping me.
From the direction we were going, I guessed we were headed for an escape pod. It took an effort to hold my head up high and smile at people as I passed the way that Hyosu did, especially when my nerves screamed that I was going to be unmasked as an imposter any moment now. The continued ache in my muscles didn’t help. Fortunately, I wouldn’t have to use Charm for much longer, because the dock was close.
Still, I couldn’t afford to get overconfident. It was only a matter of time before my escape was discovered. At that point Captain Hwan would turn the entire ship inside out and try his best to recapture me. Worse, he might do something to my brother to force me to turn myself in again. I had to get to the Pearl so I’d have the upper hand.
Sujin’s footsteps slowed as we approached an intersection. I cocked my head to make sure I understood where they were going, then followed them around the bend. My pulse raced as we approached the emergency escape pods for this section. Was this actually going to work?
That wasn’t all. Standing guard at the doorway to the pods was Haneul. She smelled of fear and dismay, but I could also see determination in her expression.
I slowed to a stop in front of her and said in a hushed voice, “It’s me, ‘Jang.’ ”
“We have to hurry,” Sujin said, almost in my ear.
I jumped, even though I knew Sujin was there. Haneul didn’t bat an eye, but I guessed she was more used to dealing with her invisible friend. I longed to ask why they were helping me. It would have to wait—I didn’t want to delay my getaway.
The escape pods had very simple entry codes that everyone in the crew knew, even me. But Haneul was the one who punched it in. As the door to the pod swished open, eerie violet-tinged lights flickered on and cool air whispered past me.
“Get in,” Haneul said.
I hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know how to pilot this. . . .” And there was more to it. Despite the drills on the Pale Lightning, I felt uneasy about escape pods. On the holos, they were always haunted by the ghosts of people who’d died in them. I didn’t need to fly with yet another spirit who was feeling vengeful and might bring me bad luck.
“We can handle that,” said Haneul. “We’re coming with you.”
My heart expanded in gratitude, and I flashed them a grin. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.” I clambered inside, taking the farthest seat, and began strapping myself in. Haneul was next. Then Sujin, who pulled off their invisibility cap and appeared piecemeal, like a jigsaw assembling itself out of the air.
“This is going to buy you a lot of trouble,” I said to the other two, seriously this time. “You could face court-martial, maybe even . . .” I couldn’t say the word execution.
I hadn’t thought Haneul’s face could get any paler. “Sujin managed to sneak in and listen in on what the captain said to you,” she said. “I swore loyalty to the Space Forces and the Thousand Worlds, but what Hwan did, coercing you by threatening your brother, isn’t right. We have to get you out of here.”
“But you don’t have to desert as well,” I said, as much as I hated the thought of being alone.
“What, you want to leave us behind to be tiger snack food?” Sujin said.
“Don’t joke about it,” Haneul said sharply. To me, she said, “We only have one chance to get this right. We’re hoping the captain will want you alive and he won’t shoot down the pod.”
I gulped. “What about the EMP mines?”
“I thought of that,” Sujin said smugly. “I downloaded a map of the mine locations on the sly. We’ll be able to navigate around them.”
“Then we’d better hurry down to the planet so we can look for the Pearl before the captain reaches it,” I said.