“I got it, Kay,” she said, slipping past promises she’d never keep. Ari clapped Kay’s shoulder, before he headed out of the museum exhibit and down the stairs that led to the heart of the mall. Ari moved to the balcony to watch him go, taking in a bird’s-eye view of bleached consumerism. The ceramic tiled walls and floor were white. So were the identical Mercer storefronts: the symbols for grocery, pharmacy, clothes, and spaceship hardware among the most visible.
Worst of all, even the light pouring from the lofted ceiling was blinding and pale, the kind she couldn’t look straight into without wincing—which was exactly what Mercer wanted.
“Don’t look at us looking at you,” Ari murmured, her nerves prickling. She couldn’t blame Kay for sweating in this place. The Mercer Company didn’t mess around. Ten years ago, the Mercer Company placed a barrier around planet Ketch, sealing everyone in—their response to the Ketchans, who had begun speaking out against the company’s monopolistic tyranny. Not even communications could pass through. The Mercer Company proclaimed that the Ketchans had become hostile, that they were bad for the economy and therefore must be walled off. Mercer had become more than just a greedy corporation with a monopoly on goods and services for the entire galaxy—they were the galaxy. They controlled everything from people’s food to healthcare to the freaking government.
Around the same time that Ketch got walled off, Kay’s moms found seven-year-old Ari abandoned, starved, afloat in a piece of space trash. They’d taken her in, loved her. They’d even tried to find a way to get her through the barrier and back home to Ketch—and gotten arrested in the process. That was three years ago, when Ari was fourteen, and there hadn’t been any word since. They could have died in a Mercer prison or on a factory planet. Kay said not knowing was the easiest part; that was his favorite lie.
“Welcome to Heritage Mall.”
Ari managed not to shout. The words came from the image of the Mercer Company’s CEO, known only as the Administrator, whose bust was now projected above her watch screen.
“We’re so glad you could join us today on Heritage. All pilgrimages to Old Earth are rewarded with a twenty percent discount on souvenirs and government documents.” The man’s blank eyes and digitally smooth skin hinted at intrigue, explicit knowledge, and caustic mischief. Ari wondered if he looked that way to everyone or just her. “Whether you’re in the market for a keepsake pebble from terra firma or a quickie divorce, the Mercer Company is at your service.”
The Administrator’s face disappeared. Ari swore inside her smelly rubber knight’s suit and silenced her watch. “It’s just a pop-up ad,” she murmured to herself. “He’s not actually on this starship. It’s just an ad.…”
“Look, my sweets! A knight!” An elderly couple swept into the Middle Ages display, as swift as a pair of roaches. They were on top of her in a moment, groping her suit, all up in her personal space.
“Hey!” she shouted. “No touching!”
Unfazed, the old man with dyed dark hair held up his watch. “Can I take your picture with my wife? We honeymooned on Lionel more than fifty solar cycles ago, back when the planet was much more Mercer friendly, you understand.”
The sprightly old lady posed on Ari’s arm, and all of a sudden Ari was seeing spots from a brilliant bang of light.
“What the—”
“Spotlight flash. Erases all shadows and lines digitally before the picture is even taken.” The woman chuckled. “It is a bit bright.”
“Take mine now!” the elderly man yelled, handing off the watch to his wife, gripping Ari and repeating the blinding-by-luminescence. “Now let’s do one with the sword!”
Ari snuck a fist inside her helmet to rub her stinging irises while he pulled her toward the only display in the museum that wasn’t roped off. A golden, bejeweled sword stuck out of a stone in the center of the fake-cobble courtyard. Its handle was worn with smudges and dirty fingerprints. Gross. How many people had yanked on it since the last time it had been cleaned?
“Give it a tug! I’ll stand by and act surprised, like, ‘Oh, heavens, we’ve got ourselves a new King Arthur!’” he shouted.
Ari sighed and gripped the handle. At least the galaxy-worth of germs was only getting on Kay’s old rubber armor. When the flash shattered the air once again, she gave the sword a heartless tug. It didn’t budge. “Sorry, pal. Looks like we’re stuck in the dark ages.”
He waved her words away like they were annoying liberal chatter and beckoned for his wife to come over. “Now you take our picture,” he ordered.
Ari held out her hand for their seriously large watch while they got in position. Her eyes caught the platinum diamond on the back that denoted elite Mercer status, the shining proof that this piece of tech had access to data that most people’s did not. How easy would it be to type a few words and find out what kept both Kay and her awake in the endless night of deep space?
Ari glanced at the couple. They were discussing who should stand where, dissolving into a full-on argument. “Can I check out the photos you’ve taken?”
“Sure, hon,” the woman said. She elbowed her husband out of the way in order to give the sword her own series of entitled tugs.
Ari opened up the universe-wide web and typed in the search bar. She didn’t think about what kind of alarms might fly up when she entered her adoptive mothers’ names; she didn’t care. She would give anything to hand Kay some answers, a bandage for their wounds. Besides, what were the odds that Mercer was watching this particular platinum account at this exact moment?
She tapped ENTER, and the Mercer Company emblem spun lazily before blinking wide open with information on her parents’ arrests. It listed their names, dates of birth, planet or spaceship of birth, and their joint status: Incarcerated. Deceased: Blank.
“They’re still alive,” Ari breathed, hardly believing it. She clicked on LOCATION, but a flaring red light darkened the screen. Ari dropped the watch, spun on her long legs, and ran from the blinking warning:
REMAIN STATIONARY.
MERCER ASSOCIATES ARE COMING TO ASSIST YOU.
Ari ripped off the knight costume and slid into the command chair on Error. She put her feet flat to the metal grating of the floor and engaged the ankle lock on her magboots. Hauling the crisscrossing safety belt across her chest, she pulled it more taut than usual. Only loose enough to breathe, and barely that.
Kay appeared in a flash of sweaty fear, his watch still buzzing from the alarm Ari had sent. He locked in, lording over the control panel. His frenetically moving fingers ticked against Ari’s anxiety, a tally running ever higher against them.
If this were a normal takeoff, Kay would have wandered into the cockpit five minutes after their preset hour, still in his boxers and clutching a mildly poisonous energy drink. This was entirely too reminiscent of the last time they’d run from Mercer—after their parents’ arrest.
Kay pressed the anchor release once, twice, before hammering it with his fist. An echoing bang announced that their tiny lifeboat of a ship had disengaged from the mall parking dock. He wasted no time in gearing up the thrusters, pushing toward the bumper-to-bumper lane of compact spaceships waiting to pass through the parking booth.
“Don’t suppose you paid for parking at the kiosk on your way out,” Ari said with a badly timed chuckle.
Kay groaned and hit the accelerator. They shot over the lane of ships, over the security bar at the parking booth. The alarms blazed, and he hit max throttle. Ari and Kay could have been mirror images of each other, leaning forward, staring at the small mouth of an exit, willing it to stay open long enough to blast through. They were both holding their breath—until they burst out of the parking area and into the black of space.
“If they weren’t suspicious of us before, they are now.” Kay punched the speed while the floating mall shrank behind them, far enough to show off the threateningly large Mercer fleet orbiting the stationary starship.
“Are they following?” she asked.
Kay stared at the rearview screen. And stared. “No.”
Ari scrubbed her face and let out a little scream.