Ephraim breathes out, a sigh of both frustration and despair. “We’re not getting back down to the ground again anytime soon, are we?”
“Several hours, if the pattern you guys IDed holds up.” Virginia’s working at her dataread again, the dim green glow from its display painting her features in eerie, witchy light. “So this is just as bad as you were thinking. If not worse.”
“I’m sorry,” Riko says, more gently than Noemi’s ever heard her speak before. “You’re in this predicament because you tried to help me.”
“Because you got yourself caught and put everyone in Remedy at risk.” Ephraim sounds as ominous as rolling thunder. “Because you did something as stupid and cruel and wrong as bombing the Orchid Festival. Seriously? You think going after a bunch of pop stars is going to change the worlds?”
“Earth won’t listen to anything less!” The gentleness has already left Riko’s voice. “How many lives have been lost because of Earth’s carelessness, their greed, their—”
Virginia cuts in. “Let’s definitely have a loud philosophical argument while our only hope of escaping is trying to find a way out, so she can’t concentrate.” Her thumbs keep working the dataread’s controls, the clicking sound unnaturally loud in this plastic cell. “That would also alert the guards that we’re here! Another plus! I’m so glad I decided to break into prison with a group of geniuses.”
Noemi ignores the sarcasm and simply drops to one knee beside Virginia. “What are you trying to do?”
“See if I can change the pattern of the cell pods. It’s a totally separate system from main security, though—I have to start over from scratch. Hours at least. But hey, it’s still going to be dark then, right?”
“I hope so.” Noemi’s not familiar with the latitudes and longitudes of Earth, with the seasons here. Neither is anyone else in this cell. She hates feeling so ignorant and helpless.
The cell shifts again, lurching sideways this time. Ephraim mutters, “You never mentioned these things were so rough.”
“On Wayland Station, they weren’t.” Noemi wonders whether their accommodations were a little more luxurious than she’d realized, or whether the cell pods have been specifically engineered to be rough. Maybe the jolting around is part of the punishment. “This has to be the worst-case scenario.”
Then she straightens as she hears it: an insistent metallic thumping, coming up the side of the cells.
“Uh, guys?” Virginia finally looks away from her dataread. “What’s that?”
Riko shakes her head. “I’ve been here for almost a day now, and I’ve never heard that sound before.”
It has to be one of the guards. But no alarms are going off, and Noemi would’ve thought they’d be more likely to seal the cell pod, freeze it, withdraw it from formation somehow. Instead they’re sending someone straight up the side.
“This,” Ephraim says to Noemi. “This is the actual worst-case scenario.”
She forces herself to snap out of panic mode. You have to decide whether to surrender or fight.
However the guard is climbing the side, he’s using both hands to do it. That means any weapon he has is one he’ll have to draw. No matter how quick he is, that still takes time—time Noemi doesn’t intend to give him. She won’t knock him to the ground, because that would kill him and he’s only doing his job. But if she can overpower him and get the weapon for herself, maybe they have a chance.
“Everyone move back,” she commands as she gets herself into defensive position, one meter from the door. “Stay behind me.”
Ephraim says, “You don’t have to—” but Noemi waves her hand at him, shushing any further noise. Soon the person approaching will be able to hear them.
The thumps come closer, then closer again. Noemi realizes she’s holding her breath.
A dark shape leaps through the open door, terrifying and then almost immediately familiar—
Noemi gasps. “Abel?”
Abel stops short, staring at her, before he says, “I’m malfunctioning.”
“No, no, Abel, you’re okay. It’s me.” She takes a step forward, hardly trusting the evidence in front of her eyes. But it is. It’s Abel, here in front of her.
“Thank God,” Virginia mutters. Noemi doesn’t answer. She can only stare at Abel.
Overcome, she wraps her arms around him, hugging him tightly. He embraces her, too—first seemingly by reflex, then wrapping his arms around her more tightly and burying his face in the curve of her neck.
“How is it possible for you to be here?” His voice is muffled by her shoulder. “Why are you on Earth?”
“I came to look for you.”
“You came here for me?” He sounds so bewildered, like he can’t believe anyone would ever do that.
“I had to know you were going to be okay,” Noemi says. It’s as much of an explanation as she has. “We saw you with Mansfield, in his garden.… You looked happy. I thought, all right, he’s back home and everything’s good—”
“Mansfield lied.” Abel’s voice actually shakes. She hadn’t known his emotions could affect him physically like that. “He lied about everything.” Abel pulls back from her then, as if he has to look at her again to make sure she’s real. But that’s when he sees the others. “How—”
“We’re asking ourselves the exact same question, buddy,” Virginia says. “The. Exact. Same.”
Ephraim cuts in. “Why aren’t you with Mansfield?”
Abel does something Noemi’s never seen from him before; he stares at the floor for a moment, avoiding the question. He says only, “I’m not going back there.”
“So you just decided to break Riko out of jail out of the goodness of your mechanical heart?” Ephraim obviously thinks something’s up.
“Thanks for that, by the way,” Riko says. “But how did you get up the side?”
Virginia sighs, exasperated. “He’s the most sophisticated mech in the galaxy! That’s, like, nothing for him.”
More quietly Riko asks, “He’s a mech?” Nobody answers that one.
Noemi’s astonished brain keeps trying to make sense of this, and failing. “Why are you here, Abel?”
“I thought that if I freed Riko Watanabe from prison, she might help me look for you,” Abel says. He smiles crookedly, and Noemi does, too.
“We were both looking for each other the whole time,” she whispers, hugging him again. Abel embraces her in return, more gently than before—
“Hey, this is super heartwarming,” Virginia says, “but should we maybe finish escaping from prison now?”