She dropped her hand. “Yes, thank you.”
“Turn it up, P.” Aly didn’t want her to see his face. His head scarf was tangled up somewhere with his belongings. And if she knew she was talking to the most wanted criminal in the universe, he doubted he could keep her from screaming. “And don’t apologize either. She’s fine.”
Pavel let out what sounded suspiciously like a sigh—damn learning technology—but the light intensified again.
She had long black hair and bangs that covered her eyes.
The girl pawed her hair away from her face like she’d read his mind. She was kind of a mess, in the way that pretty girls looked messy, like she’d just washed up from the ocean, raw—open up a clamshell and there she’d be. She had dark gray eyes and sharp features, but her skin was tan and her cheeks were broad. It gave her a mixed look, maybe a blend of native and second-wave Kalusian blood. She was swimming in an expensive-looking jacket, two rows of buttons down the front, like the kind he’d seen diplomats wearing on the holos. It obviously wasn’t hers.
“If you’re willing to live with the guilt of burning my retinas off, then that’s on you.” She had a full mouth pulled into a straight line—like she was born to argue.
“A thief trying to lecture me on manners?”
“Says the guy who was stealing to begin with.” She jerked a thumb toward the service cart.
This piece of work. Ballsy as hell. Turns out when she wasn’t biting people, she was running her mouth. “You owe me,” he said.
“I’ve got nothing to give.” But Aly saw her bring a hand to one pocket and skim it, as if for reassurance. A tell. It was the same way folks gave themselves away in the Wray, absentmindedly tapping the pockets where all their important stuff was.
“Then what’s in your pocket?”
“I said I have nothing to give,” she repeated. “And anyway, what would you want with a rusty old coin?” She held it out in the palm of her hand, and when he reached for it she grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the light.
Aly froze. But it was too late. He’d been recognized.
“You,” she whispered. She dropped his wrist and pushed him away, but she didn’t run or scream out like he thought she would. Instead she pressed herself against the wall, so he backed up to give her some room. Her expression—the way her mouth parted, her eyes squinting like her brain was locking into that aha moment this very second—it reminded him of someone he knew. He just couldn’t think who.
“Kill the light, P,” he said quickly, and Pavel did. They’d plunged from bright light to total darkness. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her. “Don’t be scared.”
“Who says I’m scared?” She didn’t sound too confident, but she wasn’t screaming her head off either. “Maybe you should be scared.”
“I am,” he said honestly. For a lot of reasons. That it would all end here. That Vincent had died for nothing. That the Ta’an had been wiped out and the planets would go to war.
“It really is you,” she said. “I can’t believe it. You’re Alyosha, from The Revolutionary Boys.” Then: “Where’s the other one? Where’s Vincent?”
“Dead,” Aly said shortly. Maybe Aly was a murderer. Anyone who rolled with him ended up dead. “I buried him.” Aly could feel the back of his throat closing off, his eyes watering, a deep blue filling up his chest.
She was quiet for a bit. “They said you kidnapped him.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked bitterly. “That I’m a murderer? Some sort of terrorist?”
“Is that what you are?” she replied evenly.
Aly couldn’t read her tone. “It’s what everyone believes, isn’t it?” Even if she couldn’t see him, he could still feel her eyes searching his face. It reminded him of the first time they’d brought a camera on board the Revolutionary, and how he didn’t know what to do with his hands.
“If all we are is what people think we are, then we’re all screwed.” There was a knife’s edge to her voice. She sounded pissed. Or scared. Or both.
“Well, we’re all screwed anyway,” Aly said, but her words bothered him. He knew as well as anyone that it was other people’s rules that mattered. In the real world they told you who to be, not the other way around. It’s why he pretended to be Kalusian when he first joined the UniForce—it just made life easier. “You’re crazy, you know that?” Aly told her. “I could be dangerous.”
“Let’s say I am crazy and you are dangerous, and we call it a draw? Besides,” she added, “you haven’t hurt me yet, and you could’ve. That’s a gold star in my book.”
“That’s a pretty low bar . . .” Aly said.
Just then there was a faint hiss as the doors opened at the northern end of the hold. Aly snapped back to the present just as the beam of a flashlight shifted across the floor. The girl grabbed his wrist and pulled him down to crouch behind what looked like an old MRI machine nearby. Pavel had enough sense to go still and keep his lights dark. No one had come in here for a full twenty-four hours.