“And your mom told you about the safe house on Rhesto before she ran?”
“She’s gone on and on about it for years. A neurotechnologist from Derkatz turned up dead after the last summit. I never got details, but I got the feeling my mom was scared, like maybe it had been a deliberate attack.” Kara turned to face him. A strand of dark hair came loose, and she tucked it behind her ear. “She made me memorize coordinates, take self-defense classes. I know, like, six languages because she crammed them down my throat.” She looked down and started picking at her thumbnail. “I used to be ashamed of her. Thought she was a nutjob. A conspiracy theorist, you know? But when I came home that day, and our apartment was ransacked . . .”
Aly thought of Vincent’s room on the Revolutionary, just before the robosoldier had come in and nearly split his skull open. Vincent had saved him. His best friend, messy as hell and a lazy choirtoi—but he was a spy, too, and he’d died trying to do the right thing. He’d died because Aly had picked that day of all days to start a fight. Now they’d never talk taejis, mess around. He was almost glad he was offline, so he wouldn’t call up the memory over and over to torture himself.
“Hey.” Aly reached out to take her hand, not sure what made him do it. It was warm, and he felt that same jolt of electricity where their hands touched. After a split second, she pulled away. There was a confused look on her face, like she’d been woken up from a spell.
“I’m fine. We should get moving.”
Aly nodded, feeling stupid and embarrassed.
She slipped out of her jacket . . . and started to take off her shirt.
“What are you doing?” Aly asked, trying to turn away and cracking his elbow against the door.
She wore a loose tank top underneath her long-sleeved shirt. The tank top had a tiny pocket on the chest that had zero use except to draw his eye to it. He looked down at his shoes, at the ceiling, anywhere but at the tiny pocket. Her face was even worse—she was smirking.
“Calm down.” She began tearing her shirt into long strips of fabric, pulling out what looked like nail clippers to make the initial cuts. “See? Instant disguise.”
“I don’t think this is going to work,” Aly said firmly, as she motioned for him to squat down. As she wrapped pieces of cloth around his head, Aly scrambled to distract himself, but the cloth was still warm and smelled like her.
“Trust and believe, friend,” Kara said. Aly noticed Pavel trying to slide his camera under the door again, but he stomped on it—clamping it to the floor until Pavel eventually wiggled it back.
He’d always been nervous around girls, but keeping to himself had been an all right strategy—without fail, Vin would bring some pretty girls back to base and talk Aly up. Vincent was the ladies’ man, saying charming things, laying on the compliments. Aly was cool enough by association.
When Kara was finished, Aly stood up and squinted at his reflection. “Okay, this is definitely not going to work.” She’d wrapped cloth around his forehead and diagonally across his left eye and nose. “I look like a half-assed mummy.”
“I should’ve bandaged your mouth too.” She smiled at him in the mirror. “Look, it’ll work because no one actually wants to look at a victim. Even if they do want to look, they’ll steal a glance. They’ve been taught it’s impolite to stare.”
Aly wasn’t sure about her logic but really didn’t have any other options—she’d opened up a brand-new possibility for him, an out from his fugitive status, and a way to broadcast the truth. They just needed to survive long enough to get to Rhesto.
They slipped out of the bathroom, and he and Pavel followed Kara as they moved through a series of passenger cars toward the front of the zeppelin. She either knew her way around or was picking a route at random. There was no hesitation as she turned one way or the other, doubled back, climbed up a flight of stairs and back down a different one.
“We need to get to the cars with the labs in them,” she said over her shoulder. “We can hitch a ride on one of the vessels they use to transport supplies there.”
The lower the numbered capsule, the more streamlined the zeppelin became—the prettier too. The hallways were quiet and flooded with a soft light. The seats were made not of patched synthetics but brushed velvet. Instead of dozens of passengers packed on bench seats, businessmen and businesswomen reclined in practically empty cabins.