They’d never returned to Lux empty-handed.
The thought turned Imogen’s stomach. She’d only met Lux once, but that one time was more than enough. There was something off about the man they called boss. She got the distinct impression that he was a devil without the d. Not the sort of person who’d forgive the loss of eighty-five mil. Imogen wasn’t sure what the black market mogul would do in mercy’s stead, and she really, really didn’t want to find out.
Similar thoughts layered Farway’s face—denial, anger, desperation—sketching his emotions into new dimensions as he strode to Gram’s station. “We have to go back. I have to try again.”
The Engineer was staring at the numbers in front of him and whispering to himself, traces of gibberish syllables. He held one of his prized Rubik’s Cubes in his hands, twisting without thought. Imogen had never seen Gram so imprecise, in word or motion. Muttering into unhearing screens was usually her forte….
“Gram! I need you to focus! I need you to skip us to earlier in the timeline, so I can get that hashing book before the girl does! Go back to the time we were supposed to land in before this whole mission went to shazm!” Farway’s voice was sharp enough to make Imogen look at his eyebrows.
No trembling. This time he was truly pissed.
Gram looked up. There was sweat on his face; it caught the display’s glow, shimmering from his cheekbones and brow. “Can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I don’t know why or how, but we can’t jump to that time. I tried plugging the numbers in—”
“So fix it!” Smack. Farway hit the frozen Tetris screen. Its glass held, but the rest of the Invictus flinched. “Isn’t that what I pay you to do?”
“I tried,” Gram said again. “I tried, and I’m telling you, I can’t. It’s impossible.”
His sweat had collected into beads, rolling down his face so profusely that Imogen knew the Engineer—though he made no sense—was telling the truth. Farway must have come to the same conclusion, because he started back for the hatch.
“Imogen, get the feed back online!” he barked.
“No!” Imogen swiveled her chair too hard in her franticness. “You can’t go back down there! The ship is sinking. There are too many variables now—”
“Do I look like I give a hashing bluebox about variables?” Her cousin halted. “That’s two hundred mil I just lost down there! Lux isn’t going to let that go easy, and I sure as Hades won’t, either! Bring back the feed!”
Lux’s wrath loomed, true, but Farway’s descent into the gathering deep wouldn’t change that. “The girl’s gone,” Imogen reasoned. “She’s not gonna stick around with loot like that when the ocean’s knocking!”
Yet stubborn is as stubborn does, especially where McCarthys were concerned. Farway made for the console room door, only to find Priya blocking its threshold. She stood there with her arms crossed, eyes relentless. “Imogen’s right. You can’t go.”
“Move,” Farway said. “Please.”
“Sometimes,” Priya spoke in a whisper, “it’s okay to fail.”
Imogen watched her cousin’s face turn a shade darker and found herself wondering if there was any gelato left in her freezer stash. She could use some right about now, but she had a feeling the last carton of raspberry had fallen victim to nighttime cravings over a week ago.
NOTE TO SELF: SAVE AT LEAST ONE PINT OF GELATO FOR EMERGENCIES.
“I didn’t fail.” Farway’s words seared. “I never fail. I was robbed.”
“Can you really be robbed of something you never had in the first place?”
The whisper had come from Imogen’s corner, just over her shoulder. Gram, Priya, and Farway all turned to look. When Imogen followed suit, all she saw was Bartleby, but once her sight started to adjust, she realized there was another human shape cookie-cuttered into the darkness behind the mannequin.
The shadow stepped forward.
It was the girl in the yellow dress.
11
SCANNING WILL NOW COMMENCE
ELIOT HAD SEEN HER FAIR SHARE of time machines and TM crews. They all had their quirks—you couldn’t expect to survey the whole of time without a few personalities—but this took the cake. Clothes hanging from the ceiling. A girl with hair the color of a nebula. The Medic in grease-stained scrubs. And—oh haze—was that a raccoon?
The Invictus’s crew stared at her with the same scrutiny, trying to process her out-of-thin-air appearance. It wasn’t as sudden as they thought. Eliot had been lurking behind the mannequin for several minutes, observing. She’d already gathered quite a lot about how this particular engine of teenagers ran. The Engineer, he was the steady click, click of gears. The dark-haired girl in the doorway was something of a radiator, monitoring temperatures, keeping things cool. The Historian—colorful like motor oil, running everything through the chaos.
But Eliot wasn’t here to pick apart the interpersonal web of the ship. That was extra credit. The real assignment was Subject Seven, whose gaze was fuel-rod hot, aimed straight at Eliot. Had she been anyone else, she might have melted.
“You!”
Eliot was beginning to wonder if that exclamation was all he was capable of saying when the others chimed in.
“How’d she get in here?”
“Where’s the book?”
“Who the hash is she?”
The ginger raccoon hissed at her, darting under Nebula Girl’s chair.
“The Rubaiyat is in a safe place.” Eliot gathered her skirts and stepped into the center of the console room. Nebula Girl scooted her chair back, accidentally rolling over the whatever-kind-of-animal-that-was’s tail. The creature bounced away, yowling.
Subject Seven didn’t seem to notice the mayhem. “What do you want?”
That question again… It was almost as if Seven were reading from a script, just like all the others. Same scene, different setting. Eliot brushed this thought aside. The other subjects, those other scenes, were done. Closing acts and curtains drawn. Her focus needed to be here and now. Subject Seven had to be the center of her universe… in case that was what he was.
“I want a job.” Eliot moved to the empty captain’s chair, sank into its tangerine-colored leather—haze, it felt good to be off her feet—and twisted to face her audience. “I want to join the Invictus as part of your crew.”
The Medic’s eyebrows tilted: one up, one down. Gingerbread Rodent kept hissing from the safety of the mannequin’s shoulders. The rest of the crew continued to be dumbfounded, staring at Eliot as if they couldn’t quite grasp her dimensions. Real? Hologram? Bad med-patch trip?
If only they knew the half of it.
Nebula Girl was the first to respond. “But… why?”