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“You killed her!” he shouts, his mouth inches from my face, his voice cracking.

I
try to say something, anything. A million emotions jumble together: disbelief, then anger, then fear, flaring one after the other, like a set of lights on a circuit. Carver’s words have dissolved into incoherent yells. Tears stain his cheeks.

Kev and Prakesh wrap their arms around him and yank him back. He finds his voice again, screaming, “Get off me!” He collapses back against the other wall,
stumbling, like he’s drunk. For a few seconds, he just leans against it, and then sinks down, his fist slamming the floor in anger.

I can’t take my eyes off Carver. He senses my gaze, and raises his head to look at me. This time, all he can manage is a whispered, “Why?”

Somehow, nothing I can say seems good enough.

For a long time, none of us do anything. Prakesh keeps a wary eye on Carver,
but he just sits, his head down, his body shaking with silent sobs. Eventually, he looks at me. His face is blotchy and red, but his eyes are clear. The anger in them appears to have dimmed, but when he speaks, his voice is harsh. “Why’d she do it?”

I shake my head. It’s like trying to describe something on the Earth below. Some animal I’ve only seen in pictures.

It’s Kev who answers him. “Doesn’t
matter now.”

“Yes, it matters!”

Carver’s words reverberate within the cramped hab, leaving a cold silence behind. I rest my head against the wall, trying to stop the tears I feel pricking the corners of my eyes, squeezing them shut. Out of nowhere, I see Yao’s mural, from before it was destroyed by whoever wrecked the Nest. I see its colours and its swirling shapes, the image so vivid that I
can pick out the parts where the ink hadn’t dried yet.

“We can’t bring her back, or change what she did,” I say quietly, turning to face them. The words sound awkward in my mouth, as if I’m reading someone else’s writing, but I say them anyway. “She thought we’d lost our right to exist as a species. I say: not without a fight. I’m going to run the Core. I’m going to find Janice Okwembu, and I’m
going to end this.”

I say it evenly, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. Nearly manage it, too.

“I’ll go,” says Carver, getting to his feet. He won’t look at me. “I can do it.”

I stare at him. “You’re going to run through the Core with a busted shoulder? Really?”

“I’m fine,” he says. I step forward, and lightly tap him on the shoulder. He tries to turn away, but I see him grimace in pain.

“I can do it,” he says again, but the fire has gone out of his voice.

From the wall, Kev says, “Why can’t I go?”

“With that ankle? We don’t have time for this.” I shake my head, frustrated. “It’s not just that I’m the fastest here, which I am. I was there when she died, OK? I was there. She played me. She
used
me. This is my fight.”

“Did you see what Darnell did to those stompers?” says Carver.
“The ones who went through the Core? You want that to happen to you?”

I don’t have an answer.

“Riley’s right,” says Prakesh. “I don’t like it either, but this is the best shot we have.”

“I’m not just going to sit here,” says Carver.

“You won’t have to. The Core entrance is guarded, right? If we can create a diversion or something, we can get the doors open long enough to get Riley in. What’ll
you need, Ry? Five seconds? Ten?”

“Three,” I say, and walk right over to Carver. He avoids my eyes, but I place a hand on his good shoulder, and after a moment, he puts his on top of it. “I can do this,” I whisper.

After a long moment, he nods.

I turn to Kev. “We good?”

“We good.”

“Look, I hate to be the one who drops the doom-bomb here,” says Carver, “but it’s like I said. We’re not just
talking about one stomper on guard duty. You don’t get into the Core with a wink and a smile. How are we going to get past them?”

“There’s always stompers,” Kev says. “Five. Six.”

I think, trying to picture the Core entrance. I’ve run past it plenty of times too: a big open room, bisected by the Level 6 corridor, with huge blast doors set into the ceiling. Equipment
storerooms lead off the main
area. There are control panels at opposite ends of the room – old things, with dusty digital readouts and clunky switches. Presumably, that’s how you open it up.

Prakesh reads my mind. “There’ll be fail-safes there, too – more than likely two keycards or passcodes that’ll need to be used at the same time at opposite ends of the room.”

I frown. “Can we get a keycard?”

“I could probably hack
it if we had enough time.”

“How long?”

He looks helpless. “Ten minutes?”

“Why sure, officer,” says Carver. “This little speck on the wall is the most fascinating thing you’ll ever see in your life. But you’ll need to stare at it for at least ten minutes to fully appreciate all the nuances …”

“Not helping,” I say.

“We could lock the place down, maybe,” Prakesh says thoughtfully. “Get everyone
out somehow and then barricade the entrances. It might buy us enough time.”

I shake my head, frustrated.

“Hello?” says Kev. We all look at him, and he spreads his hands wide. “Just break things.”

Carver rubs his temple. “Much as I love your enthusiasm Kev, stuff tends to stop working when you smash it to pieces.”

“Yes – but not the stuff it’s connected to,” says Kev slowly, as if talking to
a child. His voice is clearer than it was before. “Smash the panels. The blast doors will think there’s been a power short. Open right up.”

“Any chance it could work?” I ask Prakesh. Of all of us, he’s the most familiar with the station tech, especially the parts which give you access to secure areas. He thinks for a minute, his fist raised to his mouth.

Eventually, he says, “It’s possible.
Doors on Outer Earth
are
configured to open automatically using auxiliary batteries if there’s a power cut. Or at least, they’re supposed to.” Then he shakes his head. “But we don’t know anything about the Core system. It might not work the same way as the other doors on the station. We could spend hours wrecking the access panels, and it’d stay locked tight.”

“I don’t like it,” says Carver.
“There’s just too much we don’t know. We don’t get a second run at this.”

I choose my words carefully, looking him in the eyes. “If there’s even the slightest chance that it’ll work, then I’m going to take it.”

He returns my stare for a long minute. I’m certain that he’s going to argue some more, but then he says, “Well, you’re going in there, not me. Although if the doors don’t open I am leaving
you there and running like hell.”

“Fair enough.”

Prakesh puts his hands on his hips. “I’m in too.”

I take a deep breath. He’s not going to like this.

“I need you to stay in Apogee. If it goes wrong in the Core, you’ll need to warn people. Tell them what we know.”

Even before I’ve finished, he’s opening his mouth to protest, so I talk quickly. “We could be injured, or captured, or … anyway,
it doesn’t matter. We need a backup plan. You’re it.”

“If this is about speed, I’m not going to slow you down,” he says. “I’ve kept up with you so far, haven’t I? Let me help get you in there.”

I shake my head. “It’s not about that. People trust you. They listen to you. Us?” I gesture to Carver and Kevin. “We’re just tracers. People pay us to take their cargo and get out of their sight.”

His
expression has softened a little, even if he isn’t completely convinced. I lower my voice. “You have to trust us, Prakesh. We can do this.”

The silence that follows seems to stretch forever, but eventually he gives a curt nod, not looking at me.

“So that’s it. We go,” I say. But still, nobody moves.

Which is when I realise: this is when Amira would have inclined her head, the tiny gesture indicating
that this is how we proceed. She’d be leaning against the wall, just there, her arms folded, staring into the distance, as if holding up every option individually and examining it for flaws.

It’s Kev who breaks the silence – and before he does it, he glances at the place where Amira would have been, as if expecting her to reappear. When he speaks, he says, “If it comes to a swinging, swing all,
say I.”

It takes a moment for his words to make sense. Then understanding dawns:
Treasure Island
.

With a small smile on my face, I nod. “Swing all.”

Carver sighs. “Since I’ve agreed to this insane idea,” he says, “does anybody know how we’re going to get enough time to destroy these damn panels?”

“Actually, I do,” I say. I’m thinking back to something Carver said. Something about running through
it.

It takes me less than two minutes to outline my plan. Carver is sceptical at first, but before long he’s nodding, thinking hard.

“I’ll need to see if I can salvage a few things from the Nest,” he says. “I don’t have anything to work with here. Kev – you come with me. And you two: for the love of every god there is, stay here.”

“What do we do if the man who lives here comes back?” Prakesh
says.

Carver winks at him. “Like Kev said. Hit him again.”

He points to a big storage locker, over by the wall. “Meantime, drag that in front of the door after we’re gone.”

They leave, and Prakesh and I haul the locker over to the door. When it’s in place, I take a minute to stretch, working
my tight leg muscles and rotating my shoulders to work out the stiffness. All the injuries from the
past few days seem to make themselves felt at once – the bruised collarbone, the ring around my eye, the marks on my neck and stomach from my fight with Darnell. The gashes in my hands and forehead, healing but still ugly, and the burn on my right hand where I pawed at my jacket sleeve in the fire. And I ache everywhere, my body telling me in every possible way that I’m nearly at breaking point. But
I can’t stop. Not now.
Please
, I silently say.
Just a few more runs. Then we’ll sleep. We’ll sleep for weeks
.

I sit down on the cot to stretch out my legs. Prakesh comes over and sits down next to me. He looks worried, more worried than I’ve ever seen him. “What are you going to do if they come after you into the Core?” he says.

I shrug, try to act like I’m beyond worry, even though there’s
a band of fear that feels like it’s squeezing my chest to bursting point. “What I always do, Prakesh,” I say. “I run.”

I’m about to say something else, but then Prakesh is kissing me with so much force that it nearly knocks me over backwards. I’m so surprised that for a second his open mouth is locked on my closed one.

I pull away. “’Kesh, I … we can’t.”

He’s shaking his head. “Why not?”

I laugh, using it to mask the tremor in my voice. “Look at this place. It’s a mess. It’s not even ours.”

I expect him to smile back. To let the moment pass. He doesn’t. He just looks me right in the eyes. His hand touches mine, clasps it, then squeezes tight and doesn’t let go.

“You remember when you said you’d have to choose?” he says. “That if … that if we were together, you’d eventually have
to choose between me and the Dancers?”

He doesn’t give me the chance to answer. “I wouldn’t care. You hear me? Because even if you chose the Dancers, even if
you couldn’t be with me, I’d still have a little bit of time with you. And now you’re going to Apex – you’re off on this
stupid run
– and you’re not giving me a choice.”

“If I don’t—”

“No,
listen
. I know you have to go. I get that. But
you don’t get to do it without giving me a chance. You don’t. That’s not a choice you get to make.”

His other hand is gripping my forearm now, and he pulls me into another kiss. This time, I kiss him back.

“We don’t have enough time,” I whisper.

“I don’t care,” he says.

Neither do I.

His hands, wrapped around my back, slip silently under my top, and begin tracing the curve of my spine. His
touch is gentle, hesitant at first, but growing bolder, faster. Little prickles of heat shoot through me.

We fall back on the cot, pushing aside the blankets, my hands pushing under his shirt, lifting it over his head. His mouth moves down to my neck, then my own shirt comes off and he moves lower still, kissing my breasts, skin on skin.

He pushes me too hard, and my head bumps against the wall.
I wince, but he’s there immediately, kissing my forehead and laughing. I try to tell him it’s OK, but I don’t get to finish the sentence, because right then he slips inside me.

He holds it for a moment, looking me in the eyes. Then he slides deeper. The aches in my body vanish, melting away. Soon, there’s no hesitancy, no holding back: just us thrusting together, and my nails digging deep ridges
in his flesh. His mouth, my mouth, his hands, everywhere, all at once. When I come, when Prakesh finally pushes us over the edge, it’s as if every scrap of energy I have has concentrated into a single burning point, deep in my own core.

I can’t move, I can’t breathe. I don’t want to. I’d trade
everything, every run I’ve ever been on, every good memory I’ve ever had, to freeze time at this instant.
His hand is on the back of my neck, his skin warm. It feels good.

Like how I imagine sunlight would feel.

Afterwards, we lie together. Our breathing has slowed, quietened. He lifts his left hand and caresses my cheek.

“You come back,” he says. “No matter what happens, you come back to me. You find a way.”

And I whisper, “I will. I promise.”

I hold him for as long as I dare. I want the memory
of his touch to be as powerful as possible. If I die, if I can’t save my world, then I want this to be the last thing I remember.

I don’t know how long we lie together, but by the time Carver and Kev come back, we’re clothed again, sitting against the wall quietly, sharing some more water. I thought there was nothing useful left in the Nest, but I guess I don’t have Carver’s eyes. He’s got an
armful of tools and spare parts. Kev has managed to find some food: more protein bars, pulled from another of his secret stashes.