A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(93)

Jane flicked her eyes over to Counsellor Lukin, who was rubbing one of her temples. ‘I was looking for my ship.’

‘Jane, I don’t know how many times we have to go over this,’ Counsellor Lukin said. ‘That ship is not here. It was confiscated by legal authorities, and I do not know where it has gone. That is how it works when something is confiscated. You do not know where it is. You do not get it back.’

‘Why did you think it was in cargo hold six?’ the commander asked. ‘It wasn’t in cargo hold two or three, either. As you know from experience.’

Jane shrugged. ‘I haven’t been to cargo hold six yet.’

‘So why—’

‘I just said. I haven’t been to it. She says’ – she pointed at Counsellor Lukin – ‘that my ship’s not there, but I don’t know that. All I know is that she says that. That means nothing to me. What, because she’s got the same face and hands as me, and has the power to take people’s stuff away—’

‘I didn’t have any say in it,’ Counsellor Lukin said, speaking over Jane. ‘This was a Transport Board matter—’

‘—I’m supposed to believe anything that comes out of her mouth?’

‘I am trying to help—’

‘And you, you have all your doors and walls and unauthorised zones. Why? What don’t you want me to see? What’s so f*cking important that—’

‘Okay, enough,’ the commander said. She sighed – the first time she’d opened her mouth during the whole conversation. Owl had told Jane to be ready for the way Aeluons talked, but Jane hadn’t been, not really.

Owl had told her. Jane shut her eyes. Don’t worry, she thought, trying to make the words stretch as far as they needed to. I haven’t left you. I haven’t left you. I’m coming. I’m coming and it’s going to be okay.

The commander kept talking, lots of words like behaviour and regulations and for your own safety. Blah f*cking blah. Jane didn’t care. She didn’t care about any of this. She’d been on the station for more than sixty days, and they still couldn’t tell her when she’d get to leave. Formwork, Counsellor Lukin said. Processing. Applying for citizenship took time, she said, and there was some dumb unanswered question about whether Jane’s case counted as a standard refugee thing, or if Jane and Laurian should be categorised as clones, which was apparently a whole big complicated thing if so. Oh, and social adjustment. Fucking hell, Lukin was actually making them watch all these dumb vids about what to expect in GC society. As if Jane hadn’t been practising that for years. As if everything Owl taught her didn’t matter.

Owl. Owl Owl Owl.

The room had gone silent, and Jane realised the other two were waiting for her to say something. ‘Uh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I won’t do it again.’ She looked back and forth between them. Neither looked any more pleased than they had when the security guard brought her in there. ‘Can I go?’

The commander sighed again, and waved her toward the door. Jane couldn’t get out fast enough.

Laurian was waiting for her on the other side, sitting on a bench opposite the door. ‘H-hey,’ he said, speaking Sko-Ensk. He chased after her as she strode down the hall. ‘I-is, um, are – a-are you—’

‘I’m so sick of this,’ she said. ‘So sick of all this stupid shit.’ She walked faster and faster, nearly breaking into a run. Her muscles wanted to run. She wanted to run away from the station, away from all these stupid binding rules, away to wherever they’d taken Owl.

Laurian kept up. She could feel him watching her. She had nothing to say to him, but she felt better with him there. He was the only thing on the station she recognised.

They came to a railing, overlooking the wide commons below. She leaned against the cold metal, looking down, looking at nothing. Dammit. Of course there’d been a third camera. The hall outside that cargo hold was a weird junction, and she’d just assumed that it had the same camera setup as everything else. Stupid. They’d taken her tools – again – and they knew she was going for that particular cargo hold, so she’d have to be real careful the next time. She’d have to plan it just right so that . . . that . . . She kicked the railing, so hard it made her toes curl in. Her body was strong enough to kick now. It could kick and punch and yell real loud, and those were the only things she wanted to do these days.

‘She’s not here, is she?’ Jane whispered.

She hadn’t meant the words for anyone, but Laurian answered – not with words, but with a hand on top of hers. He looked at her with his grass-green eyes, a hue Human eyes could never be without some help. No, his eyes said. And I am so, so sorry.

Jane watched the busy commons down below. It was full of aliens, not another Human to be seen. They were spacers, most of them, except for the vendors selling food the doctors hadn’t let her eat yet. Your body isn’t ready for heavy foods, Jane. Come on, take your supplements. Fuck off. Supplements were just meals crammed into a pill instead of a cup.

She looked at Laurian, looked right at him so he couldn’t look away. ‘Do you want to get out of here?’

He looked back at her, searching her face. He took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said.

She felt something stir in her, something sure and final, the same something that had made her step out of the hole in the wall, that had made her decide she would never, ever leave her bones in the scrapyard. She nodded at Laurian, grabbed his hand tight, and headed down to the commons.