Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(47)

If I can answer even one of those questions, I’ll be closer to understanding what’s happening to me. Why my own government’s trying to erase every trace of me. I’m aching to set a course for Octavia, to see if anything’s left of the colony I know was there. But this thing that’s overtaking me has led me here, to Sempiternity.

So I’ll follow this path, try and understand why it’s twisted in this direction. Hope it’s brought me here because this is where my answers are.

Scar helps me to a seat at an auxiliary station, then takes her place around the central console. I know I should be watching the amazing station we’re slowly moving toward, but instead I find myself looking at the squad around me. At these six young soldiers I’ve suddenly found myself thrown together with. The strangers my life seems to depend on now.

Squad 312.

I wonder what makes them who they are.

What’s driving them to even be here.

Cat’s attention is mostly on steering, through dozens of vessels coming and going, detaching from the messy sides of this sector, or clamping on to airlocks and joining the throng. But she’s watching me out of the corner of her eye as well, her gaze flicking my way like clockwork every thirty seconds or so.

She doesn’t trust me.

I don’t blame her.

Tyler looks kind of peaceful, really, all things considered. Shaggy blond hair hanging in bright blue eyes, fixed on his readouts. He’s picked his course, it seems, and for better or for worse, the decision’s made. Still, I have a long way to go to win over him and his sister, and I’m not even sure what I want them to know or believe about me.

Next along from Tyler is Fin, white hair spiked above his white face, so hard to read behind those black contacts that cover the whole of his eyes. It’s hard to even tell where he’s looking sometimes. Between that and the equally effective shield of sarcasm, it’s hard to know who he is, either. Right now he has his head down—he’s fixing or modifying something in the forearm of his suit with a magnetic screwdriver. Zila takes her seat at the station beside him, but her dark eyes are still fixed on me, as if I’m a puzzle she can figure out with sufficient study.

Kal’s glancing at me occasionally, but I can’t get a read past those eyes of his. He’s over six and a half feet of long, silver hair and lithe muscle, and he looks like he’s on his way to counsel Gandalf or something. He acts like he’s better than me, though, I know that. “Liability,” he called me. “Beneath concern.” I suppose just because he’s an alien, doesn’t mean he can’t be a total jerk.

They’re all suspicious of me to one degree or another. Some of them are scared. And I’m scared of myself, but I’m trying to be brave. I don’t know what’s happening, but I want to figure it out as badly as they do. To know where I’m headed, and why. How I can do the impossible things I’ve done. But I barely even know what I’m running from, let alone to.

Still, this station might hold all my answers. Like Scarlett said, maybe we’re going exactly where we’re meant to go.

There’s a gentle bump as we come into berth, a series of thuds, a brief chorus of electronic noises as we lock on to the docking system. Cat’s hands dance across consoles as she powers down the main drive. Kissing her fingertips, she presses them against her monitor screen, then the stuffed dragon sitting above it. The thrum of our engines slowly dies, the computer noises fall quiet. Everyone looks at everyone else, wondering what comes next.

“We need three things,” Tyler says, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

Fin looks up from his home repair job, answers without missing a beat. “I’ll take a fresh pair of pants, a professional masseuse, and a shot of Larassian semptar.”

Tyler presses on as if his mechanic didn’t speak. “Shelter, intel, and a change of clothes. So Fin got one out of three right. This place is run by interstellar pirates, so we won’t get far in these uniforms.”

“We need four things,” Cat corrects him.

“We need to know why Aurora brought us here,” Zila supplies.

And of course everyone looks at me again. And my muscles ache from what I guess was my seizure before, and the echoes of my nightmare are still lingering inside my head, and I’m tired, and I still don’t know the answer.

Scarlett comes to my rescue. “I’ll go shopping for the clothes. Place like this, it won’t be hard to find a market. And I have better taste than all of you put together.”

Tyler looks mildly wounded. “Hey, I—”

Scarlett aims a withering glance at her brother, and he wisely falls silent.

“I have a cousin here,” Fin says. “I can get us a place to lay low.”

Zila blinks at him. “That ventures into the realm of coincidence.”

“Not really,” he says, wiggling his hand in a so-so gesture. “I mean, if you want to get technical, he’s the second cousin of my third mother once removed on my matriarch’s side, but we generally just say ‘cousin.’ ”

“Second of third … ?” Ty tilts his head, and I can practically see some of the others counting on their fingers and toes, trying to make the connection.

“Family reunions are tricky for Betraskans.” Fin smirks.

“Go find your cousin,” Tyler says. “Take Cat with you.”