Brightly Burning(62)
“Who are you here to see?” a bored-looking man asked from behind a cluttered desk.
Charlotte handed over the keytab, which now flashed our clearance stamp. “Mr. Reynolds,” she said in a small voice, almost like she was scared.
“Have a seat,” the man directed us. “He’ll be right with you.”
We had a very different definition of “right with you,” which I would have classified as “forthwith; very soon.” The government drone, however, meant “at some nebulous time in the future.” We waited ten minutes, then twenty.
At the forty-minute mark, two miraculous things occurred. First, Mr. Reynolds finally appeared, beckoning us to follow. Then, as we were trailing behind him, making our way down a narrow, dimly lit corridor, I caught a familiar face heading in our direction. I did a double-take, stopping in my tracks.
“Jon?”
“Stella!” He jogged to me, grinning wide, and then enveloped me into a hug. I went stiff at the unexpected intimacy, but thankfully we parted quickly. I looked to see Charlotte stopped ten feet ahead, expression gobsmacked. A cute boy hugging cousin Stella—?scandalous! Farther off, Captain Karlson stood, equally bemused.
“Um, go on without me,” I told Charlotte, who obliged with no fuss. Captain Karlson let Jon know he’d wait in the lobby, leaving us alone.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I could ask you the same thing. I thought you might end up on the Empire, but I never expected to see you here.”
“How did you know I might go to the Empire?”
“Your cousin contacted the Stalwart about your aunt a few weeks ago. I took the call, but advised her to write to you herself. I didn’t want to be the one to break the news.”
“Oh. Well, Charlotte had to come to sign some papers. So here I am.”
When Jon leaned in close, I was afraid he was going to hug me again or, worse, kiss me. But his arms remained at his side, his voice low. “I finally convinced my uncle. We came here to ask for a ship, to send a group down to Earth.”
“You can’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“Do we have another choice? They’ve been systematically moving all our crops onto other ships. Something’s going to happen. I just don’t know what.”
I thought of Mason, telling me in his oily voice that my friends should worry less about vegetables. “Be careful about writing anything in messages. They’re reading them.”
“Of course they are.” Jon sighed. “But how do you know?”
I did my best to explain, and with the way Jon was looking at me, it must have sounded mad.
“You’re living on a ship with a potential murderer. You can’t go back there.”
“I have to go back. I promised.” I bit into the last word, let its weight wash over me. How much was my word worth if the price of it was my own heartbreak? I longed to see Hugo again, just one more time, but could I really bear to see him married to someone else?
“A promise is a stupid reason to put yourself in danger.”
“You didn’t find anything before, when I asked you to look into the crew.”
“Doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to find.” The steel edge melted away, leaving an expression I’d never seen on him: weariness. “I know you don’t want to come back to the Stalwart; probably wise, given our predicament. They’re phasing us out, but won’t give us a ship that’s able to deorbit safely. But couldn’t you live with your cousin now? You could apply for a permanent visa, since you’re here anyway. My uncle would vouch for you.”
It was tempting. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t thought about it. Charlotte wasn’t my favorite person, but she wasn’t as whiny as I’d remembered her being when we were children. We’d both grown up a lot. She was about to come into a four-bedroom unit, and if I could secure a job on board, she might let me move in.
I felt a pang at the thought of leaving the Rochester and Hugo behind for good, like someone twisting a wrench in between my ribs.
“I’m going back,” I said. I needed a proper goodbye. “But I’m going to just flat-out ask what’s going on. If they fire me, I’ll make the request to move to the Empire.”
“Firing you is a best-case scenario,” Jon said darkly.
“They’re not going to kill me.” I rolled my eyes and punched him on the shoulder. Jon was becoming far too paranoid for his own good.
“You’re still here?” Charlotte was back; either her meeting had been short or Jon and I had been talking too long. We headed back toward the lobby, collecting Captain Karlson and making our way en masse to the shuttle bay.
I trailed a few steps behind, my brain running over all the best-and worst-case scenarios for my return. The best brought a grin to my face and a blush to my cheeks, while the worst ran my blood cold and had me glimpsing Hanada down the Olympus’s corridor, fuchsia hair flashing in the corner of my eye. Jon’s paranoia was rubbing off on me. I looked again, and she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sergei laughed as I climbed aboard his ship the next day. “You really want to go back?”
I gave him the same speech I’d given Jon and Charlotte the day before. I’d been gone weeks, I missed everyone, etc. I kept the uncertainty to myself: how long could I stay before the wedding? Where I would go afterward? Would seeing Hugo again twist a dagger in my heart? And then there was the matter of the attacks.