Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(23)
“You won’t need it again,” he told me. “It’s keyed to your DNA. Just keep it on your person. Get some rest.”
As he walked off, Mom opened the door to their room, pausing long enough to say, “They gave us a copy of your schedule. It’s rough. You feel like a late dinner tonight?”
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
After my mom and sister went to their room, I inspected the posh suite I’d been assigned. The closet held a full week of Honors uniforms stacked on the bed. The nu-silk didn’t wrinkle, no matter how I twisted it up. When I wandered into the bathroom, I found an array of sponsor-provided toiletries and nano-cosmetics on the counter, and a shower big enough to lie down in, if I wanted. I didn’t, but it was gorgeous to rinse off the travel, co-wash my hair, deep condition, and use the luxe products to finish my curls. The finger-styling went much easier than it had at Camp Kuna.
Time to get dressed.
Afterward, though I was definitely hungry, I checked out the schedule my mom had mentioned. No joke, but it was packed. Orientation, lectures, sim training, press junkets, luncheons, fittings, and specialized classes.
Yet I hadn’t forgotten that weird moment in the hall, earlier. Valenzuela . . . When I checked the net, I pulled up a ton of results for Gregory Valenzuela, all glowing profiles. Not one of them mentioned him being pulled from a Leviathan midyear. They’d just stopped reporting on him.
Cover-up, or just respecting his privacy? Hard to tell, but I hadn’t noticed the newshounds out there respecting privacy much. It was too juicy a story not to splash out, unless someone had a very tight lid on it.
I wanted to follow the trail, but Mom and Kiz were waiting on me. My head was all over the place; it was great to see them, but their faces reminded me of what I put them through, so it was a cycle of gladness and guilt, longing to be back with them and a never-quite-gone urge to bolt. I pushed all the distractions away with an effort. I really did want to make the most of our time together.
Once I got ready, I knocked on the connecting door. It took about five seconds for the locks to click back and the door to slide open. “Set?”
Kiz had touched up her lipstick, and Mom had swapped her fancy shoes for pretty but still-comfortable ones. “I hear the hotel restaurant is something,” Mom said.
On the way to the elevator, Kiz started naming all the things she was going to eat that were hard to get on Mars.
Which made me wonder, “How is dome life, anyway?”
She thought for a minute. “Structured. But my school is awesome. We take field trips outside for science sometimes, and I thought that was a big deal. Can’t believe you’re going to space, Z. But then you always did want to run as far as you could.”
That stung, because she was right. I’d always been about running away. Once, I’d seen some gorgeous street art in the Lower Eight: the words INERTIA=DEATH, surrounded by exquisite color and Leviathan-inspired patterns. It had made a lasting impression, and I’d been living by that principle ever since. So, maybe taking them up on this Honors thing was as far as I could ever go. If I looked at it that way, I might warm up to the idea. In time.
Early the next morning, I woke up because my door made a soft, respectful chime, but when I put it in view mode, there was nobody there. Just a fancy arrangement of flowers, and a card stuck on it. I opened the door and brought it inside.
The card said, Give it back, and I’ll let everything go.
Deluca.
All of a sudden, the purples and reds of the arrangement looked like bruises and bloodstains. I ripped up the card and stepped away for a second with my heart pounding. The room read my anxiety, and I smelled lavender as the relaxers were pumped in.
I dumped everything in the disposal unit, along with the ripped-up card, and hit the delete control. It took about two minutes to incinerate everything, but when the container opened again, there was no trace of Deluca’s message.
The hotel has anti-terrorism scans, I told myself. It was standard for these fancy places.
Fear couldn’t be eradicated so easily, though. It haunted me the whole week, through all the lessons and drills, all the interviews and info sessions. I learned about Leviathan biology, including a very basic (and mostly theoretical) analysis of how their bodies processed energy gathered from starlight and used it to drive their propulsive systems, which were strong enough to overcome the speed of light, when they chose to use them. Not a lot of info about the Leviathan’s social structure; there were Elders who accompanied the younger ships we’d be traveling with. They seemed to be larger and stronger and generally more badass. I approved.
More classes. Virtual navigation, which I hated. Hands-on console repairs, which I didn’t. We were introduced to a variety of sims that we’d be expected to use aboard the ship, partly to keep us in good mental and physical shape. My favorite, to no one’s surprise, was the fighting sim, where I got to kick ass for cardio benefits. Perfect scores.
Second favorite unit? The crash Leviathan MD course. I had a thousand questions about the emergency procedures, how we might be called on for medical intervention, and a more in-depth study of biosystems. When it came time to choose my elective seminar, I picked Leviathan physiology over navigation.
But worrying about Deluca cost me when I took the final tests; I couldn’t focus on the higher math and I choked on the chemical formulas. Thankfully, I leveled out on tech and rocked the unit on biomechanics. End result? With my cumulative total, I passed by two points.