Kit wraps one hand around the woman’s wrist, and, surprisingly, the woman easily releases her. Her arms drop to her sides, and her whole body relaxes.

“There, isn’t that better?” Kit asks gently.

The woman doesn’t answer. And then I notice the pale green patch on the back of her hand.

Kit leads the woman to a chair against the wall and deposits her there. She turns back to me with a satisfied look on her face. And—I can’t help but smile back at her. That worked. Maybe if Elder had had some patches in the City yesterday, things wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand. And maybe if I had had one in the fiction room when Luthor burst in . . .

“Can I have some of those patches?” I ask Kit.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Didn’t you hear? They’re not safe. We’re trying to get all the ones that were stolen back. Only Doc, the nurses, and I are supposed to use them.”

Interesting. The patches were stolen.

“Can I just have one, then?” I ask.

Something in Kit melts. I think she thinks I’m depressed about being the only freak on the ship—she’s always been nice to me in the way that some people are super-nice in a suffocating sort of way to people who are handicapped.

“Don’t tell Doc,” she whispers, slipping me a patch. I hide it in my pocket, next to the floppy I found in the armory.

I pull my jacket hood up before I leave the Hospital, but, armed as I am with a Phydus patch, I don’t bother with the scarf around my hair. I head directly to the Recorder Hall. It’s a long shot, but Orion left the clues—the real clues—for me. Even if the last clue was tampered with, Orion’s had a pretty solid plan to make sure I’ve gotten where I needed to go. So far, the clues have come from Harley’s paintings or the Recorder Hall. Maybe the next one will too.

Yeah. Right. It’s going to be so easy to find one clue out of all the book rooms, art galleries, and artifact rooms in the Recorder Hall—if the clue is even there. For the first time ever, Godspeed actually feels . . . huge. I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell to find this thing.

I can’t help but smirk. After all, Dante’s hell was made of ice.

As I approach the Recorder Hall, I see a group of people standing in a tight cluster on the porch. I pull my hood lower and slip my hand into my pocket, fingering the Phydus med patch.

“The ship needs guidance,” a man says.