Glacia walks ahead of me. Finding the room isn’t difficult because John’s voice carries down the hall. It’s designed for comfortable travel: there are couches, a projector, and a large window to stare out, which is currently facing west, toward the rising sun.

Ellin and Michael are sitting on separate couches, and John has his palms pressed to the long window. I sit on the opposite end of Michael’s couch, while Glacia sits with Ellin.

The floor shudders when the hovercraft lifts off the platform. The other crafts on the dock shrink away. As we rise higher, I realize how small Cornell really is. There’s Secondary, near the center of the city, and there’s Wallace Emerson’s ice cream plaza across the street. Gray Wall’s industrial complex stands in the distance, along Cornell’s empty eastern border.

The city disappears, then the neighborhoods. Now the desert dominates our view, and it’s nothing special. Mesas break the plain here and there, a mirage shimmers near the horizon, but for the most part, the land is cracked and empty and worthless.

“So you guys are fresh from Secondary?” Ellin asks Glacia, who nods in response. “Cool. I got out four years ago, a year after John.”

Hearing his name pulls John from the window.

“She’s my little sis,” he says, plopping down next to Ellin on the couch. “Wouldn’t know it, would you? She has stunning good looks, I have the ingenuous brains.”

“Ingenious,” Ellin corrects him.

He shoves her shoulder and she tips sideways, grinning at him.

“See that? Even thinks she’s a know-it-all.”

John stretches his arms and lays them over the back of the couch. Ellin takes the chance to look at Michael and ask,

“What about you?”

Michael looks away from the window and crosses his arms.

“Got out six years ago.”

“Cool.”

Michael resumes staring out the window, so Ellin turns to me. “What’s it like to—”

“I’m sorry about your dad,” John interrupts. “That really sucks.”

Ellin’s eyes widen at the same time my arms go numb with anxiety.

“John,” she says to hush him. She glances at me, grimacing. “I’m so sorry.”

I shake my head quickly to let her know it’s okay, but still, I turn away. This flight needs to end so I can get away from this guy.

My head smacks my arm and jolts me awake. Glacia snorts and rolls her eyes.

Yes, so funny.

Ellin and John are sitting at the other end of the lounge scrolling through a holotab together, and Michael is standing at the window. Then there’s a knock at the entry and Victoria walks into the room.

“Could you two come here?” she says to Ellin and John. They walk over and sit on the couch again. “You need to sign medical releases.”