“Wait, Nadin!” Ceilos grabbed my wrist. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. If Gitrin is the one who programmed the posternkey, then she didn’t want the geroi to know about it. That’s why it was encrypted to your DNA.”

I pulled my hand away. “Well, what am I supposed to do about that? I am not a gerouin yet. And that was Gitrin’s own doing. I don’t have any authority to act on my own.”

Isaak stood up, looking at the map of Hope Renewed over Ceilos’ shoulder. “Okay, wait. Who are these geroi, and why do you need their permission?”

“The geroi are the rulers of the citidome,” said Ceilos. “And… they’re also our parents.”

Isaak’s brows furrowed. “You guys are siblings? I thought you were—” He broke off, not seeming to know how to phrase it. Finally, he said two words in his own language. The System did not translate these, but something about Isaak’s tone as he spoke them made my face grow hot.

“Ceilos is my assigned partner,” I snapped. My fingers fumbled over the panel’s input, and I restarted it in frustration.

“My parents are the former geroi of Bright Horizon citidome,” Ceilos said in a calmer voice. “They relocated to the Hamos colony three years ago, and I came to live here, with Nadin and the geroi of Hope Renewed. Nadin and I were supposed to finish our education together, and then…” He trailed off.

And then we were supposed to form a geroi partnership of our own. But I had to go and ruin everything by failing my evaluation.

“Dataset not found,” the System told me. I clenched my teeth and restarted it again.

“But if the geroi are your parents,” Isaak said, “why don’t you want them to know about the time-door thing?”

“They already know about it,” I said, inputting the command slowly and deliberately this time. “My tutor and I designed it as an alternative evacuation mode. I’m sure you noticed that there’s not a lot of air out there right now.”

Isaak moved his head up and down. “The atmosphere is depleting. Our scientists knew that it happened, but we weren’t sure what caused it. And we definitely didn’t know that there were humans here when it happened.”

Ceilos snorted. “The humans are what caused it. Before the Progression, people were a bit less… careful about the impact our industries had on the environment. By the time we realized it, it was too late. The gerotus was established to help implement policies that would offset the atmospheric degradation, but it was too late by that time. So now the primary objective is evacuation.”