Naomi focused on the task at hand. She sent him everything she needed, terse and factual. She didn’t let herself imagine him hunched in the tiny underground comms base, his dark eyes staring at blue screens, lips pursed. Despite spending his days in a lab, he always struck Naomi as uncomfortable indoors—he was active, his half-Chinese skin tanned from hours outdoors on long hikes or runs.

No one knew the base’s location save Evan and Valerie, not even Naomi, though she’d seen the pictures and schematics. Satellites sprouting from the roof, screens surrounding the interior. A desk. A bed. A bathroom and kitchen. It was a little bigger than Naomi’s cabin on the Atalanta. He had to be careful coming and going. If people found the bunker and suspected he was in contact with the ship, they’d take him in. Valerie had been repeatedly ignoring any official message from Earth.

It was strange for Evan to agree to do this in the first place and put himself at risk. If there was one thing Naomi knew about Evan, it was that he was a little mercenary in his approach to life. That didn’t mean he was selfish to the point he wouldn’t do the right thing, but he was always angling to make sure his actions directly benefitted himself in some way. Or he’d take action for the opportunity to learn something interesting rather than because it was moral. Why offer to help? Or had Valerie not given him a choice?

He’d delighted in frustrating Valerie’s plans for him. He’d been the rebellious one and Naomi the one who did what she was told.

Once, Evan had been dropped off at Valerie’s mansion in a cop car. Evan had sauntered up to the front door, unbothered by his mother’s fury. He’d broken into a nearby lab just to prove he could. He didn’t steal anything, just peered at all the different medicines, the animals in their cages, taking it all in. They’d been experimenting on the vaccine for Seventh Disease, or erythema varicella. It was a new childhood disease, a mutation of the same virus that caused chickenpox and shingles, that affected children intensely but barely touched adults. It had only taken a few years to engineer a new vaccine.

The lab didn’t bring charges against him, in no small part due to who his mother was. They were impressed, despite themselves, that he’d been able to get in so easily. They ended up hiring him to help with their security, then given him an internship that eventually led to him studying immunology. It’d stopped him going down the road of seeing what he could steal for the pure thrill of it, at least. Naomi had no doubt he still unpicked a lock that struck his interest from time to time, to prove to himself he still could.