“I’ve spent too much time staring at Baz’s stupid shirt, and now I’ve got a craving.” She pulled out a metal cylinder, opened it, gave it a wary sniff, shrugged her shoulders, and dumped it into the third cup she tried—the first was black inside; the second had something growing in it. As she was adding water from the ship’s moisture reclaimer, she noticed Leo fiddling with his watch.

“Everything operational?” She nodded at his wrist.

Leo shrugged. “It’s been glitchy since I put my dad’s message on it. But it seems to be working okay.”

“Pretty cool tech. And that’s coming from someone who knows a thing or two.” She wiggled the fingers of her titanium hand.

“Gift from my parents,” Leo said, noticing how loose the watch was on his wrist. His pants didn’t fit quite as snug either. There was simply less of Leo than there was before. “My brother and I both got one, but he lost his.”

“The only advantage of growing up an orphan with nothing to your name,” Kat said. “You have nothing to lose.”

Leo knew it was a joke. He also knew that it wasn’t. Compared to Kat, Leo had had a princely childhood—family, friends, nice house, nice schools. At least until the day the Earth caught fire. But then lots of kids had had their childhoods cut short that day. “Gareth could never find anything,” Leo recalled. “He was always losing his shoes. His phone. His datapad. He once lost his toothbrush. Found it in his underwear drawer. Had no idea how it got there.”

“Please tell me he got a new one.”

Leo shrugged. “I was always the one who helped him find stuff. I was good at it. Which is weird, because now he’s gone, and I have no idea where to even start looking for him.”

Kat sat down next to Leo, her cup of milk in hand. Leo recalled how intimidated he’d been when he first saw her. Not so much by the pistol at her side or the artificial appendage capable of crushing his windpipe with barely a squeeze, though those added to the effect. It was more the look in her eyes: the intensity. The challenge. A frosty-blue warning that said, I’ve survived so much worse than you.

It was nothing like the yeah-that-sucks look she was giving him now.

“I know how badly you want to find your brother. If it were me, it would probably be the only thing I could even think about. But if he’s anything like you, Gareth can probably take care of himself for a while. At least until we get around to looking for him.”

Leo smiled—at the compliment but more so at the we. It could have just as easily been you. Until you get around to looking for him. After all, even with everything they’d been through together—security bots and bounty hunters and botched rescues—she was still a pirate. They were all pirates. They had to take care of themselves.