“Is it something I did?” Cole waited for Penny to meet his gaze. “I screwed things up, didn’t I?”

“How should I know? All I know is a lot of people have died to keep this place together, and now Mortimor’s talking about abandoning it.”

“You’re supposed to tell me this isn’t my fault,” Cole said.

Penny looked to the side. “I don’t know that it’s not.”

Cole pushed her hands away from his wound. “Leave me be,” he said. “In fact, I think you should leave the room.”

Penny slapped his hands in return. She threw the tape in his lap and turned to leave, then whirled on him. Leaning forward, she grasped his shoulders with both hands and brought her face close to his. Cole gasped in pain.

“You leave me be!” Penny hissed. “Get out of my head!”

Cole stared at her with his mouth open, his vision blurred with tears of physical agony.

“You’re hurting me,” he said.

Penny let go. She stood up and looked at her palms, then whispered something to herself.

Cole looked to his real shoulder and saw that the bandage had been torn loose by her grasp; the stitches were leaking blood.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Cole didn’t say anything. He watched as Penny surveyed her hands, turning them over and back, checking all sides of herself. “It’s just—I feel stupid around you. I feel—”

“I’m in love with someone,” Cole said.

Penny nodded. “I know. And it wouldn’t matter, anyway. I just hate myself for feeling out of control.”

“You hate yourself? How do you think I feel? One minute I’m being called the chosen one by a group of people trying to eradicate us, which makes me wonder what the hell I was chosen for. The next, it sounds like I’m screwing up the plans of a guy I’m doing every damn thing to win the respect of—”

“Mortimor?”

Cole nodded.

“Well, you can stop.”

“Yeah, I’m sensing that.”

“No, I mean the guy already loves you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Trust me. I know what it looks like.”

Cole pressed his bandage back in place and picked up the tape.

“Here, let me,” Penny said. “It’s hard to do stuff like that until your new fingers sort themselves out.”

Cole allowed her to take the tape. He looked down at his fingers and rubbed the pads of them together.

“Do you remember the first time you saw me?” Cole asked.

“Of course.”

“Where was it? Or . . . when was it?”

“I was in the skimmer that picked you up. Don’t you remember? I performed CPR on you for most of the trip back here. And then there was the surgery. You almost didn’t make it, you know. Pretty bad hypothermia. Your lips—” Penny glanced up at his face, then looked back to her work. “They were completely black.”

“After that, was there any time—were we ever alone together?”