“No, it’s fine,” Naomi said. “Yes, it’s weird seeing him again. Did a lot to get away from him last time. Didn’t see ever coming back.”

“Bad times.”

“Those or these?”

Cyn coughed out a laugh and looked over at her, a question in his eyes. “These? Esá the promised land. Belt standing up. You know how it was before. You remember running thin because we couldn’t get enough oxygen. Breaking bones because the meds got taxed too much.”

“I do,” she said, but Cyn was on a roll now, and he wasn’t ready to stop. He put down his array and stared at her. The sympathy had burned out of him, and there was a rage in his eyes. Not with her. With something bigger.

“I got three cousins died because Earth corporations wouldn’t sell the good cancer meds to Belters. Gave us the crap left over from the farms on Ganymede. Only vat meats aren’t like people, yeah? Don’t work the same, but who cares? Tio Bennett got his ship taken away because he was behind on his permitting. He wasn’t even in a pinché Earther dock, but he didn’t pay, so they boarded him, dropped him on Ceres, and sold his rig. And for what? They protect us from pirates? They protect us from third-rate manufacturers passing off old suits as new? They care if we got shot? If we got killed?”

“I know they don’t.”

“Didn’t, Knuckles. They didn’t. Because past is the past now. Today,” Cyn said, poking the air with his thumb. “You been flying on their side for a lot of years, and maybe not tu falta. Things before, keeping Filipito away, maybe we all did that wrong, yeah? But I’m starting to think you been sharing a couch with an Earth coyo so long you forgot what you are. Started thinking maybe you’re like them.”

No, she wanted to say. No, I never forgot. But even as she formed the words, she wasn’t sure if they were true. Once, there had been a girl with her name who had belonged here. Who’d felt the rage she saw in Cyn and in Filip. There had been a time when she could have cheered the deaths on Earth. But Jim was from Earth. And Amos. Alex from Mars, which from a Belt perspective was more or less the same thing. And what was she? Their pet Belter? The one that didn’t belong? She didn’t think so. So then, she was something else.

And still, how well had they known her, really? There was so much she hadn’t said. She didn’t know what would have changed if she had.