“Thought so.” It was gentle. Tennal was softening his edges for Surit. That only widened the rip in Surit’s chest.

Surit should have been sensible. That was who he had been his entire life: he was the dependable one, the one you could rely on not to do something rash. He pulled himself together and buried the part that wanted to fling his whole self at the coruscating sun in his flight path. “No,” he said. “You’re right. We have to do the job in front of us.” And there’s no future for us together. Neither of them had to say it.

Surit pushed himself up into a crouch, then to his feet. He wasn’t unsteady; that was only a lie his brain was telling him. “The exit must be clear by now. We should get back.”

Tennal pushed himself to his feet as well—careless, his elbow in Surit’s chest, but not getting as close as they’d been before. His back pressed against the wall. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s not get arrested on top of each other in a maintenance corridor. Think of the paperwork.” He gave Surit a rueful smile. “Lead on, Lieutenant.”

CHAPTER 21

Surit sat up in bed in the early morning light, dappled through the hydroponics window, and stared at the old wristband.

He hadn’t let it go since last night. He hadn’t even really taken in that it was Marit’s wristband. Surit’s picture of his gen-parent was a hazy composite of family pictures and vids: his alt-parent, Elvi, had kept them all, as if Marit had never been declared a traitor. Surit had never known Marit, not personally. Elvi had raised him. Surit was a war baby, an old slang term for babies born from soldiers freezing their genetic material just before a big campaign, for their partners or families to raise their child if something went wrong. And, for Marit, something had gone wrong.

Surit wondered if Tennal had been a war baby as well. He was the right age, and his gen-parent must have been a neuromodified soldier.

Surit was putting it off. He brought up his family key and tapped the wristband.

The owner of a wristband could segregate files into compartments for access by someone with the right key, tiny message capsules for if they were dead or incapacitated. The most common one was a public prompt for urgent medical records, but a family key was common as well. Surit tried it.

Two images popped up. One was picture of Marit and Elvi in some tourist spot by a river. Marit, short and squat, looked suspiciously at the camera drone. The second—Surit blinked and stared.