“You’re wrong.” He shrugged. “Or wrongish. I lived next door to you a long time ago.”

“How long ago? We’ve been in Albuquerque for nine years.”

Before then we never stayed in one place long enough to make friends. Some people made an impression along the way, but most of those early years we spent running from one place to the next were a blur. It didn’t help that I’d been so young, too.

“It’s been four thousand, seven hundred, and thirty-two days since I last saw you.”

An exact count in days? That wasn’t what I expected. I did some quick math in my head. “Before Liberation Week? You knew me from back then?”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re old enough to remember me?” He didn’t look that much older than me. A few years maybe.

“Calling me handsome and young? Careful. You’re going to do all kinds of things to my ego.” He tilted his head as he watched me as if trying to get a read on me.

I just stared at him for a minute. My gut said to trust him, but I still wasn’t sure what to make of him. He thought he knew me, but he didn’t really. I was barely a person at six.

“I was ten when you were born,” he said, finally. “That makes me thirty now. And you’re turning twenty in a couple months.”

He was right about my birthday, but he could’ve learned that from Space Tech records.

“So, yeah, I remember you, but I don’t take it personally that you don’t remember me. You were just a kid when everything went to shit. Plus, your mom helped those memories fade.”

“Right.”

My mother had my memory wiped when we first started running. I was having a hard time not speaking in Aunare, and she said I kept talking about things that would get us caught. So she took me to a doctor to help me forget that part of my life.

I wasn’t sure how to feel right then. It was weird that someone besides Mom, Roan, and Jorge knew who I was, especially when I didn’t really know him.

I stared out at the skyline, not wanting to hold his gaze anymore, but I could feel his eyes on me. Watching me. Waiting for me to ask another question.

I had to get up the nerve to talk about the one thing I didn’t want to talk about. After a minute of quiet, I finally asked him. “My father sent you?”

“Among others. There are a lot of people looking for you.”

So it wasn’t just my father. I shoved down the disappointment and asked another scary question. “SpaceTech? But you’re not going to turn us in.”

“Exactly,” he said. “SpaceTech is looking for you, but there’s not a chance in hell I’d ever turn you in.”