“You can’t have nanos! You’re—” He leaned closer, his face turning red. “Why didn’t you do anything to help her, Ahiga?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ahiga’s voice was filled with freezing calmness as he slowly rose from his char and leaned over the desk. “I asked, bartered, begged, and blackmailed to try and get her switched. Nothing worked. My cover’s pretty much blown at this point. I’ve been sending you messages, but two days ago, I had enough. I sent a message to her family. This is over. She’s not suffering anymore.”

I patted Ahiga’s arm, and he looked down at me, the fire of his anger still burning in his eyes. “Ahiga did everything he could to help me. We even talked about stealing a ship and making a run for it, but—”

“How did this go so fucking wrong?” Declan put his head in his hands. “You were supposed to be washing dishes in the kitchen.” He looked up at me. “In. The. Motherfucking. Kitchen.”

“No. Your brother made sure I wasn’t washing dishes.”

“I…” He stood up so fast his chair crashed to the ground. He leaned over the desk, head hung down. When he looked up at me, his face was filled with pure rage. “I would’ve been on the same ship as you, except I needed to get your mother, Roan, and a few others who wanted to go with them to safety. If I left your mother where my brother could find her… The two weeks you were in cryo, I was racing to find a good place to stash them, get them there and then cover my tracks. I sent word to your father, and then I left. And it’s still not going to be good enough?” He stood up and started pacing back and forth.

I felt cold all over. “What do you mean not good enough? You’re not close?”

“Not close enough. I’m two days out. I can maybe speed up a little, which will put me there tomorrow in the middle of the night. I wanted to wake up with enough time to set up our exit. I…I needed time to plan so that I could sneak you out of there with no one knowing.”

The ship could only go at top speeds when its passengers were in cryo. The human body couldn’t take travel like that.

I blinked a few times as I tried to process. “You slowed down and came out of cryo early?”

“Yes.”

I swallowed. Declan couldn’t go back into cryo now. The drugs that woke him up needed more time to cycle out of his body.

This was so messed up. He was close, but not close enough to do me any good. I shook my head at him. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going on my first run in the morning.”