“Good.” He closed his eyes for a second as he let out a long breath. “Good.” He walked to the door but stopped before opening it. He glanced at me over his shoulder. “It really is good to see you again, Amihanna.”

The sound of my birth name made my chest tighten. I wasn’t her. Not anymore. “My name’s Maité.”

“Right. Maité.” He gave a stiff nod and stepped outside.

When the door shut, I gave my mom a squeeze before she could start asking me if I was okay or what I thought of Declan or any of the other million questions I could see running across her face.

“I need time to process. We’ll talk in the morning?”

“Okay. But if you change your mind, come get me. I’m not sure I’ll be sleeping anyway.”

“Okay.” I slipped out of the room, heading back to my bedroom. If I thought I needed a minute before… Overwhelmed didn’t begin to describe how I felt now.

I crawled up on my bed until I was pressed into the corner. It felt nice, having the walls at my back. It made me feel like nothing was going to sneak up behind me. I hugged my knees into my chest and took a breath.

A few days and this nightmare would be over. I might be heading into a totally different life. I didn’t know what that would mean, but at least it would be a change. That was a start. It was more than I’d had to look forward to in a long time.

Chapter Five

It’d been three days since I found Declan waiting in my apartment. Since then, the city had been swarming with SpaceTech’s goons. I know that he said it was only going to be a few thousand of them, but it felt like everywhere I turned there was another uniformed officer. Everything in me said I should lay low and hide, but I kept hearing Declan’s voice in my head telling me to do my normal routine. The AI would be looking for changes in the routines of locals. So that’s what I’d been doing, but it wasn’t easy. Especially this afternoon.

There’d been a table of ten SpaceTech officers in the diner. I’d been terrified every second of showing what I was. Of one of them recognizing me. Of something happening to mess up my chance of getting away. When I took them the check at the end of the meal, I wasn’t thinking about anything other than getting them gone as quickly as possible.

As I left the table, one of them knocked over a bottle of ketchup, and I caught it. I caught it. My reflexes had been too good to be human.

Stupid. So stupid. So unbelievably stupid.