“The security system let us through. It wasn’t the drones.” Malachi touched my arm. I looked down at his hand. His fingers were barely warm, but compared to the aching cold around us, his touch felt like a flame. “Zahra. Think about it. Take a breath and really think about it.”

I did as he said, and I tried, oh, I tried, but my mind was too full. I heard the screams of the woman who had died before she could cross to the ship. The quick red pop of a man’s head vanishing at the pull of a trigger. Boudicca’s laugh when she knew she was going into space again. Nico’s screams as the terrible, voracious fire roiled from Pilgrim 3. My back and ribs had been hurting for so long the pain had become a part of me, inseparable from my skin and my blood.

The man I killed was devoured by the explosion. What a dirty thing it was, to feel relief that another crime had covered my own.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I said. I was so tired. “Tell me what you mean.”

“SPEC does not have missiles and—”

“We don’t know that,” I said. “They have secret weapons. The security grid was secret until they had to reveal it.”

“Okay, but even if they do, your first instinct was that the explosion had come from inside the shuttle. Inside, not outside. That’s what you said before Dag argued otherwise. You were the only one who saw it. You know what you saw.” Malachi spoke patiently, like a teacher guiding a reluctant student. “Do you think SPEC would sabotage a passenger shuttle? If they wanted to stop us, why not do it at Civita? Do you really think they would endanger the passengers? A group of researchers? Including a famous man with a powerful aunt absolutely guaranteed to launch a thorough investigation into anything that happens? Why would SPEC or the Councils do that?”