Henke and Malachi brought Bhattacharya to House of Wisdom. He was obedient and quiet, offering no protest and revealing nothing of his thoughts. Henke stayed near the airlock to guard the prisoner, while Malachi looked for a functional control panel. He had designed a skeleton key to seize control of the ship’s computers. We needed light, power, air, access to every part of the ship. We needed to find the bridge and fire up the flight systems. We needed to scrub the air clean of any remaining virus. Malachi had warned us that it might take several hours, but Adam had laughed at his concerns. Laughed and ruffled his hair and said that Malachi would not disappoint us. It had not, at the time, sounded like a warning.

“Don’t worry about what’s out there,” I said to him. “Boudicca will handle it.”

Malachi glanced toward Bhattacharya. “You know they can hear us. All the suits are on the same frequency.”

“It doesn’t matter. Are you ready?”

“Always.” Malachi smiled, a bit shakily, and he said, “But I could use some help.”

For a fleeting moment I saw the boy who had walked out of the desert six years ago, in the purple twilight of a cold winter day. I had been patrolling the edge of the homestead, stomping through the cacti and scrub bushes beyond the wire fence that marked our territory. Thrice in the past fortnight we were awoken in the middle of the night by gunfire and taunting shouts from the desert; Adam had commanded a twenty-four-hour patrol to spot any Councils agents before they got close enough to harm us. Low clouds had blanketed the land, threatening snow. A quiet cough behind me made me spin around, my heart thumping, my gun raised. As the stranger drew nearer I saw that his feet were bare, his clothes little more than rags, his hair long and tangled. He carried nothing. He was no older than my seventeen years and so thin a strong wind could knock him over. When he coughed his entire body quaked.

“I saw the lights,” he said, and he spoke with the musical accent of the desert, the one I had been teaching myself to adopt. “Is there a camp near?”

“This is a homestead,” I said sternly. “You’re trespassing.”

He had smiled—bold but warm, a smile that burned through the cold, a smile stronger than my doubts—and he said, “I could really use some help.”