We found no tears or signs of self-sealing. None of us had felt any prick, jab, or scrape. We looked, then we looked again, the three of us in an awkward, waiting silence. We found nothing to indicate our suits had been breached or our skin broken.

Finally I said, “I can get us off this ship, but we have to get to my mother’s lab.”

“Why there?” Baqir asked. “There are evac airlocks on every level, aren’t there?”

“They’re locked down—that’s part of the medical quarantine. And if they haven’t shut down the security drones, we would be vulnerable in evac suits. But Mum’s workshop isn’t locked, and there are two more experimental ships. We can use one of them to get away.”

“What about the security drones?” Baqir asked. “If they attacked the shuttle . . .”

“Mum’s ships can outfly the drones. It’s always pissed SPEC off, that the engines fast enough to beat the security web are stuck inside of it.”

“We can’t leave Ariana behind,” Xiomara said. “They’ll kill her when they find her again.”

“Xi,” I said softly. “She’s already gone. Nobody survives the virus. Not once it’s in them.”

Xiomara shook her head, swiping tears away still. “You don’t know that. You don’t even know what it is. You can’t know that.”

I started to say something, but Baqir shook his head minutely to stop me. To Xiomara he said, “Think about it. If there is some way to help her, what’s the best way to do it? She was firing at us too. She didn’t recognize us. She could be anywhere on the ship. Doesn’t it make more sense to call for help? SPEC can send a whole medical team. They can put her in quarantine and get her real help. You heard what those people said. There’s already a ship close, and probably more on the way. The shuttle sent out a distress signal.”

Xiomara ran her hand over her mouth. “What the fuck happened to the shuttle? Do we really think it could have been shot by a missile? Or was it the drones?”

“SPEC doesn’t have missiles,” I said. “And I don’t just mean officially. They really don’t. My aunt and a bunch of other Councilors have been shutting down space-based weapons research for years.”

“You wouldn’t need a space-based weapon to sabotage a shuttle,” Baqir pointed out. “That one lady seemed pretty certain it exploded from the inside.”

“So she says,” Xiomara said. “Shit. This is so fucked up. We need to call for help.”

Baqir said, “Jas? Is there a radio we can get to?”

“There must be.” Xiomara jutted her chin stubbornly as though she was expecting me to argue. “We have to tell them everything we know, so they’re prepared when they get here.”