Rhea followed behind the others. Nyx and Cato strode ahead with their Mors at the ready. Rhea felt defenseless in comparison. She drew her abilities around her like a cloak, knowing that the fractals would be shimmering at her skin. She fought the instinct to hide them—the effort wasn’t worth it.

Nyx was calm, focused, her fear so dampened she likely didn’t realize it was still there, hiding beneath the surface. Cato’s fear was acute, no longer massaged away by the Oracle. The closer they came to the bridge, the more agitated Rhea felt. Metal sometimes weakened her abilities, if the walls were thick enough.

The doors slid open, and Rhea prepared herself for twenty Mors trained on their heads. For gunfire and screaming and blood. For a repeat of Zelus.

Silence.

Twenty soldiers and delegates, sprawled on the ground. Sleeping like the dead. Rhea knelt down, pressed her fingers to the closest man’s neck. This would be the legate. He’d receive a gentler fate than the legate of Zelus. That death she hadn’t mourned.

The man’s heart beat slow and steady. He dreamed of someone he loved. Murky, strange, drugged, but the strength of emotion still shone through, clear as a clarion call.

Cato stared down at them, his face rippling with the emotions that washed over Rhea’s skin. He’d have known Philanians in the forces. In the features of those sleeping were the echoes of his friends. Soldiers who might have saved his life in battle. They wore their Tholosian uniforms. Cato had so recently worn his own with pride. He’d moved against his own in a way he couldn’t explain away. He had already chosen his side on Ismara, but this cemented it.

Nyx made her way around the bridge. “All out like newgrowns still wet from the vat,” she confirmed.

Rhea let out a breath, expanded her abilities. The gas wasn’t meant to work for long. As Nyx, Cato, and Rhea gathered up the handful of delegates and twenty soldiers, snapping their wrists together with cuffs and loading them into the shuttle, Rhea kept them calm. Kept their dreams sweet.

They programmed the shuttle to jump them far from their location, far from their home planet, even farther from Laguna. Ariadne scrambled their comms but left them more than enough food to last them for a few days. She put the cuff keys in one of the women’s hands. They’d wake up groggy, and it’d take them some time to debug the comms.

Enough time, she hoped.

“Thank you,” Rhea said as she gathered the DNA samples for their shifters. “We’ll use your faces well.”

With luck, they’d save a galaxy.

—