“I didn’t feel much like celebrating.”

He grunted. “Didn’t do well on the test?”

“Turns out it doesn’t matter,” I said. I glanced at him, but he was backlit, just a silhouette in the doorway. “Do you ever…,” I said. “Do you ever feel they forced you to be what you are?”

“No. I might have forced myself into it though.”

I sighed. Mother was probably worried sick about me. I stood up and wandered over to the wall where the aide had put my pack.

“Why do you want it so much?” the janitor asked. Was there something familiar about his voice? “It’s dangerous, being a pilot. A lot of them get killed.”

“Just under fifty percent are shot down in their first five years,” I said. “But they don’t all die. Some eject. Others get shot down, but survive the crash.”

“Yes. I know.”

I froze, then frowned and looked back at the figure. I couldn’t make out his face, but something flashed on his breast. Medals? A pilot’s pin? I squinted, and made out the shape of a DDF jacket and dress slacks.

This was no janitor. I could still hear those two out in the hallway, joking with each other.

I stood up straighter. The man walked slowly to my desk, and the emergency lights revealed he was older, maybe in his fifties, with a stark white mustache. He walked with a prominent limp.

He picked up the test I’d filled out, then flipped through it. “So why?” he finally asked. “Why care so much? They never ask the most important question on these tests. Why do you want to be a pilot?”

To prove myself, and to redeem my father’s name. It was my immediate response, though something else warred with it. Something my father had sometimes said, something buried inside me, often overshadowed by ideas of vengeance and redemption.

“Because you get to see the sky,” I whispered.

The man grunted. “We name ourselves Defiants,” he said. “It’s the central ideal of our people—the fact that we refuse to back down. And yet, Ironsides always acts so surprised when someone defies her.” He shook his head, then set the test down again. He put something on top of it.

He turned to limp away.

“Wait,” I said. “Who are you?”

He stopped at the doorway, and the light outside showed his face more clearly, with that mustache, and eyes that seemed… old. “I knew your father.”

Wait. I did know that voice. “Mongrel?” I said. “That is you. You were his wingmate!”

“In another life,” he said. “Oh-seven-hundred sharp on the day after tomorrow, building F, room C-14. Show the pin to get access.”

The pin? I walked back to the desk, and found—sitting on top of my test—a cadet’s pin.

I snatched it up. “But Ironsides said she’d never let me into a cockpit.”

“I’ll deal with Ironsides. It’s my class; I get final say over my students, and even she can’t overrule me. She’s too important for that.”