“We ask you—” began one.

“—to be orderly—”

“—and calm—”

“—while you wait.”

“Wait for what?” Robb muttered.

“For Mellifare to get her heart,” Di replied, lifting his head a little. The slice in his chest sparked, and he winced. “And then she will kill us all.”

“Nice of you to join me. How’re you feeling?”

“Not good,” replied the Metal, and suppressed a painful groan. “I think it hit my memory core. You should have left me.”

Something glinted far above them—a flash of a skysailer’s underbelly. Crimson wings. Diving down through the lines of traffic like a stone dropped from the sky.

Guess he didn’t need a comm-link after all.

The skysailer swirled down beneath the garden on the other side, its wings as silent as a sigh. He heaved Di a little higher on his shoulder and said, “We’re never leaving anyone behind. Never again.”

Then he shoved himself and Di over the edge—for a split second he remembered his brother falling, falling, a crown of blood behind his head—before the skysailer appeared under them and they landed in a heap in the backseat.

Jax

Jax pushed up his goggles and glanced back at his new passengers as they struggled to untangle themselves from each other. “Welcome aboa— Goddess, Di, you have a hole in your chest.”

“It is only a flesh wound,” replied the Metal painfully, pulling himself up from the floorboard to the seat. “We need to get to the shrine.”

“That doesn’t look like just a flesh wound—are you sure you’re okay?”

“The shrine, please. Mellifare went into my head. She knows her heart is there.”

“Ak’va,” Jax cursed, and tapped the comm-link on his lapel. “Ana, they’re on their way to you.”

There was only static in reply.

“Captain?” he tried again, but there was still no answer.

He exchanged a look with Robb. That wasn’t good. The light under his skin whispered, telling him things he didn’t want to hear. His face pinched. A horn blared, and he quickly jerked the skysailer out of oncoming traffic and down toward the cityscape. The Iron Shrine stood in the distance, surrounded by a large square, and then rows and rows of buildings, like petals of a blooming flower.

Suddenly, an emergency node blipped up on the holo-screen, and on every other skysailer’s holo-screen around them.

CODE 49-1.

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

He cursed and swiped the emergency node away. “Di, what code is that?”

“How am I supposed to know?” replied Di, almost irritably. “I have a hole in my chest.”

Both Jax and Robb gave him a blank look. “Because you always knew this stuff before,” Robb pointed out.

Di’s eyebrows jerked up in surprise. “Oh. I did.” It wasn’t a question but a realization. He looked down to the wound in his chest and put his hand over it. “I would guess it has something to do with locking down the space station. Mellifare would not want anyone to leave. Not now. Not with her heart.”