Caledonia reached for the glass of water by her cot and took a long drink. She shouldn’t care what he risked getting the patch. She hadn’t asked him to, after all. But she couldn’t help herself. “What do you mean he risked a lot?” she asked.

“Anytime we need something like that we have to go to the colonies.” Triple watched her shrewdly as she spoke. “And anytime we go into the colonies, we risk our safety.”

“Why?”

“Because.” She hesitated. “Because even though most of us were born there, the colonists fear Aric more than they want us back. If they even want us back.”

“What do you mean?” She couldn’t imagine being so close to her family and not being with them. She would—and had—done everything in her power to try to free her brother from Aric’s army.

“I mean we’re already lost to them. In their minds, the damage is done. If they thought they could save a few of their children by returning us to the Father, then that’s what they’d do. So we keep our distance. Only go near one of the colonies when we have no other choice.”

“So you aren’t trading with them.”

Triple regarded her coolly.

“No,” she said. “We aren’t trading with the people who would likely take us prisoner and return us to the life we’ve just escaped.”

“You stole it.”

“We stole it.” Triple’s answer was unashamed.

The colonists lost more than nanopatches on a regular basis. Between conscriptions, they shouldn’t have to worry about this kind of thievery. Yet these Bullets were still taking from them. Whatever they needed. And in this instance, it had been what she needed.

“Once a Bullet . . .” she said, guilt and resentment turning in her gut.

Triple stood abruptly, slinging her bag over her shoulder, and turned a cutting glare on Caledonia.

“We’re not Bullets. We’re Blades. We belong to ourselves and ourselves alone. We’re sharp and flexible and nothing like the things Aric Athair forced us to be. You can judge us all you want, Caledonia, but if you refuse to see that we are more than these scars on our bodies, then you’re more like Aric than we are. That’s on you.”

Triple’s eyes were alight, her cheeks flushed. She was fully alive, fully rooted in her own strength and convictions, and Caledonia knew immediately that she’d spoken carelessly. In spite of having two defected Bullets on her own crew—Hime and Oran—she continued to make this mistake. She had reacted to the idea of Triple as a Bullet rather than the complicated, compassionate girl before her.

“And for what it’s worth, we give back to them when we can. Here and there. They might not know where it comes from, but meat cooks the same on any fire.”