He gives a low, throaty laugh and points at the black scrawl on my Starbucks cup. “Don’t worry. I’m not a stalker. The barista wrote it on your cup.” His lips curl into a grin. His teeth are white and the right kind of crooked. “So…does Ana speak?”

I open my mouth and then shut it again. Like a damn fish.

“I get it,” he says. “Low profile. Smart.”

Uh…what?

“It’s just you two?” he says, glancing around the carriage.

“What, two’s not good enough for you?” Bea deadpans.

“Where are the others?” he asks.

The others? OK, that does it. He’s a psycho.

“I suppose you could ask me the same question,” he adds, his face darkening. “Truth is, I needed space. Last mission…it didn’t go well. All over Sol news.”

“What news?” Bea says.

“They didn’t make it,” he says. “None of the last three have.”

OK. All right. Stay calm. Don’t lose it. Just because he’s Tobias-Eaton-aka-Four-in-Divergent hot, doesn’t mean he’s not an axe murderer.

“What did you say your name was again?” Bea says.

“Malik.”

“Right, well. Look, Malik, I don’t know what the Buck Rogers you’re talking about and I don’t really care. To each his own. But listen—”

The train wheezes and the brakes whine and swallow her words. We pull into a station. The doors crash open and the carriage crowd disgorges onto the platform.

“This is me,” he says, glancing up. “See you at the Haven?”

The what?

He moves past me and my fingers graze his and that sends a shock up my arm. I watch him shoulder through the crowd, glancing back once, and still I don’t speak. A thrill of adrenaline pumps in my blood. Wait, my body screams. Don’t go. Stay.

I sit transfixed, breathing hard, turned to the window as the doors slide shut. He’s a stranger…and yet, I feel like meeting him was meant to be. Inescapable. But why?

In the middle of the crowded platform, he turns again and his eyes find mine. And I feel two things at once. Affinity with him, a closeness. But also, a nameless dread. The train screeches and speeds up and hurtles us into darkness.

He was staring at me—at me—as if no one else existed in the world.

Here. With me. Gone.

“Well, that was weird,” Bea says. “And by the way, you’re a pickup artist of the first order, Moon. Should have your own vlog, teach others.”

“Get lost,” I say.

“In your defence,” she adds. “He was fit, that boy. I’d like to take him home and…well, finders keepers. I know. I’m just sayin’.”

I put my hand against the glass, feel the train shake.

I stare at my reflection in the window and the black beyond.

“Don’t worry,” Bea says. “You’ll see him again.”

“Think so?”