For now, the Chimæra was the one place I could actually be myself. Everyone here was a little like me, actually. They wore crazy clothes, had weird hair; they did their own thing. Even on a planet like Lorien, there are people who don’t quite fit in. Those people came here.

Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—you’d even catch someone cracking a frown. Not because they were unhappy or anything. Just for fun. Just to see how it felt, I guess.

Teev was looking at me with an amused expression, and Paxton pointed at the identity band on my wrist. “Aren’t those things supposed to be foolproof?” he asked with a smirk. “Every time I see you, you’ve figured out another way in that front door.”

The gates at the Chimæra scan all patrons upon entry, mostly to prevent underage Loriens like me from getting in. In the past, I’d sometimes snuck in a back entrance or shoved through the doors unnoticed with a big crowd. Tonight, though, I’d gone a step further, modifying my ID band’s age signature so the machines would think I’m older than I am. I was actually pretty proud of myself, but I wasn’t about to give up all my secrets. I just gave Paxton a sly shrug.

“That’s me. Sandor, Technological Wizard and Man of Mystery.”

“Forget about the door scan, Paxton,” Teev said. “What about the Truancy Register at his school? You do still go to school, right? You better hurry or you’re going to get busted. It’s getting late.”

“You mean early,” I corrected her. The sun would be coming up any minute. But she was right. Or, she would have been.

Teev had a mole above her lip and a scarlet-colored birthmark high on her cheek, fading back into her hairline. A thin-line tattoo encircled the mole and then curved up into an arrow, pointing at the birthmark. She was shortish and kind of cute and there was something offbeat about her. She was who she was, and she wasn’t going to hide it. I admired that about her.

I was tempted to tell her how I’d gotten around the problem of the Truancy Register. It had actually been an easier fix than the door-scan problem—or maybe I was just that good. All I did was borrow my friend Rax’s ID band and embed a copy of my own digital biosignature inside it. Now whenever I cut class, the class register scans me as “present” as long as Rax is there.