She looked like an idiot.

“There’s nothing else in this room but me, but I’ll check,” I promised, swallowing my grin.

I turned my back on the window and Tamara’s bent head to pace around the little room. It was just big enough that I could have laid down on the floor without touching either wall. That meant it was larger than most spaceship rooms, and larger than some apartments in the Republic’s capital city. I told myself this several times as I walked around, examining walls and floor and finding nothing. There was a grate in the back of the room, from which emitted a hissing sound paired with an odd little wind; probably the ventilation system sucking up air to clean it of impurities. Nothing else.

A dull knocking from behind me caught my attention; Tamara was rapping on the window. When she got my attention she spread her arms wide and mouthed, Nothing.

“No?” I said. “Nothing worked?” I leaned against the window. It was very solid glass; I hadn’t realized how thick it was until I was right up against it. Tamara stared at me from the other side, my shadow falling over her face. Some trick of the light made her look worried.

The rest of the room behind Tamara was dimly lit now in the light that filtered through the window and past me. By that light I could see the rest of the big room, a cracked slab of stone in the wall that might have been a chalkboard, the bent and broken plastic of a few ancient chairs behind metal and shattered glass desks.

And, beside the door we’d entered by, almost invisible with age and shadow, another little computer screen.

I hit the talk button on the intercom and said, “Tamara, behind you, at the door we want to close—there’s a panel in the wall a little below eye level. Well. A little below my eye level.”

That she was shorter than me suddenly struck me as inexplicably funny. Brigid had always been so pissed about that. She’d been tall, too, about as tall as Tamara, but not as tall as me. I could pick up something she wanted and hold it over her head while she jumped for it like an angry little dog.

She’d hated that so much. It had been funny because she’d hated it. I’d done that the morning she died, for no reason except to piss her off. She’d been so mad. That’s the last interaction I’d ever had with her. She’d been so furious, and I’d laughed at her.

I didn’t like to think about this. I didn’t like to remember. The conflict between horrible old shame and my weird hilarity made me nauseous. I doubled over, holding my gut.

Knock-knock. I lifted my head and found Tamara very close to the glass that separated us. “Who’s there?” I asked, and laughed.

She mouthed something at me, but trying to read her lips took too much focus. “You should learn sign language,” I told her. “Or we should learn Light. Indigo would be mad.”