Unless the Federation Prince shows them the way.

CARMINDOR

You want me to become a mindless follower?

GENERAL SOND smiles, and it’s so deceiving because it is earnest.

GENERAL SOND

I merely want to save you, my Prince, because no one else will.

My hands are shaking. Somehow it feels like a threat. No, I know it is. And this time there’s no clues, no signifiers. It’s just a cropped photo of the script. Whoever the thief is, they’re learning—and that means I have even less chance of finding them.

I’m ruined.

Harper lays a concerned hand on my shoulder. “Imogen, are you okay?”

I look up and I want to scream that I’m not Imogen. That I’m about to be no one, the girl who leaked the Starfield sequel script and no Hollywood studio would ever work with her again. My career will be over.

But I can’t tell her that because she thinks I’m someone else.

She says softly, surprising me, “Are you hungry?”

“I don’t have any money with me,” I reply tightly. I can’t look at her.

“Lucky for you I am also very, very broke. C’mon, we haven’t had dinner yet.”

She takes my hand—her fingers folding between mine—and drags me in from the balcony and out of the Stellar Party, knowing before I even said anything that I was trying not to fall apart.

HARPER FISHES AROUND IN HER BACKPACK for her keycard and lets us in. We aren’t even in the same hotel anymore, but one adjacent to where I’m staying. It’s a modest room, like most are, I guess; there are two double beds and a minifridge and a pretty outdated TV on a dresser. I can tell from the suitcases strewn across the room and the bathroom full of shampoos and straighteners and toiletries that she’s rooming with three other women, but they’re all gone.

“I hope you’re hungry,” she says as she dumps her purse in the doorway and walks over to her suitcase.

I don’t exactly know what kind of food is supposed to be in a suitcase until she unzips it to reveal a jumbo-pack of those ninety-nine-cent ramen noodle cups. She asks me to fill the coffeemaker carafe—after washing it out—so I do that while she pulls the desk out from the wall and sets it up as a table, the edge of one of the beds serving as a bench.

My mind is still buzzing with the new script leak. I don’t want to think about it—can’t think about it. If I do, I fear I may lose all hope.

This is impossible. Why am I here? Pretending to be Imogen? It doesn’t make sense anymore. I’ll never find the thief. But I don’t want to be Jess again yet.