Sagara was silent for a moment, gazing at her. Finally he turned his back on her, and for a horrible moment Park thought he was going to leave her there. “Hold onto my belt,” he said, his voice now stiff and toneless.

She didn’t want to touch him. But he had the light, and seemed to know his way back to the others; what other choice did she have? So she reached out and slipped her fingers under his belt, following him as he walked back into the dark. There was surprising heat trapped there, rather than the chill she had been expecting. So he was human, after all.

“Thank you,” she said as they walked along. She tried to calm her heart’s clamoring—afraid that he might pick up on it, like some kind of night-hunting predator.

Sagara didn’t turn his head. “For?”

“Coming to get me. And . . . supporting me, last night. I know we haven’t—seen eye to eye.” This had to seem ultra-suspicious to him, Park thought. This and the bridge, and the utility rooms. And everything he’d overheard with ARGUS. She cringed internally as she recalled all the jabs she’d thrown at him, knowing he would eventually hear it; all the furtive talk she’d had with Jimex and Fulbreech and Wick. And yet he’d chosen to put all that aside and lead her back.

The security officer didn’t answer her for a moment. Finally he said, “You don’t need to thank me, Park. Whatever you may think, my loyalty lies with the ISF. That extends to every member of its crew.”

So he was rebuffing her olive branch. She couldn’t help but challenge him on that. “So personal feelings never enter into the equation, for you?” She tried to gauge his body language. “What if you had to protect someone you hated?”

His posture didn’t change. “I don’t hate anybody.”

“And love?”

A pause. “Nor that.”

“The perfect soldier.”

“I have been called that.”

She could see it: years of dutifully serving the ISF, of never questioning orders, carrying out his tasks with a cool and efficient gravity. In some ways he reminded her of herself—and that frightened her a little. Was Sagara simply a mirror-image of Park, had she been space-born? What if she had been selected because ISF thought she seemed like the perfect spy, as he was the perfect soldier? A matching set.

But that was before I learned about all of the ISF’s secrets, Park thought. Its inequities. The divide between the conscripted and the non-conscripted. And the mad, eldritch gauntlet they’d sent their people into—knowingly or not.

Her fingers felt cramped around his belt; he was towing her along like a boat dragging someone on a lifesaver in its wake. To break up the silence Park said, “Do we know what caused the blackout?”