Luckily, not many Cosmics are up and about, and the ones who are mind their own business as they pass. Duarte and Eshe walk in front, my drones hovering over their heads, while Timour and I are partially concealed behind them. I glance at the Liansan now. He said my name when he first woke up, but he hasn’t spoken to me since. He hasn’t even looked me in the eye, and I would chalk it up to post-traumatic stress if he weren’t openly communicating with the other two Keepers.

He’s clad in a gray jumpsuit and black boots we snagged from a janitor’s closet, and he winces each time a loose piece of fabric rubs against his tender skin. Although the clothes hide his injuries, I’ll never forget the pure suffering on his face when we coerced him to put them on.

I resist the urge to ask if he’s alright. It’s a dumb question, because plainly, he’s not.

Unexpectedly, Duarte and Eshe stop, listening to their helmets, and I almost bump into the Lieutenant.

“Damn it!” exclaims Duarte. “The pirates destroyed our cargo ship.”

“Plan B?” I wonder.

“Plan B was an escape dropship that we piloted here. They know it doesn’t belong to Titan, and they know we’re here, which means they’re preparing an ambush. We’ll have to find another way out.”

“I’ve disabled security, but it’s possible they can override it.” I address Timour, “What about the dropship you were working on?”

He doesn’t look at me when he asks, “What’s the date?”

“October… sixth. Time is around zero-four-hundred-hours,” I reply.

He chuckles morosely. “Missed the cutoff point by four hours. The dropship requires a password to undock, and the password I stole was only good for thirty days. It’ll take more time than we have to obtain the new one.” He spares me a glance. “Where’s Felix? He’s the Captain of DeLarge, so shouldn’t he have access to it?”

I really wish people would quit bringing him up. “Felix is dead.” Timour’s eyebrows shoot up. “He died saving me from… I’ll explain later.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and his authentic apology makes me feel guilty. Yes, losing Felix was—is—excruciating, but I’m certainly not about to compare it to Timour’s month-long torture extravaganza.

“Who’s Felix?” queries Duarte.

“Later,” I repeat. “Commander Orlov raises a viable solution, because I have access to DeLarge.”

“You want us to escape in a giant, Alameda-class battleship with a bright red logo?” Eshe asks caustically.

I shrug. “Unless you have a better idea.”

And that’s how we end up racing toward the center of Titan, utilizing routes that I know less people travel through. If somebody recognizes me, we’re finished, but the few Cosmics we run by seem to think what’s going on is above their pay grade.

Until we reach the bottom of the steel elevator connected to DeLarge’s entrance.

And right there is Nupan in a bulletproof vest, blocking our exit. She points her machine gun at Duarte, and he and Eshe aim their coilguns at her in a standoff. “You cannot take her,” Nupan states. “Boss wants her.”

“We don’t give a shit,” Duarte retorts. “You don’t have a right to kidnap.”

“The IF has been killing my people for as long as I can remember, Martians and Cosmics alike,” she argues stolidly. “We have the right to put her in a grave; be grateful that Boss has an undue liking for her.”

Duarte flexes his hand, primed to shoot, when a dart from the left punctures Nupan’s throat. Her eyes widen, her aim wavers, and she follows our gaze to Doctor River, who’s emerging from the left hallway. The doctor’s wearing regular clothes as opposed to her wonted hospital garb, a tranquilizer gun in one hand.

“Nalani?” Nupan questions, as though she’s hallucinating. “How… could…” She falls, and Doctor River rushes to catch her shoulders. The machine gun and tranquilizer gun clatter to the floor, as the doctor carefully lowers her wife beside the weapons.

“You guys need to go,” says Doctor River, straightening her spine and angling her head toward the elevator. “Boss is arriving any—”

A shot rings out, and the five of us examine our surroundings wildly, but there’s no one else in sight.

Doctor River groans, placing a hand on her stomach, where darkness is blooming from a hole in her purple shirt. Blood. “Shit,” she whispers, collapsing onto the ground, parallel to Nupan.

Stolen story; please report.

I move to assist her, when someone steps into the light from my right. I didn’t even know there was a hallway there—it’s shrouded in black shadows. The person who stepped forward is Wolfe, carrying a sniper rifle. He shot the doctor.

Two others reveal themselves: Valentino… and Huxley. They both hold elecs, trained on Duarte and Eshe’s heads. Considering Huxley only brought two guards with him, I reckon he was unable to override my disabling of the surveillance cameras. He took a guess as to how we were planning to escape, and the guess was accurate, but backup could be on its way.

We won’t be leaving Titan.

“Hm, another traitor among us. Can’t rely on anyone these days,” Huxley tsks, looking at Doctor River’s bleeding body. Duarte and Eshe swivel around to aim their coilguns at him. “Ah-ah-ah, no, you shoot, and she dies.” Huxley gestures in my direction, where I’m no longer behind Eshe. I’m exposed, and a purple dot from Wolfe’s sniper rifle is illuminated over my heart. “Weapons down.”

Duarte and Eshe start to lower their guns, and I order, “No, don’t. He won’t kill me.”

Huxley smirks, eyes glittering. “Won’t I?”

“No.” Honestly, I’m just taking a chance here.

Silence descends for a full minute, then Huxley uses one hand to sign something to Wolfe, and the purple dot shifts to Timour. “Doesn’t he just look… too alive?” taunts Huxley. “After what I did, I’m amazed he can still walk.” Timour clenches his jaw. “Ailee, I’ll make you a deal.”

“Right, because you’re so good at adhering to those.”

He purses his lips. “Or I can simply kill all your friends, your Liansan, and throw you in the dungeon. Your choice.”

He’s going to do that anyway. “What’s your offer?”

He smiles. “I’ll let your friends go in an escape pod, provided they don’t vandalize any of my people or property on the way out. They must swear an oath never to return, although I doubt that’ll be much of a problem, since they won’t be able to find this place once I change our trajectory around the Sun.” I don’t think he knows about the eight other IF-MSF astronauts on Titan.

“And in exchange?”

He tilts his head. “Do you have to ask?”

No, I guess I don’t. He wants me to remain here on Titan with him for the rest of our lives. He wants me to watch as he uses NeuroQueue to extinguish Liansa, then the UE, then Mars… the whole Solar System under his rule. He is abusive; he’s proven that time after time. I don’t see how he possibly believes I could ever forgive him for all he’s done. Or maybe he doesn’t care for my forgiveness, as long as he gets to pull my strings.

Yet I’d take that deal in a heartbeat. I really would. Because otherwise Duarte, Eshe, and Timour are dead, and NeuroQueue is still a complication. If I take the deal, they’ll be alive, and it would give everyone involved further opportunities to demolish Huxley’s plans. However, the main predicament is that the IF and the MSF won’t surrender me. They need the Eye around my neck, and they’ll probably bid Eshe to chop my head off in order to get it.

“Well?” prompts Huxley.

Before I can respond, the ceiling explodes. We Keepers jump back, avoiding the wall of metal that crashes down from the collapsing ceiling, effectively separating us from Huxley and his henchmen. My drones fly to the side.

A hand wraps around my arm and yanks me toward a man, and I yelp. I spot distressed black eyes the same moment Thomson yells over the creaking metal, “Sorry I couldn’t control the detonation better!” He gestures to the DeLarge elevator that’s now decimated due to the explosion. “But this was the only thing I could think of!”

Duarte whips his coilgun at Thomson. “Let her go,” he demands.

Thomson does more than that. He pushes me into the nearest unblocked hallway—the one Doctor River came from—and trails behind, waving for the other Keepers to follow. “There’s a dropship at the stern that can take you wherever you need to go. I’ll show you.”

“How do we know we can trust you?” Eshe asks him.

“I think the bombs I set off for you are self-explanatory. And because I owe Ailee,” he states.

For what? “You can,” I simply tell Eshe, even though I’m not entirely sure what Thomson means by “owe.” But I trust him.

We sprint through the hallway, and I hear bullets battering metal back near DeLarge, as Huxley and my former guards try to punch through the new obstacle. There’s too much dust at that end to see anything, so I focus my eyes forward.

Two Cosmics shoot at us from up ahead, and I shout, “Hunt, Scar, sic!” My drones are intelligent enough to identify who’s attacking me, and they set their sights on the two shooters, beheading them rapidly.

“Holy shit!” exclaims Thomson.

“Hell yeah!” Duarte laughs.

Once we jump over the decapitated bodies, an explosion behind us rocks the ship, and then I hear three pairs of feet barreling toward us—Huxley and his goons, but I can’t see them yet. Thomson pulls me to a stop, urging, “Take out your portal.”

“Why?” I ask.

“I’m transferring access to the dropship over to you,” he responds, putting our portals together. He taps his screen twice, and the transfer is done, which is a much faster process than if we had been segregated, and he had to search for my specific portal within the database. “Match the number on the dropship’s hull to the one you see here.”

A seed of panic. “But why?” I ask again.

“Yo, what the hell are you doing?” Duarte yells, meters in front of us.

Caressing my face briefly, Thomson shakes his head, his thumb brushing over my bottom lip. “I’ll hold them up. Now, we’re even,” is all he says before releasing me and running toward the explosion’s dust storm.

“For what?” I scream at his back. For when I saved his life on DeLarge? For when he executed Leonid? He scarcely has enough protection—only a bulletproof vest and a handgun. What is he thinking?

As the dust swallows Thomson, it erupts into flames.