“Ailee! Let’s go!” demands Duarte.

I hesitate, captivated by the orange, dancing flames. Smoke burns my lungs. Thomson, you moron.

“Don’t even think about it!” Duarte threatens. “I’ll come after you, and we’ll both fry.”

Clenching my fists, I turn away from the fire and sprint to where Duarte, Eshe, and Timour are waiting. I won’t risk their lives for someone who’s most likely dead.

As we continue through doors and halls to the stern of Titan, Eshe asks, “Will we be able to enter the dropship?”

“Thomson gave me access,” I say.

“The redhead?” questions Duarte.

“Yes,” Timour and I respond in sync.

“I didn’t know you had pirate friends in such high places,” Duarte mutters. “First the woman, now the redhead.”

I want to say that I think all Cosmics are high—as in, on drugs—but that wouldn’t be fair. So instead, I state, “They’re good people.”

“They’re still pirates.”

My body starts to feel weird, like I’m on a roller coaster going downhill. Our running falters, and I have the urge to throw up, which allows me to figure it out—Titan is halting its rotation, plunging us into zero G. They’re attempting to slow us. Unlike Plato and DeLarge, Titan isn’t a battleship, and many items aren’t tied down or magnetic. So when the ship stops spinning, a bunch of shit flies into the air, including us.

Duarte and Eshe respond quickly, clapping their heels together to activate their magnetic boots and connect to the floor. Eshe catches me while Duarte grabs Timour, and the Liansan bites his lip in pain from the points of contact. Noticing ridges in the upper right corner of the hallway, I point to them and say, “Keepers, look! Throw us to the handholds.” Duarte and Eshe comply, and Timour and I float through the air until we reach the emergency handholds, using those structures to propel ourselves and continue our getaway. Duarte and Eshe “skate” across the floors—must be special Martian tech, because I’ve never seen magnetic boots do that before.

Eventually, we find the dropship, entering it through an airlock. But when I open my portal to undock the dropship, the screen turns black, and red letters flash:

PORTAL REMOTELY DEACTIVATED

Contact your provider if you think there has been a mistake.

“Are you kidding me?” I exclaim. “He deactivated my portal.”

“Who?” Eshe asks.

“Huxley.”

“Who?”

“Boss.” Does this mean he’s still alive? I was hoping he cooked in that fire.

“You’re an engineer. Can’t you bypass the ignition?”

“What? Like hot-wire a spaceship? This one runs on electricity; there’s nothing to hot-wire.” I ponder for a moment. “Theoretically, I could hack the control bus, but I don’t know how long that will take.”

“Marshal Renner has a better proposition,” Duarte says, referring to his father.

We clamber out of the dropship and seal the door between it and the airlock. After that, Duarte uses the screen in the airlock to release the dropship from Titan, and a large, Martian stealth ship draws up next to us. Marshal Renner is commanding that ship. Claws on his stealth ship hook onto the dropship, flinging it into the vacuum of space. By the time this process is complete, the eight other IF-MSF astronauts locate and join us in the airlock, guided by Eshe.

But the airlock we wait in is not a universal one, probably because it exists for Titan’s personal use, which means Marshal Renner’s ship isn’t going to fit. Just as I assumed, his ship’s airlock parks about a meter away from ours.

The only way into that ship is to careen through space, and Timour and I don’t have spacesuits.

“Does Marshal Renner have any spare suits?” I question Duarte.

He pauses for the incoming reply, then shakes his head. “Negative.”

While humans can survive in space for a short period of time without dying or even permanent injury, it’s not exactly a walk in the park. We cannot hold our breaths, or else our lungs will rupture from the air trying to escape. My skin will boil, my tongue will boil, and then I’ll fall unconscious from lack of oxygen, but hopefully someone will lug me safely aboard.

Oh, man, this is going to hurt.

I look over at Timour to ensure he’s alright with this—I mean, not that we have an alternative—and he nods. “Okay,” I say, “we’re ready.”

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Lifting her helmet off and holding it out to me, Eshe speaks up, “Sergeant Chambers, take my suit.”

My jaw drops. “Um, no. No! I’m not letting you do that. What is wrong with you?”

“I am perfectly sane,” she replies. “With your surface-area-to-volume ratio, you’ll die in seconds.”

Is that a dig? “I’ll be fine, Lieutenant Hassan—”

Somebody gently grasps my arm, and I don’t pay attention to them until my sleeve is pulled up and I feel a pinprick.

“What the…?” The effect is almost instantaneous. My limbs give out, and Duarte holds me, allowing Eshe to place her helmet over my head.

My consciousness fades.

* * *

I wake up strapped to a chair. The first thing I see is the Martian emblem above a doorway. In the middle of the room, a man is barking into a microphone—it’s Marshal Renner, and we’re inside his stealth ship. I don’t know where my drones are. Without propulsion, they probably didn’t endure the short journey through space. I’m no longer wearing Eshe’s spacesuit—I guess she wanted it back—is she alright?

Unbuckling the seatbelts, I stagger to my feet and nearly waft into the air. Damn zero G. Grabbing my chair with both hands, I survey the rest of the room—the command center. Eshe and Timour are nowhere in sight, but there are three Martians in red armor superintending various stations. It’s strange to witness them in the presence of Keepers without shooting at us, or us at them.

The last person I spot leaves his position next to Marshal Renner and floats toward me, suit on, helmet off. Duarte. “Hey, how are you feeling?” he asks, turning his magnetic boots on to keep him in place, his eyebrows drawn together.

“Where are Commander Orlov and Lieutenant Hassan?” I query.

“In the medical bay, recovering from the exposure. An MSF doctor is treating them.”

“So they’re okay?”

“Yes. Lieutenant Hassan should recover within the week. Commander Orlov will take longer because of… well… you know, but we’ll get him to the hospital on Plato as soon as we can.”

“We’re going back to Plato?” I begin to smile.

His expression matches mine. “Yes. Why aren’t you mad at me?”

“I’m always mad at you. You just can’t tell the difference.” And because we all survived. We’ll be okay.

Marshal Renner’s booming voice reverberates throughout the ship, “We cleared the area, and we have a lock on Titan. Prepare to activate DEWs.”

God, there’s that acronym again. “What are DEWs?” I question.

Duarte responds, “DEW stands for directed-energy weapon. It’s Martian tech, and in fact, the pirate cargo ship we hijacked was transporting DEWs to Titan. The pirates don’t expect us to be carrying them. They’re in for a surprise.”

He points to a holographic monitor at the front of the command center, and my eyes widen in horror. The monitor portrays IF and MSF ships surrounding Titan from about a hundred kilometers away, DEWs locked on the Cosmic headquarters.

I object, “But Thomson and Doctor River and—”

Duarte narrows his eyes, saying, “They’re responsible for their choices. Don’t forget who they are, Ailee: Disgusting pirates. Irredeemable monsters who murder innocent women, men, and children.”

“Not all of them are monsters. You saw that firsthand. And regardless, not everyone on Titan is a Cos—pirate. Some are prisoners, like I was.”

He shakes his head. “You know who you sound like right now? Ever heard of the Nuremberg trials?”

“What? So now you think I’m a sympathizer?”

“Are you not?”

I clamp my mouth shut, because maybe I am a sympathizer. Maybe I believe that Cosmics don’t really have alternatives due to former poverty, and they can’t exactly return to Earth or Mars without consequences, so they just follow orders, lest they end up in the dungeon. But these contemplations are dangerous, and perhaps I only think this way because pondering the deaths of all the Cosmics I’ve met during the past couple of months constricts my heart.

This is for the better, I tell myself. Annihilate the NeuroQueue project, save planet Earth. Should be a simple, untroubling decision to make. So why isn’t it?

“Ready… Fire!” Marshal Renner commands. While railguns would’ve taken around thirty-five seconds to reach Titan, and missiles around fourteen, DEWs don’t have any such time obstructions. One second the Cosmic headquarters is there, and the next, it disintegrates in a flash of light.

Titan is gone.

* * *

Artificial gravity is back on owing to the ship’s acceleration, but I don’t bother sitting in my chair. I sink to the ground, eyes unfocused as I deliberate the deaths of Felix, Thomson, Doctor River, Nupan, even Blaze and my infuriating guards. Ten thousand people. Dead. The IF really has no tolerance for pirates.

And then there’s Huxley. Perhaps I’m petulant for thinking this, but his deception stings more than his demise. The small part of me that feels something for him—love or desire or camaraderie—is eclipsed by my regret that I didn’t shove a dagger through his heart myself.

I’ll never forget the look on his face when he pieced together that Felix and I were allies: Utter betrayal. Betrayed by Felix, by me, and so he killed his Quartermaster, he took the life of somebody who I genuinely… who I genuinely loved. Who I practically begged to come back to Earth with me—to be with me? That I do not know. But there’s no purpose in entertaining hypotheticals, because it’s too late. It’s too late to tell him how I felt. Granted, I had other things on my mind, such as getting me and Timour off Titan alive, but I could’ve afforded to be a little less proud and vain and stuck-up.

Or conceivably, it played out this way because it had to. A tiny change in the events of the last twenty-four hours may have resulted in an extant NeuroQueue project. The butterfly effect and all.

Felix’s final words echo through my brain and sear the memories within the gray matter: I love you, Ailee.

Love is eerie. All I can do is outrun the hole where my heart used to be.

Water slides down my cheeks. I stay curled up against the wall of the ship, unmoving, barely breathing. It’s peaceful.

At least, it was until a man incessantly calls my name as though he’s at the other end of a tunnel. Ugh, be quiet. Even when he crouches down, he still towers over me, blocking out the harsh light—ah, the man’s existence has merit now. I’m grateful to this ghost. But then he grabs my shoulders, savagely shakes me, and shouts, “Ailee, what—look at me!” He’s furious, with a hint of desperation.

Curiosity makes me turn toward him. I stare into wild, dark brown eyes; they tighten.

“Get up,” he orders.

I reply, “Go away.”

“Son,” calls Marshal Renner from… somewhere, “leave her alone.”

“We’re docking soon,” Duarte retorts. “She needs to be strapped in.”

“I’m quite capable of doing that myself,” I state, uncurling my limbs and rising steadily.

“Yeah, well, for a minute there, I thought you were brain dead.” Despite the insult, there’s no denying the relief in his tone.

I can’t decide if rule-abiding Duarte is more or less irksome than rule-breaking Duarte. Whatever the case, I walk to my chair, buckle my seatbelts, and wait for home.