The most important thing was that Eden was home. She may not have found her way all the way home yet, not mentally or emotionally, but she was home, and she was safe. After the long morning in the infirmary and Mara’s unrelenting barrage of questions, Eden had chosen to go home, not to her dorm but to her parents’ house. Knowing that she was across town, far away from campus and Cardinal Enterprises, was the only thing that calmed the roiling acid of his belly. Cardinal Enterprises was a black hole where morality died at the hands of progress and Eden had been unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire.

It wasn’t only her face, but also Dr. Abrahams’ words that haunted Rory. No matter how he tried not to let his mind linger, he knew that she never would have been taken without her association with the company. It was Cardinal Enterprises, always, that the Hive targeted. Cardinal Enterprises staff went missing; Cardinal Enterprises warehouses were trashed; Cardinal Enterprises trucks were dismantled.

But why Eden? Why now? It had been seven—maybe eight, he considered—years since Eden had left home to work for the company, straight after her graduation. It had been around that time that the Coopers, struggling to stay afloat while competing for oxygen with Cardinal Enterprises, had lost their land on the Farm and that Rory had been all but sequestered away at the university. She had thrown herself into her work, the way she threw herself into everything she did. Eden had worked hard for the company, no one could deny that, and the records that she set in her school years still stood unbroken. At the end of the day, no matter how amazing, Eden was a cook. She could hold no secrets, no codes, no keys. Perhaps, Rory considered, that was what had earned her freedom. They had gotten nothing from her. But then why did Eden so fervently refuse to speak of it? Her words replayed–familiar by now–begging him not to ask questions, just before telling Mara that she had no memory of the last three days, leaving Rory wondering which was closer to the truth. It made sense, Rory told himself. Her brain was protecting itself from something, something that was too horrible for her to revisit even from the moderate safety of campus. Something that had driven her away from campus and back to her parents house, which Rory couldn’t find it in himself to fault her for. She needed space. She needed time. She was safe.

Rory took his glasses off and held his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes until he saw stars. The finishing touches on his code had just been placed, and, for good measure, he’d sent a copy to Sabrina to look over before he notified Dr. Abrahams. He couldn’t be too careful. The entire time he’d been working on his latest assignment, his mind had been half in the code and half with Eden. More than half with Eden, he had to admit. He pulled out his phone and messaged her for perhaps the tenth time that morning.

Okay?

Her reply came mercifully quickly.

Okay.

Rory let out the breath he’d been holding. He pushed himself back from his computer and waited for Sabrina to get back to him. The assignment hadn’t been extensive, and having a second engineer check it over was overly careful, but Rory didn’t trust himself. Not with his distracted mind, not with his conflicted feelings.

With Eden home, it was hard to pretend that building the Tyche was the only available option. Shouldn’t they stop to consider? Perhaps Eden’s memories would return, away from the stress of Cardinal Enterprises, and lead Mara and her Cards straight to the Hive’s base. And how could they ignore the miraculous? Eden had come home. The first in dozens of missing to be returned. The Tyche had seemed like such a good idea only the day before, but without the delirium and fear, Rory couldn’t help but question the project.

He refreshed his computer, but Sabrina still had not responded. Rory sighed. He should just send the code off to Dr. Abrahams and be done with it. Rory hesitated. It wasn’t the assignment he’d just completed that gave him pause; Dr. Abrahams had, perhaps as an insult or perhaps as a test, assigned Rory nothing too complicated: a cooling system, the navigation controls, heat signature scanning. Nothing that Rory was overly worried about in and of itself but he knew that each piece of the puzzle would lead to something bigger. His stomach twisted as it always did when he thought too much about the Tyche.

A knock at his door, soft and sweet, jolted him out of his anxiety. He straightened the sleeves of his shirt and got up to answer the door. Sabrina was waiting just outside. She grinned at him and tossed her dark hair over the shoulder of her crisp white jacket.

“Hey Rory,” she said. “Can I come in?”

“Oh, of course,” Rory stammered.

He moved to the side and let her cross into the office, immediately thankful that he’d left the door leading to his room, an absolute mess of chaos, closed. Sabrina took an appreciative look around the office and dropped into one of the chairs in front of Rory’s desk. Rory lingered in the doorway before joining her, taking his seat behind his desk.

“I looked over your code, and it looks fine,” she said without preamble. “I guess I’m not sure why you wanted me to look it over?”

Rory’s cheeks heated. “Oh,” he said when it became clear she was waiting for an explanation. “I’m sorry if I bothered you, I just—”

“It’s okay, really,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I guess it just made me think. Are you still feeling unsure about the Tyche, Rory? Is that what it is?”

“No!” Rory said, too quickly. “That’s not it. No, I just–with everything going on with my friend, Eden, since she got back–I’ve been distracted. And I just don’t want to mess anything up.” Rory smiled weakly. “Or make a fool of myself,” he added. “Dr. Abrahams is already at his limit with me, I suppose.”

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Sabrina laughed. “Don’t say that. He’s just like that, you know? You’ll get used to him, if you stay on the special projects team. You do intend to stay on the special projects team, don’t you?”

“Is leaving really an option?” Rory said. “This really isn’t the sort of job you can just walk away from.”

“I imagine if you tried to quit in the middle of this particular project, Abrahams might kill you himself,” Sabrina said, only half joking. “But once the Tyche is in orbit and we can be done with all of this secrecy finally– well, I suppose I’m just worried once you have an opportunity to leave the team, you’ll take it.”

Rory hesitated, but Sabrina did not. She continued on quickly.

“Please just think about it before you make any decisions, okay?” she said. “Look, I really don’t want to rehash the morality of everything with you, really. I just think we should trust that Abrahams knows what he’s doing and enjoy the ride. Right? Did you ever imagine, even when you were a little kid, being a part of something so cutting edge? The Tyche, the Paradisium, all of it! The future is right in front of us, Rory. Don’t you want to be a part of it? Don’t you want to see what’s next?”

“Of course,” Rory said, trying to match her impossibly bright smile. His was a mockery, a faint shadow of hers.

“I shouldn’t put you on the spot,” Sabrina said. “I just wanted to stop by on my way out, and I didn’t think we should have a conversation like this on the record.”

She laughed lightly, but her comment made Rory’s stomach twist. He walked her to the door and bid her a goodnight and when he closed the door behind her, he slumped to the floor. Rory drew his legs up to his chest and tried to settle his breathing.

When the project was finished, he was out. The relief that came with certainty rushed through him, sweeter than he’d ever imagined. The Tyche would happen, with or without him, but after that? Whatever fresh hell would come next, whatever morality Dr. Abrahams planned to spit in the face of? Rory would have no part of it.

There was to be no relaxation for Rory that evening. Not long after he’d sent his finished code to Dr. Abrahams and changed into his pajamas to attempt to sleep away his anxieties, his phone buzzed. Rory resisted the urge to throw it across his room, and checked it instead. Conference room B. Rory’s heart hiccuped.

The others were already seated around the conference table when Rory arrived, breathless, at the conference room. Only Sabrina smiled, and Rory slipped into an empty chair quietly. Dr. Abrahams was looking more wild-eyed than usual. Had he always been this disheveled, or was the stress of the Tyche project eating away at him too? For a moment, Rory had a flash of hope, wondering if Dr. Abrahams had called them here to cancel the project. Was it possible for him to come to his senses?

“I’m a busy man,” Dr. Abrahams began, his voice harsh and clipped. Rory’s heart sank. There would be no sense in this meeting, he could tell. “I’m a busy man, so I’ll keep this short. It seems our Paradisium supplier has been apprehended. While Paradise doesn’t know which of her sister cities outsmarted them, obviously, they are now aware of the operation. It won’t take them long to realize it was us. Needless to say, this means that we will need to ration our supply carefully.”

“So does this mean we won’t be able to launch the Tyche? The project is halted?” Rory dared to hope. Thank the stars that someone had finally put an end to this madness.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Dr. Abrahams snapped. “Excuse me. No. Fortunately, we have more than enough Paradisium to launch the Tyche and power her for hundreds of years to come. No, all this means is that we will be moving up the launch date of the Tyche, considerably. Dr. Hardy, what’s your status on the launch pad?”

Dr. Hardy had been given the task of overseeing the construction of a launch pad for the Tyche, which was currently being excavated just outside the dome. The entrance, as far as Rory understood, was somewhere off of the rail tunnels, and it burrowed off to the side and behind the Farm dome. The launch pad would be built underground, away from questioning eyes, and the hatch wouldn’t open until the Tyche was ready for orbit.

“It’s almost complete,” Dr. Hardy said. “I estimate another few days, at the most.”

“Perfect. And Dr. Woods, the Tyche herself?”

“She’s coming along beautifully, sir,” Dr. Woods said.

“Paradise will be very sorry that they tried to cross us,” Dr. Abrahams said darkly. “And rest assured that I expect to have the situation with our Paradisium supply sorted out shortly after the Tyche’s launch.”

“‘They’ll be sorry’?” Dr. Whitmore asked. “What does that mean, Jason?”

Dr. Abrahams waved his hand dismissively. “Save your concerns. By next weeks’ end, a new era will begin.”

Rory and Whitmore shared a look across the table and Rory could see that, beneath the mask of compliance that Whitmore usually wore, his mentor was finally concerned.

Rory fled the conference room the moment Abrahams released them and retreated to his own room. He dropped his coat and kicked off his shoes in the middle of the room and ran a hot shower. He stood under the water until his skin was red and raw, but when he dressed in his softest flannel pants and sleep shirt, his mind was no clearer. The only thing that was certain was that he couldn’t work through this alone. Everything was happening so fast. He’d never had a problem in his life that he couldn’t bring to Eden, couldn’t parse out every detail with her. She’d always listened, always nodded along and given him advice that often wasn’t half bad.

Was it even fair to dump this on Eden? After all she’d been through recently, it felt wrong to lay this at her feet and share the burden of knowledge. Could he do that to her?

Could he bear not doing it?