Chapter 2

The doors behind the guard hissed then finally opened. Two men stood inside arguing. No one was coming down the floor-lit path behind them, and the guard would stop us if we even thought about stepping through the door without her receiving the go-ahead. So I stared at the ass of the man who had his back to me because someone had to. Might as well be me.

His jeans perked up every curve and squeezed it, almost like I was cupping his cheeks myself. Damn. If only I could, though that was likely frowned upon just as much as my armor. Still, the idea tempted me and my horny fingers, so I fisted my hands behind my back and willed myself to focus on something less stimulating. Like the immaculately clean carpet. And then back to that beautiful butt.

A dark brown coat skimmed his waistband and bulked up his wide shoulders. The ends of sandy blond hair played across his collar as he shook his head vehemently at the other man, who stalked away from him and into the Waiting Room.

The man, the cute one, looked after him, the set of his stubbled jaw like steel. "Fuck," he mouthed, then marched back down the corridor, I guessed to his waiting ship. Good thing, too, because any more memorization of his backside, and my ovaries would've surely exploded.

From where he'd disappeared, a string of haggard-looking men and women rushed through and searched the crowd. I stood on tiptoe to see any sign of Pop while people jumped to their feet again. Turning from the window, I jostled myself into the mass barring the doors.

Between a small break in the throng, I thought I saw the brown stocking cap Pop always wore to hide his bald spot, but I couldn't be sure.

"Pop, over here," I called anyway.

But something was wrong. I saw it in the faces of everyone I scanned. Wild eyes. Panic.

A curly red-haired girl next to me covered her mouth. Tears stair-stepped down the cracks in her fingers. A man, maybe her dad, shook his head. "Deep space."

"What about deep space?" I demanded, but he just looked at me like he had no idea who I was. Probably because he didn't. Even though I'd lived on the Nebulous with these people, no one knew who I was because I'd kept to myself.

Another man took the elbows of a younger version of himself in his large hands. "The Ring Guild say she..." His voice faded as I hurried forward through the crush of bodies.

What did the Ringers have to do with anything? Who was she? The air inside the Waiting Room seemed to solidify.

I grabbed at a chunk of hair and pulled, like I used to when I was little and couldn't catch my breath. Normally it reassured me that everything was safe. But this time it didn't.

The brown stocking cap had disappeared. Where were Pop and Ellison?

"Absidy!" a familiar voice called.

At the sound of my name, I sighed my relief. Pop appeared at my side and hugged me to him.

"Something happened, didn't it?" I asked, pressing my face into his jacket and breathing in ship oil and his normal Pop smell.

"Absidy, listen to me." He pulled away. Red veins webbed his eyes, and his bronze skin seemed paler in the harsh light. "You can't come back with me to the Nebulous."

"What? Why?" The Nebulous was my home. I'd grown up on that ship. I had to come with him to see... Ellison. I looked around him, thinking maybe she hid behind his bulk. "Where's Ellison?"

Pop grimaced at his shoes. Deep cracks had stitched through his dry lips, and he licked them nervously. "You have to stay here. At Smixton."

My skin prickled. He never called my school by its real name. I clutched at one of the buttons on his jacket, an anchor in this swell of unease. "Tell me, Pop."

"Your sister..." he said, his voice tight. He shook his head and his eyes fell closed. "She took a cruiser to Wix a week ago, but she swore she'd be back in time for your visit. And now she's...gone."

A cold chill flushed the air from my lungs, and I fought to drag in another breath. The panicked conversations around me spun the room, making me feel sick. Everyone knew Ellison and loved her almost as much as I did with her warm bedside manner and genius medical knowledge. I knew this only because I used to tuck myself away in a cabinet inside her office where no one could see me.

"We traced the cruiser to deep space and hacked into her powered-off telecom," Pop continued.

"And?" I whispered.

"The Ring Guild thinks she was speaking in some kind of code, similar to when rebels deserted the war and floated off into space."

"But...we're not at war. Not anymore."

He nodded and blinked hard, like he had trouble processing the Black War even though he hadn't been born when it ended. "Ad astra per aspera." To the stars through difficulties, the phrase to honor the memory of the millions of lives lost in the war whenever anyone spoke of it, tumbled from his mouth automatically.

"Pop, what did Ellison say?"

Several excruciating seconds later, he looked up, attempting to trap his bottom lip with his teeth to keep it from trembling. "Sail."

A shiver iced up my back, constricting my insides, until I twisted my fingers around the frayed edges of his coat lapels to keep myself upright. In that moment, I hated that I could read him so well, but I knew exactly what he was thinking.

Not sail. Saelis. Had Ellison's telecom shut off before she'd spit out the name of the aliens from deep space? No one had ever seen them and survived. They were the ones who'd caused the Black War, who'd destroyed Earth. The thought of my sister even being on the same ship with Saelis shredded my insides. Ellison excelled at sewing people up and mending broken bones, not flying out to deep space to face off with the Saelis. She didn't stand a chance against something so vile. That truth ripped fiery pain through my heart. This couldn't be happening.