Chapter 22
Ver
Early the next morning, Xenon and Card invade the dormitories like a virus taking over a host cell. They leave my door open when they enter my room, and several of my hallmates peer inside, smirking. They have probably come to find proof that I planned to kill the person I loved most.
“Glad you’ve been enjoying your freedom, Miss Yun,” Card says. “Home AI?”
“. . . Yes?” Charles says.
“Lift up her desk, throw her clothes out of the closet, flip up her bed.”
“You do not have the permissions to execute those commands.”
Card sneers at me. “Miss Yun, lift your desk.”
A cold sinking feeling in my stomach collides with white-hot anger in my chest. I glare at Card and try not to cry.
“You can’t?” Card says. “Xenon, do we need to get her vitals to confirm this?”
Bang! Charles has raised my desk to the ceiling and turned it sideways so that my notebook, styluses, and personal care items rain down on the officers. “I have lifted the desk as you ask. Do you require me to move any other furniture?”
“Argh!” Xenon rubs his temple, where a stylus has clocked him, and resorts to tearing the rest of my room apart on his own. Crash, clang!Charles drops the desk back to its usual position.
Card is looking at the notes magnetized to the wall. “You’re investigating on your own, I see.”
She talks to me as if to a pet. Good girl! But they have found nothing incriminating—even after flipping my whole life upside down.
Xenon barks, “Miranda, stop speaking to the suspect. Keep looking.”
Frowning, Card lowers her bright green head and captures images of my notes with her flexitab.
“Listen,” I say. “Did you notice I covered up my door with paint? There was graffiti on it. On Aryl Fielding’s door too. Abusive messages.”
“Do you have holographic evidence to prove this?” Card says flatly.
“You took our flexitabs,” I remind her.
Xenon shoots Card a disapproving look for talking to me, and she turns back to her work.
I refuse to let them ignore this. “You can 3D-scan our doors and read the words under the paint. As keepers of the peace, you must punish whoever did this.”
Xenon scratches his mustache, stepping back to examine my door. “Miss Yun, killing an investigator has consequences, and this is the least of them.”
“The police owe me protection—as a witness—before my trial,” I insist.
Xenon leans down until his face is level with mine. “Listen, Miss Yun. Think about what you’ve gained by living on this moon. Have you been physically hurt since you arrived here? Since your arrest?”
I glare at him, putting on a poisonous expression that people have said makes me look like a snarling cat.
Card snaps, “Answer him, girl.”
This woman’s behavior puzzles me. She obviously does not enjoy taking Xenon’s orders, yet she falls in line as soon as she finds someone smaller to bully.
“Yes,” I say flatly. “You took my medications.”
“You lying little errorcode,” Card says.
“The correct answer was no, you have not been harmed by anyone,” adds Xenon.
They did not want the truth. They wanted to feel righteous.
Xenon straightens to his full height. “You should be grateful. You leave your moon and come here, to the best research institute in the galaxy. To Lucent City. You enjoy its safety and its luxuries—and then you kill the man who brought you here. We take this job seriously. If you are found guilty, Miss Yun, we will make sure that you never see Pangu’s light again. That you stay in its shadow forever. And that people like you can no longer destroy the cities you did not build.”
He will relish sending me to the penal colony, the one place he believes I belong. Ninety-seven percent of the Sandbag’s inmates are from Two or Three, even though those moons hold less than half the population of the Pangu System.
What the detectives do not know is that the sands of G-Moon Three are composed of silicon dioxide, often in the form of yellow quartz. Quartz, just like the most magnificent buildings in Lucent City. Only the size of the pieces is different.
My heart is still pounding as I walk to Aryl’s dorm room. Galunk, galunk. So loud and obvious, I want to tear it out of my chest.
As I knock on her door, I see that our handiwork has resulted in a messy layering of the steel-colored paint. It is ugly. But it marks this space as hers again.
“Come in,” Aryl’s home AI says in a monotone.
I do and nearly run into a desk, which is half-blocking the door. A shoe rack is flipped over, and a landslide of soft dance shoes flows toward the bed, where it meets an ocean of instant spicy rice packets. Someone has dumped cheap jewelry on the mattress. Aryl’s rings and necklaces are the kind that project holograms of flowers and complex geometric shapes. I can barely tell that the bedsheets, stained and discolored from years of use, were once stark white. Her home AI makes faint clicking noises as it moves objects one by one back into their rightful spots.
“The police searched my room,” Aryl huffs. “Xenon had a field day with my foam roller collection.” She looks terrible. Her blood must be a cortisol cocktail.
“They were in my room too.”
Aryl pushes aside a lunch box and sits beside me on the bed, so close I can smell the coconut oil in her hair. One curl dangles between her exhausted eyes. She locks her golden-brown gaze on mine, and a faint smile lifts her lips.
“Ver, come with me to Celestine.”
My body freezes, but my heart has climbed into my throat and is contracting rapidly. “Running away will only make us look worse . . . Oh.” I clap my hands together as it dawns on me. “You do not want to run. You want to talk to Ford.”
As I say his name, Aryl flinches, but her face quickly returns to a neutral expression. “Yeah. He won’t answer messages. Xenon asked me twice if Ford worked with us to kill Cal, back when we were in custody. The police might have evidence against him. Legitimate evidence. He probably would’ve been arrested already if not for his mom.”
Ford, a killer? He never showed hostility toward Cal. But rich One-ers are skilled at masking their feelings. Ford was so polite to me when I first arrived that I thought he wanted to be my friend. Then I realized he acts that way with everyone. Even people he dislikes.
I am trembling now, just as I was when I realized Jaha could have killed Cal. Between her and Ford, we must be right about one of them!
“Let’s go. Now,” Aryl says. “There’s a vactrain to Celestine every hour.”
Travel to a faraway city, alone with Aryl? She and Ford have known each other for years, and Celestine is her native environment. What if I am wrong about her innocence, and this is some kind of trap?
“What about Jaha?” I ask.
“She and Ford could’ve been working together. We’re more likely to get information from Ford than from Jaha. And even if Ford’s not guilty, he might know something useful. His mom has access to classified information.” Aryl looks at my worried face and sighs. “Ver, I can go alone, if you’re not comfortable coming with me. But I hope you will.”
She is not forcing me to go, not trying to do me in. And everything she says makes sense. My brain returns to homeostasis, and my heart lowers itself back into my chest cavity.
“Ford knows everybody at the Institute,” I say. “Not to mention his mother . . .”
“The most powerful senator on the moons,” Aryl says. “Prison warden to my parents and sister.” Pain flashes like lightning across her face. She must be worried sick about her family. Maybe that is why she is so desperate to go to Celestine.
“Will Ford agree to see us?” I say. “What if he calls the police?” Two murder suspects showing up at the Mercure estate is not a smart move. The place is surely protected with layers of security. The Mercure family has total power in their own domain. They may not even need the police.
“Ford will talk to us,” Aryl says, lifting her chin. “I’ll make sure of it.”