32SIRENS BREAK OUT IN THE cargo hold, but it’s nothing like the reaction the last time the klaxons went off. Everyone has been through this before; they know what to expect. Most of them probably assume it’s just another drill. Nothing to get worried about. Not the people or the Spectres.

“What do we do now?” Teal hisses, eyes wide with alarm.

No idea. “We meet Michael like planned. We’ll figure it out from there.”

I don’t wait around for the officers to start herding people to the shelter, but grab Teal’s hand and head for the exit. In our civilian clothes, the soldiers don’t even look at us twice, though they stop a refugee who tries to leave just behind us.

We make for the lift in the center of the level. The first of the ex-prisoners are already being herded out of the bays, and we have to push our way through the maze of refugees, soldiers, and civilians just to reach the end of the lift line. As I jump on the lift with Teal, I think I hear my name. I glance around, but I can’t see anything through the swirling crowd. Shaking my head, I glance at the time: 1847.

Compared to Eight, Level Five is not nearly so chaotic, the permanent stationers much more efficient at reacting to the alarms. Those remaining are making quick work getting to the SlipStreams, encouraged by a bunch of soldiers making sure everyone is heading to their designated place. The soldiers take one glance at the two of us and motion us toward the SlipStreams. We nod, not needing to be told, and wheel toward the nearest entrance. As we jog down one of the concourses, my nose starts bleeding again. I raise my head and pinch my nostrils, trying to contain the bleeding, which is why I don’t see the stray pastry someone dropped. My foot finds it though, slipping out from under me and sending my knees to the floor with a hard bang. The false skin flops out of my pocket.

“Lia!” Teal calls, stopping a few feet ahead when she realizes I’m no longer with her.

I grab for the false skin and begin staggering to my feet when something silver drops from the skin. Stopping, I reach for it, drawing the tiny disc, no larger than the tip of my pinky, to my face. In a flash, I realize what it is.

The data chip! The one I was originally supposed to transmit to the station before going Nova on the transport; the one with all our knowledge of the Spectres.

“Lia? What is it? Are you sat?”

Rising to my feet, I wave the chip in Teal’s face. “No, I found it! The data chip! It’s here.”

Hope rises in me and then falls. We finally have the last piece of the puzzle. If only Shar hadn’t backed out on us at the last minute.

I rejoin Teal, and the two of us breeze out of the hub and onto the SlipStream platform shortly after. Michael is already there, leaning against the wall just inside and nervously fingering his dad’s old chit. He snaps upright at our arrival.

“Ready? Wait, where’s Shar?”

“Not coming,” I tell him at the same time Teal growls, “The bitch ran out on us.”

“What?”

I shake my head and motion them toward the entrance to the tunnel on the far wall. We crowd in, the door sliding shut silently behind us, and I check my chit for the time again: 1851. Based on the amount of time that’s passed, I would estimate that Michael triggered the alarm at approximately 1845. Assuming that’s correct, that leaves us exactly nine minutes. Nine minutes before the SlipStreams shut down and cut off the rings from the hub.

Nine minutes to figure out what to do.

“And just what do you propose we do? Walk right up to PsyCorp and tell them we triggered the alarm?” Teal is saying. “I can just imagine how that will go. ‘Oh yes, officer, we’re the ones who set off the alarm, but don’t worry! The hub power reactors aren’t really going nuclear. We just set it off to stop the invisible aliens taking over the human race.’”

Michael huffs. “Well, without Shar to link with the station commander and show him what’s going on, we’re going to have to tell some psychic.”

“There are only a handful of psychics on this station. We don’t even know if any of them are going to be in the rings. They might be stationed on the hub for all we know.”

“So what do you—”

“Quiet!” I yell, distracted by all their bickering. “I have to think.”

I glance at my chit. 1853. Seven minutes to go.

Think, Lia. I tell myself. What now?

The plan seemed simple enough. Teal would sabotage the misters the night before, clearing the rings of all the Spectres or at least most of them. Then Michael would use his dad’s old chit, still programmed with its officer designation, to access one of the alarm boxes and set off the reactor overload alarm. Michael assured me that even if everything looked good in the hub’s power stations, it was standard operating procedure to continue with the alarm until the power analysts could do a full system check, a process which would take five hours minimum.

Meanwhile, we would all hustle to the rings before the SlipStream stations automatically shut down, thereby locking off the rings from the hub. Once there, the plan was for Shar to link with me and the station commander, showing him the real reason for the alarm. The pièce de résistance would be the data chip, with all of the Tellurians’ accumulated knowledge about the Spectres. Even if the convoy came early, SOP demanded that they refrain from docking with us until the alarm ended and the station commander gave the all-clear. Something he presumably wouldn’t do once he knew the truth.

Unfortunately, without Shar we have no way to show the commander what we’re up against. Just a data chip that he may or may not believe is a bunch of station teens’ idea of a practical joke, assuming he’s even willing to look at it.

“Michael’s right,” I finally say, the cogs in my brain turning at a hundred klicks an hour as I try to decide what to do. “We need a psychic, someone who’ll be willing to listen to us. And I think I know just the person.”

Firing up my chit, I put through the link. Rowan answers on the seventh tone.

“Lia, I don’t know what’s going on, but this isn’t a good time. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a station-wide alarm. You need to get to the shelters with the others, and I need to get to my station on the hub.”

“Wait! Please,” I ask him as he goes to cut the link. “I need you to meet me in the rings. Not later, now. Before the SlipStreams close down.”

“Lia, I can’t—”

“Please, Rowan! I have information about . . . about the Tellurians. It’s important, it can’t wait.”

“If you’re making this up—”

“Do you remember the first time we met? How messed up my mind was? Well, there was a reason for it. I’m like your sister—I’m a patriot. You know I’m on the level or you wouldn’t have tried to protect me all those times before.”

Rowan scowls at me for a minute, then shakes his head. “You remind me so much of Amaya sometimes. No wonder I find it impossible to say no to you. She’s been away on Earth too long.”

“Wait—she’s on Earth?”

“Yes, she’s an attaché to the embassy there.”

A burst of sadness sighs through me as I realize that, just like me, he’s lost someone to the Spectres, too. He just doesn’t know it yet. The words slip out without my permission. “Oh, Rowan. I’m so sorry.”

He wrinkles his forehead. “What?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. Will you come?”

Reluctantly he assents, getting my location and agreeing to grab the opposite SlipStream and meet us on the other side.

Only four minutes to go now. Michael, Teal, and I clamber out of the tunnel just in time to see the SlipStream pull up.

“Last one,” the corporal overseeing the evacuation tells us. “You’d better get on because there won’t be another one after this.”

We scramble on and take a spot near the back. Michael throws himself down on one of the seats, while Teal stands, hanging on loosely to one of the seatbacks. Too nervous to sit, I pace along the aisle. Now that the plan is in motion, all my doubts are rushing in like a tidal wave pounding for shore. What if Rowan decides not to meet us after all? What if he refuses to listen, or the station commander won’t listen to him? What if they don’t fully understand what we’re up against? What if the convoy docks with us anyway? The plan seemed like such a good idea, but the more I think about it, the more panicky I start to feel. Something is picking at the back of my mind, like a dog scratching at a door begging to be let in. Something I’m missing, that I’ve been missing this whole time.

A hand touches my shoulder. Teal. “Take an oxygen pill, Lia. It’s going to be sat. You’ll see.”

See.

With that one word, the dam in my mind explodes, blowing apart as the final piece of the puzzle comes rushing back. I know why I was sent here. I know what my mission is.

My heart sinks at the knowledge, and the hope I carried deep inside, the hope that I might somehow find reprieve in the eleventh hour, some way to avoid my fate, flares once and goes out like a dying star going supernova before finally being reduced to a black hole.

I briefly close my eyes. Perhaps Shar was a traitor, but she saw more clearly than all of us. More clearly than even me. Did she see in my mind my final mission? Or did she just know, somehow, with that sixth sense of hers, how everything had to end?

1858. Only two minutes to go.

“Teal, I need you to do me a favor. Once you get to the other side, please get every person you can to the observation decks.” I press the data chip into her hand. “Meet Rowan and give him the chip. Get him to help you, tell him I asked him to.”

“The observation decks? But why? Where are you going to be?”

“I had it wrong, Teal. This whole time, I thought my purpose was to destroy, but it’s not. At least, not primarily.”

“Then what—?”

“It’s to reveal.”

Teal frowns, confused.

I try to explain, but my words tumble out one after another, and I can tell from her glazed eyes that she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. Finally I just shake my head and say, “Don’t worry—you’ll understand. Just make sure to be on the observation deck, and you’ll see.”

“See? See what?”

I stare off into the distance, my eyes far away as I remember Niven’s words. “Something glorious,” I whisper. “More glorious than you could possibly imagine.”

The SlipStream whistle sounds. Thirty seconds until the doors will shut.

My feet edge back toward the exit. In the back, Michael is standing up, his face pinched in a frown as he watches Teal and me. Suddenly a high-pitched voice calls, “Lia!”

I whirl around. “Kaeti? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with the other refugees.”

The little girl throws herself through the SlipStream doors at me. “I want to come with you.”

I remember the voice I heard on the lift, of someone calling me, and realize it was Kaeti’s. She must have escaped her guardians and followed me here. I want so much to keep her on this SlipStream, but I can’t. She’s one of the refugees; one of the infected.

Or is she? I sniff, but the bloody chunks clogging my nose are too thick to smell out a single Spectre. I flash back to the time Kaeti followed me into the tunnel, and that time Michael and I took her for ice cream in the rings. I don’t remember smelling anything on her then. Is it possible the Spectres somehow missed her for some reason? Like Shar, some latent psychic abilities protected her?

No time to deliberate, I go with my gut and thrust her at Teal. “Here, take her! She’s clean, I’m sure of it.”

Teal automatically pushes the girl toward a seat, even as she shakes her head. “Lia, no.”

“I’m sorry, Teal,” I whisper. “When this is all over, tell Michael . . .” I pause, unsure how to say what I want to say. Finally, “Tell Michael if I could have stayed, I would have.”

Her face crumples at the words, then she throws herself at me in a hug as fierce as it is swift.

For one moment, I hug her back with every bit of strength in my body. Then pulling away, I step off the train.

Just before the doors slide shut behind me.

I turn around and look back through the windows. Michael has figured it out now; I’m not coming with them. He doesn’t know my plan; he doesn’t know why I’m staying in a hub full of Spectres. Not consciously, maybe. But unconsciously, he knows.

He knows I’m not coming back.

Michael’s shoving through the people now, trying to get to the doors, only to be stopped by the corporal, who catches him in an armlock and won’t let go.

“Lia! Lia!” he screams through the window. He struggles against the arms holding him, but he’s no match for the burly soldier. “No, let me go! My friend is out there! Lia, Lia!”

“Goodbye, Michael,” I whisper.

The SlipStream lets out another whistle and the train begins to roll away. Strangely enough, my last vision isn’t of Michael’s tormented struggles, but of Teal, standing silent and alone at the doors of the train, watching me with solemn eyes as silent tears run slowly down her cheeks.