Chapter 5

Happiness filled Jonesy’s chest like a big red balloon as she rushed breathlessly for the middle of the hideout.

Suddenly it didn’t matter if Rook was making her choose between the salvage team and lying to her friends. Or if she’d broken out of her cabin and into Rook’s and was definitely in all the trouble ever.

They were finally getting rescued. And not by just anybody. Whatever the message on her dad’s terminal said, she knew it meant he’d found out she was here. She’d burst into the mess and not be in trouble, and her dad would be there, and he’d give her a big hug and take her home to Mom and Cass. She could see it all in her mind like a scene in a movie.

Which was why it was really confusing when Rook shouted at somebody to LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE and called them a really bad name. Davenport Jr. started crying, and Eva shouted at somebody, too.

Jonesy stopped dead.

She’d never heard Rook talk like that around the little kids. And she’d never, ever heard Eva sound so mad, not even the time Hunter had called Nikita a chubbo at dinner.

Rook was still yelling. “You think we’re stupid? We’re not going anywhere with you until you tell us who you are!”

A strange, amplified grown-up voice said something that sounded like “Noncompliant,” and then came a lot of commotion.

The happy balloon in Jonesy’s chest popped into sad red tatters. Cold, thick dread poured in to fill the space instead.

Maybe she had managed to get the beacon running in time to catch that pirate ship.

It sounded like everybody was still in the mess, so she tiptoed the long way around to the galley. That was right next door, and it had a hatch for passing in the dirty dishes with a perfect crack for spying through.

When she eased onto the counter and peeked into the mess, though, the scene didn’t look anything like she’d expected. Instead of pirates, she saw a bunch of gray-armored marines facing off against her friends, while four or five triangular gray drones circled close to the ceiling. “All of you in the corner,” one of the marines was saying, pointing with his stubby gray rifle. “Now.”

“There’s seventeen of us, you idiot,” Rook snapped. “We won’t all fit behind the table.”

Hunter’s table was so heavy that he and Rook and Meg together could barely move it, but the marine grabbed the edge and flipped it upside-down with a CRASH like it didn’t weigh anything. “Sure you will.”

Jonesy’s friends shuffled across the table and into the corner, Rook and Eva shielding the rest behind them. Rook and Eva looked furious. Everybody else looked as scared as Jonesy felt.

Jonesy had seen marines before, when a United Colonies Navy frigate had visited Canary Station. In their armored suits, the UCN marines had looked like robot monsters. Seeing them clanking around Canary Station’s corridors had thrilled and scared her at the same time, even knowing they were the good guys.

She didn’t think these gray marines were good guys, though. She’d learned a lot about marine stuff from playing sims, but she’d never seen anything like the armor these ones wore. It looked newer and nastier than the UCN marines’ gear and was totally unmarked—plain, blank gray. It made them look like bulletproof, laser-resistant bugs, with windowless helmets and so many built-in thrusters that they could probably fly around like spaceships. Evil spaceships.

Jonesy’s friends were staring at the gray marines’ guns and quietly freaking out behind Rook and Eva, but Rook shushed them over his shoulder.

“Look, what is this?” he demanded. “If you’re just after salvage, you didn’t have to come in here playing like you’re the cavalry running three years late so we wouldn’t fight you for it. Because there’s no way you’re UCN. If it’s some International Maritime legal deal where this doesn’t work for you if there’s survivors, we’ll sign away any rights you want. Just leave us alone.”

None of the marines responded. One of their drones circled low over Rook’s head, but he didn’t flinch.

“And you’ve got no right to round up a bunch of kids and point guns at them,” Eva added in a brave voice.

“We’ve got no weapons,” Rook went on. “You should do what you came to do and leave. The station network’s still up. If you connect to it, you’ll be able to see what’s worth taking.”

Jonesy smiled to herself. Of course Rook had a plan. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it already.

“Very good, young man,” said a new voice. “That would be a nasty trick, wouldn’t it?”

A new man had stepped into the mess. He was tall and looked like an old colonial sheriff, with a tan, lined face and a stern mouth. He had cold, gray-blue eyes; short gray hair; and wore a long, black, high-collared coat covered in a faint design of thin white lines, like old-fashioned ink drawings, that changed slowly as Jonesy watched. He wore black gloves, too, but very strange ones. They were reinforced and sealed to his sleeves like spacesuit gloves but also had circular holes cut out of both palms. Holes were definitely not what you wanted in gloves for a spacesuit. Apart from his coat’s shifting white lines, he wore no markings except for four small gold stars on his collar.

“Still,” he continued, “I can’t deny I’m curious, so why don’t we have a look?”

He tapped the back of his left wrist, and a red holo display popped out. Jonesy held her breath. It looked like Rook did, too.

The man in the black coat flipped through several menus in the display and poked a button. Something flashed. “There! All connected. And there certainly is quite a bit up and running yet—impressive piece of work, Canary Station. Tough.

“But I digress. My name is Captain Norcross, and you’re right about one thing, son—we’re not the cavalry. However, we are here to help, because for everybody’s safety—including all of yours—one of you needs to come with us. And in return for helping me sort out which of you that is, I’ll happily ensure you’re rescued in the very near future.”

“That’s the stupidest—” Rook began, but he stopped, frowning at Captain Norcross’s red holo display, which hadn’t done anything weird at all since connecting to the network. “Wait, how are the bugs not—”

“Bugs?” Norcross interrupted, then laughed. “Never you mind.”

“No way. No way. You knew.” Rook’s voice was low, cold, and utterly furious now. “You knew about them, and they’re leaving you alone—”

One of the marines shoved Rook back, but Norcross’s expression didn’t budge. “Slow down, son. Don’t think too hard and lose focus on what matters here, which is that I’m willing to inform the authorities you survived. Because I’m afraid they have no idea. They don’t even know what happened to Canary, but it concerned the Joint Colonial Authority enough to declare Noraza off-limits three years ago. Yet another Critically Hazardous (Cause Indeterminate) Volume so far as they’re concerned.”

He smiled. “And if that means nothing to you, I’ll explain: it means we’re the last visitors of a friendly persuasion you are ever likely to get.”

Apart from the older kids, all of Jonesy’s friends looked shocked, then heartbroken. The younger kids started crying. Rook called Captain Norcross another bad name.

“Hush,” Norcross said gently. “It’s very simple. One of you is a Fluxer, and all I need you to do is tell me who it is. They need special help, and I’m here to see they get it.”

Fluxer. Jonesy mouthed the unfamiliar word to herself. None of her friends said anything or looked like they had any idea what Norcross meant, either.

He didn’t seem surprised. “Somebody here can do things the rest of you can’t. Things that don’t make sense or would seem impossible. You might have seen a glow around their hands. It might have been very faint.”

Jonesy covered her mouth with both hands so she wouldn’t scream.

Norcross wanted her.

Somehow he knew what she’d done that morning. Somehow he knew what it meant. She was the—Fluxer. Whatever a Fluxer was.

And she’d told Trace about the neon lights, so Trace knew it was her, too.

“Anyone?” Norcross asked. “Don’t be shy. You, there—something to say?”

He was talking to Trace, who looked ready to throw up. “No,” Trace said, swallowing. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Not—not in real life.”

Jonesy let out a deep breath. She had amazing friends.

Norcross looked impatient now. Jonesy saw his eyes darting from face to face in frustration. “You swept the entire quarters?” he asked the marines.

“I already told them this is all of us,” Rook said.

Now Jonesy felt ready to throw up, too, because even if Trace was the only one who knew she was the person Norcross wanted, everybody knew she was the only one missing.

“This is a mistake,” Rook said coldly. “Whoever, or whatever, you’re looking for, they’re not here.”

“Oh, perhaps not here, but I’ll bet this place is full of marvelous hiding places, isn’t it?” Norcross pointed to his red wrist display. “My ship outside has a hypercast transmitter. I can send a message anywhere from here. If I wanted, I could even let one of you patch through my comms system. You could send your family a message. Or call in a rescue for yourselves right now. You could even try telling the authorities about me, if you think you’d prefer a lifetime of being shuffled around the JCA court system by clerical errors to your present circumstances. So, who wants to tell me about the rest of your friends and win the prize?”

Jonesy’s friends all stared at Norcross with wide eyes. She covered her mouth again. She knew Hunter would give her away. But Hunter didn’t.

Davenport Jr. did.

He clapped his hands and shouted, “JONE-ZEE!”

“Davenport, hush,” Eva exclaimed.

“Well done, young man.” Captain Norcross knelt and held out his arm. “As promised. Step right up.”

Davenport Jr. goggled at him, then started crying and hid behind Eva.

“He got hit on the head when he was little,” Eva said furiously. “He doesn’t even know how to send a message.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Norcross said. “Now, as for your absent friend—”

“Don’t bother,” Rook interrupted. “She’s one of the station ghosts.”

“Ghosts,” Norcross repeated in a low, flat voice.

“Yeah, we’ve got a lot of those thanks to you clowns, don’t we? Davenport doesn’t know they’re just pretend.”

Jonesy wanted to cheer. Rook always had a plan, and two or three backups at least. He wouldn’t let Norcross get her or hurt anybody.

Norcross, though, just sighed. “Son, I’ll do you a favor and proceed as if I didn’t hear that little gem of kindergarten idiocy escape your lips.”

He turned off his wrist holo. “Excuse me a moment, young lady,” he said, motioning for Eva to stand aside. “And I promise that if you all keep your own mouths shut, this will go far more smoothly than if you oblige me to—well, to use the resources at my disposal to help you.”

(“What?” Hunter hissed in the back. “He means shut up, stupid,” Ryosuke snapped.)

Norcross held out his hand again to Davenport Jr. “It’s all right. You can help me. Where’s your friend?”

Davenport Jr. wiped his nose on his hand. “Jone-zee?” he whispered.

Norcross gave him an encouraging smile. “That’s right. Where is she? Can you point?”

Davenport Jr. frowned, then brightened and indicated the exit that led straight to Jonesy’s corridor. “JONE-ZEE! B2!”

“Check it,” Norcross said over his shoulder. One of the marines nodded and hurried out. “You may have saved your friends a lot of trouble, young man,” he told Davenport Jr. as Eva drew him back, scowling.

Jonesy heard a big crash, like somebody knocking over a pile of crates (followed by a faint cry of “Zounds, it’s a space-quake!”). The marine came back. “Negative,” he told Norcross. “Found a compartment marked MEDICAL STORAGE B2 with recent thermal traces inside, but they predate mission zero. No sign the door was used more recently.”

Norcross’s eyes narrowed at the little gasps and shared looks that slipped between Jonesy’s friends at this news.

“Like I said,” Rook burst out. “Ghosts, okay? There’s Jonesy in the storage corridor, and Steve in the observation bubble, and Jeff under the bunk in B24.” Jonesy didn’t understand why Rook was almost shouting or why he was talking about Jeff. He never talked about Jeff.

Norcross ignored Rook and tapped his wrist instead of asking any more questions. “Send over my shuttle.”

He turned to his marines. “It’s got to be one of them. Take them all to the airlock.”

“No!” Rook shouted. “I’m not letting you take anybody, you psycho—”

That was as far as he got before one of the gray marines yanked him from the corner, slammed him to the floor, and zip-tied his wrists in two seconds flat.

“AIRLOCK, NOW,” another marine bellowed as the rest shouldered their weapons. The little kids screamed, but seeing Rook overpowered like that had stunned everyone else into staring, terrified silence. Jonesy had never felt so helpless as she watched the gray marines drag Rook away and bully the rest of her friends out after him.

Norcross didn’t leave, though, and he pulled the last two marines aside. “Deep sweep the whole compartment,” he said. “Check whatever the Latino boy was talking about, too. I don’t care if it’s Jonesy or Steve or ten thousand Ghosts of Canary Past—if they’re real, find them.”

“Understood, sir,” the marines said together.

Norcross looked around the mess with a thoughtful expression. “And be careful,” he added. “They didn’t survive three years in this place because they were stupid.”

He touched his collar and a bubble helmet appeared around his head. Jonesy was shocked to realize his clothes were a spacesuit—and his helmet had to be a field, except she had no idea how he could be carrying enough batteries for that. Fields shimmered across the holes in his gloves, too. She’d never heard of such a thing. The marines saluted him as he left.

For a few moments longer, she could still hear her friends crying. Then she couldn’t. Norcross must have sealed the airlock’s hatch.

His last two marines, meanwhile, moved to a corner, where one raised his weapon while the other started tapping controls on his wrist. The gray drones stopped circling and flew out of the mess.

Jonesy jerked back in alarm. Her perch on the countertop left her sitting in full view of the galley’s doorway. She slipped off the counter and started quietly checking the cabinets for a hiding place, but every cabinet she opened was full of autocooker inserts or emergency rations. And before she could look anywhere else, she heard a drone in the corridor outside.

She climbed back on the counter behind the autocooker and huddled up as small as she could. She crossed her fingers, closed her eyes, and thought don’t come in, don’t come in, don’t come in as hard as she could think because she didn’t know what else to do.

In the cartoons she’d watched, combat drones were usually funny. They were slow, easy to confuse, and shot each other by accident all the time. In real life, though, Jonesy knew they were basically the worst things you could possibly have hunting for you. They could see in the dark and through thin walls, and some could even track you by smell, like dogs. Plus they were smart, bulletproof, and really fast. Ryosuke had showed her part of a BHBC documentary about the Osiris Riots, once, where a SWAT drone had punched through a bulkhead and stun-missiled eight Gen-Rights terrorists on the other side before they could fire a shot.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the gray drone’s reflection in the face of a cabinet across from her, because it was hovering in the doorway.

Suddenly she felt just like she had that morning. Something inside her was about to happen. She saw the gates again, standing in the darkness with the hairline of impossible colorful light all the way around.

Her heart had already been pounding in terror, but now it felt like she’d tuned it to a boomstep station and spun the volume to 110. Not again, she thought. Please not again. I’m already in so much trouble. Why couldn’t you have been a dream? Why are you back now?

The light around the gates shone brighter—and to her astonishment, she felt them answer. We can, they said.

Or seemed to say. Or hadn’t said, but—

She saw the reflected drone float through the door, and she quit trying to make sense of how, or if, the gates had said anything.

Please don’t kill me, she told them, almost like she was talking back to them in the dark place herself. Then she held up her hands.

The neon-magenta glow was harder to see under the galley lights, but it was there. And it brightened when her hands got closer together.

She didn’t touch them this time. She’d definitely learned her lesson there. She held her breath, watched the drone’s reflection, and thought hard about how much she needed the drone not to see her. Somewhere inside her, the gates opened the tiniest crack, and the glow faded from her hands.

Not a moment later, the gray drone floated past the end of the autocooker and was right there, so close she could have reached out and touched it.

She gasped. She almost clapped her hands over her mouth but thought of shocking herself in the face just in time. She wasn’t sure if her hands had to be glowing for that to happen, but she wasn’t about to start experimenting now.

The drone didn’t react to her gasp, but it stopped and unfolded a bunch of scanners, antennas, and cameras from small hatches in its armored gray shell.

Jonesy watched in disbelief as it turned a circle, sweeping its sensors carefully over the cabinets and appliances in every direction except hers. She was a little girl huddled on a countertop and she couldn’t breathe quietly and the drone was right there, but it paid her no notice at all.

Inside her, light was pouring through the crack between the gates, razor-bright like molten sheet metal in the darkness. It looked beautiful, but in a dangerous way, like something she wouldn’t be allowed to use until she was older—but it was streaming through those gates inside her right now anyway.

She couldn’t tell where it was going, but it must have been the right place because the drone kept ignoring her.

A few moments later, one of the marines scared her half to death by exclaiming “Gotcha,” but apparently he didn’t mean her. Something across the hideout went BOOM, though. Then came a few minutes of silence, and at last the marines shared a few disappointed, confused-sounding murmurs.

Jonesy’s drone, meanwhile, still hadn’t given up on scanning the galley.

It seemed to know something wasn’t quite right, but it couldn’t figure out what. It tried folding away all its sensors and popping them out again one by one. Then it made several circuits of the room, pausing at every single cabinet she’d touched looking for a hiding place. On two of those laps it also hesitated and edged closer to her, but both times it backed away again. Finally, with a sulky sort of wobble, it folded everything away and zoomed out.

Jonesy didn’t move, even after it was gone. Her hands still weren’t glowing, but she wasn’t sure what to do with them now because the gates were still cracked in that dark place and the light was still streaming out. A tickly bead of sweat trickled down her forehead, but she didn’t dare let herself wipe it away. She’d probably shock her brains out. She felt tired, now: not sleepy tired, but panting, gasping tired. And it was getting worse fast. She felt like she was a bathtub and somebody had pulled her plug.

Then she realized she felt an awful lot like she’d felt back on the command deck right before this got really painful, and she nearly panicked. If she started screaming and blacked out right now, she doubted she’d be in the galley the next time she opened her eyes.

Rook had taught her a lot about how to not panic, though. Don’t Panic was step one for dealing with any problem in a spacesuit, because if anything bad happened to you in a spacesuit, panicking was guaranteed to make it worse. So she took a deep breath, focused, and forced herself to keep thinking.

Survival, Rook said, was just a problem you kept solving until you were safe. This was just another problem to solve.

The gates had opened when she’d held up her hands, so she tried holding them down. That didn’t work. She tried holding them out to her sides, but that didn’t work, either.

The light around her gates gave an urgent pulse. She had a bad feeling she was almost out of time.

“Please,” she whispered. She held up her hands again and tried just thinking very hard about the gates being shut.

And that was it. Her hands glowed neon magenta, then faded again, and the gates banged closed. After a moment she couldn’t make herself see them or the dark place anymore. It was like it hadn’t happened.

Except a military drone hadn’t seen her from that close because she hadn’t wanted it to see her. And she was exhausted like she’d been playing Z-Ball all day.

If that was what it meant to be a Fluxer, she thought, then Fluxers didn’t make sense. People didn’t have doors inside them. People couldn’t make unplugged screens turn on just by wanting them to. Or make drones not see them.

She’d never heard of Fluxers before Norcross had said the word, either. That gave her a horrible thought: What if he was the only one who could explain what was happening to her? And what had he meant about her needing special help? Was she sick? She’d never heard of a disease that made people glow—not even radiation poisoning did that, except in cartoons, and she was up on her RadFlush doses anyway. But if that wasn’t what he’d meant, then what?

While she was still wondering about that stuff, she heard footsteps leaving the mess, and then about a minute of buzzing from the airlock’s vacuum pumps before the marines popped the doors early and wasted the rest of the air with a BANG.

“Wasters,” she whispered indignantly.

Then she remembered what had happened to her friends.

She wanted to stay huddled up on the galley counter, because she wanted to believe that what had just happened wasn’t real. But she also knew that just because it was awful didn’t make it impossible, and in a few minutes, she’d lose any chance to find out more about who’d just stolen her friends.

So she made herself get down from the counter, then ran for the ladder to the hideout’s observation bubble and started climbing. “Don’t panic,” she told herself over and over as she pulled herself up the rungs. “Keep thinking.” Repeating it didn’t help her feel less panicky or think more clearly, but it got her to the top, at least.

Just as she’d feared, the gray ship was right outside.

It looked exactly like she remembered it: dark, unmarked, and angular like a combat knife. A much smaller ship was just slipping into a brightly lit hangar bay in its side. As she watched, the last two marines and all their drones jetted up from the hideout and flew inside, too. The hangar bay’s doors folded shut, and the ship was just a dark gray shape against the bright, yellow-gold clouds of Amberius.

Jonesy’s pocket chimed. She pulled out her dad’s terminal to find a second message blinking in the queue.

The title said F/EVENT DETECTED//MAG X001//LOC AKSCNY (<15KM). It was dated a couple of minutes ago.

She looked up to see the gray ship’s massive engines flaring to life, blue and so blinding-bright that the observation bubble’s glass autodimmed almost to black as the ship accelerated away into the dark.

Jonesy hurled her dad’s terminal across the observation bubble. Then she curled up on the bench and started sobbing.