The water rose—faster, faster, faster. It covered my ankles, surpassed my knees, my thighs, my hips. A sweet-smelling mist filled the room, similar to Blair’s moon dust but far stronger. My skin rippled with tingles, my limbs so weak I could hardly stand. Pulling the trigger on the blaster seemed impossible. A grenade it would be, then.
My vision went black around the edges as I pawed around in Elio’s jacket. Just as the water reached my chest, I ripped out the pin of a fat yellow explosive with my teeth and lobbed it at the door.
Before I could hear the bang, my mind darkened completely, and the water rushed over us both.
4
“Do you think she’s dead? I’m putting my money on dead. Not that I have any money on me at the moment…”
Something sharp dug into my side. I tried opening my eyes, but they refused to budge. Somewhere nearby, the voice continued, a high-pitched drone that sounded as if it were drilling a hole into my brain. If I could remember how to operate my arms, then I would have rolled over and punched whatever dared to interrupt my sleep. But I just lay there—wherever there was—immobile and cranky, my mouth filled with a sour tang as if I’d licked the inside of a trash can.
“The little one is pretty shiny. If he doesn’t wake up, we could harvest some of his parts.” The voice laughed, and there was a slapping sound followed by a growl. “Come on, you lump! Help me move them in from the door. Chivalry isn’t dead yet. I should—oh! You’re awake!”
“Cora?” Elio’s cold, tiny fingers prodded my cheeks, and my eyes flew open. My muscles were cramped, my body pulsing with sudden terror and the overwhelming desire to both vomit and urinate. Four cinder block walls surrounded us, dripping something that was hopefully water.
“What the—” I stopped abruptly, my throat burning. How much water did I inhale in the crypt? Were we still on Vaotis? Memories of our failed job came rushing back, but they were eclipsed by the sight of Elio sitting on the floor beside me. His ears hung limply around his face, and more holes on his neck had cropped up, exposing half a dozen new patches of wires, but he was alive. Somehow we both were.
“Oh, goody. New friends,” said the same high voice from before. It belonged to a girl about my age, Earthan maybe, although it was tough to tell in the dim light. She had short purple hair buzzed nearly to her scalp, and the cheery grin she gave us practically made her dark skin glow.
I didn’t trust her. Anyone who looked that happy was either a liar or lacking sanity. If she attacked, I knew a quick shot with Elio’s blaster would put her down. I reached for it in his jacket, the fabric caked with grime from the queen’s crypt, but found his pockets disappointingly empty.
“Oh, they kept your stuff,” the girl said. “They always do. You had a couple coins in your pocket, but I took those. Finders keepers. I also took the zipper on your sweater. It looks like it’s made of Europium. Is it? I’ve been itching to touch some for years but never managed it and—”
“Whoa! Can you shut up for a second?” In addition to all the other aches in my body, now my head was pounding. And look at that—my zipper really was missing.
A sudden noise came from the opposite corner of the room, almost like a laugh, but I couldn’t see far enough into the shadows to pick out a body. Maybe I made it up, desperate to talk to anyone other than the girl, who had scooted closer and was talking again.
“My mom calls me Magpie. I’m always swiping things for myself, but it’s actually a very misleading name, because according to research, magpies are positively terrified of shiny objects. And I very much like them. Shiny objects, that is.” She ran a hand over her scalp before offering to shake. “I’m Wren, by the way. Also known as your welcoming committee.”
I just stared at her. The aura around her head shimmered a soft periwinkle blue. Far too calm for being stuck in this freezing, windowless room. She was most definitely out of her mind.
Of the two of us, Elio was the only one who tried to be polite. He pinched Wren’s hand between two of his fingers in a halfhearted shake. “I’m Elio. This is Cora.”
“Nice to meet you. What are you in for?”
Elio frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Wren grinned. Again. “Grand theft auto? Homicide? No, not homicide. You don’t seem like a murderer. She does though.” She nodded to me, and I swore I heard another chuckle from the shadows.
Still not seeing anything, I pulled my eyes away from the corner. “We didn’t do anything,” I said. “Where are we?”
Finally, finally Wren’s grin faded. “They didn’t tell you when they brought you in?”
“We weren’t conscious when they brought us in,” Elio said, but my ears were ringing. At last everything clicked into place.
If we ever got out of here, Evelina would kill us both: we’d broken a criminal’s only rule.
We got caught.
Wren had the grace to look apologetic as she nodded to the door—a block of steel with no handle and no window. Just a faceless slab of metal.
“You’re on Andilly. In the Ironside maximum security prison.”
* * *
Andilly, despite its warm and fuzzy-sounding name, was the planet where all good parents threatened to send their children if they misbehaved. A primitive nation made of sprawling, provincial villages that were constantly locked in some kind of war with each other, Andilly’s inhabitants were known to be so violent that not even Evelina wanted to steal from them.
And if their personalities weren’t dazzling enough, they also had prison cells that smelled like curdled milk and feet.
We were trapped here.
I should have realized it immediately, but it had taken a while for my brain to play catch-up. Wren’s baggy red jumpsuit, the dark and dank cinder block walls, the general sense of despair and anger in the air—we had been caught, manhandled onto a ten-hour flight from Vaotis to Andilly, and thrown into the largest penitentiary in the galaxy. And I didn’t remember any of it.
The not knowing was what made my skin crawl. Someone must have seen my pod ship land at the cemetery. When I unlocked the door of the crypt for Elio, no alarm had gone off—at least not one my monitors had picked up. It must have happened when he opened the queen’s tomb, when that strange vapor had filled the room, seeping into his processing system and my lungs, and knocked us both out.
We’re probably cursed now. Doomed to listen to Wren’s incessant talking as punishment for our many crimes. For being locked in a cell, the girl sure didn’t seem too sad about it.
The worst part of it all, I realized with a twist in my gut, was that our blasters, my inventions, all my hard work, had been left behind in the pod ship. I’d have to build another visual enhancement device from scratch, assuming I ever managed to find the parts again. Or assuming we ever got out of here. No. We will. I would live to hear Evelina yell at me again, I would live to hear Nana Rae sing the Condor national anthem off-key, I would live to see Blair’s ugly, annoying face. I would not die in this cell.
I looked to my left, where Elio was pretending to politely listen to Wren describe the customs associated with birthdays on Earth. They involved yelling “surprise” at each other in a dark room and then lighting things on fire, and to Elio’s credit, he didn’t look as frightened by that as I expected him to.