Someone is sobbing. I think it might be Lin. Honestly, though, it might be all of us. If ever a day has been awful enough to justify a public breakdown, it’s this one.

  “Here,” says Kora, pushing the gun into my hands. Her own gun—hers now, even if it came from my family’s ATV; I don’t want it back—is clipped to her belt. She’s not disarming herself to make me feel better, and somehow that is the one thing that actually does make me feel a little better. Brains are weird.

  “Here,” she says again, and this time I take the gun from her, wrap my fingers around the long, familiar shape of it, pull it to myself like a teddy bear. A teddy bear …

  “The bag!” I straighten, turning to stare at her. My nose aches. I must look awful. There’s blood all over my face, and my hair has been whacked short by the machete, which isn’t famed for making the most even of cuts.

  This is a strange time for vanity. Again, brains are weird. They do what they want, and it’s up to us to make them follow along.

  Kora blinks at me. Then, understanding dawns, and she says, “It’s right over there,” gesturing toward the control panel where Rockwell and Johnson still stand, frozen in their terror over what just happened. They saw monsters, confirming every nightmare they’ve ever had about the world outside the safe walls of the colony. They saw two teenagers taken, carried screaming into the wilds.

  They are not handling this very well.

  Everyone is crying, shaking and screaming as they try to deal with the situation. That says something about their faith in the wall: they believe we’re safe here.

  Kora isn’t crying.

  Now that I have my breath back, neither am I.

  I clip the volt gun to my belt as I stand and move to retrieve the bag my mother gave me. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s a bunch of photo albums and keepsakes from the original Viola, the one who died before she had the chance to develop a fondness for gossip, a habit of leaving the bedroom window open whenever she could get away with it, all the things my Viola’s programming may have extrapolated from those early brain scans, or may have come up with entirely on her own. I don’t know that Viola. I don’t want to know that Viola. I want my Viola back.

  It doesn’t really matter what’s in the bag. It’s what I have left. Mom wanted me to have it. That’s good enough for me, at least for now.

  It fits on my shoulders like it was sized for me. Maybe it was. Dad said it was time to tell me the truth: maybe this is part of that truth. I turn to Kora.

  “I need to know more about those things that took my sister,” I say, voice flat, with no preamble. “I need to know what they are, and where they came from. I need to talk to your mother.”

  She looks briefly taken aback. “Why do you need to talk to my mom? I mean, of course you can come home with me, of course you can stay as long as you want to, this is all terrible, but I don’t understand—”

  Kora is smart and tough and beautiful and I have a crush on her so big that sometimes it feels like it could eclipse the suns, and none of that matters right now, because she isn’t an orphan, she didn’t watch her entire family die today. She doesn’t understand what I’m talking about. She doesn’t need to. All of this is still academic, for her. She can let it be. She can focus on survival.

  “Your mother arranged for the purchase of that survey ship,” I say tightly. “If anyone had any idea, at all, what was going to be up there, it was her. I need to talk to your mother.”

  Rockwell seems to snap out of her fugue. It’s like she’s suddenly realized she’s standing by a little-used gate with a bunch of panicked teens—and more, that two teens were just taken on her watch. She needs to get things under control, and she needs to report the situation to the colonial authorities.

  There’s something comforting in that thought. The colonial authorities may be cowards who’d rather hide behind a metal barrier than confront the realities of living on their chosen homeworld, but they’re also adults with access to way bigger weapons than an emergency kit pistol and a biologist’s volt gun. They can defend us. They can keep the colony safe while they figure out how to kill those things, and I can get Viola back. This is how we win. By letting the adults take over.

  “All of you need to go home right now,” snaps Rockwell, voice as crisp and tight as a folded memo. She’s in command, she’s taking control, and if her hands are still shaking, we’re all grateful enough to ignore it, at least for the moment. “No one should be on the streets.”

  Johnson moves to lock the gate, a process that involves typing a long alphanumeric code into the control pad. He shifts positions when he sees me looking, blocking the keypad from my view. They don’t want anyone using this gate.

  There are other gates. There are other codes. I am not staying locked in here while my sister is out there, being held captive by monsters. The only thing that’s keeping me from charging for the gate right this second is the knowledge that Viola isn’t technically alive. That shouldn’t be soothing—should still, in fact, be absolutely horrifying—but weirdly, it helps. They can’t kill her. She died a long time ago, when I was too young to notice, and nothing they do to her now is going to change our uniquely messed-up family situation.

  Lin clings to Juan as they turn to go. I don’t call them back. They deserve to go home to their families, to close the doors and lock the windows and feel, for at least a little while, as if they’re actually safe.

  They’re not safe. I know too much about biology to think, even for a second, that they might be. These creatures …

  There are at least three of them, and they’re tough enough to have survived the conditions on the biological survey ship and inside a crashing shuttle. They survived impact and the shuttle exploding after it hit the ground, and they were able to track us across miles and miles of Zagreus grassland. They’re not finished. They’re out there, and they’re hunting, and they’re going to come back for another round.

  Maybe if they’re all males, or sexless drones—assuming these are some kind of new pseudo-insect, and not something different, or something worse—there’s a chance. They’ll eventually die out there, of old age or whatever, the humans can have another go at taking the planet. But that feels like the kind of luck it’s not safe to count on.

  I’m already mentally ceding Zagreus to the creatures, and there are only three of them. It’s the only sensible reaction to the information we have so far. I could be wrong. I would love to be wrong. My parents are the Shipps, the best xenobiologists in the business.

  I’m not wrong.

  Kora takes a deep, unsteady breath. “I don’t know where she is right now. It’s the middle of the day.”

  “Then we go to your residence,” I say. “I need to wash the blood off my face.”

  She hesitates. Then, finally, she nods. It’s time for us to move.

  So we move.

  Walking through the streets of Zagreus’s capital city with blood on my face and in my hair is a new experience. The invisibility I’m used to experiencing is gone, replaced by horrified stares and quick motions to avoid getting too close to me. No one offers to help; no one even asks if I’m all right. It’s funny. For a colony founded on the ideals of recycling and cooperation, people here sure are fast to pull away. It’s like they don’t understand what their utopia is supposed to look like.

  Kora doesn’t pull away. She keeps her hand in mine as she tugs me through the streets, skirting around the areas where the population is likely to be densest. She manages to make it feel less like she’s ashamed of me and more like she just doesn’t want to stop and explain what we’re doing.

  She doesn’t need to bother. No one seems to want to ask. I guess my face tells its own story, and while that story is far from accurate, it’s enough for the people who glance at us, see the blood, and look quickly away.

  We reach the stairs that will lead us to the residence she shares with her mother and I pause, partially to catch my breath and partially because my traitorous heart is suddenly beating a little faster, a little less evenly.

  Adrenaline can cause all sorts of biological responses, I think, and I hate myself for it. My parents are dead, my sister is missing, and I’m getting all excited because I’m about to see my maybe-girlfriend’s residence for the first time. Subprime, Olivia. Seriously subprime.

  Kora looks at me and smiles. It doesn’t touch the horror still hanging in her eyes. She looks like she’s facing the possibility of her own death at the top of those stairs, and I want to take it personally, but I can’t. If her mother knew …

  We could both be losing parents today, in different ways.

  “My mother is … she’s my mother,” she says, like that means anything. “She didn’t do this on purpose. There’s no way. You’ll see. This is all just … it’s all a misunderstanding, that’s all. She’ll be able to clear all this up.”

  I’m not sure she can clear up the deaths of three people—four, if you count Michel, and more than that, if you count everyone else who went up to check that survey ship for signs of danger. I don’t say that out loud. I just nod, and force myself to offer the slightest of smiles in response, and follow her up the stairs.

  Halfway up, there’s a door. We pass through it, and we’re not in the open air of the domed colony anymore: we’re inside, another layer of protection between us and the world. It feels stifling, claustrophobic, like something essential has been shut away. The air-conditioning is turned up too high. I shiver, knots of gooseflesh breaking out on my bare arms and the back of my neck. For the first time, I miss my hair. It would have kept me a little more covered, a little warmer.

  Kora doesn’t seem to notice. She’s a hothouse flower, used to a life where hot and cold are choices, not consequences of the climate. She keeps climbing until we reach a door that’s been painted the red of half-dried blood. It’s enough to turn my stomach, and even she hesitates, seeming to see the door in a new light, before she swipes her wrist across the lock. It beeps twice, undoing itself. The door swings open.

  The residence on the other side is half the size of ours, but twice as opulent. The walls are papered in something plush and soft-looking, like the skin of a vat-grown peach. The floor is covered in a thick carpet that will muffle and steal away our steps. The windows are tempered steel as clear as water, covered with a photosensitive film that changes colors according to the light outside. Right now, they’re tinted to filter the Zagreus sunlight into a pleasant twilight, while artificial lights make up the difference.

  It’s a packaged, curated slice of civilization, and it could be on any planet in the galaxy, it could be anywhere, and I hate it, because it’s possible to look out those windows and pretend that everything is fine, everything is safe and ordinary and there’s nothing to be concerned about. This whole space is a lie.

  Humans are so good at lying to ourselves. We should have learned to stop before we left Earth behind. We’re too well-suited to the world that bore us. The rest of the galaxy doesn’t have nearly as much patience with us.

  Unlike my residence, where every room is neatly partitioned off from the rooms around it, this space is wide and open, making the most of the limited space. The entryway bleeds into the living room, which bleeds in turn into the dining room. That’s where carpet gives way to shining tile, where bookshelves and curio cases surrender to cabinets and appliances. There’s a large island in the center of the kitchen area, built in, to create additional counter and workspace. That’s where Kora’s mother is, a tablet in her hand, frantically scrolling through screens, posture tense and miserable.

  Kora’s coloring must have come from her father, because her mother looks nothing like her: Delia Burton is as pale as I am, with hair only a few shades darker than the Zagreus sky, pulled tight and high in a sleek chignon. Every inch of her is polished, poised. She’s perfect for this room, for this residence, for her position. She’s all wrong for Zagreus. She doesn’t reflect her world, its wild reaches, its rugged glory. I wonder if she’s been outside the colony walls since they were finished. I wonder what she’d think if she went out there.

  Kora takes a step forward, confirming my belief that the carpets are thick enough to muffle all sound. She makes a small coughing noise, following it up with a half-whispered plea of, “Mama? Can you look at me, please?”

  There’s something achingly vulnerable about the way she says “Mama,” like it’s a secret I’m being allowed to share, whether I’ve earned it or not. She’s too shaken by the day we’ve had to keep it from me. It’s a gift, and I don’t want it.

  And Delia Burton looks up from her tablet. It falls from her fingers to clatter on the marble top of the island, the sound seeming very loud in the quiet of the residence. The color drains from her cheeks, leaving her looking more like a wax sculpture, or a corpse, than a living woman.

  The thought of death is enough to make me shiver and touch the butt of the volt gun at my belt, reassuring myself that it’s still there: I’m not suddenly, impossibly defenseless. Those windows are making me more nervous than I would have believed possible. Anything could smash its way in, and the things we saw outside the wall … they wouldn’t even see the glass as a challenge. The way it’s tinted isn’t going to do anything to protect us. It’s just going to make it impossible for us to see the danger coming.

  “Kora!” Delia stands gracelessly, gripping the island to steady herself. She doesn’t even seem to have noticed me yet. A neat trick, considering how much of my own blood I’m wearing.

  Then again … I glance at Kora, and for the first time I realize how much of my blood she’s wearing. It’s on her hands and in her hair. There’s a dainty, almost delicate smear down one cheek, shockingly dark against the creamy brown of her skin. She’s not hurt, but she looks prettily damaged, like something out of a horror vid. No wonder Delia’s upset.

  “I’m all right, Mama,” says Kora. She reaches back to grasp my wrist and pull me forward. “Olivia needs our help.”

  Delia recoils—actually recoils—when she sees the state of me. I try to smile, to be polite, but I can feel the expression coming out twisted and weird, not the sort of thing I should be sharing with my maybe-girlfriend’s mother.

  “Miss Shipp!” says Delia, voice just a little shrill. “What happened to you?”

  “Michel punched her,” says Kora quickly, like she’s trying to keep me from being the one to answer. I shoot a look in her direction. She’s focused on her mother, eyes wide, face innocent. No monsters here, no sir. No impossible problems. Just a boy behaving badly, just a girl with a bloody, maybe broken nose, everything’s normal, everything’s the way it’s meant to be.

  I pull my wrist out of her hand. She shoots me a hurt look. I do my best to ignore it.

  “He punched me because I was trying to keep him from shutting my sister out of the colony,” I say.

  Delia frowns. “Viola? What was she doing coming to the—is she unwell?” She takes a step back, apparently willing to abandon her daughter to avoid catching my sister’s imaginary illness.

  That doesn’t make sense. Michel saw our arrival manifest; he’s the one who told Kora there were only three people listed. Three living humans, one android. Androids can’t get sick. Which is ironic, given how much of our lives Viola has supposedly spent incapacitated by her illness, but—

  “You think I’m the android,” I blurt.

  The look Delia gives me is equal parts horror and respect. “You’re not?” she asks.

  So many things start to make sense. The adults of Zagreus have always been hands-off, viewing independence and self-sufficiency as essential parts of the colonist experience, but most of the kids I go to school with have been treated like they still have things to learn. My teachers, though, they never gave me that treatment. They always left me to my own devices, and their sympathy, when it was extended at all, was given entirely to Viola. Poor, sick, isolated Viola, whose parents loved her enough to keep her enrolled in a school she could never attend in person.

  Poor, sweet, doomed Viola, whose parents loved her enough to build her a companion. The adults of Zagreus haven’t been shunning me because they thought I was dirty, or an outsider.

  They’ve been doing it because they thought I was an android.

  I want to laugh and pull my machete-shortened hair at the same time. I don’t know whether my parents did this on purpose or not. It would make sense if they did. Distract, deflect, let me think people were treating me weirdly rather than start to get suspicious. Right now, though, this is not helping the situation.

  “I’m not,” I say. I touch my nose, and wince from even that slight contact. “Androids don’t bleed, remember? Michel hit me hard enough that I think he may have broken something. He found out about Viola. He didn’t want to let her in.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” says Delia, with a small frown. “We don’t allow android ownership here on Zagreus, but—”

  “Why not?” I blurt. Michel must have gotten the idea that androids were somehow wrong from somewhere. If it’s going to be just me and Viola from now on—and it’s going to be just me and Viola, because I’m going to get her back—I need to know these things.

  “They…” She looks uncomfortable. “Ordinary citizens don’t have the necessary technology to build or maintain any decent android model, and there’s always the risk they’ve been loaded with spyware that even they may not be aware of. We’re trying to be independent out here. Not beholden to the corps. Keeping them from getting a handhold in our operations is essential to that.”

  “If you’re so worried about spyware, why let us come here in the first place?”

  “Your parents are the best in the business,” says Delia. “Their prices are reasonable, their references are impeccable—honestly, the only question we had was why they’d be willing to take a posting this remote, and the fact that only one of their daughters is technically alive answered it quite nicely. There are worlds where, biological mysteries notwithstanding, you—I’m sorry, I mean, your sister would never have been allowed to be turned on. They showed me and my advisors comprehensive brain maps of their android, and proof that their software build is entirely unique. It may be a corps chassis, but the program running it, the part of it that is, ah, ‘Viola,’ was designed under such close watch that the usual concerns don’t apply. It’s much more expensive to do things this way. I suppose that’s what makes it so rare.”