This time when I return to our room, Viola is awake. She gives my outfit an approving nod. “Good,” she says. “I was worried you’d put on that frumpy jumpsuit you wear to school.”

  “School is for blending in,” I say. “Today is for standing out.”

  Her grin is quick. “You mean today is for impressing Kora.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m really excited to meet her.”

  “I will smother you with a pillow.”

  “I have machines that breathe for me.” Viola waves a hand. “I’m going to tell her all about what you were like as a kid.”

  “I will disconnect your machines and then smother you with a pillow.”

  If there’s a better sound in the universe than my sister’s laughter, I’ve never heard it. She grins at me and says, “How about you pull out my silver and blue and we’ll call it square?”

  In silver and blue, Viola’s coloring won’t have anything to complement it. She’ll match me, but she’ll do it in the most faded, washed-out way possible. I blink. “Really? But you’ll look…”

  “Sick. I’ll look sick.” Viola’s grin turns impish. “You know. Like a girl who totally exists but couldn’t possibly go all the way into town to attend class. Also, I’ll look like a worse version of you. Keeps Kora from figuring out who the prettier twin is.”

  I blink. Then I smile. “You always know what to say to make me happy.”

  “Yeah, well, if there were a doctorate degree in Olivia Shipp, I could make a case for having it awarded to me solely on the basis of practical experience. I get you, stupid sister. Now help me out of bed. I need to take a shower.”

  Vi’s thin, but she’s heavier than she looks; it takes some work for me to extricate her from the mattress. Then she’s off to the bathroom and I’m off to start getting things set up for the party.

  The snacks aren’t fancy and there aren’t any decorations, and six kids really shouldn’t be enough to consider a “party,” anyway, but it doesn’t matter, because we’re doing this; we’re going to socialize with people our own age, and maybe I can sneak off with Kora for more kissing, and Michel will have to admit that Viola actually exists, she’s not just some figment of my imagination. This is going to be the best day.

  Viola emerges from the bathroom in her blue-and-silver outfit and settles on the beanbag chair near the living room window. She’s having a good day; she doesn’t even need her oxygen tank. She still looks sick—and I hate that she needs to, but she’s right, because people judge even when they shouldn’t, and her looking sick will help to convince the others that she is sick. I hate it. I hate it more than she does. Viola says other people can’t change what she is by refusing to listen, but it’s not fair. She should be allowed to exist without people judging her for it.

  “You should let me braid your hair,” she says.

  “I like it down.”

  “Then you should let me curl it,” she says. “It’s all flat and lifeless.”

  “It looks exactly like yours.”

  Viola grins. “Which means I know what I’m talking about.”

  There’s a chime before I can argue further. I pull up the security screen. Kora’s at the gate, with Michel, and Lin and Juan from our statistics class, and Alisa and Paul from history. It’s hard not to notice that Kora put together an equal mix of boys and girls, like we were some sort of school dance. I take a deep breath.

  “They’re here,” I say.

  “Wow,” says Viola, looking at the screen. “Do they always travel in a pack like that, or are they all that scared of being outside?”

  “I think they’re that scared,” I say, and turn toward the front door, tugging my tunic into place and putting on my best not-scared smile. They’re my classmates. They’re my peers. I invited them to come. They shouldn’t be this frightening.

  All six of them are standing clustered by the gate at the edge of the fenced-off yard when I open the residence door. They’re trying to seem unobtrusive and unconcerned. They’re failing. Kora perks up. The others huddle closer to her, glancing around like they expect the ground to open up and swallow them whole.

  “You made it!” I call.

  “Let us in, Shipp,” snarls Michel.

  I pause in the act of reaching for the gate release, giving him a neutral look. It could go either way, that look. It could let him in or it could lock him out, and there’s no way of telling which impulse is going to win.

  Kora elbows him in the side, hard. Michel scowls. If I’ve read the social dynamics correctly …

  “I mean, please let us in,” says Michel. “Your residence looks nice. I’d love to see it from the side of the fence where nothing eats us.”

  Everything is biology, and biology is war. I allow my neutral expression to shift into a smile as I press the gate release. It swings inward, and six nervous, excited, slightly giddy teenagers spill into our yard, which is as close to perfectly safe as any slice of the great outdoors can be here on Zagreus. The grass is all the friendly, non-carnivorous sort, which keeps most of the bugs away; for the ones it doesn’t, we have sonic repulsors. I flip the switch to send the “ants” and “spiders” scattering, hoping none of my classmates will notice.

  They don’t. They’re too busy laughing and hugging one another. Alisa and Paul give each other a high five; Juan spins Lin around by her hands. She throws her head back, eyes on the sky, seeming to drink in the sight of it with nothing to get in her way.

  Michel starts to reach for Kora, but she sidesteps him and heads for me, planting a kiss like a flag on the country of my mouth before she grins, cheeks red and curls wild around her face, and asks, “Can we come in?”

  “Sure,” I say, feeling my own cheeks heat up. “Viola’s inside with the snacks.”

  “Snacks?” asks Paul. Everyone laughs, even Michel. That’s a good sign. Maybe he didn’t come to challenge me for a better position in the social stack—as if beating me would get him anything. I’m Kora’s weird little pet, one more slice of the terrifying outside. It’s only the fact that she’s at the front of the pack that lets her keep me without hurting her own social standing.

  Michel slams his shoulder into mine as he moves past me into the residence, hard enough to hurt. I stagger, catching myself on the doorframe.

  Alisa, following behind him, gives me a sympathetic look.

  “He hated Paul for, like, two years because he thought Paul liked Kora,” she says, voice soft. “Try not to take it personally.”

  “Bruises are always personal,” I say.

  They’re all inside, and so I shut the door and turn to face the consequences of my own actions.

  My schoolmates have spread out through the room like they own it. Paul and Juan are investigating the snacks with the single-minded hunger that is universal to teenage boys. Lin has a tumbler of water big enough to constitute half a daily ration under normal circumstances; she’s already drinking, great, blissful gulps, her eyes half-closed as she sucks it down. I hate water rationing, and this reminds me of why.

  Michel has stopped halfway across the room, staring at Viola. She smiles back at him, smug as a cat that’s gotten into the ship’s cream.

  “You must be Michel,” she says. Her voice sounds just like mine, even down to the inflections. We’ve been told that it’s creepy when people aren’t used to it. Right now, nothing could make me happier. “Olivia’s told me so much about you. Want to poke me so you’ll believe I really exist?”

  “I … that…,” stammers Michel.

  Kora laughs and punches him in the arm. “She’s got you there. Hi, Viola. It’s good to see you again.” She winks.

  I redden. Kora told the others that she’d already met my sister when she was trying to convince them of Viola’s reality. If Viola doesn’t play along …

  “I keep telling Olive that I deserve a social life too, but she wants to keep you all to herself, and I guess I can’t blame her for that,” says Viola. “I mean, you’re not my type, but she likes you a lot.”

  “What do you mean, she’s not your type?” demands Michel.

  I resist the urge to put my hand over my eyes. If he decides to challenge my sister over Kora’s honor—or whatever—this is going to be a really, really short party.

  “She’d break me,” says Viola bluntly. “I don’t know if you noticed, since Olive’s vivacious enough to fill up plenty of space on her own, but I’m too sick to come to school. I don’t get crushes on real people. Too much risk of making things worse for myself. Visual novels and dating sims are more than enough for me. Kora’s all Olive’s, and I’m all my own.”

  Michel bristles at that characterization of Kora, but Kora laughs and steps away, beckoning for me to come over to her.

  “Darn straight,” she says, and kisses me, earning herself a whoop from Juan, who has put together some sort of crisps-and-meat sandwich using two of the sweet rolls as bread. Boys have the weirdest taste in food, but I don’t care, because I’m kissing Kora. Michel’s right there, watching me kiss Kora, and that makes it even better somehow, like if anything was going to spoil things between us, it would have been him, and now I know that he can’t. Nothing is going to spoil what we’re becoming.

  “Best party ever,” I murmur dazedly when Kora pulls away, and she laughs, and the party is on.

  Except for Michel, who winds up sulking in the corner, arms crossed, looking at the rest of us like he dares us to say a word, everyone seems to have a good time. Lin drinks so much water that she has to sit down, a giddy, almost intoxicated expression on her face. Alisa and Paul get into a good-natured argument about whether going into the yard counts as hanging out in the wilderness, while Juan sits down by Viola, who flirts with good-natured non-commitment, happy to be part of an ordinary social group, doing ordinary things, for once in her life.

  Kora and I sit on the couch together, snuggled up so I can feel it when she breathes, so her hair tangles into mine, curls wrapping tight around overly straight strands, and I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy, I don’t think life has ever been this good. This is what perfection feels like, this is how the world should be every day, forever.

  I should have known it couldn’t last.

  The lights above the residence vidscreen flash red-white-red, bringing conversation to a grinding halt as everyone whips around to stare at them.

  “Cover your ears!” shouts Viola. I realize why a bare second before the screeching wail starts pouring from the vidscreen speakers. Vi is almost always in her room, and this is the emergency transmission alert: we need a way to get her to pay attention when she can’t see the lights in the living room.

  The sound fills the entire residence, shaking the windows. Kora cries out, pained. I want to comfort her, but I can’t bring myself to peel my palms away from my ears. I’m shaking, it’s so loud. Then, as abruptly as it started, the sound stops, and the connection is made.

  My father’s face appears on the screen. His helmet is gone; his environmental security suit has been torn, a great gash down one side that exposes red and bloody skin beneath. There’s blood on his cheek. He looks like he’s been attacked, or like he’s barely evaded being attacked, escaping purely by dint of being willing to throw himself into some piece of machinery. His left arm is dangling, useless. The shoulder is dislocated, or the bones are broken, or both. Both seem suddenly, terribly probable.

  “Daddy?” I whisper. I’m sitting up, no longer snuggled into Kora, and I don’t remember when that happened, I don’t remember moving; I’m staring at my father, beaten and bloody on the vidscreen, and I can’t breathe, my lungs are too small and I can’t breathe.

  He doesn’t seem to hear me, and I realize this isn’t an open channel. This is a recorded message, something sent from orbit to ground with all the emergency keys my father could embed in its message flags. Zagreus only has a small satellite array; incoming messages aren’t a priority. This could have happened hours ago. Dread gathers in the pit of my stomach, filling and freezing me. My father is hurt, and I don’t know when it happened, and I don’t know if—

  No. I won’t think like that. My father is fine, he’s fine, he’s calling to let us know that there’s been an accident and he didn’t want Viola to miss it, that’s all. Nothing’s really wrong. This was a salvage run. This was only a salvage run. He’s fine.

  “Katherine.” His voice is a rasp, like he’s been screaming so much that he’s stripped all the skin from the back of his throat. “Kate. God, Kate … we messed up. Honey, we messed up so bad. We should never have come here. We shouldn’t…”

  He stops, closing his eyes and forcing himself to take a slow, shuddering breath. I’ve seen that look on his face before. When I fell out of a tree and broke my wrist; when Viola’s equipment malfunctioned and she stopped breathing. Whenever one of us was in danger and he couldn’t fix it, he made that face, and he’s making it now, or he did make it, whenever this was filmed, and he’s so far away, and I can’t reach him, and I can’t help him.

  “Daddy…,” I whisper.

  Viola is staring at the screen, eyes wide and solemn in her bloodless face, and I want to go to her, I want my sister, and I can’t move. No matter how hard I try, I can’t make my body listen to me.

  My father opens his eyes.

  “They took the shuttle. The damn fools took the shuttle, even after what we saw that thing do to Petrov. She’s dead. They’re … we’re all dead, even if some of us don’t know it yet.”

  Michel stiffens. Petrov is his last name; his mother is one of the people who left this morning for the survey ship.

  “They’re heading back to Zagreus, and these controls—half these systems are fried. Kate, I don’t know how long you have before the shuttle lands. You have to get out of there. Grab the girls, grab whatever you can carry, and run. Head for the ship. Don’t look back. Don’t stop to help anyone, anyone, do you understand me? They could be—these things, they—no one is safe. It’s you and the girls, and baby, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I should never have agreed to this, I should have stayed with you, I should…”

  He stops. For the first time since this transmission started—for the last time in my life—he smiles. It’s soft and it’s sad and I realize I’m crying, and I can’t stop. The tears have a life of their own, and what they want is to do what Daddy told us to do. They want to escape.

  “They would have gone up without me. Maybe it’s for the best. At least this way, you have some warning of what’s to come. I love you, Kate. I love everything about you, and I’m not sorry, do you understand? But it’s time. You have to tell Olivia. She deserves to—”

  Something slams into him from the side, something too fast for me to see clearly. I have the brief impression of shining black, not scales, but chitin, something hard and sharp and terrible. A splash of blood hits the lens of whatever camera he’s been using to record this. He screams. The sound is mercifully brief. That’s the only merciful thing about it.

  The transmission is replaced by a blast of static. When that fades, the screen shuts off. All of us are silent, staring, unable to fully process what we just saw.

  “No.”

  The voice sounds like mine, but I know I haven’t spoken. Slowly, I turn.

  Viola is struggling to her feet, moving jerkily, like she can’t remember how her body is supposed to work. Bit by bit, she gets herself under control, until she’s standing, straight and strong and pale as skimmed milk, eyes still fixed on the darkened screen.

  “No,” she says again, stronger this time. She whips around to face me. “I told you, I told you something bad was happening, I told you, and now he’s—now they’re—we have to find Mom.”

  She spins on her heel and bolts for the door, moving faster than I’ve ever seen her move, moving faster than I knew she could move. She’s running, sprinting, and she hits the door without breaking stride, racing into the yard.

  “Viola!” I run after her, pausing at the threshold to stare. She’s already halfway across the yard, the gate standing open, triggered by the signal from her key. The others pile into the doorway behind me, all stunned and staring.

  Then a hand grabs my shoulder and whips me around, slamming me into the doorframe. Michel has his other hand drawn back, fist already formed, ready to strike.

  “What did he do?” he demands. “What did your worthless fucking father do?!”

  I don’t have time for this. I twist away from his hand and grab his wrist at the same time, digging my thumb into the space between the large bones of his arm. He makes a choked sound, swaying. I dig in harder, feeling the muscle part under the pressure.

  “Not. Now,” I snarl, and let him go, shoving him away from me as I look for Viola.

  She’s gone. The gate is closed, and she’s gone. My father is—no, he’s not dead, I won’t think that he’s dead, but he’s hurt and stranded in orbit, and now I’ve somehow managed to lose my sister, my sick twin sister, who’s supposed to be my responsibility. I can’t breathe. How did the day go this wrong, this quickly?

  A hand touches my shoulder, right where Michel grabbed me. I duck away, spinning at the same time, and find myself looking into Kora’s wide, wounded eyes. She looks like she doesn’t understand what’s happening. I can’t blame her for that. I don’t understand it either.

  “I have to go after her,” I say. “Anyone who wants to come with me, fine—only no, not anyone. I can only take three people.” I have to save a seat in the ATV for Viola. We only have five seat belts.

  “I’m coming with you,” says Kora.

  “Me too,” says Michel.

  The others exchange glances, clearly uncomfortable. Paul steps forward.

  “If there’s a problem, if she’s overexerted herself, I can help,” he says. “I’m going into med training as soon as we graduate. I can already do first aid.”