‘Who was it?’ I ask her urgently, because anything that buys even a second’s distraction is worth it.
She’s pulling up displays at lightning speed, and in a moment she’ll figure out someone added Sabrina’s handprint permission back into the rover list. I try to look as if I’m helping, getting in the midst of it with her, yanking code just as she touches it, and making as much of a mess as I possibly can without giving myself away any sooner than I have to.
Then, with a flourish, I overload the system enough to bounce us both out. ‘What the—’ I mutter a false protest, throwing my hands up. ‘The power’s failing, everything’s breaking down.’
Marguerite curses as she starts all over again, so I dive back in alongside her.
My thoughts are racing across the red planet outside, chasing after the tiny rover crawling across its surface.Cleo, run!
I don’t care what it costs me – I just want her out of here. Yes, to warn people, of course to warn people. But more than that, because I want to know she’s out thereliving. That her smile and her sarcasm and her quick wits are out there somewhere on Mars, with another chance at life.
I should have said that, instead of going on about sending a message she already knew was urgent. But I missed my chance.
I hope one day she figures out what I really meant.
When Marguerite left, I told myself that if loving people made you vulnerable, it wasn’t worth the risk.
Something broke in me then, and hardened instead of healing, I brought up my shields. But that was never the right way. The answer wasn’t to become morelikemy sister.
It was to become morethanher.
And that’s what’s happened, with Cleo. I’ve learned it’s worth the risk, to leap. That a trust fall can kill you, sure, but it can save you too.
Whatever happens next, Cleo’s saved a part of me. And now I’m going to go down trying to save her.
Marguerite’s back in the code again, cursing softly as she tries to figure out what’s going on, and I lean across to her.
‘Should I go help Nico?’ I murmur. ‘Maybe I can do more on-site.’
It’s a risk, this moment – she hasn’t actually told me they disabled the other rovers, but I’m hoping she won’t remember that, now I’ve got her flustered. And sure enough, she just nods.
‘Go,’ she says, soft enough that nobody else will hear it. ‘Get a rover ready for us. The solar’s almost completely gone now and we have maybe ten minutes left before your girlfriend’s into range to send a warning. I need to make sure there’s nobody there to receive it.’
I go cold all over.
She’s not in the code to try to figure out how Cleo and Sabrina got away, how Sabrina got her handprint back on the permissions list.
She’s moving up the time of the bombings, so their warning will be useless. Cleo would have had twenty-five minutes to get her message out. Now she’s got ten. And she doesn’t know.
‘Can I help with that?’ I ask, scrambling for a new plan. I need her to let me in if I’m going to slow her down.
‘I’ve got it,’ Marguerite replies. ‘I built it, I can wrestle it. There’s no time to catch you up.’ She spares me a glance then,reaching across to squeeze my shoulder, and lowers her voice even further. ‘Get us a ride out of here, brother.’
There’s an ache in me, for what my sister could have been to me – what sheshouldhave been to me. For what she’s not.
I reach up to hook Cleo’s headset over my ear and start my jog toward the rover garages.
I duck into a side passageway as soon as I’m out of sight, and then another, and wrench open the door to someone’s quarters so I can slip inside.
I try to pull the door closed behind me, but it sticks – it’s the failing power. As the station dies, it’s meant to start leaving doors open so nobody gets trapped.
I give up, stumbling over to sit on one of the bunks. I’m breathing hard, sweating now, my heart pounding.
I only have a couple of minutes before Marguerite figures out I never reached Nico. Can I get into the system and undo her detonation orders in that time?
No. She’s right, she built it. I can’t force my way in and unravel all her code in the next few minutes. I need another angle.
I need to distract her enough that she can’t speed up her plans.Think, Hunter. What would Cleo do?
