“No, thankyou. You did so much good here today.”
“It wasn’t only me. I wouldn’t have had anything without my crew.”
“Then thank them for me, too.” Surral smiled softly in what looked like wonder. “The Mornavail… You can’t imagine the questions going through my head right now.”
“Believe me, I kind of can,” I said.
She started to follow the boy, walking backward to still look at me. “Isn’t it strange how you never seem to get sick?” She glanced at my arm. “And I know you didn’t inject yourself.”
I froze and stared, a surge of blood ratcheting up my pulse. How did she always know everything? It had always been like that. Was she some kind of psychic? Or was I just an open book?
Surral made a locking motion over her closed lips and then threw away the imaginary key. I trusted her with my life, but I also had no doubt that if there was any blood left over after the kids got what they needed to heal, she’d run every test imaginable on it. She could also take samples off my ruined suit—and would—if there was nothing uncontaminated to use instead. Would she find something that Fiona hadn’t? Something that could be useful to me?
I’d find out on my next visit, I supposed—assuming I lived.
Surral turned and hurried after Thomas, who was already well ahead of her. I continued toward the office level alone, accepting hellos and giving them back until I’d cleared the residential floors. It was closing in on dinnertime, and there was no one left upstairs. The cupola was empty and quiet and, to be honest, a little eerie without the usual administrative staff and workday noise.
Outside the windows was pure Dark, broken only by lone twinkles and the occasional cluster of stars. Sector 8 was pretty empty. There was hardly a habitable planet, and the orphanage orbited a barren moon in an equally barren and totally atmospherically challenged planetary system. It was a spacedock, like Flyhole, only without the brigands, extortion, and endless supply lines. Just like Flyhole, we were close enough to the system’s star to draw power from it and have light, but not close enough to instantly fry under its harmful UV rays. Perfect—with the added help of the protective filters on every window. Right now, we were on the far side of the moon, though, and it was pitch-black outside.
When I turned down the final corridor to Mareeka’s office, everything changed. Color blazed, and the crowning glory of Sector 8 came into view. The Rafini Nebula painted everything outside the long hallway in swirling sprays of purples, pinks, blues, and golds. It was massive and magnificent, and my breath caught, just as it always did.
There was something magical about the nebula, maybe even holy. It went beyond being a cloud of dust and gases. I couldn’t get on board with the Sky Mother, but when I saw Rafini’s sprawling burst of color spread out like an arm in space, its hand nearly cradling Starway 8, something washed up through me, a wondrous feeling I couldn’t explain.
I shivered with it, but it was a warm shiver. It felt like hope.
My bare footsteps made almost no noise, but Mareeka still called out to me before I rounded her door. “Is that you, Tess?”
She got up from her desk when I entered the office, smiling at me.
I moved forward, inhaling the scent of something slightly cinnamony that Mareeka always kept in here. I didn’t know what it was exactly, only that it was her scent, and that smelling it brought me home.
“Where’s Surral?” she asked.
“She had to take care of a little girl named Annalee. Playing capes and wizards and running in the hallways seem to have led to a broken nose.”
“Ah.” She nodded. Just another day on Starway 8.
Luckily, that laser instrument in sick bay was a real-life magic wand. Annalee would probably be fine in time for dinner.
“I have a dilemma,” I said immediately. We both knew I couldn’t stay long.
“What is it?” Frowning, Mareeka crossed her arms and half sat on the edge of her desk, the nebula framing her in brilliant color through the window.
“I have in my possession something that could be considered a weapon. It could potentially turn a good fighter into a great one, a nearly indestructible one.”
“Potentially?”
“That’s the thing. I’m not really sure what it would do to a person, short term or long term. Think…enhancer.”
Mareeka nodded, her expression turning contemplative and a little worried.
“My problem is this: do I turn it over to people who I think—hope—would use it to fight for things I would approve of, or do I destroy it, so that no one has it on either side?”
“Does the Dark Watch have this?”
I shook my head. “Not anymore. I don’t think so.” If they’d had more of the serum somewhere, I didn’t think they would have been quitethatdesperate to get their lab back. A potential problem, though, was how many goons they’dalreadyenhanced.
“So, you would be giving the rebels something that could possibly help them to gain the upper hand?”
