A painful burst of memory jolted through me. Was I repeating a pattern? Seven years ago, my boyfriend Gabe and I had been in a good place, happy together, looking for a crew to join after leaving the orphanage. But we took on a job out of our league that went bad so fast we didn’t know what hit us. The Dark Watch showed up. We ran and got separated. They caught me and hauled me off to prison. I didn’t know what happened to Gabe. I probably never would, and now it could happen all over again with Shade.
I lifted my chin, did my best to shake off those thoughts, and climbed the damn ladder. It swayed, even with Shade holding it. I didn’t mind the movement. Or the height. Or the setting. I was mostly complaining for the fun of it, and because I liked how happy it seemed to make Shade to reassure me and guide me through this place.
Sure, the Gano Jungle and this scratchy rope ladder were slightly terrifying, but life without any unexpected zaps to the nervous system didn’t seem worth living. And Shade and I were making memories together. Good ones. I wanted that with him.
Almost to the top, I looked over my shoulder. Honey-brown eyes met mine. The sexy curve of Shade’s lips sent a zing of heat through my belly.
I climbed the final few rungs, transferred my weight onto the platform, and tested it with a couple of hops before letting go of the ladder. Shade started up after me.
As he scaled the tree, I ventured out onto the narrow walkway. It rocked beneath me, lifting and rolling in a way that made my stomach roll, too. It squeaked and bounced higher with every step I took away from the anchor of the tree. Fear hit my bloodstream like a flare of solar energy. My heart punched against my ribs, and I froze, my hands gripping the thick rope railings for balance.
Turning carefully, I waited for Shade to catch up, my breath coming short from the way my pulse pounded. “Don’t you think it’s weird the Overseer didn’t mess with universal time? I’m surprised he didn’t switch it to match Alpha Sambian or something.”
“Are you trying to distract yourself?” Shade asked from below me.
“Yes.”Don’t look at the river.“Go with it.”
“Novalight’s megalomaniac enough to do it,” he agreed, three quarters of the way up now. “Give him time. Maybe he just hasn’t thought of it.”
“Or gotten around to it.” The Overseer was too busy making sure he and his Dark Watch controlled everyone’s lives down to the thoughts we allowed ourselves, the books we read, and the color of our clothing. If it wasn’t restrained, dull, and limited, he didn’t like it. If his endgame was to anesthetize the entire population with a mixture of fear and boredom, it was working.
Shade swung a foot onto the platform. “He’s too busy spinning the oppressive shit he does as necessary to our well-being—and making sure people either buy into it, or shut up about it.”
That about summed up life as we knew it on every planet, spacedock, and ship across the galaxy. But our rebellion worked against him, and it was powerful enough to turnresistinto a dirty word for the Overseer.
I glanced at my watch as Shade took in the view from the platform, double-checking that my alarm would go off the second we hit the day we were supposed to meet Bridgebane. I moved around so much that my watch only showed universal time. I’d never bought anything fancier or that required multiple dials. Shade’s had two: the date and time in Albion City, and the date and time on Earth, at some place called Greenwich.
“Greenwich,” I muttered aloud as I verified the time there, pronouncing it likesandwich, which Mareeka insisted was wrong. It looked like Green Witch to me, though. I liked the way it sounded—and the idea that some ancient witch dressed in green had imposed her notion of time on all of humankind.
The earliest galactic government had established universal dates and time based on Earth’s orbit around her sun. That had still meant something to them at the time and had proved useful in the long run. Some planets had seasons, others didn’t. On some, a day was short and spent in half darkness. On others, it was bright and interminable. An orbital year was four universal months on the fast-moving Greera but took thirty-two universal months on a slow giant like Capita Leo. Every inhabited planet kept its own calendar right alongside Greenwich mean time, which was used to calculate age, among other things. Spread out as we were now, with some of us living in the Dark most of the time, it was one of the ways for humanity to maintain something in common. Certain things would never change. We all needed to eat, drink, and breathe. And apparently, grow old on the same schedule. In any case, universal time gave a useful reference point for all the space rats who zigzagged across the galaxy.
Shade’s hand shielded his eyes from the bright light of the Great Star as he surveyed the jungle from the platform. He looked perfectly at home here, as though he could just as easily have been an archeologist, a naturalist, or an explorer instead of an engineer, navigator, and bounty hunter. He was even still tan from summertime on Albion 5, although life in the Dark was starting to chip away at that. There didn’t appear to be a drop of sweat on him, which just proved he was in his element. I was blazing hot and dripping.
He turned, lowering his hand. Finding me watching him, he smiled as he stepped onto the bridge. It jiggled under his weight, and I held on for dear life until he joined me. Shade gave me a peck on the lips before slipping past me, his hands skimming the weather-smoothed railings without really gripping them. When I didn’t immediately follow, he looked over his shoulder. “Come on, starshine. You can do it. One foot in front of the other.”
Cautiously, I trailed after him. The river rushed beneath us, a low and constant rumble. The long bridge bobbed and swayed, moving up and down and back and forth, which was frankly a little too much unpredictable movement for my liking. Shade slowed down so that I could just shuffle along behind him, absorbing sights and sounds I’d never imagined seeing even in my most vivid daydreams.
A pair of ice-blue birds with fancy white crests and four crimson-tipped wings swooped back and forth across the river, bringing bits and pieces to a large nest they were building. A smaller species crowded several entire trees, singing to each other from the branches, their calls operatic and their feathers an explosion of different shades that defied my knowledge of colors. On the opposite bank, not far from the rope ladder, a squat little creature with creamy-white fur and fuzzy ears clung to the side of a tree and tapped at a spiky purple pouch stuck to the bark. The orange stripe down its back matched the long nails it used to pound on the thorny ball like a hammer.
“An orange spearback,” Shade said quietly, nodding toward the animal in the tree. He stopped and held out an arm to keep me behind him.
I peered past him, watching the small round-bottomed creature work industriously. It seemed almost cuddly, about the size of Bonk. “The name sounds more dangerous than it looks.”
“That orange stripe down its back is made of hard plates with pointed tips that are lying down right now. Threaten it, and it’ll raise them up like armor. Really piss it off, and it’ll shoot them at you hard enough to do some damage.”
“Like lose an eye?”
“Like sever a jugular.”
Okay then, not like Bonk. “Let’s stay here, shall we?”
Shade’s low chuckle made me ridiculously happy. I wrapped my arms around him from behind. His hands covered mine on his abdomen.
“It’s almost done. It’ll take off after it gets what it wants.” Shade watched the banging process as avidly as I did. I couldn’t wait to see what happened.
The purple shell finally split open. Something fat, gray, and shiny slithered in a viscous goo. The little animal scarfed it up like a gourmet meal. After, it lapped up the goo.
“Ick.” I grimaced.
