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“I don’t know what happened after I was taken.”

The fruit sat forgotten in my hand.

“She left our settlement before that. With a man she was seeing.”

Veyr said nothing.

“She wanted me to go too.”

“Why did you not?”

I almost gave him the simple answer. Work. Instead, I told him the real one.

“I thought staying was the choice.”

His brow furrowed.

“My mother hated where we lived. The pollution. The security checkpoints. The way people learned not to look too closely at anything because looking could make you part of the problem.”

I rubbed my thumb over the smooth skin of the fruit.

“She kept telling me there had to be something better somewhere else. Another settlement. Another life.”

“And you disagreed.”

“I thought she was chasing something that might not exist.”

That sounded harsher now than it had then.

“She left with her boyfriend when he got permission to relocate. Asked me to come with them.”

“You stayed.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Because of your work.”

“Partly.”

I stared at the table.

“The earth lab was familiar. I knew the procedures. I knew which supervisor would cover for you if you were late and which one would report you. I knew how to get through the checkpoints. I knew what streets not to take after dark.”

The realization felt different saying it aloud.

“I knew how to survive there.”

Veyr watched me.

“My mother told me that wasn’t the same thing as having a life.”

Something moved behind his eyes.

“She said I didn’t owe the place enough to die there just because I already knew how to survive it.”

For a second, neither of us spoke.

Then Veyr asked, “Was she right?”