“Because you have to. They’re not investigating anything, Ms. Jax. This isolation and the so-called dream therapy they’re forcing you to undergo, it’s not standard. They’re trying to break you. They don’t want to know what happened; they just want to make sure you’re in no condition to talk about it. Ever. And when you crack beneath the stress, they’ll write you off and bury you beneath piles of policy. Ninety seconds, Ms. Jax.”

With an inward jolt, I realize he’s right. Nothing they’ve done to me is conducive to healing. That’s not the goal at all. Most likely, I was supposed to fall apart by now. What jumper could live without her pilot and not go mad? Especially when forced to relive the event, over and over and—

When I cracked, I wasn’t going to be sent to Whitefish. Instead, I’d wind up in the Corp asylum where they hide the broken ones. All of us snap, sooner or later—you can’t spend so much time jacked into grimspace without losing part of yourself. Jumpers know the risks and yet the drive toward exploration, the need to be the first to see a new rim world, make first planetfall with our pilots, these things fire us along an ultimately self-destructive course. We’re a little crazy, the J-gene carriers, or we wouldn’t be able to handle grimspace in the first place.

With that, I make my decision and push to my feet. “Let’s go.”

There’s nothing here I want. All my personal effects burned up on Matins IV, and so I’m ready to follow this guy into the unknown, trusting wherever he’s taking me is better than where I am. That’s a hell of a hope to pin on a stranger.

I half expect him to want to talk some more or outline a plan, but he’s on his feet as well, expedience ruling the day. That’s a welcome change from the bureaucratic bullshit I’ve dealt with for the last ten days. I doubt the COs wipe their asses without forms in triplicate.

“Need you out of the uniform,” he tells me, so brisk that I don’t think even for a moment he’s angling to get a look at the body beneath. “They’ll probably guess you’re making for the docking bays, but it’ll help if they can’t get a vis-ID at a glance.”

He intends me to strip, but I know it’s not prurient interest. Even before, I wasn’t anything special to look at: lean, strong, and energetic, a good partner in bed, but not because I was beautiful. I think that might be tied to the J-gene as well, the hunger for sensation. People don’t understand my loss; the Psychs poke at it with morbid curiosity. Intellectually they know it’s bad for a jumper when her pilot dies, but they don’t understand the relationship.

Imagine for a moment—lover and brother and guardian and partner and—

There are no words. Even if a jumper never sleeps with her pilot, there are still bonds that can’t be articulated to the layman. He’s the one who watches while you’re lost in grimspace, the hands on the ship controls that interpret your signals as you cue the jumps. Every time you jack in, he’s the reason you come out safe again. Perfect trust, perfect symbiosis; there comes a time when words aren’t necessary anymore.

Well, I can’t waste any more time on hesitation. March hands me a plain brown coverall, and I change quickly under his watchful eyes. My whole body’s webbed with faint purple burn scars, souvenirs of the crash, so if he has any sense, he’ll look away. But he doesn’t. He just stares, eyes on mine. I don’t trust him, and he doesn’t seem to like me, so we make a perfect match. Dressed, I look like a san service worker.

He finishes the makeshift disguise with a bottle of Spray-bond, aerosol colorant used by part-timer punkers who want to be able to wash out their weekend revels and return to the office looking respectable. In my case, dark hair goes grungy gray, and suddenly I’ve aged twenty-five years. It’s not hard to alter how I move because I feel physically stiff from my incarceration. At a nod from him, I stuff the Corp gear down the recycler, and then he manually keys the door open.

“Unauthorized exit from crew quarters!” my AI sings out maybe thirty seconds later as alarms begin to sound. I feel faint satisfaction at having thwarted it, even as we move off. “Unauthorized access to artificial intelligence Q-15. Recommend initiation of lockdown. Unauthorized personnel detected in detention level C.”

In the distance I hear booted feet coming to investigate. Shit. We hasten down into the corridor, and I can’t tell what time of day it is because the artificial lights never alter. Station life would drive me crazy. I need a natural cycle, which is why I often linger planetside after Kai and I—flinch away from that thought, as I follow March at a dead run. God, I hope that’s not a prophetic thought.

The Psychs don’t realize the reason I’m not completely nuts, since I’ve been running a lot longer than most, is that my early life granted me the ability to compartmentalize. Just shut stuff off, lock it away. In a room inside my head part of me may, in fact, already be gibbering mad, but I don’t let that one out to howl. Just like part of me mourns Kai, curled up in a corner, sobbing like a child. And the rest of me functions.

Just like now. Can’t help wondering what I’ve gotten myself into, but then I’ve never been one to wait around. And just what in the hell does he want with me—if this isn’t a Corp trap? I have a bad feeling and a stitch in my side, but March isn’t breaking stride, and damned if I’ll let him outrun me.

Right before the first checkpoint, a pair of Corp security drones stumbles on us, and he never slows, diving between their blue laser fire like this is all part of the job, coming up beneath in their blind spot. Brute force—he crushes them together, smashing their sensors, so their feed to the security station goes black, then he slams them again in a spray of sparks. I hear the low whir of their tiny thrusters slowing, then they drop, heavy, inert. Maybe two corridors over I hear more booted feet. They’re coming to investigate the outage of the two drones.

“Move,” he tells me fiercely as the second set of alarms kick in.

Orange alert? Holy shit.

That means they don’t care if they take us alive.

Up till now, I had always thought of the Corp as a friendly Big Brother, hand out to help, interested in exploration, in science and discovery. And sure, they had a military arm, but that was for defense and protection, not for assault. Now I’m wondering just what I don’t know about the Corp, what else they do, quiet and smiling, while yokels lap up their adorable ad campaigns about little boys pointing at the heavens in awe as a shooting star carries the Corp logo overhead.

“If they’ve gone into lockdown, we won’t be able to use the doors,” I pant, as he makes for the security station at a brisk walk, not unlike the pace one would use if a bit pressed for time for a moderately important business meeting. “Are you crazy? We’re going to have to fight our way through half the Corp—”

He ignores me and lays out the first guard with a hard hook before the poor bastard hardly registers we’re there. Even with alarms sounding, you just don’t expect a man in a suit to fight like a gladiator; you expect him to stride up, and say politely, “I’m sorry, I’m quite turned about. Do you know where the lift is to the hydroponics gardens?” The second man, March takes by the throat and stares into his eyes. I don’t know what the frag that was about, but the man just crumples, lying up against the wall as if he’s about to piss himself. And once more, March keys the door open, and he’s hauling for the next point without looking back.

We pass two more security doors exactly like that while Klaxons blare and more teams deploy. One hand on my cramping side, I can’t help but think this is the crappiest rescue I’ve ever seen and I want answers, not that I’m a hundred percent sure I needed rescuing. Maybe that was lack of sleep and paranoia and the general creepiness of Psych Officer Newel. I may have just fragged up and made things way worse for myself, ruined my career and put my fate in the hands of a maniac.

As we hit the freighter bays, a gray squad opens fire. They aren’t telling us to halt or to surrender. Mother Mary of Anabolic Grace, they really want to fry us. I dive in behind a ship and growl at March, “You owe me some serious answers if we get out of this alive.”

He shoves me toward the boarding ramp of a cutter that’s seen better days. From his manner and the way he’s dressed, I expected a big hauler or a sporty little cruiser, something with a high price tag and a lot of amenities. Not this junk bucket that looks like it should’ve been decommed before the Axis Wars. The gray squad closes on us with military precision, using cover and working the perimeter in a metric circle. Soon they’ll be on us, boarding the ship. A laser blast sears the metal at my feet, and I fall back, farther up the ramp.

Talk about ass choices. I’ve got this shit bucket and a nutcase or a bunch of gray men coming for me.

He reads my look and shrugs. “However she looks, this ship is sound. Can you jump, Ms. Jax? Our lives depend on it.”

Jump? But I don’t have a pilot.

My look or my mind? Because he adds, “Yes, you do.”

My throat tightens, and I feel a fist curling around my intestines. It’s a cramp, rising nausea. It’s being told you have to remarry before your husband’s cold in the grave. Before I can say a word, he boards. No more conversation. It’s up to me now. Stay or go. Reluctantly, I admire the fact that he doesn’t bullshit, doesn’t explain, doesn’t persuade. Maybe he knows I can’t resist a mystery or a challenge or both. Or maybe he just knows I’m not looking to die today, because the gray men are almost on me.

I follow.

CHAPTER 3

The inside of the ship restores my faith in benevolent deities.

Controls are new, shiny, and everything’s well maintained, clean, from the corridors to the cockpit. It’s almost like they’re using the exterior as camo, nothing to see here, just another struggling ship. And that’s probably not too far from the truth.

It’s an eight-seater, at least I see that many places where crew can strap in for a jump. Possibly she could carry more, but there’d be no guarantee what would become of them while passing through grimspace. Generally, only refugees are desperate enough to take the risk. But there aren’t six other people on board. In fact, I just see three, now gazing at me, although there may be more in medical or the holds.

“I got her,” March says, as the boarding ramp seals behind us. “Use the override launch codes Mair gave us, and let’s go.”

I can hear the impact of gray-squad lasers striking the hull. Luckily, the Corp’s response time isn’t good here on Perlas; they’ve grown complacent, unable to imagine anyone could challenge their authority or breach their security. Something tells me—times they are a-changing.

The others busy themselves right away, as if there’s no question he’s in charge. While they’re not talking to me, I study them one by one: an older man with the heavy musculature that signals an upbringing on a high-G world and another man of indeterminate years, slim and androgynous. The older man, silver hair, neat goatee, runs a device across my temple and smiles. “Positive ID,” he tells someone over a comm unit, and I’m left staring at him in bewilderment. Last, there’s a woman around my age, blond, butch. She regards me with open animosity, and for a moment, I can’t breathe, just scorched by the look in her gray eyes, but then the look’s broken like someone cutting a live wire. There’s even a resultant explosion.