“I think you’ve proven that’s not true.”

She manages to make crawling look elegant as she moves to the ladder and descends to the office floor. But I’m staring at her, too struck to move.

“What?” she asks.

“You’re right. I…it’s not true.”

I was never sure. For years, I’ve been unsure I was capable of anything but ambition. I think back to the days lost crying for Nelline. Feeling guilty for Adra. Feeling hope for Nik Nik. Sometimes you have to bleed to know you’re human. I am afraid, panicked, and ashamed, but I am also grateful. I hadn’t thought all this misery would bring its own gift.

“I’d like to sit in the hatch.”

Her first expression, before she masks it with her constant disapproval, is worry.

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

“Please. I just want to sit until I can stand it. Promise me you won’t try to send me anywhere. Just let me stay there.”

She sits. “Do whatever you want. I doubt we’ll get a pull in today anyway.”

She’s typing into a pad, no doubt pushing back deadlines because of me. I drop back into the hatch.

    It’s easier this time, to slide into the dark. The perfect black isn’t such a surprise, an impossible thing my mind has lightened in my memories in the weeks we’ve been apart. And it is a we. I see that now. What felt like suffocating on my first attempt feels like entwining the second time. I’m not so far gone that I think the pitch-dark space is sentient, but we are partners. I wish I knew what material made this sphere possible, but even asking will get me fired, labeled, and permabanned from Wiley. Or worse. I can’t picture Adam Bosch ruling with Adra’s iron fist, but Eldridge’s secrets have never leaked, even across worlds, and that doesn’t happen purely through kindness inspiring loyalty.

I sit in the dark until my heartbeat goes so quiet it’s not there at all.

I press my cuff. “I’m ready. Send me.”

Dell’s reply, when it finally comes over the cuff, is cool. “Absolutely not.”

I climb halfway out of the hatch, glaring down at Dell seated at her desk. She’s still not looking up.

“Dell. Program the pull.”

She sighs, but eventually addresses me. She stands first, of course. Dell is taller than me, like all Wiley City residents are typically taller than Ashtown’s people—a result of never having to guess where breakfast is coming from as a kid, or not growing up where only those small enough to hide from runners or be passed over for armed service had any chance of survival. I like addressing her from above. The way she has to tilt her head up makes her look open, vulnerable. I wonder if I look like that to her. Or if I looked like that to Nik Nik, the emperor being an exception to the rule of Ashtown’s shortness, any of the times he tried to strangle me.

Dell leans with her fingertips spread out on the desk. “I am not going to approve this. What if you panic in transit? There’s nothing I can do about it then. If you panic when you land and I have to bring you back it’s a waste of a pull.”

“So? I’m owed a wasted pull. Don’t forget I did do the job on 175.”

“You pulled one port on 175. You were supposed to pull four.”

    I wave my hand at the technicality. “Oh please. The backup ports carry so little intel that’s not overlapping, it’s really like I pulled from three and a half.”

She tilts her head. “How do you know that?”

Oops.

I give her a look I hope passes for charming. “I’ll tell you if you let me do this pull?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Oh, come on, Dell. It’s my first day back and I don’t want to waste it. What are you afraid of? Losing me?”

This hits home. She can keep denying me the pull, but then it will look like she cares.

“Fine,” she says, sitting. “Is your veil still secured?”

I nod, feeling the tightness across my cheeks.

“Close the hatch.”

She must have shut down the tuner, because I spend enough time in the dark for it to warm back up. For a second, I’m sure she went home, leaving me here as a lesson for pushing back. But just when I’m about to give up I hear the whisper that Dell calls a signal and Jean and I call a petition. It surrounds me and embeds in my skin. And just like that I’m traversing.

At the edges of the total darkness are packs of swirling light, bending out of shape, gravity turning beams into rings. It’s been years since I’ve really paid attention to the act of traversing, the feeling of weightlessness, of being nowhere and also the center of everything. I feel the presence I will probably always call Nyame now, and that Dell will always tell me is just a mix of pressure and hallucination. Nyame is not angry with me. Her touch is gentle, a welcome back, as if I’ve always belonged here and my absence has been noted.

It opens up something in me, maybe not as deep as what I felt sharing time with my sister, but close. It feels like being seen, and how long have I been missing that? Suddenly I want my job again, not because I’m terrified of carving out a living in Ash, but because my job is to walk among the stars. How can I have viewed it as a paycheck for so long when I would pay to do this? I see now that it is a gift, not a lifeline.

    One day soon traversers will be obsolete, and I was so focused on the next position I hadn’t considered what that means. But even if I get an analyst job with a pay raise and citizenship and two bedrooms on a higher floor, I will have lost something I can never get back.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The meeting place is on 80, so before I go I dress in the kind of clothes I learned to value by watching Dell. I’d checked before, and the coordinates on the note lead me to a public garden owned by Adam Bosch, which adds evidence to the “employee” column on my list of suspects. A runner would probably want to meet somewhere low and populated. Another piece of evidence in that column is the wording: I know what happened on 175 instead of the more proper, I know what happened on Earth 175. It’s a shorthand we’d use, but anyone outside the company would feel the need to specify that they were talking about an Earth and not a street address or elevator line.

Bosch has kept this public garden since he purchased the block-sized mansion next door. It’s a known place to spot him, either on his balcony or when he takes his own turn in the massive greenspace. I used to believe the garden sightings were just a man oblivious to his own celebrity taking a walk and getting caught. But now that I’ve seen how much shine Adra donned, I’m sure he drinks in attention like cracked ground drinks rain.

The garden is full of frivolous flowers and fruit-bearing trees, half edible and half purely aesthetic. It looks like he did what any of us would do—picked out the brightest flowers with the biggest petals he could find, the kind of plant that would be singed to brown ash by the time noon hit back home.

    I grab an apple and sit at a bench where I can pretend to watch a fountain while watching the park entry. I’m looking, I realize, for Starla. Who else knows where I live and stands to gain from bringing me down? She was in charge of 175 for eight years; maybe she established some way of getting info and put two and two together. She was deported, but the walls aren’t perfect, especially if you have friends on the inside. And she must have had friends, right? Even if I never saw them. I couldn’t have been all she had.

But I don’t see the waist-long shine of her dark-brown hair, and the bright silks she favored would stand out in this crowd. More than half of the visitors are in tight pants and the kind of boots that could keep you dry during a mudtide. Wiley City’s upper class is appropriating the desert-dweller look in droves. No one’s gone for the onyx teeth, rumors of loss of taste and a shortened life-span are probably enough to isolate that trend, but I see a few metal-tipped nails. Funny, there’s no gold dust on the fingers. They don’t want to be Exlee, only the emperor. Anyone from Ashtown would have made the opposite choice, because not only is Exlee’s power greater, it’s cleaner. Somehow using someone’s need to keep them in line is less awful than using their fear.

I eat my apple slowly, but soon enough I find myself sliding teeth along the core, trying to milk the shavings of the fruit. A new one, lush and green instead of the red I’ve been devouring, appears over my head, held dangling by its stem.

Once I take it, Adra—Adam—walks around the bench to sit beside me. My heart pounds, but I try to keep my voice steady.

“I’ve heard stories about taking fruit from a man named Adam,” I say.

“Pretty sure that one was the other way around.”