“What do you think?” I ask.

“I think he had no reason for being in Ashtown, so it would make sense that he was with someone else who had business there when the runners found them.”

It’s been a long time since I let myself give a good, hard, Ashtown hiss. I do it now.

“Runners don’t kill their customers.”

“Customers? You think extorting people is a financial transaction?”

“No, but they do. And you Wileyites love it. You tell your friends how you bribed your way into the desert, even though it’s not a real bribe. Just like you come to the craft bazaars knowing we’ve overpriced everything, just so you can tell yourself you’ve haggled when we let you pay fair value. Every dead Wileyite is a hundred more who will never come, and never pay the toll for coming. Runners aren’t stupid. The House would punish them for the damage a killing does to business.”

She’s staring at me, her face unreadable in the same way a star chart is unreadable when there are no lines to mark the constellations. It’s not that you can’t make out a shape, it’s that you can make out so many shapes you’ll never know which one is right. If I wanted to, I could read longing in her distance. But if I’m honest, it’s probably just my own reflected back by her indifference.

“What?” I ask, because even lovely puzzles get tiring if they’re unsolvable.

“You used we when talking about Ashtown.”

“Does it bother you?”

    It might. The Caramenta she was attracted to was perfectly tame—a Ruralite, a farm rose, not a garbage git. How would Dell react if I threw away every attempt at assimilation? How quickly would she and everyone else spit me out if I became that unpalatable?

But she surprises me. She smiles her real smile, wide and white and nearly perfect but for how much longer it stretches on the left side of her face. It’s the same side of the face where the Ashtown version of her carries a scar.

“I’ve gotten used to you pretending you’re from nowhere. It’s a change to hear you declare yourself.”

Declaration sounds too formal, but I have claimed my home more in this conversation than I have in six years. Maybe just existing as what I am is a statement.

Dell inserts a vial of serum into the injector. “It’s time,” she says.

After my prep, when I’m climbing into the hatch, Dell calls my name.

“What?” I ask.

She’s looking down at her desk, but eventually she raises her eyes.

“Jean loved fiercely. It fits the story of his life to die protecting someone he loved. The only person who should feel guilty is the monster who beat him.”

Her dark eyes have the shine of sincerity, and I want to tell her everything. Maybe I should never have let her hold my real name, because it seems I can’t keep anything from her now. But I can’t tell her what really happened to Jean, or what I plan to do about it. Not just because she might be connected to Adam, but because she might try to stop me.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, and take the ladder down into the dark.

* * *

ESTHER BUZZES AT my door as aggressively as the technology will allow—which isn’t very, but she caps it off with a scowl into the camera. When I open the door an inch she pushes it open three feet, and my calm, Ruralite sister stomps into my home like Nik Nik’s meanest runner.

    “Oh? You’re not dead. Interesting. I was sure you were dead. I messaged you a hundred times. I even got a digi of Jean’s funeral coverage so I could see you, but you weren’t in it.”

“I was in the back…”

“And then I hear that you have, not once but twice crossed the border but didn’t see fit to let me know you were okay? I was halfway to picking ingredients for your candle!”

“I’m sorry I didn’t think…wait, who told you I’d crossed the border? Are you still talking to Michael?”

The flame of her rage flickers, then surges. “It doesn’t matter! I thought you were dead! I thought they’d killed you with Jean and nobody cared enough to inform us.”

Did she think a new replacement was coming? This one just as off as I was?

“It’s my fault.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, not that.”

Her glare narrows.

“I mean, yes that too. I should have called.”

The heat of my sister’s righteousness can rival a brush fire, but so can her empathy. That’s why she puts out her rage with a sigh.

“You can’t blame yourself for Jean,” she says.

“Why not? He’s dead because of me. This is why I didn’t call you back. I knew you’d make me feel better and I don’t deserve to.”

She swallows what’s probably another balm, another sweet comfort I don’t want and haven’t earned.

“Fine,” she says. “Tell me. You can tell me everything.”

And I do. I tell her things I couldn’t tell Exlee because it would be too exhausting to explain, and things I can never tell Dell because she doesn’t know me well enough to understand. I tell Esther, first and only, everything. I’ve already told her about what happened on Earth 175, so it’s easy to tell her of Adam’s bonus and how I found his other murders. When I tell her about turning the packet in to enforcement she says she’s proud of me, but I can sense her hesitation because she still lives in Ashtown so she knows what a bad idea it was.

    By the time I finish telling her about Jean and what Adam said at the funeral, she’s pacing my tiny living room, her flowing clothes swooshing around her ankles like a mudtide.

“You can’t let him get away with this.”

“I know. I just need a little help.”

She nods. “Anything. What do you want me to do?”

“Not…from you.”

And up goes her eyebrow. “Then who?”

There’s a suspicious pitch in her voice, and I have a feeling the leniency my grief bought me is about to run out.

“You’re not the only one I invited here tonight.” I’d hoped to tell her before the runner actually arrived, but my door monitor beeps with the proximity of my new guest.

Mr. Cheeks is lingering near the entrance. He’s wearing a high-collared jacket and gloves, covering every inch of skin from chin to fingertips, but even without the tattoos his identity is obvious. It’s not even his desert skin or silver teeth. It’s the narrowed, wary set of his eyes. No one else in Wiley walks around looking like they’re expecting to be jumped.

“Him?” Esther turns toward me. “I don’t like him.”

“Why not? He was never actually stealing from you.”

“I know, it’s just…his presence. Has he killed me on another Earth? That might explain it.”

It somehow feels wrong to tell her what I know, like ruining a surprise.

“Not that I’ve seen. But this isn’t the only world where you know each other.”

Mr. Cheeks has picked a peach on his way to me, and right now his head is craned all the way up, staring at the steel and glass the same way I did when I first came. At first I think his awe is pure, but after he lingers too long I see the two enforcers just at the edge of my feed. He’s probably been wasting their time for hours, and he’s determined to make it stretch.

    I open the door. “Taking your sweet time?”

“Just having a bit of fun.” He smiles wide. “You see the light out there? Sun’s half set but it’s still day bright.”

“They want people to commute home in the light, so they don’t switch to nighttime until about half past seven, regardless of the time of year.”

“They just push back the sun?” He shakes his head. “That’s city stock for you.”

I start to nod in agreement, then realize he’s including me.

When Mr. Cheeks steps into my apartment he becomes the second person to enter my home and instantly begin lecturing me.

“What are you thinking? She shouldn’t be anywhere near runner business,” he says, pointing his half-eaten peach at Esther.

“Why? Because I’m a Ruralite and we all know Ruralites are thick as rocks and full of judgment?”

“No, because you’re an only child now. That makes you sole heir. Business with runners has consequences, and the emperor’ll strip me if I cause unrest in the Rurals by letting its future wander into sinking sand.”

He’s not wrong, but my sister will claw before she backs down, so I step between them.

“This is just a conversation. Esther’s here to visit me, but she won’t be involved. She knows how to handle herself. She only looks soft.”

“Soft?” He says it like the word is an impossibility. “Soft like a diamond, maybe.”

He means to insult her, but he doesn’t know my little sister has waited years for someone to see her and know she can cut.

When he sits on the couch, he tosses his gloves aside and begins eating the veggie snacks I’ve set out by the fistful. Esther sits beside him. I don’t like the look of them so close together, but that’s because when I look at her I see a twelve-year-old and when I look at him I see Nik Nik.

    “Tell me your story, and I’ll decide if we can do anything for you.”

“This won’t make sense unless you know I’m a traverser.”