Given their composition, my clothes most likely went into fertilizer for the hydroponics section, and in my grimmer moods I imagine a molecule here or a molecule there in the carrots I eat at dinner. See, Kady? You didn’t lose everything. It’s right here.

They say people are more important than stuff. Maybe that’s true, though I think there’s a reason nobody except Brothers and Sisters renounce their possessions. Even the destitute have something they cling to, right?

Your stuff is a series of choices that show who you are. Yeah, I went for the black digiplayer with the skulls on, got a problem with that? Yeah, these are the boots my mother says make me look like I’m in the army, this is the shirt my boyfriend loves, that I have to wear a jacket over when I leave the house.

That’s the toy turtle my gramma gave me before she died.

All I have now is me. People matter more than stuff?

Well fuck you, I don’t have people. My mother’s dead, or mad. My father’s on Heimdall, which means he’s probably dead too. And my stuff might have been a tiny reminder, something to cling to. Something to tell me who I am. Excuse me for being so fucking shallow.

FUCK. I want to slam this keyboard against a wall. This keyboard that belongs to the Hypatia. Not mine. Requisitioned. Like my blankets. Like my clothes. Like my life.

So here’s the thing. My people are gone. My stuff is gone. Nobody’s left who knows me, there’s nothing left to say who I am. Everything’s gone, except one thing. One person.

He told me to run, to get out, to spread the word. Byron said the same. I understand why they did.

But Ezra was ready to die just to improve my chances of survival by one percent more.

Turns out I feel the same way.

Time to go get him, or die trying.

Surveillance footage summary,
prepared by Illuminae Group Analyst ID 7213-0089-DN

It’s hard to believe this is the same spider monkey. The same girl who sauntered away from the Hypatia servers and blew a kiss to mark her conquest.

Surveillance report commences at 17:43 as the subject, Kady Grant, approaches the Hypatia shuttle bay. She has in her possession a large bag with infirmary markings, a backpack and a portable tablet.

There’s no strut in her step now. She looks exactly like the scared seventeen-year-old she is, pink hair fading, askew where she keeps running her hand through it. Still, considering she’s on her way to almost certainly be deader than a space dodo (so nice we killed them twice), you have to give her some credit for not just puking on the spot.

She stops around the corner from Hypatia’s Shuttle Bay 1B, home to the personnel carriers used for short, intra-fleet skips. Small craft, no weapons, designed to zip across the black to the Alexander or Copernicus, or, in happier times, a nearby space station. Her mouth moves, but audio doesn’t catch it. I’m not even sure she’s making any noise. Praying. Rehearsing. Giving herself an old-fashioned pep talk. You’re up to bat, Kady Grant. One strike and you’re out.

Her fingers dance across the tablet, and she scans the results, then nods. When she rounds the corner to Security Officer (2nd Class) Bronwen Evans, she’s neither strutting nor shuffling, but striding, short of time and take-no-shit. “They need you outside 3F,” she calls, brusque.

Officer Evans lays her hand on her sidearm. “Back up please, Miss.”

Kady Grant, career criminal in the making, rolls her eyes. “Listen, lady. I’m trying to get to the infirmary, okay?” She hefts the huge infirmary bag to make her point. “Your comms unit is out, and they told me to send you to 3F.”

Evans gropes for the comms unit bolted to the wall, without taking her eyes off Miss Grant. She stabs at it with one finger, but there’s no soft crackle to tell her it’s alive.

Grant shifts her grip on the tablet, and well she should—she used it just a minute earlier to mute volume on the comms unit Evans is trying to revive. Takes less time than cutting the line. “Listen, you do what you want, just don’t deny I passed on the order.” Grant’s voice is crackling with tension, but that’s not out of place on the Hypatia right now. And then, in one of the ballsier displays I’ve seen, she turns and stomps off back from whence she came.

Security Officer (2nd Class) Evans stabs the comm a few more times, issues a non-regulation curse, and stomps off herself.

Eleven seconds after Evans disappears from view, Grant comes tearing back. She fishes a cable from her jumpsuit and splices her tablet into the control panel for the hangar bay doors.

Evans makes her way along Corridor 8639, two minutes from her destination: Bay 3F.

Grant gets to work romancing the circuits. She trawls recent log-ins, fishes for any traces of passwords, then when that doesn’t work, tries the log-in she lifted to invite herself into Captain Boll’s cabin. No luck—it’s been altered already. With a soft curse, she starts dismantling the protection protocols that keep the doors sealed.

Evans turns into Corridor 8620, now one minute from her destination: Bay 3F.

Grant’s trembling now, and finally thinks to dump the infirmary bag so she can work easier. She wipes her palms on her jumpsuit, squeezes her eyes shut and tries again.

Evans arrives at Bay 3F and commences an argument with Security Officer (1st Class) Sam Ryan about whether he sent for her or not.

Grant finally gets a handhold, hauling down code with no grace at all now. This time you can read her lips as she whispers: Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.

Evans and Ryan call in Security Section Head Wu to adjudicate. Section Head Wu advises he doesn’t care who did what, he wants everybody back at their posts where they belong.