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“You need them,” Goose argues. “Press conferences. Circuit events. Parties. On the circuit and off, you represent the wealth and prestige of Benroyal Industries. Racing is more than the national obsession—no other sport on three planets commands such attention, and you are about to become a part of the spectacle.”

If he wanted to win me over, that was not the way to do it. “This is not me,” I say. “At all.”

Auguste frowns at me. “Yes, yes, Miss Vanguard. That's the point. We don't want you to look like you. We want you to look extraordinary.”

There's a blur of words as both Bear and Cash talk over
each other. “. . . already are extraordinary,” Cash says. 
“. . . fine as she is,” Bear agrees.

I'm a little stunned. It almost feels like I'm not alone, like we're all in this together. Unfortunately, their mutual faith in my worth as a human being does nothing to neutralize the bad blood between them.

Cash stands up. “I'm out.” He looks at Bear and extends a fragile olive branch. “Wanna catch a feed at my place? Ditch the fashion show?”

Bear shakes his head and summons his worst stoic face of doom. “How about you just leave?”

Everyone stops what they're doing to stare at the bald-faced rudeness of the exchange, and even I'm not sure what's gotten into Bear. The boy I know is careful with words, but always, always kind. He still opens doors and carries groceries for every old lady on Mercer Street, for sun's sake.

I could say something to Bear, but I know it would just push him over the edge. And I don't need Cash making a scene either.

“You know what?” I say, pushing the latest chiffon monstrosity out of my face. “I'm done for the night. Everybody out. Right now.”

Cash is the first one out the door, and I'm not sure that's a relief. After Bear stalks to his room and everyone else clears the apartment, I'm alone with nothing but brooding thoughts.

I walk into my room just as the Castran sun dies. I know this because the milky iridescence of the outside flex wall has somehow morphed into transparent glass. Whoever made my bed must have also swiped the wall sparkling clean. I didn't know they made flex walls like this, but as I face the horizon, this window on the world is a gift.

We are above the worst of the smog, the choke and residue of a thousand gritty streets. I can see past the city into the shadow-veined foothills of the Sand Ridge Mountains. The sight of it all is so seamless and clear, I'd swear there was no wall at all. I move closer and the illusion is broken. I see the ghost of my reflection on the shatter-proof surface and it reminds me of all the inescapable boundaries that keep me here. The contracts. The cameras. The threats against those I care for most.

I can race, but I cannot run. I can live, but I cannot breathe.

Something does not add up. Racing is everything here, but I'm an unknown with no real rally experience, just a couple years' worth of small-time match-ups under my belt. Forty-eight hours ago, I was pacing Benny's garage and now I'm living in the Spire.

Why?

I'm somewhere between the paralysis of sleep and
blinking awareness, in the hazy, just-under-the-surface zone. My side-to-stomach-and-back-again turns have twisted the sheets; I'm tangled up in soft cotton knots. Eyelids and limbs are too heavy to move.

“Pretty girl,” a woman whispers, touching my arm. “Such a pretty girl . . .”

My eyelids snap open so fast, it hurts, and blood is pumping and the flow of fear and instinct and adrenaline is pushing, pushing, pushing through veins that are too small to accommodate the flood.

There is someone in my room; I can just make out her bone-sliver shape in the dark, and I'm already moving. I'm off the bed, feet on the floor, back against the wall, in the space of one breath.

Don't panic. Watch. Listen. Sweep the room and look for an out or a defensive position. My eyes flick toward the door, but she is in the way. I can't see her face. She is tall, but her long, long dark hair seems to weigh her down. She is so thin and eggshell frail.

And it seems my jump to the wall has frightened her almost as badly as she has startled me. She starts to cry, the sobs bleed into her voice. “You can't stay here . . . they give you things to make you forget . . . they cook it themselves.” She speaks gibberish, talking so fast I can barely keep up. “They cook it . . . don't you understand?!”

She tries to press something into my hand—a flex card—but instinctively, I flinch away, letting it fall to the floor.

“Take it.” She scrambles to pick it back up, mumbling the whole time. “Sweetwater. Remember. It's Sweetwater. You have to remember. You have to take it.”

This lady is completely unhinged. I could backtrack my way into the bathroom, lock myself in, and summon a flex wall panic button. Or I could tackle this crazy and shove her in instead. Rust. She moves closer. I can sense the impulse; she's going to pounce if I don't move. Still pinned against the wall, I edge right.

“You have to get out!” She lashes, clawing for my hands or arms, anything to hold on to. “Get out or they will give you things to make you forget.”

I pivot, grabbing her by the shoulders. Before she can react, I force her into the bathroom and slam the door to keep her inside. I nearly plowed through her—she is no more solid than melting snow. Through the door, the woman keeps calling out to me.
Get out . . . Get out . . . Get out before it's too late.

No sooner do I reach for my flex to call for help than I hear the boot stomps. Voices. A trio of security guards burst into the room and push me aside. Black shapes moving past me in the dark. The muffled cries of a madwoman being dragged away.

Another slamming door. Footsteps in the hallway. It's Bear. He stumbles into my bedroom. When he sees the guards in my room, he charges forward, but then freezes almost as quickly, scanning the room.

“Bear!” I call out.

He sees me, finally realizing the guards don't have me. He barrels past them and over the bed until he's at my side. He reaches for me, but I stand and push him back.

Bear's eyes are wide, lit with alarm. “Are you okay? Did she hurt you?”

My protector, he tries again, pulling me closer. I know he just wants to shield me, to guard me from the lunatic mess who's invaded my room, but my pulse is still racing. Bear overshadows me, and suddenly I don't want his arms around me. I hear the woman's birdlike shrieks as the guards haul her completely away and it makes this tiny room feel all the more like a cage.

“What happened, Phee?”

“I don't know. Just a crazy woman . . . I don't know how she got in. I'm sorry, Bear, I'm sorry,” I say, pushing past him. “I need to breathe.”

Still in my pajamas, I run after the guards. Once I make it to the living room, I realize I'm too late—only one member of the uniformed security detail is left. My front doors are still open, but they've already taken her out of the apartment.

In the lobby, I see the other guards hustle her into the elevator. Her back is turned to me, but I recognize the man waiting for her. Even as she collapses against him, there is almost no reaction on his face, just a trace of possessive concern. Mechanically, he smooths her hair and whispers in her ear, as if he's done this a thousand times before. There's something in the tenderness that makes him all the more terrifying. It's the flicker of restraint. He's an animal, the predator too strong to hold this china doll. After he folds her into his arms, Charles Benroyal looks up, straight at me.

The torment in his eyes instantly vanishes. Cruelly, he smiles. The sight chills me to the bone far more than her trembling voice and frozen touch. Benroyal holds a half-empty glass—his cheeks are bright with wine. And he is so sharply dressed; no doubt he's just been torn from a penthouse gala to deal with this woman. She's a beloved inconvenience, someone I was never meant to meet.

But he is not so alarmed. The look on his face assures me that everything is firmly under control and that I need not concern myself with these matters.

The elevator doors close. She's gone. “Who was that?” I ask the remaining guard.

He was heading for the entryway and my near shout brings him to a sharp halt. He pulls an about-face and looks at me. I see that he's not that much older than I am. Bet there'll be hell to pay when he's forced to account for this lapse in security. “I'm sorry, Miss Vanguard. She used an all-access flex, but it won't happen again. Sorry to disturb you.”

Maybe he thinks that official-sounding nonsense is a good enough answer to dodge my question, but it isn't. I decide to get up in his exhaust. I'm pitifully short, but when I lean up to get in his face, there's no way he can avoid me. “Who was that?” I repeat. “Who was in my rusting room?”

“Mrs. . . .” He stutters. “Mrs. Benroyal.”

“What? Are you kidding me? That's his wife?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he answers.

“Which one are you?” I ask. “What's your name?”

“Kinsey, ma'am. Hank Kinsey.”

Hank. The only guard Cash trusts.

I lean closer and spy the edge of the flex card he must have taken from her and stuffed into his right hip pocket. Turns out Mrs. Benroyal is not the only one with a talent for nicking things. I'm no thief, but I've seen enough of them at work around Benny's place to spot their little tricks. I'm streetwise enough to distract the guard with a little shove. “Is she—”

“Good night, ma'am. Take care.” He backs away, out the door before I can get two more words out of him, but I've already palmed the stolen flex, tucking it out of sight.

Bear and I collapse on a sofa in the whitewashed living room. I'm creeped out enough that I don't want to go back and lie down in my bed. Bear insists on staying up with me, but I don't want that either. Why should we both spend the night sleepless and miserable? There's no chasing him out of here, so we stretch out on the couch.

I sink into one corner and he rests his head on my lap. I feel the tension in his shoulders, so I run my fingers through his hair until he finally relaxes. This is something I've done a hundred times, on nights when Bear cannot sleep. I've known him since we were small, and he's always closed his fists around our worries and kept them close.

But it's me who's anxious now. This place is changing him. Us. Before the arrest, we were inseparable. He's the same loyal, blue-eyed boy I've always clung to, but now I keep
pushing Bear away. I care for him. I'd bleed for him. Yet since arriving at the Spire, I can barely look him in the eye.

My hand slides from his blond hair to the cushion. His eyelids are already growing heavy. He doesn't notice I've pulled away. Good. After tucking a blanket around his broad shoulders, I decide I'll lull Bear to sleep with the most boring feed ever. Corporate News.

I gently fish my own flex out of my pocket and after selecting the feed, I turn off all the lights. I keep the volume low and let the talking heads yap softly. It's the tail end of a financials recap. Sixer stock prices flash off and on below the larger-than-life camera shots.

“. . . After violent swings throughout the day, stocks ended this afternoon at their lowest point in this year. The Corporate Exchange experienced massive trading as investors scrambled to deal with the fallout of a terrorist attack just east of the Biseran Gap . . .”

The feed cuts to an aerial shot of the canyon, the red rock gash that runs so deep, it seems to slice Cyan-Bisera apart. In the distance, smoke rises from the torched shell of a building. Soldiers herd sap miners into evacuation rigs. Another refinery bombing.

I think of my hearing and the judge's sentence—I could've easily ended up in that mob of prisoners. Day after day, they'd lock me into a miner's harness, forcing me to rappel all the way down into a dark, sticky hole, where I'd hose up raw fuel sap until the fumes finally wore out my lungs and choked me to death.

Either that, or I'd end up blown to bits in an attack like this, murdered by drug traffickers or Cyanese Nationalists or whoever they're blaming this time. No wonder Cash left home. His planet's a war zone.

The feedcaster continues his canned, teleprompter freak-out.

“. . . Deep concerns about the interstellar economy have prompted official statements from several corporations . . .”

The feed cuts to a press conference clip, and I nearly jump out of my seat when I see the next talking head.

James Anderssen, CEO, Locus Informatics, according to the screen.

What? If James runs Locus, the company behind every flex network in the universe, he has a lot bigger concerns than jail-breaking circuit crew for King Charlie. I scowl at the feed. My father drove for Locus. I got a life sentence thanks to their rusting “hassle-free” court proceedings. This whole time, I've been so suspicious of Benroyal, but now I'm beginning to wonder if James is even worse.

On the screen, his frames obscure his eyes, but James's voice carries loud and clear.

“. . . I spoke with the prime minister today, and I'm told that Benroyal Corp is prepared to deploy an additional twenty-five thousand Interstellar Patrol officers to secure the Gap. We will not back down. There will not be another conflict on Cyan-Bisera.”

The glasses, the pitch of his voice. It's all empty talk, and James knows it. I keep waiting for him to ditch the frames and let the audience at home see the truth in his eyes. Nothing is going to get better. Get used to it. Instead, the feedcaster interrupts with another clip.

“. . . Most officials have released similar statements, but once again, Chamber minority leader Toby Abasi opposes the current administration . . .”

Onscreen, Abasi is lean but haggard, and I swear his sun-spotted face is as creased and dark as the cloth we use to spit-shine a rig. He looks nothing like the smooth-talking corporate clones who normally dominate the feeds.

“. . . We should not authorize the deployment of any more troops, least of all Benroyal's mercenaries. It is one thing to defend our interests, but it's completely another to hijack control of Bisera, another allied nation. What hard evidence do we have that the Cyanese are actually behind these ‘terrorist' attacks? Why aren't we policing the problems on our—”

A flex message flashes over the walls, swallowing Abasi's final words. It's Cash.

CD: ARE YOU HURT? HANK TOLD ME WHAT HAPPENED.

I grab my card and delete the message off the walls, keeping our conversation contained on the tiny screen in my hands. Before I can reply, he texts again.

CD: YOU OKAY?

PV: FINE.

CD: ARE YOU SURE?

PV: CAN'T SLEEP. NO FRESH AIR.

CD: I HAVE FRESH AIR.

PV: ???

CD: BALCONY. TELESCOPE TOO.

PV: HOW COME YOU GET A BALCONY AND I DON'T??!!

CD: COME OVER.

I don't answer for a long time. I could use a breather, but dealing with Cash again . . . I don't know. I look down at Bear. He's fast asleep, relaxed and dreaming at last. I could slip out and get back before he woke—he wouldn't even miss me.

CD: ???

PV: YES.