Alex’s dark brows snapped into a V. “A mech can’t imprint on two pilots.”
“True enough,” allowed his uncle, one side of his mouth curving upward, “but why bother redoing an imprint if Rebelwing has already chosen one perfectly serviceable pilot?”
“Serviceable!” Cat practically squawked, fair skin mottling.
“Relax, he’s not really talking about me,” muttered Pru.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the Head Representative, tone innocuous. Very slowly, he lifted his head and looked at Pru, unwavering. Within a space of seconds, he’d gone from boyish, Cool Uncle Mode to the legendary hero of the Partition Wars. Pru took a step backward. “Were you not the young lady who received the imprint?”
“Well, sure,” stammered Pru. She backed up farther still, and narrowly avoided planting a heel into Anabel’s ankle. “But I’m not a real military pilot or anything. You can’t mean to keep me imprinted. Like, that makes no sense at all, dude—uh, sir. I mean, Mr. Head Representative. Sir.”
Still pinning her beneath those eyes, the quicksilver bloom of Lamarque’s smile took Pru by surprise. She could see it now, what Anabel meant about the resemblance between Alex and his uncle. Blue-eyed Gabriel lacked the dusky undertones to Alex’s complexion, and boasted a hint of silver at his temples that accompanied a couple extra decades, but their skin stretched over the same elegant bones, their resting expressions full of the same intensity of conviction. Looking a Lamarque directly in the eyes for too long felt a bit like staring straight at the sun: overwhelming, and kind of uncomfortable, but replete with a warmth that was hard not to crave.
“On the contrary,” said the Head Representative, “I believe you may have an opportunity here. I’m told you’re the book smuggler who partnered up with Miss Park here.”
Pru shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I didn’t know she was working on behalf of Coalition business.”
“Naturally not,” said Hakeem Bishop. “Just committing normal, garden variety crime.”
Pru felt her own lip curl. “Minus the government endorsement. Sure.”
“Pru,” said Anabel in a warning tone.
“I didn’t come here to be insulted,” snapped Pru. The abrupt anger in her gut overrode her anxiety. “Book smuggling’s a crime in Incorporated territory, yeah, no shit. Either the Barricade Coalition is for it or against it. You can’t endorse one kind of smuggler, then turn your nose up at the other, Mr. Bishop. Anabel’s said it herself. She’s as much a criminal as I am.”
Anabel shrugged. “Not gonna lie, Pru’s got a point. We wouldn’t have pulled half the Coalition-approved media drop-offs without everything I learned from her.”
Gabriel Lamarque’s smile grew. “I see why you two are friends.”
“The shared passion for illegal media dealing?” suggested Bishop.
“Why, the shared passion for free expression, Hakeem!”
Bishop’s jaw ticked. “Passion is all very well, sir, but that doesn’t alter the particular problem we currently face regarding Miss Wu. Or haven’t you forgotten what’s been trending on the news media cycles all night?”
Pru frowned. “Excuse me?”
Bishop hit a button on the conference table. The surrounding walls flickered into darkness, then, with a low hum, lit up with what Pru quickly recognized as news headlines. She frowned, squinting. “What’s—” Then she read the headlines. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Scrawling before her eyes like technicolor doom were a series of gossip column titles. “Preppie Caught Crossing Borders!” read one, followed by “Book Smugglers among the Best and Brightest?” One even boasted a fuzzy motion capture—poor quality, and focused on the back of the subject’s head rather than a recognizable face—but Pru could make out her own ponytail and school uniform, paused beneath a video game display in an Incorporated zone, Dick Masterson’s red hair and tinted spectacles bright beside her.
Anabel hissed a low-throated expletive.
“If it makes you feel any better, Alexandre’s little rock show did eat up most of the views and consumer attention,” said Bishop, looking like he’d bitten into something sour. “No respectable news source has yet picked up on your extracurricular activities. And none of those prurient gossip rags or chit-chat forums seem to have identified you by name. Still, the physical descriptions and commonalities between varying eyewitness accounts didn’t make your identity difficult for us to piece together. It will not be long before, shall we say, less benign entities do the same.”
“Which is why,” said Head Representative Lamarque, “it is fortunate that we have brainstormed a solution!”
“A solution,” said Pru faintly, still staring at the scrolling tabloids.
“Indeed. Hakeem is right, that people will likely piece together your book smuggling activities at some point, in which case you’ll find yourself at the center of a minor but exceedingly troublesome diplomatic incident, and slapped with a criminal record, not to mention probable expulsion from school.”
Pru tried very hard not to throw up. “Great,” she managed.
“It is fortunate, then,” continued the Head Representative, “that records from New Columbia’s Barricade sentinels currently indicate that you were, in fact, a student intern in my detail during my latest mech policy negotiations with our Incorporated neighbors, giving you a perfectly respectable reason for your presence in an otherwise unauthorized UCC zone.” Blithely, he added, “Of course, anyone who double checks with the registrar at New Columbia Prep will discover that third-year student Prudence Wu isn’t enrolled in Modern Politics II at all, and that your gate pass ID is an admirable forgery. Which will certainly compound your criminal record, I’m afraid.”
“With due respect,” said Pru, “I’d love to get to the ‘solution’ part of this conversation.”
The smile flashed again, alarmingly white. “Modern Politics II has an add-drop enrollment period after midterm projects for half-credit internships, contingent on sponsorship by a valid work-study employer. The Head Representative’s office would certainly qualify. I’d even throw in a legitimate gate pass ID to sweeten the pot.”
Pru took a long minute to process the implications of the offer. Then she rounded on Anabel, a bit frantically. “Did you conspire with the Head Representative to trick me into joining your weird, terrifying government internship?”
“She did not,” said Gabriel Lamarque, in placating tones. “Though I agree with Miss Park. You could serve the Barricade Coalition government quite well in your own way, if you chose to.”