That made no sense. The resistance had sent Eva in to get the psychic imprints; there was no reason for them to also start shit, especially when it might jeopardize that plan. Unless . . .
Mierda, mojón y porquería. They must have found Pink and the others. Because of security being so tight, Eva and Pink had agreed on absolute comms silence, no matter what, so it wasn’t as if either of them could alert the other of whatever might be happening.
But if the Watchers had found Pink, why was Damaal bothering to let Eva keep wandering around instead of dragging her off to be “educated”? Was it because of her mom? Eva’s neck felt hot, and she wondered whether she had once again stepped into a puddle that turned out to be a pit. Had Damaal known about Regina and left Eva alone because she thought Eva was working for BOFA, too?
Damaal shifted away. “Be cautious, Captain. The travel lines may be impacted by our Watchers attempting to apprehend the resistance members. And unfortunately, the rebels have a habit of engaging in their own disruptive behaviors, despite our efforts to educate them in their rights and privileges.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Eva said, her throat dry. She had to get out of there in a hurry. She’d only gotten two out of the three imprints the resistance needed to get into the lab, but Pink was more important.
“I hope we will meet again at the Tournament,” Damaal said, beginning to leave. “May the Light embrace you—” And she called Eva something her translators glitched on for several long moments as Eva tried to figure out how she was going to find Pink.
“Fallbreaker.” Damaal’s tone hadn’t changed, but her translators suggested the word was charged. A Fallbreaker was someone who saved lives with their own body, which was brave and commendable, but also someone who sacrificed themselves in some foolish way. Falling in the first place was a failure, probably a deadly one, totally unacceptable. It wasn’t a compliment.
The scar on Eva’s face pulled tight as she smiled bitterly. Yeah, that sounded about right. And she was about to do it all over again.
As soon as Eva and Vakar were over open water, halfway back to Spectrum City, she pinged Pink. She wanted to do it sooner, to warn her, but Damaal’s cute little parting note had felt like a test, a trap. After enough time, with enough distance, Eva hoped it would seem innocuous. Normal. “Standard captain procedure” instead of “worried about my best friend who might be dead or arrested.”
No response.
They made it back to the house, and Eva managed to ping Pink only twice more on the way, admiring her own restraint—even if it wasn’t all that restrained. It was better than pinging her until she responded, which is what Eva actually wanted to do.
When did you get so worried? Eva thought. This isn’t the first time either of you has been in a similar situation. It will be fine.
It didn’t feel fine. It felt like her insides were trying to climb out of her throat, like her skin was on fire, like she couldn’t get enough air. Pink probably would have called it a panic attack, told her to breathe and find something else to focus on.
But Pink wasn’t there. Pink was missing, and it was Eva’s fault for dragging them to Garilia in the first place, for coming up with the asinine scheme to have Pink tag those scientists at the party. She should have figured out another way to find Josh, instead of agreeing to help the resistance.
She should have left Garilia in the past where it belonged.
Vakar tried to comfort her, but he smelled as worried as she felt. Even Mala couldn’t penetrate the layers of guilt and fear and worry Eva was putting up around herself like energy shields. The only thing that finally knocked Eva out of her own head was Sue, who all but tackled Eva as soon as they walked through the door.
“I found the power source!” Sue squealed.
Eva stared at Sue blankly.
“Of the Pod Pals,” Min said. She was already petting Mala, who had abandoned Eva for scratches.
“Look, look!” Sue grabbed Eva’s hand and towed her over to the table, where the parts of the robot were arranged in neat piles, except for the largest remaining component.
In the center of the table sat a metallic lattice, almost like a small Dyson sphere. In the center of that, hovering in a stasis field, was a purplish-pink cube of energy.
“Me cago en la hora que yo nací,” Eva said.
“That’s what I said!” Sue exclaimed. “I mean, I didn’t really say that, I don’t say that, but—”
“I know, I know.” Eva crouched slightly to peer directly at the mechanism in all its glory.
It was definitely Proarkhe, or whatever the Fridge equivalent was. It was the same kind of energy cube Eva and Vakar had found on the planet where they’d also encountered a Proarkhe artifact, which had later turned into a giant robot before vanishing. It was the same thing that had powered the Fridge’s strange portable Gate guns, one of which was inoperable, both of which were hidden.
And here it was, the beating heart of a robot that looked like an animal. A robot that could change its form and shrink to fit into an impossibly small capsule.
“This is exceptionally illegal,” Vakar said.
“Only by BOFA standards,” Eva replied. “Which Damaal has to know because she’s eyeball-deep in a compliance audit right now.” And my mom is part of that, Eva thought. Qué relajo. At least none of the noise had woken Regina up, assuming she was sleeping at all instead of working or eavesdropping.
“How are they able to maintain secrecy about this?” Vakar asked, smelling like vinegar and rosemary. Incredulous. He could be adorably naïve sometimes.
Sue perked up. “Oh, I know! My family has to deal with this stuff all the time when we’re making new ships or parts.”
Eva pinged Pink again. Should she set up an auto-ping? No, that would be ridiculous. She dragged her attention back to Sue.
“When you submit plans to the regulators, they look like this,” Sue continued, bringing up a schematic with her commlink and projecting it so everyone could see. It was an engine for a medium-sized craft, and Sue rotated it and fiddled with it so that it seemed to explode outward, all its individual parts visible and labeled and able to be independently examined.
But a few areas were static, opaque. They could be moved to show things around them, but they themselves were like gaps or missing data, lost pieces of a puzzle that had otherwise been fully assembled.
“Those bits are proprietary,” Sue said, pointing at the gray areas. “BOFA allows certain parts of a plan to be kept secret. You know, for competition and stuff. If everything were all out there, it might get stolen and copied, and that wouldn’t be fair.”
Eva squinted at the floating image. “But someone has to know about it. Things break, they need to be repaired . . .” She herself had fixed enough ship components to have a decent working knowledge of a variety of schematics, and she’d never run into this before.
Sue nodded. “There are statutes of limitations. After a certain amount of time, things go public, usually because they’ve been reverse-engineered and there’s no sense keeping it secret anymore.”
“But then at some point, someone is going to figure this out,” Eva said. “You can’t be the only person dismantling these things to see what makes them tick.”