Vakar smelled like jasmine. “It is also likely that someone may unintentionally damage a unit by, for example, inserting it into a waste recycler.”
Eva scowled at him and rolled her eyes.
“I think I might be the only one who could do it right,” Sue said, her gaze falling on the glowing cube at the center of the table. “I know how Josh works, how he programs, how he builds. There were a bunch of fail-safes that were supposed to shut down the power matrix way before I got to it. I bypassed them, along with a lot of other cute little software gremlins, but anyone else would probably end up with an empty core and a lot of teeny tiny parts they couldn’t reassemble.”
Eva stared at the glowing cube, remembering how she’d fed a similar one to a giant lizard creature, remembering the violent chain reaction she’d caused by blowing the thing up in a room full of other cubes of varying sizes. Would the next Pod Pal upgrade add more fail-safes in case, as Vakar said, someone else stuffed one in a recycler? Damaal and her Sylfe Company investors couldn’t afford to have some kid in Casa Carajo find out the hard way that their cute little robot friend was powered by a volatile unknown energy source.
Biting her lip, Eva pinged Pink. Still no answer. The gnawing chasm in her stomach was growing, and she’d already fallen in, was tumbling deeper with every passing moment. Should she be getting her crew to the ship? Trying to escape from Garilia before Damaal cracked down and hauled them all away? Would she even be able to get off-planet at this point, or was it too late?
Never should have taken this job. No money was worth this. Should have kept chasing The Fridge, playing the mosquito to their elephant—or better, picking up legal work where she could and letting Pink practice telemedicine peacefully while Sue and Min played with their respective toys.
“Now what?” Min asked, petting Mala on the floor.
“Indeed,” Vakar said. “Possessing the knowledge that the Sylfe Company is engaged in illegal activities is potentially useful leverage, however it suggests that we will be less likely to succeed in our mission.”
“But now we know Josh is definitely here!” Sue exclaimed. “He’s the only one who could have built this, I’m sure of it.”
“We confirmed that at the party,” Eva said. “I spoke to two different scientists working with him on this project.”
Sue’s excitement vanished along with her smile as she followed the thought-paths Eva had known she would. “But if he’s okay, and here, and working on these, then why didn’t he ever tell us?”
“He was probably protecting you,” Eva said, unable to keep the sarcastic edge off her tone.
“We never stopped paying his ransom,” Sue said, her eyes watery. “My poor parents. They think he’s locked in a box somewhere, but he’s here in a lab, working on these things.” She gestured at the pile of parts on the table, which one of her robots was continuing to tidy up as she spoke.
“Trust me,” Eva said, “I know how it feels. My sister pulled the same shit on me, and look what happened.”
Vakar smelled like ozone with a nasty fart undertone. “If he is here voluntarily, he will potentially be less inclined to leave with us.”
“And then we don’t get paid,” Eva said. “Not that money was our primary motivator.”
“At least he’s okay,” Sue murmured.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Eva said. “It’s safe to assume he was going after Damaal when he was hopping all over the universe six months ago, given the evidence we now have, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t locked him up and twisted his arm to work on her project.”
It hadn’t sounded that way when the resistance members were describing his involvement, or when his fellow Pod Pal designers were talking about him, but she hated to see Sue so depressed about her brother probably being an asshole. Let the girl have a little hope.
Eva could use some of that herself. She pinged Pink again, and once again there was no reply.
The door at the end of the hall opened, and for a brief moment Eva’s stomach shot into her throat. Her mother was awake, apparently. Eva flopped onto the couch and covered her face with one hand, trying not to cry, because what would that accomplish? And Pink could be totally fine—was fine, had to be fine, madre de dios, por favor.
“You’re back,” Regina said. Her tone was so sour, Eva looked up at her, blinking away the bleariness forming in her eyes.
“Where else would I be?” Eva asked, then winced at her own rising anger. That hadn’t taken much.
“Bueno, what do I know about where you go?” Regina hovered through the room, avoiding eye contact with everyone. She went to the kitchen, got a drink, then went back toward her bedroom without another word.
Something was wrong. Coño carajo. Maybe it was work-related? But no, then her mom would have unloaded about it; she loved to complain, at length and in detail. She might be upset if she couldn’t because of confidentiality, but that had never stopped her from at least getting salty in as vague a way as she could manage.
Here was a new thing to worry about, but unlike the situation with Pink, Eva could do something about this. She trailed after Regina, despite being half-inclined to let it burn out on its own.
“Qué pasó?” Eva asked, leaning against the doorframe. The room itself had a bed, a colorful wooden dresser, and a desk whose chair had been scooted into a corner. There was also a miniature comms tower complete with an expensive scrambler unit and privacy shield, which explained why her mother was having no trouble accessing the q-net or receiving calls and wasn’t worried about any eavesdropping.
A few other devices littered the desk, including a thin mechanical keyboard—her mother always had been old-fashioned. But before she could do more than glance at anything else, Regina was shoving her back out into the hallway.
“You can’t come in here,” Regina said coldly.
“Right, secret government stuff, discúlpame,” Eva said, raising her hands defensively.
“Classified, not secret,” Regina replied.
Eva furrowed her brow. “Same thing.”
Regina continued moving forward, forcing Eva to back up. “No, descarada, I’ll tell you what’s secret. Secret is your husband pretending he sells used spaceships when he’s actually running an organized-crime operation. Secret is having to tell your children just enough so they understand why you got a divorce and left the galaxy, but not so much that they might say the wrong thing to the wrong person and get kidnapped or killed or, god forbid, arrested.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely worse than killed,” Eva said, and her mother whacked her arm hard enough that it stung.
“No me busques!” Regina shouted, and now they were in the house’s common area, but clearly her mother didn’t care. “Tu sabes qué? When I took this assignment, I had to learn about the history of Garilia. As much as possible, because how else would I be able to see whether the people here were complying with regulations? And what do you think I learned about, hmm?”
Eva froze, her skin flashing cold and hot all at once. No, she thought. Please, not that. It was supposed to be buried, hidden . . . But of course, BOFA would have more than the official accounts.