Things, Noemi thinks. Not people. I wonder if you’ve ever really loved anyone. He doesn’t even look up at his daughter.
Oblivious to Noemi’s reaction, he continues, “Really, I should’ve brought the Kahlo. Abel would’ve enjoyed seeing it again. He always liked that painting so.”
He can look at Abel, see that Abel loved a piece of art—behold an impulse that intelligent and human and alive—and still want to use Abel up and throw him away like a piece of trash.
Noemi’s unsure of Second Catholic Church doctrine, sometimes; she’s still discovering her individual faith. As she stares down at Mansfield, though, she realizes at least one thing the Church taught her is utterly true: There are worse fates than death. One of them is to live without the capacity for love.
Abel could never have saved you, she thinks. If you’d ever seen him for what he is, you might’ve saved yourself.
Noemi fans out with the other passengers, doing what they can to secure the area once more. Force fields still work and can be activated to cut off various corridors; Noemi’s able to plant a few homemade incendiary devices in some key locations, including an auxiliary fuel gauge. She notices that the passengers never leave her completely alone. Maybe they think she’ll abandon them the first chance she gets.
But where’s she supposed to go? To Remedy? They know her as the maniac who threatened to kill them all earlier today—
—no, yesterday. Isn’t it? Everything’s blurring together. Her body ran on pure adrenaline for hours and hours, but has now run out.
Just get back to the mech area, she tells herself. Simon has to be captured, but she’s in no shape to do it. Remedy has to be negotiated with, but first they’ll have to reestablish contact; with comms damaged if not destroyed, that next contact seems likely to be a while away. If the force fields hold long enough for them to regroup, they might be able to devise a strategy to take the ship back from Remedy, and then—
Better to ask that question later, assuming she ever gets the chance.
Noemi stumbles over something on the floor-ceiling, glances down, and sees that it’s a chandelier. Or it was a chandelier. Now it’s just an etched-crystal hazard underfoot. Who puts chandeliers in a spaceship?
Irritated, she turns the corner that leads back to the cargo bay. In the distance, she can just make out a small huddle of passengers under one of the emergency lights. They can’t see her at all. One of them whispers, “How much longer is this going to take?”
“Two days, maximum,” says Vinh. “That’s what I was told, pre-treatment.”
Treatment? And how much longer is what supposed to take?
“So we wait, then,” says the first speaker. “How do we stop that Genesis girl from going after Remedy in the meantime? It’s a risk we don’t have to take.”
Vinh shakes his head. “I doubt we’ll have to worry about her much longer.”
Noemi knew the passengers didn’t much like her. She hadn’t guessed they were counting on seeing her dead.
18
ABEL CANNOT EVALUATE ENOUGH VARIABLES TO DETER-mine how probable, or improbable, this circumstance might be. However, it is not impossible.
“Identify yourself!” shouts the same voice he’s heard before.
From the place where he huddles behind a chunk of wreckage, he checks the timbre and inflections against his memory banks, rechecks them, and nods. “My name is Abel,” he calls. “And yours is Riko Watanabe.”
Footsteps come closer—just one person, small of build. A few people mutter, “What are you doing?” and “Come back!” but she doesn’t stop until she sticks her head through the door. Despite the tan fatigues and goggles she wears, he identifies her easily. It is indeed Riko.
She has the same short haircut she did before, the same wary expression. This is hardly a joyous reunion. But she lowers her blaster rifle, which in the current situation counts as a good sign.
“This is Abel,” she calls to her fellow Remedy fighters. “The mech I told you about, who broke me out of prison.” After another moment’s hesitation she adds, “He’s a friend.”
Abel is not sure he would’ve described her as a friend; he is even less sure whether he’s willing to apply that term to anyone who freely takes part in terrorist activities.
Under the circumstances, however, he must take what allies he can find.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. “How in the worlds did you find us?”
“I was following Burton Mansfield, who is holding Noemi captive,” Abel replies. “I believe they are both on board.” Impossible to tell whether they survived the crash—but he refuses to speculate further. Not until he has more data. He won’t give up on Noemi one moment before he has to.
Riko nods slowly. “Mansfield’s on the manifest, yeah, but Noemi? How did he manage to take her hostage? Hadn’t she gone back to Genesis?”
“It’s what humans would refer to as ‘a long story.’” Abel risks getting to his feet. The Remedy members closest to them tense and clutch their weapons tighter, but nobody aims at him. They appear to have trust in Riko’s judgment. So he adds, “All I ask is for a chance to look for her.”
“Fair enough,” Riko says. “In return, we could use a little help.”
“Whatever I can do.”
Whether Abel likes it or not, for now, he’s on Remedy’s side.
The extravagance of this ship struck Abel as wasteful, even cruel, as soon as he saw its golden exterior. However, he had failed to account for the danger presented by that gaudiness until he encountered the interior, and had to follow Riko and her party across endless rooms and hallways littered with the remnants of chandeliers, champagne flutes, and stained glass.
“Think of how many people could’ve been fed for the cost of that thing,” says Riko as she nudges one of the larger crystal prisms aside with her
