Page 196 of Carousel

Rike.

Someone who can help me.

I run to him. He meets me halfway.

“Rike, what’s happening?”

“Dezeeves sent me to get you and bring you to The Bridge. All the FIs are going there now.”

“What? Why?”

But as soon as I say it, I know why.

Dinner is getting cold.

And the Queen is ready to serve it.

“Come on,” Rike says, steering me around.

“No,” I say, bursting out of his arms. “I’m not going there.”

“You FI’d,” he states, sounding nothing like my old friend, who was always so mild. “It’s time.”

I try to run. Manage to surge through the faceless bodies around me.

But with a violence I never knew he had in him, he chases me down. Grabs me, despite my thrashing and attempt to defend myself, and throws me over his shoulder like I’m nothing but a burlap sack. Something to be used and discarded. My oxygen cannister slips off my back. I hear it clunking onto the wooden floor. See it rolling away from me.

Rike’s Commander father would be so proud of him.

I beat at his strong back with my fists. “Put me down! Put me⁠—”

Smack.

Rike yelps. We go flying. One second I’m on his back, the next I’m on the floor, my body screaming in pain. Rike is curled around me, clutching his knee. A plank of wood is broken and splintered around him.

And then a body collides with mine. A body I’d know just from its scent, from its hard, slender shape, and from its warmth, alone.

I let him pull me up, in this hug we can’t break from – that I don’t ever want to break from.

“Cosmer,” I say, into his hair, which feels dank. I don’t care. I still want to run my hands through it.

He releases me. Stares into my eyes.

His are bloodshot. But he sees me. It’s enough.

“Are you okay?” he asks me, desperately, like telling him no would torture him.

“Yes,” I promise him. “But this is Dezeeves’ plan. He’s evacuating the ship for his own reasons. We need to find Ephraine⁠—”

“Ara,” Drake’s voice says. “I found us a ship⁠—”

I turn to face him, twining Cosmer’s fingers with mine as I do. “So did I,” I say, lifting our joined hands.

Drake looks at Cosmer’s face like it carries his ghosts.

Rike, still holding his knee, sits up. “Drake. Ara. You need to go The Bridge⁠—”

“We’re not going there. Unless Ephraine is there⁠—”