Page 42 of Last Chance to Save the World

Her love gives me courage. It always does, even when I know she’s lightyears away. And maybe if I wasn’t hauling ass through the sea, I’d find the words to tell her that. I hope she knows anyway. I suspect she does.

She always knows more than I give her credit for. Like how she knew not to rely on regular communication systems for this. Rianhadto have had people monitoring all the networks.

Can’t monitor birds and whispers, though.

I wait until my helmet flashes green to use the jetpack. The swim goes much quicker with that little aid.

“I’m almost there,” I tell Mom as I approach the dock. “Where are you?”

“Safe.” That’s the only answer I’m going to get from her. She and I have both learned to never really trust any comm sys.

We’ll find each other again. We always do.

I breach the surface of the water and spot the ladder going up to the platform. My skin stinks with the sticky-salty water that comes off me in sheets as I lug my body, weighed down with the jetpack, up onto the station platform.

There’s no one here to help me, but that’s fine. Bruna’s the port boss, and while she set me up with my escape route, either she’s told the other workers on the dock to ignore me or they’re sympathetic enough to turn a blind eye as I trudge over toGlory.

I don’t risk anything—I get into my pilot seat still dripping wet, not bothering to take the time to change clothes. I swipe my damp hair out of my face and drop the breathing helmet in the seat Rian occupied when we came to Earth.

In minutes, I’m in the air, soaring north to avoid the lingering holo-casts that paint the sky with colorful light.

Ships are supposed to be grounded now. If Rian is looking in my direction, he’ll know that the streak of light escaping Earth’s gravity is me.

He’ll know I got away.

Not because I’m clever—at least not this time.

But because the people of Earth are tired—have been tired, for generations—of being trod upon, ignored, and used. Because when there was a chance to exact some level of justice, all they needed was a sign to rise up.

17

Idon’t stop until Mars.

I take the short portal across the solar system, using the codes my mother helped me acquire. I get far enough away, in other words, that I could tell Rian my exact location and he wouldn’t be able to get to me in at least a week, and then only if he were lucky.

I didn’t just sit there while in the portal. Of course. I had work to do.

First thing first: Extract all the data from my earring.

I spent a shit ton of cash on these suckers, and I had to leave one behind in Fetor’s server room. Worth it, I suppose, since jamming the post into the nanobot programmer enabled my code to overwrite his. Eventually, maybe, someone will notice a random stray earring. But I’m already half a solar system away.

The other earring?

Far more valuable.

Thiswas the thing I got out of the red telephone, after hiding it there at the gala. Rian had the right idea but the wrong execution. He thought that I was going to steal the red phone, and that I needed Fetor to move it to a less-secure location for me to do that.

That was never the plan.

The plan was to hide this earring in the phone, something that took me only seconds, thanks to its narrow design. I planted it while still at the gala at the Museum of Intergalactic History.

Its tiny size was why the earring was so expensive in the first place. It’s a wireless scanner and recorder. And before I put it in the red telephone from NASA, I had it programmed to scan for a specific code.

This is where the plan fell to luck and timing, but for once, I actually did get lucky here. I got the phone to Fetor, who took my suggestion to put it in the communication room. And with the scanner in the room, it had time to infiltrate the system and copy every line of code I would need to break in to the entire communications network.

It took me the entire journey from Earth to Mars to parse it out, and there are bits that I’m still not sure about. I’d already written several programs to help extract the data I needed, though, and that helped speed the process along.

When I reach Mars, the first thing I do is line up a portal code. Just in case Rian has people out here, in this remote corner of the system. It’s unlikely, but . . .

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