very comfortable, but she was tired. This too was a new feeling for her. She’d been exhausted before, pushed to the brink of system failure by a lack of calories, but this was different. This was the kind of tired that meant good things had been done, and that she would be able to do them again tomorrow. Her body was learning to rest normally, not because it was out of fuel.
Pendt ate the last piece of cheese and put the greenhouse to rights. She went back out into the lounge and curled up on the comfortable sofa. It was, she decided, more than fair that she get to take a nap before lunch.
14.
ON THE MORNING OF her eighteenth birthday, Pendt Harland slept in. It was the first time in her life she had ever done it. Usually, she was woken up by a chime calling her to work, or she woke out of habit. But this morning, she slept until her body was ready to wake up. Even then, she didn’t get out of bed. She lay there, appreciating the fact that today she was a legal adult, and that she was going to steal herself from her family for good.
Eventually her stomach grumbled, something that made her laugh. It was no longer a desperate sound, something that spoke of emptiness and food withheld. Instead, it was an almost-pleasant rumble, a sound that remembered being full and would like to be again, thank you very much.
Pendt got up and pulled on her new clothes. Ned and Fisher had bought her five whole outfits and assorted sundries, something she found ridiculously excessive and they thought was the barest minimum. The idea of choosing what to wear was still strange to her, and she just grabbed whatever was closest, but she was starting to appreciate colour combinations and the feeling of certain fabrics against her skin. Today’s outfit was a purple tunic that fell to her knees over yellow leggings and comfortable brown shoes. There was a yellow scarf in the closet too, and after a moment, Pendt took it out and tried to arrange it around her neck. She wasn’t entirely pleased with the result, but she could look something up later.
She’d left her hair long after escaping from the Harland, and watched a few vids on what to do with it. She lacked practice to do the fancier plaiting, but she could handle a ponytail high on the crown of her head. She liked the way the ends of her hair brushed against her neck like that, the soft touch of something that was hers.
Dressed and ready to face the day, Pendt activated the door to her room, and stepped out into the lounge. It was empty, but she could hear both boys in the galley. If they’d got up at the normal time, they would be finished breakfast by now, but Ned had mentioned sleeping in too. They both had the day off from operations, barring an emergency that required Ned’s genes.
“Good morning!” Ned said as she came into the galley. “You look nice.”
Ned seemed determined to make this as weird as possible.
“Thank you,” Pendt said.
She understood that he was trying to make them both comfortable. In his world, people who did what they were about to do genuinely liked each other. From what Pendt had heard, Ned and Fisher’s parents had actually been in love. It might be enough for Pendt to have a thoroughly detailed contract, but Ned clearly expected himself to give her something else, and she tried to accept it as gracefully as possible. She did like both boys a great deal, even leaving aside the part where they helped rescue her and then came up with the plan to stay rescued. They were funny and nice, and different from each other in ways she was coming to appreciate. As for the rest, though, she wasn’t really emotionally equipped to deal with it yet. And they seemed to understand that she would need time.
“Happy birthday,” Fisher said.
“Thank you,” Pendt said with a bit more enthusiasm. In the space of a week, her birthday had gone from a day to be feared to a day to be excited about, and she was pretty thrilled about it.
She sat down at the table and poured herself a glass of fruit juice. The boys both drank stimulants in the morning, but they made Pendt jittery. Fruit juice was on her long list of current favourite luxuries. Today’s was