held up a fry, fingers trembling. “So. GOOD.”
“She’s been living on rats for the last few months,” FM pointed out. “Her taste buds are undergoing serious atrophy.”
“You have such a unique way with words, FM,” Kimmalyn noted. “Not like anything I’ve heard!”
“How many of these can I have?” I asked.
“I got the whole basket for you,” FM said. “Arturo is paying, after all.”
I started stuffing them into my mouth—comically, by intention. But honestly, I wanted to get as much down as I could before I woke up, or someone kicked me out of here, or something exploded.
Bryn laughed. “She’s aggressive.”
“You have no idea,” Arturo said, smiling as she played with a curl of his hair.
Scud. It was criminal, how little I knew about my flightmates.
“Where’s Jorgen?” I said, talking around bites of food.
“He wouldn’t want to come,” Nedd said. “Too important for us.”
“You didn’t even invite him?” I asked.
“Nah,” Arturo said.
“But isn’t he your friend?”
“That’s how we know he wouldn’t come,” Nedd said. “Say, how’s old Cobb getting by? Has he said any interesting curses lately?”
“Spin gave him a bit of a black eye, last they spoke,” Kimmalyn noted.
I swallowed my mouthful of fries. “I was wrong to say what I did.”
“If you don’t say what you’re thinking,” Kimmalyn said solemnly, “then it will stay in your head.”
“You deconstructed him,” FM said, raising a finger. “He was relying on the very thing he was denying!”
I looked down at my basket, which was somehow already empty. FM swept it away and walked off to the counter, probably to get me another. I could hear the fryer, and the pungent, crisp scent in the room made my mouth water for more. This wasn’t too expensive, was it? Did I care right now?
I tried the drink again—still too sweet. FM set another basket of fries in front of me, fortunately, and I attacked them. The spices were just so good. Flavor that made my mouth wake up, as if from a long slumber.
The others continued to reminisce about Hurl—their voices tinged with the same pain I felt. They got it. They understood. I wasn’t alone, not here.
I found myself explaining what Jorgen and I had done. They listened solemnly to the details.
“I should have gone with you,” Arturo said. “You think Cobb would let me hold her pin for a moment, if I asked? Before he gives it back to the family?”
Bryn rubbed his arm as he looked down at the table.
“Remember that time,” Nedd said, “that she bet she could eat more algae patties than me at dinner?”
“She ended up on the floor,” FM said, wistful. “On the floor. just lying there, groaning. Complained about it all night, claiming the patties were fighting in her stomach.”
The others laughed, but Arturo stared at his cup. He seemed . . . hollow. He’d almost died in that battle. Hopefully the ground crew would have his ship running again by the time our leave was done.
That, of course, made me think of the work Rig was doing on M-Bot. And the fact that I owed him. A lot.
“FM,” I said. “What do you think of smart guys?”
“I’m already taken,” Arturo said with a smile.
FM rolled her eyes. “Depends. How handsome are we talking?”
“Handsome, in a reserved way.”
“Guys, I’m already taken,” Arturo said again.
“FM would only want to romance someone low-class,” Nedd said, “to defy the powers that be. A kind of star-crossed, impossible love is the only love FM would accept.”
“My entire life isn’t dominated by being a rebel, Nedd,” she said.
“Yeah?” Nedd said. “What kind of drink did you get?”
I noticed, for the first time, that her drink was orange while everyone else was having purple.
She rolled her eyes again. “You are stupid.”
“The right kind?”
“The annoying kind.”
“I’ll take it.”
Their banter continued, and I sat back, enjoying my fries until Bryn got up to use the restroom. With her gone it was just our flight, and I found myself itching to say something to them, now that we were away from the DDF headquarters, where I always felt like someone was watching.
“Can we talk about something?” I finally said, interrupting a story Nedd was telling. “I keep thinking about the questions Arturo brought up in class that one time. Isn’t it weird that we can fight an enemy for eighty years, and have only a vague idea what they look like?”
Kimmalyn nodded. “How convenient is it that the Krell never commit more than a maximum of a hundred fighters to an individual assault? The defense