Juno Vex's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Fenn Hollis pulled Juno into the service corridor behind the dorm and shut the hatch. His Copperstripe Armadillo shifted on his shoulder, sand-colored plates ticking against his collar. A speaker in the ceiling coughed. Then the inspector's voice came through, calm and clear. Missing student. Juno Vex. Report any sighting. Hold in place. Every corridor camera would be watching now. Every adult would look twice at a small girl with a cracked panel bolted to her back. Juno pressed the foil packet against her ribs. "He knows my name." "He knows the name on the bunk," Fenn said. "Not the girl." He crouched. "Take the panel off." "I can't. It's bolted." He turned her by the shoulders and looked at the cracked panel. He clicked his tongue once, the way he did when a thing annoyed him. From an inner pocket he pulled a short driver. Four turns on each bolt. The panel came loose in his hands. Cold air hit her back where it had been. He wrapped the panel in his jacket lining and slid it into his satchel. "They flagged the panel," he said. "Not your face. Kids all wear the same coat." She touched her back. It felt wrong to be lighter. "Where do we go?" "Off the school grid." He nudged her toward a side stair. "I know a house past the water lines. Thatched roof. A friend owes me a room. We wait there until the alert cycles off the boards." They moved. Fenn walked in front, slow and bored, like a man on an errand. Juno kept her hands in her pockets and her eyes on his boots. At the first junction a worker glanced at her. Juno smiled the way she smiled at teachers. The worker looked away. At the second junction a clay water cache sat against the wall, its painted sun symbols faded, one skull-sun still bright pink. Fenn stopped and pretended to check the tap. Above them, a speaker repeated her name. He filled a tin cup, handed it to her, and watched the corridor behind them in the cache's copper fitting. "Drink slow," he said. "Girls who run get noticed. Girls who drink don't." She drank slow. Two colony guards passed the far end of the hall. Neither turned. When their steps faded, Fenn tapped her elbow and they walked on. They cleared the school gate at the shift change, folded into a group of maintenance workers, and stepped into the open lane. The alert kept playing behind them, but no one stopped a small girl with no panel on her back and an old pilot at her side. The house sat at the end of a dust track, its palm-thatched roof low over a shaded porch. Fenn unlatched the gate. "Inside," he said. "Now we look for the other one." Juno stepped onto the porch. Her shadow stayed on the step behind her, one beat too long, and then followed.