The flight back to the Hub was one of the longest of his life.

Erri had lost count of the number of times he'd taken the Phoenix from Earth to Jupiter, from the Starbridge behind the gas giant to the one orbiting Irimoy, and finally to the Hub. It was second nature to him. But this time, something felt different, and it wasn't the alien 'diplomat' currently locked in the dry storage cupboard, for lack of a proper brig.

The two ambassadors kept to themselves, going over how they would explain Rinir's presence first to the border officers at the Starbridge, and later to their higher-ups. Jules was sitting against the door holding Rinir, though the latter hadn't made any attempt to escape. Most of Cass's processing power was therefore focussed on the galley, which Erri was fine with. He didn't need Cass for this journey.

That said, though he would never claim to possess a tenth of Cass's mental capabilities, he got it. He hadn't stopped thinking about Avery since they'd left Earth for the last time, so much so that it was a wonder he'd got them through the asteroid belt in one piece.

He hoped Anderson hadn't been pushing her too hard. He hoped she was eating enough and getting enough sleep and that her work on her mysterious gift for Cass was going well.

And he wanted to know why she hadn't answered any of his messages in the last twelve hours.

XxX

Three hours later, Erri brought them out of hyperspace in the Irimoy system. It was three hours too long; there had been more checks at the Starbridge than usual, and there had been a queue to make the jump in the first place, which he hadn't seen since he'd had to make a supply run during the Hub's Unification Day celebrations a few years ago.

Avery still hadn't even read his messages.

"Erri, are you okay?" Cass's voice chimed over the speaker.

"Finally decided to join me, huh?" he said, voice gruffer than he had intended.

"Sorry," Cass said. "I thought Jules deserved my full attention."

Erri sighed, resting his forehead on the heel of his hand. "Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you."

"You are stressed."

"You think?"

"You have not been able to sit still since we left Terran space. Normally, you would lock in our course and use this time to sleep."

He sighed again, leaning back in his chair so the viewscreen filled his whole vision. Matlara was a tiny speck in the distance, indistinguishable from the stars except for a greenish tint to its light.

"Cass, does anything feel...off to you? We've never had to queue at a Starbridge before, not on a regular day."

"I do not know," said Cass. "I cannot access the Hubnet from this distance without a direct link. I have received no transmissions from the Department of Earth Affairs. Does Avery know anything?"

"That's the thing," Erri said. "I can't get hold of her."

Cass paused. "You can't contact Avery?"

"No."

"But the transmitter is a part of her. She never ignores messages."

"I know, Cass. That's why I'm worried."

"Perhaps there has been an issue with outgoing comms. It would explain the delays at the Starbridge."

"Yeah," Erri said as he turned the engines to full power, heading for Matlara and Irimoy's central zone. "Let's hope it's just that."

XxX

It was not, Erri realised as they stepped off the Phoenix, just that.

The first thing that struck him was how empty the docking bay was. There were normally a few dozen shuttles and Terra-class observers like the Phoenix in this bay alone. Now, there were only a handful.

"The Council's called off the search of Irimoy and want to move to the Ba'gar system," a human dockworker was saying into his datapad as he hurried past. "I know there's nowhere to hide there! But maybe-" The rest of what he was saying was lost.

Behind them, four armed security guards led Rinir off the ship. She wasn't restrained, but the guards looked ready to use their stun batons at a moment's notice. Erri wondered whether that carapace would insulate against electricity, as his own did.

"Miranda!" a female voice called from across the docking bay. Erri turned to see Lara Bakker hurrying towards them. The director for the Department of Earth Affairs moved as quickly as the sharp incline of her shoes would allow (Erri had never understood that human fashion trend). She looked as immaculate as he had the few other times Erri had seen her, but there was something different in her eyes. Something frantic. "And – Jules, you're okay!" Erri stepped to the side as Lara quickly embraced the two women. "Everyone was so scared for you – but you're alive. Good, because Kei wants to kill you himself."

"What?" Jules said, and Erri felt his crest rising in instinctive defence of his friend.

"Bringing a commander from an uncontacted race onto the Hub – I'm glad you're okay, but – you can't just – and at a time like this it's the last thing we need, Kei just about had a stroke when he found out, I-"

"Lara!" Miranda said, her voice quiet but firm. "Calm down. Take a breath. Get your thoughts in order, then speak."

Heat flooded the Director's pale cheeks. Distantly, Erri remembered Jules saying something about her mother mentoring Bakker years ago. "Right," she said. "Sorry. What I mean is, we should go up to the Spire where I can debrief you in private." She glanced between them all, her burgundy-painted lips pursing when she met his gaze. "Officer suu Saykhel, you should come too. This concerns you as much as any of us." Her tone was careful and precise, like someone manoeuvring through a net of laser traps.

He didn't like it one bit, but he followed Bakker and Miranda anyway, sharing a confused glance with Jules before falling into step beside her.

As they filed into the personnel elevator in silence, he tried sending another message to Avery, but he was starting to doubt if it was worth it. She still hadn't read his other ones.

Maybe the netlink in her brain was malfunctioning.

"I really didn't mean to snap at you, Jules," Lara said as the elevator began to move. Erri, despite his bulk, did his best to melt into the background. Bakker looked like she was about to start crying. "It's just that so much has happened. Oormu – Councillor Oormu is dead."

"What?" Miranda said. "How?"

Lara closed her eyes. She swallowed. "Assassinated. By Avery Williams."

Erri's whole world lurched.

He felt Jules freeze beside him. "The cyborg girl?" Cedric said, his voice very quiet. Erri could feel everybody's eyes on him. "She killed Oormu?"

Bakker's breath was shaky as she started tapping out a message on her datapad. Perhaps, Erri thought, it was so that she wouldn't have to look at him. "She escaped. We're looking everywhere, but we can't find her."

A fugitive.

She was a fugitive.

That was what she had always been afraid of, for as long as he'd known her. The fears she'd only told him of when they lay together in his room, Apsannian brandy still tingling on their lips, her words sluggish with drink.

I'm not human any more.

I'm a lab rat.

A freak.

A monster.

And he should have let me die.

In an instant he had muscled his way to the front of the elevator, Miranda and Jules jumping out of his way. Lara looked up from her datapad with wide amber eyes as he got in her face, crest flared. To her credit she didn't flinch away from him, even though the top of her head barely reached his chin in spite of the strange shoes.

"There has been a mistake," he snarled. "You are wrong. Avery would never hurt anyone deliberately. It is what she has always feared." The last words were said with his fangs bared, but he couldn't stop himself. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to run to her, to protect her, but he was trapped in this elevator with this human and her lies.

Bakker's throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Officer, I know this is hard to process." Erri's crest strained at the words, so clipped and rehearsed, as if he could be pacified with anything but holding Avery in his arms. "But there is plenty of evidence. You can review the security footage yourself once we are in the Spire."

His tail snapped against the ground impatiently. "I don't want to see security footage, I want to see her. Where are you keeping her?"

Bakker's jaw clenched in barely-masked frustration. "She escaped, Officer. I just told you that."

Jules laid a gentle hand on his arm. "Lara, Avery was meant to meet Erri at her flat. Would it help if-"

"The flat, yes!" Erri said, the relief at having something to do almost overwhelming.

Lara sighed, pausing the maglift and redirecting it to the human habitat. "Fine. Miranda and I will head up to the Spire. You and Erri can meet us there soon."

"Thanks," Jules said with an apologetic smile, though her concerned hazel eyes never left his own.

Erri had thought the flight from Earth to the Hub was bad, but no, this was ten times worse. The maglift compartment was too small for him to comfortably pace in, so he settled for shifting his weight from foot to foot and watching the floors crawl past in the glass front of the carriage. Lara had swiped some kind of government ID chip in her wrist, so the carriage didn't stop for anyone else to get on. Erri felt like he might have exploded if it had.

As soon as the maglift glided to a halt he was prising the doors open and easing his body through the gap. Behind him Jules was saying something to her mother about keeping an eye on him, but he didn't have it in him to listen.

Finding Avery was all that mattered.

Humans jumped out of his way as he wove through the crowds in Tycho Park, Jules following with a string of mixed apologies and curses. He headed straight for the central column, with its wide stairs zig-zagging a central glass elevator. The elevator would be faster, but even the thought of standing still in an enclosed space again made his skin crawl. Besides, he was ghraal. In their habitat there were no stairs, only walls made for climbing and elevators for the infirm. Stairs were as good to him as flat ground to a human.

Jules had other ideas. When he reached Avery's level a couple of minutes later, she was already waiting for him, leaning against the glass wall shielding them from the hundred-metre drop to Tycho Park below.

"Erri," she said as he paused for a moment to steady his breathing. "Are you going to be okay?"

He closed his eyes, blood hammering in his ears. Finally he nodded. "Yeah. There has to be a mistake. It's insane. Avery? Murdering a Councillor?" he shook his head. "They got the wrong person. I bet she's in there, plugged into some video game, with no idea what's going on." A fond smile crept onto his face in spite of the deep, primal fear twisting in his gut. "She played Ultrablade 8 for ten hours once. By accident."

Jules only stared at him, a frown creasing her brow. "Erri..."

"Let's go," he said, leading the way towards Avery's home.

The upper levels of the human habitat were cramped, empty flats crammed together in preparation for the influx of residents after first contact – though now it would be second contact, he supposed – and the air was hot and close. It almost made him feel at home.

"Here it is," he said when they reached the door to Avery's flat. She'd programmed the door to unlock for him, and it slid aside when he swiped his ID chip over the scanner.

"Ave?" he called, stepping inside. The lights came on at the sound of his voice, and as they did, he heard movement from further inside the apartment.

"Did you hear that? There's someone in there," he said to Jules as he passed through the tiny entrance hall.

The flat Avery had inherited from her mother, her childhood home, was tiny. A kitchen, dining room and living room all in one, a bathroom on one side, and a single bedroom on the other.

"Avery?" Jules called. "Are you in here?"

The bedroom door eased open a crack—

–and out shot a streak of black fur. Erri glimpsed two yellow eyes, so much like his own, before the cat made a beeline for the open door and disappeared.

"Charon," Jules breathed. "Cass asked Avery to look after him, in case we got into trouble on Earth."

Erri frowned. He checked the room again and caught sight of a half-eaten piece of toast on the kitchen counter. He picked it up – it was cold and soggy from the butter. Next to it was a stone-cold mug of tea, and the milk had formed a grey film over the surface.

"Shit. Erri, come look at this." He turned to find Jules peering into the bathroom. When she looked over her shoulder at him, her copper skin had turned pale.

She stepped aside so he could see.

The floor was covered with broken glass. The remains of the mirror above the sink opposite the door reflected his horror back at him in jagged spikes.

"Ave," he murmured, sinking to his knees. The glass shards didn't even scratch his hide. "What happened?"

As if from somewhere far away, he heard Jules move back into the main room. "Yeah," she said in a low voice, as if she was afraid he'd overhear. "Definitely not here. I know. She played us all."

But none of it mattered. The truth was crushing him, a vice on his chest that constricted his throat until he couldn't breathe past the rage that choked him.

They were right. She was out there alone in the cold of space, and she had probably killed Oormu too.

But he refused to believe she had done it alone. That she would willingly become the monster everyone insisted she was.

There was more to this. He felt it in his soul.

"Erri," Jules said softly, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry. I promise we'll find her."

He nodded, unable to speak through his grief. But the promise in his mind was clear.

I'm coming for you. Even if I have to cross the universe to do it, I will.

I will find you, taan'jhiira.