*(It's still Tuesday somewhere, right? No? Ahhhhh.)*

Well, Jiayi thought ten minutes later, after she’d stripped off Yamaguchi’s spare suit and grabbed her things, at least I have a job.

It occurred to her that, with the shadow attacks, there would be a sudden shortfall of competition in her career field. The image of Kapil’s passive, neutral face, then Yamaguchi’s, built instant regret on the thought. Her jaw tightened, along with her fist, fingernails digging into the flesh of her palm.

Gods, what’s wrong with me?

The entire station was in crisis. Normal modes of thought didn’t apply. Hopefully, the Shadow people and their attack would be a passing phase and would vanish back into the aether from which they’d come, and some marketing company would come forward and claim it was all a hoax—but that kind of hope didn’t hold much sway in the logical parts of her brain. Even if a marketing firm managed to get its hands on the kind of technology that could create those Shadow people—which she wasn’t sure really existed, except for the fact that it had to—the attack had taken down at least one military squad, which meant that if it were some mundane company responsible for it all, it had gone horribly wrong. If anything, this attack felt more like a show of power. Alliance, perhaps? Had she missed something in the year she hadn’t been paying much attention to the news? Alliance had always been a bit grumpy and antagonistic since Fallon had pulled out of its circle twenty years previous, but she hadn’t heard much of anything between the two except for misunderstandings on border asteroids, the gate incident seven years ago, and the large possibility that Alliance was funding pro-independence rebels in a couple of areas.

Tianjin Station was a key part in Fallon operations, and more than just some halfwit target meant to pester. An attack here led to instant war.

Which, conversely, meant that an attack here would have to be beyond devastating to get anywhere, and they would have had to attack other places as well. Two people she knew had been taken down—possibly a third depending on what Uncle <name> finds. And the tension through the halls and the thin, worried looks she saw on the people she passed made the potential scale of the attack hit home.

Suddenly, she felt sick.

“Do you know how many have been… taken?”

Tuomin glanced up. It was the first time either of them had spoken since they’d left Curlew. She’d been moving on autopilot, working through her thoughts as she followed the normal route back, and he’d kept to her side without more than a few assessing looks when the sleep deprivation made her heavy feet stumble on the flat floor. The crowds made loose, broken huddles in the corridors, the mood fervent and anxious. People clustered together with netlinks, not automatically budging when she made to go through them—but she was used to crowds, and these were stiff and stubborn, easy to maneuver around. A few had called after them, catching sight of Tuomin’s uniform, but they’d walked on, and the calls had stopped. They’d almost reached her dorm.

“We won’t have any estimate for quite a while, I’d imagine,” he said.

“Well yes, but at a gravball courtside figure,” she said, referencing the gambling that took place at the games, “I’d assume it was more than the five that I know have gone down. What do you think? One hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?” She hesitated. “Ten thousand?”

His face clamped down. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

A chill went through her shoulders. Guess I have my answer.

She held his gaze for a few moments, her mouth half-open—Ten thousand. That many? Surely she’d read him wrong—but, before she could organize her words, the netlink buzzed in her pocket.

Her gaze dropped immediately, heart racing as she fumbled to grab it and pull her uncle’s message onto its holoscreen.

Your aunt is afflicted. Military took her. Gave me a number.

A numbness spread at the bottom of her chest. That made at least six she knew about, then. She forced herself to swallow. At least the networks were still up, thanks to Tianjin’s tri-access system. Emergency and military had their own lines and wires separate from the others, and the rest was a mix of public and private services monitored by industry-elected oversight. She couldn’t imagine the people working in those places now, trying to keep them up.

“Where is the military taking people?” she asked. “What are they doing with them?”

This time Tuomin’s glance was a little longer. His expression opened as he measured the change in her tone and the change in her face. “Two hospitals on different levels. Standard quarantine. The doctors are looking over them, trying to figure things out.”

Standard quarantine protocol—nothing to panic, in and of itself. On any station, let alone one as dense and populous as Tianjin, outbreaks of disease were curtailed in a swift and strict manner. She’d seen it happen before. Didn’t matter if it was a case of simple food poisoning, if ten people began throwing up in the same area, the military came and had them checked out at a hospital. Hells, they even passed a law about it a few years back—and sixty to seventy percent of the rooms on station had built-in sensors to detect cough, fever, and some other symptoms. One time she’d been in her dorm, hacking up a lung from a brutal strain of cold, when the sensor had gone off and asked if she were all right. If she’d triggered it a second time, she’d have had a discrete visit from Health Core or been publicly invited to check into the nearest clinic.

But—two hospitals. That gave her a better feel for numbers. Two hospitals weren’t enough for ten thousand people, so she must have read him wrong. Or he’d reacted to a different guess of hers.

They turned the corner and the junction of her dorm came into sight. She picked up her pace. “I just have to grab a few things. Won’t be long.”

Tuomin nodded, but said nothing.

The lights were on full day cycle this time, an indicator of just how bad things had gone if the throng of people in the narrow halls weren’t enough. They passed two soldiers on their way out, escorting a young, red-haired man who shuffled in front of them. Jiayi didn’t get more than a fast, harried glimpse of his black eyes, but that was enough to send a shudder straight through her chest. Tuomin jostled into her from behind, his hand finding her shoulder to buffer the action. The second of the hallway’s wolves snarled on the wall in the direction the two soldiers went, its blue and red paint more vibrant in the day cycle lighting.

A crowd had gathered farther ahead, clustered in the narrow hall like fat in a clotting artery. People were talking, shouting. Someone was crying. Several soldiers, accompanied be a lone police enforcer, were visible beyond the first few rows of people, the center in a seemingly growing circle. She caught sight of the crossed-feather Fallon insignia overlayed on the side of one helmet, and the stoic, tense face of the soldier beneath it as he turned from one person in the crowd to the room beside him. By the shouts in the crowd, she presumed he and his colleagues were attempting to enforce quarantine on someone inside.

One voice cut through the air, clean and raw. “You can’t take them away! They didn’t do anything!”

She only half recognized it. A neighbor of hers, though she didn’t quite know from where. She didn’t socialize much, not with her internship. Hadn’t said much of anything to anyone beyond a simple ‘hello’ and ‘goodnight,’ and didn’t engage with politics—but, as she watched the crowd shift ahead and the scene unfold, a frown drew down her brows.

Can I help with this? Can I make them back off?

Maybe. They didn’t know her, but most had scene her around. And, with Tuomin’s uniform, her words would be given more credence than some random person. The few she’d bumped into and introduced herself to might even remember that she was an engineer and put two and two together.

But, just as she thought that, maybe she should step forward, she caught a flash of color—blue and red, a simple patch of color flashing from someone’s pocket, the tint almost in line with that of the wolves farther down.

Gangs.

Shit. She gave Tuomin a quick, hard glance, then went straight for the doorpanel next to her.

They needed to get out of there.

She lunged for the packsack under her bed, not even caring when it dragged out her electronics box with it. She stumbled, stubbing into it with her toe as she lurched around. At the door, Tuomin reached up to the panel on the inside of the wall and turned on the light.

“Thanks,” she muttered, reaching for her wardrobe. The light coming in from the doorway moved as the drawer rattled open, Tuomin moving his attention back to the hall. She grabbed a fistful of panties and socks, stuffed them in, and hesitated a moment before grabbing another fistful before moving on to her other clothes.

Don’t know how long I’ll be gone.

With that thought in mind, she grabbed her spare netlink and computer drives, extra ID, and the few remaining packets of noodles, teas, and juice mixes from her deskspace.

“Almost done,” she called, taking a quick scan of her room to see if she’d forgotten anything. A hardcopy photo of her parents on the wall made her pause again—but she had the same one in digital copy backed onto both her harddrive and station servers. Instead, she went for her engineering license and registry. If she could, she’d rather leave them at her uncle’s place or at work. The dorm rooms down here could lock, but that didn’t dissuade most thieves. And she had a sinking feeling that she’d be away for a while.

After a few seconds, she realized that Tuomin hadn’t answered.

Outside, the murmurs from down the hall had grown more fervent. People still shouted—and it sounded as though the soldiers had joined in now, barking orders amidst the building anger, not a good sign—and a kind of hot, close energy zinged through her skin as she tuned back into the situation, but it was what she heard closer to her door that made the blood run cold in her arms.

Two low voices speaking to Tuomin, and a third joining in.

Her jaw tightened, recognizing the tone and accent even if she hadn’t heard the words. She took a deep breath, slung her pack securely on both shoulders, then stepped back to the doorway.

Four men stood outside her doorway wearing a mix of clothing—from the tight, asymmetric shirt and leg cuts that gravball players favored to a loose, flowing hemp-style on two of them and one who wore a thick maintenance style jumpsuit with a recognizable private corporate logo stamped on his breast—but all bearing the red and blue colors of the gang, had formed a careful half-circle around her door, hemming in both herself and Tuomin. As she poked her head out, one of them—the man in the maintenance suit—took her in with one eyebrow-raised glance and gave a low whistle.

“Hey, look here, she’d not even sick and they’re taking her away. Isn’t that funny?”

“Yes,” said the person on Tuomin’s other side, a light-skinned man with a faded tattoo showing on his bicep. “And still no word from upstairs.”

Upstairs? Does he mean the government? She actually hadn’t been paying attention, what with her sortie into Harbin level and her focus on her own problems—but yes, there hadn’t been any emergency broadcasts yet. Which was odd, considering the quarantine.

But now was not the time to start questioning Tuomin again—and he probably didn’t know, anyway.

“You guys got a problem?” She moved out of the way as her dorm door closed behind her, the panel flashing red. “Or do you just find my door a great hangout?”

“Oh, not a problem with you, missie, just this one here.” The leader—he had a Japanese look that reminded her a bit of Kapil, with high cheekbones and a more-handsome ruggedness to his jawline—didn’t so much as glance at her this time before he proceeded to ignore her, directing his next comments to Tuomin, a sharp smile playing across his face. “We don’t like it went men come in bothering our people.”

He went on to same something more, a jibe that made Tuomin shift upward like a mod-shift antennae relay catching a signal, but Jiayi didn’t care to hear it. Part of her brain had splintered, and a seldom-felt rage had buzzed through the cracks like a swarming hive.

That was the second time—no, the third—that someone had called her ‘missie.’

“My name’s Jiayi,” she said.

She didn’t speak loud enough to interrupt the leader, but the person closest to her—one of the hemp guys—heard her. Whatever he saw on her face made his expression change.

His concern shifted to confusion when she took a step forward, blocking the leader from whatever he was working up to with Tuomin. She wasn’t tall, but she strode right into his space. If it had been Tuomin, or if she had squared up, it wouldn’t have mattered—but she had kept the same neutral hunch of her shoulders that she always had, one thumb hooked under the shoulder strap of her backpack, and went right up to him.

“Hey, fuckface,” she said. “My name is Jiayi.”

She’d also caught him toward the end of whatever he’d had to say, which meant he needed to take a breath before answering, and the silence stretched out around them.

“Yeah? So?” He didn’t back off, instead staying right where he was, which put them only a few inches apart—close enough that she could feel some of his body heat in the air and notice that the chest under his suit lacked any of the pudgy softness that some of her coworkers had acquired. The look he gave her was hard, sharp. She reflected it right back at him.

“So I’m pretty fucking tired of getting called ‘missie.’” She cleared her throat. “Now, Tuomin and I have places to be. If you’ll excuse me—”

“Hey, aren’t you Kapil’s girl?” Gravball Guy, the man next to the door, suddenly straightened, his gaze going to the leader. “I’m sure of it. He’s always off chasing her.”

She didn’t recognize him, but he did look like the type Kapil hung out around.

“That makes her one of ours, then.” The leaders eyes narrowed on her, then rose to Tuomin behind her. “We protect our own.”

“Great,” she said. “How’s about you protect me by fucking off? Tuomin and I got places to be.”

“You sleeping around?” Gravball Guy’s eyebrows raised. “Cheating on him already?”

Oh, and like Kapil’s never done that. But the conversation was slipping away from her. She couldn’t get dragged into that argument. The longer they stayed, the higher the chance there’d be a scuffle. The crowd down the hall seemed to have dispersed, though. She didn’t know where the soldiers and enforcer had gone—she hoped they’d gotten the person out—but they were no longer in sight. No help from them. And no one else was coming their way, either. Probably keeping their distance from the obvious intimidation gathering of gangsters.

“No, I—”

“Where is Kapil, anyway?” Gravball Guy asked. “Anyone seen him?”

(Due to a character count limit, the chapter is in two parts. Keep scrolling for Part Two!)