Fully dressed, I make my way back through the Rotunda to the marketplace. Not too many people greet the day at this hour, so I have my pick of the corners in which to observe the world lurch forward. The baker leaves his sacks of flour in a mound where he can swing by once a day to grab the bags of powdered wheat bits and synthetic wheat material.

I climb atop the mound of flour sacks. From this height, I can observe everything.

I watch the people of the URE in the marketplace either wandering around like ghosts or talking rapidly to one another, gesticulating around their wild opinions and harsh criticisms. Their movements are rough and abrupt, exactly like the cows moving in their stalls. Some have pointed to the cracks in the URE and worry that we can't get out soon enough. Others believe there's no chance we'll survive out there if we leave.

At any rate, they need to come to terms.

I lean against the wall in the shadows. When Dean and Connie, talking casually and smiling intermittently, enter the marketplace, I avert my gaze. But not before I catch her long fingers rest on his arm. Not before I see her wrap her hands around his bicep. Not before I see her line her palm against his.

Lady Almighty, I miss those hands.

"We aren't meant for space travel." A sharp voice breaks my mind away from my loneliness. "If that's where the Invaders are from, why we meeting them up there? Wouldn't it make sense to just get rid of them?"

"I'm sick of war," says another. "It's high time we started over."

"Started over? We've been on Earth hundreds of thousands a years. Why don't these 'allies' shoot 'em down instead of ship us out?"

"I wonder whose side they're really on."

The arguments become more childish from here. Their exact words drizzle into a background fuzz as I let my gaze wander through the crowd.

Startled out of my lazy scan, I spot Kai standing out against the frantic movement of the squalling masses. I find him as easily as I could pick out a potato in a basket of steel-wool. His blue eyes lock with mine before I even realize he's there. He wears the small grin that transforms his face from subterranean to supernova.

"Lorn." He sidles next to my flour perch.

"Kamalani." I scooch away to allow him space in my shadowed observation deck.

When he joins me, we stare into the whirlpool of people for a long time before saying anything else. We haven't talked since the day of the flyover. When two people share something that terrible, small talk seems rude. But it happens anyway. "How are things with—"

"You actually want to know?"

"Why do you guys think I can't handle it?"

"Great, actually. We have crazy, loud, hot sex every night. It's awesome."

"She isn't pregnant yet?" I hide my grin, repressing the exultation from the idea that I'm not the only one who has trouble. Maybe the HHP rushed me because I'm nearing the end of my timeline, but if we started earlier, Dean and I could have taken our time . . . No. Stop right now. There's no point in falling through that dark hole again.

"She is. We just do it anyway."

"Congratulations, Papa Kamalani." My hand lands on his back with a boisterous, hardy slap. It's the first body I've touched in forever. My palm is hot on impact.

"Yeah, it feels good to be significantly contributing to the success of the human race." He hits his chest proudly, puffing it out before falling back to lean on his elbows.

His comments don't outright hurt, but they prickle. I laugh anyway. "Right. Thank you, my Savior. And when will they be erecting your statue in the chapel?"

His finger lightly traces the top of mine. Fire. Pure fire.

"What are you doing?"

He abandons my fingers to drop his open palm on my knee. My concentration is laser-focused on his fiery touch, so when he places the other hand on my cheek I'm surprised.

There is not enough willpower in the world to prevent my eyes from closing. I never imagined I'd miss human touch this much. It's been so long since I experienced physical contact with another person. Months maybe? Since the last time with Dean outside Combat Room 4.

"Contractually," he whispers into my neck, closing the distance between us, "I did what they asked. There's nothing more we need to do until this one's born. Then we try again. Until that fateful day, I'm free of obligation." He tilts my face into his. "Kinda like you."

There it is again in full force. The fluttering—the brush of wings storming inside me that lulls the ruckus of the marketplace into a soft din. I hold my breath as he shuts out the air between us. His lips are as soft as I remember.

He pulls out the elastic tie, spilling the tendrils of my soil-brown hair around my shoulders. The top of his cold, curved PAHLM presses against the back of my head as he laces his fingers through my tangled waves. He grabs a fistful of it and pulls me into him until we create negative space.

I don't have time to wonder about the reasoning behind my actions.

He breaks away to move his lips free from mine. "Your pod."

I nod without speaking. Hands. Give me the hands. Touch me. Please. Show me there are other people on this planet with me.

The naked pipes around the URE fly by without regard as we bound by, anticipating arms to grip, legs to caress, lips to suck, and shoulders to bite.

Somewhere between my pod's door and my cot, we lose our clothes. They lie in little clumps on the floor with our boots strewn together by the doorway.

We stumble to my cot and move like gears of a machine, each extended part filling crevices until the whole system groans from intense pressure. It grinds faster and faster and faster. His elbows bend, tucking under my body. His hands yank me into him with each brutal thrust. He envelops me with his concrete arms, black hair, dark skin, and thick legs.

Noticing my boots and Kai's boots stirs by the curtain stirs an unnamed sensation in the pit of my stomach. I've yet to interpret the incessant jabs. Little else can be brought to the forefront of my mind. I want to keep my eyes open, but maybe this unsettled nudging will evaporate if they remain shut.

"Janika!" he shouts like it's a victory cry.

I clench my teeth and reach between us, launching myself into the stars.

When he rolls off my body onto his back, I curl into his chest and exhale, letting the butterflies escape at last. Before I can even catch one more breath, Kai tilts my chin to kiss me, and shoves off into the cold space of the pod.

The icy air smacks my wet skin—something snaps.

There's a shift in the universe. The subtle switch trumpets in my face. Despite only hearing Kai's dressing noises, my cacophonous world explodes.

I've done something incredibly wrong.

Kai must sense my change. He glances at my face for a brief second before returning his attention to his pants.

"You're thinking about him?" he asks into his fly.

"I feel weird about this." I pull my knees to my chest in a limp embrace. I want to evaporate into shameful steam.

"What's there to feel weird about? You don't owe him anything. You're not even contracted to that freak anymore. You're a free agent."

I can't respond. The silence thickens. Kai stands in the room, staring at me, his chest naked with one boot laced.

"This isn't you." His hands drop to his side, one of them holding his other boot tightly. "This emotional bullshit thing you're doing that all the girls do." His voice slips out tentatively, tasting the way the words leave his mouth. They sound completely different from his usual levity.

"I'm really sick of being reminded how un-female I am," I say with scathing animosity. Recently, I've come to terms with the idea of being female and how that enables the cosmos' hope and doubt to be simultaneously placed inside me. How, to certain groups, my mettle is comprised of what I can produce. There's an idea circling around my head with a brittle comet's tail of indignation, but I find my voice is listless, so I don't say any more.

"Oh, get over it!" Kai throws his boot against the wall. "Fuck, I mean, you're sterile. That's great news. You didn't even wanna get saddled with the giant's kids in the first place. You earned yourself a miracle, Lorn. You know that?" His voice rises. I've never heard him yell before. "Do you think any of us, especially any of us leading this clusterfuck into the universe, want anything to do with kids?" he spits out the last word as a curse. "There is nothing between you two anymore. It's my turn now."

Much to my confusion, he unbuckles his belt, reversing the progress he'd been making.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to fuck you until you stop caring about him." With his fly open, he rushes toward me where his arms strike out, grabbing fistfuls of my hips.

I have enough time to catch his face before he flips me over on my stomach, pinning me to the cot. It's a far cry from his jocund features, copper skin outlined in deep black hair, and dark water-colored eyes. I'm exposed to a side of Kai I'd otherwise be blind to until that fateful day when we'd share a battlefield.

He is a predator.

He is a missile.

He is inhuman in this form.

I've never seen someone shift gears so fast in my life.

I see why Hayomo chose him, despite his youth.

"Like hell you are!" I scream. My leg juts out in a donkey kick to the gut brutal enough to shove him away. With my body detached from his, I flip onto my back and scramble off the cot, poised to gouge out those bright eyes. He doubles back, gingerly touching the impacted spot and glaring at me from under his dark brows.

I expect him to rush, to strike back with an elbow to my cheek, to swipe his legs under mine, to pin me to the floor, but moments pass. His brilliant eyes glaze over. He doesn't fix them on me again.

With deliberate movements, he zips, grabs his boots in one hand, and exits the pod.

I hear the whir of the broken door attempting to unlatch. I hear it again. I hear it again, and I hear Kai murmur a string of expletives from the other room. "How the fuck do you open this thing?"

Wrapping a blanket around my naked body, I step into the common area of the pod to throw my weight against the door. It jiggles and slides open.

"Ninety days left," he announces to the outside world. The cool air of the URE rushes in, sweeping the corners of my blanket around me. "People can act a little crazy when there's a countdown against them." He leans in to kiss me again. I back away, shutting the door between us.