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“Okay,” Naoe flared in his breast Speaking was suddenly easy

“I won’t,” Holden said “We’re talking about an insane member of the Mao clan, the people who’ve twice tried to kill everyone in the solar syste, tried to kill us To kill you She blew up a spaceship full of innocent people just to try and make me look bad Who kno many other people she’s killed? If the UN wants to space her, I’ll push the da moment of silence Holden watched Anna’s face fall as he crushed her hopes Alex started chuckling, and everyone turned to look at hi voice “I ot beat half to death She can cut this Clarissa slack, it’s no big deal But the captain’s girlfriend got hurt He’s the real victiain as everyone stopped breathing Blood flushed into Holden’s face, rushing like a river in his ears It was hatred and pain and outrage His e to strike out at Alex for the insult was almost too much to resist

And then he understood Alex’s words, saw Naomi’s eyes on his, and it all drained away Why, he wanted to ask, but it didn’t matter It was Naoe to take

He was spent Exhausted He wanted to curl up on the floor there with his people around him and sleep for days He tried out a santic assle”

“No,” Aht there with you I’d kill this Clarissa o, and Naoet ,” Holden said to Anna, his voice cold “I will never forgive this woman for what she’s done Never But I won’t turn her over to the UN, as a favor to you, and because if Naouess I have to”

“Thank you,” Anna said

“Things change, Red,” Amos said, “you let us know Because I’ll still be happy to kill the shit out of her”

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Clarissa

S

he didn’t know at first what the change was It presented in little things The decking she’d been able to sleep on like she was dead suddenly wasn’t co more what her father did in his cell, five billion kilometers away and, for all she knew, in another universe She tapped her hands against the bars just to hear the subtle differences in tone that the different barsnew She’d lived with it for long enough that the mee and righteousness Only before, she’d hated Ji herself had a kind of purity that she found appealing Cathartic Jieance, refusing to be consumed by it She could live in the flaah variation between them to play ato distract her She wondered whether her extra glands would be enough to bend the bars or lift the door off its hinges Not that it would unned down by an OPA guard At worst, it would haveto her, at least She watched the strea to hiuards answered to him And there were a couple of Martians in military uniforms who came, and a few UN officers too They ca in the low voices of people who took thenized the sound fro on her father She remembered that she had been ih

She paced her tiny world She did push-ups and lunges and all the pointless exercises that the light gravity allowed And she waited for punishment or for the end of the world When she slept, Ren was there, so she tried not to sleephorror, she understood that the change was her co awake After her failure on the Rocinante, there had been a kind of peace A disconnection fro But even before that, she’d been in a sort of a dream She couldn’t tell if it had started with the day she’d killed Ren or when she’d taken the identification to become Melba Koh Or earlier, even When she’d heard her father had been arrested Whenever she’d lost herself, she was co back now, and it was like her whole consciousness was suffering pins and needles It orse than pain, and it drove her in circles

The ames that the red-haired priest had played on her were The priest and, in her way, Tilly Fagan too Maybe Anna had coiveness would need to be dangled in front of her in order to get the confession If so, the woht Clarissa wouldn’t adiveness was so Clarissa wanted Or would accept

I’d like to speak with you again, she’d said, and at the time it had seemed so sincere So real Only she hadn’t come back A small rational part of Clarissa’sin the cell changed the experience of time and made her feel isolated That was the point of cells Still, Anna hadn’t come back And neither had Holden Or Naomi, whom Clarissa hadn’t quite killed They were done with her, and why shouldn’t they be? Clarissa didn’t have anything else to offer the that the power on the ship was about to change hands again, as if that would even ot to sit in the doo to worry about It was like arguing about as the prettiest girl in the prison ca, so she watched

The voices froency Even before the well-dressed man came doard her, she knew that their little dra in His white hair, brilliant and perfectly coiffed, just made him look old There was a darkness in his professionally avuncular eyes When he put his hands around the bars, it looked like he was the one imprisoned