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hold on to something that was false, wrong; he can’t keep feeling he owes them for his training, for his job—not after what they did to Lin.
    But when you’d defined yourself as part of SFI since youwere eleven, how long would it take you to let go?
    Cadan flipped the jacket open.
    The man nodded toward him. “Okay, Bryn. Get his ID.” His eyes focused, unblinking, on Cadan’s. “Try anything and I’ll—”
    â€œShoot,” said Cadan with a snap. “Yes, I know.”
    Another man—Bryn—stepped forward, keeping to the side, out of the way of the gun, slid two fingers into Cadan’s pocket and pulled out his ID card, then stepped carefully back.
    The first man took it, flipped it over. His eyebrows shot up. He tilted the card away from himself, then sideways, checking the tiny holograms that appeared at different angles, tokens that the card wasn’t a fake, then held it up, shutting one eye to check the glinting edge of the tissue-thin metal sheet within it.
    He gave a sharp look back at Cadan, eyebrows slanting into a frown. “Seriously? Bright young cadet, with the luck to have sole command of a ship and to be safely off-planet for the whole of this crisis? You decided to come back ?”
    Cadan watched him, still tense, wary. “Like I said, my family’s here.”
    â€œYou didn’t have strings to pull to get them out?”
    Cadan’s mouth twisted. “You’ll find that off-planet, SFI strings don’t work as well as they used to.”
    The man gave a short laugh. “ You’ll find they don’t work too well on Sekoia, either. We have ex-SFI people here, Captain, taking refuge from a city that used to damn well worship them. Here.” He flipped the card back to Cadan, who caught it. The man holstered his gun and threw a glance toward the crowd. “No danger. He’s SFI, all right. Rising star among the cadets, if you can believe it.”
    There was nothing but some wry amusement in his tone. But the other man, Bryn, jerked his head up, staring at Cadan. “ Which rising star?”
    â€œGreythorn,” the first man said, shrugging.
    â€œ Cadan Greythorn? The pilot who went off-grid forty-five days ago? The information-blackout one?”
    The first man frowned. “Yeah, you’re right, that’s the one, isn’t it? Bryn, what—”
    But Bryn’s eyes had left Cadan and swept straight to Elissa and Lin. Elissa saw the second it happened, the second the realization hit him. His gaze flicked from her to her twin, taking in all the similarities that their different hairstyles and clothes had obscured to start with, then he turned to the other man. “It’s him. He’s that pilot. No wonder SFI wanted a blackout on him! He didn’t just go off-grid, he went to IPL . And those two—Miguel, for God’s sake, no danger ?”
    For a moment Miguel stared at him. Then his expression changed too, going from realization to shock, and then to horror. He looked back at Cadan. “Tell me you haven’t,” he said.
    â€œWhat?” In contrast to the horror in the faces of the other men, Cadan’s expression remained blank. But Elissa knew it was deliberate, a mask over his own emotions.
    Anyone else, if we’d met anyone else , they’d have had no idea which pilot Cadan was. We had to run into SFI people, people who heard about Cadan taking the ship off-grid, people who’d be able to put two and two together. . . .
    â€œTell me you haven’t brought them back to Sekoia,” said Miguel. “That runaway girl and her clone. Tell me you haven’t brought them to my camp .”
    Anger scalded through Elissa, eclipsing—for an instant—everything else. Don’t call her a clone!
    â€œI did bring them,” said Cadan, his voice flat and calm. “Tell me the problem.”
    That stir came again, a ripple of anger, of