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med unit until she found herself pausing at the open door. She waited there for a moment, looking in; Thorn seemed to be asleep, the tablet lying on his chest, his bandaged hands folded across its surface.
    “You’ve been running,” he said then, even though his eyes were still shut.
    Had she really been breathing that loudly? She supposed she was; she knew her heart was beating so heavily she was surprised he hadn’t mentioned that, too. “I just—” she began, then realized she didn’t know exactly what to say. Again, the gravity of their situation hit her, and she gripped the skirt of her tunic with both hands, hoping that would be enough to quiet their shaking.
    At that point Thorn did open his eyes and look over at her. She thought she saw the faintest flicker of concern cross his shadowed features, but his voice was expressionless enough as he asked, “Is there a problem?”
    “You might call it that,” she said, and gave a short laugh, which she clamped down even as it escaped her lips. If she started in with that there was no telling where she might end up. “I just monitored the comm station in Mast’s chambers. Thorn, the Iradians have risen up against the garrisons…sounds like the locals are in charge. Which means it’s all going to fall apart.”
    If she had been expecting any sort of outward response, she would have been disappointed, but by now she had come to realize that Thorn revealed very little of his emotions. Still, with news as astounding as that, she would have thought he’d look at least even slightly shocked.
    He didn’t, of course. The dark eyes narrowed a little, but that was all. “Interesting,” he said, after a lengthy pause.
    “’Interesting’?” she demanded. “That’s all you have to say?”
    With that he did give her a quick glance, and there was the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth. “All that’s changed for me is who might be paying the bills,” he replied.
    Outraged, she glared at him, wanting to say something witty and cutting in response, but she knew that was impossible in her current state. “So what are we going to do?” she managed at last.
    “What we have been doing. I’m not fit to get out of here yet, and you haven’t broken the security code. So I don’t see much changing.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Although if you could work a little faster, it might be a good idea.”
    All the epithets her father had hurled at recalcitrant computers and Gaian tax collectors came bubbling up to her lips, but Miala knew better than to say anything out loud. She couldn’t risk antagonizing Thorn now, not when things were even more unstable than she had thought. “If you think I haven’t been working myself to death over that code—” she spluttered finally, knowing even as she said them how weak the words sounded.
    “I know you have,” he said, and although she should have been reassured, somehow she wasn’t. There was something very cold and measured in the glance he gave her. “Believe me, if I thought you weren’t doing everything in your power to break that security system, I’d have been standing down in the security station with you, holding a gun to your head.”
    He meant it, Miala knew. For the first time she realized how dangerous he really was—and how very little she meant to him. She was a tool, nothing more. And if that tool should prove to be useless...
    “I’d better get back to work, then,” she said at last, when she thought she could speak without completely breaking down. She had no idea how she could possibly concentrate at such a time, but she also knew she had to get out of Thorn’s presence as soon as possible.
    “You do that.”
    And taking that as a dismissal, she turned and fled in the direction of the security station. It was only once she was there in its relative safety that she collapsed in her usual chair, shaking in the overly air-conditioned air, forcing her palms against her eyes in a