Space was so unforgivingly cold, cosmically beautiful, alien and strange and gorgeous. Six hundred thousand stars glimmered in the dark black backdrop that stretched into eternity, as far as Lyra could tell. They twinkled like the inferno of six hundred thousand fires, pulsed like the neon in six hundred thousand lights. If every one of those six hundred thousand lights was the tiny flame of a candle, it still wouldn’t be enough for the life lost.

T wasn’t the first death in Lyra’s life. There were dozens of people who had vanished one day, kidnapped or sold or shot. There were a dozen more who had taken so much stim all at once that their heart went into the wrong rhythm and they collapsed and died. About half of those were intentional. But T… T was different.

Lyra never really believed sudden, unexplained death was a problem for anyone but her fellow Cantatores. Upper class boys didn’t just die like that. The Imperatrix’s brother didn’t just die like that. Violent shootouts were only supposed to happen between the gangs on ground level and the Magistratum who tried to stop them, not at the very highest levels of government. Lyra had lived in anarchy for years, but the thought that Eleutheria itself was unravelling was a scary one nevertheless. Scary, but also wonderful.

Eleutheria was undoubtedly falling apart. That she could see, even from the darkest areas of the planet where sunlight didn’t reach. It was rare to find someone who had lived long enough to remember what life was like under Harmonia Cassia, Acidalia’s grandmother, but whenever it happened Lyra would sit and talk and listen to the legends they told. They always said that things used to be so much better. Lyra was a firm believer that you could tell the state of a nation by the state of its ghettos, and Eleutheria couldn’t be any different. If the Underground was better before Alestra, Alestra had to be the problem.

Not that Lyra ever really had the time or education to care about politics.

When she’d followed Ace and T to Cassandra, the Revolution wasn’t anywhere in her mind, not really. She didn’t like Alestra, but she didn’t know Acidalia. She’d seen parts of the coronation, all tiny and bright on the TV above the bar, but had no reference for who the new Imperatrix was. She just assumed that if her supporters were the kind of men who cared about random bleeding Cantatores, she might be worth backing. And if it meant a free ticket out of hell, she’d have been willing to go along with anything.

And now one of the people who had offered her that ticket was dead, and they were heading straight back to hell.

Lyra wasn’t sure what she should have been thinking. She was terrified of Acidalia, but also in awe—not for any particular reason other than that the living embodiment of the throne had stood before her. She felt dumb, especially compared to the Scientia girls—they were teenage astrophysicists, and Lyra had never been taught basic algebra. She was worried about Ace, who had somehow insulted the Imperatrix to her face without getting killed, who had lost his best friend in the galaxy, who was fighting a war without the person who’d been beside him for years. She was intrigued by the Martian, who was having a screaming conversation with her father in English on the other side of the ship.

But mostly, Lyra was just tired.

One of the few skills she had was her ability to fall asleep anywhere, which was almost necessary if one wanted to survive in the constant noise of ground level. If she couldn’t sleep through laser shots and sirens and drunken screaming two feet away from her head, then she wasn’t sleeping. She’d passed out on this bench right in front of one of the Revelation’s stained-glass windows and slept for the majority of the trip, long enough that Mars was long gone and Earth’s gray clouds were visible when she woke. Even after she’d rubbed the sleep out of her bleary eyes, the achy feeling and worry lingered in her bones, and she had no idea how to correct it. She wanted to distract herself, but there was absolutely nothing for her to do, so instead she just sat there, staring blankly at colorful windows inexplicably lit by nothing.

Occasionally people walked by her, but none of them spoke to her. She didn’t expect them to. A Cantator was so far below all of them that her very presence on this ship was insane and probably illegal in some way. She’d long since stopped keeping track of the things it was illegal for her to do and say and be and look at, because there were so many, but if she had to guess, being on the Imperatrix’s personal starship was likely one of them. She didn’t know what they were going to do with her once they landed, but thinking about that was exhausting too. What would the Revolution want with a Cantator, especially one with such little human capital?

She could tell them she was a Labora and they’d be more willing to put her to work. Nobody treated Laborum nicely, either, but they got the bare minimum—wages and shelter—and that was more than Cantatores got. Ace wouldn’t argue that, would he? He wouldn’t care about such a small thing. But if he did, who would they trust—a high-ranking Eleutherian soldier, or a random illegitimate girl from the Underground who had been in off-the-books slave work since she was 6? Would they punish her for lying?

Her head throbbed. She put a hand up to it and there was blood on her fingers; whatever wound was up there had opened up again. T had bought her cheap healing gel at the spaceport, but she’d either put in on wrong or it wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. Head wounds always bled a lot, anyway. She tore off a strip of her already messy dress and held it up to the cut, helplessly watching as the grayed fabric turned red.

“Are you okay?”

A soft voice came from behind her, one she recognized all too well. Her anxiety levels shot up as she realized that the Imperatrix must have been watching her this entire time. She couldn’t think of anything to say—the Martian had called her celestida tua, a botched version of “your highness,” but Lyra knew enough to know that Imperatrices weren’t typically called that. Acidalia wasn’t supposed to have a title, but calling her her name felt strange, so Lyra just stammered, “yeah.”

“No, you aren’t.”

Lyra looked up at her. She still wore the flower tiara she’d had on before, not the Imperial crown she was supposed to have. Instead of the crown jewels, she had a tiny blue and green marble pendant, jagged at the edges like it had been torn away from something. The Earth from the crown, Lyra realized suddenly.

“What happened to you?” the Imperatrix asked.

Lyra didn’t answer her. She couldn’t.

“I’ll have someone bring you healing fluid,” Acidalia offered. “You’re much paler than I am, but…” Her voice trailed off in a way very uncharacteristic of her TV persona.

“Thank you,” Lyra whispered.

A moment of silence passed. She expected Acidalia to get up and leave, but she didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Acidalia said suddenly. “I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I’m sorry.”

Lyra started. “About what?”

“About T.”

“Wasn’t your fault.” The words slipped out of Lyra’s mouth before she could contemplate whether arguing the fact was a good idea.

Acidalia looked at her silently—she didn’t appear angry or even sad, really. She was neutral and obviously trying very hard to stay that way. Her expression was incredibly difficult to read, even for someone like Lyra, who had grown so used to reading people’s emotions that she could usually peg someone’s intentions three seconds after meeting them. Somehow, though, Acidalia was different. Looking at her, Lyra got the sense that her face wasn’t really her face—maybe it was the makeup, or maybe it was the carefully curated Imperial mask.

“We’ll be landing in a few minutes,” Acidalia said, her voice still painfully neutral. She didn’t respond to Lyra’s comment, possibly because she didn’t believe it; survivor’s guilt was a horrible thing. Then, with a great movement of fabrics, she stood up to her full height—an impressive six-foot-something, but only because of her stilettos—and looked at Lyra one last time before walking away, her white skirts leaving a trail of glitter and gold dust behind her.

Lyra’s eyes lingered on the place where Acidalia’s shoes clacked against the white floors. She wore the same heels as Alicaria used to wear on the poles—less cheap-looking, but in the same style. Lyra always wondered how either of them actually walked in those overglorified ballet boots.

As she sat contemplating, a tiny metal disc nudged at her foot. On the top of it was a jar of healing gel. The lid was embossed with “A. P. C.”—Acidalia Planitia Cipher. Of course she had personalized jars for over-the-counter medication. The things rich people did for the sake of having pretty stuff were astounding. Someone had actually engraved this for the sake of making it more aesthetically pleasing, and it sure as hell wasn’t the Imperatrix herself. The sheer unencessity of it gave Lyra pause, but she wasn’t one to refuse help, so she opened it anyway.

The healing gel was the same color as Acidalia’s skin—a warm-toned orange-brown, nothing like Lyra’s own pasty whitish-cream. Experimentally, she slathered it on her skin, where it adopted her own pale tone immediately.

Of course it did. It was rich people stuff.

Curiously, she moved closer to the window and stared at her reflection in the multicolored glass. Threads from both sides of her head wound attached, as if her body was sewing itself back together. The spiderweb of fleshy strings sealed up into a scab, then settled into plain skin again, like nothing had even happened. She ran her fingers across her hair. It was perfectly clean.

Slowly, she rubbed the gel into everything else—the bruises on her legs, the lacerations on her face, even her acne. Everything sealed up beautifully, making her skin smooth and perfect like a porcelain doll’s. She looked like someone who could belong here, if it weren’t for the stained, ripped-up dress and the flats that had been worn so long they were literally falling apart at the seams. Earth’s glow twinkled before her just outside the window, and if she looked at it the right way at the right angle, she could almost pretend she had some sort of right to it—like she was one of Acidalia’s friends, someone with power and influence. Someone who held all the keys to control and knew how to use them. Someone whose opinions could mean something.

Suddenly, the thought that she was just a Cantator came careening back to her. She had no right do this. It was hardly even legal for her to be here. The planet before her was Acidalia’s to hold and Lyra’s to work for. She shook her head. It all felt dizzying.

As she stood up, the soles of her shoes flopped away from where they were supposed to be on the bottoms. She decided her next step would be to look for some tape. Or staples. Anything to look less ridiculous. She took the shoes off and walked aimlessly, searching for any supplies to MacGuyver into something functional, until she stumbled quite by accident into another sitting room.

Like the rest of the Revelation, it was embellished with the most expensive decorations known to mankind. It was a Catholic cathedral rolled into an expensive shopping mall and topped with neoclassical columns, and somehow it managed to work perfectly. There were more stained-glass windows that, by all means, shouldn’t have looked as pretty as they did—this ship was floating in the blackness of outer space; there was practically nothing to light them, and yet somehow they were glowing like their own suns. In the center of the room hung a massive, adamantine cathedral that swayed gently with the rocking motion of the ship and cast little refracted pinpricks of light onto the floor. Then there were at least a dozen plush white chairs, which looked so comfortable Lyra half wanted another nap.

But no staples.

Lyra crossed the room, leaving a trail of healing gel dripping from her forehead. Before she could do anything about it, an army of white robots with blinking LEDs appeared out of thin air, mopped it up, and vanished back into nothingness.

“Wow, they’re fast,” said a strange voice from the corner. Lyra whirled around to see one of the Scientias near at the door, sitting in a chair and playing games on her meta.

“Hey,” the Scientia said distractedly, dumping an entire drink onto the white carpet with no concern whatsoever. The robot appeared again and blinked angrily at her before vacuuming up the mess and zooming out of the room again. “Woah.”

“Hey,” Lyra said back, slightly awed by this woman and her complete lack of shame for creating a huge mess someone—or something—else had to fix. “Who are you, again?”

“Athena Stellara, Scientia. I’m an astrophysicist, but I suck at it.” Athena didn’t even look up. Instead, she gazed vacantly in the direction of the robot. “How do you suppose those things work? I’m, like 87% sure that one looked at me. Actually, glared at me.”

“No idea,” Lyra said. “I’m just a Cantator.”

“Oh,” Athena said. “So, like, you do… dancing and stuff?”

“Yeah. Dancing, but I suck at it. I can play songs. Mostly I just waited tables and did odd jobs.” Lyra smiled awkwardly and prayed this woman didn’t ask about anything else.

To her relief, Athena just yawned. “Sounds boring.”

“It was boring. And kind of awful—I was only paid with tips. What do Scientias do all day?” Change the subject, change the subject, Lyra thought. Rich people did not like to talk about Cantatores, but they did like to talk about themselves.

Athena shrugged. “Math. And like I said… I really suck at math. The numbers kind of jump around in my head. I think if I were in chem or bio it would be easier, but I’m not. So I was bored. We all were, except for the nerds who actually cared. I think being a Cantator would be more exciting than being an Astrophysica.”

“I guess,” Lyra replied. “Depends on what your definition of exciting is.” She leant against the chair opposite Athena. “There are lots of scary people.”

“Cool scary people?”Athena asked. “Or, like, real scary people?”

“What do you mean?”

“Biker chicks or mafia leaders?”

“Mostly mafia leaders,” Lyra said. “None of them were people you and me would have wanted to hang out with, I promise. Most of them were in a drug-induced rage half the time and they got really violent.”

“Did you ever see a fight break out?” Athena asked, reverent.

“All the time,” Lyra said. “The people picked fights with the police, the police would pick fights with the people, the people would pick fights with each other, the corrupt police would pick fights with the less corrupt police. Sometimes someone would wind up dead. You didn’t want to be in the blast zone when things got bad, but most of the time, there was just kind of yelling in the background.”

“Sounds badass.”

“Oh, it sucked.”

“Why?”

Lyra sighed. “You ever meet a Cantator before?”

Athena shook her head. “Bunch of Laborum. Not any Cantatores.”

“Well, what did those Laborum say about Cantatores?”

She thought for a second. “The usual. They didn’t like them.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s kind of cool, though,” Athena said. “You’re society’s underdogs. I mean, when you watch those old movies about the cool cyborg hacker people who, like, take down society from the inside, it’s always someone from the very bottom class.”

“I’m no cyborg hacker person,” Lyra replied. “It’s a little different when you’re there yourself. The Underground is a good setting for a holo film, but in reality, it’s just… well, dirty. You want to hear something gross?”

“Yeah!”

“I knew three people who died from horrible staph infections because they walked around barefoot. All dancers. They couldn’t afford shoes but dancing cuts up your feet, you know? They’d turn bright red and ooze and then a few days later the girls would get a fever and burn up, and then they’d be dead. We had nowhere to bury them. It didn’t matter. No one missed them.”

Something changed in Athena’s face. “Damn. I got anthrax three times and I just got cheap phage therapy.”

“They couldn’t afford cheap phage therapy. They couldn’t afford anything.”

“Why didn’t someone help them?” Athena asked. “I’m sure some of those drug dealers had the cash. You know, the people who have briefcases of shady money in the movies.”

“Why would they? The only people who got any medical care were girls who were owned by people and could still make a profit for the procurers, and sometimes not even then.”

“Isn’t slavery illegal?”

“Nothing’s illegal where there are no cops who care,” Lyra shrugged. “It’s not the neon-lit antihero-filled wonderland everyone thinks it is. I’d much rather be a Scientia.”

Athena looked down at her meta’s screen and put it on the end table. “Being a Scientia isn’t that great either. It’s so monotonous. You basically just work for a hundred years until you die, doing the most complicated equations known to mankind with no reward. Occasionally someone way further up than you, like, discovers that star number 65,009,181 emits slightly greener radiation than expected. You know what we did as kids, Carina and me?”

“What?” Lyra asked.

“We would sit there and watch the shadows on stars where spacecraft passed, and every time they were different we’d report it.”

“Why?”

“Who knows?” Athena shrugged. “They never told us. We just sat and watched the numbers change and pressed a button when they got too weird. And then we got older, and we were basically doing the same thing, with more numbers and equations. And you just keep doing that until you die. No breaks, no future, nothing to look forward to beyond sitting at some stupid desk punching numbers into spreadsheets until you give up.”

“Sounds a lot like me,” Lyra remarked. “Working, working, working, looking forward to a future where your debt is paid even though you know it’ll never happen… and that’s it.”

Athena sighed and laid back on the chair. “So I guess it all sucks, in a way. Hey, doesn’t this feel good?”

“Doesn’t what feel good?”

“We don’t have to give up anymore!” she replied, like it was obvious and Lyra was just missing something. “No more crunching pointless numbers, no more dying of staph infections, no more having nothing to look forward to! Isn’t it nice to be a part of something bigger than clearing tables or punching numbers into formulas?”

“I guess?” Lyra asked hopefully. “Do you think the Revolution really is something bigger?”

“Hell yeah,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m not some Scientia anymore. I’m a Revolutionary! We’re going to change the world someday, topple the system from the inside and take everyone that squished us into those little boxes down.”

“You think that can happen?”

She snorted. “I’m an astrophysicist hanging out with the Imperatrix on her personal starship and a Cantator, and we just came back from Mars. If that can happen, I think anything’s possible.”

“Maybe.”

Lyra glanced at one of the many massive windows through which she could see her home planet. It was all black water, half-obscured by gray clouds, lit up in the void by all the twinkling lights of the districts. There was something different, though—the amount of military ships that orbited was far more than they had been on her ride to Mars. Some were the size of islands, others so small they looked as if they were grains of graphite. Occasionally, swarms of them would plunge down past the polluted atmosphere and onto the planet’s surface.

“Woah,” she said, drawing Athena’s attention towards Terra. “Look at all that. Do you recognize those ships?”

“They’re part of the space force,” she shrugged, “but I’ve never seen them in action so close—holy shit, they’re fighting with each other!”

“What?” But just as she had said, there were lasers flying through the sky at top speed—they were so pretty Lyra had hardly paid any attention to them before. Each time one landed on its target, there was a small burst, followed by nothingness.

“Why is it so quiet?” she asked, figuring that Athena, the Scientia, would know.

“There’s no sound in space,” she replied, “and no oxygen to sustain a fire. So things just quietly obliterate each other.”

“It’s beautiful,” Lyra whispered. “And horrible. Oh my God.”

Lasers in a rainbow of colors spun into space with the brightness of the Sun, slamming into black beads and exploding into tiny flames before they were extinguished in the vacuum. Lyra noticed suddenly that they were approaching the Earth at a different angle than she’d expected; they were at the very edge of one of the poles, watching dogfights around the equator. And the Revelation was plummeting.

“Is this normal?” she asked.

Athena, looking elated, shrugged. “I don’t know. But isn’t it exciting?”