A month had passed since Youri and Six were taken to the Order. Life had settled into a dull rhythm. The business went on as usual: packages arrived, the two of them moved them, and day after day the same routine repeated itself, monotonous and unchanging.
Until one afternoon, when Youri was selling near one of the bays and noticed a ship unlike the others. It was a cargo vessel, but something about it felt off. Cargo ships didn't dock in the open bays; they used the warehouse ports. This one sat quietly by the water with its engines cooling, as though it wanted to avoid attention. To Youri's surprise, one of its crew walked over to him and asked for product.
Youri took the opportunity. "Where's the ship headed?" he asked, as casually as he could.
"Montra," the man said, already turning away.
The ship wasn't very big, and the place it had chosen to dock gave Youri an idea. It probably had nothing to do with Barnaby. It was keeping away from the official ports to avoid any misunderstandings — or inspections.
That night, as usual, he and Six met on their bench, with the lights of the city flickering across the water. After a while Youri turned to him. "I think I've found a way out," he said quietly. "There's a cargo ship docked at the bay. It's already unloaded, so it's mostly empty. I think I can buy off one of the crew. We hide in the crates, and we finally leave this place."
Six looked at him, and then he nodded slowly.
"It's going to Montra," Youri added. "I'll look it up tomorrow. Let's just hope it's warm — warmer than here, anyway." A faint smirk crossed his face.
The next day he went to one of Volar's many information booths, which housed fully emergent AI systems connected to the central database of the Terrian Systems. The one he chose was called SpaceNet, on the thirtieth floor of Mincin Fortress, one of the towering skyscrapers of Talion. When the elevator doors opened, he stepped out into a space lined with smooth gray panels, with a glass door a few meters ahead and rows of small square booths behind it. When he went into one of them, black panels rose from the floor and enclosed him completely. A pair of white goggles came slowly down from above. He put them on, and the booth lit up in a soft blue glow.
"Welcome to SpaceNet," said a calm voice. "I'm Bern. How can I help you?"
Youri blinked. The voice sounded entirely human — a grown man's. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then he spoke. "Give me detailed information on the planet Montra."
Holograms filled the booth as Bern began.
Montra was a deep sapphire sphere. More than ninety percent of its surface was ocean, broken only by chains of emerald archipelagos and towering atoll-cities. Beneath the waves lay vast continental shelves glowing with bioluminescent reefs whose light could be seen from space during the planet's long nights. Despite how little land it had, more than six million people called Montra home, and their whole way of life was shaped by the sea. Their cities stood on floating platforms, coral-reinforced pylons and ancient stone spires that rose straight out of the waves. They traveled by submersible current ships and by sky-skimmers that glided just above the water, and their children learned to swim before they learned to read. At the heart of it all stood Dahrin, the capital, a tiered metropolis built around a natural super-atoll, whose towers curved like seashells to withstand the hurricanes and the shifting tides, where canals took the place of streets and the whole city glowed blue and green at night from the living coral lighting the water beneath it. Dahrin was governed by the Tide Assembly, a council devoted to balance, sustainability and reverence for the ocean. The people of Montra were resilient and deeply spiritual; they believed that the planet itself was alive — that it listened through the waves and watched from the depths.
Youri stared at the holograms in awe. As he scrolled through places and histories, a quiet certainty grew inside him. He asked one last question. "How far is Montra from Volar?"
"Three hundred and eighty-six light-years," Bern replied. "On a standard commercial ship, the journey takes approximately two days."
That was enough. He took off the goggles, and the black panels slid back down into the floor. Montra would be their next world.
That night, Youri and Six set themselves up near the bay, selling as close to the ship as they could. After hours of waiting, the same crew member appeared again, and this time Youri made him an offer. He opened a bag and showed him what was inside — a small fortune in Galley.
"All of this can be yours," he said. "On one condition. Leave the ship's hangar open. Once I'm inside, the bag is yours."
The man's eyes lit up, and he agreed without a moment's hesitation.
As the ship prepared to leave, the hangar doors opened just as he had promised. Youri and Six ran. They slipped inside and hid themselves in an empty crate. The ship began to lift, and then it stopped. An Order patrol had signaled the vessel. Inspection required.
The hangar doors opened again, and light crept in as Order troops stormed into the bay. Crates were torn open, some smashed, some shoved aside. The boots came closer and closer. Then Six patted Youri on the head, and when Youri turned, Six was smiling. He pulled him into a tight embrace.
"What's going on?" Youri whispered.
But his vision was already blurring, and the darkness rushed in. Six had made him pass out.
In the next instant, Six burst out of the crate and charged at the soldiers with a roar. Gunfire erupted. One shot missed; another tore through the air where he had been a moment before. Then he ran. He leapt from the hangar down onto the bay and drew every soldier in it after him. Behind them, the ship rose slowly and the hangar doors sealed shut.
Out on the bay, Six kept running with the gunfire thundering behind him, and his smile never faded. When a bullet finally struck him in the side, he fell into the snow, and white flakes drifted down from the sky — just as they had on the night in the forest when he had carried Youri out of the cold.
As the soldiers closed in, only one picture filled his mind, one that had never really happened: a sunny afternoon in the garden behind Knox's house as it might have been, with Six stretched out asleep in the grass and Youri sitting beside him, reading.
And for the first time since he had lost his voice, Six thought clearly, in words:
Thank you, Youri. I will always be your brother.