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R ian’s not letting me out of his sight again; that’s for damn sure. He escorts me to the now-dark windows at the back of the main gallery, and we watch on screens as Fetor finishes up his speech on the other side of the black curtain.

“Backstage at the biggest event of the year,” I say. “I feel like a VIP.”

“I feel like I can’t let you out of my sight.”

“You’re such a flirt.”

“Trust me, folks,” Fetor says on stage, the voice amp picking up his resonant chuckle. “We had a great display set up for you to explain it all, but—”

Rian notices the way my lips snarl. “Why do you hate Strom Fetor so much?” His voice is low, and we’re far enough away from others that our conversation is, essentially, private.

“Do I need a reason?” I ask. “He’s so hateable, on so many levels.”

“Is Fetor the reason why you’re here?” Rian tries to keep this all business. He’s so focused on me, he doesn’t even notice the way Phoebe is on the other side of the hallway, whispering to a tall man with reddish-brown skin and crinkly eyes, both of whom keep looking at us conspiratorially. I wish there was a way I could eavesdrop on the office gossip that I am absolutely thrilled to be in the center of with Rian. From their point of view, I was caught making out with Rian and then escaped certain punishment after that stunt on the hover stage, and now I’m hanging off his arm. I slither a little closer to him, and it takes him a full five seconds for him to move his hand when it brushes against my hip.

“I didn’t come here for Fetor,” I say. Lie. The job I was hired to do had nothing to do with Fetor, but part of the reason I accepted it had everything to do with it. Dominos. Still, to Rian’s face, I say, “I consider personally informing Fetor that I despise every molecule in his body as a bonus of the job. Almost better than the food. It would also have been a bonus if he’d caught on fire in front of a live audience, but I had to improvise on that one. You’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” Rian mutters, but he doesn’t sound grateful at all. “So, Strom wasn’t your job?”

“Of course he’s not,” I say. Someone closer to the stage glances back at us, glowering, as if she’s far more concerned about what Fetor has to say than anything else, which is just ridiculous.

“But then why do you hate him?” Rian asks, softer.

“Do I need a reason?”

“Just curious.”

“I don’t think anyone should have enough personal wealth to decimate a large country’s income just because he’s going through a midlife crisis.”

Rian frowns, considering. There are at least three things I could be referring to with that statement. The bureaucratic coup that shifted control of the communications network from Fetor’s mother to Fetor himself also saw a shift of the main office from Centauri-Earth to Rigel-Earth, creating an economic crisis on the former. Fetor’s brief, passing interest in ship development saw him purchase and then bankrupt the largest engine manufacturing chain, which resulted in alternative fuel systems all but disappearing from sale.

And that’s not even mentioning . . .

“Your father,” Rian says softly, razor-blade gaze on me, cutting off every mask I usually wear.

I nod tightly, not trusting myself to talk.

See, Fetor’s family wealth did start on Earth, and while his family’s compound in the heart of the United Russo-Asian Republic may have been vastly different from my own upbringing in rural America, that little bit of shared homeworld would normally garner my sympathy.

Not for Fetor.

“I thought you’d appreciate the climate-sickness vaccine,” Rian says.

“I do.” I wrap my arms around my shoulders, unconsciously touching the rough patch of skin near my left underarm. The med patch vaccine left a scar, one anyone who was in the first few years of vaccines has. They have a milder version now, one that doesn’t leave a mark.

Climate sickness only affects people on Earth. Radiation and pollution combined into a lethal outcome for hundreds of thousands of people before anyone even started to try to find a cure, and it was only in factories like Fetor’s, ones that were literally on the planet, that there was any sort of concentrated effort to discover a cure, even if other planets claimed to offer help.

Fetor’s medical research facilities discovered the vaccine and treatments to help those already sick first. I’ll give him that. The researchers saved billions of lives.

But not at first.

At first, after the trials and experiments, the only people who got the vaccine or treatment were those who could afford it.

“Eight years,” I say, my eyes blurring as the audience starts to clap for Fetor. The show’s about to end.

Rian touches my shoulder. When I release my hold on myself, I see the lingering traces of my handprints on my arms.

“Eight years of profit before he sold the patent to the government. Three more years before the government was able to manufacture enough vaccines and distribute them widely. Eleven years, total, before anyone who wanted the meds got them.” I don’t look at him. “A lot can happen in eleven years.”

“Thank you, thank you!” Fetor shouts into the amp as gold and silver confetti falls from the ceiling over the crowd. The audience roars in approval.

While the kid hacked into the holo display of the hover stage, there are permanent display holos built into the museum’s network. The holo projection of Sol-Earth that illuminates and reflects through the metallic confetti is safe, although I expect Winters to have triple-checked to ensure it wasn’t sabotaged as well. Music swells as the projection of the planet slowly twirls midair.

Not Earth as it is now, no, but as it was centuries ago. White at the caps. Blue in the oceans, green in the land. No bubbles of protection over specific landmarks. No America broken by plates shifting after the supervolcano erupted. No garbage island in the Pacific, so dense that it’s now inhabited by bands of independent rovers.

Earth as it was.

As it will never be again, even with all the money of all the people in this room.

I glance at the O-ring pinned to Rian’s rose corsage. Sometimes, when something breaks, it stays broken.

Rian’s not watching the people. He’s watching me.

“It takes time to distribute medical care to every inhabitant of a planet,” he says. “In the history books, it’s considered a miracle that in just a little more than a decade, everyone had access to a life-saving treatment.”

I nod silently. Then I say, “How much of that time was wasted on haggling over the sale price of the patent on the vaccine?”

He doesn’t answer.

One thing both Fetor and Rian have in common is this deep desire to save the world. Fetor wants the credit. Rian just wants to do good.

But...I don’t need to save the whole world.

I just needed to save my father.

And he didn’t have eleven years to wait.

The museum coordinator strides past us, and I startle. I was so lost in my own thoughts, I almost forgot about the purpose of the chaos around us. Winters mounts the acrylic stage in front of the black curtain, waving his hand for attention from both Fetor and the audience. “It has been our joy to host you tonight, and I must extend my deepest gratitude for our guest of honor, Strom Fetor!” The cheering from the audience gets even louder, and servers pop up, glasses of fizzy wine on silver platters.

“You know, the climate-cleaner nanobots that we’re rolling out...they’re nothing like the vaccine distribution.” Rian tugs on my arm, pulling my attention to him. I blink rapidly, refocusing. “Maybe the climate-sickness vaccine could have been distributed more efficiently. But this is different.”

“Because you’re in charge?”

He flinches at the bitter bite of my words. “Because it’s already in motion.” He turns me away from the stage, enclosing me in our private conversation. “I don’t know what the people you’re working for told you, but what you stole from the Roundabout crash? It delayed us, but it didn’t stop us. You took a prototype on its way to the final stage of testing and development, and while we had to recreate the data and send an entirely new one to the facility, you did nothing more than hold up production.”

There’s an accusation in his voice, an undercurrent of blame that makes bile rise in my throat. If Fetor’s family made Earth wait more than a decade for climate sickness treatment, Rian’s saying in his tone, how are you any better for delaying climate cleaners from spreading all across the planet?

I want to tell him everything.

Not yet, though. Not here.

Instead, I say, “I know.”

I pull a tube out of my reticule and slick shiny gloss over my red-stained lips.

The museum coordinator makes a motion, and a woman crosses to the stage, a black box in her arms. When Fetor lifts the lid, he grins in delight, showing the red telephone from Mission Control to the audience, who—somehow—cheers even louder.

Rian’s voice is so soft that I almost miss his words in the cacophony around us. “What do you know, Ada Lamarr?”

I lean close to him, tugging on his shoulder so I can whisper in his ear. “More than you,” I say, and then, before he can pull away, I let the tip of my tongue dart out and lick the shell of his ear, just so I can watch him try not to unravel at the galaxy’s biggest event of the year.