Then he turns back to me, frowning, and the tenderness is gone in favor of sleepy exasperation. “Lee, do you have any goddamn clue what time it is here?”

I hadn’t thought to check the time differences. I hadn’t thought at all, beyond the desperate need to see a face I knew I could trust. “Sorry, sir.” He’s not military anymore, but I could never call him anything else.

Now that he’s more awake, I can see confusion starting to blossom across his features. I can’t blame him. We haven’t served together in a year, haven’t spoken to each other in nine months.

“What’s going on, Lee?”

I hesitate, listening for sounds of life in the room behind him. I can hear none, but I’m all too aware of Roderick LaRoux’s daughter lying in Merendsen’s bed, hearing every word I say. “Is there another room you can pick up in?”

Merendsen pauses. “She’s asleep. It’s okay.”

I shake my head, swallowing, not daring to speak.

Merendsen’s eyes are slightly downcast, staring at my face in his screen and not at his camera. I lift my own gaze to the pinhole above my screen so he can see my eyes.

He doesn’t speak, but pushes away from the desk and gets to his feet. It turns out he is dressed, wearing drawstring pants that hang low on his hips, but I can tell I hauled him up out of bed. He leaves the immediate circle of the monitor light, and as the camera auto-adjusts, all I can see is a shadowy form crossing to the bed and leaning over it. I hear Lilac LaRoux make a whiny sound of protest, see a pair of arms reach up in an attempt to pull him down with her.

Quiet conversation. Merendsen’s soft chuckle. A sigh of capitulation. Silence. Then the soft, unmistakable sound of their lips parting.

He returns to the computer. “One sec.” There’s a jumble of noise and light, and I realize his computer’s a mobile unit, that he doesn’t have more than one, that he’s not somewhere with screens in every room.

The jumble calms after a minute, and I see his face again. His camera blurs and refocuses, adjusting for a different level of light, and it turns out he’s outside. It’s night, the landscape beyond him silver and blue with moonlight. All I can see is a field of flowers.

“Okay, Lee.” Merendsen takes one of those deep breaths I know is a bid for calm. “Tell me what’s going on.”

My throat’s closed so tightly I can’t speak. He’s all at once so different and exactly the same that I feel an odd shyness creep over me that hasn’t touched me since before I left Verona.

He leans forward. “Did you really call me in the middle of the night to stare at my bedhead?”

That particular streak of humor is so familiar that my heart hurts. I shake my head again. “Sir—can I still trust you? What you told me when you were reassigned, does that still hold true?”

Merendsen sobers. “Always, Lee.” His voice is firm, the voice I remember. The voice of a real leader. “Always, you hear me?”

My vision swims as though I’m drowning, struggling to get enough air. “Your fiancée. How much do you know about her?”

“I know more about her than anyone else does, Jubilee,” he responds, though his tone is cautious. His use of my full name is deliberate. He knows only my family called me that, knows the pain it causes—he’s testing me. Testing my resolve, testing how badly I need his help. “Why are you asking me about Lilac?”

I lift my chin and gaze into the pinhole lens of my camera. “I need information about her father’s corporation.”

“You want me to spy on my future father-in-law?”

I try not to cringe; hearing the words now, I regret ever having called my old captain at all. “No, sir. I meant—”

“Because Lilac and I have gotten very good at that.”

My eyes snap to the screen, surprise robbing me of speech.

“You don’t want to get involved with LaRoux Industries, Lee. Whatever you’re into, just…let it go. Fight your instincts and walk away.”

“I can’t. People are dying, and I think it’s because of LRI. I had someone—but he’s gone now. It’s just me, sir. There’s no one else to chase this.”

“Lee,” he says slowly, voice softening to match my own. “Where are you?”

“Avon.”

He doesn’t answer right away, but his expression shifts. Though I can’t understand why, there’s fear in his gaze. Concern. Somehow, across the millions of light-years between us, he’s seen the echo of what’s happened here in my face.

“Avon?” he echoes finally, his voice rough. “You’re still on Avon?”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. I feel like crying with relief. Until Flynn came into my life, I hadn’t cried since Verona. Now it feels as though I’d just been storing up the flood for this moment. But Merendsen’s the last man in the world I want to see me cry.

He’s shaking his head. “Nobody lasts there more than a month or so—I barely lasted two.”

“I’m okay,” I lie. “But their planetary review with the Council isn’t far off, and things are heating up here. And LaRoux Industries might be involved.”

“What’s happening?”

I want to tell him about the impossible disappearing base I saw with Flynn in the swamp, but the words refuse to form. “The Fury.” I start there instead. “It’s getting worse. Stronger.”

“Get out of there,” he says instantly. “Leave. Request a transfer. Go AWOL if you have to.”

“AWOL,” I echo, my voice halting. It feels as though the floor below me is heaving. “Sir, I don’t—”

“You’re not wrong, Lee. About LaRoux.” Merendsen’s voice is grim, his eyes shadowed. “I saw documents that mentioned Avon, back on—around the time I met Lilac. I assumed his experiments there were long over, though. I thought we’d ended them.”

“What experiments?”

He hesitates, watching me in his screen, brows drawn. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he says finally. “Lee, just hang on. I’m going to figure out a way to get there.”

“No,” I reply, leaning closer to my screen as though he’ll hear me better. “Sir, I wasn’t asking you to come. The situation with the Fianna is too dangerous, and you’re a civilian now. I’m only looking for information we can bring to the higher-ups to get answers.”