M. R. Parsons

They say the food is free. But that isn’t true, is it? Sure, maybe the basic sustenance that allows us thirders to keep the ship clean and maintained is. But the food food. The dishes that make you feel human—those have price tags no thirder will ever afford.

###

I’m on a second-class deck, pushing my cart down a corridor that is roomy by third-class standards but the crowds walking about make it seem the opposite. I pass by another thirder; she’s scrubbing the gray epoxy wall where some hooligan graffitied the image of a faceless captain at a dinner table about to devour some well-dressed seconder boy.

I’ve always wondered what the captain looks like. I wish I had a face to place the blame on for all the injustice dealt on the SSE Gilgamesh. But for now, I can only blame the Solar Space Expedition—though the captain is the cause for _today’s_ problems, they all stem from the shitty systems implemented before launch, fifty years ago.

Did they know they were condemning generations of individuals on board the colony ship? Or did they assume a system of fairness would work itself out?

I stop outside an apartment and hold my palm to the sensor beside the door. Pulling a toolbox off my cart, I stare into a camera and give it my best ‘I know I’m a thirder but I promise I’m one of the friendly ones’ smile. Most seconders are cool since, like us, they have to work for a living. But you never know.

A moment later, I’m buzzed in. The two-bedroom apartment is large, at least by my standards. I suppose _most_ of the ship would disagree since nearly eighty percent of the population occupies a second-class level. More than two thousand apartments, just like this one, and I’m still not used to it. A dining area, missing from all thirder apartments, is beside the entryway. A 3D printer looms there, bright screen displaying dozens of meal options.

I tear my eyes away when a forty-ish woman in a jumpsuit greets me. It’s like mine, but instead of the dark, navy blue of maintenance, hers is an earthy brown. _She’s a farmer,_ I think; at least that’s the title she’s been given. The ship doesn’t grow any food. Doesn’t butcher any animals. But still, she’s one of the many who make sure the 3D printers have the resources they need to produce our food.

It’s the one seconder job I’m happy I don’t have. Making sure all that piss and shit and food scrap gets broken down into the base nutrients to be recycled back into our meals. The process is gross enough to think about—if I had to do the job, I’d probably starve.

That’s why when she smiles and nods at me, the smile I return is genuine. “Liam,” I say, “here to check out the HVAC.”

“Oh good! My shift starts in an hour. How long do you think it’ll take?”

“You reported a moldy smell?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Most likely its condensate collected in the ductwork. Probably no more than twenty minutes.”

“Oh good!” She turns and calls into the apartment, “Honey, could you get dinner started?” A voice grunts an affirmative and she turns back to me. “I’ll show you where the smell’s coming from.” She leads me down a carpeted hallway and stops by a vent mounted on the floor at the far end. I nod my thanks, and she disappears back into the apartment.

I unscrew the vent, careful not to scratch the white paint there. Even though this woman _seems_ nice, I don’t need a complaint on record so close to my internship ending.

Opening my toolbox, I pull out my datapad and a palm-sized, spider-like device with a tiny lens mounted at the front. I hold down a button on one leg until it flashes green, then place it gently in the duct. I watch it as it wanders further in, taking a gentle green glow with it.

When the glow is gone, I look to the screen of my datapad. I don’t have to wait long. A live video feed pops up and I see a shallow pool of water. At the edges, the brown-green buildup of water mold looks like a lake shoreline as the air vented in brings short, rippling waves inland—along with a musty, damp smell.

_That confirms it._

I walk back to the entryway; the whole family is in the dining room, all four huddled around the printer, making selections on the screen. They don’t even notice my presence as I exit into the exterior corridor.

As I search through my work cart, a child walks by, licking mint-green ice cream from a cone. A spark of jealousy hits me.

###

When I was young, I thought dessert was a myth. A tall-tale told in school by the upper deckers to shock thirders. At least, until I met Isabella.

Isabella was born a thirder, but her father had been a firster. We’ve had a few second-class men marry thirders over the years and move down to third-class. But her father was the only firster.

William met Isabella’s mother, Anna, when she first started her cleaning internship at eighteen. Anna was assigned to clean a group of apartments on one of the first-class decks. Most firsters paid her no attention, but not William, who was her age and captivated by her.

Isabella told me they started seeing each other in secret. When William’s mother found out, she flipped. Anna was nearly kicked out of her internship, but technically she’d done nothing wrong. Instead, she was reassigned to work second-class. When she completed her training at twenty and gained marriage privileges, she got a first-class pass and proposed to William in front of his mother in their luxurious apartment.

To his mother’s shock, William accepted, moving to Anna’s tiny apartment in third-class the next day. The mother formally disowned him after that.

###

I find what I was searching for—a vacuum with a capture tank and long hose. Old tech, but reliable, I haul the shop vac into the apartment. This time, the smell of frying meat and baking bread greet me, along with the startled stares of the family. Apparently, they really hadn’t noticed I left.

“Sorry. Just be another minute,” I say before heading toward the vent. I feed the hose into the duct until I see it enter the pool displayed on my datapad. While the vacuum sucks up the water, I direct the maintenance spider-drone to begin scraping up the mold. A minute later, the work is complete.

As I’m about to leave, the smells are overwhelming, and my stomach is very audibly grumbling. When I pause at the entryway, gathering my equipment, I feel a tap on my shoulder.

It’s the woman. The matriarch. She’s holding half of what I’ve been told is called a ‘cheeseburger.’

“For our thanks.”

I glance into the dining room and find the wondering stares of the husband and two children, a girl and boy. _Or is it compassion? Or pity?_ “No, thanks.” I wave the burger away. “You need your strength for work to keep us all fed. Besides, I have dinner waiting at the Cantina.”

“I insist.”

For a moment, I wonder if she’s aware of how closely our consumption is tracked in third-class. How the excessive calories would immediately be recorded into my work file. How my internship would be suspended—if I’m not fired outright.

Still, it takes all my willpower. I put on a smile. “Actually, tonight I’m having my favorite meal. Gotta save room for it.” It’s an outright lie; even the seconders’ portion sizes aren’t large enough to fill them up. But it seems to satisfy her. Tonight she’ll be able to tell her coworkers she tried to do a good thing.

As I load up my cart and push it to the elevator in the center of the level, my mind is on the burger. The smell of charred meat. The juice dripping down the woman’s hand. The layers of wealth: bread, meat, cheese, tomato, lettuce, bread. I’m salivating as the elevator takes me to third-class—the twelve levels closest to the EM drive at the bottom of the ship.

When the doors open, my mouth dries up. Back to reality. Back to the dirty gray walls of third-class. Back to dull, bland food. Back to the realm of no opportunity for the next fifty years.

I store my cart in the maintenance room beside the elevator and walk down a ramp to the level below. A low roar from hundreds of conversations fills my ears as I walk to the table reserved for my family. Two seats are conspicuously empty.

Even for thirders, mom and dad died early. They were never healthy again after they got out of lockup in the brig. A handful of fried potatoes, taken from a picky seconder kid’s plate, stashed in my mom’s cleaning pack for me and sis. Six months for mom. Two years for dad when he found the father of the kid and punched him in the face for reporting her.

I nod to Lisa. “Hey sis.” She sits at the table, carefully cutting into a gummy slab of beef smothered in onions. The ammonia smell of liver wafts from it beside a steaming pile of spinach.

“Hey Liam,” she says between chews. “I was wondering where you were. Just get off?”

“Had another emergency call that turns out was not an emergency.”

“Who would have guessed?… Well, what are you waiting for? Go get some food.”

I pick up a chipped plate from the table and walk to a 3D printer mounted to the Cantina wall. “And get the liver!” I hear Lisa call. “We only get it once a week.”

I place my plate on a platform beneath a plastic cover containing a mechanical arm, then hold my palm to a sensor. My meal choices fill the screen on the printer. Four options, chosen by my late grandmother, fifty years ago. Why she picked what she did, I don’t know. For rice and beans—the main staples of any thirder diet—I have two options: black beans with white rice or kidney beans with brown rice. I also have two options for my weekly ‘special’ meals: Liver and onions with boiled spinach or a chicken patty with corn and lima bean succotash. Unfortunately, this last option—my favorite—is grayed out. I always try to put off eating it for the end of the week, but I never make it past Tuesday.

My finger hovers over the image of liver and onions. _I really should._ But I won’t be able to force down the chemical taste of the meat today. _Next week._ I select kidney beans with brown rice.

The mechanical arm immediately becomes a blur, racing across the plate while it builds my meal, molecule by molecule. When I was little, I was fascinated by the printer. I’d spend our dinner time watching the arm, a mechanical ghost, moving so fast I couldn’t see it except during occasional short pauses.

A minute later, the plastic cover raises, and I take the warm plate of rice and beans.

When I return to the table, Isabella has joined us. She’s saved her favorite meal for the last day of the week. I don’t know how she does it. _Her_ maternal grandmother made _good_ choices.

Enchiladas Verdes. Pulled chicken, cooked with onions and peppers, wrapped in two fluffy tortillas, and smothered in tomatillo salsa. A spicy and savory scent fills the air around our table. Several people around us stare at the meal, eyes burning with hunger. Isabella looks up at me, grinning from ear to ear.

It turns to a frown when she sees the plate of rice and beans in my hands. “Liam, rice and beans again? I know you didn’t have liver this week.” It’s the start of an almost-weekly argument.

“I told him to pick it,” Lisa says.

I don’t tell her there’s a piece of spinach between her teeth; I only shrug. “Didn’t feel like it.”

“Your grandma picked it for a reason,” Isabella says. I know precisely where this is heading. “It’s one of the most nutritious meals she could have chosen.”

“Easy for you to say, Bella.” I nod to her plate. “Your abuela had other considerations.”

“After the thousandth time, even Enchiladas Verdes tastes bland. Besides, in six months this discussion will be moot.” She’s decided to channel this argument in a positive direction.

In six months I’ll be twenty. I’ll have completed my maintenance internship. I’ll be a full-fledged third-class worker, worthy of marriage privileges like Bella.

Isabella finishes chewing a bite of enchiladas, licks a bit of green salsa from the corner of her mouth, then takes my hand. “In six months I’ll make you my husband. You’ll be a part of my family system, sharing in our food and property. Are you ready for that?”

I cusp her face in my hands. “Of course. There’s no one I could love more.” She stares into my eyes, about to say something.

“You guys ready for the flip into de-cel?” Lisa asks, ruining the moment.

De-cel. Deceleration. The SSE Gilgamesh has been accelerating for fifty years toward Proxima Centauri. Tomorrow, it will begin the fifty-year deceleration process. To do so, the Gilgamesh has to flip 180 degrees, pointing the EM drive at Proxima.

The action of flipping the ship will take at least three hours. Three hours without the false gravity of acceleration. Three hours of weightlessness. Three hours for everything to go to hell.

“It’s going to be a cluster-fuck,” I say.

“You really think it’s going to be that bad? The ship is designed for this, isn’t it?” Isabella asks, genuinely curious.

“Yeah. But these systems have been under a constant downward force for more than fifty years. Going zero-g, even for just a few hours, is going to be a maintenance nightmare. Like today—I had to vacuum out condensate from a duct. But in zero-g, that water will float around, maybe make its way into an electrical panel. Stuff like that is going to happen ship-wide. We’ll be working for days straight.”

“You think it’ll be bad in cleaning too?” Isabella asks, looking at Lisa.

They’re both ‘Cleaning Specialists’ or as they call themselves—maids. Picking up after firsters and making sure the common areas on the second-class decks are tidy. Isabella is assigned to a cluster of first-class apartments. Sometimes I worry that she’ll tell me she’s fallen for a firster like her mom. Then she looks at me and my doubts disappear.

“How many firsters are going to neglect to tie something down or leave out a half-eaten meal?” I say. “It’ll be all hands on deck.”

###

I am right.

During the flip, we’re ordered to stay in our apartments. We’ve experienced weightlessness before; short pauses in the EM drive’s propulsion. But never for an extended period such as this. A few minutes into it, I spew the yellow chunks of my morning eggs into a plastic bag as I float in our tiny living room. Lisa told me to skip breakfast, but I didn’t listen.

The rest of the time is uneventful. It could even be described as fun. Lisa and I compete, doing cartwheels and spins in the air throughout the apartment.

Then it’s over. The EM drive activates and we’re slowly pulled to the floor as deceleration begins. A moment later, I receive a message to report to maintenance at the top of third-class.

When I get there, a handful of other maintenance workers are crowded in the equipment room. Our manager, Bob, a seconder with thick, hairy arms, a long beard, and a bald head, is handing out assignments. The workers filter out, pushing carts in front of them.

When it’s my turn, I’m given a datapad with my maintenance request. My eyes scan the location noted at the top. Then I reread it. “First class?”

Bob nods. “We’re working top down. No second class requests ‘til these are filled.”

“That doesn’t make sense; we should be filling requests according to n—”

“The 3D printer in my apartment clogged durin’ the flip. I gotta wife and kids who can’t eat ‘til we get these filled. So I get it, but this comes from the Captain. Besides, you only got six months of probation left. ‘Bout time you had a job on a first-class deck. The _top_ no less.”

“Fine.” I scan the rest of the assignment. “What does the firster want? Reason for request is blank.”

Bob shrugs. “How should I know? Also, up there it’s first or second _class._ None of this firster, seconder shit. Firsters find it offensive.” He waves me away and moves on to the next in line.

I take the elevator up to the second-highest deck of second-class. I’ll have to walk up one level and check in before accessing first-class.

As I push my cart to the ramp up, I stop in front of one of the second-class restaurants. People sit at tables in pressed shirts and long flowing dresses. At the table closest to me, a 3D printer is building the pink flesh I recognize as salmon. A smokey, sweet smell accompanies it.

Seconders get paid for their work. Not much, but enough that they can come to these restaurants occasionally and feast on meals the firsters have every day. Food is free. Sure. But the recipes aren’t. A seconder can save up and buy a recipe outright to print within their own home. But the first-class meals are prohibitively expensive.

Or so I’m told. Thirders don’t get paid.

Well, technically, we already were paid a long time ago. Firsters bought our family tickets to get on the Gilgamesh in exchange for our labor until we get to Proxima Centauri. Occasionally a thirder can move up to second-class through education, but the opportunities are limited. No one’s moved up in years.

I’m eyeing a ribeye steak, covered in a browned-butter sauce, beside a heaping pile of garlic mashed potatoes when a guard nudges me along. “No window shopping.”

I push my cart up the ramp and down the corridor to the checkpoint outside the elevator. A dozen guards stand there, checking the datapads of second and third-class workers before admitting them. I hand one my pad.

He checks it against his own. “First time, huh? You know where you’re going?”

I point to a location on the map displayed by the datapad.

“Alright, we just need to get you an injection.”

“Injection?”

“It’s your first time up to first class. You need a chip so we can monitor your location up there.”

I’m shocked. Isabella never mentioned having to have a microchip injected. _Firsters distrust us this much?_ I hesitate, but only for a second. I can’t afford to have any bad marks on my work record. So I nod my agreement.

The guard pulls a pistol-like device from a holster and holds it to my bicep. _Pfft._ There’s a sharp, stabbing jab in my arm, then a tingling numb sensation. “You’re good to go.” He stands aside and lets me enter the elevator.

Unlike the second and third-class elevators, there’s a man in a red vest, polished shoes, and a strange black hat with a chinstrap manning the controls. Staring distantly into the wall, he asks, “What floor?”

“All the way to the top.”

His eyes meet mine, then travel up and down my body, taking in my dirty, stained, blue jumpsuit. “Datapad?”

I show him my assignment on the screen.

“Very well.” He closes the door before other workers can enter, presses a lever forward, and we race upward. Half a minute later we come to an abrupt stop. “Top floor.”

I mutter my thanks, then exit. The door closes with a crash.

Isabella has described the first-class decks to me before, but nothing could prepare me for seeing one with my own two eyes. The corridor I’m in is at least twice as wide as those on the second-class levels, with a ceiling thirty feet high. The walls are painted baby blue, not the dull gray of the lower decks, and are trimmed in dark, polished wood. Rather than the smell of steel and ozone, first-class smells of flowers underpinned with floor polish and wood stain.

I try not to stare at the people as I pass, pushing my cart. Many of the men and women walk stiffly in navy slacks and the starched white shirts of the SSE Gilgamesh’s flight crew. Others walk by in sports coats or silk dresses adorned with kerchiefs and sparkling necklaces.

One man passes, crunching on potato chips piled in a wide ceramic bowl. He’s larger than any person I’ve seen before, with a stomach that bulges beneath a tan sweater. It takes me a moment to realize he’s _overweight._ No one on the second or third-class decks is allowed to consume more than necessary to maintain a healthy bodyweight. He catches me staring and takes in my much smaller physique and dirty jumpsuit.

He shoulders past me, nearly knocking me into the wall. “Hmmpf—_low class._”

My datapad buzzes, and I look down to see a message from security. _Hurry it up._

I keep my head down and eyes glued to the map on the datapad as I approach the apartment for my assignment. Holding my palm to the sensor, I give the camera a smile and am buzzed in.

When I step into the entryway, it’s like stepping into a different world. I thought the corridor was lavish but it couldn’t prepare me for the palace I’ve entered.

The floor is white marble with dark veins streaking through. I can’t even see where the tiles come together; it’s as if the entire floor was carved from one piece. The walls are rough stone, so white it’s as if they’re creating light. But they’re not. Light comes from a pair of massive screens in the dining room off the entryway. They’re meant to appear as windows letting in sunlight. Marble columns hold up a high, arched roof where a crystal chandelier hangs—centered above a long, wood, dining table. The chandelier sparkles in the false sunlight, casting tiny, flickering rainbows on the surrounding walls. A bank of 3D printers, encased in white stone, line one wall.

Across an expansive foyer, a marble staircase with wrought iron rails ascends to a second level. A woman stands at a landing midway up, dressed in sharp navy slacks and a form-fitting white jacket. She’s older than anyone I’ve met. Old enough to have been well into adulthood before the Gilgamesh left Sol.

A glass of amber liquid in hand, she descends the stairs and approaches me. Despite her age, there’s strength and confidence in her stride. “You’ve made it. Delightful!”

There’s alcohol on her breath.

Alcohol can’t be printed in the Cantina. But that’s never stopped us thirders from taking the food we have and making our own. The rice liquors distilled in third-class could probably be used to strip paint.

No doubt the dark, golden liquid in her hand is of a much higher quality.

“Yes ma’am. I understand you have a maintenance request?”

“Indeed I do. Thank you for getting here so quickly.”

I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t. Despite her friendly demeanor, there’s a glint in her eyes that’s offputting. Then I realize this is a show of dominance. She wants me to break.

I don’t have time for this. I want to get back to third-class where the people are real. Where Isabella is. “Could you please let me know what the issue is?”

“The air conditioning isn’t working.”

It’s a lie. The air is cool and neither dry nor humid. Working in maintenance, I know the difference. “If you can direct me to the AC, I’ll take a look,” I say.

She leads me down a series of corridors, high heels clacking against the marble. The apartment is even larger than I thought. On the lower decks, each apartment only has two bedrooms, but this one must have dozens. Since even the firsters are allowed only two children, I wonder what the justification is for having so many rooms. Pictures of family and artwork line the walls at what I’m sure are ‘tasteful’ intervals.

Stopping outside a door, she opens it to reveal a janitor’s closet the size of my bedroom. Two walls are lined with shelves stacked to the ceiling, containing various chemicals and cleaning implements. A variable air box is mounted high on a wall, controlling airflow into the apartment’s ducts from the ship’s air system. I study it from below. “There’s nothing overtly wrong. It’ll take me a little bit to diagnose the issue. Are you sure it wasn’t just a momentary lapse during the flip?”

“I suppose it’s possible,” she says a little too quickly. “I’ll trust your judgment, but I want you to check it out.”

“Yes ma’am,” I say, but she’s already left the room. Shrugging, I remove a couple of devices from my toolbox, then pull a folding ladder off one wall and set it up beneath the variable air box. Climbing the ladder, I open an access panel on the box and begin my work.

I measure the airflow rates, the temperatures of the cooling and heating coils, and the electrical current to the actuator. Nothing is wrong, just as I suspected.

I know this firster won’t be satisfied with five minutes of work and no problem to report, so I stay on my ladder, pretending to inspect the working components of the box. I quickly grow bored, and the woman doesn’t return, so I look around the room. _Has Bella ever been in here?_ I wonder, looking at the mops and brooms leaning against the shelf beside me.

Something on the top shelf catches my eye: a flat, rectangular object pinned beneath a bottle of bleach. I move the bottle and peel the picture from the shelf, it’s practically embedded in the paint, and I worry about ripping it. But a few seconds later, it comes loose.

My jaw drops. The picture is faded, but I can still distinguish the two people depicted—William and Anna, sharing a meal in one of the restaurants in second-class. _Bella’s mom worked here?_ Then another thought occurs to me.

I run out of the closet into the corridor. I look for a set of pictures I’d noted when the woman was leading me. I find them and take one off the wall. It’s a family portrait of four people. The woman I’d met, much younger. A distinguished-looking man in a blazer. A toddler in a pink dress. And…

William. Just a boy, but still William. _This lady is William’s mother?_

My finger grazes something smooth. I turn the frame over and there’s another picture taped there. I drop it, glass shattering against the marble. _Bella._ Not an old photograph but recent.

_Why am I here?_

I hurry to the exit, abandoning my toolbox. The woman is in the vestibule, blocking my way.

“Done already?” she asks.

“Just need to get something off my cart,” I lie.

“I’m having issues with the front door.” She smiles at me. “But there’s an _opportunity_ I want to discuss with you.”

“I can take a look at the door. Just let me get my tool—”

“In a minute,” she says forcefully. Then gently, “Please join me in the dining room.”

She glides into the next room and pulls a heavy, wood chair from the table before moving on to a 3D printer. She motions for me to sit.

I do. I stare at a glass of golden-brown liquor as she scrolls through hundreds of meals on the printer interface. “You’re William’s mother. Catherine.” I think my statement will surprise her. Catch her offguard so she might allow me to leave.

She isn’t and she doesn’t. She says coldly. “_Captain_ will suffice.”

“Captain?” I gulp.

She turns to me. “Have you ever had risotto?”

I’m speechless. I slowly shake my head ‘no.’

“And scallops, have you had them?”

“No, Captain.”

“I thought not.” She presses an icon on the screen and immediately the printer begins building the meal. She turns to me and raises an eyebrow at the glass in front of me. “That’s 14-year-old scotch. Well… It’s much older than that, but it was aged for 14 years on Earth. Not even printed. I don’t break it out for just any occasion. Have some.”

It’s not an offer but an order. Gingerly I take a sip. It burns my throat on the way down but is much smoother than the rice liquor of third-class. There’s a strange smokey flavor that’s better than anything I’ve ever tasted.

She pulls the dish from the printer and sets it before me. It’s not the chipped, ceramic saucer given to us in the Cantina but a shallow bowl of fragile china rimmed in gold. A fatty-sweet smell invades my nostrils and my mouth fills with water. The bowl is loaded with a creamy, rice-looking substance. Thick disks of golden-brown, not unlike the scotch, top the risotto and are slathered in a deeper brown sauce with bits of red meat flecked in.

With difficulty, I push the bowl away. “I can’t eat this.”

She sits in the chair across from me and pushes it back. “Yes, you can. The SSE Gilgamesh is under _my_ command. And _I_ say you _can._” I look at her doubtfully. “When someone offers you food and drink, it’s not polite, _or wise,_ to deny.”

I pick up the fork beside the bowl and hesitate for a second before plunging into the risotto. When I take the first bite, my mouth explodes with flavor. Flavors I can’t recognize and have no reference points to compare them against.

Appeased, she directs, “Every bite.”

As I eat the extravagant dish, she describes what I’m tasting. “Risotto, cooked in white wine and cream, finished with truffle oil, butter, and parmesan cheese. A pinch of salt and pepper mixed in, of course.” When I move on to the fleshy disks that melt in my mouth. “Scallops, seared to perfection and topped with a maple bacon butter sauce, offering the perfect combination of sweet and savory.”

And she’s right. The taste of first-class is better than the flavors imagined in my dreams. After this meal, I worry that even Isabella’s enchiladas will be bland. As ordered, I consume every bite between sips of whisky.

When I finish, she doesn’t waste any time before moving on to business. “I’ll get down to it. They tell me you’re sharp.” I don’t dare ask who ‘they’ are. “I pulled some strings and got you into the maintenance management program.”

I’m shocked. All the maintenance managers are second-class. I’d be paid for my work.

“The pay is not much,” she says. “But it’s more than any third-class resident will see before we reach Proxima. You won’t always be able to have a meal like this, but similar dishes are available in the restaurants in second-class. You’ll be able to take your future wife out on occasion.”

_Bella,_ I think. _I’ll be able to give her the meals she deserves._ “What’s the catch?”

“Not much. You only have to give up Isabella. I know she’s taken with you. You need to end things.”

_No. Never._ “Why?”

“Did Billy—excuse me—did William ever tell you he had a sister?”

I shrug. William never explicitly mentioned it around me, but Isabella told me she’d died not long ago. And even though I had never thought about it, it made sense; Couples are allowed two children: a boy and a girl. So of course William had a sister.

She goes on, “Billy’s baby sister Cathy—that stupid girl—she drank herself to death before giving me grandchildren… How was I to know that when I disowned Billy?”

Suddenly it clicks. “You have no heirs.”

“No,” the Captain admits. “No heirs. No daughters to inherit my wealth. This apartment. My meals. Only Isabella, my granddaughter.”

“But you formally cut her father out of the family.”

She nods. “Yes. An overreaction on my part, perhaps. But I’ve spoken with the Captain’s Committee. Isabella will be allowed to rejoin my family. Provided that she does not further tarnish first-class when she moves here. There’s even a young gentleman she’s friendly with, two levels down. He’s one of the Committee member’s sons and is taken with her.”

_Tarnish? That’s all I am to her?_ “Absolutely not. And Bella would never agree to it either.”

“You’re probably right. If you’re around, _Isabella_ will never leave third-class. But if you were to earn a second-class position and marry a second-class woman, she’d understand.”

“No, she wouldn’t.”

“This is the only option that works out for both of you. I won’t make the offer a third time. Take it.”

“I’ll take option two—I may never eat _scallops_ again, but Bella and I will be _happy._”

“Unfortunately, that was never an option.” She snaps her fingers and a door beside the dining room opens. Two guards in black jumpsuits step into the room. “This _low class_ specimen has stolen my food and threatened me. Take him away.”

Wordless, they roughly grab my arms and force my hands into thick plastic loops that bite into my skin. The Captain escorts me as I struggle against the guards pulling me into the corridor. It’s no use, but I fight anyway. “You can lock me in the brig, but she’ll wait for me!”

“We’re not taking you to the brig,” she says calmly. “You’re too dangerous to remain breathing on this ship.”

A crowd of firsters lines the walls as I’m dragged on. They look at me, a sheep in wolves’ clothing, fear bulging in their eyes. “I’m not the animal! She is!”

I’m hauled into a maintenance corridor, and the crowd disappears. A moment later, the Captain opens a thickly insulated door, and the guards push me in. I hit the ground. _It’s freezing in here!_

The Captain’s breath mists the air. “Have you ever wondered why we have the technology for cryosleep, yet most people on this ship are awake and alert?”

_Cryosleep?_ I look around. The room is filled with coffin-sized glass cylinders, frosted over.

“Some of our wealthier passengers have opted for cryosleep,” the Captain explains. “Only we have to thaw them out every decade or so for a few months, or else the muscles atrophy and the mind deteriorates.” She nods to the guards.

I’m lifted off my knees and thrown onto the table of an open cylinder. I battle against the guards as they attempt to strap down my arms and legs, but a reign of blows dazes me, allowing them to tighten the restraints and place an IV line. The Captain walks over and looms above me. Her face is pinched together in a strange mix of disdain and pity.

“Things could have been different,” she says.

“Screw you!” I spit. “Bella will never be a firster!”

“How long?” A guard asks, standing at a control panel.

“Time it with arrival—fifty years. If there’s anything of him left, Liam here will be needed to help build the colony.”

The guard shrugs as if to say, ‘not my call.’ Then hits a button.

The cylinder closes around me as icy liquid flows into my veins from the IV line. Ice crystals immediately form on the glass. I release one last steamy breath and think.

Isabella.

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