"The doors of the throne room," Amity whispers, gesturing dramatically toward the thirty-foot gilded doors.
"Wow, this place is fancy," Luz whispers.
"Why are we whispering?" Willow asks.
"For stealth," Luz responds. "Even if we aren't actually hiding. Stealth. Because we're being cool."
"Now is really not the time for this!" Amity snaps.
The door opens when she touches it. It's balanced on vast electromagnets below the floor, that make it float several inches in the air. In the event of an intrusion, the electromagnets can be deactivated, blocking the only way into the throne room. It's airtight when the door is sealed.
And they're walking straight in.
Luz peers around the edge of the door, then quickly backs up.
"There's no guards," she says quietly.
"The emperor doesn't need guards," Amity says. "At this point he's mostly cybernetics wired into the Capital itself. He knows we're here, and probably has a few missiles pointed at the door right now."
Luz's face falls.
"This isn't really how I expected this to go," she says dejectedly. "I kind of thought we'd burst in dramatically, and defeat the emperor."
"With what, the power of friendship?" Amity snarks. "Let's face it, we are a grand total of three teenagers and one fancy dog who stayed on the ship, which is a heap of bolts by now. We never had a chance of winning this."
Luz ignores Amity and turns to Willow. Willow shrugs.
"I'm sorry, Luz, but it doesn't seem like there's anything we can do."
Luz's eyes close, and Amity pulls her into a hug impulsively. She's not sure why. Her family doesn't really hug, as a rule. It's an act of unnecessary contact with no practical purpose.
Luz apparently doesn't feel the same way, since she wraps her arms around Amity and sobs into her shoulder for a few agonizingly long minutes.
Just when Amity thinks that this is far too awkward to continue, and decides to break the hug even if Luz is still miserable, Willow interrupts them.
"I know we can't fight the emperor directly, but … maybe we don't have to."
Luz turns around instantly, hastily scrubbing her face dry with one sleeve.
"What do you mean?"
"The emperor is still accountable to the populace. If we can convince enough people that Eda doesn't deserve this, she has a chance of being pardoned."
"Okay, but we're still three teenagers and a fancy dog," Amity comments. "People aren't going to listen to us."
"My parents both work for major news outlets," Willow responds. "One is a well-known journalist. He's kind of busy, but he would be willing to write about this."
"Do we have time for that?" Luz asks. "I mean, it's not going to be a very long trial, considering all the evidence against Eda."
"It won't take much," Willow responds. "We have the evidence that Eda's work is saving lives, regardless of its legality. BlightCorp's unethical practices are common knowledge by now, and the testimony of a Blight, with leaked documents, could be the final nail in the coffin for them."
"Hold on. You want me to steal information to bring down my family's company?" Amity splutters.
"If not, Eda's going to die, and a lot more people are going to die because of it!" Luz snaps. "This is important, Amity."
"Okay, maybe we should have this chat a bit later," Willow says hastily. "It's only a matter of time before they discover that we broke in, and we need to get the prisoners we freed onto a transport vessel before we get caught."
Luz isn't happy about the compromise, and neither is Amity, but somehow Willow is the one leading the charge.
…
Obviously, Amity's parents aren't particularly happy. They sent Amity a ticket home and a stern letter regarding Amity's rash decision to travel and not inform them. On the bright side, this entire mess is over. Amity doesn't have to worry about smugglers again. If Luz and Willow succeed with their dumb plan, they succeed. If they don't, it's still none of Amity's concern.
Luz hastily presses her phone number into Amity's hand as she walks away and makes a comment about how if she changes her mind the testimony of a Blight could be incredibly useful. The two people closest to friends Amity has ever had walk away with Willow's dads, who seem like nice people, if a bit too friendly. One of them asked Amity about herself, and smiled, and Amity just doesn't feel like talking to people right now.
When she's home, she endures another lecture about the improper company she kept by staying with Willow when they got "kidnapped". Edric and Emira are out, presumably having fun with their friends like normal people, so Amity has a grand total of zero allies.
She falls over onto her bed and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes until she sees stars. It's been five days. Five days of chaos and mortal danger and real people, not absent parents or the robots Amity talks to sometimes, even though they aren't intelligent enough to answer back. Five days of protecting criminals and fixing spacecraft and consistently being impressed by Luz and Willow. Not that she'll admit that, obviously. But things could have been much worse.
Amity tells herself that she's just curious, or that this is just revenge, or that it's for the sake of open journalism. But she's stealing her mother's computer, spoofing a password, and searching through the files marked BlightCorp because she wants to see The Owl flying again, solar sail streaming behind it, visible from miles away. She wants to see Eda grin and flash her gold tooth and hand another family a few trinkets or a lifesaving cure. She wants to see Luz in the middle of all that, tripping over her own feet and trying to lend assistance and tugging Amity by the hand to see another cool rock she found.
Amity doesn't have the time to wonder where that part came from. Luz may have some impressive abilities to lie her way out of situations, but she's barely Amity's friend, and Amity certainly doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with her. Nope.
Amity keeps scanning through document titles. Budget sheets, internal memos about changes to Page 37 of the Employee Handbook. Nothing interesting.
She then searches through her mother's email. Again, the communications are banal. Why were people so concerned about BlightCorp? It's hardly bad for a megacorporation; 0.01% of profits are even donated to charitable causes.
She finds a long email chain between her mother and an email address she doesn't recognize. The domain name is , so presumably it's from a chemical supplier. Amity clicks, impulsively, partly because there's a suspicious lack of a subject line.
We respect BlightCorp as our biggest customer, but smaller pharmaceutical companies provide us with a third of our revenue. We cannot in good conscience stop trading with other companies, out of respect for our shareholders.
I don't believe you understand the situation here. You are not in a position to turn down this offer.
You have relatively little bargaining power, as BlightCorp is under a fifty-year contract with Bayer. If you'd like to take us to court to withdraw your business, be aware that we have excellent lawyers.
There's no need to involve the courts in this. I believe you have a daughter. Cassidy. Age eight. 4'2, 37 kg. At an age where she's still likely to trust strangers, particularly of the variety who know her parents.
We will end our business with other companies as soon as possible.
BlightCorp is blackmailing CEOs by threatening their children. At this point, Amity has seen giant cave spiders that have no right to exist, and really shouldn't be so surprised.
Her parents are threatening people to increase their share of the pharmaceutical market.
Amity quickly forwards the email chain to herself and deletes the record that it was sent, then looks for more.
She shouldn't be all that surprised that there are more.
Amity spends the next hour alternately saving the email chains and throwing up.
A good Blight, a responsible child, or just a decent person would cover this up for the sake of their family. Nobody sane would expose the criminal dealings of their parents for some girl they haven't even known for a week.
Amity sends Luz the email chains anyway. At this point, she's past caring what happens to her parents. There are far more lives at stake.