AUBRIOT HAD A PROBLEM with Cherry, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it. He’d been acting weird toward her for weeks, ever since that time she’d gone to see him after visiting the threads’ underwater city. Their friends-with-benefits arrangement had fallen apart for no particular reason she knew. Not that she minded too much. These things happened. But what she couldn’t understand was why Aubriot now seemed to hate her.
She lay in her sleeping bag. The holo the Guardians’ creators had made was playing from her interface, but she wasn’t paying attention. Her mind continued to chew on Aubriot’s strange change of attitude.
As if her thoughts had summoned him, the man himself appeared in the entrance to their quarters. When he registered that Cherry was alone, he immediately beg
