Chapter 13: Sponsor Package — A Book and a Question

The package arrives at midmorning.

He hears it before he sees it — a faint mechanical whistle, the sound of pressurized delivery, and then the small silver capsule strikes the catwalk grating three feet to his left with a clean, metallic ring that sends Rue's hand to her knife before she has fully woken from the half-sleep she had fallen into against the support strut. Her eyes open. She reads the capsule. She puts the knife down.

"Sponsor," she says.