“Are we heading back to Keanu?” Pav said, triggering nervous laughter from Chang and, behind them, Xavier.

That two seconds of grim humor quickly gave way to even grimmer fear. This wasn’t right—!

As she looked out the window to the north, Rachel saw a fireball.

Yahvi saw it, too. “Mommy, what was that?”

“Our decoy,” Xavier said.

Rachel had known that, though it took Xavier’s words to supply confirmation. She gasped and uttered, “Oh, no!” Benvides and Quentin!

As their plane leveled out, the light brown coast of Mexico visible on the horizon, Rachel saw two other aircraft in the sky, heading toward them from the left.

From the cockpit came the clear sounds of Steve and Jo in a grim struggle, overlaid with alarming beeps.

They were alone in the sky now, targets for the Aggregates.

THINGS WE DON’T HAVE ON KEANU

Sports teams or most sports, except for cricket and some basketball

Churches

Books on shit like diets, investing, pets, or etiquette. Books, period

Electronics stores

ATMs

Kentucky Fried Chicken or other restaurants

THINGS WE DO HAVE ON KEANU

Music

Markets

Free time

XAVIER TOUTANT, AS QUOTED BY EDGAR CHANG

FOR THE NEWSKY NEWS SERVICE

SANJAY

His memories were completely confused.

Sanjay Bhat remembered the tension of Adventure’s final approach to Bangalore and Yelahanka . . . the barely suppressed pride and even glee that a hostile missile had come close to destroying them, but failed.

Then he had watched the last few meters of the descent, his eyes unable to look away from the figures on the control panel, as if rapt, unblinking attention could somehow slow the rates, change them to the numbers he wanted—

Then? The shattering impact, cushioned by couch and belts, the sound of something smashing, the panel flying toward him, blinding, crippling pain—

Followed, seemingly a few moments later, by a cough, a feeling of suffocation, an opening of the eyes to see a brownish-yellow film in front of them.

Clawing, feeling relief that the covering was coming away, terror that he was confined. Had he been buried? Was he in the wreckage of Adventure?

Then he was shaken by a series of violent spasms. Fortunately, they passed quickly, leaving him shivering, twitching, but alive . . . and lying on his back inside a golden coffin-sized cell, like a honeycomb.

Along his left side was a wall made of a thin, translucent substance that felt like wax. There were shadows outside! Maybe someone who could get him out!

He turned on his side and reached with his right hand—

And poked a hole through the wall.

The whole thing broke into soft pieces, some falling, some peeled away by the entities outside.

Even though his ears were still covered by the clinging second skin, Sanjay could hear a human female voice calling, “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Then arms reached for him, pulling him free.

As he slid out of the cell, he realized that he knew where he was. Like most HBs, he had sneaked into the Beehive at one time—or, in Sanjay’s case, several times. And that was where he was, in the Beehive, in the arms of a woman he knew very well . . . Sasha Blaine.

“Thank you,” he croaked.

There was the choking sob at the realization that he must have died, followed by the instant elation that he had somehow survived, or rather come back.

“It’s okay, Sanj,” Sasha Blaine said. “We’re here.”

Another woman held him, too, this one dark-haired, dark-eyed, not familiar. Sanjay let himself collapse into their arms.

They cleaned him up as well as they could, helping him peel the second skin off his head and face, shoulders, chest and arms, legs. “We ought to leave it around your middle,” Sasha said, “until we get you some pants.”

Sanjay’s response was a spasm of laughter. Yes, his nudity was the concern. Not his condition, not the fact that he had been killed on Earth and reborn on Keanu. “What about Rachel?” he said, horrified at the way his throat felt and his voice sounded, like that of a man of a hundred. “Is she still on Earth? What happened? How did I get here?”

“Rachel is still good, as far as we know,” Sasha said. She nodded to the woman with her—Sanjay remembered her name now: Jordana, agro sector. “Do you have any memory of what happened?”

It didn’t take long to tell her—the approach, the missile, the crash. “That’s pretty much what we heard,” Sasha said. “And now here you are.”

“Having been killed.”

“Uh, apparently.”

“So I’m a fucking Revenant.”

“Well, yes.”

“Any idea how?” He looked up at the Beehive. “This hasn’t functioned for twenty years.” He thought of Jaidev and Zhao, who had devoted hours to the problem, with no success. “Did someone figure out how to turn it back on?”

“No,” Sasha said. “I’m kind of hoping you could tell us what happened.”

“I told you everything I know.” He croaked again. “So far.”

“Well, welcome back. Which sounds really stupid, like you’ve just been away on a trip.”

“Well, I have.”

Sasha turned to Jordana. “Let’s get him out of here. He needs water and God knows what else.”

Among the two gigantic mental adjustments Sanjay Bhat was making—realizing he had died, and that he had been reborn as a Revenant back on Keanu—there was a new one, perhaps more important:

No Revenant had lived more than a few days.

He emerged from the Beehive to a crowd larger than any he had seen in his life in the habitat. The HB population of Keanu had no celebrations or events that required such gatherings. “Is this all for me?”

“Everyone heard about the Beehive,” Sasha said.

Sanjay found that he could stand . . . that breathing was easier . . . that he seemed to be gaining strength. Aside from the emotional whiplash of going from dead to alive again—not inconsiderable—and the lingering discomfort of wearing strips of second skin and moving with muscles that seemed untested, he felt good. Even great.

He knew that he had been killed by a blow to his face and head. He carefully raised his hand and felt the same set of bones he had always known.

Allowing for the uncertainty of his new, second life span, Sanjay thought, Keanu brought me back good as new.

He spotted Jaidev and Harley Drake and Zhao and then, to his amazement, the legendary Dale Scott, looking as old and confused as Sanjay had felt fifteen minutes earlier.

Sanjay raised his hand. “Hi, everyone,” he said.

Then he heard a woman scream.

Oh my God, he thought, Maren.

Maren Houtman had been Sanjay’s lover for the past five years. And had the Adventure mission not intervened, likely for years to come, possibly for life. She had become that important to him in that time, though not, he realized with some embarrassment and worry, so important that she had a place in his thoughts until now.

He couldn’t possibly tell her that, either. Maren had many virtues, from intelligence and artistry (she had managed the trick of marrying pottery and sculpture to Substance K engineering) to classic Nordic beauty . . . but a sense of humor was not among them. Nor was she truly confident of Sanjay’s affections; when they argued, it always seemed to be about the likelihood that he would find someone he preferred to her—