man, those are hard questions. i think im rotating favorites in it.
all eight have massive baggage and havent been traveling together for as long as it seems in the first two chapters, or even in the one im writing right now. they kind of come in pairs with a partly shared story and then intermingle in a variety of ways.
i do have a specific soft spot for felix and jeongin though, to no ones surprise.
felix, the weird sydnari, that has been weird all his life. him being all kinds of genderfuckery, even for an alien species, means a lot to me. hes got massive internal gender issues that come from being male despite hatching from a small batch of eggs that was not supposed to have drones. and hes not really a drone, hes kind of both a warrior drone and a queen. in human terms that would make him intersex, because his body is somewhere between both. in a society that essentially works like a bee hive or an ant colony (kind of both), its difficult to be in between. still, he became his queens companion later. her blade. her protector. and then politics and violence happened and he lost it all... so of course an intruder like jeongin, who just showed up and is taking into what he considers his new hive is making him suspicious and pissy. thats why he calls yennie a parasite.
jeongin meanwhile is just a miserable little dude. raised in an orphanage with very little memory of what came before, taught a beliefsystem that tells him hes undeserving and thus neds to be grateful for all hes given, because he was unwanted by his kin. he was essentially raised as a barely tolerated pet. there is so much to uncover about him and where he actually came from. there are distant connections to seungmins former group/family and not so distant ones to hyunjin, that hyunjin still has to realize are there.
i dont think i have a favorite line yet, but felix threatening to throw jeongin into the trash compactor and chan telling him off with annoyed fondness might be up there in situations ive written up until now.