"You put more of the weight of the world on your shoulders than anyone I've ever known," Pierce said. "You have to learn to let things go. It can weigh you down. It can cloud your judgment."
Of all the things that had happened, one thing stood out, and it wasn't vengeance or guilt.
"I didn't know," Stellan said. "She didn't tell me."
Pierce took a deep breath. "I'm sure she had her reasons. Maybe she was waiting for the right time."
"Thing is, it had never crossed my mind that I wanted to be a father before I walked into that room and knew the opportunity was gone. It's like the guys used to say. Some men get a taste for killing and can't let it go. I feel like I'd been looking for something all my life and just got a taste of it. For a moment, it was real, and now it's gone. Now I can't imagine wanting anything else."
"Well, then," Pierce said, "that's one good thing to take from it, isn't it?"
"I should have known something was wrong," Stellan said. "It was like she kept wanting to tell me something I wasn't going to like, and then she would hold it back. I've just been so absorbed with everything this run with Skinner and Edward and these dreams I—"
"Dreams?"
"Yes," Stellan said warily. "Two different ones. In the first, it's London. Everything happens just the way it did. It's like my brain is trying to remind me of something, trying to reinforce something I'd forgotten."
"You would be lucky if that were the case."
"No," Stellan said. "We have to hold onto it. It's made us who we are. In a way, the other one's connected. I'm on the Atlas, and it's deserted. A tram pulls up at a station, and I find a crowd. They've turned into monsters, and they turn on me."
"How are they connected?"
"The boy. He's in that one, too. He turns them," Stellan said. "What does that mean?"
"We all owe a debt to the dead," Pierce said, his eyes glazing over. "One way or another." He fell into silence for a moment and then returned as if out of a trance. "It probably means nothing. Guilt, that's all. It comes back sometimes for me, too. The faces fade and blur 'til they aren't recognizable, and then there's just the idea."
"I remember exactly what he looked like."
"I doubt that," Pierce said with a patronizing laugh. "You've just constructed an image in your mind."
After a moment, Pierce opened a drawer in his desk and reached in.
"When the ash settled on London, when the fighting stopped, I went back to see to the boy. Made sure he was taken care of. We were gentle. Respectful."
Pierce's voice trailed into a whisper, his eyes vacant with recollection. He tumbled something small and shiny in his hands, and then he clenched it within his fist.
"There was so much water. A main must have burst and softened the earth. I found the slug buried into the wall and pulled it out. Had it melted down and recast. It could be fired again. I've kept it all these years to remind myself that, sometimes, even the worst of us get second chances. It's important that we do right with the chance we're given because, like that bullet, we have the potential to make the same mistakes. Then again, maybe we can yet do some good."
Pierce offered the bullet to Stellan, pinching it between his forefinger and thumb. The metal gleamed at the tip, like the beacon of a lighthouse showing the way home.
He dropped it into Stellan's palm.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" Stellan asked.
"Bury it."
Eleven
The first thing Rick Fairchild thought of as he lay under a gravity crane loader in a cargo bay of the Atlas was not how warm and wet the floor felt on his back. He did not wonder why a black fluid drained from the exposed guts of the crane or even how the manifold had been removed. He did not feel the sting of the cuts on his forearm or the swelling of the bite on his hand. It didn't cross his mind that the human mouth was a breeding ground for bacteria.
The only thing Rick could think of was that his memory was blank. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten there.
It didn't feel to him that he'd simply forgotten, the way the mind sometimes passively declines to process and store certain memories of places you've been and actions you've committed a thousand times before, a kind of autopilot. It wasn't the fog of weariness for lack of sleep or the haze of a drug or alcohol-induced blackout. It wasn't a momentary lapse. In fact, the last thing he could definitively recall was the warm shower that poured over his greasy body and the towel he used to dry himself off.
He looked to his link. That was hours ago.
"What the…?" he whispered, his bushy eyebrows narrowing.
In his hand, he held a bolt torque, a hand tool that used powerful magnets to turn bolts. He looked up into the guts of the machine and found a power module missing, a small part that looked insignificant to the untrained eye. Anyone else might discard it as a spare part, but Rick knew it was like the machine's kidney or liver. It scrubbed and regulated power for the crane, and without it, the crane would overpower itself, imploding from an enormous amount of unchecked gravity.
On the floor beside him, Rick found the module, hoses and wires frayed on short ends. It had been ripped out by hand after the bolts from its mount had been removed.
Rick tried to tell himself he was there to fix the machine. He tried to deny that he would ever harm one of these cranes, his babies.
As he struggled to accept what would be so apparent to anyone else, he grabbed the power module and shoved it up into the crane's guts in a futile attempt to put it back in place. Even before he accepted the truth, pieced together the final moments of his missing memory, his mind worked its way through how to fix the crane. It would need new couplings on the power module ports, and new lines and wiring would need to be drawn throughout the entire crane, which would mean taking it apart and piecing it back together.
The crane was dead. Rick knew it and dropped the power module onto the deck beside him.
For some reason he couldn't grasp, Rick laughed, quietly at first, then erupting into an uncontrollable fit, and he knew it was wrong.
Twelve
>> Sent: Senior Engineer Arup Manish, Department of Engineering, Fifth Level, Power Plant
<< Received: Department Director Andre Lawrence, Command Deck
<< Awaiting protocol response... >>
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>> Sent: Charles Waterman, Cook, Mess Deck
<< Received: Assistant Department Director Melvin Stoltz, Command Deck
vestigation, found Washington pinning Barton to the floor, her shirt raised to expose her breasts, blood flowing from her mouth from an apparent strike. Washington was attempting to take her pants off when I intervened. Barton is off to medical. Washington is restrained and unresponsive. \>
<< Awaiting protocol response... >>
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>> Sent: Maggie Prewitt, Junior Engineer, Cargo Bay 28
<< Received: Department Director Spencer Cutler, Command Deck
<< Awaiting protocol response... >>
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>> Sent: Marcel Wooding, Deckhand, Engine Room
<< Received: Assistant Department Director Augustine Faust, Command Deck
<< Awaiting protocol response... >>
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<< Awaiting protocol response... >>
<< Awaiting protocol response... >>
<< Awaiting protocol response... >>
Chapter 7: The Pandora Protocol
One
Preoccupied by thoughts of Daelen and a burning desire to hunt down Adelynn Skinner for what he was sure she'd done, Stellan almost didn't notice the way his crewmates looked at him as he hurried down the corridor to medical. They looked uncertain, like they didn't even recognize him, and he didn't like it one bit. They seemed ungrateful for the sacrifices he'd made for them, and it made him angry.
But it wasn't thanklessness. He was disturbing them. Stellan didn't see his own wide eyes reflecting the blue glow of his link's expanded holographic interface. He didn't hear his erratic voice or his labored breathing. He didn't see his rigid posture or his hurried gait. They perceived his stress like an electric field emanating from his body, and it unnerved them.
All at once, the Atlas' crew had gotten out of hand. As the reports flooded the ship's intranet, he became increasingly irritated with his obligation to his duty. He should have been with Daelen. He’d promised her he wouldn't leave.
Then again, wasn't all duty about personal sacrifice?
Management and delegation had never been among Stellan's strong suits. He was more of a hands-on kind of man. As the requests for protocol procedures followed the predesignated paths over the link system and landed in front of him, he had to find ways to delegate duties to his weakened security staff, which he wished he had back in full force. He would have welcomed back even the most inept of his men because it was becoming a game of sheer numbers. He just didn't have enough bodies for a security presence everywhere he needed it, and he worried something would inevitably slip through.
"Doug, you're going to run roundup," Stellan said into his link. "I want you to take a couple of others with you and put Jude, Robichaud, and Mathers in holding. Keep them isolated. I'll question them when I get back."
"Okay, Chief," Doug said.
"Floyd, I want you to head down to the engine room to secure that dead body. Nobody goes in there. Understand?"
"Oh, I don't do well with blood," Floyd said. A cackle rang through the channel from Doug's end.
"We're a little shorthanded, old man, so I'm going to need to pull you away from that desk for a little while," Stellan said. "I'm sure that body's not going anywhere. Just make sure no one enters the room. I'll be there as soon as I can with a medical team."
Stellan thought about how weak the crew he'd left himself with were, but he'd never thought he'd need to plan for this much trouble. It would have been fine if there were one larger disruption in one location, but the violence was breaking out all over the ship, spreading them thin and making it hard to coordinate. His entire security staff mostly comprised men and women who had no other adaptable skill but wanted to live and work on a carrier. It wasn't hard to teach people how to stand around, keep an eye out for trouble, and call him if they saw anything. Stellan was always the backup, but now he needed them to be where he couldn't. He needed them to support him in a way they never had and in a way he had never thought would be necessary. They were overwhelmed.
The only solace he could find was in the realization that, whatever was going on, it was bound to let up. And he knew that because, if it didn't, they were finished.
"And both of you," Stellan said, "don't touch anything."
Two
Daelen was preoccupied as well. For some reason, while she still grieved for the loss of her child, Tom's mystery continued to plague her. She knew there was a reason for his madness, that it was different than what Edward had experienced. While everyone wrote it off as just another case of the black madness, Daelen remained unconvinced.
With the escalating reports of violence sending patients to the medical deck, Daelen had to be on her feet far sooner than she should have been. She couldn't expect Margo to handle it all. Keeping busy kept her mind from wandering into dark places where nothing made sense, but she still wanted to just sit and ponder Tom's case.
If she knew anything, it was that Tom hadn't had the black madness. With him gone, stowed away in her morgue, it may not have mattered anymore. Still, some instinct pushed her in that direction.
She stood before Susanna Barton, one of the Atlas' bartenders. Susanna sobbed in a way Daelen had seen in patients before, and it came from a kind of pain Daelen had experienced herself very recently. While Susanna had several bruises and cuts, she felt a deeper, emotional trauma. It was a loss of power and control. Jude Washington had attempted to rape her. Unfortunately, no counselor was available on the Atlas, so Daelen would have to listen. After her own feeling of loss of power and control, it was the last thing she wanted to do.
Susanna sat on the exam table in a private room, clutching her own body like she was cold. Even though they kept the medical deck a comfortable 22°C, someone had given her a gray blanket, probably taken from a fire station in the kitchen where she was found. Her makeup drew lines down her face, and it smeared from where she wiped blood away from her nose and mouth. A faint streak of red remained jutting up to her cheek bone, and Daelen marveled at how blood could stain even skin, a reminder that would only wash away with an abrasive cleaning tool. The last thing that pretty girl needed was to look at herself in a mirror.
"Hi, Susanna," Daelen said. "My name is Dr. Lund. May I exa
mine you?"
"You're Stellan's wife, right?"
"That's right."
"I heard about your loss. I'm very sorry."
Daelen tried to ignore the sympathy because she wasn't ready for it. It threatened to crumble the emotional foundation she was rebuilding.
"Thank you," she muttered, snapping on a pair of latex gloves.
"That's probably for the best," Susanna said. "I feel toxic right now." Another tear rolled down her cheek, and she gasped between sobs.
"They're for your protection as much as mine."
"I'm not really worried about catching a cold."
Daelen nodded while searching for materials in a cabinet. She set disinfectant, swabs, bandages, and a cold pack on the table beside Susanna. She snapped the chemical casing inside the cold pack, and it instantly cooled.
"For the eye," Daelen said, handing the cold pack to Susanna, who placed it over the bruise forming around her left eye. Daelen went to work cleaning up Susanna's wounds, starting with the long, tearing scratches on her arms, which looked to be done by an animal.
"So, dear, do you want to talk about what happened?" Daelen asked.
"I'd rather forget about it."
"I understand."
"I won't be able to, will I?"
Daelen shook her head with as much sympathy as she could. Susanna winced, and Daelen wasn't sure if the bad news or the application of the disinfectant caused her pain.
"It was like it wasn't him at all, like it was somebody else in his body," Susanna said. "The look in his eyes. It was like he didn't even recognize me."
"Sometimes even good men do bad things."
"Jude's not that good of a man," Susanna scoffed. "He's the same as all the others. They all look the same. It's in their eyes."
"What do you mean?"
Susanna's face glazed over, staring beyond Daelen, as if her brain was sending messages her body wasn't receiving.
"Sorry," she said, breaking that trance and shaking her head. "Nothing. It's stupid. It's just that he asked me out a long time ago, and he was pretty persistent. He even grew a flower in a pot for me while we were on one of the longer runs. He grew one. I saw the UV lamp he had and everything. Who does that?"
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