The Servitor hobbled toward them. “Manual lock—”
“Has failed, yes, thank you, we know!” Rosalyn shouted.
She ran to the door and flung herself to the side of it, putting her back flush to the wall and raising the fire extinguisher. This time the crowbar was aimed at the door itself, not the locks, and it only took a few hits and a kick of a solid boot to send it crashing open. Rayan collapsed into a heap, holding his head and rocking back and forth. She could just barely hear him sobbing as a huge man rushed inside.
He was just a blur, but big. Too big. Rosalyn took a deep breath. She had been there before, inside that fear, inside that helplessness. Never again, she said silently. Before the man could spin toward her, she smashed down the trigger on the extinguisher, a huge cloud of white enveloping him. He shouted in confusion and staggered back. Rosalyn pounced, raising the metal canister high before bringing it crashing down.
Through the mist of white and the glowing blue, black blood squirted out to meet her, splattering with a sickening gush across her visor.
11
Piero howled with pain. His ears rang, wet, warm blood running into his mouth as he clawed at his eyes. The bitch. The bitch had blinded him. She would pay for that—she would die for that. There was nothing but fury inside him, fury and anguish. His hands stung from where the crowbar had bit into his palms, and now it felt like she had split his face in two. He wiped and wiped, covered in whatever she had shot him with and his own blood. Clever little thing.
And Rayan had helped her. With every crash bang crash of the crowbar, he had been seeking his clustermate. Why was Rayan trying to keep him out? What was he hiding? The cluster spores in the galley were no use, their senses not nearly as keen or as helpful as Rayan’s actual eyes. It was like screaming at someone across a canyon. His own voice rang back, but there was no answer from Rayan. He banged on the door and tried to see through Rayan’s eyes, but something stopped him. It was infuriating.
Which made him laugh. Of course. Piero threw back his head, lying flat on the floor, laughing and laughing, letting the horrible blood run freely into his mouth. He swallowed. Who cared? It was no use trying to fight the two of them, and besides, they needed her alive. Just for a little while the clever little shit had to live. He wiped at his eyes again and finally realized he could see. Blinking through the stinging, he gazed up through a lingering white fog at Rayan and the woman. There had been only glimpses of her through the cluster network as he made his way from the crew deck, Rayan keeping him from getting the full picture.
Mother—Foxfire—would be furious with him.
A sense of urgency had swept over him once the ship reset and the doors cycled. Mother told him to go and go fast. Things were happening. Something lucky had fallen into their laps. Something very interesting. Something that Mother wanted desperately to know more about. Piero’s laughter died out until it was just a soft, mirthful hoot. Of course Rayan had bungled this. Or maybe . . .
He’s winning her trust, the dark voice inside of him suggested. He’s lowering her defenses. Perhaps he is the clever little shit. Trust your brother. Trust your cluster.
Piero let that possibility wash over him. It felt good. And anyway, he didn’t really like violence, preferred to avoid it. It was so volgare. His father smacked him around only as a necessity. That was a good policy. Who knows? He might have swung that crowbar too hard and killed the girl before Mother got what she needed out of her.
“That wasn’t very polite,” he said up to their astonished faces. It came out garbled. One of his teeth was chipped, he now realized. They had been murmuring to each other but he didn’t bother to listen. He had to play this Rayan’s way. Make friends. He could do that. Friends relaxed. Friends let you pour them a drink. Let you in. Let you help. And then? Well, his father always said, If you can pat a man on the back, then you can put a knife there, too.
Rayan dropped down next to him, his teeth clenched in horror. “Piero . . . I’m so sorry. I should have stopped her. I didn’t know what to do.”
He waved the young man off. Such a worrier. They had the advantage now. She was outnumbered, this salvager. Piero reached through their shared network, through Mother, trying to calm Rayan, reassure him, let him know they could work together to outsmart the woman. His thoughts were more open now, but jumbled. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
“You . . . you were pounding so loud on the door. It sounded angry.”
Piero nodded, then reached up and slapped the boy gently on the side of the head. “You locked me in the dorms, you motherfucker, of course I was angry. What was I supposed to do? Even jerking off gets old.”
His eyes slid to their visitor. Prisoner. She hadn’t struck him again, so she was either cautious or naive. Possibly both. He tried to smile, and wondered just how gruesome it looked. Very, he hoped.
“Ah. Pardon my language,” he said to her, winking.
The woman recoiled, but did not lower the fire extinguisher clutched in both hands. That explained the white vapor all over the place and the godforsaken stinging in his eyes.
“Help me up, Rayan, my head is killing me.”
Rayan clapped a hand over his arm to help lever him up, but the woman took a big step forward.
“No,” she said, kicking the crowbar away from his side and across the galley. Clever. “You can stay right there.”
“And I thought I had a temper,” he murmured to Rayan. Inside, he felt his chest growing hotter with irritation. But he remembered that they had need. Mother had need. He glanced briefly at the glowing VIT on her arm and swallowed to keep from spitting at her. They needed that thing; the one on his own arm had gone dead. Useless.
Why hadn’t Rayan tricked her into removing her helmet? The oxygen levels were stable, and just one gulp of spore-filled air would put her on the path to Mother’s embrace. His eyes slid warily between the two now, his faith in Rayan dimming. Something was wrong.
“What is this, Rayan? I thought we were friends. She’s been here five minutes and you trust her more, eh? Do you even know her fucking name?”
“It’s Rosalyn,” the other man said, exasperated. “And . . . I don’t trust her. But I don’t trust you either, Piero. I . . . don’t think I trust anything anymore. Listen.” He swiveled on his knees and looked up at the woman, Rosalyn, his eyes glittering and huge. “He’s bleeding so much, can I just get him to the med bay, please?”
The woman stepped back, still brandishing her makeshift weapon, and squinted at them.
“Does it matter? I mean . . . doesn’t that stuff keep you alive no matter what?”
“It doesn’t mean he can’t feel the pain,” Rayan shot back. “I can do something for that, at least.”
Piero let his head dip back, playing it up. He was in pain, tremendous pain, but already he could feel the Foxfire inside him going to work, its soft, warm tendrils making their way through his body to the wound. Already there was a scar forming, a light web of blue knitting his split skin back together. And the pounding in his skull . . . well, that was nothing new, really, although his headaches were less severe now. They began to vanish when he stopped fighting the war inside and just sounded the retreat. Mother became gentler when he played into her hands. He wondered if that was where the sudden rage came from, the Foxfire, or if that was always inside him, and if there was really any difference at all now between him and the thing unfurling inside to heal him.
“Fine,” Rosalyn finally said. “I’m not a monster.”
“That’s one opinion,” Piero muttered, inhaling between his teeth as Rayan helped him slowly to stand. “Che palle, that hurts like hellfire. Damn your aim, woman.”
“I’m watching you,” she told him.
The nozzle of the extinguisher remained firmly between them. Piero slung his arm over Rayan’s shoulder, leaning heavily on the smaller man. He took the salvage
r’s measure with what sight he had, but decided she really was pretty, Indian maybe, a bit tall for his taste, with even brown skin, huge hazel eyes and a clean-shaven head. That was a pity. He pictured her with a head of long, flowing black hair and almost started salivating.
Not that she would be interested in him, but Piero liked to look. She wasn’t his type, not with that bald head, but hair could grow. Misato was old as dirt, and Rayan didn’t want anything to do with him sexually after the Foxfire took them. He had been bored nearly to death waiting for Rayan to let him out of the dorms, but maybe now things would get exciting. He looked again at her VIT. Yes, very exciting indeed. With her credentials they could get back to civilization and then there would be a world of possibilities, for him and for the hungry seeker inside.
Piero tried to scratch his chin casually, giving the woman a lazy smile, one that had worked plenty of times before on much prettier women.
“What do we do with her? I wouldn’t leave her alone with JAX or the cockpit,” Piero said. The sharp, summery scent of lemons drifted around him. That was happening more and more as the Foxfire deepened its hold.
Something about the salvager was achingly familiar. He couldn’t explain it, couldn’t explain it at all, but somehow he had seen her eyes before, hazel, big, filled with tears, filled with laughter . . . A memory, like a building fever, burned across his brain. How could I possibly know her? If he knew her, then maybe he ought to trust her . . . But no, no, that wasn’t right either. She wasn’t part of the cluster; she wasn’t one of them.
Rayan gave her a furtive glance, then nodded toward the mangled door to their left.
“He’s right, Rosalyn. I’m sorry,” he sighed. “But you have to come with us. You can bring the fire extinguisher if that makes you feel better.”
Something sparkled to Piero’s left, down the corridor, past the destroyed door and in the shadows of the halls covered in the thickness of Foxfire nodules that glowed like blue flame. Their leader. Mother’s favorite, he thought sneeringly. His presence was so strong it made the fringes of Piero’s vision stutter, his bones almost vibrate.
“That won’t be necessary,” their captain said. In the cavernous dark of the hall, Piero could only see two glowing blue eyes. “She’ll be coming with me.”
12
Outnumbered. Trapped. Friendless.
Her one gambit had not paid off—Rayan had caved, and now she was being escorted down the narrow, tubular corridor toward more of the unknown . . . Rosalyn hugged the fire extinguisher to her chest. She felt almost dizzy with fear and the drums in her head, the withdrawal symptoms. Never before had she craved a drink that way. Almost like oxygen. It would just take the edges of this sharp terror away, sand it down to something manageable. Or something she could forget.
At her side, JAX clipped along, energized by the fresh battery she had put in his chassis. Piero and Rayan followed behind her. They didn’t need to say a word; the threat simply existed. Hemmed in on all sides. Bloody trapped.
Maybe the woman aboard, Misato, would be more amenable to helping her. She couldn’t understand it—if this Foxfire thing was trying to control them and they had some shred of self-determination left, why wouldn’t they try to work with her? And what had happened to the other woman, Tuva? They didn’t even speak about her, and JAX had described her as deceased. Maybe she had passed before the Foxfire had a chance to spread.
Rosalyn swallowed hard. There was clearly something human left in these people, but she couldn’t let them get near other humans or they would simply spread the Foxfire farther and farther. No doubt that was the goal. Of the Foxfire, of course, but now of its hosts as well. Her heart clenched with pity, but there was something else, too . . . Revulsion. Dread. She had seen the fury in Rayan’s and then Piero’s eyes when the creature inside them took over. Mother, or so they called her. Bizarre. The flash of white eyes . . . the total lack of humanity . . .
Shuddering, she watched the man ahead of her move deeper into the research vessel. She hadn’t yet caught a glimpse of his face, but there was a tired stoop to his shoulders. The others had fallen in behind him immediately, and so she could only deduce that he was the last male crewmate, the captain. Where was Misato, she wondered, and what would happen when they reached wherever he wanted to take her?
A fire extinguisher wasn’t going to do much damage against three grown men. She needed a new weapon and she definitely needed a better plan.
Reason first, she cautioned herself. You’re outnumbered, remember?
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible. But even she could hear how small, how terrified she sounded.
“We’re going to talk in private while Piero gets his face figured out,” the man ahead of her said. He hadn’t introduced himself, and didn’t seem interested in speaking until they found that privacy. His voice was pleasant, confident, low and almost musical.
“I won’t hesitate to defend myself,” she warned him.
“Clearly.” The captain managed a short laugh, shaking his head. “Piero never had a pretty face, but now?”
“Eh, I can hear you,” Piero groused from behind her.
She had to agree with the captain. The tall Italian had a face as friendly as a hatchet, deeply lined, with a too-big nose and a razor-sharp chin. He was probably someone’s taste, someone who courted trouble. In the dossier picture he had ice-blue eyes, not so very different from the glowing orbs shooting daggers at the back of her head. His crude swagger reminded her of . . .
No, she couldn’t think about Glen just then. It all felt too close, too similar. She hadn’t been outnumbered in Conference Room B, but he had sixty pounds on her and the red-hot dangerous fire of a man enraged burning away inside him. It almost made her laugh, thinking how she had been afraid of Walters and their close quarters aboard the Salvager 6; now that seemed a million miles away, and quaint by comparison. God, Walters. They had killed him. He was out there spinning and spinning, shattering into smaller frozen pieces until he was nothing but dust.
They had come to a stop and Rosalyn didn’t notice, lost in thought, and she nearly walked directly into a storage locker at a fork in the corridor. She gasped softly in surprise, then watched Piero and Rayan hobble away and down the left fork, disappearing. As they went, Piero looked at her over his shoulder, face streaked with blood, his right eye split to the bone, where miniscule blue webs were already forming, a spidery net gleaming in the wound. He air-kissed at her and she turned away.
“Vile,” she whispered.
“This way.”
The captain had already started down the right fork. Strangely, he turned up on her AR nav bar. Other users in the system would appear as icons that grew brighter the closer they got, but of all the crew he was the only one registering on her display. That was important, she thought, doubting that the rest of the crew would have forgone the implant for integrated AR. Occasionally she ran into someone way older that had never gotten around to having the procedure or mistrusted the tech, but those folks were few and far between. Integrated AR technology was so convenient and widespread, it was almost a no-brainer to opt in for the implant.
JAX waited until she began to follow. It felt almost like a betrayal, knowing the Servitor was there to keep her in line. This tech was meant to be harmless. Maybe that was an avenue to explore if she ever got a minute alone . . . Rayan had hacked the permissions on JAX once, but that meant it could be done again. She wasn’t necessarily familiar with Servitor tech, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
“I’ll talk to Piero,” the man ahead of her said. “Tell him to watch his mouth.”
Rosalyn didn’t respond. Instead she stared at the back of his head, running silently through the dossier she had read not twenty-four hours earlier. That could work to her advantage, too, she thought, knowing these people. Or at least, knowing who they had been. So far w
hat she had seen made sense—Rayan was a crack biology and xenobiology graduate, top in his class and young for the position and money he was making at Merchantia. Piero was just muscle, and probably the most dangerous—ex-military turned mercenary turned glorified security guard. The samples on these vessels were sensitive and expensive, and piracy was uncommon this close to headquarters but not unheard of.
She called up the ship schematic on her AR display. The captain was leading them closer to the extensive storage needed for crew supplies, specimens and experiments. The area on the map marked MAINTENANCE ACCESS was getting closer, as well as a labeled hatch leading down to the bay for rovers and collection vessels. Storage, storage, maintenance, she thought, counting off the circular doors as they went by. It wouldn’t hurt to keep her bearings, even if those bearings were covered in that same glittering blue web of growth and spores. Her display continued trying to identify the growth, but the progress bar remained empty. Did that mean they could see her wherever she went in the ship? Was each of those glowing nodules another vigilant and watchful eye?
They stopped outside a regular storage hatch. JAX remained close, in easy striking distance. Still, he was an old model, and could possibly be knocked over with enough shoulder force. And then what? Rosalyn waited, watching the hatch door hiss open.
She held the extinguisher at the ready.
“Aren’t you nervous?” she asked. “To be alone with me, I mean. I attacked your friend.”
“He’s not my friend,” he replied flatly. Then he stepped into the doorway, gesturing for her to go through. When she hesitated, the Servitor lightly clamped her forearm and tugged. “And no, you’re . . .” He trailed off, but he sounded almost sad. “I want to trust you. I don’t know why, but something tells me I can.”
I wouldn’t bet on that, buddy.
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