“Yes,” Edison said, venting a dark chuckle. “We would.”
“Anyway,” Misato mused, scratching at her chin, “I have no idea if the fungus can survive extreme temperatures. Even space might not kill it off.”
“Something to think about,” he agreed. “Something to test.”
“What the hell was that? Do you see this? We’re back online, baby!” Piero had slid into engineering with a spin and a whoop, Rayan not far behind him. The Italian danced over to them, his right eye split through the middle, the bone and sinew beneath protected by a thin web of blue. The flesh all up and down the right side of his face was black and purple with bruising. It was gruesome to look at, but seemed to bother Piero not at all.
And he noticed the open duct hatch. And he noticed Edison turn and shield it from his view.
Yes, protect the salvager. Her bumbling has come to nothing. No, not nothing; she has helped.
He was not, he insisted silently, protecting her because she had accidentally cut the code blue. In fact, he didn’t know why he was standing guard like that, only that he didn’t want Piero anywhere near Rosalyn. The short stints when he slid into Piero’s mind through the alien network were enough to convince Edison that he never wanted to go near the man’s thoughts again. He could never control how much he saw, or how long it happened. The glimpses into Piero’s mind were brief, shattered fragments, never enough to make out anything more than flashes of dark memories. Foxfire wanted Rosalyn’s information and mind, so Piero would probably protect her, too, but Edison didn’t trust him.
It was confusing and his head hurt, and he didn’t want to deal with the Italian just then. Or ever.
“Don’t get too excited,” Rayan said, lingering near the door. He fidgeted nervously with something in his pockets, having changed into a lab coat. The collar was splashed with dried blood, his or Piero’s, it was impossible to tell. “The nav systems still want active credentials. We’re not going anywhere unless Rosalyn gives up her password.”
“You’re missing the point,” Piero replied. Laughing boisterously, he shuffled back over to Rayan and clapped the young man with rattling force on the back. Rayan jerked forward. “The code lifted. HQ will notice that and send more ships. We don’t need her, eh? We’ll be better prepared when the next morons show up—we take their credentials instead and we can go wherever we please. Rayan can send another hail, and we can dump this bitch out the air lock.”
Edison scrubbed at his chin, stowing the urge to toss Piero out into space instead.
“Captain . . .” Inching forward, Rayan stared up at him with his huge eyes, lower lip trembling. “We could give her the injection while she’s out cold”—and here he glanced nervously at Piero—“if you want to keep the Foxfire away from her.”
“Bullshit. Don’t waste the syringe,” Piero said hotly. His momentum was all in his shoulders as he stalked toward the engineering hatch. It was familiar body language, the seething masculine coil of anger tightening his shoulder blades together as he came face-to-face with Edison. God, that blow to the face really had made Piero terrifying to look at.
His lip curled up and he craned his neck to see around Edison’s head. “We can use the cells in her suit for something, yeah? Let me have a go at her VIT, I bet I can crack it.”
“That’s not happening,” Edison told him sternly. He could see into the man’s face where the muscle and skull had caved in. A jagged piece of cheekbone stabbed out from the split in his skin. He was strangely odorless, as if the Foxfire had drained him of all human markers.
Piero leaned back on his heels, sweeping his eyes up and down Edison’s face before his sneer deepened. Maybe he recognized the matching posture, the planted feet, the puffed chest. “Ha. Fine. Put it to a vote, then. You Americans love your democracy. We want her VIT credentials, don’t we? So we can actually fucking get somewhere.”
“I’m no thief,” Misato said, joining Edison and extending the wall between Piero and the duct.
“Rayan?” Piero spun, his swagger returning as he jutted his hip out toward the younger man and pointed double finger guns at him. “You’re with me, I know you are. This is all a waste of time. Let’s get you back to the lab where you belong. A real lab, not this satellite bullshit. Back to campus, to life, to wine and food and pussy. You’re just too tense, we all are, nobody thinks right trapped on a little ship with three other people for this long.”
But Rayan was shaking his head midway through the speech, his eyes fixed on the tops of his shoes. “I don’t know. The campus . . . We would just make things worse.”
“Ignore him, Rayan.” Edison took one step backward, putting himself closer to Rosalyn.
“Motherfucker, don’t touch her, we haven’t voted yet.” Piero slapped a hand in Edison’s direction before closing the distance between him and Rayan. His lip curled up toward his split cheek, Piero leaned amiably on Rayan’s shoulder, dipping his head down, one roguish curl falling over his forehead. Then his eyes seemed to go unfocused, a white, glittering curtain dropping over them.
“We had a plan, Rayan. Mother has a plan. The woman is not important, only her cooperation is important. Violence is unnecessary, she can simply join the cluster and contribute her credentials and knowledge voluntarily.”
Edison lurched away from the hatch, watching Piero’s hand clamp hard over Rayan’s shoulder. They were still learning about the strange connection between them, but there was no doubting that proximity strengthened that bond. All in one place like that, they had made themselves vulnerable. Piero and Rayan, he knew, were the most lost to the Foxfire, and now he looked on in horror as Rayan gritted his teeth, fighting but helpless, as it took control of him, too.
“You’re sick,” Edison snapped at Piero. “You let that shit rule you? You’re a coward.”
“We rule over you, too,” Piero—the Foxfire—told him.
Pain seared through Edison’s head, and he heard Misato cry out in alarm before dropping to her knees. She put both hands over her face, shivering.
“I never let you do it,” Edison shouted through the hot knife slicing through his brain. “I never want you to do it.”
Rayan’s head snapped up suddenly, frosty white blazing out from his eyes. “Violence is unnecessary. We can gift her bliss. Connection. This is the compromise.”
“No.”
“What is she to you? A little crush? Aw.” This was new. This was Piero’s shithead attitude mixed seamlessly with the alien’s intentions. His eyes were pure white. His voice was his own. “What is she to you? We’re your crew. Your cluster. Listen to your mother.”
Crew. Cluster. None of it meant anything anymore. Rosalyn was the most human thing on the ship, and that was worth saving. Not one more person was going to experience this; Edison was going to fight through it no matter what, he decided, even if he was the only anchor keeping the ship from blowing away in the storm. On the floor next to him Misato wasn’t giving up, though her shoulders trembled harder and harder.
Warm, tempting tendrils licked at the edge of his pain. If he just gave in, the suffering would be over and he could sink into the Foxfire’s influence like a waiting bath.
“No,” he repeated. “No.”
Edison charged at them. Moving made it easier to resist. Running with all of his weight behind one shoulder, he forgot about arguments and reasoning. It was not an elegant solution but a solution nonetheless. Misato stumbled to her feet, grunting in agony as Edison rushed by her, catching Piero off guard. He was already off balance, leaning so hard on Rayan, and now it was easy to aim right at his armpit and send him reeling back toward the door.
There was a loud crack as they collided, and Rayan spun away, managing to land against the wall and huddle there, his eyes still wild and silver.
Piero was back on his feet in an instant, growling, hurling himself toward the door as it shut with a hiss.
His fingers curled into talons as he reached for the control panel on the other side, but Edison was just a little faster, inputting his captain’s code and locking him out.
He hadn’t noticed how hard he was breathing, but he leaned against the door, listening to Piero swear and kick. Fixing his crooked glasses, Edison turned around, sliding down a few inches while Piero huffed and paced on the other side.
Then he knew, or sensed, that Piero had put his palm gently on the door. “We are your cluster, your family,” he heard Piero murmur. It didn’t sound anything like him at all. “We are not the enemy, Edison.”
He closed his eyes, made a fist and pressed it against the portal. “You’re sure as shit not my friend.”
“Let him in.” Rayan rushed toward the door, slamming his fist against the panel uselessly. Without Edison’s code there was no opening the portal. Outside, Piero laughed and laughed, adding his own fists to the racket. “Let us in! LET US IN!”
The biologist was screaming now, louder and louder, frantic, and Edison didn’t know if his aching head could take one more shout like that.
“LET US IN! LET US IN!”
“You have to stop that.” Edison’s voice shook. Whatever Rayan was doing called to the monster inside him. It snarled and snapped, desperate to get out, determined to open the door and let Piero and the chaos back in. “Rayan, listen to me, you have to control yourself.”
He didn’t like manhandling the kid, but there were precious few options. Misato joined him, taking Rayan by the shoulders as he bucked and shrieked, both fists banging on the door panel. Clamping a hand over the biologist’s mouth, he made a soothing sound over and over again, as if trying to settle a spooked animal. Shhhh. It’s okay. Think of a memory. Something that’s just you, anything that’s just you. Shhhh, calm down now.
It was as much for Edison as it was for the kid.
Misato met his eye over Rayan’s shoulder, her mouth a thin line, but he looked quickly away from her, afraid. Proximity was dangerous. Easier now, he thought, without the screaming, to keep hold of his humanity. But still.
At last Rayan stilled, no longer squirming and kicking at them. He blinked rapidly, the bright terror in his eyes dulling until it was the usual dimly glowing turquoise. His hands closed gently over Edison’s wrists. On the other side of the door, it had gone quiet, Piero’s giggling vanishing down the corridor. Even without the silence, Edison sensed he was gone.
“Are you going to be quiet?” he asked Rayan, stern as a parent.
The kid nodded yes.
“All right, don’t make me regret this.” Edison let him go, watching the biologist stumble away, his clothes rumpled and still bloody, his thick black hair sticking up in every direction, revealing the grisly wound below. He wondered if they all appeared that haggard and dirty. Human needs, human instincts, had become distant desires, an occasional itch that he was too distracted to scratch. Showers. Food. Contact. It was like the alien thing inside him was slowly setting aside everything that made him a man and discarding it.
“I’m sorry,” Rayan whispered, huddling in the middle of the engineering room with both arms wrapped around his middle. He shivered as if freezing cold, avoiding eye contact.
“Forget it,” Misato said as she hurried to the door panel. “You can apologize later. We locked ourselves inside here, and Piero has access to the cockpit. To JAX. With the Foxfire controlling him like that . . .”
“I know.” Edison pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing fruitlessly for his headache to subside. At least the beast in his head had calmed for the moment. “Not my finest idea.”
Rayan perked up, but his face was streaked with tears. With a few faltering steps toward the door, he raised his hand and closed his eyes. As he did, a crisp, mechanical female voice spoke across the intercom system.
“Emergency broadcast parameters met. Fire damage detected. Foreign matter present in crew-critical quadrants . . .”
“He’s going to send an emergency hail,” Rayan whispered, shaking his head. “He wants to lure more ships here. He wants to expand the cluster.”
19
She woke to a deep slicing sensation in her stomach.
Hunger. When was the last time she had eaten something? Rosalyn blinked in the cool semidarkness. She didn’t recognize where she was at first, and sat up, fast, too fast, her vision spinning from the sudden rush of blood. Whatever she was lying prone on was quite soft and accommodating, padded and slick with some kind of plastic coating. Her eyes adjusted gradually, and she instinctively reached for her face, breathing a sigh of relief when she felt the protective bubble shielding her from the ship’s compromised atmosphere.
“You’re safe, chickadee.”
Rosalyn started, twisting sharply to the right. She hadn’t noticed the small old woman sitting next to her, hands folded around a full white mug. The last crew member, Misato Iwasa. Her AR display fragmented into a few pale squares, forming boundaries around the various parts of her face and body to identify her. One square highlighted her delicate mouth and the mole next to it, another what would have been brightly inquisitive brown eyes. At least, that was what was shown in the dossier picture that popped up in the upper right-hand corner of her display.
A fish tank lined the wall behind her, bathing the room in watery blue light. The spores had spread into the tank, and there didn’t seem to be a single fish inside swimming around, just floating turquoise threads along the surface.
“Hi.” Rosalyn didn’t know what else to say. There was a dull ringing in the back of her head, and her skull felt soft, like a bruised apple. She groaned and stretched, glancing around the room, her AR helpfully providing the schematic overlay and informing her that this was the medical bay and attached wet labs.
“Are you hungry?” Misato Iwasa asked conversationally.
“Wait . . .” Rosalyn’s memory was returning along with her vision. They were obviously still on the ship and obviously not dead. She squeezed her eyes shut and sighed. “It didn’t work, did it?”
“Your quaint little plan to blow us to hell? No, afraid not. Not a bad idea, but you ended up doing us a favor. Well, not us. Them.” She pointed to her eyeball and shrugged. Just like Edison, she seemed to wear the weight of their plight on her shoulders, sinking down toward the floor as she took a long sip from her mug.
“You’re . . . not angry.” Rosalyn squinted at her, her stomach twisting again with hungry anguish. Sitting up, she dangled her legs off the padded examination chair. “You’re not angry. Why are you not angry? I tried to kill you.”
Misato’s thin brows went up and she snorted above her cup. “Did you try to kill me, chickadee, or them?”
“Them,” Rosalyn admitted. “But them also means you.”
“And you.” Misato stood and crossed to the laboratory counters opposite where they were sitting. There were two small, refrigerated lockers, one with a taped label reading SPECIMENS, DO NOT EAT and the other labeled FOOD, DEFINITELY DO EAT.
She opened the latter and rummaged. Half watching her, Rosalyn reached for her VIT, inputting her personal code and checking the life on her oxygen canisters. If she wanted to stay alive and healthy, which she hadn’t decided on yet, then she would need to maintain enough juice in her suit and a reasonable oxygen level. Even if the oxygen had stabilized on the Brigantine, she didn’t trust the filtration system in her suit to deal with the Foxfire spores indefinitely. For the moment she retained plenty of oxygen, but the filters were another story. To keep her safe, they were dealing with a spore-choked environment. Eventually those filters would need to be replaced, especially after constantly processing such heavily contaminated air.
“Hungry?” Misato called. She returned from the lockers with a few ration pouches.
“How did you know?”
“Your stomach is growling something fierce. No way you thought to stop for a snack while
sabotaging the ship.” It was a gentle accusation, given with a smile.
Rosalyn took the pouches from her and felt her face grow hot. “I thought it was the right thing to do.”
“It still is, probably.” Misato took a seat again, brooding over her mug, and Rosalyn’s gut growled just at the sight of the steaming liquid heaven in the cup.
“God, that looks so good,” Rosalyn muttered. “I’m starving.”
“It’s coffee, probably not the best for an empty stomach.” The older woman nodded to the pouches in Rosalyn’s lap and smirked. “How do you plan on eating those?”
She hadn’t even thought that far ahead. Studying the pouches (sweet potato puree, freeze-dried turkey cutlet, reconstituted apple crumble), she chewed for a moment on the inside of her cheek. Soon she would have to use the bathroom, or make the uncomfortable decision of letting the suit cycle and expel her waste for her.
“Cold storage has the decontam chamber and a bathroom. I might be able to finagle something.”
“Or I can,” Misato suggested. She rolled away on her chair for a moment, then flicked herself back with her heels, returning with a small touch tablet she had taken from a messy examination table. “Hold this.”
Rosalyn took the mug from her while Misato brought up a simple drawing app on the tablet, sketching rapidly with her fingers, making an improbably precise schematic, as good as any Rosalyn might find loaded up on her AR.
“You worked on the Io Station Project for the Global Alliance,” Rosalyn said softly. “You’re practically a legend on Earth. Your dossier . . . I mean, it’s incredible. Why are you on the Brigantine?”
“Vacation?” Misato glanced up at her and winked, still working diligently. “I had my fill of irrigation rigs and sulfur dispersion systems, thought I would give bioengineering a look. Or maybe I just have an addiction to school. Here . . .”
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