Or maybe, just maybe, he was a traitor, and the guilt had gotten to him as quickly as the infestation.
Rosalyn’s head slid off her arms and onto the chair. No way that was comfortable. If he could, if it was possible or even appropriate, he would’ve liked to slide a pillow under her cheek and drape a blanket over her. After what she had seen, after what she now faced, she deserved to get some good, solid rest.
The salvager tried to kill you, kill your family. She will try to do it again.
Enemy at the gates. Edison dropped his glasses in his lap and scrubbed at his eyes. He had to stay awake and alert, lest the Foxfire catch him in a moment of weakness. It would be far too dangerous to lose control now when Piero and Rayan had vanished and Rosalyn was all but catatonic. Vulnerable.
Yes, baby. Vulnerable. Break the shield. Destroy the barrier. Let her join the family.
“I’m not doing a single fucking thing you tell me to do,” Edison muttered aloud. “I don’t care who you sound like.”
And how do you know that? How do you know this wasn’t intended? We want you to remain close to her. We want the temptation to become too much.
“Bullshit.”
Is that you saying that? Are you even you anymore? No idea original to your mind but to ours. You know this; you know our desires are intertwined.
“Not always.” Edison sighed and cleaned his glasses on his thermal crew shirt, then set them back in place. “Not now.”
I know you’re plotting against us, baby, I know you like her; we like her, too. Mother knows what you’re up to.
“Yeah?” He felt crazy speaking to himself this way, but if he didn’t, if he only talked back to the voices in his head, it made it easier for them to swirl together. A thought could be his and then seamlessly become something else, tainted and ripped from his control. “If I’m plotting against you, then try and stop me.”
Oh, we will. We are.
A hand like a vise clamped down on his shoulder. Edison leapt to his feet, throwing his right arm out for balance and slamming it against the clear barrier. He kept his balance, but his attacker had the upper hand. Of course he didn’t have to look. Piero peeled away from the darkness as if he were part of the shadows. He wasted no time, shoving Edison back against the shield and then reaching for his head, Piero’s huge hand closing over Edison’s face before cracking his head back against the barrier again and again. Something snapped. There was a crackle like the breaking of thick ice.
No. The shield will hold. It can’t break, it can’t . . .
Edison lashed out with both hands, landing one blow, but it was a weak one. There was no coming back from this ambush. He couldn’t see, couldn’t think, not with Piero’s giant hand smothering him and blocking his eyes. Their connection returned with a vengeance, pure, obliterating emotion rolling off Piero. Edison gasped, hearing his glasses click softly as they landed on the floor.
Rage. Frustration. Elation.
His chest felt giddy, as if that excitement in Piero had nested itself effortlessly in his body. Then he was flying or tumbling, jerked away from the barrier, his thoughts a jumble as he fought off the other man’s emotions. More than the disorienting blows to the head, those unfiltered feelings left him reeling and confused.
There was a soft sound behind him and then laughter, but there was no telling if it was his voice or another’s.
26
Shattered. Shattering. She opened her eyes, the world black and blue, glowing, glowing so brightly as if fused to a dream. A fluorescent smiling skull glittered in the dark outside the chamber, hovering there before she recognized the springy mane of hair and the powerful frame attached to it. Piero. She opened her mouth to scream out a warning but nothing happened.
Nothing happened and everything happened.
Piero fell on Edison with unnatural speed, grabbing him by the head and lifting him to his feet before using his skull like a rock to break the flimsy shield. Slam, slam, slam. Rosalyn watched in mute horror as a hairline fissure splintered out from the contact point, and half expected the barrier to crash inward and expose her to the corrupted ship’s atmosphere. But then Piero ripped Edison away, his spectacles dropping to the floor with a tiny bounce.
The violence ended as abruptly as it began, Piero flinging Edison into the darkness. Rosalyn scrambled to her feet, floundering in a frenzy of dread and confusion. Her environmental suit lay in a heap near the decontamination chamber and she hurled herself toward it, cursing the number of toggles and seals that had to be meticulously done and redone to ensure total security. And the filters. The filters. By a stroke of luck they had finished their cycle in the decontam pod. She ripped them out, punching the old filters out and into a hazard bin, breathing hard enough through her respirator to faint.
“Fucking shit, fuck,” she mumbled, hands shaking as she switched in the new filters and raced toward the door. But she stopped herself. No. This was panic speaking. This was haste. She had to be smarter than the thumping war drums in her head that said, Go, go, why are you fucking dawdling, GO!
Edison couldn’t sense either Piero or Rayan. Against Piero she stood little chance. Against them both? She needed more than adrenaline to save Edison, if he could be saved at all. Of course she had to try, because three grown men against her spelled quick and total doom. Misato might be helpful, but could she really rely on another person when the infected crew were dropping like flies?
Fight back, she thought. Fight back.
She paced, and then raced to the 3-D extruder, wondering if she could at least print some sort of weapon. Most printers were prohibited by law from doing so, and only a sophisticated hacker could change that. The machines were calibrated to automatically scan schematics for known weapon parts to avoid the rampant proliferation of 3-D printed guns, knives and bomb parts. She didn’t have time to mess around with sorting through the six million available printing formats either. Rosalyn shook out her trembling hands, then smoothed them repeatedly down her legs. Her leg. Her right leg. She gasped, releasing the sealing valve on the right leg of her suit, allowing her to access the plain jumpsuit beneath. Panting, she thrust a hand down into the pocket of her cargo pants.
The multi-tool. It wasn’t much, but it had a decent enough utility knife and corkscrew, and both of those could sink handily into an eye or throat. Clearly those infected with Foxfire were dulled to pain, but a good enough slash would likely be incapacitating. She didn’t need to kill anyone, just get them out of the way long enough for Edison to fight back or run.
Or run. To where? She had Edison’s captain’s code, but that could only do so much. There were no evac pods, no truly safe places on the ship. Her little hideaway chamber was the most secure place, she thought, but if Edison got inside, it would make him immensely sick and expose her one safe zone to corruption.
Think. Think. Think.
Starved of options, Rosalyn brought up her AR display. There he was, the indicator blinking softly at the very top of her vision. That was a good sign, at least; it meant his display was still functioning, and if his chip hadn’t been completely corrupted by the Foxfire, then maybe he was still fighting it off. Piero and Rayan seemed to fall to it in a flash, so there was no telling how long she had to act. Her heart twisted as she stared at the display—Edison had changed his public profile.
Dogs, jazz, single malt
She wanted to cry. No sleep, hardly any food, and now her one solid ally, the one person who seemed at least partially reliable, had been attacked. It was bad enough before, but now the enemies were turning on one another, and somehow that was so, so much worse.
“Hey.”
Oh God, Oh God . . .
But it was only Misato. She put one palm on the shield, lightly, pressing her other forefinger to her lips. Luckily her eyes were blue and not the stark, terrible white of Foxfire’s control.
“He took Ediso
n,” Rosalyn whispered hoarsely. “Piero is . . . he’s like a demon. His face is all shredded, skin hanging off of him, his mouth . . . Jesus, it’s a nightmare, and all I have is this stupid fucking multi-tool with like a two-inch blade and . . . that’s it. That’s all I have. He took Edison.”
Misato nodded, her silver hair and eyes glowing brightly in the darkness. “I need you to stay calm, Rosalyn, you’re shaking.”
“I know. I know. I just . . . What the hell are we going to do? Can you, I don’t know, sense him? Is he all right?”
“Yes, but the others . . . I can’t see them. As hard as I try, they’re just not there.” Misato slowly reached into her cargo pocket, pulling out what looked like a homemade machete, a weapon cobbled together from a plastic chair leg and a jagged shard of the ship’s interior.
“Jesus Christ! Where did you get that thing?” Rosalyn rushed to the glass, her helmet bumping gently against it.
“It was a precaution, in case I wanted to take my life peacefully.”
“Yeah. There is nothing peaceful about that thing.”
“No,” Misato agreed, inspecting it. “Hm. Perhaps not. Perhaps that works to our advantage. Come on, we need to fix this. For Tuva?”
Rosalyn nodded, panting, then transferred the multi-tool to her left hand, gripping it tightly. Tap, tap, tap. There went the code. No turning back. The shield went up with a quiet hiss, and she joined Misato in the quivering darkness. She felt suddenly aware of every sound, every breath, every reverberating buzz of the ship’s body. There was a metallic click-clack behind Misato, and Rosalyn reached to pull the older woman back. JAX teetered into view, not a single light shining on his chassis or head.
“It’s okay,” Misato said, twisting out of her grasp. “He’s with us.”
“But how?” Rosalyn whispered. “I thought Rayan hacked his functions.”
“The kid? Sure. But I’m an engineer. I could make JAX perform Swan Lake if I wanted to,” she replied, inching carefully down the corridor.
“Isn’t that programming?”
“Yeah, obviously.” Misato snorted, JAX sticking close to her side. “I had to even the odds for us. Piero has to be stopped.”
Rosalyn caught up to her, brandishing her multi-tool knife at the darkness. “He was already a murderer, now . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what he did to himself. This is getting out of control. I mean, it was already impossible, but it seems like the Foxfire is accelerating or something. I’m not . . . can I tell you things? Is it safe to say anything to you, or will you just feed it back to them and betray me?”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Misato replied, coming to a stop. “Edison shared it all. Your plan, that is.”
“What? That . . . but he . . . he didn’t tell me that . . .”
“No, because you don’t trust anyone here, but he does. Maybe you should consider it, too. Just a friendly suggestion.”
Rosalyn considered that, standing there frozen and afraid in the darkness. What was she going to do? Take on a woman with a homemade machete and her faithful Servitor? Alliances had to be made, as much as she hated it. As much as she still didn’t fully trust any of it. This was as close as she was going to get, she thought, not real, deep friendship or trust but a convenient partnership, one that would hopefully last long enough to survive this sudden mutiny. There was a plan to enact as long as they could wrest control of the ship back from Piero.
“No, I do. I like you. I would like you a lot if we weren’t here. And I trust you; you wanted to do the right thing for Tuva. I . . . trust or something you. For now. Anyway, how are we going to find them? We can both see Edison, I’ve got my AR, but we have no idea where the other two are.”
“You’re not the only one who can fit into an engineering bay duct,” Misato murmured. “JAX is monitoring the security feeds.”
“Crewmates Endrizzi, Aries and Yasin are currently located in starboard observation.”
“Christ, you’re good. You did all that just now?” Rosalyn was feeling increasingly confident in this temporary alliance. She was grateful, at least, that the one person available to her as an ally was intensely, scarily smart.
“You’re terrifying,” Rosalyn added with a shiver.
“Ha. Just resourceful. I went to work on the cameras and JAX as soon as Piero went dark. Rayan came to see me and he was scattered . . . worsening. Something was different, and I prefer to be prepared,” Misato explained. She began moving down the corridor again, keeping her makeshift weapon at the ready, and Rosalyn copied her.
“Why starboard observation?” she asked in a whisper. “What’s there?”
In the glow of Misato’s turquoise eyes, Rosalyn saw the old woman’s mouth harden into a grim line.
“The brig.”
“Crew member Iwasa?” JAX interjected. “Pardon the interruption, but it seems pertinent: Crewmate Endrizzi is attempting to access the communications hub directly.”
“Directly?” The engineer drew up short and Rosalyn stumbled past her. “Define ‘directly,’ JAX.”
“With his fists,” the Servitor intoned matter-of-factly.
“Oh no. Oh, that’s not good,” Misato breathed. “Show me the feed.”
JAX lit up, his chassis becoming a milky white that then filled with a camera stream from starboard observation. The two women crowded around him, leaning in for a better look. The image was murky and difficult to make out, and there was no sound, but toward the back left corner of the gently curved room, next to a large observation window, was Edison, locked behind what looked like the same tough, clear shielding from cold storage. He shouted something unintelligible, and Rosalyn heard the echo of it in real time, muted by the doors and corridors between them.
Piero had ripped a smooth, silver panel from a waist-high bank of storage bins near the brig. His fists came away with spools and spools of green cording.
“God, what are they doing to him? And what are they doing to the ship?” Rosalyn whispered.
Misato squinted and then shook her head. “JAX, where is Rayan? I don’t see him there. Find him on the cameras.”
The faintly glowing image stream on the Servitor’s curved body went dead and then cycled at impossible speed through all the available cameras on the ship. Darkened room after darkened room flew by. When the cycle ended, JAX tilted his narrow head to the side.
“Unavailable.”
Misato blew out a frustrated breath and then glanced at Rosalyn. “He’s somewhere. Keep monitoring the feeds, JAX. We need to know if Rayan turns up. The second he turns up.”
“He’s probably hunting us,” Rosalyn offered. “They know you, right? They know how capable you are.”
“How capable we are. I told you, Rosalyn, you’re a survivor, which is why we need to change course. Piero will kill our chance of getting a warning signal out. He’s already sent his SOS; he doesn’t need to do anything more but sit and wait for more ships to arrive at these coordinates,” Misato said, taking off briskly down the corridor.
Rosalyn leapt to keep up, forcing down the exhaustion, a bone-deep brittleness that felt as threatening as the man tearing open the ship to rip at its guts.
“No, no,” she quickly said, putting a light hand on the shorter woman’s shoulder. “What about Edison? You can still sense him, right? That means he isn’t a lost cause yet.”
Dogs, jazz, single malt
Rosalyn blinked. Was this just sentiment talking? The lack of sleep could be compromising her ability to think straight, but it seemed wrong to just leave Edison there and potentially lose another friend. Ally. She meant ally.
“We’ll be totally outnumbered if Edison goes,” she hurried to say, watching Misato’s eyes flick back and forth as she no doubt made her own calculations. “We have to protect the comms, that’s priority one, right? I need to get a message out to HQ and stop them from coming here. I
f we go to the cockpit now, that means I have to put in my credentials, and if we go down, then the Foxfire has free rein of the ship. We’re not outnumbered, not yet, but that could change. And fast.”
“Our chances of success greatly decrease against three opponents,” JAX chirped. “Crewmate Yasin is approximately one hundred and sixty pounds, suffers from asthma, and possesses no military or martial arts training. Crewmate Endrizzi is approximately two hundred pounds, with extensive experience in Krav Maga, judo—”
“Yes, we get it.” Misato waved him off impatiently. “Then we stick together and go straight for Piero. He probably sent Rayan to ambush us if we tried for the cockpit.” The engineer set off back down the passage, and Rosalyn tried to keep pace. “I don’t like the idea of fighting Rayan, anyway. I’d rather put it off. He’s a good kid . . . What a waste.”
Rosalyn watched her take a hip flask out of her left cargo pant pocket and chug it. She wouldn’t have minded a spot of liquid courage herself, but that would have to wait. Her AR display kicked in, highlighting the flask before Misato tucked it back into her pocket. C8H10N4O2. Coffee.
“This is all a waste,” Rosalyn told her quietly. She didn’t know why they were whispering; it was doubtful that their whereabouts were a secret to Piero and Rayan. “I could be in Mile End having a Pisco sour right now.”
“So why aren’t you?”
Rosalyn breathed hard out of her nose, shaking off the nostalgia. It wasn’t helpful. She could have stayed at Belrose Industries. She could’ve pushed harder to get Glen sacked. She could’ve filed the police report. Or just quit and stayed on Earth. Or taken a million other paths that didn’t lead to a knife in her hand and panic in her heart.
She had been so sure that the blaming voice in her head had been excised like a malignant tumor, but no, a few dangerous cells remained. This is your fault. Why didn’t you just divert to refuel that senator? Walters would still be alive. You might never have even ended up on the Brigantine. You didn’t have to sabotage the ship; look where that got you.
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