Fifty-two

 

A bomb. A prototype. Five hundred prototypes.

On the Moon.

DeRicci let out a small breath. She couldn’t look at Flint or Popova. Not yet. Because if she looked at them, if she told them, then the horrible thing Jin Rastigan had just told her might be true.

There might be five hundred bombers walking around the streets of the Moon, in various domes, in small cities and large, able to do more damage individually than the Anniversary Day bombers did six months before.

Not again. A big part of her prayed to deities she didn’t believe in, asking all of them, every one she could think of, not again. Please. Not again.

Then she took a deep breath and shook off the terror she felt.

As Flint would say, DeRicci was only taking Rastigan’s word. And for all DeRicci knew, that mask she had seen was only on one face, only part of one Peyti, somewhere on the Moon.

“I need to see something,” DeRicci said as calmly as she could.

She had control of her expression, she knew that. And her voice sounded normal. Flint didn’t even look up. Popova did, but Popova had to. She worked for DeRicci.

“I need to look at yesterday’s faces. Just yesterday’s.” DeRicci hoped that Popova wouldn’t ask why. DeRicci didn’t want to tell her why.

She wanted to be wrong. She wanted to tell them later how she had believed Rastigan for a brief moment, and it had been silly.

She wanted them to laugh about this.

Popova didn’t ask why. Instead, all the Peyti faces floating around DeRicci’s office winked out for a half second, and then came back, in different positions.

And wearing different masks.

The masks DeRicci was used to. The masks every Peyti had worn since they had come to the Moon, maybe since they had started interacting with humans.

“Now,” DeRicci said, her voice still calm even though her nerves weren’t, “show me today’s.”

Flint finally looked up, a small frown between his pale eyebrows. He clearly had no idea what she was up to, but he knew she was up to something.

The images winked out again and reappeared.

With the damn mask prototypes.

She couldn’t contain it any longer. Five hundred Peyti. Clones of a mass murderer. Wearing masks, prototype masks, with bombs.

“What is it, Noelle?” Flint asked.

Too big to contain, that’s what. If she captured one of them, just one, he would let the others know that she had figured it out. If she disabled one bomb, just one, the Peyti wearing that bomb would let the others know.

Five hundred bombers.

Five hundred.

On her Moon.

In places she couldn’t always see.

“Give me just a minute to think,” she said.

Because, she suspected, a minute was all the time that she had.