PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
PALLAS STATION
478.2.6.06
The second morning, I regretted insisting I take the mat in the other room, for when I woke, my right side tingled, and my headache had returned with its full disruptive power.
Jordan and Zhen were still asleep—Zhen’s light snores were a rhythmic purr—so I lay there several minutes before getting up. Once on my feet, I attempted a kata learned as a child to drive off the discomfort. Instead, I lurched over. The words semicircular canals chased each other through my mind, though the reason for that particular phrase eluded me. I pulled myself to the chair, falling heavily upon it.
Jordan’s sleep-laced voice croaked, “Everything all right?”
My answer must have been insufficient, for seconds later, two images of Venetia Jordan leaned over me. “What was that?”
I blinked, and the images resolved into one.
“What’s going on?” Zhen called from the antechamber.
I forced syllables over my uncooperative tongue. “Nothing. Slept poorly.”
“Anyone would with an army of drones around them,” Zhen muttered.
“Had”—what was the word?—“a degree of para . . . pares . . .” I could not finish.
Jordan worried her lower lip, then finished for me. “Paresthesia?”
I nodded.
Zhen’s soprano sharpened. “What?”
“Her arm fell asleep,” Jordan explained.
Tousled blue hair entered my field of vision. “That wasn’t what I meant, J. My grandmère had . . . Never mind.”
Jordan studied me. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“Tried . . .” My left hand tightened around the arm rest. “Exercise for blood flow. I fell.” Heat crept up my neck to my cheeks. “Is nothing.”
Zhen spun my chair around toward her, and the room swam. She tilted my face up. “Your leg was affected, too?”
I nodded, though my brain felt as if it sloshed in my skull.
Jordan put her hand on Zhen’s shoulder and knelt in front of me, her eyes searching mine. “Headache?”
Her frown deepened when I grimaced at her question. “For days.”
“Comms, J?” Zhen asked. “Or not?”
“Not.”
“Right.” Zhen ran her fingers through her hair, twisting it into a knot. “I’ll do it.”
“We should have taken her to Max as soon as we landed.”
Their words flew too fast, but I managed, “No.”
“She’s right,” Zhen said. “Those rotted Elders would have snatched her away. Besides, he might be the best in the system, but he doesn’t have a medicomputer down here.”
Jordan leaned back on her heels. “There should be supplies in the medkit. If he didn’t send jet injectors because of nanites—”
“I know, I know. Acetylsalicylic acid is the next best thing.” Zhen tugged on her cap. “I’ll be back with Max or Williams in an hour.”
She meant to leave?
“Must not!” My response erupted with energy that startled even me. “Will be—am determined—to be well.”
“Doesn’t work that way.” Zhen tugged the skullcap over her tangled bun.
“You must not.” I turned too quickly, and dizziness overtook me. I concentrated on enunciation to prove nothing was wrong, though my speech sounded odd in my ears. “Jordan, not with roaches and people who would kill me for my blood. She is dressed like me. And what if they return?”
“They don’t know where we are,” Jordan said calmly.
Had I been unclear?
“No, no. The roaches. That carcass, half-eaten.” I jerked upward, stumbled through the antechamber to block the door, and turned to face the room.
Jordan and Zhen stood side by side, watching me.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” Jordan said slowly. “Zhen will stay here with you. I’ll get Max.”
My heart roared like a shuttle engine. I said something, and whatever it was, they both stilled.
“J, we can’t let her get worked up,” Zhen said in an undertone, as if I would not hear.
I held my position. Potential attacks by roaches or murderers were too possible. They could not leave. A tear trickled down my cheek.
“Calm down.” Zhen pulled off her skullcap. Her hair fell from its knot and tumbled over her face. She tucked it behind her ears. “I won’t go.”
“We’ll both stay with you. The roaches won’t get anyone.” Jordan spread out her hands. “Simmer down, my friend. Everything’s fine.”
“Promise,” I demanded. “You must promise.”
“Founders’ oath,” Zhen declared. “But you promise to ease up.”
My body sagged. “I will.”
“We’ll see to your headache,” she continued, “then you’ll eat and rest.”
A dim sense of urgency prompted me to say, “Something else.”
“Something else what?” Zhen asked as she guided me to the sofa under the stormy painting and Jordan dug through the medkit. “Water, J.”
“I cannot . . .” I obediently swallowed the pills. Jordan gave me food, but rather than eating, I leaned forward to rest my forehead in my hand. “Yes, the drones. Charles? I think . . . And Kyleigh. Yes, Kyleigh.”
“My friend,” Jordan said softly, “you aren’t making any sense. Rest for now. Whatever it is, it can wait.”
They layered blankets over me, and as sleep took hold to drag me under, my final thought was that Jordan had twice referred to me as her friend.
Snatches of conversation intruded on dreams, which I forgot upon waking. I stretched. The blankets crumpled to the floor as my stocking-clad feet slipped from underneath.
Zhen was at my side before I stood. “Feeling better? Tingling gone?”
After a brief internal inventory, I nodded.
“Don’t worry,” she said proactively. “You haven’t missed much. Sit. Eat.”
Jordan’s tall form filled the doorway. “We’ve been keeping an eye on the halls upstairs. You can join us after you eat something.”
My attempt to raise but one brow failed again. “And where else would I go?”
Zhen’s smile flickered then vanished, and I choked down three food bars while she watched me as intently as a drone witnessing a contract. When I left the table for the other room, Jordan stood, spun the chair at the console around, and motioned to it.
I accepted the seat with thanks. “Is everyone well? Did Attlee send another shuttle?”
“Yes, but the one Elder and his drone-minions stayed close to it the whole time. Like glue.” She smirked. “It left pretty soon afterward.”
Confusion blurred my reasoning. “What do you mean?”
“That Jackson’s plenty smart,” Zhen answered. “He must’ve had your jammers nearby. That Elder wouldn’t risk losing control.”
Jordan tapped a monitor. “And from what we can see, everyone’s fine down here. We’ve only seen one roach the whole time.”
I sank back into the chair. “Good.”
“Earlier you said something about Kyleigh and drones,” she continued.
“Did I?”
“Moons and stars.” A touch of Zhen’s usual asperity returned. “On and on about those blasted drones. We dealt with them yesterday.”
“I had forgotten.”
A frown flitted over Jordan’s face. “My guess? You wanted to check the backup files, then investigate Kyleigh’s father’s death.”
Kyleigh’s tear-stained face flickered in my memory. “Yes.”
Jordan’s expression lightened. “It seems you’ve forgotten Zhen DuBois is good with computers. She’s already pulled them up and loaded them on datapads.”
I felt as if I had lost mass and could hover like a drone. “Thank you both.”
“Once we’re back on Thalassa,” Zhen added, “we can go on a crime-solving spree.”
Her use of first-person plural further lifted my spirits. “I could start now.”
“You need rest,” they responded in unison.
“If my headache returns, I will lie down.” When they began to protest, I added, “Not that either of you are licensed physicians with the authority to tell me what I may or may not do.”
Jordan’s eyes bored into mine. “If you have any symptoms of anything at all, you stop. I need to eat, but Zhen will keep an eye on you.”
“There is no need,” I said to her back as she left the room.
“Too bad,” Jordan answered over her shoulder.
Zhen inserted her datapad into a slot at the VVR and settled on my sleeping mat, which had been neatly pulled smooth. She took out her knitting. “There. Everything’s loaded onto that pathetic piece of equipment.”
I thanked her and propelled the chair to the antiquated station where I sorted through records from right before and after the time of Charles Tristram’s death. Kyleigh, Freddie, and Elliott were easy enough to find. They had been in class at the time, but I frowned.
Where had Julian Ross been?
Behind me the sound of knitting needles tapered to nothing. Zhen called out, “J, can I borrow your whetstone?”
“Why?” Jordan asked, but I heard her shuffling through a pack. “Thought you said you were taking your knives to be sharpened when we get back?”
“Not this one.” Zhen grunted thanks, then steel swished on stone. “And don’t stand there judging me, J. I’m no thief. It’s not like I’m keeping it.”
“That’s not—”
“I’m planning on giving it back in very good condition.”
The tightness in Zhen’s voice pulled me around. She was carefully and precisely sharpening the blade that had struck Alec. Something in her movements chilled me, so I refocused on the documentation, but for the first time, the sound of someone sharpening a knife was not relaxing at all. The angry whisper of knife and oiled stone crept up my spine.
Ignoring the repetitive rasp, I poured all my efforts into my search until I found him. Ross had been in his laboratory all the way across Pallas Station from the room where Charles Tristram died. He peered into microscopes, ran calculations, wrote a report—which I verified—and would occasionally drop to do push-ups before returning to his computer. When the station’s alarm sounded, he tapped his communications link. I checked the logs. He had contacted his brother and Gideon Lorde, in that order. The hallways around his laboratory and Georgette SahnVeer’s never flickered. Never disappeared.
Julian Ross had not lied.
It was anticlimactic, to be truthful, and moreover, I was irritated at my relief. “Jordan, Zhen.”
The knife stopped its incessant threats, and Zhen and Jordan were at my side.
“Another headache?” Zhen asked sharply.
“No.” I pointed at the images. “I have proof. Julian Ross was indeed in his laboratory the entire day. He did not kill Charles Tristram.”
Zhen scowled. “He probably faked this.”
I shook my head. “His alterations of Thalassa’s records proved he lacks the skill.”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t absolve him from trying to kill you,” Zhen growled. “Or from trying to kill the Consortium, or being a lying, deceitful—”
“I do not deny his other actions, but he did not murder Kyleigh’s father.”
Zhen’s scowl deepened. “Whoever did is long gone.”
“True,” Jordan said. “But it had to be someone Kyleigh knew, someone she considered a friend.” Her expression darkened. “Kye deserves a measure of peace over the whole thing.”
Which had been my point all along. “There is also the death of the Recorder and the sudden death of nineteen people.”
Zhen cracked her knuckles as she studied the monitors. “It’s the right thing to do, and we’ve got the time. What do you need?”