PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
PALLAS STATION
478.2.6.09
“It is only a headache, Max,” I repeated, though my attention drifted from him to the paper envelope on my bedside table. Almost against my will, I reached for it. Once more, I carefully opened the flap and unfolded Nate’s note. My fingertips traced his slanting signature and the thick, confident strokes of black ink neatly lining the page.
“You’re leaving something out.” Max smothered a yawn, and his long cords of hair rustled over his suit. “I need to get you in a scanner, but no matter how much you like charging through roach-filled halls, we’re not using the one down here.” He flashed a quick smile in my direction. “We’ll wait until we’re back on Thalassa.”
“I do not believe it is necessary, Max. After all, though my arm tingles occasionally, I have sufficient range of motion.” I hesitated before adding, “I am healing.”
The note in my hands bore silent witness that the half-truth itself was but half true, for, Nate’s words were not words. While I could read the bold, simple EXIT over the door, the letters in the note slid into and over each other.
I did not—could not—tell Max that I snuck peek after peek at signs, labels, notes, and undulating displays. He was allowed to believe I hid something—anything—as long as no one knew I could not read.
My eyes were tired or dry, I told myself silently. My hand was healing. My eyes would as well.
I hated that I misled Max, but I was afraid—even ashamed—to tell him the truth. And Nate? I could not bear to tell him that I did not know what he had written. Additionally, if I could not read, I could not create an identity for myself. I had not planned to, for my friends’ sakes, but having that possibility destroyed was like a physical blow. It was pointless to cause Max and Williams—and Nate—to worry over treatments.
There would be no escape from the Eldest.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said, bringing my scattered thoughts to the present.
I startled.
“Of your recovery,” he clarified, and his brow knotted. “You’re jumpy today.”
“Oh,” I said, slumping against the pillow behind me.
Max tugged his ear, and the familiar motion calmed some of my tension. “I should scold you for throwing yourself into danger, but I’m proud of you.”
Heat rose in my cheeks. “For winding up in the infirmary? Again?”
“No.” A smile touched his eyes. “For standing up for what you believe to be right. Repeatedly. You saved his life.”
Elliott’s, perhaps, but not the other man’s, and nothing I did could ever undo that damage. I tried to fist my hand when the desire to tap my leg welled up, but my fingers would not curl properly.
I forced myself to ask, “How is Elliott?”
“Alive.” Max’s gaze seemed to hover halfway between me and the wall. “Ross said Elliott has already been injected and fought off that infernal virus. I told him the risks, but as next of kin, Ross made the decision to put him in our last tank. Some of his injuries are older, including his cracked ribs, but the nanites should help with that. Elliott had already lost a good deal of blood before the roaches found him, and that bite . . .” Max slumped. “Between the beatings, the virus, the shot, the bite itself, and the infections, risking Consortium tech is his one chance.”
“You have done your best,” I said.
His nut-brown eyes turned to me. “As have you. Even if you aren’t telling me everything.”
I stammered a dishonest rebuttal.
“Let’s see how steady you are before you have another sleep.”
Nagging dread nearly made me refuse, but I allowed Max to support me as I hobbled to the water closet, then across the room to Williams’s chair.
“Max, why here? Why not the infirmary?”
He leaned against the desk. “Patching up Elliott before putting him in the tank took a while, and you needed rest. Yrsa was well enough to keep an eye on you. There isn’t much I can do until we know what’s going on.”
“Thalassa’s medicomputer cleared me of the virus,” I protested. “Edwards said so.”
Immediately, I regretted bringing up the friend we had lost.
“Which raises other questions and is one reason you’ll need to go back in as soon as you can.” Max took a long breath. “Stars, what a mess.”
I returned the letter to the envelope and, having hesitated long enough, said, “I am sorry, Max.”
“Edwards has been my friend for two decades. There was nothing Archimedes or anyone else could do, not with a shipload of marshals and Recorders at his doorstep, and apparently, Edwards told everyone to remain calm. Resistance would’ve made matters worse.” He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “I can only pray at this point. Do you know what will happen to him?”
“No.”
What an inadequate word.
Max stared off again. “Edwards must have suspected the medicomputer hadn’t picked up something when he asked for samples before Venetia and Zhen took you into hiding. If he left notes on your files, I haven’t seen them.”
I watched him carefully. Did he have more grey at the roots of his hair? “Max, you need to rest.”
“I’ll rest on the way home. Archimedes’s last cryptic message stated that Attlee left a doctor, though he didn’t say who. He usually would, so something’s off.” Max lowered himself onto the stool that used to be Kyleigh’s, his elbows on his knees and his fingers loosely clasped. “All the same, I’m grateful to have the help. We have Williams, and Yrsa is doing better each day, so she can be of assistance. More hands, less work.”
Even though I had never seen James so casual, my heart constricted. At that moment, Max looked very like his son. “Have you talked to James?”
He stared blankly at Freddie’s mural. “Not yet. It hasn’t been the right time.”
“It will never be—” I stopped. How very hypocritical of me to contradict him when I kept my own secrets.
“I’ll get to it,” Max said. He looked at me. “You need to take it easy until we know for sure what triggered your last episode.”
“I have not had an episode,” I objected. “I fell. I hit a nerve. I am fine.”
The door opened, and Yrsa Ramos poked her head around the corner. “Good to see you up, Recorder-who-isn’t. Max, Jackson needs to see her in the control room.”
His nostrils flared. “No. I told him this morning that she needs to rest.”
Yrsa edged her way into the room. “Ross is demanding to have a Recorder present, and she’s all we’ve got.”
Max growled an imprecation. “I’ve had enough of people skirting medical advice.”
I stood, trying to balance on my left leg. When I wobbled, I grabbed at the chair back, but it swiveled. Yrsa darted across the room and reached me before I fell. She lowered me to the seat. Heat suffused my face. “Thank you.”
Max knelt at my side but glared up at the medic, though it was not her fault. “Tell him no.”
All I wanted to do was to hide under the blankets, but I tapped his shoulder. “It is well, Max. Julian Ross promised information, and if it will help us defeat the people who created that evil virus, I will talk to him.”
His voice was firm when he insisted I remain in the old quarantine room, but Yrsa Ramos kept her eyes on mine as she backed through the door.
Shortly after Yrsa Ramos left, Max did as well, though he adjured me to rest but to call him or Williams should any need arise.
I lay on the bed, avoiding the note and my communications link, staring at the unmoving mural. It felt like hours, though it was perhaps twenty minutes, when the door opened and two armored, helmeted marines escorted a limping Julian Ross into the room. I pushed myself upright while he settled into Williams’s chair.
The marines might have wanted to leave him to the roaches, but they had treated him well. Several medgel bandages hid part of his hairline and the corner of his mouth. His short hair had been recently washed and fell over his forehead in loose, drying waves. His clothes had been replaced by a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of matching blue pants. I caught a glimpse of his right hand, splinted and swathed in bandages, before they secured his wrists behind the chair. They must have jarred his injured fingers, for he blanched.
Eyes like blue ice took in the room and settled on me.
Jackson’s gravelly voice arrived before he did. “. . . think so. Like every human on this rotted moon isn’t my responsibility?”
The door made a soft click when it closed behind him.
For a split second, I wondered if Ross’s ice would split Jackson’s granite, or if Jackson would crush him instead.
“There, Ross. A Recorder,” the marine said with dangerous calm. “Talk.”
But when those pale-blue eyes returned to me, the expression was one I did not recognize. He swallowed. “Elliott?”
“That’s not why you’re here,” Jackson stated. “Information. Now.”
The man who had wanted to use me as a biological weapon shrugged off the hand on his shoulder and leaned forward. The marine beside him shoved him back.
Concern? Of course he would worry, so I said, “Not an hour ago, Max told me he lived. This is the truth, to the best of my knowledge.”
Julian Ross slowly nodded. “You wouldn’t lie to me.” For the count of five seconds, he closed his eyes. “Thank you for saving him.”
“You are welcome.”
“Get on with it, Ross,” Jackson ordered.
Julian Ross glowered up at the marine.
“Please,” I said, striving to enunciate each sound clearly. “If you have information, share it.”
His jaw clenched.
Jackson widened his stance. “We have the data your brother smuggled out. What’s different?”
“You wouldn’t understand.” Ross’s upper lip curled. “Above your pay grade, marine.”
“Julian,” I said softly. His icy glare snapped back to me. “Do not antagonize him.”
He exhaled. “It’s rather technical.”
“It would be.” I reviewed all I could summon of my shattered memories. “When we talked on Thalassa, you explained you had arrived on Pallas to find treatment for autoimmune disorders, using nanotechnology?”
His face went blank. “Yes. Using DNA, combined with bacterial and viral therapies.”
“And you used that knowledge to create the virus,” Jackson inserted.
Ross’s eyes closed. His short, dark lashes fanned blotches that spoke of poor sleep and a beating. “Christine Johnson and I worked on it together.”
“Was that before or after you killed Kyleigh Tristram’s father?” the man to his right demanded.
Ross glared up at the marine.
“He did no such thing,” I said before an argument broke out. “Julian Ross was at work in his laboratory at the time of the murder.”
All four of them turned to me.
“You . . . you believed me?” Ross asked, suddenly appearing closer to his brother’s age than his own thirty-two years.
“No,” I said bluntly.
His expression fell.
“I searched the records.” I faced the tall marine. “But Jackson, whatever else he has done, he is innocent of that. Proof has been transferred to Thalassa.”
The marine squinted at me. “Do you know who killed him?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“Christine did.” The two words cut through the air like shards of glass through flesh. “She murdered the station Recorder, too. Christine stole potassium chloride from the infirmary’s medical supply locker and used it to stop her heart.”
My breath hitched. The Recorder herself had noticed that medication and supplies had disappeared. I had viewed those logs and guessed that the drug had been used to prevent her from investigating what she suspected to be corporate espionage, but hearing the woman’s murder described with so little feeling disturbed me.
“You’re telling me you knew who killed Tristram’s father and that woman all this time and didn’t say anything?” Jackson’s steely eyes were as livid as any Elder’s. “That makes you as guilty as she was. For both murders.”
“I think Gideon Lorde was onto her, and she killed him, too, but I’m not sure.”
“How many other deaths you gonna blame on her?” the quieter marine asked.
“It’s mighty convenient, Ross,” said the marine who had accused him of killing Kyleigh’s father. “Blame a woman who’s dead and gone.”
“Of course she is,” Julian Ross shot back. “I—”
He stopped, clamping his mouth shut, and a chill ran down my arms. I kept my tone gentle and prompted, “You what?”
He shuddered so slightly that I almost missed it. “I know her connection to the terrorists.” His jaw worked, then he met my eyes. “Her brother, Xavier Johnson, is planning on taking down the Consortium no matter the cost.”
“We know about your virus, and the researchers figured out your nanotech,” Jackson ground out. “You’d better have more information than that.”
Ross kept his eyes on mine. “Johnson knows your people isolated the virus and created a treatment, and the plan’s failure spurred him into a rage. They were listening in on your comms, which is how they knew when that gun ship left and how they knew it was safe to take off.”
“You think Attlee’s a ‘gun ship’?” The rude marine made a disgusting noise. “Stupid trog. You wouldn’t know one if we threw you out its airlock. Probably don’t even know what a Sentinel-class is.”
Julian winced. “Recorder, whether or not Elliott . . .” Zircon-blue eyes locked with mine. “You saved him. I want to return the favor. You saved my family, now I’ll save yours.”
The same marine grunted. “Recorders don’t have families.”
“Enough,” Jackson snapped, and the scoffer fell silent.
“This is why I needed to talk to you, Recorder. The Consortium has a network separate from regular comms, right?”
I stiffened. I would not give him that information.
“Even if they don’t, you have to listen,” he insisted. “If you want to save your people, you’ve got to warn New Triton.” His voice dropped, as if he were afraid this Xavier Johnson would hear his confession. “He’s planning on taking out the Consortium Training Centers.”
A chill arced through me. The little ones, the giftings, the novices. The Recorders and Elders.
Jackson’s focus drilled in on the man in the chair. “What?”
Ross again kept his eyes on me. “They’re bound for the New Triton Training Centers.”
“But the children,” I whispered. “That is where we raise the children.”
“I know.” Ross exhaled harshly. “Xavier Johnson blames Recorders for his older sisters’ deaths. If he can’t kill the Consortium with a virus, he’ll take out the next generation.”