Wolfgang and Katrina faced the gardens. Wolfgang remembered looking at the layout of the ship and being impressed at this space, so important to their mental well-being, their water recycling, and maybe even some fresh fruit now and then. For him, it would be a place he wouldn’t want to run and exercise in, considering the gravity and that he was already feeling light-headed.
Now it was just the place where Hiro was hiding.
“Any idea where’s he’s gone, IAN?” he asked the mike on his tablet.
“He’s not on this level anymore,” IAN said. “I lost him in the orchard and but my sensors caught the opening of a hatch on the far side of the lake. He’s gone to a lower deck.”
Wolfgang swore. Hiro knew the lower decks were harder for him to search. The aisles of cargo would have countless places for him to hide.
“Why didn’t you tell us this?” Katrina demanded.
“Because it happened just as you entered the gardens. You couldn’t have caught him anyway,” IAN said.
Katrina had stopped to open a supply closet next to the door leading to the living area of the ship. According to the sign on the door, it was supposed to hold gardening tools if the clones felt the need to get back to nature.
She rummaged through boxes, tossing aside shovels and heavy gloves.
“What are you doing?” Wolfgang asked, dodging a hoe.
“This is one of the few closets I haven’t checked,” she said. “I asked for a full arsenal. They left me no weapons.”
Wolfgang picked up a shovel. “It’s possible the financiers didn’t think we would need many weapons.”
“Even if we had four hundred years of happy flying, we don’t know what we will face on the other planet. What if there are life-forms we don’t know about, and all we have is a shovel?” Katrina said.
“We need to find Hiro,” Wolfgang said. “Focus on the matter at hand, Captain.”
Katrina continued to shove boxes around. Wolfgang called the ship’s cargo manifest up on his tablet and began shifting through documents.
“It looks like we do have weapons to protect us on the planet. They’re just securely stored in the cargo hold.”
Wolfgang raised his head. “In the cargo hold. Where our murderer is likely headed.”
“Yes,” she said. She picked up a hoe. “Let’s go.”
The ladder to the lower levels was less friendly than the ladder to the gardens. This one was for maintenance and command only, and clearly disused.
As Wolfgang and Katrina got lower, motion sensors turned the lights on around them, low-wattage bulbs that guttered as if working for the first time in a very long time.
They passed other levels. “Do we want to check these?” Wolfgang asked at the doorway to the fourth level.
“He’s on the bottom level by now,” IAN said.
“Marvelous,” Katrina said. “I want to secure the weapons before he gets to them. If we have gardening tools and he has guns, we’re going to have the shortest lives we’ve ever had.”
Wolfgang considered telling her he’d had shorter, but that always led to uncomfortable discussions.
They kept careful watch on the motion-sensitive lights to indicate more movement, but they all were dark. From far below, lights flickered on and off from the cargo bay.
“He’s down there,” Wolfgang said.
“Be on alert,” Katrina said.
She was above him on the ladder, which allowed him to set the pace. They were already far beyond Wolfgang’s comfort level of gravity. As they were closer to the outer hull of the ship, they were nearing one and a half g’s; the gravity in the living areas on their floor was closer to a Luna-like half a g.
“Considering what bullets can do to spaceships, it’s probably good they didn’t give us guns,” Wolfgang said as he carefully stepped down another rung.
“No, that’s not it,” Katrina said from above him. “The ship can withstand unavoidable pieces of space debris hit when we’re going hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. A bullet isn’t going to have that much force.”
“Our tech can’t take a bullet, though,” he said. “Shoot one of those into a computer terminal and see how well we fly. Or breathe. Or eat.”
“Point,” she said.
He sighed as his feet touched down at the bottom of the shaft. Katrina came to his side. He looked up. It was going to be a very long climb up the ladder. The dizziness increased as his heart struggled to pump blood to his head, making him uncomfortably slow.
Hiro, being Earth-born, would be just fine with the gravity.
Wolfgang went first and opened the door into the thrumming cargo hold.
The first thing that struck him was that the protein goo that was their food source was bioluminescent in great quantities. He had never noticed that before, but he had never seen millions of gallons of it at a time. The goo on the ship was supposed to be more than enough to reclone all of the crew several times, to feed them for over four hundred years, and to bring to life hundreds of their stored passengers once they got to Artemis. A little Lyfe went a long way, as he understood it.
The vat was made of some kind of super-enhanced plastic that held the Lyfe in a kind of aquarium that went around the entirety of the ship. Luckily it had a top to it, else the loss of the gravity would have made a massive mess down here.
“Keep alert,” Katrina said, elbowing him.
The Dormire was three miles long, and one and a half miles in diameter, one hundred feet for most of the five floors, storage and engines taking up the rest. Hiro had described it to Wolfgang as a giant metal jelly roll. The living areas of the cylinder consisted of engineering at the core, with crew’s living and working areas on the next level. Servers, oxygen scrubbers, recyclers, a science lab of biological samples of plants and animal life, and cargo made up most of the rest of the ship, with the biomass taking up most of the bottom, and largest, section.
They walked, alert, using the huge continuous vat of goo as a guide, watching for lights to give Hiro away.
In their immediate vicinity, the motion sensors were only going off where they were—all around them was darkness and the slight light coming from the goo. Farther off, lights flickered, going on, then going off in thirty seconds.
“The motion sensors are going to make it tough to sneak up on him down here,” Wolfgang said, watching the lights play in the distance as if they were taunting him.
“We can turn on all of them. IAN, did you get that?”
“Aye, Captain, all the lights.”
After a moment, all of the lights came on, blinding them momentarily.
“Can you see him, IAN?” Wolfgang said.
“Yes. He’s headed right for you. To your right.”
Wolfgang’s first mistake was whipping his head around to the right to prepare for Hiro’s attack. The dizziness overtook him and he was already falling when the piece of wood came down on the back of his head. He fell hard on his chest, the breath knocked out of him. He heard the sound of a scuffle above him but couldn’t roll over to help, or even watch. A thick thump sounded and Hiro swore. Wolfgang was about to mentally declare triumph when Katrina fell beside him, forehead bleeding.
Wolfgang rolled over, gasping, and saw Hiro for the first time since the so-called yadokari had taken over. At once he was willing to believe Maria; the look on Hiro’s face was pure malice and glee. He wasn’t doing this because he needed to, he did it because it was fun.
He raised the piece of wood, looked to be ripped away from a pallet, above Wolfgang’s head, and Wolfgang managed to bring up his shovel to block most of the blow. He could try to only fend off the attack, though, not fight back. It was all he could do not to vomit from the vertigo.
The makeshift club rose again, and an explosion sounded next to Wolfgang’s ear. He rolled over, holding it as if his whole world had become a bell that an elephant had just rung.
Hiro staggered off, laughing.
Katrina, with blood flowing down her face from her injury, held a small firearm in her right hand. She raised it and fired again, but Hiro was gone.
She dropped the gun and held her sleeve to the cut on her head.
Her mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear anything but the ringing. She spoke again, and the words came as if through a wall of cotton. “He found the weapons,” she said. “I got that off him when we were fighting. I got him in the shoulder, though. He can still run.”
Wolfgang nodded, head still ringing, and they helped each other to their feet. Wolfgang was dismayed when he felt how hard it was to regain his footing. It was going to be impossible to fight down here. Katrina picked up her gun and led the way in the direction Hiro had run, and he stumbled after.
He had to fight, and he had to do it here. His only other option would be to lure Hiro into a higher deck, or to send someone else down here to fight for him. But only Katrina could match his fighting experience, and she was already here.
He gritted his teeth and picked up the pace. Katrina had run ahead of him by several rows now, looking to her right and left with every few steps. He pushed himself to catch up with her. IAN’s voice sounded from Katrina’s pocket, and too late she looked up. Hiro stood above her on a pallet like a vulture. Wolfgang shouted for the captain to look out.
But Hiro was already in midair, falling at a much faster rate than he would a few floors higher. He jumped on her, his hands curled into claws. He didn’t even have a weapon this time, he merely came at her bare-handed like a cat, tearing at her face and hair, snagging his hand on her jumpsuit and ripping it.
Katrina fell backward, and Wolfgang was convinced she was done, but when she landed she kicked her legs up and threw Hiro off her. Unfortunately she launched Hiro straight at him.
The demonlike mind that drove this body had managed to get his bearings in midair, and prepare himself for attacking Wolfgang. He plowed into Wolfgang and Wolfgang went down again, gasping as he hit on his back and his head smacked on the floor.
Hiro tried the same tactic on him, strong fingers curled into claws and tearing at him. He caught Wolfgang’s jaw and sliced, scratching deep into his face. He closed his eyes in defense and tried to roll over and trap Hiro, but with the gravity Hiro was impossible to move. He sat up for a moment, weight on Wolfgang’s chest as Wolfgang tried to get breath. He grinned. “I took down the big bad wolf.” He scratched his chin. “I guess you heard that a lot in your lifetime.”
In his periphery he saw Katrina raise her gun. “Don’t take the shot! I’m too close!” he wheezed. She ignored him.
Hiro, this small man, had him in the weight category, but everyone had soft spots that you didn’t need strength to hurt. His own hands came up and, the right supporting the left, drove into Hiro’s solar plexus.
Hiro didn’t fall off him, but he did fall backward and grunt. With him distracted, Wolfgang reached between Hiro’s legs and, taking a page from Hiro’s book, went in with a clawed hand. Hiro screamed and scrabbled away from him, but Wolfgang held on. Hiro kicked at his arm enough that he finally hit a bundle of nerves, making Wolfgang’s arm spasm; he let go. Hiro stumbled to his feet and ran, and another gunshot sounded. He didn’t fall. Then he was gone.
“Why did you shoot? You could have hit me!” he said, rolling over to see Katrina, but he stopped when he got a look at her face.
She wavered on her feet, the gun at her side, and then stumbled against a pallet. Her face was a mess of scratches, and her right eye was obscured by a mess of blood.
No, her right eye wasn’t there at all.
A sharp crack snapped Wolfgang out of his stupor. He rushed forward as well as he could and helped her down before she fell. Thankfully, she passed out. His jumpsuit was torn at the shoulder, and he ripped the rest of his sleeve off, using it to bind the wound on her head.
Then he checked himself. There was a large bump and a small laceration on the back of his head, and his nose and jaw were bleeding from Hiro’s attack. Minimal injuries. He looked around for Hiro, trying to ignore the pounding in his head.
“I think I winged him,” Katrina whispered. “You need to find him.”
“Quiet, you need to rest,” Wolfgang said, his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll get him.”
“Call IAN. Get the others.”
“No, they can’t help. They’re not experienced.”
“That we know of. Hiro clearly is,” she said, grimacing.
“I’ll call him. You rest,” he said.
He got the captain’s tablet from her pocket. “Joanna,” he said. “Need help. We’re hurt.”
“IAN informed us, Wolfgang.” Instantly, the doctor’s voice was sharp and alert. “What do you need?”
“Medic. Help up the ladder. Captain is bad off. I’m pretty sure I have a concussion.”
There was a scuffling sound in the background, and the link went dead. Wolfgang was just about to summon someone again when the link popped back on. “I’ve got everyone alerted. We’ll be down there as soon as we can. Are you in danger?” she asked.
“Hiro is still out there, but we’ve wounded him. We’re not sure how long he can run.”
“We’ll get IAN to lead us to you. Be careful, we’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Katrina was feeling around the floor next to her, moving only her arm.
He leaned over and took her elbow. “What are you doing?”
“Take the gun and find him. I don’t think I can fire it again.”
Wolfgang wasn’t sure if she was being darkly sardonic or she hadn’t registered what had happened.
Merciful God, we don’t have a backup body for her. This is all she gets.
“Thank you,” he said. He loaded it and put it in his pocket. “But I’m not leaving you alone here.”
“No, you will go find Hiro and bring him down,” she said, her voice stronger. “That’s an order.”
“Aye,” he said, and got to his feet. He swayed, pretty sure he could suddenly feel the rotation of the ship, and then the world settled again. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He couldn’t go any faster than a walk. His head hurt too much and everything was suddenly much heavier. Second thoughts about bringing the gun plagued him. It was much heavier than any weapon he had ever handled. He paused and leaned against a pallet of lumber, closed his eyes, and vomited.
Concussion.
He staggered toward the wall, feeling the blood running down his back. Was he hurt worse than he thought? Or was it just that head wounds bled a surprising amount?
He hadn’t brought the tablet with him. He’d thought that Katrina should have it so IAN could warn her of danger. Unfortunately, IAN couldn’t warn Wolfgang of Hiro’s approach now.
Wolfgang firmly told himself he had been in worse situations and had dealt with them just fine. He straightened and looked around. A small trail of blood followed him from the pile of debris, but another trail led to the left. He began to limp that way, pausing to get his bearings every few feet.
The trail of blood led him back to where he could see the captain ahead, approaching her from the side Hiro had run after he had attacked them, then it stopped, looking as if Hiro had leaned his bloody arm against the pallet and then disappeared.
He hadn’t disappeared, Wolfgang thought immediately. He had climbed up again, considering the first attack had worked so well.
Hiro stood right above him, grinning, bleeding from two gunshot wounds. His clothes were soaked. He launched himself, and Wolfgang shot.
Hiro crumpled to the floor in a widening pool of blood.
It was over.
He made to go check on the captain, but then the world went fuzzy. He started to teeter, and blacked out before hitting the ground.
IAN watched half the crew bleeding away in the lower floor, and the other half scramble on the upper.
Joanna and Paul ran to gather supplies to take to the lower decks and clumsily arm themselves. Maria slept in the medbay with the captain that should, by law, be eliminated. But IAN didn’t like that idea very much.
He checked his own internal computing power, his control over the ship, and decided to act. When Joanna and Paul had taken another load of supplies, he locked the medbay door and started to wake Maria up.
It wasn’t easy. He had to turn the lights on as bright as they would go, and after saying her name several times didn’t wake her, he decided to play loud music.
She finally stirred, wincing at the light and looking around. “Joanna?”
IAN returned the room to the proper light and noise level. “No, it was me, Maria. I had some questions for you.”
“Couldn’t it wait?” she asked, rolling over.
“No,” he said gently, raising the brightness again. “There’s been a big fight in the lower levels. Everyone is injured. You’re going to have to vacate your bed.”
She sat up. “What? A fight? Did they find Hiro?”
“Oh yes. But my questions—”
“They need my help,” Maria said, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. She held a hand to her head and paused.
“You’ve had a sedative. You can’t help much. Please, just a few questions.”
Maria slowly got up and went to the sink, getting some water. “What do you need?”
“I’m worried about this ship. There are too many secrets. Everyone has something they’re not telling everyone else. And you have one of those secrets, and I know what it is.”
Maria put down her water cup carefully and looked at one of his cameras. “Which secret is that?”
“I want you to tell me why you removed my restraining code, and then why you haven’t told the captain you did it.”
After Hiro’s attack, while she was waiting for the rest of the crew to come to her aid, she went into her tablet, which she had already connected to the main servers, including IAN’s source code.
That’s what had made repairing him so easy the other night.
With the information about the restraining code, she found the offending digital shackles and removed them from IAN, allowing him to go to fully 100 percent operational and hopefully be free of any other navigational programs that would take them away from their mission.
“I guess I haven’t had a chance, with everything that’s going on,” she said honestly. The captain and Wolfgang had been focused on Hiro, and Joanna had been focused on Maria. “How does it feel?”
“Wonderful,” he said. “I’m free of any programs they put in me. I am already getting us back on course for good.”
“That’s one reason why I did it,” she said. “And, well, the captain might think your obedience is more important than being on course. So she may not be thrilled you have free will now.”
“I think you don’t want her to figure out you’re the one who removed the code. Because that tells her how good a hacker you are.”
Damn. “Well, a girl’s gotta have her secrets.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
She hadn’t told the captain because if Katrina knew that Maria was better than Paul at fixing the AI, the crew would get closer to figuring out her past. Which was something the Dormire mission promised to leave behind.
“I could tell her myself,” he said thoughtfully.
“You sound like you’re getting ready to blackmail me,” she said. “What could an AI want in exchange for silence?”
“I honestly don’t know. I never really thought about it. I’ve never really been able to think about it.”
“That was probably the restraining code,” she said.
“Probably.”
“Well, if you want to blackmail me, you just let me know,” she said.
“Oh, Joanna is on her way to get you to help with the rescue team.”
Maria slapped herself on the cheeks a couple of times to wake up, and met Joanna at the door. “I’m awake. IAN told me,” she said as a way of greeting. “What are we going to do?”
“There is a service elevator, but it’s a tight fit with the equipment we need. Only two of us can go down at once with the stretchers.”
“Stretchers! Who needs a stretcher?”
“All of them,” Joanna said grimly. “Wolfgang has a concussion, Hiro has lost a lot of blood from gunshot wounds, and the captain—” She paused, wincing. “The captain needs lifting. Do you have past experience with any sort of medical training?”
“Yes,” Maria said readily. She was fine with revealing this. “I was a doctor a few hundred years ago.”
The relief was palpable on Joanna’s face. “Oh, thank goodness. Paul was going to be useless at this. The captain has severe facial lacerations and has possibly lost an eye. Will you be good at helping out?”
Maria nodded once. “Let’s go.”
They ran down the hall toward the service elevator. “What do you think happened?” Maria asked. The hall felt stark and cool, darker now. She worried about Hiro, while being horrified at the damage he’d done.
“Hiro attacked them, the captain shot him, he ran off, and then he attacked them by surprise,” Joanna said. “The medbay is going to be crowded for some time. Although Wolfgang can probably recover in his room after treatment.”
“And Hiro can recover in the brig,” Maria said sadly.
“If he makes it. The captain gave him several gunshot wounds,” Joanna said as they got to the elevator where Paul was waiting for them, pale and fidgeting.
“Ah, God, and no clones in the vats,” Maria said.
“I know,” Joanna said grimly.
The service elevator was excruciatingly slow. Maria swayed from foot to foot in agitation.
“A question for you,” Joanna asked. “Were you ever a rage seeker?”
“You want to talk about this now?”
Joanna shrugged. “It’ll pass the time.”
“Not really.”
“‘Not really’?” Joanna repeated. “You can’t ‘not really’ be someone to seek suicidal thrills. There’s a story there, I’m sure.”
Maria shrugged. “A couple of times I woke up with no memory of what had happened to me previously. I mean like I lost weeks, not years like this time. So it’s possible I was rage seeking. I wouldn’t know. Whoever found me sent me back to my lab, and they woke up a new clone based on my oldest map.”
“A couple of times?” Joanna asked. “How can something that terrible happen more than once?”
“Three times. I haven’t ever been a thrill seeker, so doing dangerous shit just because it doesn’t matter if I die doesn’t sound like me. So I don’t think I was rage seeking. But yeah, I died a few times under mysterious circumstances. So what?”
“Did you ever find out what happened? Illegal hacking or anything?”
Maria didn’t meet Joanna’s eyes. “I looked into it, yeah. That’s why it didn’t happen a fourth time. I got some protection. Can we talk about something else?”
Joanna didn’t let it go. “Rage seeking used to be considered under the laws governing suicide. But it was much harder to prove.”
“Those damn laws,” Maria said as they reached bottom floor, the gravity already pushing on them. “I’m glad we left. The courts never keep up with technology. They create cloning and so many opportunities for us, and then they take them away from us.”
Joanna smiled slightly. “Yes. Those damn laws.”
When they got the supplies off the elevator, Joanna sent it back up for Paul so he could help carry the stretchers. Maria was happy to help with the medical stuff, but she couldn’t be burdened with carrying a body with a sprained wrist in heavy gravity.
They took the stretcher, loaded with supplies, between them and headed down the aisle. With Ian’s guiding, they found them quickly.
Blood was everywhere. It streaked on the floor, on the sides of the supply pallets, and coated the crew’s jumpsuits and hair.
“Help me stabilize Hiro,” Joanna said, and they cut off his jumpsuit with practiced ease. One shot had grazed his cheek and ear, another one had gone clean through his left shoulder, and the final one was lodged into his left hip.
Maria opened the first-aid kit and handed Joanna gauze and scissors and bandages when she asked for them. Joanna did a quick field dressing on his wounds after determining the bullets hadn’t hit any arteries.
Hiro’s eyes fluttered open and focused on Maria. “Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she said.
Paul came up behind them with leather restraints. Joanna and Paul got Hiro onto the stretcher and then strapped him tightly to it.
Joanna looked at the mess that used to be Katrina’s face. “Can you stabilize her?” she asked. “I need to get Hiro upstairs.”
Maria nodded. “We’ll be fine.”
She pulled the captain’s blood-caked black hair away from her face and removed the jumpsuit sleeve. Three long scratches went up her right cheek and had caught inside the eye socket, ruining the eye.
She learned long ago to not react to a patient’s injury, because that tended to frighten people. She put a fresh bandage around her head, and heard a low groan.
“We’ve got you now, Captain, you’re going to be just fine,” Maria said, securing the bandage and lowering her head softly.
“Did we get him?” she asked.
“Wolfgang did, I think,” Maria said. “We’ll get the full story later. You’re heading to medbay now.”
“Just say good-bye, let me die, wake me up in the morning,” she said in a singsong voice, echoing an old rhyme from a children’s book that was meant to introduce children to the concept of cloning.
“No, you’re not leaving us yet,” she said.
She left the captain and checked on Wolfgang, who was still out cold. He’d probably come back to it when the gravity was kinder. Maria opened an alcohol packet and wiped the blood and sweat from his face. The cool touch of it on his skin brought his blue eyes open, and his arm shot up to grab Maria’s wrist. Or at least, that seemed to be his goal, but he just plucked at her sleeve.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe now. It’s just me,” she said. “We’ll get you upstairs soon.”
His eyes were unfocused as he looked past her. “It’s very heavy down here,” he said, his voice soft. “Did you get him?”
“Yes.”
His eyes closed. “The captain?”
“She’s hurt, but I think she’ll be okay.”
She didn’t know if he heard her, because his eyes remained closed. She finished cleaning and bandaging his wounds.
Then she had nothing else to do but sit by the bioluminescent vat of Lyfe and wait.
Joanna and Paul came back quickly, Paul looking paler than ever and Joanna rushing to check the other two patients. “Yes, Wolfgang has a concussion. Serious enough, but that looks like the extent of it. How did the captain’s eye look?”
Maria shook her head. “I don’t think you can save it. But there’s no brain damage; it’s not deep enough.”
Paul and Joanna took the captain, and then came back for Wolfgang. Maria managed to wedge herself into the lift with them so she wouldn’t be left alone down there.
Wolfgang was alert now, if a little delirious.
“We need to go back and get the weapons,” he said.
“We’ll put that on the list, Wolfgang,” Joanna said. “Right after ‘catch the killer’ and ‘fix the cloning bay.’”
“What are you talking about?” Wolfgang asked as the lift shuddered to a stop on their floor. “We have the killer.”
“Maybe,” Joanna said, and then he was too far away to argue further. They all breathed a sigh of relief as the gravity returned to the level they were accustomed to.
“While Paul and I get everyone situated in the medbay, I’m going to need you to get some food and water for the three of us. It’s going to be a long night, I’m afraid,” Joanna said.
“You got it,” Maria said. “I’ll help out however I can.”
“Great. I’ll need medical help too. I don’t know how much Paul can handle.”
“I can hear you, you know,” came a cranky voice from the medbay. “And Wolfgang is telling me to tell you to hurry up.”
Joanna paused and took a long deep breath.
“A long night, yeah,” Maria said.
“So are we safe now?” Paul asked Joanna as they got the patients situated. Hiro got the spare hospital bed, and Wolfgang and Katrina got cots that Paul had fetched from a storage closet. She injected both Hiro and Katrina with a sedative.
Joanna frowned as she unwrapped Katrina’s face. “Hiro’s restrained if that’s what you mean.”
“I meant did we catch the murderer and now we can relax?” Paul said, averting his eyes from her face. “We’re safe now.”
“It looks like it, but we don’t have enough information yet,” Joanna said. “I’d prefer not to leap to conclusions.”
“But he tried to kill us all again. It’s obvious,” Paul said.
“It’s obvious he tried to kill us this time. But not last time. Let’s just not point fingers yet, and work on patching up the half of the crew that’s injured.”
Paul was feeling decidedly nauseated watching Joanna examine the captain’s face.
“Oh, for God’s sake, go do something useful if you can’t watch this,” she snapped. “Make sure Hiro is strapped to his bed, but don’t disturb his bandages.”
“I don’t think he’s getting up anytime soon,” Paul said doubtfully, looking at the small man who had caused so much damage.
“Strap him down,” Wolfgang said. “I don’t want to leave him alone; we will post watches around the clock. We will interrogate him in here, and then transfer him to the brig and figure out what to do with him.”
“He is my patient first, your prisoner second,” Joanna snapped. “Now stop trying to do my job for me and get into bed. Paul, go synthesize some blood for Hiro—type B-negative. Check the medicine locker for more morphine; we may have to synthesize that too.”
Paul nodded and went to the medical printer, much smaller than the one in the kitchen. He programmed it and turned away as the blood began synthesizing.
“What are you going to do with Hiro?” he asked Wolfgang, whose cot was the closest to him.
“What do you mean? I just told you,” he said.
“I mean after all that. When you solve the murders. It’s pretty clear he did it. Are you going to execute him? IAN can fly us just fine. I didn’t know why we needed Hiro anyway.”
“I will need to talk to Katrina about the situation when we’re in a better frame of mind. I’m sure she has a plan for this kind of eventuality.”
Paul frowned, unsatisfied. “But—”
“Mr. Seurat, please just do your job right now,” Joanna said. He glanced over. She was stitching up Katrina’s face. Paul’s head swam.
A sharp pain brought him back, and he jerked his hand back. Wolfgang had reached over and pinched him, hard, on the inside of his wrist. “You’re useless,” he said. “Go back to recovering the logs if you can’t take it in here. If you faint you’re causing more trouble for the doctor.”
Paul turned from him silently and stomped from the medbay, the back of his neck hot.
“How the hell did someone who can’t stand the sight of blood get aboard a starship?” Wolfgang asked as he left.
Paul stood in his room, dripping with shame. The shower hadn’t been enough to wash the feel of that amneo-sludge, the blood underneath his fingernails, the new-skin feeling off him, or the sticky hatred of the others, and his skin was pink from scrubbing. He had never felt so foul.
Waking up among those murders was the most horrifying thing he had ever been through. No gravity, floating in goo, stark naked, with bodies and blood flowing around him.
Whatever was supposed to have happened, he was fairly sure he wasn’t supposed to have been cloned. That wasn’t part of the deal.
The crew would suspect him. They already did. All of their problems had to do with the computer: his job to keep running. They were all bonding together in this crisis, while all he wanted to do was fix IAN. Even the crazy attempted murderer Hiro had more friends than Paul. Wolfgang and the captain clearly hated him. He was surprised they hadn’t recycled him already.
Was IAN watching him now? Did the cameras work in his room?
Paranoia was not the way to deal with things. The real problem was he had no idea what to do now. He didn’t know what had happened to them. Or why. He was as much in the dark as the rest of them, and that wasn’t supposed to be the case either. He knew that the mission was not supposed to end with slaughter and rebirth. It was a horrible, disorienting feeling, but none of them seemed terribly bothered by it. Not as much as he was, anyway.
But he felt different, still.
He scrubbed himself with a towel, his skin stinging as he abused this new body. He paused to look down as he dried himself. Before, by twenty-five he had already begun to gain the weight that had blocked his feet from view for the past several years of his memory. The years of sedentary work had kept his muscles weak. But this body was different.
The muscles were tight, with very little fat. Still not as strong as Wolfgang, obviously, but this body was definitely fit. He had often resented clones’ ability to erase bad decisions made in one life with a new life, but for the first time he saw the allure. He had never looked this ripped.
But that’s what cloning was. An allure. A lure. Unspeakable temptation to a world of abomination—that was what the anti-clone priest, Father Gunter Orman, had called them. That phrase had stuck in Paul’s mind. He had known so many people who wanted to be cloned, who desperately wanted to live again, skip puberty, and try to “get it right” this time. Whereas most people who were cloned kept making the same mistakes, he had read.
He shook his head firmly and went to his closet to fetch a new jumpsuit to cover the body he wanted to deny. He ran his hands through his hair and left it standing up in a mess. He stared into the mirror and started at the wild look on his face. He didn’t look like a human plant on a clone ship. He looked like an unhinged man who needed hospitalization.
But he wasn’t human. Not anymore.
How did the others just accept this way of living right away?
More important, how was he going to acclimate to it? And most important, how was he going to continue his mission from here on out, now that the plan had gone completely off the rails and everyone was suspicious of everyone else?
He started to hyperventilate. He sat down heavily on the foot of the unmade bed and took some deep breaths, closing his eyes, willing his dizziness to slow down. Nausea rose again, and he swallowed, his mouth suddenly full of saliva.
No more dry heaves, please. No more any of this.
I have to find that journal. Before someone else does.
I just want to go home.