Pete walked forward, distracted by all the new information, and found himself at the door to his stateroom.
Ramirez’s body was gone. A large red stain streaked against the bulkhead and trailed out the door. Pete had walked through it, he saw to his revulsion, and the soles of his shoes were now stained by his friend’s blood. Holmes had dragged the body out of the room, pulling him across the floor like a hyena dragging a carcass across the plain.
Trying to avoid the blood, Pete sat down on the small chair at the stateroom’s desk and pulled out the tablet computer that he’d gotten from Moody. He turned it on, hesitated, and then opened the file that contained his service jacket.
Doctorate in engineering. Cum laude from Georgia Tech. A list of military commendations. Marital status: widower. No children.
He scanned backward in time, flipping through the years with the tip of his finger, going further back into his own, unknown history. He saw that he had been an overachiever, but not one without a blemish. He’d been reprimanded lightly for a bar fight in Tokyo. Worse: he’d been demoted for a time for another altercation, this one with a superior at Eris Island. Clearly, his talents had been desperately needed by the Alliance, or they never would have tolerated him.
At the thought of Eris Island, he skipped ahead to that tour of duty, which had lasted for almost a year. When he got to that part of his biography, though, he reached an electronic dead end. The tablet read CLASSIFIED and wouldn’t let him proceed any further.
He sighed and looked around his stateroom for additional clues about who he was. He identified the desk that was his—it was mostly filled with military documents, but there were a few personal items. A worn novel by Stephen King. He flipped it open and saw an opening passage that had been highlighted:
Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters.
He picked up a digital music player, but the battery was dead; even his own taste in music remained a mystery to him. Above his desk there was a coconut that had been carved into a woman with obscenely large breasts. On the bottom of the coconut-woman were etched the words BEAUTIFUL HAWAII. Someone had drawn onto its chest with a black marker, like a nametag on a uniform: POLARIS.
He inventoried the information he had assembled about himself: it wasn’t much. He searched his mind for more than what the paltry artifacts in his stateroom and the scant information in his service jacket gave him. The effort soon exhausted him.
He stood and climbed up into his rack, needing to lie down even if he couldn’t sleep. There he found something that contained more information about his life than everything he’d seen since regaining consciousness.
Taped directly above him in the short distance between his mattress and the overhead was a photo of a woman: he knew instantly she was his wife. Her name came back to him suddenly with a power that took his breath away. Pamela.
She was blond and athletic, with a smile that electrified him. In the picture, she was dressed in hiking clothes, laughing at the camera, her hair tied back in a ponytail. A green tropical forest closed in behind her, not another person in sight. She was standing by a sign at a trailhead that read: KEALIA TRAIL. Pete knew he had taken the picture; he could remember the moment. He could smell the sweetness of the flowers, the tang of the rotting mangoes, the cleansing sea air. He felt an incalculable sense of loss.
Soon he couldn’t look at it anymore, the pain was too great. He turned over and fell into deep sleep.
He had a vivid nightmare about the mutiny. He was fighting in the stateroom, and he knew he was fighting for his life. It was dark, and the quarters were so close that he could barely see whom he was fighting as they struggled. His opponent was strong and fast, but Pete soon had the edge and began to wear him down. Finally he got behind his adversary and put him in a choke hold, just as he had done to the doctor. But this time he didn’t let up. He held his grip until the body beneath him slackened and died.
He rolled the dead man over, and looked into his own face.
He awoke with a start. A piece of paper, folded in half, had been placed on his chest while he slept. He opened it.
MEET ME IN SHAFT ALLEY—0600
He looked at his watch: he had ten minutes. He didn’t know whom the message was from, or what it meant, but the rendezvous might provide more answers. He took a final glance at the photo of his wife, and slid out of bed. He tried not to walk in blood as he exited, but there was too much to avoid.