Ophelia can’t move, numbness spreading throughout her body. All those years of her family’s warnings and snide comments, her mother’s fears—they proved to be accurate predictors. The tainted blood that her grandmother kept going on and on about was more than just her grandmother’s snobbery and elitism. She wasn’t just a classist bitch; she might actually have been right. Some people are more prone to psychotic breaks with ERS, and some of those, due to a combination of genetics and environment, are more prone to violence. That’s proven. But Ophelia never considered that it might be an issue to truly worry about.
And now she needs to.
Last night she dreamed she was her father, hunting down a victim. And this morning she woke up with blood on her face and hands.
She could have killed Birch and not even realized it. Just disconnected from reality as easily as pushing a button to shut down Liana’s beloved spiders.
Worse, in practical terms, is that Ophelia is the person with the best motive, the singular interest in keeping Birch quiet.
Acid, from the few sips of coffee she had before … before, scorches up the back of her throat. She presses her hand over her mouth. Her eyes water, blurring her vision.
“—calling it. As soon as the storm lifts, we’re done,” Ethan is saying. “We’ll bring back the samples and data we’ve gathered so far, and that’ll be it.”
“Fuck,” Kate says. “Are you sure? Ethan, if we go back now…”
He nods, responsibility weighing visibly on him, in the lines of weariness on his forehead. “I know.”
Kate stays quiet for a moment, then her expression folds inward, morphing into blank resolve. “Okay.”
“Let’s get everything ready to shut down and close up, as much as possible,” Ethan says. “I don’t know when the weather is going to break, but I want to be ready to move as soon as we have the opportunity.”
We’re leaving. Ophelia sinks back into her chair. If she’s the danger, they’ll soon be safe from her.
Except she can’t know that. To return, they’ll have to put themselves in cold sleep, and based on what she remembers from protocol, Ethan and Ophelia will be the last to go.
Field Bledsoe, the crew leader, did the same thing. He sliced into his unconscious teammates. They never even had a chance to fight back.
Ophelia has seen the security videos from the transport dock. Her father emerging from the transport, covered in blood, head to toe, except for his eyelids when he blinked. Because of course his eyes were open when he was butchering his team, his friends.
“Roger that,” Kate says to Ethan. Hands flat on the table, she pushes herself away from the table and then up from her seat. She sways slightly and then corrects herself, straightening her shoulders as she walks away.
“What about Birch? We’re not leaving him behind. Not—” Liana lifts her chin. “Not like Ava.”
Ethan flinches, a slight gesture, more near his eyes than anything. “Of course not.” He looks to Ophelia. “But we’ll have to make some temporary arrangements in the meantime. To make sure he is … taken care of.” It takes Ophelia a second to realize he’s looking at her, again, as a medical professional. Even though, again, she is not that kind of doctor. And another second to recognize the unspoken question about preservation.
“The cold,” she manages after a moment.
Liana’s jaw drops in disbelief. “You’re going to put him outside?”
“Just for now,” Ethan says. “We’re not leaving him behind. I promise.”
Something about this is ringing a faint bell, but Ophelia can’t focus on it, not with alarms screaming in her head. Bloody Bledsoe! Bloody fucking Bledsoe.
Say something, Phe. Speak up. Tell him! If you had said something sooner, maybe Birch would still be alive.
Ophelia stands abruptly, her chair squealing against the floor. “I need to talk to you,” she says to Ethan too loudly, the words exploding out of her mouth. “Now.”
He looks startled, then wary. “All right.”
Liana’s gaze skates between them, but she doesn’t say anything.
Ophelia steps away from the table, leading the way into the C side corridor, away from Liana, Kate in syscon, and Suresh somewhere on the A side.
Ethan follows at a slower pace. “I’ll be right back,” he tells Liana.
Ophelia paces a few steps back and forth in the corridor, waiting for him.
If she tells him, it’s all over. Her patients, former and current, will know that she lied to them on the most basic level, that they were wrong to give her their trust. Same with her friends, her exes. She closes her eyes. Julius.
The consequences won’t be limited just to her, either. Her family will be tried and convicted in the media, and while some of them deserve it, others don’t—Dulcie has no idea who her older sister really is.
And that’s if they don’t put Ophelia and her mother in prison for their deception.
Deception. Ha. That’s her grandmother’s word, and she is conveniently too dead to take responsibility for the choices she made because she was too embarrassed to tell the truth. Lies, they’re lies. Covered up by a ton of money, bribery, and blackmail.
Or, on the positive side, maybe Ophelia will end up locked in a secure facility, screaming about bugs, the Devourer, and being chased by her long-dead father. Not that she’ll be aware of it. To her, that will be reality.
But no one else will die here. She takes a deep breath. That’s the most important part.
“Ophelia?” Ethan prompts from behind her, making her jump.
She turns to face him, raking a hand through her hair, still damp from the shower this morning. How was that only such a short time ago?
“Look, I don’t know how to even start—” She cuts herself off. “None of that matters. You need to restrain me until we can get out of here.”
His eyebrows shoot skyward. “Excuse me?”
“Lock me up!” She throws her hands in the air. “Pick one of the unused modules. Toss a mattress and some meal-paks in one of the A side units, I don’t care. Obviously not A-5, because…”
He cocks his head to one side, brow furrowed with confusion or concern or both. “Doctor, are you all right?” There’s that command voice again. Smooth, calm, in charge.
She bites her bottom lip, feels it trembling beneath the pressure of her teeth. She releases it before she draws blood. “I think it’s my fault. Birch, I mean.”
Ethan’s face undergoes a series of rapid emotions, landing on cold annoyance. “Doctor, if you’re referring to your missed diagnosis, I don’t have time to reassure—”
“Jesus Christ, Ethan, I’m trying to tell you I think I killed him!” Ophelia manages to bring her shout down by the end, but probably still not quite enough.
He steps back from her, repulsed. “What are you talking about? If this is some kind of joke, it’s not—”
A hysterical laugh emerges from deep in her throat before she can stop it. “Why does everyone think I’m the one with the fucked-up sense of humor around here?”
He holds up his hand to stop her. “Just explain. Please.”
She pauses to consider how to begin. “The other morning, I woke up and my shoe was gone. I found it in the central hub.”
Irritation and disbelief war for dominance on his face. “Are you kidding me with this right now?”
“Just shut up and listen,” she says. “I thought, at the time, it might have been another prank.”
He grimaces.
“But now I think … I think I might have been sleepwalking. It’s not uncommon for patients to experience more than one kind of parasomnia. Night terrors. Sleepwalking.”
Ethan hesitates, then shrugs. “So you were sleepwalking. Sleep disturbances are not uncommon on R&E missions, as you’ve pointed out.”
“Not usually this early on, but that doesn’t matter.” Ophelia folds her arms over herself. “And then, last night or this morning, I had this dream, but it was also part memory. I was there again.” Only, as my father. Fuck, how had she not seen this earlier?
“Where, exactly?” Ethan asks, confused.
She swallows hard. “Goliath.”
“The old space station in the Carver system?” he asks with a frown. “Why?”
“I’m … I was born there.” It feels like letting go of a lit match she’s been carrying for years, trying not to get burned, trying not to drop it.
A snort of disbelief escapes him, seemingly before he can stop it. He quickly regains control of his expression. “No, you weren’t. You were born on that cult outpost.”
“Commune colony,” Ophelia corrects automatically. “That’s what we told everyone, yes.”
“Celestia whatever. Everyone knows that.” He pauses. “Why are you saying this?”
Of course he’s going to believe the media over her, the actual person involved. She wants to shout at him, Do you think I don’t know where I was born? Do you think I wouldn’t want to forget this if I could?
Okay, okay, breathe, slow down. She needs to build the case for him. “If I hadn’t found that shoe, I would never have realized I was even out of bed. I would have just assumed I’d slept in my bunk without interruption. It might even have happened other times.” Those dreams of wandering down corridors in the dark, had they not been dreams at all?
“You’re telling me you think you killed Birch in your sleep.” His tone is acid.
“It’s not sleep, exactly. It’s a memory. I’m reenacting a memory. Or a version of the memory, I don’t know. It’s confusing.” She presses her fingers against her forehead and the headache throbbing within.
“Doctor, I agree with you that we have a problem here,” he says, clearly struggling with his temper. “That’s why we’re heading home. But I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that Birch’s death was—”
“I woke up with blood on my hands and face this morning. I thought … I thought it was just another bloody nose, like what Kate had. But it was a lot.”
This time, Ethan’s not quite as fast to respond. “It probably was a nosebleed.”
“I wanted to check on his arm last night,” Ophelia says. “My arm had this weird rash, breakout, I don’t know. That’s why I was scratching last night.” She shudders at the memory of the movement beneath her skin. “Maybe it’s part of this whole thing, maybe it’s not. I wanted to check to see if Birch’s was the same, but he wouldn’t let me, threatened to tell everyone about me.” She draws in a slow breath. “It’s the same arm that was … dissected this morning.”
“Breakout?” Ethan asks. “What kind of—”
“You’re not listening to me,” Ophelia says through clenched teeth. “I was born on Goliath.”
“So you’ve said, which I still don’t under—”
“I lived there until I was eleven, almost twelve.” But that’s not the real secret, is it? She feels like she’s walking up to the cliff’s edge, inching closer and closer, until pebbles are flying out from beneath her feet and the wind is pushing at her back. “My name was Lark Bledsoe. Field Bledsoe was my father.”
Ethan rocks back as if she’s taken a swing at him, clearly recognizing the name, but uncertainty still flickers around the edges of his expression.
Time to end that. End everything. Jump.
“Bloody Bledsoe is my father.”