Suresh watches from his chair as Ophelia hauls Kate inside. She doesn’t even bother trying to get her off the sled, where she’s tied down. Ophelia turns the sled off and then secures it with cargo straps. It’ll hold for now. And frankly, Ophelia doesn’t want Kate to have the ability to free herself.
“Is she bleeding?” Suresh demands with a frown. “Her face is—”
“She’s alive,” Ophelia says breathlessly. “It was complicated.”
“Great job, Bloody Bledsoe,” Suresh says, clearly expecting her to be insulted and to rise to the dig.
Ophelia straightens up, after one last tug on the straps. “You have no idea.”
Her body aching, she hauls herself up the ladder to the command seat, next to Ethan.
Ethan does not look good—gray, sweating, probably bleeding internally somewhere. But he’s at the controls.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
“You’re welcome,” Ophelia says. Though in a way she feels like she should be thanking him, because now she knows. Even in the most extreme of circumstances, she can trust herself. She can choose not to be her father.
She pulls the restraint harness straps over her shoulders, her arms shaking from adrenaline and exertion.
“We’re going to try this,” Ethan says. “But even if we can make it through the storm, I don’t know if they will let us go.”
Ophelia closes her eyes. In her head it’s quiet, but with a curled-up sense of anticipation.
“I think they will,” she says simply. What Kate said, it held the ring of truth. Whatever they are—a technology created by the Lyrians and abandoned in their extinction, a probe from an exploratory intelligence, or some other kind of life form entirely—the chance to grow and spread is surely a priority, given their previous behavior.
The storm tosses them around, to the point that Suresh vomits and Kate is shrieking nonsense. Ophelia does what she can, doing whatever Ethan tells her to do. What buttons to push, what numbers to read aloud.
Then, all of a sudden, they’re clear of it. Above the weather and heading out of the atmosphere.
The Resilience glows above them in a fixed orbit, a tiny white spot, growing larger by the second. She’s never been more glad to see a ship in her life.
“Ophelia,” Ethan says. “We can’t bring this back with us. Not if it’s—”
“I know,” she says. “I have an idea about that. But let’s just get everyone on board and patched up first.”
Once they’re back on the Resilience, everyone takes a turn through the full-size medical unit in Med-Bay—Ethan first, followed by Suresh. Ethan needs a synthetic blood transfusion. Suresh loses three fingers but manages to keep his hand.
Med-Bay has no idea what to do with Kate. Eventually it declares that she’s suffering from idiopathic seizures and sedates her. That slows her mumbling and restlessness. Enough, at least, for Ethan and Ophelia to get her into a sleep tank.
While Ophelia waits for her turn—her ribs have not stopped aching since she fell under the rover near the tower—she sends two messages.
The first is to her mother. It’s a carefully worded message, letting her mother—and therefore her uncle—know that Ophelia knows about the “joint venture” Pinnacle had planned and the “souvenirs” Kate was supposed to bring back. And that they would have more than enough with the returning team, but that some work would be required to safely remove them.
But if they chose to delay or not make the effort to retrieve said souvenirs, or if an “accident” happened to befall them, Ophelia would be sending another message. A time-delayed message to Jazcinda Carruthers, telling her everything.
Blackmail, in short.
What, after all, is the point of being a Bray if you can’t use their tactics to your best advantage?
After Ophelia records the message for Jazcinda and sets the delay, Ethan asks her, “You think that’s going to work?”
He rubs his shoulder against the remaining pain. He looks so much better now, though, his skin no longer that ashen color associated with blood loss.
Ophelia shakes her head. “I have no idea. I gave them a reason to wake us up, but I think it’s entirely possible they’ll leave us in cold sleep forever. If they don’t just destroy the ship to begin with.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “We could just not go back. Fly into a star, be declared lost. Let our families claim death benefits from Montrose.”
Ophelia eyes him. “Do you trust them to pay out those benefits without fighting every step of the way?”
He sighs. “No.”
“Me either. And what’s to stop Montrose from going back, sending another crew right after us?” Most likely they would all die, but if they didn’t and they left while infected, then all of this would be for nothing. “If Pinnacle was trying to buy samples off the New Silk Road, they’re going to listen. They wanted those things for a reason. We may not like what they choose to do, but at least we have a chance of stopping it this way.”
At some point, some company, some team is going to leave Lyria 393-C with samples. There’s no way that won’t happen. Taking themselves out of the running only gives them less control. And maybe it’s the part of Ophelia that is her grandmother, but if this is happening, she wants to be the one calling the shots.
Ophelia’s trip through Med-Bay confirms her suspicions by diagnosing three cracked ribs and a multitude of bruises so severe that the medical unit asks her if she’s been in a vehicular accident.
A car crash. Yes, this entire trip has been one.
Then it’s time.
With Kate already in cold sleep, Suresh is next. Ethan, as mission commander, will be last.
“Are you ready?” he asks Ophelia when it’s her turn.
She steps into the tank, naked and shivering. Even with the Med-Bay treatment, she’s still bruised and strained in various places. But her self-consciousness is long gone. That moment when she fell out of the tank, slippery and scared, grasping for a towel, feels like several centuries ago. Is it odd to say that she’s looking forward to it? To the quiet, to the rest. To the possibility that turning themselves into frozen corpses, however temporarily, will kill off the sentient sediment lurking in their veins, eavesdropping on their thoughts and memories.
“As I’ll ever be,” Ophelia says.
Ethan’s hands move over her in a cool, professional manner, setting sensors and checking the line attached to her port. The tank itself will do most of the work once she’s sealed inside. Ophelia gets the feeling, though, that he’s doing this more to delay than to double-check.
“Everything is going to be okay.” The words burble out of her before she can stop them. As if she has any business making reassurances.
He pauses, arching his eyebrows. “You sure about that, Doc?”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
He laughs. “Okay, just checking.”
Ethan gives the sensor on her right arm one last press, then steps back. “All right.”
“You did a good job,” Ophelia says to him. He did. Most of them are still alive. The Pinnacle team would have killed for their numbers. No pun intended.
He nods. “So did you.”
“No bugs, no bites?” Ophelia offers. Maybe she’s not quite ready for him to close the door, either.
A rare full smile flashes across his face. “No bugs, no bites,” he responds, before moving the lid gently into place. Then, after two quick raps against the outside, she’s alone.
Ophelia watches the light through the tiny window in the lid until it’s gone. Or she is.