36OURS IS THE LAST SHIP to arrive back at R&D, returning to the station only a day before the Archangel is set to go live. As I step inside its crystalline walls for the first time in weeks, I feel a curious sense of homecoming. Instead of returning to H5 straightaway, I walk the outer corridor of the Central Habitat, looking out over the mists as they creep and drift in billows of pink and gold, lavender and white. It’s early morning, and Demeter’s light is just beginning to dawn over the quiet halls. The trickle of the waterfalls sings in my ears, and from time to time my hand strays across the wall beside me, knuckles sliding across glassy smoothness or softly caressing the petals of a flowering plant.

I’ve missed this place, I realize with a jolt. The habitats, the halls, the drifting mists. The crystalline light as it bends and refracts in wild rainbows through the carved panes. Even the unshakeable presence of the Spectres, so close and yet so far, their invisible forms essential within the kaleidoscopic vision of R&D. Against all expectation, in the months I’ve spent here, this station in the sky has somehow become home more than any place I’ve been since New Sol blew.

My mind goes to the Archangel, with its network of platforms and ships spread out across the Expanse. In less than twenty-four hours, it will strike down our enemies with its sword of light, rippling across planets and stations, colonies and asteroids, until every last ghoul has disappeared, banished to hell or wherever Specs go when they perish. When that happens, what will become of me? Of all of R&D? With the enemy vanquished, they might very well decide our talents could be put to better use elsewhere, the scientists sent off to work on other projects and the testers shipped back to the Navy or Guard, or wherever else they came from. Of course I’ll go wherever they send me. I’m a soldier. It’s who I am. Still, the thought of leaving this place for good fills me with a sorrow too deep to articulate.

Back in H5, I take care of some small homecoming chores, stashing my gear away and filing my report on our last mission. By the time I’m done, the station is stirring, waking from its drifting slumber in an ever-increasing rustle of movement and sound. I wander the corridors of H5 and H7, looking for familiar faces. The halls are notably empty, the number of those infected or killed higher than I care to count, though I do find testers in small clumps here and there, in the barracks, the lounge, the training rooms. All people I recognize, but none that I know particularly well. The specialists come to attention when I pass through, nodding in deferent, if informal, acknowledgement of my presence.

At 0900 on the dot, I report in to the Division Commander’s office, only to be told I have no assigned duties until further notice. With our work essentially done, there’s nothing to do now but wait for the Archangel. Though the news isn’t exactly a surprise, I can’t help feeling a certain dread, like they’ve already decided to cut us all loose and just haven’t told us yet. The idea of spending my last few days waiting to be let go turns my stomach.

“Commander, please. There must be something that needs doing.”

“Is the word ‘relax’ in no one’s vocabulary?” Asriel snorts. I raise an eyebrow as if to say, You would know. With a roll of his eyes, he relents. “All right, Sorenson. Ty’s taking a team down to Javeyn to collect some old testing equipment. If she gives the go-ahead, you can join them. Dismissed.”

Ty. So she did make it back. My eyes light up, lips curling into an involuntary smile at the news that one of my old Delta mates made it. Then my shoulders tighten, tension instantly knotting down my spine as I remember: Hers was the last name on my list. Joy wars with despair, and for a brief moment I wish she’d never come back at all. That she’d simply died out there in the black and I could rest easy knowing the saboteur was safely dead. Only I can’t. Whether she’s guilty or not, I have to face her.

With a nod to Asriel, I set out to find Ty. Rather than simply link her, I use my locator to track her down in the armory. She’s gearing up for the mission when I arrive, along with a team of six others. I don’t immediately announce myself but just stand there, watching her. She looks like the same old Ty, but . . . graver, perhaps. Like she’s lived a lot more life since I last saw her, and all that life has finally started taking its toll. As, too, it has on me. A whole host of emotions rise up in me—happiness, anger, sorrow, confusion. She’s a teammate I trusted with my life; could she really be the saboteur who’s been stalking me these long months?

Ty turns then, wheeling around to speak to one of her subordinates, and her eyes alight on me. Her sudden grin is a punch to the stomach. Despite my reservations, I can’t help returning her hearty hug and accompanying backslap with a couple of my own.

“Sorenson! Didn’t think you were going to make it back.”

“Just put thrusters down this morning. Got room for one more?”

“You bet. And look! Now that we’re on the verge of wiping out the ghouls, they’ve come out with another round of ghoul suits. Clearly they didn’t have much to do while we were all away implementing the Archangel tech.”

I check my locker, and sure enough, I’ve got one too. I roll my eyes, half in exasperation, half in amusement. “Oh, joy.”

We gear up and drop into Javeyn’s atmosphere within the hour. Though I try to act like nothing’s wrong, my feet flutter in my boots, anxiety building with each passing minute. Ty glances at me curiously, but if she suspects anything’s wrong, she doesn’t remark on it. At last our pilot puts us down just outside a city in a very familiar-looking field dotted with metallic cylinders in every direction.

Ty pulls a meter-long cylinder from the ground with a grin. “Remember these?”

“The sound amplifiers?” I laugh, forgetting for a moment that Ty might very well be a saboteur and I should be arresting her, not joking with her. “How could I forget? One blast on those things, and every ghoul in the sector came running.”

Per Ty’s instruction, we split off in teams of two, taking roamers in every direction to collect the amplifiers. I drive and Ty gathers, scanning her chit hand across each sound amplifier before she stows it in the back to mark its collection. In between amplifiers, we coast along in the roamer, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence. Now that I’ve got her alone, I have no idea what to say.

“The habitats seem pretty empty.”

She tilts her head in acknowledgement. “We took some losses. Zephyr, Annah—”

“Archer, Songbird, RC.” I pause. “Anyone left?”

“I saw Chen poking her head into the mess not too long ago, and of course Asriel’s still DC.”

I nod, gaze falling to her arms where they emerge from the rolled-up sleeves of her tunic. The thick red slash for Zel is still there, just below her elbow, now joined by several newer ones in varying thicknesses, black and red. A quiet hymn to our fallen comrades. I feel a strange lurch in my stomach as I realize that if I hadn’t come back, there would have been yet another one on her arm for me.

“Look, Ty—” I start to say, unable to keep silent any longer.

“It’s going to rain,” she says at the exact same time.

“What?”

She pats her right leg. “It’s going to rain. Ever since I broke it, I can always tell.”

I frown. “When did you break your leg? On the Archangel mission?”

“No, I broke it in a training op a few weeks before we left. I almost didn’t make it on the mission at all. As it was, they wouldn’t let me out of the infirmary for, like, a two-square.” She casts me a sidelong look and adds sarcastically, “Thanks for visiting me in the med-center, by the way.”

My heart quickens as the implications of her words sink in. I try to remember if I saw her at all during those final weeks before the launch, but I can’t recall. Of course, it was such a hectic time, I barely saw anyone who wasn’t on my own team. “Two weeks? And they didn’t let you out of the infirmary at all?”

“Nope. It was boring as slag, too.” She activates her chit, thumbing through her holo archive until she finally stops on a single recording. “See?”

I stare at the holo in amazement. The setting is clearly the infirmary, and the star is Ty herself, waving, smiling, and making faces at her chit lens. She sweeps her hand down, moving the image over her hospital gown until her legs come into view. Her right leg is immobilized in a quick-heal cast, the large casing connected with an array of wires and tubes to a huge machine nearby. “Two more days to go before this sucker is healed,” her voice narrates from the recording. “Can I make it without dying of boredom?” My eyes go to the date stamp on the bottom of the holo.

It’s the night before the energy converter arrived on base.

My mouth drops open as the truth hits me right between the eyes. There’s no possible way she could’ve left the infirmary, let alone gotten to the energy converter, not with her leg imprisoned in the quick-heal cast like that. She’s not the saboteur.

Relief flows through me at the realization. Relief, and consternation. If it wasn’t her, who was it? RC? Songbird? Someone else who was removed from the list by dint of death or infection? I suppose it’ll have to be enough to know that the threat is gone, whoever it might have been.

Heart lighter now that I’ve cleared Ty and closed my investigation for good, the rest of the collection goes without incident. If any squatters have managed to breed any ghouls since we last fired the Archangel, they aren’t within range. The only hiccup comes when we meet up with the others to find one of the amplifiers is missing. Ty checks the original deployment data and suddenly laughs.

“Ha! That’s why it’s not here. It’s the one we lost on the original testing mission. With Zel.” A note of wistfulness enters her voice.

“That was months ago; it could be anywhere by now. Can we track it?”

She shakes her head. “I’m not sure. We’d have to check with Dr. Rahman. At any rate, we don’t have time to track it down now. Asriel wants everyone back on the station before the big to-do tonight. We’ll have to come back for it.”

We load up and bug out, putting boots back on the station within the hour. The amplifiers get crated up and stored against the north wall in Habitat 8—a lengthy task even with grav sleds to handle the weighty bins—then everyone’s dismissed to clean up and eat. As we step into the Central Habitat, I’m immediately hit by how packed the halls are. R&D personnel of all stamps jam the outer corridor, a bounce in their steps and a lilt in their voices as they chatter in an excited flurry.

I press myself against the wall to make way for a pair of elderly scientists passing by. “What’s with everyone?”

“Haven’t you heard? Oh, that’s right. You just got back this morning.” Ty shrugs. “They’re going to fire the Archangel.”

“Now?”

“Just over Prism. They’re going to link all the planetary OPs together and eliminate the enemy down below—or at least, what’s left of them—in one fell swoop. It’s a final test before the full deployment tomorrow. Everyone’s gathering in the Atrium to watch.” She checks her timekeeper. “If we go now, I bet we can snag seats before they’re all taken.”

I shrug. It’s not like I have anything better to do.

We’re settling down on a couch near the east wall of the Atrium when I suddenly recall the final chip I found in my helmet all those weeks ago. Cloistered away on the Infinity, I’d been unable to run the number through the R&D database and had subsequently forgotten about it.

My mood darkens as I think of the chip. By all rights, I should simply toss it and forget I ever found it. After all, with everyone on my list of suspects either dead or eliminated, the threat should be moot. Only what if the saboteur, whoever it was, laid one last trap before leaving R&D? Just because the saboteur is gone doesn’t mean the trap won’t spring. I should at least check the number.

“Hey, Ty, I’m going to—” A good excuse suddenly failing me, I wave a hand vaguely in the other direction. “Be right back.”

I beat a hasty retreat before she can quiz me on my sudden desertion. Jogging across the crowded floor, my eyes light on a set of hygiene units nearby. Rather than go all the way back to my quarters, I shut myself into the nearest unit. Lights spring on as I enter, bathing the cubicle in a soft glow. Through the wall, I can hear the excited din from the Atrium as everyone waits for the final Archangel test to begin, but I ignore it, intent on putting this wild goose chase to rest once and for all. Activating my chit, I locate the chip number and enter it into the inventory database.

*Error: No Match Found*

Though I should have come to expect the unexpected by now, shock still fills me at the result. A bad feeling creeps into the pit of my stomach. The game has changed once again, but I have no idea why or how. With nothing else to do, I start running the number through every database I can think of, hitting “search” again and again. On my ninth try, I find a match. The chip’s number is for a shipping manifest. Specifically, a manifest for a shipment of items originally brought on base months ago.

I frown in confusion, unsure why the saboteur would suddenly change tack so oddly. Through the wall, the noise of the crowd has dimmed, replaced by a single amplified voice, though I can’t make out what it’s saying. Probably someone announcing the upcoming test. I ignore it, scrolling through the manifest as I search for . . . I’m uncertain what. Halfway down, I stop. There, in the middle of the list, is the serial number and description for the blown ignition regulator from the SkyRunner.

I suck in a breath. A chip number from a custom helmet connecting back to an ignition regulator destroyed long before the helmet was even made? Connections are being made between present, past, and future, and I suddenly have the feeling I’m on the cusp of something important. I force myself to think about the situation logically. After giving me seven serial numbers, why did the saboteur suddenly switch to the number of a shipping manifest?

Because it’s not about the items themselves, but how they were shipped.

Once again, my eyes slide over the manifest, but instead of looking at the items this time, I examine the details of the shipment itself. Shuttle name, shipment date, invoice number, origin site, and—

Shuttle crew.

Something kicks low and hard in my stomach. All this time, I’d assumed the sabotage was done on base, which never quite added up because the various items were stored and installed in such disparate locations. With Angelou’s tight security procedures, no single person would have been able to access them all. But what if the saboteur didn’t do their work on base but completed it before the equipment ever arrived?

Pulling up the shipment database, I enter the serial numbers from every chip I found and hit search. Twenty-nine documents come up, including both original shipment and transfer manifests. I set my chit to scan each document for the crew manifest, looking for the one name associated with every single piece of sabotaged equipment I’ve found. My foot taps nervously on the floor as I wait, the quick strikes of my boot loud in the sudden silence—they must be about to fire the Archangel over Prism. When the results finally come, my mouth drops open.

Every single piece on my list was originally brought into R&D by the same pilot.

And there’s the connection. After all these months of searching, I’ve got it: The identity of the saboteur who would do anything, hurt anybody, if it meant stopping the Archangel. I’d crossed her off my list after the converter incident because she didn’t have access to H8, but then, why would she need habitat access when the equipment was sitting right there on the ship with her hours before arriving at R&D?

Cheers break out on the other side of the wall, hurrahs and claps and joyous shouts. They spill out of the central chamber and fill the hygiene unit, their hopeful tones brimming on all sides of me, while all I can do is slump on the toilet and stare at that one name in utter disbelief.

The name of our saboteur is Pilot Commander Sarai Chen.