The universe roared in, sucking the oxygen out of the air lock in a puff of frozen white. The door popped open and tore away so fast, it looked as though it disappeared completely.
Space itself ripped Ana and Di out of the air lock, grabbing them by their very molecules. They shot toward the fleetship across the fifty-yard expanse. The access port grew larger by the moment.
They were coming in too fast. She’d miscalculated the gravitational fields between the two ships.
Improvise.
Drawing her pistol out of its holster under her arm, she shot the latch off the Tsarina’s emergency air lock. Di grabbed her by the waist and spun around just in time for his back to slam against the round door.
It crumpled inward and gave way into the starship.
The buffer of artificial gravity slowed them, so when Di hit the floor, Ana on top of him, it was like falling from ten feet instead of a thousand. Pain still spiked through her backbone and shoulders and knocked the breath right out of her.
An emergency cover slid over the open access port.
She coughed, rolling onto her knees, and clawed off her helmet to suck in a lungful of breath. The ship’s air tasted stale, as though it hadn’t been recycled for a while. That was a good sign. Abandoned, like Jax said.
Di got to his feet first.
“Thanks for that,” she gasped, taking his hand to help her up. She pressed the keypad to open the door to the small maintenance air lock they’d landed in and stepped into a corridor. “See? This is why we make such a good—”
The halogen lights overhead flickered on, humming.
“I thought Jax said the ship was running on emergency power,” she muttered.
“Perhaps there is an internal generator belowdecks.”
“Fancy.”
The halogen lights popped on one at a time, illuminating the long corridor. It was white, lined with silver doors glowing with red keypads. Locked. At first glance, the ship looked immaculate, but there was a thin layer of dust on the tiled floor, showing their boot prints as they traveled down the corridor.
“Where do you think we should start looking?” she asked, testing the nearest keypad. She punched in a random number, and it beeped red.
ACCESS DENIED.
“Hey, do you think you can override these locks?” When he didn’t answer, she glanced over her shoulder. “Di?”
He cocked his head, as if hearing something.
“What’s wrong?”
Slowly, his eyes slid toward the door in front of her, and he reached for his gun. Instinctively, she did too—
The door slid up, revealing a silvery figure, too tall and too thin to be human. It looked like Di, from the slats around its mouth to its polished chrome body—new. But Metals hadn’t been in production for twenty years. After the Plague, the Adviser stopped manufacturing them.
“Halt,” it said, voice deep and melodic—like a bell. “Put your weapon away, brother.”
Ana took an involuntary step back. Its eyes were red. “Brother? Di, does it know you?”
“It should not,” Di replied.
“And why are its eyes red?”
The red-eyed Metal answered instead. “You are not welcome here.” Then it aimed its Metroid at Ana’s head.
In alarm, Ana grabbed the Metal by its wrist and shoved its aim toward the ceiling. It fired, and a light burst above them.
The Metal turned its blazing red eyes to her.
A chill curved down her spine.
She twisted the android’s wrist to dislodge the weapon. But it wouldn’t let go. Instead, she slammed her foot up, connecting with the Metal’s jaw. It released its gun, falling back into the room it came from. Fuses hissed from its neck.
Ana quickly disarmed the weapon and threw it down the hallway. Her hands were shaking. “Jax said there weren’t any active Metals—why are there active Metals? And why are they attacking us?”
“I am unsure.”
The red-eyed Metal righted itself. “You are an intruder.”
“We’re only here for some answers!” She drew her Metroid and flicked off the safety. She aimed it at the Metal. “I mean it—I don’t want to hurt you. You’re not HIVE’d, so what are you?”
“Ana, I do not think it will help us,” said Di.
The red-eyed Metal lurched forward to attack.
She squeezed the trigger. One shot bit into the Metal’s right shoulder, then one into the left, but bullets didn’t stop it. She gritted her teeth and turned her aim toward its chest. To its memory core.
Her aim shook.
The red-eyed Metal reached for her throat.
Count your bullets, Siege had said. Remember where they land.
In a blink, Di grabbed the Metal by the arm. He twisted the Metal around, its back pressed against his chest, and jammed his hand into the center of its body—like he had done in Nevaeh.
But when Di pulled his hand out, it was empty, knotted with stray wires.
No memory core.
Without warning, the Metal hammered its elbow into Di’s face, sending him stumbling back against the wall. Ana aimed her pistol. But if she shot now, she could hit Di, too.
Damn it!
Di dodged as the Metal’s fist sailed past his cheek and sank into the wall. He planted his hand on the side of the Metal’s head and spun it under his arm into a headlock. The Metal didn’t even have a chance to parley before Di gripped it by its jaw and ripped its head clean off. Wires and fuses sparked, spilling out of its neck.
The Metal twitched once. Twice. Di let go, and it fell prone at his feet.
The cold dread in her stomach numbed her. “Why’d it call you ‘brother’? How did it call you brother? If it doesn’t have a memory core, then . . .”
“Without memory cores, Metals cannot function, so it is safe to assume it was a puppet,” he replied, testing the joints in his jaw where the Metal had punched him. “The signal that was controlling it is coming from the bridge.”
“The bridge? But the ship was dormant when Jax scanned it,” Ana said as Di began to go down the corridor toward the bridge. She followed, shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps the signal is not from the ship but outside interference.”
“Outside? Like someone took control of the ship the moment we boarded?”
“Yes,” Di replied, and tried to access the next door down.
The keypad blinked red.
“Like a program. A sentient program like the HIVE?”
“I am unsure, Ana,” he said shortly, and tried another combination of numbers to hack it. The keypad blinked red again.
“Or did Rasovant create something to protect this ship? Or what if this is why the ship was never fou—”
Di whirled around to her. “I am unsure, Ana,” he repeated. His eyes burned brightly, wedging her words in her throat. She’d never seen him look so frightening before.
Gunshots echoed down the hallway.
She gasped. “Di—Di, the crew!” She turned around to hurry back down the corridor, but he caught her by the arm.
“We must find the bridge and disable the program.”
“But what if it’s more Metals? What if they’re attacking the crew—”
“Then they will keep attacking unless we find the bridge and disable the program that is controlling them.”
Another round of gunfire pierced the quiet, a staccato, sharp tune. Her heart tore, but Di was right. “Okay. Lead the way.”
As if on cue, the door Di had been trying to enter slid open.
They glanced at each other, and with a silent agreement they went through. It led down another hallway, and up a lift to the next level, and down another long and white corridor. Each one seemed longer than the last, but that was only because of the anxiety that began to creep into her shoulders, bunching the muscles around her neck.
The Tsarina could easily fit five Dossiers. At full capacity, the ship could house two, maybe three hundred people. She’d never been on a ship this big.
“I don’t like this—we have to go back to the crew,” Ana said. “We have to—”
“Keep moving,” he interrupted, shooting the keypad to the door at the end of the way. The door popped open.
She stopped him by the arm before they moved on. “Why’re you being so short, Di? What’s wrong?”
Before he could answer, a door behind them slid open and a Metal stepped out, eyes blazing red. It cocked its Metroid. Aimed. She reached reached for her holster, but Di lurched forward, hand outstretched, and slammed it clean through the Metal’s skull.
She winced.
He unraveled the wires from his fingers as the Metal sank, slowly, to the floor. Then Di shifted his gaze back to her, and the way he looked—moonlit eyes bright, unyielding, curled a sliver of fear up her spine. Because his gaze was cold. And calculated.
“I do not mean to offend,” he finally said. “I simply want to survive this.”
She swallowed the knot in her throat, along with her fear. “Me too.” They made their way to the lift to the top deck, where the bridge was located, and closed themselves inside. “Are you getting the feeling we’re being herded?”
“Yes.”
The lift clanged to a stop, and the doors opened wide to another red-eyed Metal.
“Hello, brother,” it greeted them.
Ana brought her boot up and connected with the android’s center, knocking it off balance. Then she took her Metroid and shot three rounds into its head.
Di gave her a slow look.
“We’re in a hurry, right?” she asked, holstering her gun again, and they continued down another corridor lined with tarnished silver doors. And at the end of the hall was the entrance to the bridge, painted with the peeling crest of a nine-tentacled octopus.
The red keypads to the doors clicked green as they passed.
Di put a hand on Ana’s back. “Do not look back,” he said.
“Lemme guess, there are Metals coming out of those doors?”
He looked back. “I suggest we run.”
They did. The hum of Metroids filled the hallway. A bullet pinged off Rasovant’s crest, leaving a smoldering black hole. Another bit at her heel. Ten feet—five—
The door to the bridge slid open and they hurried inside. She spun around and slammed her hand on the keypad again.
The door clamped shut with a vicious snap.
She let out a breath. “Goddess’s spark, that was close. Let’s find the off switch to this killer ship and—”
Di spun her around.
There were no charts or navigational systems. There wasn’t a pilot chair or consoles, as there were in older models like the Dossier. This ship ran on holographic maps and input coordinates. The outer wall was a glass shield that looked out onto the darkened surface of Palavar. There was a tone—a long beep—and the bridge awoke. A sharp whiteness rose across the shield like a sunrise. Ana winced, shielding her eyes with a hand, as the light illuminated the bridge, casting their shadows long against the floor.
Then a voice came from everywhere and nowhere—from the air itself.
“Hello, Ana.”