I lose track of the days. Most of the time, I find that the fragments—pieces of lost or buried memories—show up when I’m not seeking them out. When I’m eating. When I’m writing out pieces of what I already know. When I’m sporadically allowed out of my quarters during the dead shift to run on the treadmill in the ship’s gym.
My only regular company is the ghost—or whatever you want to call it—of Reed Darrow’s grandfather. He of the black suit with wide, outdated buttons and a Verux first-gen pin. He paces in and out through the wall closest to wherever Reed is. Likely next door. The grandfather is a silent but steady presence that no longer unnerves me.
My mother has not been here once, which I don’t understand. But when I look back on it, she seems only to make herself known when I’m panicking or in recognizable danger. Which leads me to believe that perhaps the battalion of experts was correct: she is in my mind. A coping mechanism for dealing with everything else, generated out of need first on Ferris when I was alone. Though that still doesn’t explain everything, so I don’t know.
Kane and the others, though. They are here as often as ever, and most of the time, only showing me exactly what I’ve seen before, for months now.
A few times, there has been more.
A blurry Kane arguing with me, his face flushed with hectic color, blood on the side of his head. The whole moment is washed of detail, and the remembered pain in my head is much worse.
Lourdes, banging on the door from inside one of the suites, crying for help. I’m trying to get to her, but someone pulls me away.
A brief flash of Nysus with an elastic bandage wrapped tightly around his head.
Someone screaming in the dark, as I move through a narrow hallway, one that shows no signs of the luxury of the Platinum Level, or even one of the lower passenger decks.
That one, I think, might be part of the memory I recovered before, with Kane and Lourdes, when she was still alive.
On the bed, I lean back against the wall, dropping the pen on the page where I’m attempting to make everything fit into a coherent timeline—and scrub at my tired and burning eyes.
Here’s what I know: my last memory, the one on the bridge, is not the last thing I did or said on board the Aurora, which isn’t news. I got into that escape pod somehow.
But I’m also missing pieces from the time between when I was injured and that moment on the bridge. For example, at some point, Kane, Lourdes, and I were wandering around the ship, outside the sealed area—assuming those snippets drifting through my mind are actual memories rather than scenarios of my own invention. But why? What were we doing? What were we looking for?
That gap in my recall bothers me even more. How much am I missing? Why is it just gone from my head?
But all any of it means is I’m no closer to the truth than I was when I started. Because essentially, there are only two possibilities.
One: I left because my crew was all dead.
Two: I left even though my crew was alive and suffering. And I have no idea why.
Neither of those options is acceptable.
Shoving the paper away from me in frustration, I get up and pace the tiny room again. For the hundredth time or the thousandth, I’ve lost count.
Because I’m standing, I feel it instantly, the tiny, momentary lurch as the engines slow. Then the engine noise declines, just enough to be noticeable in its reduction.
My heart flaps about anxiously in my chest, but the rest of me is frozen in place. Wait, are we here? Or there, rather?
I try to count back, how many mornings have passed since that first one. The number is likely in the high teens somewhere, which means, yes, it’s possible.
Closing my eyes, I try to imagine what’s happening now. They’re reducing speed, which means the next maneuver will likely be to come about and pull alongside …
I feel the shift, a small push toward portside as the ship comes about on the starboard and the gravity generator compensates.
We’re here. The Aurora is right outside. With all the answers I’ve been seeking.
My mouth instantly goes dry.
I rush to the door and beat my fists against it. “Hey! Hey, let me out!” My voice is cracked and rusty, the product of speaking to no one for days.
But no one comes. There’s no annoyed response from the guard on the other side of the door, no stomping of irritated footsteps.
For a moment, my imagination shows me the Ares abandoned, the security squads, Reed and Max, all somehow vanished. Empty seats, bowls of rehydrated food slowly turning to dust, autopilot simply following the preestablished course.
But I shove that ridiculous and paranoid thought down. I saw a member of the security team just this morning—last night?—when she brought me my food and the requisite pills, which I stored in a desk drawer with all the others. And someone has to be piloting the ship through the course change.
Which means, they’ve elected to—or been ordered to, by Max—leave me in here for now.
The idea of remaining in here for hours while the Aurora is right there, visible and on-screen with whatever clues an outside view may hold, sends a flare of fury and panic through me. I need to see it. I need to know. I don’t even know which of the two options I’m hoping to be true anymore—if my crew is dead, all hope is lost, but if they’re alive, then I left them—but the uncertainty is a fire burning in my gut. I cannot stand it.
I pound on the door and shout for the better part of half an hour. I’ve just resorted to kicking, which is equally ineffective, when someone calls out on the other side.
“All right, all right, calm down, Kovalik.” It’s Reed Darrow. “Step back.”
“Okay,” I say without moving.
When the door opens outward, he jumps in surprise to find me so close. “Jesus!” I haven’t seen him in I don’t know how many days, and he looks like shit. His once-pristine suit now holds several days’ or a week’s worth of wrinkles. The collar on his shirt has a blotch of some kind of food. No dry cleaners in space. His chin is covered in patchy stubble and the purple circles beneath his eyes from lack of sleep are so dark they make him look like he’s been headbutted. An honor I would have gladly volunteered for.
I’m guessing this is his first extended period in space. The first tour is always hard. It fucks with your circadian rhythms, the lack of sunlight and fresh air. And the jumpsuits aren’t just Verux pushing protocol down our throats; they’re practical.
I shove past him into the corridor, angry at him for inexplicable reasons. For suddenly seeming human and fallible, for finally getting a taste of the life he was so dismissive of in our conversations in the Tower and clearly not being able to handle it. Maybe I should find it funny, but I don’t. I want to shake him instead. “Not exactly the luxury cruise you were expecting?” I call over my shoulder.
He doesn’t try to stop me, but he takes long strides to catch up. Which is good because I don’t know where the bridge is on this ship.
“No, but the last luxury cruise didn’t work out too well, either,” he points out.
Point to Mr. Darrow. “What’s our status?” I ask, following him around a corner to another long corridor.
Reed doesn’t respond right away, and I slow down to stare at him, fury bubbling over into words. “Are you serious right now? How the hell am I supposed to guide anyone if I don’t know—”
He gives me a long-suffering sigh, as if he is the one being imposed upon. “They’re attempting to make contact, but you should—”
I break into a jog, counting on him to catch up and prevent me from going the wrong way.
But as it turns out, I don’t need him. Once I’m close enough to the bridge, I hear the soft murmur of restrained voices and follow the sound.
The Aurora hangs outside the wide windows on the bridge, centered in black space, lit up by the Ares’s searchlights, like a painting on display on a museum wall. Max and the others are gathered around, facing the windows, like patrons of said museum, studying some archaic and formerly lost work. Ares is much larger than the LINA but is still dwarfed by the luxury liner. Then again, Ares was built for speed and, most likely, destruction. Not fine dining and swimming in space.
I stop, my breath caught at the sight of the Aurora again. We’re going to be rich, baby! Voller’s voice echoes in my memory, and it’s like pressing against a bone-deep bruise. I miss them, all of them. I didn’t appreciate them when I had them—the makeshift family we became against my will—and now look where we are … where I am. I’d give anything to hear Voller’s snark again. Even his snoring.
Staring out at the Aurora is familiar in a way I never imagined, like looking just ahead to see home. But only if your home is also the scene of a horrific crime. It is both known and unknown at the same time, foreign disguised as familiar.
Max is the only one on the bridge who acknowledges my presence. “Portside cameras,” he says in greeting, turning toward me.
I nod slowly, moving closer. The gathered security personnel step back out of my way as I approach, as if I’m a disease vector for some highly contagious outbreak.
This is the view I’m familiar with. The starboard side of the Aurora. It’s what we first saw when we found her.
But something is different.
My gaze traces the lines of the Aurora in front of me in a mental game of compare and contrast with the version of the Aurora in my head.
The pool, I realize after a moment. It’s no longer a giant frozen bubble with bodies and body parts dotting the smooth, clear ice like seeds for a horrific crop to come.
“Can you zoom in on the bow?” I ask someone, anyone.
Water, murky and dark, laps against the edges of the pool. Like an invitation to come relax at the mouth of Hell.
I shudder, all too aware of what is beneath the surface. “The environmentals are on,” I say faintly. That at least partially explains how I got out, if not at all why. I must have—or someone must have—repressurized the rest of the ship so the bulkhead doors on the Platinum Level could be opened. I have no memory of that, of course, but what’s more bothersome is that, as far as I know, I don’t even know how to do that. The ship’s computer could have walked me through the process, I suppose.
I wait for a second, for some momentary flash of that moment, triggered by this revelation, but nothing comes. Just another blank space.
“Have you heard anything?” I ask. “Any attempt at communication from the Aurora?”
Max shakes his head. “Just the same message repeating on the emergency channel.”
I thought that I’d inoculated myself against futile hope, until that moment, when it feels like my heart is plummeting toward my knees and I can’t breathe.
If anyone was still alive, wouldn’t they be waiting, hoping desperately for a response?
Max clears his throat. “Until we know what we’re dealing with, Alpha team will proceed first. Full enviro suits.”
“With ear protection,” I say, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I even realize what I’m saying. Where did that come from? Earplugs aren’t going to protect them against auditory hallucinations. But that’s right. I know it is, I just don’t know how I know. It’s like that feeling when you can’t think of a specific word—you can feel it, like an itch in your brain, but you just can’t produce the syllables.
Max is staring at me, eyes narrowed and forehead furrowed, as if I’ve suddenly appeared out of nowhere in front of him.
I start to ask him what’s wrong, but then he seems to recover, straightening his shoulders. “Full enviro suits, with ear protection, and—”
“And me,” I say immediately. I have no idea how they’re going to get over there with both ships currently moving, but they’re not going without me.
Max opens his mouth to protest, but I’m ready for him.
“I’m here to do a job, to make sure everyone gets out safely, right? I’m the lone survivor. That’s what you kept saying. So let me do what I came here to do.” I fold my arms across my chest. If he doesn’t want me to go, he’s going to have to tie me up somewhere. If there’s anyone from my crew left alive over there—which, I’m forced to admit, is seeming less and less likely—they’ve been living in a nightmare-scape for two and a half months already. Oxygen and heat means decay. Forget about whatever’s on the ship that’s causing all of this chaos and suffering, just survival under those conditions would be torture. I can’t just sit here and wait around. I need to help them, and absent that possibility, I need to know what happened.
I shift my weight from foot to foot with impatience. If I could run there, I would.
Max closes his mouth, looking resigned, and triumph spikes through me, giddy and obnoxious. It takes every bit of restraint I have not to pump my fist in victory.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Reed says loudly behind me. I forgot he was even back there. “You aren’t going to send her over there unsupervised.”
“I’m sure Diaz, Montgomery, and Shin are more than capable of keeping an eye on Claire,” Max says mildly, waving at the three security team leaders who have turned along with the rest of us to follow this exchange. None of whom look thrilled at the idea. Diaz is the same Diaz—short, pretty, with her dark hair pulled into a tight knot and a hard expression—who’d witnessed me speaking to McCaughey. She might be more than happy to dump my ass on the Aurora permanently or until they figure out what to do with the ship.
“Unless you want to go along,” Max adds, seemingly almost as an afterthought, but his tone holds the air of a threat.
“Yes,” Reed says, lifting his chin in challenge, as if to say, What are you going to do about it, old man?
Max’s lips thin.
“No,” I say immediately. “I can’t be looking after him. He’s too…” Pampered. Precious. Fucking annoying. “Too much work,” I finish finally. Besides, Reed, as a member of a third-generation Verux family, is likely considered valuable. I do not want that responsibility hanging over my head.
“You just want a chance to make sure you covered your tracks well enough without someone looking over your shoulder,” Reed taunts.
Then again, I won’t need to worry about keeping Reed alive if I kill him first.
Max holds up his hand, his expression weary. “Enough. Reed, if you think you can handle it, you’re in. I’m not sure what your father would say, though.”
And even I, as unfamiliar as I am with corporate hierarchies and the jostling and backstabbing that must take place to ascend, recognize that as a barb.
It’s also bait. Waving shit under Reed’s nose and daring him not to flinch at the stink.
Reed’s face flushes above his dirty collar. “He’d say that I’m doing my job. Protecting our company.”
And bait taken. I roll my eyes.
I study Max—currently in a stare-down with Reed—trying to figure out why he bothered. He’s not petty enough to push Reed into this simply because he knows he can, is he?
It dawns on me, then, for the first time, to wonder whether Reed, a symbol of the rampant nepotism in Verux, isn’t just fighting to prove himself but fighting to prove himself in a specific way. Say, for example, by taking Max’s job when he retires. Or, perhaps, by forcing Max out a little early to prove a point and win Daddy’s—and Granddaddy’s—approval.
Fuck. I do not have time for this political bullshit. Though, honestly, I feel a little for Max. He’s always been kind to me, if a bit bumbling, and he deserves better than someone like Reed Darrow as the replacement on his life’s work.
“So we’re good,” I say abruptly. “Everyone knows what they’re doing. How the hell are we getting over there?”
Max and Reed continue their pissing contest of dominance until Max finally breaks it off, looking to me. “We have the codes to the engine. A built-in kill switch, a safety mechanism on all CitiFutura vessels at the time to prevent piracy.”
And people from ever truly owning their ships. If CitiFutura—and now Verux—could kill your engine at any time, then you’d be less inclined to do anything they wouldn’t like. Anything that might be deemed as competition for them.
I raise my eyebrows. “And I’m sure everyone who owns those ships is aware of that particular feature?”
Max simply smiles. “Verux was not involved in CitiFutura’s business decisions at that time.”
Yeah, and I’m sure Verux has nothing similar in place, especially given how late they entered the shipbuilding game. Their focus on hab modules and colony living cost them, until CitiFutura imploded and Verux scooped up the pieces, likely learning all the best tricks and traps along the way.
Max turns and nods at a Verux-jumpsuited crew member at the helm. Her fingers dance across the board, and our ship slows. I face the windows and watch as the Aurora charges ahead without us, slipping out of sight.
My hands tighten into fists at my sides, the short edges of my nails digging into the vulnerable skin of my palms.
“Corbin?” Max asks.
Another member of the crew, this one positioned at what I’m guessing must be Communications, nods. “Packet delivered,” he announces.
Nothing happens. Several more long seconds pass, and it’s excruciating. Not that we couldn’t catch up, but there’s already been so much lost time. This feels like an exercise in patience, and patience is something I’ve never had an abundance of, even on a good day.
And then, slowly, on the right side of the windows, the Aurora reemerges as we catch up to her. My relief, once the ship is in sight again, is temporary but real.
When we are nearly even with her, the engines cut back to a low idling hum.
Max nods once, in approval. Then he looks to Diaz, Montgomery, and Shin. “You have your assignments,” he says. “Thank you for your service.”
That strikes an odd note in my ear. It’s as though Max is already resigned to the idea that some number of them won’t be returning. Which, I suppose, given my experience, seems fairly likely.
It just seems so coldly practical. Something I might once have admired, but now leaves me feeling ill. The realization is painful in its suddenness. I don’t want to be who I was before, fighting attachment, keeping safe distance. There’s no such thing as safe distance.
But the team leaders don’t seem fazed. They’re immediately in action, barking orders into their comm implants and striding for the corridor.
I follow them without waiting for the go-ahead from Max. I have no doubt Diaz and company will take any opportunity to leave me behind if they can. They haven’t been on board yet. They’re still confident in their ability to handle whatever this is. I envy them for that. That certainty is probably going to get them killed, but I still wish I had it.