The staging area, on a lower level, is a tight fit with twenty-three of us. Three security squads of seven each. Me. Reed. Our enviro suits make us even bulkier, so we’re brushing shoulders just standing next to one another while we’re waiting for the airlock bridge to be extended and sealed. Oversized black bags—likely with the weapons from the crates I saw being loaded—take up nearly every inch of floor space.
And none of that accounts for the dozen or more of the accompanying dead.
McCaughey, once more, stands over Diaz, who is facing me and the rest of her squad. She can’t see him, obviously, but he’s blocking my view of her. All I can see is her booted foot tapping against the textured metal floor, burning off excess adrenaline while she shouts at me through the cranked-up comm in my helmet. I don’t have an implant, like the rest of her team. Her words are tinny and muffled, but not blocked, by the bright orange earplugs distributed to all of us. The best that Verux had to offer on board the Ares.
Orange earplugs. An idea is scratching at the back of my brain, but it won’t emerge into fruition. What is it about those? I recommended ear protection, and Max agreed. So what? I try to chase that thought, but Diaz’s voice, even dampened, is loud enough to distract.
“You don’t follow orders, I boot your ass. You endanger any of our people, I boot your ass. You try any of that ghost-y bullshit, I boot your ass.”
I resist the urge to point out that the “ghost-y bullshit” didn’t seem so bullshit when I was talking to her former colleague.
“Is there any scenario in which you don’t boot my ass?” I ask instead.
“None,” she says.
Excellent. Good to know.
My temper strains to break my grip on it. I’m not an imbecile. While I don’t have her training or specific skills, I’ve been a team leader. I know what it means to be responsible for others under my care.
Fat lot of good it did them.
I ignore that and lean slightly to the side so I can see Diaz around McCaughey’s ghost. “I’m here to help. My goal is to get everyone out alive.”
She sneers. “Right.”
“Why the fuck are you so angry with me? I didn’t give you this assignment, didn’t make you volunteer.” I pause, a horrible idea dawning. “You did volunteer, correct?” No one should be ordered into this situation.
Diaz jerks her chin up and opens her mouth.
“Diaz,” Montgomery shouts. When she looks at him, he shakes his head, tapping his helmet, and Diaz’s gaze darts to Reed, who is next to me.
Reed, however, seems oblivious. His face is sweaty and grayish in the interior lights of his helmet, which he shouldn’t really have on. But whatever. He keeps running his hands down his legs, as if attempting to dry his palms even though his gloves are on, or reassure himself that the enviro suit is still in place and protecting him.
He catches me looking at him. “What?” he snaps, stilling his hands in late-breaking self-consciousness.
“First time in a suit?” I ask.
He mumbles something, but based on the movement of his lips, one of the words is “training.”
“Just breathe normally, and try to focus beyond your helmet.” Good advice in any situation, but particularly this one. One of the primary dangers in a suit for a first-timer is focusing on the faceplate or the way the helmet limits your vision instead of whatever is beyond, whatever you can see. Too easy to miss a handhold or improperly clamp a safety tether if you’re not paying attention to the right thing. In this situation, being distracted by his gear is only going to make the inevitable disorientation on the Aurora that much worse.
Reed looks over at me sharply. “I don’t need your help,” he says, enunciating each word precisely to be sure I understand.
And that, of all things, severs the leash on my temper. “Yeah, you do. You all do.” I raise my voice so they can all hear me, but I focus my gaze on Diaz. “I know you don’t want to believe me, and that’s fine. But you’re going to see things over there. Living people you love, dead family you’ve lost. Random strangers who have died in horrific ways but are still up and walking around, even when you can see their bodies on the floor. That’s how this thing—whatever it is—works. Maybe it’s a living creature that feeds on fear and confusion.”
Diaz rolls her eyes.
“Or maybe it’s some kind of weird side effect from the off-gassing of a material they used on the ship. I don’t fucking know. But it will happen. And knowing it’s not real, knowing that it’s a hallucination, will not save you. It feels real. And you’ll stop being able to tell the difference.” At least, if my experience serves.
“You have to keep your head,” I continue. “Don’t shoot at everything that moves or you’ll kill any survivors—”
“Survivors.” This time it’s Reed openly scoffing at me.
Fucker. Maybe it’s wrong, but I’m going to enjoy watching him squirm, just a little bit.
“—and blow holes in the ship that will take out the rest of us,” I finish.
Diaz glares at me like she’s dying to tell me where I can stow my warnings, but she keeps her mouth shut.
None of them say anything. The only sign I have that any of the rest of them even heard me is that they’re all very diligently avoiding looking in my direction.
They probably think I’m crazy. I’m sure they’ve been warned. That’s fine. They’ll see for themselves soon enough.
A loud beeping sounds as the airlock opens on our end of the extendable bridge. The Aurora’s cargo bay doors on the other end are already open.
No one is waiting for us.
Montgomery’s team is first over. I hold my breath, but when their lights sweep inside the darkened cargo bay, the LINA is still there. Holding to the floor. The sight of her shiny, familiar hull makes my stomach ache with homesickness.
I feel the brush of Kane’s shoulder against mine in LINA’s narrow passageways, the corresponding warmth in my chest when he smiled at me.
But I see him, standing in front of me on the Ares’s deck, overlapping with McCaughey, the blend of them chaotic and disorienting. Kane waves his hand at me in an urgent gesture, as always, panic etched into his expression.
I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting until the image, memory, ghost, whatever it is, fades. I need to focus.
The airlock bridge is simply an extendable portion of Ares that connects and seals to an entrance on another ship. Like a big see-through tunnel. A guideline runs on either side to help you move from one ship to the other.
I’ve heard of airlock bridges, but never used one before. In theory, it’s no more complicated than walking across a regular bridge on Earth. But on Earth, you don’t look down and see the infinite emptiness beneath you. All around you.
Diaz’s team is next. Most of them are already on board, opening up their crates and bags, when Reed, ahead of me on the guideline, freezes up. His panicked breathing is loud in my ears.
Shit.
I glance back. Three members from Shin’s team are on the line behind me. We can’t go backward.
“One hand in front of the other, focus on the cargo bay,” I call to Reed, raising my voice. Max should never have let him tag along, no matter what point Max was trying to prove.
“Shut up! I know,” Reed shouts. And yet, he doesn’t move.
I’m not enjoying being right and Reed being miserable nearly as much as I thought I would. Then again, at the moment, he’s the only thing standing between me and the Aurora and the answers that may lie inside. Come on, come on!
“Slide your back hand forward toward your front hand, and then pull yourself even,” I say, working to keep my tone patient. “It’s perfectly safe.” As long as the seal holds. From here it looks like the temporary fixture against the Aurora is that same foam bullshit that Kane has … had to keep applying on the LINA.
I expect Reed to snarl at me again, but he says nothing. Then, after a few more excruciating seconds, he does as I said, though his hands are visibly shaking.
“You’ve got it. Keep going.”
Slowly he inches toward the Aurora. The hard knot of tension in my stomach starts to ease. He’s going to make it. We will make it.
I’m coming, I promise anyone who is left on the Aurora.
Once Reed crosses the threshold, he stumbles as stronger gravity kicks back in. One of Diaz’s team members grabs him and pulls him further into the cargo bay before letting go. Reed lands on the floor in an ungainly heap, which he immediately struggles to correct by getting to his feet.
Good enough. Without Reed in front of me, I’m able to finish my crossing much faster. The second my boots touch down on the Aurora’s floor, though, the all-too-familiar hum of the idling engines resonates up through my feet and sends an awful chill over my skin. It is an uncomfortable but familiar sensation, a feeling of presence and pressure, almost. As though someone has a fingertip resting lightly on the center of your forehead and then gradually, almost so slowly you don’t even notice it happening, the pressure increases until that fingertip is boring through your skull.
Yeah. I’ve been here before, and even though I still don’t remember parts of it, the dread is gut-level and unforgettable.
It doesn’t help that the cargo bay is dark, the only lights coming from our helmets. Frowning, I reach up to turn mine on, and Reed, watching me, mimics the movement. Clearly, the grav generator is working, and we saw the effects of the environmental systems being turned back on. So why is it dark in here? Though, now that I think about it, I don’t recall any lights being visible from the outside of the Aurora when we pulled alongside.
“Did you cut the power when you choked the engines?” I ask anyone who is listening.
No one responds.
“Hello? What’s going on with the lights?”
To my surprise, it’s Max who answers me. He must be monitoring the comm channels back on the Ares.
“Negative,” he says, the grim tone of his raised voice carrying through clearly even with my earplugs. “That wasn’t us.”
Hope flares in me, outrageously bright. Nysus cut the lights before, when we were trying to give the engines more power. Perhaps he is still doing that, even with the other environmental systems up and running. That sounds like something Nysus would do.
Or … would have done. All of this, including the ship’s course, could have been set months ago. This is not proof of their survival. Just proof that they were, at one point, alive, which I already knew.
The hope in me dims at the realization. But I take a deep breath, determined to push forward.
I head toward the airlock, where the security teams have assembled. Their enviro suits, like the one I’m now wearing, are military grade and made of darker material, but theirs now bristle with weapons attached at every conceivable point. And they, presumably, have even more in the bags that several of them are carrying strapped to their backs.
This is a bad idea.
No sooner does that thought run through my head than I catch a glimpse of motion from the corner of my eye. I turn, awkwardly, trying to track it, expecting to see Reed Darrow bumbling up next to me.
Instead, my mother hovers beside me, her mouth open in a silent scream just inches from my face. She is as I last remember her, dried blood in the creases of her mouth, her eyes gone filmy and gray, sinking back into her head, and her skin beginning to sag from her cheekbones and forehead in rot.
I stagger back, colliding with someone, and setting off a chain reaction of muted protests.
But when I catch my balance and look up, she’s gone.
“What is your problem?” someone demands as I turn in the ungraceful manner that the enviro suits demand, looking, checking for her. It was in this cargo bay, nearly in this exact same spot, that I saw her the last time, for the first time in years. And the last time I was here, I lost half my crew—if my memories can be trusted—and a good chunk of my mind.
Reed Darrow, finally caught up with us, watches me warily.
Seeing my mother once is fear, an anxious mind projecting. Perhaps even the much-discussed coping mechanism created long ago in a still-developing brain.
But twice. Twice feels more like an omen.