Cleo would go for the vital systems, find something that threatens Marguerite herself, so that shehasto stop and do something about it.
I flick up the display from my cuff and dive into the code one more time, pushing past numbers, chasing something I can use quickly. Then I see it.
I set off the air-quality alarms on the bridge, so the whole space fills with a deafeningWHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOPthat I can hear even from this distance.
Hunter!Marguerite’s barely audible over comms.Get into the controls. Get me some air!
‘I can’t,’ I shout back. ‘I don’t have access. You’ll have to do it!’
I lurk in the back of the life-support system as she tries to silence the alarm, listening to her swear over the headset. It takes her longer, because she thinks the alarm is legit. It’s another minute she hasn’t spent speeding up her timeline – I’ll take it.
Then she tags me, finding me where she’s working and bumping me out of the life-support sections. Suddenly my display fritzes in front of me and disappears.
I thought you couldn’t get in, she snaps over comms.
I’m silent a moment too long, before I find a reply. ‘It’s your air, I kept trying. I’ll head for Nico.’
She doesn’t reply.
Cleo, run faster.
I reset my cuff and start again – what else can I do? Cut power to the bridge? It’s so protected, but maybe …
And then my sister’s voice sounds in my ear again, as she comes back on comms.You know, Hunter …The hair on the back of my neck stands up at her tone.Whatdidyour little friend think she was going to do with my cuff? You said it yourself – she knows nothing about code. Was she going to give it to someone who does know what to do?
Oh, shit.
I look up to find Nico in the open doorway.
He lunges for me, where I sit on the bed. I throw myself across the room, out of his way. He moves like a fighter, and I might be fit, but I’m not that.
‘Come on, now,’ he says softly, hands spreading wide as he stalks across the room toward me. ‘Game’s over.’ I can hear the soft buzz of Marguerite’s voice in his earpiece, and I flick through the channels on mine to catch the last of her words.
—him quickly.
I edge around the tiny room as Nico turns toward me, shifting to block the path to the door. Fumbling behind me, I run my hand along a shelf, searching desperately for anything I can use as a weapon.
The hell with it, shoot him, Marguerite snaps.He’s picked a side.
‘You don’t want to do that,’ I tell Nico. My fingers reach the end of the shelf and find a flat panel fixed to the wall.
‘No?’ he asks, sounding a lot like hedoeswant to shoot me. He’s not drawing his gun, though. Not yet.
‘You don’t want to shoot a Graves,’ I point out.
Nico shrugs. ‘I’m warming up to the idea.’
‘She’s lost it, you know that. You know these aren’t orders you should follow. There’s barely a way out of this now, but if you kill me …’
Nico lunges again, and an instant later I’m pressed up against the wall, his forearm across my throat, cutting off my air. ‘Who’s going to know she gave orders?’ he murmurs, eyes meeting mine. ‘Or that I followed them? Terrible that you died when the station vented.’
And now he reaches for his gun.
Black starts to creep in around the edges of my vision, and I wrench at his forearm with one hand, scrabbling behind me with the other. My fingers find the edge of the panel fixed to the wall again.
They’re easy to pull out.It’s Cleo’s voice, back at the engineering offices, making excuses for heading to the greenhouse in person.They were thinking about maintenance, not sabotage.
Just have to watch for the live ones.
