My eyes tear as light and color flood my vision. I blink several times before my sight settles, images layering and focusing.A man with jet-black eyes and matching hair is looking down at me, gaping.
“Oh my God,” he says, clasping his chest. “She just gave me a heart attack. Oh my God, I can’t breathe—”
Standing beside him is James. Twice.
Two Jameses.
I blink and the images do not reconcile; instead, they sharpen, the differences between them becoming clearer. Different hair, different eyes. One James is older than the other James: his face sharper, harder, fewer laugh lines around his eyes. Same nose, same jawline, no freckles.
I prefer the freckles.
I like the touch of sun on his skin, the way his mouth animates easily, as if he’s always hoping to smile.
Except now.
Right now, neither James looks pleased to see me. In fact, they wear similar expressions of fury. And then, of course, as my mind sorts itself out, it becomes obvious to me that the second James, the one with golden hair and green eyes, isn’t James at all.
This, I realize, must be the older brother.
Aaron Warner Anderson.
Even now, with my senses on simmer, a flash of trepidation moves through me. The stories about the eldest Anderson brother are legendary, even on the Ark.
“Rosabelle?” James says cautiously. “Can you hear me?”
I try to open my mouth, but the effort to unseal my lips is too much. I’ve been dead, I think, for too long.
“I don’t understand,” says the woman just out of my sightline. She sounds breathless with fear. “She had no pulse. There was no heartbeat, no brain activity—”
“I think we should stick her in the fridge,” says the man with the black hair. He has an impish look, somehow charming even as he insults me. “Give her some time to finish dying off.”
James frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“This is probably some kind of glitch, right?” he explains. “This is like when a worm keeps worming even when it’s split in half.”
“Kenji—”
I make a note: the black-haired man is named Kenji.
“What?” he says, gesturing to me. “Look at her. She’s barely even moving. This is, like, actual zombie behavior. I vote we put a bullet through her head just to be safe.”
James, I notice, doesn’t dismiss this suggestion; he only looks resigned. It occurs to me then that I’ve lost even the idea of him. James will never again be a place of rest for me. His eyes will never again warm in my direction.
He sees me now for what I really am.
Your father was weak. Your mother was weak. Your sister was weak.
You’re a disgrace.
The pain of this realization is so acute it draws a tortured sound from my throat.
“Oh, shit,” says Kenji. “I think she’s trying to say something—”
The burst of battered emotion has a counterintuitive effect, the flood of cortisol and epinephrine restarting my body, propelling my heart and lungs, flooding oxygen to my brain.
“Never mind,” Kenji says, waving a hand. “False alarm.”
I manage to lift my head slightly, and three things catch my eye in quick succession: the lab coat hanging from the wall, the vial of earth sitting on a steel counter, and the exit to my right. I settle back down, my mind spinning out scenarios, preparing for eventualities. I make a mental list of the kinds of tools I might find in a morgue, things that might double as weapons: bone saw; chisel; hammer; brain knife; rib shears—
