Max thinks I did it. He thinks I’m responsible.Am I?
I scrub my hands over my face, trying to pull myself out of the mire I’ve willingly sunk into over the last few months.
Reed eyes me speculatively. “So maybe you didn’t kill your whole team. Just left one person behind to hold your claim. And to bolster your story. Millions of dollars are at stake, after all.”
His words ignite a flicker of uncertainty. I don’t remember leaving the ship. Is it possible someone survived this long?
I shudder but the movement feels slow, underwater. “You better hope that ship is headed out into the dark, never to be heard from again,” I say, carefully enunciating each word.
“We can’t let it go, Claire. You know that,” Max says gently. “We’ll be sending a vessel to intercept the ship, based on your recommendation.”
“We” being Verux, presumably. I narrow my eyes at him. “That isnotmy recommendation.” Staying the hell away from it would be their best bet.
“Well, your sudden and newsworthy arrival has made any alternative solution impossible,” Max points out, showing the first hint of irritation.
I shake my head. “You can’t let whatever is on board get back here—”
“You’re referring to thepresenceyou claim you felt on the ship, during explorations you were not authorized to conduct,” Reed says, with open skepticism.
I look to Max for help, but he holds his hands up, surrendering the conversation to Reed.
“You understand how convenient this all sounds,” Reed says. “You and your team score the biggest and most controversial findin the history of manned space flight, right before you are wiped from the rolls as a team lead.” He ticks off the point on his fingers. “Everyone else had employment on other vessels lined up, but your loan application to start your own transport company was denied.” Another finger. “You had no money, no future, beyond a pointless desk job, an administrative bone tossed your way. And then, none of your team survives to tell about this big find, but you do.” Two more fingers. “Which means it’s all yours.” He raises that last finger, then lets his hand drop.
Except that my share, one-fifth of ten percent of the salvage worth, would have been more than enough to accomplish my goals. On a practical level, killing my crew to get the whole thing—and blaming it on a mysterious entity—was not only unnecessary, it actually made the situation more difficult, landing me here in the Tower. But that’s not the answer Reed Darrow wants to hear, the box he wants to check next to my name.
“Have you ever seen someone commit suicide by plasma drill? Or gouge out their eyes?” I ask. “It’s anything butconvenient.”
“And yet, somehow, you managed to survive. And it’s not even the first time ‘lone survivor’ has been attached to your name. Is it?” Reed asks, though he clearly already knows the answer.
The sense of betrayal—cold and sharp, like a knife at my throat—startles me. I thought I was past all of that. My gaze shoots straight to Max, who looks down at his hands.
“On Ferris Outpost, you broke quarantine protocol, claiming that one of the other colony children summoned you past the caution tape and into the sealed sector,” Reed says, reading notes off his comm implant’s display.
Becca.I can still see her in my mind. Small and pale in an oversized white nightgown with little blue flowers. She was barefoot, her dark hair still plastered to her forehead with sweat, but her eyes sparkled with mischief as she waved at me from the other side of the tape, urging me to follow her to her family’s hab.
I remember being surprised and impressed at how quickly andquietly my friend slipped through the passageway airlock. It was like she hadn’t even opened it.
But Reed is correct: I followed her in. It had been days since I’d seen her at work or our makeshift school. Everyone was worried about her family—and others in the same hab sector—dying. I was just happy to see she was okay. Clearly the danger was over if Becca was out of bed and standing just behind the tape.
“Never mind that the girl was dead, had been dead for more than a day by that point,” Reed continues.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the tremor starting up inside me. “I was eleven and spent a month alone in that hab. My memories are—”
“After? Perhaps,” Reed says. “Maybe your recollections would be tainted by stress or post-traumatic… whatever.” He waves his hand, dismissing years of therapy and multiple professional evaluations and treatment plans with a single gesture. “But this was before everyone died. Your mother’s explanation of the quarantine break is mentioned in her notes.”
I freeze at the mention of my mother. I don’t even remember talking to her about Becca. Everything about those last days at Ferris is a blur.
“When search and rescue found you, you told them your mother helped you signal them,” Reed continues. “You know why that’s impossible.”
Because I’d watched her die weeks before. The fluid filling up her lungs until she couldn’t breathe.
Except… I remember the whisper of her words in my ear. The light caress of her hand against the top of my head. Both long after I’d left her body behind in the MedBay hab.
Jumbled memories and a traumatized kid making up things to comfort herself.That’s all it was. Every evaluation I’d ever had backed that up.
Trying to rally, I turn to Max. “Something is on that fucking ship. And if it’s coming here, Verux needs to destroy it.”
“Along with all the evidence of your malfeasance,” Reed argues. “Are you honestly trying to imply that some kind of alien life-form—”
