“Where is theAuroranow?” I persist, ignoring him. “Is it following a course or just drifting from an initial engine boost? Have you seen course corrections?” That would imply a thinking human—or nav computer—in charge. If not, the ship might simply be following the heading Voller set.Before.“Have you tried communicating with it?”
Max shifts in his chair, the plastic squeaking slightly under his weight. “We need to know the rest of the story first, Claire.” He seems tired. Or resigned to some answer that I don’t know.
“But I’ve told you everything that I remember! I didn’t kill my team!” I shout. The nurse at the station nearby stands up to head toward us.
But Max shakes his head, dismissing her.
“Here’s the thing, Kovalik.” Reed leans forward. “How can you be so sure if you don’t remember? If this thing that you claim was on board made everyone else lose their minds, how do you know it didn’t make you lose yours?”
My mouth works, but no sound comes out.
“You do seem particularly susceptible to… shall we say, instability, to begin with,” Reed points out.
I have a loose screw. That’s what he’s saying. A bubble of hysterical and desperate laughter lodges itself in the back of my throat.
And the thing is, I realize with a dawning sense of horror, he might be right. I have no way of proving what I remember is accurate. What if my memories—the few I’ve retained—are wrong? What if I conjured up whole conversations and scenarios? Whole people? It’s happened before. Not just with Becca.
The meds in my system make everything soft and hazy, which means my grip on rational thought slips away that much more easily. It feels like the room is spiraling around me, pulling me down with the force of the motion. A ship plummeting toward an abruptend on a rocky surface. I draw my knees up to my chest, trying to hold myself together.I can’t breathe. I can’t…
My lungs seize up in their struggle, and I hear myself panting, but it doesn’t seem to be helping.
“Claire,” Max breaks in gently. And then a little more sharply, “Claire!”
I drag my gaze to him.
“Finish your account,” Max begins.
I’m already shaking my head, trembling. I just want to go back to my room.
“Finish your account,” he continues. “And I’ll tell you about theAurora’s course heading and what we know so far.”
Reed’s mouth pops open in surprise and objection, but Max shoots him a warning look. A muted sound of protest emerges from Reed but that’s all.
Even in my panicked state, I dimly recognize that as an interesting interaction. Theyknowsomething. Something that they—or Reed, at least—don’t want me to know.
“Max,” Reed says carefully, his voice sharp like the crack of the ice on our frozen water stores when it begins to melt. “Are you sure that’s a good—”
Max dismisses his concern with an impatient noise and looks to me, waiting for a response.
It takes me a moment to marshal my resources, curiosity slowly creeping in, taking over in place of fear. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m not. Only one way to find out. “All right,” I say after a moment, working to catch my breath.
Max leans back in his seat, another fascinated spectator in a tale of woe.
I open my mouth and then close it again, a thought occurring to me as I try to wrest my thoughts back in line. “Communication attempts, too,” I add.
Reed looks ready to yank Max off to the side for an angry whispered discussion, just out of my earshot.
But Max shrugs in easy agreement. He is, clearly, the one incharge of this investigation, no matter what Reed said when he first introduced himself. “Yes, I’ll share details on our communication attempts with theAuroraas well.”
Good enough.
6
THEN
“Theoretically, theAuroracould receive shipments from resupply vessels while cruising. State of the art for the time,” Nysus says, his voice high and reedy with excitement. “So the outer doors could be independently operated if the setting was engaged and you had the override code.”
And clearly, he does.
