Anthony makes his way up to the top of the spiral staircase, the motion dizzying to watch. He’s heading for his suite. Probably.
And he almost makes it.
“Hey! Hey, are you spying on me?” I recognize the gruff voice even with the edge of antagonism. Jasen Wyman.
I can’t see him, but I can hear him quite clearly, and so, evidently, can Anthony.
He spins swiftly in a motion that blurs the Platinum Level hallway into a swirl of polished wood.
“I see that camera, you can’t hide from me!” Wyman shouts, approaching Anthony. He’s in pajamas, his suite door standing open behind him. His silvery hair is rumpled and his craggy face appears further wrinkled by sleep lines, but his eyes are narrowed and bright with hate.
“Mine,” Anthony says, holding the camera up, over his head. “Fuck off, old man.”
The view is now mostly of the hall, but a tiny corner of that elegant silvering hair is visible in the lower corner.
The hair vanishes abruptly, and Anthony gives a grunt and the camera tumbles to the floor.
If I’m not mistaken, a septuagenarian just rushed a professional athlete for… spying on him?
Wyman grabs for the camera, providing a close-up, hislastclose-up, of one of those famous blue eyes, and then he lifts the camera up.
Quickly I reach out and turn off the playback. I don’t need to see this. We know how it ends—in Anthony’s suite, with the two of them beaten to a pulp.
I shove the tablet back toward Nysus. The footage hasn’t revealed anything we hadn’t already guessed at from the evidence, the bodies,we found. Murder, suicide, confusion, and chaos without an explanation or any reason.
Seeing it, though… I shudder.
“What is this?” I ask Nysus.
He lifts his shoulders helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“It’s not mutiny,” Kane says. “Not like that.”
“Hey,” Voller calls. “What’s all the whispering about?”
“What did you find?” Lourdes asks.
I take a deep breath. People are relying on me to know what to do. Because I brought them here.
Everyone you care about dies. Because of you.
The thought sets off a white-hot spurt of shame as I face them. Lourdes is leaning forward in her chair, and Voller is watching us through narrowed eyes, slouching in his seat, his body angled away from his console and toward us.
“Nothing more than what we thought,” Kane says, turning toward them. “But watching it happen…” He shakes his head grimly.
Why does it feel like he’s lying? He’s not.
“Did you see anything about why it happened?” Lourdes asks, her fingers wrapped tight around the scroll on her necklace.
“No,” Nysus says, sounding haunted.
I clear my throat. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re fine, and we’re going to stay that way. Only our food and drink, no more celebratory anything, even if it’s sealed.”
I half expect Voller to protest, but he jerks his shoulders in a shrug. “Tasted like shit anyway.”
“And we’ve all been awake for too long. We can’t afford to be distracted,” I add. Sleep deprivation is not something I want to add into this mix. “Two teams. Shifts of six hours on, six off. Starting now. Voller and I will take the first.”
“TL,” Voller protests.
