My mouth is dry from speaking and the drugs and remembered terror. I feel as though, by telling this story, I’ve expelled a darkness into the room with my air and my words. An entity hovering, watching and waiting. For now.
I squeeze my trembling hands together in my lap, the knuckle bones digging into each other with a painful but reassuring bite. The simple movement takes more concentration than it should, butmy head does not feel quite as thick as before. The medications are wearing off. The thought sends a spike of fear through me. I don’t know if I want to be that aware, not anymore.
But I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain, and I will not allow myself to leave—mentally or physically—until I get what I was promised. Ineedto know. Is someone still alive on theAurora?
Reed smirks at me. “You certainly seemed to remember enough to add ghosts and the possibility of aliens.”
“You asked for the whole story,” I say to Max through gritted teeth. He’s watching me, his head cocked to the side in evaluation, turning a pen—a relic with ink inside and a metal tip, surely as forbidden in here as Reed’s pin—over and over in his fingers. “I gave it to you, even the things I left out the first time because I knew they sounded—”
“Conveniently unstable?” Reed asks. “Nothing you’ve said in any way contradicts the far more likely scenario that you are responsible for the death of your crew.”
“I’ve never suggested otherwise,” I say, hands curling into fists. “It was my idea to board theAurora.I’m…” I swallow hard. “IwasTL. And I failed them.”
Reed slaps the table in dramatic effect, his face a mix of disgust and triumph. The loud, unexpected noise makes me and the other patients in the common room jump. Loud, unexpected noises in here are not a good idea. Heads turn in our direction. Vera, at the “window,” begins to weep softly.
“All that means is that your team would have listened to you, right up until the moment you turned on them,” Reed says. “Until you betrayed their trust.”
I stiffen. Because he’s right, just not in the way he means. If I hadn’t led the way, they would all still be alive. My own selfish concerns are what got them killed and landed me in here.
“You’re not seriously suggesting that I fractured the back of my own skull,” I say, trying to keep a hold on my temper.
“No, I think they tried to stop you, and you killed them. Your history and documented disregard for life made it easy for you,”Reed says, watching me expectantly, as if those words would trigger a lever inside of me, releasing a long-awaited confession. “A viable option.”
A viable option? I could show him a viable option. Two moves, no, three. Sit forward, snatch pen from Max’s relaxed fingers, push off the floor and jab that pen right in the side of Reed Darrow’s neck, right above that prissy, perfect white collar of his.
Chaos would ensue, screaming from the other patients. It would be precious minutes before the staff could drag him out of here, bleeding the whole way…
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. “Four against one?” I ask, opening my eyes. “You have severely overinflated ideas about my abilities. I wouldn’t underestimate my crew like that.”
A sly grin flickers at the edges of his mouth, as if I’ve admitted something important. “No. I’m sure you wouldn’t.”
My gaze cuts to the pen, as it stills in Max’s hand.
“I think, in fact,” Reed continues, “you plann—”
Max sits forward. “Thank you, Claire. I know reliving that must have been difficult for you,” he says, cutting Reed off abruptly.
In another situation, Reed’s hanging-open mouth might have been comical, like a child caught too shocked to tantrum over his candy being taken unexpectedly from his sticky hand. As it is, it’s still difficult not to smile.
“Course heading,” I remind Max. “Communication attempts.”
“Claire, you did not mention the death of Mr. Behrens or Mr. Yasuda, the one you call Nysus,” Max says.
“Which one do you want to hear about?” I ask with a sigh.
“Which person?” he asks. “I want—”
“No,” I say. “Which death?” I shake my head. “I don’t remember what happened, I told you. But in my head, whether it’s real or not, I’ve seen them die in all kinds of ways.” My voice breaks despite my effort to remain calm. “Killing each other. Killing themselves. Dying from lack of oxygen or hypothermia.” There’s even a version where I killed them, lashing out at what I thought wasn’t real. I havethem all because I’ve spent weeks trying to piece what happened together. How I ended up on that escape pod alone.
“I would never have left them,” I say.Are you sure about that? Old habits die hard, too.I shove that thought down hard. “So the only explanation for me to be here without them is that they must be dead.” Otherwise they would have come with me, wouldn’t they? Or taken another escape pod or fixed the LINA? “I just don’t know how it happened.”
Reed makes a disgruntled sound, but Max simply nods. Then his head jerks up, focusing on a signal only he can hear. Someone is calling. “Will you excuse me?” he says to me, a polite fiction that I have the choice, that I have any choice in this, as he taps the comm implant at the base of his ear and stands. “This is Donovan.”
Max moves a few steps away from the table, and I watch him, convinced that this may be a ploy to get out of giving me the information I was promised. Fake an emergency, leave the facility and me behind.
“It’s a fairy tale,” Reed says, leaning across the table.
I glance at him against my will.
