Just as abruptly, the moment breaks, and I’m in my chair in the common room. Kane is gone. And the floor is the same dull gray tile.
“Are you all right?” Max asks.
Another fragment. A new one.
“I’m fine,” I say, gripping the edges of the plastic chair beneath me, fingers tight on the safety-molded edges, just hard enough to pinch a little. “I want the course heading.”
Max holds up his hand as he retakes his seat at the table. “In a moment.”
“Max,” I say in warning.
He tuts at me. “Just hear me out. I told you we’re sending a ship to intercept theAurora.” He looks at me until I nod in acknowledgment.
And it’s still a terrible idea.
“It will primarily be a recovery mission,” Max continues. “Our team will bring back as many of the remains as we can, along with any survivors.”
But I’m already shaking my head. “If you send more people onto that ship, they will die.” I don’t know how else to be clearer on thatpoint. “Max, we were on theAurorafor less than three days and itdestroyedus.” My eyes water at the idea of anyone on that ship ever again, at the memory of our stupid optimism. “Whatever is on there”—I pause to glare at Reed—“ghosts, aliens, some undetectable virus or bacteria, it doesn’t matter. It’s real and it is deadly. Verux can’t negotiate its way out of this.”
“We recognize the risk,” Max says evenly. “But we can’t just destroy a ship with human remains on board.”
What he means is they can’t destroy a ship with human remains belonging to the world’s wealthiest families with everyone watching. Not if Verux has any hope of surviving any of the innumerable pending lawsuits.
“Our team will be going in with a full complement of Verux private security,” Max says. “The best of the—”
“Which will do exactly nothing,” I argue, heated panic and frustration rising in me, like bright colors breaking through a previously muted landscape.
“And an expert to guide us,” Max finishes.
“An expert,” I repeat dumbly.
“No,” Reed says to Max. “Absolutely not. That would be insane. They can’t—”
Max cuts him off. “The only person who’s been there, who somehow survived,” he says, focused on me.
The connection finally clicks. He wants me to go back to theAurora,and lead them.
A violent chill spreads over me, and the air in my lungs vanishes. I shove my chair away from the table, the legs squawking against the tile in protest. “No.” My midsection gives way, as if my spine has simply dissolved, and I end up huddled over my own legs, desperately trying to suck in oxygen. “No fucking way.”
“You are the best chance our people have at surviving—”
“Cancel it. That’s their best chance,” I say, panting. The gray fabric of my patient pajamas covering my legs smells of bleach and antiseptic, a scent that grows stronger with the dampness of my breath against the material.
“We can’t,” Max says with a sigh. “Your return took that option away from us.”
My rescue from a twenty-year-old escape pod that had vanished with the world’s first and only luxury spaceliner had made headlines on all the newsfeeds. Even before I’d regained some semblance of coherence—trauma and a head injury combined with days of limited water and food on the escape pod had apparently left me in a dramatically weakened state—and told my story to the crew of theRaleigh. Word had spread across the commweb like fire in an oxygen purifier.
I sit up slowly, hands wrapping tight in the excess fabric of my pant legs. “So it’s my fault no matter what?” Either they go without me and die while attempting a rescue triggered by my escape and demanded by the public and powerful families. Or I go with them, and we all die together. Somehow I suspect that “third time’s a charm” does not apply to narrow escapes from death.
Max doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. He’s right.
I can’t change the past. I could, though, choose not to make the same fucking mistake. I shake my head. “I am not leading innocent people to their deaths.”Again.
“You survived so you must—”
“But I don’t remember how!” I shout. “I don’t know what happened. One minute, I was on the bridge with the dead body of one of my crew and a hallucination of her… or her fucking ghost, I don’t know! And the next I’m on theRaleighin their MedBay.”
Max eyes me for a long moment. “I think you know more than you realize.”
