I glare at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“The course heading that you’ve been asking about?” Max prompts.
I nod tightly.
“Earth,” Max says. “The ship is heading here.”
Goose bumps rise all over my skin, little pinpricks of sensation.
“According to your story, the destination was the far edge of the commweb in—”
“Sector K147.” My lips feel numb.
“Which means somewhere along the way, someone changed course,” Max says, confirming what I’ve already pieced together.
I shake my head. “It doesn’t mean anything. I told you, I think I remember the engines being stopped or slowed down when I was… when I saw Lourdes that last time. Kane could have changed course then. Before I left, before…”
Before he and Nysus died. Or, before I killed them, depending on what version of events is true. I feel sick.
“And then there’s this.” Max nods at Reed, who reluctantly produces a small flat plastic circle from his pocket and then taps at his visible-only-to-him keyboard.
Sound emerges from the disk; it’s a speaker. Nothing at first beyond the rough rasp of static. Then words emerge, like shapes out of heavy fog.
“… help. Mayday… vessel, theAurora…rescue requested… under attack… souls on board.”
Even with the interference, I recognize that voice.
Kane.
21
I left him. Oh my God, I left him. Maybe Nysus, too.
Vomit scorches up my throat and out of my mouth onto the floor before I can stop it.
Reed jerks his chair back in disgust, and Max stands. “Excuse me? We need some help over here.” He sounds calm, unsurprised.
Two attendants, one male and one female, rush over with such alacrity it feels as though they must have been hovering nearby, expecting to be called or to eavesdrop. Or both. The man addresses the floor with a bottled solution; the woman wipes a towel roughly over my face and bare feet, pulling the towel away from my hands when I try to take it to do it myself. What kind of harm could I do to myself or anyone else with that?
“It’s a repeating message on an old emergency channel from theAuroraherself,” Max says. “Very similar to the one on the automated beacon you described hearing in the first place.”
The distress beacon that someone on theAurorahad had enough wherewithal to deliberately set off, despite the insanity around them. Despite taking the ship off course and beaching it without so much as a call for help. Which in the sea of illogical and outright insane things surrounding theAurorastill stands out as odd.
“We’ve attempted communication, of course. No response,” Max says.
“There might not be,” I say after a moment, still dizzy with the revelation. “Lourdes must not have had time to finish the upgrade. How… how long ago was this message received?”
“Ten days ago,” Max says. “It’s likely been cycling for longer than that, but no one thought to check the old emergency channel at first.”
Until someone, somewhere, believed at least that part of my story.
Ten days.“You think he’s alive,” I say.I left them. Oh God, I left them.The words just keep beating into my brain, over and over again.
But if they were alive, why would I have left them?Howcould I have left them? And if I left them alive, why am I seeing Kane, like Lourdes and Voller? Granted, my visions of him shift and change, unlike Lourdes and Voller who show me the same thing each time. I’ve never seen Ny at all. But that had made sense to me, in that he would be as reluctant to show himself in death as he had been in life.
“It’s possible,” Max hedges.
“Or,” Reed interjects, “Mr. Behrens recorded the message before you left, before you decided to eliminate any loose ends.”
