Eventually, our transportation—a chain of at least six cars—pulls away from the Tower. I avoid the windows as we leave the reporters behind. But there are more of them waiting as we approach the Verux headquarters, shouting as our vehicles approach the electronic gates.
Someone, somewhere, must have told them not just that I was leaving the Tower but where we were going.
As far as I know, the only people who are aware of the plan are Verux personnel. Why would any of them want to leak the information? I suspect my release, however temporary, is bound to elicit strong and likely negative feelings from a portion of the general population, something that’s not exactly going to help Verux clean up this PR mess. Granted, it’s a mess they inherited when they bought out CitiFutura, but still.
My suspicion is confirmed by the group of thirty or so protestors at the gates, their faces red with cold, their brightly colored signs flashing in the gray morning light. It’s easy to track the various branches of the story and the protestors’ particular allegiances to said branches by their signs.
Welcome to Earth, Aliens
Aurora Families for the Truth
Bring Them HOME!
Verux Lies
Greed is Death
Thou Shalt Not Kill!
Though, with the last two, I’m not sure whether they’re referring to me or to Verux/CitiFutura and the whole space-industrial complex.
If I had to do this over again—noneof this would be happening—I would have at least kept my mouth shut on board theRaleigh,rather than spilling my broken, confusing tale as soon as I was consciousand semi-coherent. Not that I’d been in a good headspace for making any kind of decisions at that point, dehydrated with a skull fracture and missing chunks of memory.
I woke up in theRaleigh’s MedBay under isolation protocols, cold, desperate for water, with no recollection of how I got there. They had found me in the escape pod, while searching for us in the LINA. TheGinsburghad apparently sounded the alarm when we missed our ride and they couldn’t reach us on comms.
Fueled by an urgency I didn’t even entirely understand at the time, I told the doctor and theRaleigh’s captain everything I knew, everything I did remember, which was both too much and not enough.
My story had reached Earth before I did, triggering hundreds of conspiracy theories and one poorly made docudrama before Verux shut it down.
As our cars squeeze through the barely open electronic gates, I catch a glimpse of a little girl who looks familiar. She’s holding hands with a woman shouting in protest. The girl’s dark hair is braided in pigtails with a flash of yellow at the top on each side. Butterflies.
Isabelle?I crane my neck for another look, but she and the woman are gone, the crowd pushing forward around them. If they were ever there in the first place.
I squeeze my eyes shut. If nothing else, I have to do this for Kane’s family. For all of their families. They deserve answers, and I don’t trust Verux to do more than clean up and come up with a pat story that provides little to no actual information beyond their own blamelessness.
The enormous white shuttle hangars rise up in the distance ahead, and an overwhelming sense of déjà vu sweeps over me. I trained here. I took my first shuttle here, from this launch area to my first hauler and my first sniffer assignment, P3T4. PETA. It seems appropriate I should take my last one from here.
Max is waiting at my door almost as soon as our transport stops outside shuttle hangar 4, as if he fears I’m going to make a breakfor it. Reed waits a dozen or so feet away, both impatient and sulky at the same time, checking his watch.
Max opens my door. “Come on, this way.” He gestures for me to climb out, but he doesn’t move until I get out. Then he’s a step behind me, escorting me toward the open hangar doors.
This is a different side of Max than I’ve seen before. Brisk, businesslike. It’s a little disconcerting, the difference between his victim bedside manner and this take-charge problem-solver persona he has going on right now.
Makes me feel like I perhaps don’t know him as well as I think I do.
Three squads of Verux private security personnel, twenty-one men and women in black uniforms and protective gear, stand at attention, waiting in the excruciatingly bright hangar bay in front of the transfer shuttle we will take up to a larger vessel, probably something in the Striker class. More than a few watch our approach, eyeing me with what feels like pretty open suspicion. They’re all heavily armed, with weapons I don’t even recognize slung over their shoulders, along with their bags. Crates marked with the Verux logo, a fire symbol, and the wordsAUTHORIZED USE ONLYstand off to the side.
All of which would be alarming enough, but they’re surrounded by death.
My breath catches in my throat.
People are weeping and bloodied, hovering nearby or collapsed on the floor at the feet of the security personnel. Victims? Perpetrators? Impossible to know, but definitely not living, based on the lack of reaction from the security teams and Max, next to me.
Others are dressed in similar Verux security uniforms, presumably teammates that have been lost. A few of them are shouting at or pleading with their still-breathing teammates.
I have to look away.
This is going to go badly. On theAurora,that many weapons, combined with what they’re bound to see or think they see? It’ll bea bloodbath. One that will jeopardize all of us, including anyone who might still be alive on board.
