Shit.
I glance back. Three members from Shin’s team are on the line behind me. We can’t go backward.
“One hand in front of the other, focus on the cargo bay,” I call to Reed, raising my voice. Max should never have let him tag along, no matter what point Max was trying to prove.
“Shut up! I know,” Reed shouts. And yet, he doesn’t move.
I’m not enjoying being right and Reed being miserable nearly as much as I thought I would. Then again, at the moment, he’s the only thing standing between me and theAuroraand the answers that may lie inside.Come on, come on!
“Slide your back hand forward toward your front hand, and then pull yourself even,” I say, working to keep my tone patient. “It’s perfectly safe.” As long as the seal holds. From here it looks like the temporary fixture against theAurorais that same foam bullshit that Kane has… had to keep applying on the LINA.
I expect Reed to snarl at me again, but he says nothing. Then, after a few more excruciating seconds, he does as I said, though his hands are visibly shaking.
“You’ve got it. Keep going.”
Slowly he inches toward theAurora. The hard knot of tension in my stomach starts to ease. He’s going to make it. We will make it.
I’m coming,I promise anyone who is left on theAurora.
Once Reed crosses the threshold, he stumbles as stronger gravity kicks back in. One of Diaz’s team members grabs him and pulls him further into the cargo bay before letting go. Reed lands on the floor in an ungainly heap, which he immediately struggles to correct by getting to his feet.
Good enough. Without Reed in front of me, I’m able to finish my crossing much faster. The second my boots touch down on theAurora’s floor, though, the all-too-familiar hum of the idling engines resonates up through my feet and sends an awful chill over my skin. It is an uncomfortable but familiar sensation, a feeling of presence and pressure, almost. As though someone has a fingertip resting lightly on the center of your forehead and then gradually, almost so slowly you don’t even notice it happening, the pressure increases until that fingertip is boring through your skull.
Yeah. I’ve been here before, and even though I still don’t remember parts of it, the dread is gut-level and unforgettable.
It doesn’t help that the cargo bay is dark, the only lights coming from our helmets. Frowning, I reach up to turn mine on, and Reed, watching me, mimics the movement. Clearly, the grav generator is working, and we saw the effects of the environmental systems being turned back on. So why is it dark in here? Though, now that I think about it, I don’t recall any lights being visible from the outside of theAurorawhen we pulled alongside.
“Did you cut the power when you choked the engines?” I ask anyone who is listening.
No one responds.
“Hello? What’s going on with the lights?”
To my surprise, it’s Max who answers me. He must be monitoring the comm channels back on theAres.
“Negative,” he says, the grim tone of his raised voice carrying through clearly even with my earplugs. “That wasn’t us.”
Hope flares in me, outrageously bright. Nysus cut the lights before, when we were trying to give the engines more power. Perhaps he is still doing that, even with the other environmental systems up and running. That sounds like something Nysus would do.
Or… would have done. All of this, including the ship’s course, could have been set months ago. This is not proof of their survival. Just proof that they were, at one point, alive, which I already knew.
The hope in me dims at the realization. But I take a deep breath, determined to push forward.
I head toward the airlock, where the security teams have assembled. Their enviro suits, like the one I’m now wearing, are military grade and made of darker material, but theirs now bristle with weapons attached at every conceivable point. And they, presumably, have even more in the bags that several of them are carrying strapped to their backs.
This is a bad idea.
No sooner does that thought run through my head than I catcha glimpse of motion from the corner of my eye. I turn, awkwardly, trying to track it, expecting to see Reed Darrow bumbling up next to me.
Instead, my mother hovers beside me, her mouth open in a silent scream just inches from my face. She is as I last remember her, dried blood in the creases of her mouth, her eyes gone filmy and gray, sinking back into her head, and her skin beginning to sag from her cheekbones and forehead in rot.
I stagger back, colliding with someone, and setting off a chain reaction of muted protests.
But when I catch my balance and look up, she’s gone.
“What is your problem?” someone demands as I turn in the ungraceful manner that the enviro suits demand, looking, checking for her. It was in this cargo bay, nearly in this exact same spot, that I saw her the last time, for the first time in years. And the last time I was here, I lost half my crew—if my memories can be trusted—and a good chunk of my mind.
Reed Darrow, finally caught up with us, watches me warily.
