I suck in a breath sharply. Becca waves at me with a giggle that I hear as clearly as if she were right in front of me—no, as clearly as if she was in my fucking suit with me—and beckons me up to play.
Hallucination, ghost, or memory?I’m so done with this game and it’s only going to get worse. And if it’s difficult for me to handle this altered reality, experience says everyone else is going to lose their minds that much faster.
“We need to hurry the fuck up,” I say grimly.
“I give the orders, Kovalik,” Diaz says. But she jerks her head at her team. “Move!”
We climb the steps at a slightly faster pace, passing the level with the eerie theater, then the one with the empty and gated-off restaurant, without hesitation. But when Diaz leaves the stairs to head for the darkened atrium, I pause for just a moment to brace myself.
All the people who were once drifting overhead would not have had a gentle landing when the gravity came back on. And after almost eight weeks now, exposed to full environmental conditions, it’s not going to be pretty.
Immediately, though, I see that an attempt has been made at dignity. It’s cool in here, someone trying to slow decay, perhaps? Sheets, blankets, and comforters have been draped haphazardly over the fallen bodies. At least toward the front half of the room. Theefforts leave off unexpectedly in the middle of the atrium, as if someone got interrupted or distracted. From that point to the back of the room, it’s a chaotic jumble of limbs and flesh.
Like some kind of horrible abstract painting of a murder scene.
Diaz pauses and turns to her crew. “Go. You know what you’re looking for.” Then, as her team members spread out, carefully picking their way across the field of dead and setting up emergency lights on stands, she adds, “Find the ones in the best shape.”
I stare at her. “What are you—”
But then my attention is caught by three bundles tightly wrapped in sheets off to one side behind Diaz, near the bottom of the beautiful spiral staircase to the Platinum Level.
Despair rises in a strangling sensation at my throat, and my legs feel jointless and loose, as if my knees might suddenly bend the opposite way without warning, as I stumble forward and then manage a run.
I stop at their feet. Three of them. One so tall and thin, it must be Voller. In the middle, Lourdes. And on the last, dried blood stains the sheet near the head…
A silent scream escapes me; no sound is adequate for this pain. Emptiness tunnels through the center of my body until it feels as though there’s nothing left.
I failed them. I led them here. Left them to die here. Theytrustedme.
Diaz is at my side and tries to pull me back, but in that moment, I cannot, will not, be stopped.
Before she can intervene, I’ve pulled the coverings from each one of them. Voller. Lourdes. Nysus.
Voller’s head still bears the damage of the plasma drill. Lourdes’s eyes are covered by the bandages, exactly as I recall from that fragmented and tattered memory. And Nysus…
My hand flies up to my mouth in an instinctive gesture, but it’s blocked by my helmet.
Nysus stares up at the ceiling, his skin grayish and sloughing off, but his expression is one of peace, relief. Which is belied by several inches of metal screwdriver and blue plastic handle sticking out ofhis left ear. I recognize it immediately. It’s one of ours, a screwdriver from the LINA that we brought with us.
That makes it worse. I don’t know why, but it does. I sink to my knees beside Nysus.
In my head, I see them. Voller smirking at me. Lourdes’s thin, elegant fingers flying over her boards, her calm voice over the channel in my helmet, telling me to come in from the cold. Nysus beaming at me as he ran a loving hand down the wood panels on the Platinum Level corridor on theAurora. He thought I’d given him the best, most amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with exploring theAurora.
And it was once in a lifetime. In that it killed him. My decision did that. To all of them.
Hot tears roll down my cheeks like liquid fire. All those visions, dreams, hallucinations, memories, whatever you wanted to call them were correct. I had not imagined Nysus’s end with a screwdriver, but that does not change the fact that he is lying here in front of me, dead.
Maybe those psychological assessments from my childhood had been right. I was reckless with life, unfit for leadership. Because I didn’t care what happened to me and they had followed me in. And I let them.
“Come on, Kovalik,” Diaz says, discomfort coloring her words. “You knew it was a long shot.” She edges around me and pulls the sheets back into place loosely over their faces. It looks sloppy and untidy compared to the neat work Kane had done. “We have to keep going.”
I don’t move.
What’s the point? No, Kane isn’t down here, neatly wrapped and cared for like the others, but he wouldn’t be. As the last one alive, he would be left where he had fallen. And I’m not sure I can handle that sight.
For a moment, I long for the oblivion of the pills, left behind in the drawer in my cabin onAres.
“I’m staying with them. With my crew,” I say. Reed lingers atthe edge of my vision, shifting his weight from foot to foot but wisely keeping his mouth shut.
