But before Diaz can respond, a loud popping noise—short bursts in rapid succession—explodes somewhere behind me. I jump, heart pounding. It takes me a moment to identify the muted noise as a gun instead of, say, the hull splitting apart unexpectedly.
“Cease fire!” Diaz shouts, bolting past me toward her team. “What the fuck?”
“We’ve got movement,” a thin voice says in my ear. “I saw… I saw movement.” The team member sounds less than certain, though.
“Where?” she demands.
I turn as he points the light on the end of his weapon toward the top of the spiral staircase on the Platinum Level. It’s empty.
“What did you see?” I ask.
“I don’t… I’m not sure. A woman, maybe?” he says. “Long hair. White coat.”
I cock my head to the side. That sounds like… which is impossible.
“You don’t fucking fire without my permission,” Diaz snaps at him. “We have a mission and getting us all killed before we complete it is not the plan.”
Something about that sounds wrong, but I can’t linger on what, not with my thoughts churning as they are.
Slowly, I push myself to my feet—my whole body aches as though I’ve been trampled repeatedly—and head toward the spiral staircase. I have to check, I have to see.
“Where are you going?” Diaz asks.
I ignore her and keep moving, concentrating. The staircase is a surprisingly tight and dizzying affair, easy to miss a step and fall. I’ve scaled the outside of it, used it as a push-off point. But I’ve never climbed it with the gravity on.
At the top, I’m breathless from the effort, and that condition is not improved when I get my first look at the closest Platinum suite corridor. The bulkhead door is open, retracted into the ceiling, leaving the hallway beyond dark and impenetrable.
The other one, on the starboard side, is likely open as well.
That is not a good sign, and yet, nothing less than what I was expecting.
But now, I have to see for myself.
I head down the portside corridor, the same one we used to first access the suites and the bridge. The light on my helmet barely penetrates the gloom.
Behind me, Diaz is barking orders at her team as she follows. “Just get them wrapped up!”
The doors on either side of the corridor are still closed tightly. The redXs on the doors marking the suites we’d checked and where Kane and I had found the dead remain in place, though it feels like centuries or another life when I was last here. It’s like revisiting the scene of a bad dream.
Toward the end of the passageway, my helmet light catches on the bloody scrawled message on the wall, and this time, my brain manages to pick out a pattern in the rise and fall of the smeared letters.
i’m sorry
But who would have been apologizing, especially up here? TheAurorapassengers and crew, at the time, were all drowning in hallucinations, paranoia, and fear.
I’m so caught by this idea that I nearly miss what’s right in front of me—the edge of a towel or sheet sticking out, just a little, from underneath the door of the suite closest to the end of the hallway. Closest to the bridge.
That was not here before. That I recall, anyway. I bend down for a better look, and it becomes clear that the towel has been wedged in the gap beneath the door—like someone attempting to keep out smoke.
My heart racing, I put my hand on the doorknob and try it—the handle moves freely. Not locked, but when I attempt to push the door open, it meets resistance.
Something soft and heavy on the other side.
Like a body,some awful part of my mind suggests helpfully.
Panic lights up inside me, and I shove at the door, but it moves barely an inch. “Damnit!” My voice is shrill, breaking at the edges, and I slap at the door in futile frustration.
Diaz joins me without a word, putting her shoulder against the polished wood. I mimic her stance, and together, we push at the door until it finally gives, opening about six inches or so.
