Uh-huh.
“Nysus diverted power to increase the noise dampeners, too, beyond the specs,” he continues. “We have to go slower than before, but it helps.”
I gape at him. That sounded almost like a coherent thought. And it might be true, given the status of the lights.
“We can’t find it,” Kane says to me, his expression suddenly bleak. “We looked everywhere.” His gaze flicks to the side, and he nods in response to someone I can’t see or hear. “It has to be tied to the engines somehow.” He pauses. “But it lives up here.” He jabs at his temple with his finger. “Eating and chewing and devouring.”
What are you talking about?I bite back the question. Any response I might get would only be a mix of gibberish and something that sounded almost like sense, sending me on a scavenger hunt of meaning. Trying to pick out just enough to give me hope that he’s trying to truly communicate.
A deep sadness wells up in me, rising until it feels like I might drown in it. Kane Behrens, the physical person, is still alive, lungs still pumping, heart still beating. But the man himself—who he was—is gone.
“We can’t root it out,” Kane says sadly, letting his hand fall to his side. “Nysus tried.”
I flinch, remembering the screwdriver.
“We need to get him out of here,” I say to Diaz. “Now. He’ll be better as soon as he’s away from this place.” Which is, at best, an optimistic overstatement of my deepest hope rather than anything I have proof of, but I’m not going to let Kane sit here for a second longer. That sure as hell won’t help him.
Diaz starts to turns away, and McCaughey is back, looming overher. She jolts slightly, the tremor barely visible in her posture, but I notice. She saw him. Or sawsomething.
Diaz is not immune to what’s happening here, though she somehow seems to be able to ignore it better than the others.
“Sir, we have a confirmed survivor,” she says, as she finishes turning away from me.
The ghost of her former commander watches her carefully, despite the missing half of his face.
I can’t hear Max’s response, my helmet on the mattress on the floor where I left it. I fumble for my earplugs, pulling them free.
“Yes, sir. Right, sir,” Diaz says.
Kane tugs gently at my arm. “Maybe they can find it,” he says.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. But I’m keeping my eye on Diaz. This shouldn’t be a difficult moment. You found a survivor. Step one, get him off the fucking ship and back to safety.
But Diaz is still talking. “It seems so, sir.”
“Nysus tried to search using the specs, like we talked about, but…” Kane pauses to shake his head violently, like a dog trying to free water from its ears. Then he glares at someone who isn’t there. “Shut up! That’s not right! I told you, no! She didn’t betray us, she’s right here!”
Self-loathing burns in my chest. “It’s okay,” I tell Kane soothingly. “It’s okay.”
Kane blinks, returning his attention to me. “The ship is just too large,” he says, as if the interruption never happened. “Even the engine room is too big when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.” He gives a despairing laugh. “You were right.”
A vague echo of a memory bounces through my mind, faint but present. The voices on the bridge, when I woke up next to Lourdes. The last memory I have, lying in the dark, staring at the two versions of Lourdes in horror, whispers in the distance. Was there more? More of that moment taken from me?
“Understood,” Diaz says.
I glance over in her direction, only to find that she’s already in motion. But instead of coming back toward us, she’s heading away.
Toward the door.
That amorphous sense of dread and suspicion that has been swirling around in me suddenly coalesces into a razor-sharp knifepoint of confirmation. And then panic.
“Wait!” I shout, struggling to rush after her, pain sizzling up my ankle.
But I’m too late. The door slams before I can reach it, and seconds later, something scrapes across the surface. A soft hissing noise follows, and a thick white liquid pours through the keyhole—damn old-fashioned locks—rolling down the smooth wooden surface on our side before solidifying in place.
I tug at the doorknob, trying to turn it, but the mechanism won’t engage. Whatever she’s put in there has thoroughly jammed up the works.
“What’s happening?” Reed demands, making his way over to the door.
