Despite my despair, despite it all, the Admiral herself turned my mission down.
We are not risking lives for the sake of one.
Fuck that. I’d risk everything for one.
For her.
Dropping the headset, I traced the path back to my quarters and threw whatever I could find into a standard issue pack—food, water, a first aid kit, spare clothes, batteries, a flashlight, gloves. If it was within reach it went in the bag. Then I yanked SOL from its charging bay, tucked it under my arm, swung the pack over my shoulder and ran.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Open up — Elias! Kit!” I was half a second from having SOL hack the door controls when the steel hatch hissed open.
Kit stood in the doorway, stone-faced, blonde hair wrapped into a knot on top of her head. “Ransom.”
“Sorry to wake you,” I said, breathless. “But I need your help.” I pushed past her into their living quarters where Elias was stumbling out of their bedroom pulling on a pair of pants.
“Dude!”
I threw Solace’s underwear on the counter. “You see those, right? I’m not imagining things.”
Kit’s nose scrunched, and Elias dragged a hand over his head. “What the hell is going on? Whose are those?”
“You see them?” I rounded the counter, pushing the lace toward him. “Black lace panties, right?”
“What the fuck is going on Jude? Have you been drinking? Your eyes are red.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” Kit added.
“Solace is in trouble.”
We sat at their small kitchen island, Elias’s laptop open between us. Kit waddled back and forth behind the counter, making tea while we poured over SOL’s data logs, searching for any discrepancy between the thermal scans from two days ago and the ones it was pulling now.
SOL was designed to read survival probabilities, and since its conception almost twenty years ago we’d managed to integrate its base software into multiple sectors of the Order—from the med bay to atmospheric monitoring, to even parts of navigation and logistics.
When SOL first pinged Solace two weeks ago, it was because the radiation and ARS-7 levels around her bunker had dropped. Just enough for the system to flag a survivable pocket. Since then I’d been running deeperscans, narrowing the coordinates, trying to pinpoint exactly where she was.
Now there was nothing.
No heat signature. Absolutely nothing. The atmosphere readings where she’d been were dismal again and hazy at best. Radiation levels spiked, swallowing the space she once occupied. My stomach twisted. Which meant…
“I don’t understand,” Elias muttered, scrubbing a hand down his face. “She was right there.”
I stared at the screen. “She didn’t just disappear.” The words were wrong even as I said them. I was almost half-convinced I was experiencing a psychotic break. Thatthiswas the dream—a nightmare. She wasn’t real, only a figment of my imagination to cope with the losses I’ve faced. I patted my pocket where I’d stashed her undergarments again.
Two possibilities pushed their way through my mind, both worse than the last. “She went outside,” I said quietly, almost to myself.
“But why? That’s suicide.”
“I don’t know.” I dragged a hand down my jaw. “Or… someone opened it from the outside?” That didn’t make any sense either, unless Paul or Bridget actually made their way back, but the chances of that were slim to none. I leaned back on the stool, mind already made up. “I’m going down there.”
Kit dropped the spoon into the mug. Water sloshed over the rim. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“Admiral Pike would never allow it. Neither would Commander Zhang. Jude—” Elias began, resting a hand on my back.
Ishrugged him off and stood, grabbing my jacket from the chair. “It’s a good thing I’m not asking permission.”
