Kit Walker's Blog

The lake house was just as Michael remembered it.

It was a modest, rustic little A-frame that just barely peeked out from the tree line, its glass front facing the water. The furniture was mismatched, a little archaic, and uniformly cozy; the walls and shelves were covered in various decorative trinkets, but devoid of anything that would identify a particular owner—typical, for a vacation home. Stairs from the deck led right down to the beach, where small waves lapped gently against the shore.

There was no second floor; instead, a short flight of stairs led up to a walled loft that was separated into two bedrooms. Michael hesitated at the top of the stairs, considering the half-open door to the master bedroom for a moment before turning and dropping her bags in the second bedroom instead.

Two beds sat on either side of the room, one of which still sported a clumsy, angular IDIC symbol scratched into the headboard.

Michael smiled, remembering Spock’s initial protests that vandalism was illogical and later complaints that her rendition of the symbol was inaccurate.

She made a quick detour to the kitchen to drop off the groceries she’d brought; there was a synthesizer installed, but she was thoroughly sick of synthesized food. Then she circled the interior of the house, throwing open every window she could find. The owners cleaned regularly, but the air was stale.

With that done, she wandered down to the beach and out onto the dock that stretched into the water. The dock faced due west, toward the setting sun that lit up the sky in shades of orange and violet.

It was so quiet. She’d grown used to the constant hum of a starship, noticed it now only by its absence. Here there was only the sound of the water, the rustle of the trees in the wind, and the faint cries of wildlife in the distance.

She’d been eleven years old when Amanda brought them here for the first time.

“What is the purpose of this exercise?”

Michael swam over to where Spock knelt on the dock, watching her. “You don’t swim?”

Spock made that little frown, the one he always made when Michael pointed out something he didn’t know. “Vulcan is a desert planet.”

“We live next to a lake,” Michael fired back. Spock’s frown deepened, and Michael figured it was time for a peace offering: “I can teach you, if you want.”

The sun finally descended below the horizon, and Michael wandered back inside.

A quick glance at the clock confirmed it was still early in the evening, by her usual standards. There was a little lag between local time and galactic standard, but not enough to warrant going to bed quite yet.

The cabin’s bookcase was old and battered, stuffed with paperbacks and hardcovers of wildly varying age, condition, and genre. The selection hadn’t changed much since she was a child, and she ran her fingers over the spines before pulling a mystery novel off the shelf and settling down on the couch to read.

She woke with the book splayed open across her face, the sound of the doorbell echoing through the cabin.

Michael hauled herself up off the couch and looked at the clock again; it was well past midnight. She stood, brushed herself down, and took a few seconds to brace herself before moving to open the door.

Spock waited on the other side, hands clasped tightly behind his back. His expression was fixed into a neutral mask, but there was something wounded in his eyes.

“Michael,” he said, as if saying more than that risked breaking his composure entirely.

“Spock,” Michael answered, and pulled him down into a hug.

Spock didn’t stiffen or resist like he usually did; he let her drag him into the embrace, forehead slowly coming to rest to her shoulder as his hands dropped to hang at his sides.

Michael could feel him trembling with the effort not to cry.

One Week Ago

Even over comms, she could tell something was wrong.

Michael and Spock attempted at least one call a month, although their respective duties sometimes made that difficult. This particular call was three months overdue—and, judging by the shadows under Spock’s eyes when his face appeared on Michael’s screen, it had been a long three months.

“You look tired,” she said. They didn’t usually bother with pleasantries. “Is this a bad time?”

“In human vernacular,” Spock replied, “‘you look tired’ is often a euphemism, used to indicate that one’s conversational partner appears uncharacteristically unkempt.”

“Which you are,” Michael confirmed, prompting a slight, annoyed furrow between Spock’s brows. “What’s wrong?”

Spock’s mouth opened, but he hesitated. If it were anyone else, the pause would indicate a placating lie was on the way, but this was her brother. They kept secrets for each other, not from each other.

“I do not wish to trouble you with the matter,” he said. Stalling. “I am well aware that you unnecessarily take on the burdens of others—”

“We’ll have that fight later,” Michael interjected. “And I’ll drop it if you really want me to. But you know I’ll worry anyway.”

Spock hesitated again. He took a breath, and it left his lungs in a long, shuddering exhale. “I … recently underwent pon farr.”

Michael did her best to school her expression, even as the surprise of it made her eyebrows twitch. “Are you all right? You’re alive, so—”

“I find it difficult to discuss,” Spock bit out. “It was … unpleasant.”

Spock’s idea of ‘unpleasant’ usually indicated nothing less than an unmitigated disaster.

Michael sat back in her chair, reaching for her PADD. An idea was forming. “How much leave time do you have saved up?”

Spock blinked at the sudden change in topic, but answered automatically: “96 days.”

“Do you remember the lake house? The one Mother liked?” At Spock’s nod of assent, Michael continued, “Captain Georgiou has recommended I take some time off. I’ll be at the lake house one week from today. If you want to talk, come see me. Okay?”

Spock nodded again, but his reticence didn’t leave her with high hopes.

Now

Despite Spock’s insistence that he could carry his own bags, Michael moved them upstairs and into the second bedroom herself. Spock followed, pausing when he noticed Michael’s bags already there.

“Your intent is to leave the master bedroom unused?” he asked.

“I thought this might be more fun,” Michael answered. “Like when we were kids.”

And letting him sleep a room away in his current state was out of the question.

Spock looked pointedly at the two beds; one a double, the other a twin. Michael had slept in the double bed the last time they were here—big sister privileges. Wordlessly, he raised an eyebrow at her.

“Yes, I’m aware you’re bigger than me now,” Michael said. “You can take the double this time.”

Spock opened his mouth, probably to poke fun at her for being a sentimental human, but at that moment the weariness of travel seemed to catch up with him. He wobbled a little, and his jaw clenched.

Best to pretend she hadn’t seen that. Michael turned to her bags and started digging for some sleepwear. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “If you plan to stay up, try not to make too much noise.”

Spock didn’t reply, and Michael headed to the bathroom to change.

When she got back, Spock was dead asleep in the double bed. He hadn’t even managed to turn the lights off.

Spock had trouble sleeping, ever since he was a child. Sarek and Amanda’s room had been too far away for them to hear him tossing and turning and pacing all night, but Michael’s room was right next to his. And so one night she’d crossed the hall with Amanda’s old copy of Alice in Wonderland and read to him until the familiar words lulled him to sleep.

It had become a little tradition between them, until Michael left for Starfleet.

That Spock had fallen asleep so quickly could be a sign of improved training and discipline. Or it might be an indicator of how little rest he’d had in the last few weeks.

Michael pushed the worry down as she switched off the lights and climbed into the twin bed; she wasn’t likely to get any answers until the morning.

That reasoning didn’t stop her from lying awake for a few hours before finally succumbing to fitful, worried sleep.

When Michael woke at dawn, Spock was still out cold.

Michael got out of bed as quietly as possible and made for the kitchen. She filled the kettle and set it to boil; by the time the water was ready, she’d warmed the teapot, filled the diffuser, and selected two mugs from the cabinet.

A grumbling Spock appeared within a few minutes. Though he hid it well around anyone but his family, Spock wasn’t exactly a morning person. Bleary eyes blinked in quiet confusion as Spock attempted to recall where he was and why Michael was here.

“Morning,” Michael said. “There’s tea.”

After downing a cup and a half, Spock seemed a little more conscious. He studied the mug in his hands, as if seeing it for the first time. “Xial spice tea. Grown only on Vulcan.”

“A few cuttings made it off-world, before …”

Michael didn’t bother to finish the thought.

She’d been deployed with the rest of the fleet in the Laurentian system when the distress call came through. Too far away to help. So far away, Starfleet had been forced to deploy a relief fleet crewed by untested cadets instead.

Michael wondered, sometimes, what would have happened if the Shenzhou had been close enough to intervene. If it would have mattered.

She forced that train of thought away. “I found a specialty teahouse on New Vulcan,” she explained. “You can take some back with you, if you want.”

Spock made a noise of assent, and a quick glance at his blank expression confirmed he was still preoccupied with his own memories of Vulcan.

Michael pulled a box of gloves down from the cabinet, donned a pair, then pulled a few vegetables from the fridge. “Here,” she said, depositing them on the counter next to Spock, along with a knife. “You can help with breakfast.”

That seemed to pull Spock out of his reverie. He put on his own pair of gloves, and they worked silently for the next few minutes.

Surprisingly, he was the one to break the silence.

“I understand that Captain Georgiou has been persuaded to accept a promotion,” Spock remarked idly. “Which would leave her position as captain of the Shenzhou vacant.”

“That’s correct,” Michael said, chopping mushrooms with a bit more focus than necessary.

“It would be logical for her first officer to take command,” Spock continued, asking the question without asking it.

“Maybe.”

“Then you have not accepted the position,” Spock concluded.

Michael finally put the knife aside and glared down at the counter. “I’m considering it.”

“You are the ideal candidate,” Spock said, blunt as he usually was with praise.

“I’m the default candidate,” Michael corrected. “It’s easier to promote me than it is to find someone else. Doesn’t mean I’ve earned it.”

Spock turned to look at her, head tipping slightly to the side. “You would not have been offered the position if you were not qualified.”

“I just—” Michael stopped and took a breath. Now was not the time to start snapping at Spock. “I need some time to think it over. That’s all.”

“Is it possible this insecurity stems from your rejected application to join the Vulcan Expeditionary—”

“Don’t.”

Spock stared at her, then nodded. “Very well. Do you have plans for the day?”

Michael sighed, relaxing a little. “Nothing.”

Spock gave her the eyebrow. “There are a number of diversions within the town if—”

“No, Spock,” Michael explained. “I have plans, and my plans are to do nothing. Care to join me?”

Living with Vulcans was, Michael often reflected, not unlike living with cats. They socialized primarily by gathering in close proximity and then ignoring each other.

While Michael read in the daybed by the window, Spock settled on the couch across the room and sketched on his PADD. They cooked and ate together, and kept a drive-by chess game going on one of the tables. Conversation, however, was sparse and brief. Michael kept her ear open, waiting for any indication that Spock was ready to talk, but he remained almost entirely silent throughout the day.

After dinner, Michael headed down to the beach for a swim. She didn’t bother to ask Spock if he wanted to join; while he’d taken to swimming with the same aptitude he took to most other pursuits, he didn’t seem to like it all that much.

She lost track of the hours she spent in the lake, but before she knew it the sun was setting and it was starting to get cold.

And she could see Spock sitting on the edge of the dock, staring out at the water.

Michael swam up to meet him, one hand braced on the dock to keep the waves from pushing her away. “Planning to go for a swim?”

“No,” Spock said, absently. Then he looked down at her, with that wounded look in his eyes. “I came to speak with you.”

“Okay.” Michael hauled herself up out of the water and sat next to him on the dock, leaving some space between them. With Spock, it was sometimes hard to tell what would help and what wouldn’t.

“I … had expected I would be spared the pon farr,” he said, looking out at the dark water.

When he didn’t continue, Michael guessed he was waiting for a response. “You’re not the only one,” she said. “You were the first hybrid to make it out of childhood. Nobody knew what to expect.” A memory surfaced, and she allowed herself a quiet laugh. “Mother was a wreck every time you got sick. Even when the doctors said you’d be fine. She told me ‘it’s a mother’s job to worry.’”

Spock tensed next to her, and his eyes turned to where his hands where folded in his lap. “… I miss her.”

Michael shuffled closer, pressing her shoulder against Spock’s. “So do I.”

There was another long stretch of silence, until Spock said, “I tried to control it. There is precedent that allows for pon farr to be suppressed with meditation.” His eyes squeezed shut. “I could not maintain focus. Perhaps if I were a full-blood Vulcan …”

“Perhaps not,” Michael said. That train of thought led nowhere good. “There’s no way to know.”

Spock nodded, but his eyes remained shut. “We were too far from New Vulcan. And with T’Pring’s death, even reaching the colony on time was no guarantee of survival. I had resigned myself to death, except—” Spock took a shaky breath. “—except that Captain Kirk—”

“Oh, Spock,” Michael sighed.

She’d long had her suspicions about Spock’s regard for his captain. And even if Spock hadn’t acknowledged his feelings, his instincts clearly had, judging Kirk a viable mate in the absence of his childhood bond with T’Pring. As for the other half of the equation …

Rage boiled up in Michael’s chest. “If he took advantage—”

“He did not.” Spock turned to look at her then, eyes wide. “He left the choice in my hands. I was the one too weak to—”

Michael shook her head, still angry. “You were dying.”

“Exactly my point,” Spock said, emotion choking the words. “His consent was compromised—”

“Not by any fault of yours,” Michael interrupted. “If I needed a transplant, if I’d die without one and you were the only possible donor, your consent would also be compromised. But I know you wouldn’t consider that coercion on my part.”

Spock raised a disdainful eyebrow, a little of his usual composure returning. “An irrelevant hypothetical. The degree of medical compatibility between us is so narrow as to make organ transplant impossible.”

“We’re discussing ethics, not biology,” Michael sniped back. “I have a point and you know it.”

Spock’s face settled into a familiar little frown. He turned his gaze back to the water, lapping gently against the dock.

Michael sighed. “Is that why you …” she trailed off, unsure how to continue.

“Not … entirely.” Spock swallowed, his posture slumping a little. “During the—when we—I was … unable to control myself. I knew that to use my strength recklessly might cause harm, but I did so nevertheless.” His eyes closed again. “I … injured Jim. Not because I wanted to, but because I did not care—”

A sob escaped him in a sudden, gasping rush.

Instinctively, Michael looped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in close. Spock went with the motion, weight resting against Michael’s side.

“He insists he is unharmed,” Spock gasped, “and that he would have consented even if my life were not at stake. But when I look at him, I see what I have done to someone I love. What I could do again, if I stay aboard the Enterprise.”

Michael stilled, her hand tightening on his arm. “You’re thinking about resigning.”

“I am unfit to be a Starfleet officer,” Spock ground out. “I am unfit to—to stay with him.”

His head dropped to press against her shoulder, and Michael put her other arm around him.

“Okay,” Michael said, resting her chin on the top of his head. “Here’s the part where your big sister says something true, but not something nice.” She felt Spock tense in her arms, but continued anyway: “Sometimes it’s easier to call yourself a monster and run away than it is to face what happened and deal with the consequences.”

Spock didn’t lift his head, instead mumbling into her shoulder: “You believe my desire to resign is an avoidance tactic.”

“I do,” Michael said. “Uncertainty scares you, Spock. You know that if you try to make things work on the Enterprise, there’s a possibility you’ll fail.” She rubbed his back with one hand, soothing. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.”

They sat there in silence for a while.

“Ambassador Spock is dead,” Spock eventually said.

“I heard.” Michael’s own emotions regarding Spock’s counterpart were hard enough to navigate; she could only imagine what Spock had gone through.

“There is much I wish I could ask him.”

There was regret in his voice, and grief, and … disappointment, the disappointment of not living up to an ideal. Michael knew that feeling well.

“I met him once,” she said. “We had dinner on New Vulcan. He didn’t tell me much, but …” Michael squeezed Spock a little tighter. “I got the sense he had his own Michael. And he lost her, in a way that hurt. Deeply.”

Spock lifted his head from her shoulder, sitting back a little. Michael loosened her grip, but left one arm slung around his shoulders.

His eyebrows were just slightly furrowed, the closest he usually got to open confusion.

“His life wasn’t the ideal version of yours,” Michael said. “He had his own regrets. Made his own mistakes.”

“You …” Spock paused. “You are likely right.”

“I’m always right.”

The sun had set long ago; it was pitch black out, and Michael knew neither of them would accomplish much of anything else tonight.

“Come on,” she said, releasing her hold on Spock and hauling herself upright. “I could use some sleep, and I’m sure you could, too.”

Spock managed to compose himself, rising to his feet with his usual grace. But there was still something vulnerable in his voice when he said, “May I ask a favor of you, Michael?”

“Of course.”

“I … I believe I would find it easier to sleep if you read to me.”

Michael’s throat tightened, but she managed to feign a casual, “Of course.”

There was an old copy of Swallows and Amazons in the cabin’s bookcase; she cracked it open once they were both settled in their respective beds and began to read aloud, quiet and steady.

Within minutes, Spock was asleep.

Michael jolted awake, bewildered as to what had woken her.

Until she saw, curled into a fetal position up against the headboard of his bed, Spock. His hands clutched his head, tangled in his hair, and a continuous keening noise ripped from his throat.

Michael threw the covers back and leapt into the other bed. “Spock?”

“Jim,” Spock sobbed out, palms pressing tighter against his temples. “Where is Jim?”

“Shit,” Michael hissed. The pon farr was more recent than she’d thought; he was still having aftershocks. Gently, she braced her hands on his shoulders. “Spock?” He didn’t respond, and she shook him a little. “It’s okay, Spock.”

Her only answer was another wordless wail of loneliness and fear.

Michael moved back, slowly made for the door, then bolted downstairs toward the cabin’s comm unit. It took at least three overrides to open a priority channel directly to the Enterprise.

The call finally connected, and the resulting video feed displayed the interior of the captain’s quarters. A startlingly young man, only half-dressed, looked at her with bleary eyes; it was early morning, by galactic standard time.

“Kirk here,” the man said. “What’s this about?”

“Captain. I’m Commander Burnham, U.S.S. Shenzhou.” She waited for a nod of acknowledgment before she continued: “I’m with Commander Spock right now. He needs your help.”

Kirk’s poise immediately shifted, his shoulders stiffening as he leaned toward the comm panel. “Spock? What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s having an aftershock.”

“I don’t—”

“Captain, I don’t have a lot of time to explain.” Michael was talking too fast, stumbling over her words. She couldn’t worry about that now. “I need you to talk to Spock. Try to calm him down, if you can.”

“Of course,” Kirk breathed. “Where is he?”

“Upstairs.” She grabbed her communicator from the side table, tapping rapidly at the screen. “I’m patching you through to my communicator. Stand by.”

Spock was exactly where she’d left him, curled up and unresponsive. Michael scrambled up onto the bed and managed to pry one of Spock’s hands free, shoving her communicator into it.

“Spock,” she murmured. “Spock, it’s okay. Jim’s here.”

“Jim?” Spock called out, voice cracking over the name.

“Talk to him, Captain,” Michael urged.

“What do I say?”

“Anything,” Michael said. “He just needs to hear your voice.”

“Okay,” A shaky inhale echoed down the line. “Okay. Spock? Can you hear me?”

“Jim?” Spock repeated, voice trembling. “Where are you?”

“I’m here,” Kirk replied, soothing. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“You were gone,” Spock gasped. “I could not find you.”

“I’m here now, Spock. Don’t worry. I’m right here.”

The string of reassuring babble continued for a few more minutes. Spock relaxed by increments, until Michael was able to coax him to lie down again. His eyes slid shut, and his breathing evened out until he drifted off to sleep again.

Michael gently slid the communicator out of his slack hand. “Thank you, Captain.”

“Commander.” Kirk sounded shaken. “What the hell’s going on down there?”

“I’ll explain what I can, sir.” She glanced over at Spock’s sleeping form. “Just … not right now. I’m sorry.”

“Understood. Kirk out.”

Michael sat heavily on the edge of the bed, clutching the communicator. Spock slept peacefully, as if nothing had happened.

Her eyes burned, and she blinked away tears.

The second time Michael woke that morning, it was to the smell of bacon.

The other bed was empty; unless they were the victims of a particularly courteous burglar, Spock was downstairs, making breakfast. And he was feeling extra contrite this morning, if there was bacon involved. He usually couldn’t stand the smell.

Michael rolled out of bed and made her way to the kitchen. Sure enough, Spock was there. And he’d made tea.

Green tea, which Michael loved and Spock hated.

Michael announced her presence with a yawn and reached past Spock to grab a few plates out of the cabinet. “Apology accepted,” she said. “You didn’t have to do all this.”

“I believe I did,” Spock replied stiffly.

“What, for waking me up in the middle of the night?”

“… No.” Spock turned off the cooktop and set the bacon aside. “I should not have come here. You do not have the training to manage my current condition without causing harm to yourself and it was irresponsible of me to—”

“I asked you to come here,” Michael corrected. “I want to help.”

“I accepted the invitation despite being aware of your fixation on my well-being to the exclusion of your own,” Spock said. “Including—”

“Spock!”

Spock’s mouth snapped shut.

Michael groaned and rubbed a hand over her face. “Damn it. You’re right.”

When she looked up, Spock was giving her the eyebrow again.

“Stop that,” she groused. “You’re right that I can’t be your therapist. But I can still help. And there are plenty of Starfleet counselors that I know you haven’t talked to.”

“… You are correct,” Spock conceded. “I—”

On the table behind them, Michael’s PADD beeped.

Michael reflexively turned to check, and froze when she saw the message that had just come through. It was from Kirk, consisting solely of the words “Can we talk?” and an address.

Spock sensed her tension immediately. “What is it?”

Wordlessly, Michael passed him the PADD so he could read the message. Spock studied it for a long while.

“If you want me to ignore it, I will,” Michael said firmly.

“No,” Spock replied, handing the PADD back to her. “The captain deserves an explanation for the incident last night. And he would clearly prefer that it come from you.”

“Not sure about that,” Michael muttered. “I’ll go get dressed.”

The address Kirk had sent led Michael to an outdoor cafe, just off the town’s main strip. She spotted him at a table in an isolated corner; he was out of uniform, but still held himself with an official air. A common tactic for command officers trying to hide anxiety.

Kirk jumped when Michael dropped into the seat across from him; he hadn’t noticed her arrival. Another bad sign.

“Captain Kirk,” she said.

“Commander Burnham,” Kirk replied, with a stiff nod. “Although, from what I’ve heard, I might as well call you ‘Captain,’ too.”

“I haven’t accepted the promotion yet,” Michael pointed out.

Kirk shrugged. “At any rate, we’re both off-duty. I don’t think we should worry about formalities.”

“If you insist.” Michael leaned back in her seat, hands in her lap. “You got here fast.”

“I kept Enterprise within a few hours of transporter range after Spock left.” Kirk fidgeted, running a hand through his hair. “Everyone’s worried about him.”

“Of course,” Michael said, nodding. “Spock’s … stable, for now.” She paused, then added, “He knows I’m here.”

Kirk leaned forward, hands clasped tightly on the table in front of him. “What happened last night, Burnham?”

“It’s called an ‘aftershock,’” Michael explained. “It happens sometimes, in the days after a Vulcan’s pon farr. From a biological standpoint, it’s meant to cement the social bond between a mated pair after the initial, uh … coupling.” Michael grimaced a little, her clinical understanding at war with the fact that she was sitting across from one of the parties involved in said coupling.

“That doesn’t exactly answer my question,” Kirk said.

“Long story short, a Vulcan experiencing an aftershock will feel compelled to stay close to their mate,” Michael continued. “And if they can’t find their mate …”

“They freak out,” Kirk concluded. His eyes narrowed. “You know a lot about this.”

“I’m a xenoanthropologist,” Michael said. “And I was raised on Vulcan.”

“Is that why Spock came to you?”

There was something underlying the question. Suspicion. Insecurity.

Michael couldn’t stop her eyebrows from going up. “You have no idea who I am.”

Kirk rolled his eyes. “I know who you are, I just—”

“Spock is my brother,” Michael interrupted. When she saw Kirk’s eyes flit to her ears, she added, “Adopted.”

“… Oh.” Kirk rubbed both hands over his face, mumbling into his hands: “God, what is it with Spock and secrets?”

“He has a hard time trusting people,” Michael offered, by way of explanation. “Try not to take it personally.”

Kirk’s hands dropped to the table. “Is he afraid of me?”

Michael shook her head. “He’s afraid of himself,” she said. “Afraid of what he could do to you. He came to me because he knew he could trust himself around family.”

“He just manhandled me a little. Left some bruises.” Kirk sighed. “He didn’t hurt me, Burnham. Not in any way I wasn’t willing to be hurt.”

“That’s … not the problem.” Michael crossed her arms, the fingers of one hand tapping against her bicep. “The central tenet of Vulcan philosophy is that the only thing one can control is oneself. This belief is ingrained since birth. It’s the core of their identify as a people.”

“And pon farr takes away that control.” Kirk shifted a little in his seat, looking away. “I thought they were just hung up about sex.”

Michael realized she was clenching her jaw, and forced herself to relax. “Most Vulcans can compartmentalize the violent impulses they experience during pon farr. But Spock is half-human.”

Kirk still couldn’t meet her eyes. “So he can’t.”

“Spock is a gentle soul, Captain. A human soul. The pon farr may not have wounded you, but it wounded him. Do you understand?”

It took a moment for the words to sink in, but when they did, Kirk swore and buried his face in his hands again.

Quietly, he said, “Did I do the right thing, Burnham?”

Michael took a breath. It took all her training to compartmentalize Kirk’s decision away from the memory of Spock crying in her arms.

“You faced a problem with no ideal solution, and chose the course of action that saved a life,” she said. “From a Vulcan perspective, yes. You did the right thing.”

Kirk ground his palms into his closed eyes. “Well, from a human perspective, I still feel like shit.”

“I know.”

Kirk eventually emerged from behind his hands, looking weary. “Can I talk to him?”

“You’re his captain,” Michael pointed out. “I couldn’t exactly stop you. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

Kirk bristled at that. “Why not?”

“Because if you want to help him, you need to be honest with him—and yourself—about what happened,” Michael said. “And everything I know about you indicates a self-sacrificing streak a mile wide. You’ll sublimate your own feelings to try and make him happy, and that’s not what he needs.”

There was a defiant flash in Kirk’s eyes, a split-second of tension before he slumped in resignation. “Fuck.”

Michael chewed her lip, studying him. “… I’ll call him. But I can’t promise anything”

She turned her back on Kirk’s expression of abject relief, levered herself out of the chair, and stepped away just far enough to allow some privacy.

Spock answered the comm almost immediately. “Michael?”

“Kirk’s fine,” she replied, answering his unspoken question. “Worried about you, but fine. He’s asking to see you.”

Spock was quiet long enough that Michael began to wonder if there was something wrong with the comm, but then he answered: “Very well.”

“Nice place,” Kirk remarked, as they approached the cabin.

“One of Mother’s favorites,” Michael replied, without thinking.

The tense silence she expected—the one that usually occurred whenever the topic of Amanda or her birth parents came up—never materialized. And of course it wouldn’t; Kirk’s entire life had been defined by the loss of a parent.

As they stepped through the door, Spock stood from his uneasy seat at the edge of the sofa. “Jim,” he said stiffly.

“Spock,” Kirk replied, voice rough. “Hi.”

Michael glanced between them and turned for the kitchen. “I can give you two some privacy—”

“I would prefer if you stayed,” Spock replied, quickly enough that Michael could detect the anxiety behind the words.

Michael raised an eyebrow at him. “Weren’t you the one pointing out I’m not a therapist?”

“It is my understanding that in—” Spock paused, his throat clicking as he swallowed. “—in emotionally fraught situations between two individuals, it is often beneficial to have a third party present.”

His face was neutral, but his eyes were wide and begging.

Wordlessly, Michael moved to sit on the couch. Spock perched next to her, and Kirk settled into the chair across from them.

“I trust all is well aboard the Enterprise?” Spock asked.

“The ship’s fine,” Kirk said, mildly exasperated. “We’re all worried about you.” After a beat, he added, “I’m worried about you.”

Spock’s gaze settled somewhere over Kirk’s shoulder. “I did not intend my departure to cause undue distress.”

Kirk’s attention drifted as well, until he was glaring at the floor. After a moment, he said, “I don’t regret it. Any of it.”

“Kirk—” Michael began, resisting the urge to yell.

“Well, what do you want me to say?” Kirk snapped. “That it sucked? Because it did.”

Spock flinched.

Kirk looked at Spock again, his expression open and raw. “I hate that you had to go through that. I hate what it did to you. I wish it hadn’t happened.”

Spock drew in on himself a little; imperceptible to most, but clear to anyone who knew him.

“But,” Kirk continued, taking a breath, “You’re alive. And I don’t regret that.” A pause, then: “Do you?”

Spock closed his eyes. “No.”

“So,” Kirk said. “What do we do now, Spock?”

“I am uncertain.”

Kirk’s lips pressed into a firm line for a moment, and he took a breath. “Do you want a transfer?”

“I considered it,” Spock said. “But I find the prospect of serving under any command but yours … unacceptable.”

“Good,” Kirk replied. “Because I don’t want anyone at my back but you, Spock.”

Spock shook his head, eyes still shut. “I hurt you,” he croaked out. “Not out of necessity—or even anger—but simply because, in the absence of my control, I was indifferent to the consequences of my actions. How can I stay by your side, knowing I am capable of that?”

“I don’t know,” Kirk said, quiet and a little lost. “But maybe we can try, anyway.”

Spock’s eyes snapped open, fixing his gaze on Kirk in open confusion. “There is no guarantee of success in such an endeavor.”

“I know.”

“Jim—”

“Spock.” Kirk reached across the space between them, holding out his hand.

Spock went still, gaze darting between Kirk’s outstretched hand and his face.

Then he leaned forward and interlaced his fingers with Kirk’s. Kirk slid out of his chair, kneeling on the floor at Spock’s feet, and pressed their foreheads together.

“Come home?” he whispered.

Spock nodded.

Michael suppressed the urge to clear her throat.

It wasn’t long, though, before Kirk seemed to remember they weren’t alone. He stood, Spock’s hand still entangled with his own. “We should at least stay in town for dinner, though,” he said, turning the charm back on. “I saw a great little Italian place near where I beamed down.”

“Spock hates Italian,” Michael said, preempting whatever excuses were on their way out of Spock’s mouth. Spock turned to glare at her.

“What?” Kirk said, genuinely surprised. “Since when?”

“Since always.” Michael pretended ignore Spock’s glare. “Vulcan palates are more sensitive to certain acids—”

Spock broke in: “I did not wish to be considered a limiting factor during social—”

“You can’t keep ignoring your own boundaries just because—”

Kirk burst out laughing.

Spock and Michael froze, both turning to stare at Kirk.

“Okay,” Kirk said, still giggling. “You’ve convinced me. You two are definitely family.”

Public transporters were located near the town square, well within walking distance of the lake house. Michael accompanied Spock and Kirk there, unwilling to send Spock off alone. She still had big sister privileges, after all.

Michael paused at the entrance to the transporter bay and clasped her hands behind her back. “Captain. May I speak with you in private before you go?”

Spock and Kirk exchanged a look, and Kirk nodded. “All right.”

Michael led him around the corner, far enough to be out of earshot even considering Spock’s Vulcan hearing.

Kirk crossed his arms. “You about to give me the shovel talk, Commander?”

“I’d rather not get court-martialed for threatening a superior officer.” Michael offered a small, conciliatory smile. “Heartbreak is a fact of life, Captain. I’m sure you understand that more than most. I do have some advice, though.”

“Oh?” There was a wary look in Kirk’s eyes.

“Never lie to him,” Michael said as sternly as she could manage, considering he had rank and about eight inches of height on her. Then, less so: “And try reading to him once in a while.”

A genuine smile tugged at Kirk’s lips. “Are you serious?”

“Spock has trouble sleeping,” Michael told him. “He can go for a few days without it, but that doesn’t mean he should. Reading to him will help. Trust me.”

Kirk seemed to consider this. “Can I offer you some advice in return?”

“Of course.”

Kirk leaned in a little closer. “Take the promotion.”

The anxiety Michael had repressed for the last few weeks surged up; she carefully schooled her expression. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“Nobody’s ready,” Kirk replied. “I sure wasn’t. You don’t really earn the chair until you’re in it.”

Michael raised an eyebrow at him. “In your case, Captain, I’m confident that’s completely true.”

Kirk rolled his eyes with a noise of mock disgust. “God. Now I know where he gets it from.” He uncrossed his arms and clapped her on the shoulder. “Captains serve their crew, Burnham, not the other way around. Just remember that, and you’ll be fine.”

Michael’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Thank you, sir.”

“And drop the ‘sir,’” Kirk said with a wink, sidling past her on his way back into the transporter bay, “Captain.”

Spock was waiting where they’d left him, with a slight air of impatience. “I trust all is well?”

“Just clearing a few things up,” Kirk replied. “Ready to go?”

Spock nodded, turning his attention to Michael. “I am grateful for your support, Michael.”

“That’s what family’s for,” Michael said. “Oh, and don’t forget this.”

She reached into her pack and retrieved a packet of spice tea, holding it out to him.

As Spock reached out to take it, his fingers shook almost imperceptibly.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Take care of yourself,” Michael replied. “And maybe come see the Shenzhou sometime. I think you’d like her.”

“I will see what arrangements can be made,” Spock answered, and from him, she knew it wasn’t a platitude.

The transporter activated, and Michael stepped back, watching as the two of them disappeared.

Once they were gone, she turned to make her way back to the lake house.

‘Captain Burnham.’ It had a ring to it.

Weeks later, Jim found himself standing at the door to Spock’s quarters.

The away mission had gone bad. They’d lost three people—including Lieutenant Czeto, one of Spock’s youngest and brightest science officers. No-one had seen hide nor hair of Spock since they’d beamed back aboard and the away team had been cleared to leave sickbay.

Jim braced himself and hit the door chime.

There was no answer, but after a few seconds, the door slid open. Jim stepped inside, the door sliding shut behind him.

The room’s lights were turned down. Jim scanned the dim interior, eyes eventually landing on where Spock knelt in the sectioned-off meditation area. His eyes were closed, and a lit firepot sat in front of him, its flame a wavering beacon in the dark.

“Sorry,” Jim said, immediately backing away. “You’re meditating. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Spock’s eyes opened. “The interruption is of no consequence. I am finding it … difficult to clear my mind.”

Jim moved forward again, noting the stiffness in Spock’s shoulders, the shadows under his eyes. “You look exhausted,” he said. “Maybe try to get some sleep, instead.”

“Unfortunately, that eludes me as well,” Spock replied, with a weary glance in his direction.

“Okay,” Jim said. “I have an idea. I’ll be right back.”

The trip back to his own cabin was mercifully brief, and he returned to Spock’s room within a few minutes, a worn copy of Our Mutual Friend in hand.

Spock’s attention immediately went to the book, and his eyes narrowed. “You have been speaking to Michael.”

Kirk gave him a wry smile. “Don’t worry. She hasn’t told me all your secrets.”

Spock seemed to relax at that.

Jim settled into Spock’s bed, up against the headboard, and patted the space next to him. “Come on. Lie down.”

Spock hesitated, then lowered himself to the bed; stiffly, at first, but relaxing when Jim put an arm around him. He rested his head against Jim’s shoulder, eyes already half-closed.

Jim opened to page one and began to read aloud.

Spock was asleep by the end of the first chapter.

“Guys, come on, it’s almost midnight,” Rachel says, lying upside-down in the armchair. “Please go home?”

“Ssshh,” Mutavore replies from where she and Jurassic Park III are sprawled all over the couch, eyes fixed on the TV. “Sienna Miller in glasses. Don’t ruin this for me.”

“If we win that contest,” Jurassic Park III says, “we’re buying Rachel a bigger TV.”

“If we win the contest,” Komodo says, “we’ll need to stop hanging out in Rachel’s basement.”

“But we love Rachel’s basement,” Jurassic Park III whines.

Komodo rolls her eyes. “I can see the tabloids now: ‘America’s hottest new band, The Limp Lizards, made an appearance at no clubs and no events this weekend because they were too busy watching terrible movies in a basement in Oxnard.”

“Quiet,” Mutavore snaps. “Sienna and I are having a moment.”

Komodo shakes her head and goes back to refreshing their Misfits VS! page on her phone. The votes for their video have slowed down a little, but it should pick up again in the morning, after the deadline has—

“Oh, crap,” Komodo says.

“What?” Rachel sits upright in the chair. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re down to second place.” Komodo frantically refreshes the page, but the big ‘2’ on their video stays put. “What the hell?”

“Huh,” Jurassic Park III says. “So who’s at #1?”

“Let me check.” Rachel reaches for her tablet and brings up the contest site. “Looks like it’s ‘Moremoremore,’ by Jem and the Holograms. Posted five minutes ago.”

Komodo leans over Rachel’s shoulder to double-check the timestamp. “The deadline is in, like, three minutes!”

“Yeah, they cut it pretty close.” Rachel hits ‘play’ on the video, and tinny music emanates from her tablet’s speakers. “Wow. This is… it’s really good.”

“Crap,” Komodo groans.

“They have a dragon,” Rachel says. “Why don’t we have a dragon?”

“Because we spent all our money on papier mache kaiju and jaeger costumes,” Jurassic Park III says.

Komodo sighs. “I really thought we had a chance at winning this thing.”

“But we suck,” Mutavore points out.

“We suck less than everyone else!”

“Yeah, but to win the recording contract we’d have to beat the Misfits in a Battle of the Bands,” Jurassic Park III reminds her. “The Misfits. That’s not gonna happen.”

“Even if we lost, the publicity would’ve been amazing,” Komodo says. “But then Jewel and the Holodecks showed up.”

“Holograms,” Rachel corrects.

“Whatever!”

“Look at this,” Komodo laments. “We’re supposed to be bonding as a band and instead half the people at this table are on their phones.”

Jurassic Park III elbows Mutavore. “You’re gonna get syrup gunk all over your touchscreen.”

“I’m texting my mom,” Mutavore replies. “She wants me to call her and I’m telling her I’ll do it after brunch.”

“This isn’t brunch,” says Jurassic Park III. “It’s Saturday.”

“What are you talking about?” Mutavore gestures to encompass the entire diner. “It’s totally brunch!”

“You can’t have brunch on a Saturday and you can’t have brunch at two in the afternoon,” Jurassic Park III insists. “We’re having tea.”

“I’m not having tea. There’s no tea. I’m eating bacon, so it’s brunch.”

“There are no time slot restrictions on bacon!”

Komodo groans and buries her face in her hands. “This is why we’re so far behind the Holograms.”

“We’re so far behind the Holograms because we are a terrible band,” Mutavore says. “People only voted for us because our video was funny.”

“Oh my god!” Rachel blurts out, way too loud for a public place.

“Inside voice,” Jurassic Park III says.

“Look,” Rachel whispers, shoving her phone into Komodo’s hand.

“‘Guitarist Aja Leith of Jem and the Holograms was rushed to hospital after an incident at the Starlight Benefit and Gala,'” Komodo reads aloud. “… Holy crap.”

“Is she okay?” Mutavore asks.

Rachel takes her phone back and starts reading through the rest of the story. “They would’ve mentioned it up front if she’d died, right?” She pauses. “Wow, it says a lighting rig fell on her.”

Jurassic Park III winces. “Ouch.”

“Maybe the Holograms will have to drop out of the contest,” Komodo says, a little too eagerly.

There’s a long, awkward silence.

“That’s… not cool, dude,” Mutavore finally says. “She could be really badly hurt.”

Jurassic Park III pipes in with, “Yeah, don’t be a jerk.”

“Okay, okay.” Komodo sighs. “Sorry. That was gross of me.”

“Twitter says she was kept overnight at the hospital,” Rachel reports, still glued to her phone. “Minor injuries. She’s fine.”

“Well, that’s good,” says Jurassic Park III.

“That’s kind of weird though, right?” says Mutavore. “A light rig falling on someone. That’s the kind of thing that only happens in a Mel Brooks movie.”

Absently, Rachel asks, “Who’s Mel Brooks?”

“Oh my god,” Mutavore mutters. “You tiny child. You infant.”

“You’re making that up,” Jurassic Park III says. “That’s not a real thing.”

“I’m serious!” Mutavore insists. “Google it!”

“Fine.” Jurassic Park III pulls out her phone. “But if the NSA asks me why I searched for ‘kangaroo vagina’ and ‘lesbian clone lizard’ in the same day, I’m telling them it was all your fault.”

Rachel and Komodo sprint around the corner and stumble to a halt.

“Why are you guys hanging out behind the storage shed?!” Komodo snaps. “We’ve been looking all over for you!”

“Chill,” Mutavore replies. “The Battle of the Bands doesn’t start until six. We have plenty of time.”

“Is it the ‘New Mexico whiptail lizard’?” Jurassic Park III asks.

“That’s the one.” Mutavore turns back to Komodo. “Besides, we’re gonna get clobbered by the Holograms anyway.”

“Actually, no,” Komodo says, excited. “We’re not.”

“Did you two actually learn to play your instruments?” Jurassic Park III asks. “You know we have a rule about that.”

“The Holograms got into this huge fight with the Misfits,” Rachel says. “Everyone’s saying they’re gonna get disqualified.”

Jurassic Park III looks up from her phone, eyebrows crawling up to her hairline. “Wow, like a real fight?”

Rachel shrugs. “Just a food fight, I think.”

“Dude, who does that?” Mutavore says. “That’s, like… middle school shenanigans. At best.”

“This is incredible,” Komodo says. “If the Holograms get disqualified, we’re back at number one!”

“Well,” Mutavore says. “That’s neat.”

“‘Neat’?” Komodo snaps. “‘Neat‘?!”

“‘The lizard is a female-only species that reproduces by producing an egg through parthenogenesis,'” Jurassic Park III reads off her phone. “‘Despite reproducing asexually, and being an all-female species, the whiptail still engages in mating behavior with the females of its own species.'” She looks over at Mutavore. “Huh. You were right. Lesbian clone lizards.”

“Told you.”

Komodo throws up her hands and walks away in a huff.

“Oh, man,” Rachel says. “We should’ve called ourselves ‘the Lesbian Clone Lizards.'”

“Too late to change it now.” Jurassic Park III pockets her phone. “They already printed the sign.”

“Wow,” says Jurassic Park III. “They set up right across the street.”

“That is so cool,” Mutavore adds. “So freaking cool.”

“They had a holographic t-rex,” Rachel says, stunned. “Why don’t we have a holographic t-rex?”

“Because we spent all our money on crocodile print onesies,” Jurassic Park III replies.

“Leotards,” Mutavore corrects.

“Whatever.”

“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me!” Komodo shouts from inside the changing trailer’s bathroom.

Mutavore rolls her eyes. “Could you not yell at us while you’re peeing?”

“No!”

“I got a look at Jem before the crowd got really bad,” Jurassic Park III says. “I’m totally okay with losing to her. She’s amazing.”

“She’s nine feet tall and made of glitter,” Mutavore agrees, entranced. “She could step on my neck with those spiky pink heels and I’d say ‘thank you.'”

Komodo exits the bathroom and slams the door shut behind her. “Stop that,” she snaps, adjusting her leotard. “Neither of you are allowed to crush on my nemesis.”

“She’s not your nemesis,” Jurassic Park III points out. “She doesn’t even know who you are.”

“Don’t you realize what just happened?” Komodo paces the length of the trailer. “Not only did the Misfits utterly destroy us in the Battle of the Bands, but now the Holograms have completely stolen the show! Nobody’s going to know we exist! We’re screwed!”

“Okay, but like—”

“If you say ‘we suck’ one more time, I’m going to kick you,” Komodo interrupts. “Do any of you ever take anything seriously?”

“Not really, no,” says Jurassic Park III

“… I hate you all.” Komodo stalks toward the door. “I’m done with this band. I give up. I quit.”

The trailer door slams shut behind her.

Rachel stares at the door. “She’s really upset, guys. Maybe we should do something.”

“Let’s give her a chance to walk it off, first.” Mutavore turns to Rachel. “Hey, can we come over and play video games in your basement?”

“No,” Jurassic Park III says firmly.

“But he has a sniper rifle,” Mutavore whines.

“Do not.”

“But I want a sniper rifle and he has a sniper rifle!“

“I swear to god, if you—”

Mutavore pulls the trigger. The blocky allied NPC on the TV screen is reduced to a fine red mist, and Mutavore picks up his fallen sniper rifle.

“You’re a monster,” Jurassic Park III mutters.

“I can’t hear you over the awesomeness of my new sniper rifle.”

The basement door opens, and Komodo hesitantly makes her way down the stairs. “… Hey, guys.”

“Yo,” Mutavore replies without looking away from the TV.

“Are you okay?” Rachel asks. “You were pretty upset, earlier.”

“Yeah, um…” Komodo sits on the stairs. “I just needed to cool down. I want to apologize for… all that. I don’t hate you guys.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Jurassic Park III says. “Plasma grenade! Plasma grenade!“

“I see it!” Mutavore yelps. “… Crap.”

“I shouldn’t have quit on you,” Komodo continues. “I just got so obsessed with this dumb contest, and… I dunno.”

“It’s okay,” Rachel says. “We understand.”

“Anyway, uh.” Komodo stands and crosses to the center of the room, just behind the couch. “I was wondering if you guys would be willing to let me back in. Into the band, I mean.”

“Okay, first things first.” Mutavore pauses the game and turns around on the couch. “One: you’re always in the band, no matter how many times you throw a hissy and quit. It was true when we were fourteen and it’s true now.”

“I did not throw a—”

“Two,” Jurassic Park III interrupts. “We started this band because it was dumb and fun and gave us something to do on Friday nights. If we’re not having fun, we shouldn’t be doing it. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Komodo says.

“Good,” Mutavore says. “Welcome to the Limp Lizards. Newbie springs for pizza.”

Komodo rolls her eyes. “You weren’t worried at all, were you?”

“That’s not true,” Jurassic Park III gasps. “Your absence was like a void in my bosom. Feel my bosom void, Mutavore.”

Mutavore dramatically lays a hand on Jurassic Park III’s chest. “I can feel it!”

“I’ll order the pizza.” Rachel grabs her tablet and, a moment later, says, “… Oh my god.”

“What?” Komodo says. “Did the Holograms almost die again?”

“No, it’s an email,” Rachel says. “From some club manager. She wants to book us for a show.”

“What, really?” Mutavore says.

“She saw us at the Battle of the Bands,” Rachel says. “She thinks we have a ‘unique sound’ and wants us to play on Sunday night.”

“Who goes to a club on Sunday night?” Jurassic Park III wonders.

“Nobody,” Komodo replies. “It’s not exactly a recording contract, Rachel.”

“Yeah, but it pays,” Rachel says. “Real money. Someone wants to pay us real money to play music.”

“So…” Mutavore says. “Does that, like… make us professional musicians?”

They all think it over for a moment.

“I think it does,” Komodo says.

“Cool,” Jurassic Park III says. “All hail the Limp Lizards!”

The crowds of Santa Carla’s boardwalk parted around the monster among them, like fish darting away from a shark.

It hadn’t been like this before. People had avoided him, sure, but out of contempt for the scruffy runaway he’d once been—like even sharing the same air ran the risk of catching whatever it was that had pushed him out of society’s warm circle of firelight, out into the dark.

Then Max had come to him, fed him the blood, and now everyone who saw him knew, instinctively, to be afraid.

David never thought it would be so lonely.

He arrived at the video store before he’d actively made the decision to go. The hollow ache in his chest eased as he spotted Max behind the counter: his maker, his teacher, the one person in his life who had ever given a shit about him.

But as he drifted closer, Max looked up and barked, “I told you not to come in here,” a blustering order from the small man he pretended to be.

David flinched back, and Max gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod—apologetic, understanding, and a warning not to linger.

Because there couldn’t be any kind of connection between them, not in public. It would raise too many questions, ruin the careful cover that Max had constructed.

He kept telling David he would have brothers soon. But they had to wait for the right time, the right candidates—more runaways that nobody would miss.

David hated waiting.

He turned and left the video store with a smirk, only letting his face fall once he was back out on the boardwalk. And then he stopped dead in his tracks.

There was a stranger among the strangers, a pale figure in the tanned, bustling crowd. It was a young man, maybe about David’s own age; pretty, but in a cold and distant way, like a statue. He was dressed like a prep school student, like a respectable young man, but he moved stiffly—holding himself apart from the people around him.

He looked up and met David’s eyes. In that moment, each of them recognized exactly what the other was.

They weren’t quite the same—two different breeds of the same monster. Max had told him as much: that there were different clans, different bloodlines. And he’d warned David to stay away from them, because the only real threat to a vampire was another vampire.

The stranger turned away, sidling through the crowd toward some unknown destination, and David followed.

The stranger had to know David was there, but he never once looked back as he made his way up to Hudson’s Bluff. He seemed to be looking for something, and eventually he found it: a passage that led to a massive, buried ruin. The remnants of what, a hundred years ago, had once been a luxury hotel.

“Nice place,” David remarked, too loud in the hushed space.

For the first time, the stranger spoke: “It used to be.” There was a mournful air about him, a sense of disappointment. “It must have been destroyed in the earthquake.”

“Earthquake?”

The stranger turned to look at him then. “1906,” he said, like he was pointing out the obvious. “The earthquake that flattened San Francisco.”

“Right.” David vaguely remembered hearing something about it in school, back when he actually went to school. Despite how young the stranger looked, he seemed … ancient. And sad. “Did you come here, before?”

The stranger shook his head. “My father did.” He studied the ruined walls, like he was searching for something. “There’s supposed to be a photo …”

He made his way through to a half-collapsed room that had once been the hotel bar and knelt to dig through the rubble. David wandered over and watched, hands tucked into the pockets of his coat.

With a quiet noise of satisfaction, the stranger unearthed a dusty picture frame. The glass was broken, but the photo inside was largely intact: a yellowing, black-and-white group shot from some fancy dinner way back in the day. One of the men in the photo bore a striking resemblance to the stranger.

The stranger touched a fingertip to the man’s face with a desolate expression David had come to know well.

“I’m David. What’s your name?”

The stranger looked up at him and blinked, as if he’d forgotten for a moment that David was there. Then, he said, “Edward.”

David took a step closer. “Edward.”

Edward stood, back up to his full height—maybe two or three inches taller than David. They were standing a little too close, now.

A sudden, mad impulse compelled David to reach up and touch Edward’s face. His cheek was cold beneath David’s fingertips, colder than any living thing should be—but he wasn’t living, was he? Not really.

Edward made a noise low in his throat, eyes fluttering shut.

David’s fingers trailed down the side of Edward’s neck; his skin was soft, but there was an odd resistance to it. Like living marble. There was no pulse at his throat, and yet something thrummed beneath David’s fingertips. Not blood—something else.

Closing the distance between them, David leaned in to brush his lips lightly over Edward’s neck.

Between one second and the next, Edward’s hand was pressed tight to the back of David’s skull, fingers clutching at his hair. He made no attempt to pull David away, no attempt to stop him as he drew closer. His throat convulsed, and whatever it was that moved beneath his skin throbbed against David’s lips.

He opened his mouth; his fangs extended, and he sank them into Edward’s throat.

Edward moaned—a high, shocked noise—as David’s fangs pierced his flesh and sank deep. It was entirely possible that nothing had ever penetrated that marble skin of his before this moment; it had to hurt, but maybe the pain was so bright and unfamiliar it was almost like pleasure.

Something that wasn’t quite blood flooded into David’s mouth, something that burned and warmed at the same time, like whiskey. David groaned as he drank it down and wrapped his arms around Edward, drawing him in tight and holding him still.

There was a clattering noise as the picture frame fell from Edward’s grip and tumbled to the floor. He grabbed at David with both hands, keeping him close, even as his knees buckled and went out from under him. David eased them both to the dusty floor and knelt with Edward in his arms, fangs still buried in his throat, swallowing mouthful after eager mouthful of that strange, burning ichor.

But soon the pain overwhelmed the pleasure, and David had to wrench himself free of Edward’s neck. He threw his head back, gasping around the incredible burning in his mouth, his throat, the pit of his stomach.

Edward whined—desperate, frustrated—and nuzzled against David’s bared jugular, teeth scraping gently at his skin. They weren’t pointed, not like David’s, but they felt as sharp as razor blades.

“Do it,” David gasped, “come on, do it—”

He wanted the sweet agony of Edward’s teeth in his throat, wanted to feel his blood gush hot into Edward’s mouth. Wanted Edward to hold him still and take what he wanted from him.

Edward’s teeth set firmly against David’s skin, jaw tensing, ready to bite down—

—and his hands tightened convulsively around David’s shoulders, inexorable strength shoving him away.

David went sprawling across the floor, shocked and disoriented.

Edward stared at him from where he knelt, gasping, on the floor with one hand clasped to the wound in his own neck. There was an aching, confused longing in his eyes.

That burning ichor still dripped from David’s lips, smeared down his chin. He wiped some of it away with his thumb—then, with perverse delight, met Edward’s eyes and sucked it clean.

A quiet moan escaped Edward’s throat, but his expression shuttered into cold, firm rejection. He fumbled for the fallen picture frame and, holding it close, staggered away and out of the ruined hotel.

David watched him go and, for the first time, fully understood what he saw: a creature of denial, of self-imposed suffering. A man with all the pleasures of the world at his fingertips, too much of a coward to seize any of them.

What was the point of being immortal, if you were going to live like that?

A crazed laugh worked its way up David’s throat, echoing through the ruins of luxury around him. Edward could endure and abstain and martyr himself all he wanted. David was going to have fun.

And he was going to live forever.

Fanfiction website Archive of our Own went down last week for maintenance and will be staying down for up to a month, reportedly due to a “security incident.” I’m hoping that’s not their way of saying “we waited too long to patch PHP, the site is now incredibly compromised (as are the backups), and it’ll take weeks to dig out all the malicious code someone injected into it.”

In the meantime, while AO3 is down, I’ve been mirroring some of my fanfiction onto my own website. This isn’t a permanent move from AO3, as I intend to keep using the site if/when it comes back up, but this incident has demonstrated once again that it’s a terrible idea to have all your work archived on just one platform.

Not June, Still Gay! Pride Market

I’ve got a table at Safe Haven‘s November market this weekend! I’ll be there selling minibooks of the Casefile of Jay Moriarty series, plus both collected editions.

Market hours are from 10 AM to 4 PM on November 7th and 8th. Come on down, get a free bookmark, and maybe buy some gay crime books.

Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight You

In this episode of I Will Fight You, writer and game designer Claire Mulkerin joins us to discuss the Insidious movie series. I have only watched one of these, but fortunately it was the one that focuses almost entirely on Lin Shaye.

Listen HereSerializing Now: “The Safecrackers’ Take”

“The Safecrackers’ Take” is now serializing on the Casefile of Jay Moriarty website! The first three chapters are available now, and subsequent chapters will be posted weekly on Mondays.

Read it HereThis Week’s LinksAs Rocky, Project Hail Mary’s James Ortiz Helped Save the Universe — and Hollywood

“My own queerness being present in what I did with Rocky was not something that I necessarily was actively trying to insert,” Ortiz says. “It’s just who I am.”

‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre

“We had wolves coming into the village because all the wild animals moved out of the forest.”

Macmillan Staff Say the Publisher Threw a Party for a Workplace AI Assistant That Was Later Killed

One Macmillan employee remembers a Chaptr representative reassuring workers during an early in-person training session that Chaptr understood publishers were dealing with something very important—content. “And here I thought we were publishing literature,” the employee says.

If the AO3 outage has left you without anything to read, here’s your reminder that most of my writing is available on my website for free.

-K

It was hot. Too hot; every breath scorched Simon’s lungs. He couldn’t think. And someone was pressed tight to his back, skin on skin.

Hands roamed his body—soft palms and long clever fingers, stroking and teasing. They were slick—wet. Wet with his blood; it was under the fingernails, sinking into the lines of each knuckle, smearing across Simon’s skin wherever they touched him.

Simon reached back to touch in turn, but his left arm wouldn’t move. It was gone, a ragged dripping wound where it should have been.

There was a hot line along the cleft of Simon’s ass—hard, throbbing with each beat of an alien pulse.

Grace’s breath washed over his ear. “You want it?”

A desperate noise wrenched its way out of Simon’s throat.

Teeth nipped at his earlobe. “Tell me.”

Simon trembled and whined. He couldn’t make himself say “yes”; couldn’t bear to say “no”—

And opened his eyes to darkness.

It wasn’t complete darkness; he could make out the vague shape of the ceiling struts arching overhead. He was in his quarters.

He’d been dreaming.

Simon rubbed his hand across his face and groaned. “Frell.”

It was too hot under the covers, his own sweat damp and sticky on his skin. Simon tossed the blankets aside, panting for breath.

He was hard, his pulse pounding in his groin, cock aching where it was trapped beneath his underclothes. Simon pressed at it with the heel of his palm, hoping to soothe the ache.

There was a quiet thunk, and Simon caught a glimpse of movement in the dark.

Something was in here with him.

Grace’s logic was as follows:

Point the first, time was relative. Rocky only slept every eighty-six hours or so, and while Simon seemed to need sleep about as regularly as Grace did, their waking hours were staggered a bit. Strictly speaking, aboard Mari, there was no “morning.”

Point the second, “breakfast” was a social construct. There really was no biological reason why certain foods were considered “breakfast foods,” beyond baseline human needs for protein and carbohydrates early in the day.

Point the third, Grace was the only human on board. There wasn’t anyone in a position to call out his eating habits as any kind of deviation from the human norm. This far from Earth, he was the human norm.

Therefore: ramen for breakfast was perfectly fine, as long as he put bacon bits in it.

Grace was forced to consider several additional points when a ragged, terrified shout echoed down the corridor and he nearly dumped boiling water all over himself.

He muttered a minced oath under his breath and sprang back from the mess, bolting from the central chamber and out into the corridor. The noise had come from the direction of Simon’s quarters—the voice shouting had been his.

As Grace drew closer, there was a crash; Rocky’s voice joined the cacophony, sharp shrieks and trills that the translator microbes failed to process. Simon’s door was open; Grace stumbled through, but hesitated in the doorway.

Simon had backed up against the far wall of his quarters. He wasn’t wearing his prosthetic, and his right arm was curled protectively across his chest. He was also mostly naked.

His bedside table was missing. Grace quickly located it at the base of the wall near the door, dented along one side; Simon had thrown it across the room.

He’d apparently been trying to hit Rocky, who was sitting in his ball in the middle of the floor. Four of his legs danced uneasily in place, rocking the ball slightly from side to side, while the fifth—the rearmost—was raised in what Grace guessed was an eridian threat display.

“Get the frell away from me!” Simon was screaming at him. “Out! Get out!”

Neither of them seemed to be hurt, and Grace couldn’t see anything else that constituted an emergency. “Guys?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

“He was watching me!” Simon shouted back. “I was asleep and he broke in and—”

Rocky interrupted with a fresh bout of shrieking—all Grace’s translator microbes caught was “rude” and “yell” and “throw.”

Simon replied with a string of profanities, and the room dissolved once more into incoherent noise.

A crackling squeal resounded through the room; Grace doubled over, covering his ears. Simon flinched away, backing further into the wall. Even Rocky fell silent, limbs curling in as he hunkered down under the sonic assault.

It took Grace a moment to realise the sound had come through their comm chips.

“What the frell was that?” Simon groaned.

“Apologies,” came Pilot’s voice over the comm. “There appears to be some feedback on the comm system. I merely wished to inform you all that Mari’s sensors have detected a strong infrared light source moving parallel to our current course.”

“Infrared?” Grace asked, with an inkling already of what that meant.

“The signature is consistent with a large population of Astrophage,” Pilot said, confirming his suspicions.

Simon’s brow furrowed. “Another infected star?”

Grace shook his head. “Your average star pumps out so much light across the whole spectrum that the infrared produced by Astrophage just gets lost in the noise.”

“So what does that mean?” Simon asked. “The Astrophage is just … out there, on its own?”

“It migrates,” Grace conceded, “but even in transit, I don’t think any natural population of Astrophage would produce a signal strong enough to get Mari’s attention.”

“Could be ship using Astrophage as fuel,” Rocky proposed, uncurling from his huddled position.

Except that nobody out here used Astrophage that way. So far, Grace had encountered only one other species with Astrophage-powered ships.

Rocky seemed to realise that as well; he was practically vibrating with anticipation.

“Pilot,” Grace asked, “could we change course to intercept the signal?”

“Easily, Dr. Grace.”

The source of the infrared signal was, in fact, a ship. Grace didn’t have a handle on the meters-to-motras conversion rate yet, but scans showed it was maybe 150 meters long—gigantic by the standards of any ship from Earth, but utterly dwarfed by Mari, who was six times its size.

The projection on the strategy table showed an elliptical core section surrounded by an elaborate hull-mounted rail system, elongating the ship’s silhouette into a jagged-edged rhombus. Grace had never seen a ship quite like it, but the design was oddly familiar—it had the same flat planes and geometric patterns as some of Rocky’s engineering projects.

“Spectral analysis indicates the vessel is made primarily of xenon,” Pilot offered, clearly baffled by that particular reading. “Its composition and silhouette match Peacekeeper records of the ship Rocky was taken from.”

Rocky stood upright in his ball, legs stretched out to lift his body as high as possible, even though he couldn’t perceive the projection on the table. The vents atop his carapace fluttered wildly.

Simon, meanwhile, hung back in the doorway of the command—properly dressed, now. Grace couldn’t blame him for giving Rocky a wide berth, although he wasn’t sure why Simon was avoiding him as well.

“Rocky,” Grace said carefully, “is it possible your people sent more than one ship?”

“Not possible,” Rocky replied. “Fact. Second ship planned as redundancy. Still building when Rocky ship launch.”

The US military personnel on the Petrova Taskforce had introduced Grace to a saying: “two is one and one is none.” It was an ethos embraced by just about every space agency on Earth: anything important had to have a backup. Even the personnel slated for the mission.

If they’d had the time or resources to build a backup ship, they would have. Evidently, Erid had managed to follow through on the same idea.

From his spot in the doorway, Simon asked, “Why’s it going so slow?”

Grace twisted to give him an incredulous look. “It’s travelling at nearly the speed of light.”

“And Mari caught up to it no problem,” Simon pointed out. “We could fly circles around that thing, if we needed to.”

“Yeah, well it’s supposed to be impossible to travel faster than light,” Grace complained, throwing his hands in the air. “And I can’t figure out why it isn’t, because nobody I’ve met so far can tell me how a ‘hetch drive’ works!”

“Signs of life aboard ship, question?” Rocky interrupted sharply.

“The vessel has not altered its speed or trajectory in any way,” Pilot replied. “Either the crew has failed to notice our approach, or …”

“Or there’s nobody on that ship to notice,” Simon concluded. “Heat signatures?”

“Inconclusive,” Pilot said. “The interior of the ship seems to be … quite warm.”

Grace winced. “Yeah, that’d be the atmosphere full of superheated ammonia.”

“Mari is finding it difficult to distinguish between the background heat and any potential living bodies.”

“Can we hail them?” Simon asked.

“I have been sending hails on all standard comm bands,” Pilot replied. “So far, there has been no response.”

“The eridians might not be using any of those channels,” Grace pointed out.

“Why the frell not?”

“Before Rocky ran into the Peacekeepers, his people thought they were alone in the universe. It’s not like they knew what standards everybody else was using.”

“I go aboard,” Rocky said, rolling back toward the door. “Look for survivors.”

“What—? No!” Grace chased after him. “Rocky, what about the radiation? You could get sick.”

“It’s unshielded?” Simon said, appalled.

Grace managed to outpace Rocky and step into his path; the ball collided lightly with Grace’s shins, its occupant whistling in annoyance. “Eridians don’t know about cosmic radiation,” he explained, moving to block Rocky’s attempts to roll past him. “Their atmosphere’s so thick, it doesn’t reach the surface of their planet. They have no natural resistance. Rocky, stop. I’ll go instead.”

At the thought of donning the EVA suit, his stomach lurched.

Simon didn’t seem to like the idea, either. “The atmosphere in there will crush your suit like a flibisk egg.”

Before Grace could ask what the heck a ‘flibisk’ was, Rocky said, “Peacekeepers have pressure suit.”

Grace blinked down at him. “They did?”

“Needed suits to board ship,” Rocky explained. “Used sometimes to enter Rocky workshop, quarters.”

Grace didn’t want to think about why the Peacekeepers might’ve needed to enter Rocky’s space. “Is it still onboard?”

“Don’t know,” Rocky said. “Maybe.”

Simon found the pressure suit in the cargo bay, buried under a stack of crates containing what looked to be spare Peacekeeper uniforms. It was heavy; even with Simon’s prosthetic, it took Grace’s assistance and the use of a hover sled to get it down to the maintenance bay.

Rocky was in his workshop, putting the finishing touches on a new docking ring for the transport pod—one that would be compatible with the airlock on the eridian ship. He’d had to cannibalise the quarantine chamber he’d built for Simon in order to get enough xenonite for the job.

If there was anything wrong with the suit, it was better to find out now and not while Grace was aboard the other ship. Simon stood the thing upright in the middle of the maintenance bay; it was functionally a one-piece bodysuit, with a hatch in the back for its occupant to climb in and out.

Grace hesitated as he approached the suit, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“Something wrong?” Simon asked.

Grace jumped, as if he’d forgotten Simon was there. “Fine,” he blurted out. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

Before Simon could question him further, Grace climbed awkwardly through the rear hatch of the suit. He fed his arms and legs through the suit’s limbs, settling his weight for a moment before looking back over his shoulder and giving him a nod.

Simon sealed up the hatch and moved to the suit’s wrist monitor, tapping in the commands for a full systems check. Within a few systems, the results started to come back: the suit was in good working condition, with no serious faults detected.

Through the dome of the helmet, he could see Grace staring straight ahead, breathing heavily through his mouth.

Simon keyed his comm chip into the suit’s channel. “Grace?”

It took a moment before Grace licked his lips and replied, “Y—yeah?”

“Can you breathe okay?” Simon asked. “The suit says life support is working, but if you’re—”

“It’s fine,” Grace interrupted, voice strained. “I’m—it’s fine.”

Simon turned his attention back to the wrist monitor. “I’m going to start the calibration routine,” he said, keying in the appropriate sequence. “Can you try taking a step forward?”

The suit didn’t move.

Simon glanced up from the monitor. “Grace?”

Grace was panting harder now, fast and panicked, shaking so hard his glasses had slipped to the end of his nose. Tears streamed down his face, his eyes wide and unseeing.

“Rocky?” Simon called; his voice cracked. “Is he okay? What’s happening?”

“Not know,” Rocky trilled back in alarm. “Grace wear other suit before. No problems.”

“Before,” in this case, meaning the time he’d boarded a derelict leviathan and wound up not only fleeing for his life, but chopping Simon’s arm off with a hatchet.

Grace’s mouth was moving, but the comm couldn’t pick up whatever he was saying. Simon leaned in closer, just barely hearing Grace’s rasping voice through the helmet: “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—“

Simon darted behind Grace and unsealed the rear panel, yanking it open. Grace threw himself backward out of the suit, barely managing to keep his feet; Simon instinctively reached for him, but Grace reeled away, blind with terror as he fled.

He collided with the nearest bulkhead, huddling there in the corner between a strut and the wall behind it.

Simon couldn’t shake the feeling he should be … helping, somehow. Grace would be helping, if Simon was the one crying and mindless with terror. He took a half-step toward him.

A wordless, sobbing noise wrenched its way up Grace’s throat, and he slammed his fist into the wall.

Simon froze.

Grace drew his fist back and hit the wall again, heedless of the damage he was doing to his hand. A broken sound fell out of him—helpless frustration and rage.

He was taller than Simon, but nowhere near as bulky. The prosthetic alone would likely be enough to keep Grace at bay if his anger turned on Simon—but Simon wasn’t sure he could do that without hurting Grace in turn. Better to keep still and avoid drawing attention to himself.

Rocky, though, was moving—clambering across his workshop and through the hatch into his ball, rolling it across the floor toward Grace.

Simon made a warning noise behind his teeth and reached out to stop him, but Rocky ignored him completely and forged onward until the edge of his ball bumped Grace’s foot.

Grace whirled in place and wrapped both arms around the ball, clinging tightly and pressing his face to its surface.

“Sorry,” he mumbled into the xenonite barrier. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …”

“Grace friend not be sorry,” Rocky insisted, settling his body against the side of the ball touching Grace.

Simon finally let himself take a full breath. Whatever violent impulse had sent Grace’s fist into the wall seemed to have passed.

And Grace wasn’t going to the eridian ship. He couldn’t. Which was just as well—there probably wasn’t anyone still alive over there.

But what if there was?

What if someone was dying alone aboard that ship, right now? Would they ever know how close they’d come to being saved?

“Grace,” Simon said, as gently as he could manage.

Grace sniffed and peered up at him from where he was still wrapped around Rocky’s ball.

“Get up,” Simon told him. “I need you to calibrate the suit for me.”

Grace blinked. “What?”

It took some manoeuvring to dock the transport pod with the eridian ship. According to Rocky and Grace, the ship didn’t have artificial gravity in the same way Mari did; the gravitational force created by its constant acceleration pushed toward its stern, so Simon had to orient the transport pod perpendicular to its direction of travel to make sure the two gravity planes lined up.

The other airlock was larger than standard; luckily, the docking clamp Rocky had built was up to the task, latching onto the eridian ship’s hull to bring the two hatches together and sealing off the gap with a short xenonite tunnel.

Simon ran one last check on the suit, then climbed through the rear hatch and closed it up behind him. He opened a comm channel back to Mari. “Pilot?”

“Yes, Simon?”

“Could you tell Rocky and Grace I’m about to board the eridian ship?”

“We’re here,” Grace cut in. “Me and Rocky, I mean. We’ll be with you the whole time.” Grace went quiet for a moment. “… Thank you. For this.”

Something uncomfortable squirmed in Simon’s chest. “I’m sorry,” he said, awkwardly. “For … earlier.”

There was brief, confused silence. “You mean, in your quarters?”

“Yeah,” Simon rasped out. He stepped into the airlock. “I was just … scared.”

The hatch closed behind him, and a few microts passed as the air cycled out.

“When eridians sleep,” Grace said, “they’re completely paralysed. And they’re stuck like that until the sleep cycle is finished. They can’t wake up if … if something happens.”

The airlock’s outer hatch opened, and Simon stepped out into the short tunnel between the two ships. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Grace echoed. “So when an eridian sleeps, their friends watch over them. To keep them safe. That’s what Rocky was doing. He shouldn’t have come into your room without asking, but … yeah.”

“Oh,” Simon said.

“Anyway. Just thought that might … help.”

Rocky had loaded an acoustic override signal into the suit’s onboard computer; Simon played it back from the wrist monitor, and the outer hatch of the other airlock opened. He stepped through and waited another few microts for the airlock to repressurise, then stepped through the inner hatch.

Ahead of him was complete darkness.

“Dark in here,” Simon remarked aloud; there was a tremor in his voice he couldn’t quite control.

“Yeah, uh … eridians don’t have eyes. They don’t need lights, so … they don’t have them.”

Simon reached for the suit’s wrist monitor and switched on the helmet lamp. He couldn’t help recalling the last time he’d stepped onto a dark alien ship with only a small light to guide him—but aside from the darkness, the eridian ship was nothing like the inside of a leviathan.

He focused on the straight lines and sharp angles of the ship’s interior, so unlike a leviathan’s organic arches and curves, as he trudged down the corridor. The suit’s exoskeleton was motorised, but it didn’t interface directly with his brain; it was motion-sensitive. Every time Simon moved a limb, there was a fraction of a second before the suit responded appropriately, and he had to abort every stride slightly before he actually wanted it to stop. It was more tiring than he’d thought it would be.

The light from the helmet lamp caught something that glittered along one wall of the corridor: a set of taut metal strings, suspended about a finger’s width from the bulkhead. Curious, Simon reached out and plucked one; the string vibrated all down the corridor, off into the darkness, and an answering hum resonated through the rest of the ship.

It had to be some kind of communications system, like the signal Rocky had given Simon for the airlock door.

Before long, he reached a junction point in the corridor; one path ramped upward, while another looked to be heading down. “I’m at the end of the airlock corridor,” Simon called in. “Where am I going from here?”

“Engine room,” Rocky suggested. “Back of ship.”

“The engineering section is right next to the ship’s Astrophage tanks,” Grace explained. “Rocky was stationed there on his own ship—that’s probably what saved his life. If there’s any survivors, that’s where they’ll be.”

Simon took a moment to orient himself—“back” meant “down,” with the ship’s centre of gravity where it was—and took the corridor that sloped gradually downward. The eridians had taken pains to ensure their ship was navigable in both free-fall and artificial gravity; the corridor spiralled in rigid segments, branching off occasionally into other sections of the ship.

There was a shadow ahead of him—an irregular rounded lump, breaking up the sharp angles of the walls and floors around him. Simon turned his helmet lamp on it to find a five-legged, stone-shelled body slumped across the floor.

“I found an eridian,” he reported back.

“Alive, question?”

“Uh …” The eridian didn’t seem to be breathing, but Simon had no idea whether they even did that. “Not sure. They could be unconscious, but … how do I check an eridian’s pulse?”

“Try move limbs,” Rocky instructed. “If rigid, hearts not beating.”

Simon manoeuvred awkwardly onto his knees and reached out for one of the eridian’s bent limbs. He tried to straighten it, but it didn’t move; whatever passed for muscle beneath its carapace was locked in place.

“Dead,” Simon confirmed aloud, then winced. “Uh … sorry.”

“Is okay,” Rocky assured him, although a low, untranslatable croon accompanied the words.

Simon heaved the suit upright again and continued down the corridor. There was another eridian a few motras along, and another two not far from that one—all of them dead, their limbs completely rigid.

Then the corridor opened up into what Simon guessed was the engine room. It was just as dark as the rest of the ship, but from what Simon could see with his helmet lamp, the space was huge—easily as big as one of Mari’s cargo bays. Rising out of a platform at the centre of the room was a towering pillar, its sides covered in sand or some other fine-grained material. Unreadable symbols appeared in relief on its surface, constantly scrolling and changing.

Eridians didn’t have eyes. They couldn’t rely on screens to show them the status of their propulsion system; this was their main monitor.

Simon turned, casting the beam from his helmet lamp around the room’s cavernous interior. There were more eridians down here—easily a dozen of them, all dead.

“Rocky,” he asked, “how many people were on your ship?”

“Twenty-three,” Rocky reported. “Same number second ship.”

These eridians, plus the ones Simon had found in the corridor, would account for the bulk of the crew. “There’s a lot of bodies down here,” he reported. “I think they must’ve all been hiding out together.”

“Learned Astrophage helped,” Rocky guessed—then, with another low croon, added, “Learned too late.”

Simon swallowed; there was something heavy in his throat. “Is that what happened on your ship?”

“Crew sick,” Rocky confirmed. “Cells dying. Not understand why. No infection. No injury. No reason.”

“Rocky was the only one who didn’t get sick,” Grace added. “The Astrophage in the fuel tanks absorbed the radiation before it could reach him.”

“Tried to fix. Could not fix. Crew die. Rocky alone.”

Alone in the vast dark, waiting to die.

“For how long?” Simon asked.

“Forty cycles, approximate.”

Simon’s reverie shattered. “Forty?”

“Eridians have long lifespans,” Grace assured him. “It wasn’t as long for him as it would be for—”

“You said eridians aren’t safe without someone to watch them sleep,” Simon shot back. “Rocky had nobody to watch him for thousands of nights in a row. He would’ve been terrified for decades, he should be—” his voice faltered, “—insane.”

The comm line went quiet.

Simon would be the first to admit his interactions with Rocky weren’t exactly normal. Up until now, he’d put that down to the friction between them—cultural differences, maybe. He’d never met another eridian. He had no idea what they were supposed to be like.

If Rocky were, by eridian standards, utterly deranged … would anyone aboard Mari be in a position to tell?

Did it really matter?

“I, uh …” Simon cleared his throat. “What should I do with the bodies?”

“Oh. Heck.” Grace groaned. “Each of those is going to weigh, like, five hundred pounds.”

Simon wasn’t sure how that translated to real units, but from what he knew of Rocky, he guessed that was pretty heavy.

“Leave bodies,” Rocky said decisively. “Bring supplies. Crew not need now.”

“Yeah,” Simon agreed, voice tight. “Yeah, I can do that. What do you need?”

“Chemicals for xenonite,” Rocky said. “Should be in storage compartment on ♩♬♫ side of—”

“Wait, on what?” Simon interrupted. “Is that treblin or hamman side?”

“Facing back of ship, is ♪♫—”

“I don’t understand.”

Rocky emitted an annoyed trill.

“Hang on,” Grace broke in, “he’s gesturing—”

A shiver crawled up Simon’s spine, unease churning in his gut; the anxiety wasn’t coming from him. It was Mari’s.

“Dr. Grace?” Pilot broke in, alarmed.

“What’s wrong?” Simon asked, not waiting for Grace’s reply.

“Mari has detected a signal at the edge of her sensor range,” Pilot replied. “Another ship is approaching.”

Grace’s knuckles were white where he gripped the edges of the operations console, watching the approach of the other ship through the viewport.

This far from any star or other light source, it was a vague silhouette against the blackness of space. Pilot sent a projection through to the strategy table; the new ship appeared to consist of several rotating sections stacked vertically along a central axis. No one section perfectly matched the next, as if each had been patched together from whatever was on hand at the time.

“The ship appears to be a sheyang pirate vessel,” Pilot informed them. “I am receiving an audio transmission.”

The operations console lit up, and the message began to play. “Unknown leviathan,” said a low, croaking voice. “I am Captain Vatrec. I claim right of salvage over this vessel, and yours. You will submit to my boarding party, or you will be destroyed.”

“The sheyangs have activated their weapons system,” Pilot said, voice quavering. “They are targeting Mari.”

Grace’s heart jolted in his chest. “Shields up?” he said, instinctively.

“We have no shields,” Pilot replied. “Our only defensive option is to starburst.”

“But Simon’s still on the eridian ship.”

“And Mari has no intention of leaving without him.”

“I’m heading back to the transport pod,” Simon assured them. “Just give me a few minutes and I’ll—”

“The transport pod cannot return without passing through the sheyangs’ field of fire,” Pilot warned him sharply. “Their weapons are fully capable of destroying the pod. Mari insists you stay where you are until the danger has passed.”

“Let pirates board,” Rocky offered. “Wait until outside ship, then vent hangar. Easy easy easy.”

“No, listen—” Simon started.

“You want to kill them?” Grace yelped, rolling right over him.

“Pirates want kill Grace Rocky Mari.”

“If the sheyangs detect the death of their boarding party, they will most likely open fire,” Pilot pointed out.

Simon’s voice broke through: “Frelling listen to me!”

His voice cracked around the words, scared and desperate, and Grace’s mouth snapped shut.

Simon breathed heavily down the comm line.

“Okay,” Grace said. “Okay, Simon. We’re listening.”

A moment passed as Simon composed himself, and then he said, “Pirates are cowards. They’ll fight if they think they can win, but they’ll retreat if they’re worried they might lose. You just need to convince the sheyangs we’re too much risk to be worth it.”

“Right, okay.” Grace thought it over and drew a blank. They had no weapons. They had nothing to threaten the sheyangs with. “How … do we do that?”

“… Do you still have those Peacekeeper uniforms?”

Some frantic digging through the crates they’d found in the cargo bay turned up what Grace was pretty sure had to be a captain’s uniform: a knee-length black jacket with red accents. The collar was high and way too tight, pressing against Grace’s windpipe; he wedged a finger in to try and loosen it, struggling to breathe. “I can’t do this.”

He tried to back away from the operations console, but collided with Rocky, who’d rolled his ball directly behind him. One edge hit the back of Grace’s knees, and he nearly collapsed.

“Grace call respected colleague ‘staggering waste of carbon,’” Rocky opined, shoving Grace forward again. “Grace tell Rocky this.”

“Okay, but that was—” Grace raked his hair back from his face and realised his glasses were still hanging from his ear. He pulled them free and folded them, tucking them into his pocket. “I was really burned out, and I’d already decided I was done with academia, and it was the tail end of a two-week conference and—I was under a lot of stress, okay?”

Rocky seemed to consider this for a moment. “Grace not stress now, question?”

Grace had to give him that.

“I am opening a channel to the sheyang vessel,” Pilot reported.

Grace bit back a whimper and tried to stand up straight.

Up on the viewport, the bridge of the sheyangs’ ship flickered into view. Taking up most of the frame was the face of an alien who looked like nothing so much as a giant toad, with slick greenish skin. Its wide mouth turned down at the edges into a permanent, unimpressed frown.

“Peacekeeper,” said the alien, with a touch of caution. His voice was familiar—this was the Captain Vatrec who’d demanded their surrender.

“Yes.” Grace scrambled to remember what Simon had told him to say. “Captain Melkor, Ustar Regiment, special duty assignment. I command this leviathan.”

Vatrec scoffed. “You claim to command a leviathan with no control collar?”

“Our technology has advanced,” Grace replied. “We no longer need to collar leviathans to control them. And you’re interfering with an ongoing operation.”

“We merely claim right of salvage over a derelict vessel,” Vatrec said—already backing off his threat to board Mari. Good.

“The vessel in question is part of a Peacekeeper test flight,” Grace replied. “You will keep your distance, or my crew will be forced to take defensive action.”

“You’re bluffing,” Vatrec said. “Leviathans have no weapons. Your threats are empty.”

The reality of the situation caught up with Grace all at once. Here he was at the ass end of the universe, inside a living spaceship flown by a giant crab. His roommate was a talking rock. He was trying to bluff with no cards in a poker game against Kermit the Frog. And Kermit had a gun.

He just barely swallowed a hysterical burst of laughter and, instead, said, “We have a command carrier patrolling this sector. I’ve already called them in—they’ll arrive within a few minutes. What happens when it gets here is up to you.” He glared at the screen. “If you value your lives, be somewhere else.”

With that, he reached across the operations console and closed the channel.

“Think that worked?” he asked faintly.

“We’re about to find out,” Simon replied.

A few seconds passed—and then the sheyang ship dropped back from the eridian vessel, pulling away.

“The pirate vessel is departing,” Pilot reported. “At maximum speed, by all appearances.”

Grace’s knees buckled; a controlled collapse brought him to the floor, where he rested his forehead against the warm xenonite of Rocky’s ball. His eyes drifted shut as a shuddering sigh left his body.

“Grace save Mari,” Rocky said. “Grace very brave.”

“I’m not,” Grace mumbled into the ball.

“You did good,” Simon added, over the comm. “That last part was clever.”

“Yeah, well.” Grace shrugged. “Turns out that whole semester I spent watching Babylon 5 was good for something after all.”

Simon had ejected one of the eridian ship’s fuel tanks before making his way back to the airlock and the transport pod. Mari matched velocity with the tank, pulling in closer as the other ship continued to accelerate away from them.

Grace and Rocky monitored the whole process from the command, and as the eridian ship pulled away, Rocky began to sing—a haunting melody that echoed throughout the room, none of it even remotely parsed by the translator microbes.

“What’s that?” Grace asked softly.

“Eridian dying song,” Rocky replied. “For memory.”

In the viewport, the eridian ship grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the darkness of space. As far as final resting places went, Grace figured there were worse options than to travel endlessly through the stars.

Mari snagged the fuel tank with her docking web, drawing it through the open door of the transport hangar. Not long after, Simon’s pod followed.

By the time Grace and Rocky arrived in the maintenance bay, the transport pod had already landed and the hangar was repressurised. The inner door opened to reveal Simon climbing down out of the pod; he’d already shed the pressure suit, and there was a crate in his arms.

“This better be the right one,” he grumbled, setting it down. The crate was marked with eridian symbols, carved in relief.

“Is correct.” Rocky rolled forward, seemed to realise for the first time that his current situation wouldn’t allow him to carry the crate, and added, sheepishly, “Will need assistance moving to workshop.”

“I’ll get the hover sled.” Grace stepped back into the maintenance bay.

When he returned, sled in tow, Simon was eyeing the Astrophage tank. “Is it safe to have that thing aboard?”

“It’s harmless to us,” Grace assured him. “Mostly.”

Simon gave him a wary look. “‘Mostly’?”

“Well—” Grace shifted in place. “If the eridians were using this Astrophage for fuel, that means it’s, uh … well-fed. Astrophage stores a lot of energy, relative to its mass. So if that energy gets released …”

“It explodes?” Simon didn’t sound overly keen to hear the answer.

Grace pushed away the memories: fire blooming in the distance; a shockwave ripping across dry grass; a ship disappearing in a flash of blinding light; a command carrier crumpling in on itself.

“Yeah,” he said. “It explodes.”

Grace’s half of the room he shared with Rocky was, as usual, a disaster: bed unmade, clothes scattered across the floor. Within his sealed-off section, Rocky was busy unfolding some kind of spiked metal frame. There were a few empty ration canisters nearby; he’d just finished eating.

“Simon.” Rocky didn’t turn to face him; near as Simon could tell, he didn’t really have a face. “Why here, question?”

“I, uh …” Simon cleared his throat. “I was thinking about what Grace said. About you watching me.”

“Apology,” Rocky offered. “Rocky enter Simon room without permission. Grace explain. Wrong wrong wrong.”

“Yeah, well …” Simon shrugged. “You didn’t want me to sleep alone.”

“Yes.”

Simon sighed. “The station I grew up on … nobody had their own room. There wasn’t enough space. I slept every night in the dormitory, with my brothers.” He crossed his arms, shoulders hunching inward. “Then I went to prison, and … I had cellmates, but I didn’t really know any of them. We were just … alone, together.”

He could feel Rocky watching him, even without eyes.

“Understand,” Rocky said, eventually.

Simon nodded, relaxing a little. “So … thanks.”

Rocky replied with a low hum. “Simon get Grace, question? Grace watch Rocky sleep.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Simon turned back to the door, but lingered there. “Or … I can do it.”

Rocky emitted a soft, curious trill. “Simon watch Rocky, question?”

“Yeah,” Simon replied. “If … if that’s all right.”

“Yes,” Rocky said simply. “Thank.” He climbed into the metal frame, settling each of his limbs along one of the metal spikes until he was splayed out, suspended midair. Simon couldn’t imagine that was comfortable, but within minutes Rocky had gone completely still.

Simon sat on the floor at the base of the xenonite wall and settled in for a long watch.

Subscribe to receive an email when this story updates:

#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form { margin-bottom: 0; }#mailpoet_form_2 p.mailpoet_form_paragraph.last { margin-bottom: 0px; }#mailpoet_form_2 h1.mailpoet-heading { margin: 0 0 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_column_with_background { padding: 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:not(:first-child) { margin-left: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph { line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_segment_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_radio_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_list_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_label { display: block; font-weight: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_month, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_day, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_year, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date { display: block; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea { width: 200px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_submit { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_divider { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading { width: 30px; text-align: center; line-height: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading > span { width: 5px; height: 5px; background-color: #5b5b5b; }#mailpoet_form_2{border: 0px solid #f7f7f7;border-radius: 0px;background: #fbfaf3;color: #20030b;text-align: left;}#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form {padding: 10px;}#mailpoet_form_2{width: 100%;}#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message {margin: 0; padding: 0 20px;} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.textarea.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-errors-list {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-required {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-custom-error-message {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph.last {margin-bottom: 0} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 {background: #fbfaf3;}} @media (min-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .last .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:last-child .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} Please leave this field emptyinput[name="data[form_field_ODg4MDU1MjcwMDZiX2VtYWls]"]::placeholder{color:#c2bfab;opacity: 1;}

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription!

“But there’s hundreds of them.”

“All of Mari’s DRDs are occupied with essential tasks, Dr. Grace,” Pilot replied over the comm. “None can be spared at the moment, especially not for the purpose of satisfying your … curiosity.”

“I just want to disassemble one,” Grace insisted. “I’ll put it back together once I’m done with it.”

“I’m sure you have other things with which to occupy your time.”

The thing was, he didn’t. Simon had recovered well over the past few weeks, to the point where he didn’t need babysitting, so Grace had tried filling the time in other ways. He’d gone through every bit of Astrophage data from the derelict leviathan and taken inventory of all the equipment and supplies the Peacekeepers had looted from his old ship and stashed in Mari’s cargo bay. He’d even resorted to tidying up the lab.

There was, quite simply, nothing left for him to do. Nothing to keep his thoughts from turning to the bloom of an exploding fuel tank against the blackness of space, the sickening impact of a hatchet hitting bone, the dark, slick smears of blood all over the gloves of his EVA suit—

“Can I at least examine one?” There was a DRD rolling through the lab that didn’t look particularly busy; Grace approached it. “I won’t even take it apart.”

The DRD emitted an alarmed trill and spun in place. A thin, telescoping barrel popped out of its carapace, the tip glowing a warning red.

Grace yelped and put his hands up. “Okay, so leviathans don’t have weapons, but the DRDs have guns?”

“It’s a plasma welder,” Pilot replied; before Grace could call that out as a blatant lie, she went on: “If you require something productive to do, you may inform Rocky and Simon that we’ll be arriving soon at the commerce planet.”

“Can’t you do that?”

“I can,” Pilot confirmed, with no apparent intention to do so. “Simon and Rocky are in the central chamber.”

Backing slowly away from the DRD, Grace fled the lab.

“Careful.” Rocky’s voice echoed down the corridor as Grace approached the central chamber. “Careful!”

“I’m being careful,” came Simon’s strained reply.

“Need more careful.”

Rocky’s ball was rolling slightly back and forth along the floor next to the table, where Simon sat with his elbows resting on the tabletop. Both elbows: one flesh, one metal.

Over the past few weeks, the stump of Simon’s amputated arm had healed enough to start using the prosthetic Rocky had built—although Rocky could no longer claim sole credit on the project. Just a few days in, Pilot had announced that Mari would donate some of her own parts to the endeavour. The completed arm had the same segmented, bronze finish as Mari’s bulkheads, and the addition of bio-mechanoid material had made it infinitely easier to interface directly with Simon’s nervous system.

The prosthetic fitted neatly over the truncated end of Simon’s left arm, held in place by a harness across his chest and shoulders. Calibrating the thing was a process that required taking it off and putting it back on multiple times a day; whenever Rocky was working on it, Simon tended to go shirtless.

The harness framed his pecs beautifully; they were full and soft and—

Uh oh.

Grace turned his attention firmly to the table, which had food cubes scattered all over its surface. This particular variety was flat and thin, like crackers; more than a few of them were broken, or crushed into crumbs.

Simon reached for one of the unbroken cubes with his prosthetic hand, picking it up delicately between his thumb and forefinger. He laid it on top of a pile by his other hand—he’d managed to stack up at least half a dozen so far.

Then he reached for another one, more confident this time—and the cube cracked under the pressure of his fingers, snapping neatly in half.

“Frell!” Simon snarled, and slammed his prosthetic hand into the tabletop. The stack toppled, and his fury evaporated; he put his face in his hands and gave a weary, self-deprecating groan.

“Again,” Rocky said, mercilessly.

“Hey.” Grace edged through the door. “How’s the arm working out?”

Simon peeked at Grace through his fingers and replied with a muffled, “Fine.”

“You sure?” Grace eyed the devastation on the table. “Seems like the fine motor control could still use some work.”

Simon sighed and sat back. “It’s a lot stronger than my other arm.”

Turning to Rocky, Grace said, “You can’t turn that down?”

“Have already reduced as much as possible,” Rocky replied irritably. “Can’t reduce further without compromising response time. Simon must adjust.”

Grace’s attention drifted to the tall windows of the central chamber. A wide, bright arc had just edged into view—the horizon of a planet, white clouds swirling above oceans and dusty green continents.

He’d woken up from his coma aboard Mari in deep-space transit; depending how you counted it, he hadn’t set foot planetside in either months or multiple years. The commerce planet didn’t look much like Earth, but a pang of nostalgia settled in Grace’s chest anyway.

“Oh,” Simon said, glancing toward the window—not nearly as impressed with the view as Grace had been. “We’re coming into orbit.”

Grace winced. “Yeah, uh … Pilot sent me up here to tell you.”

“Grace not tell,” Rocky pointed out.

Grace carefully did not look at Simon. “Got distracted.”

Simon didn’t remember his last trip in the transport pod all that clearly, but Rocky had lamented Grace’s piloting loudly and often enough that Simon made a point of settling behind the controls as they boarded. Grace seemed content to take the passenger seat.

Rocky was staying behind; apparently, the ball he used to get around on Mari wasn’t suitable for use planetside. He’d rolled anxious circles around the hangar as Grace and Simon got the pod ready—then, as they boarded, jabbed a claw in Simon’s direction and said, “Keep Grace safe.”

Like he needed to ask.

Sitting at Simon’s feet was a shoulder bag full of chakan oil cartridges. Simon had found a whole crate in the cargo bay; the Peacekeepers must have brought it aboard as ammunition for their pulse weapons. Seeing as nobody on Mari actually had any pulse weapons, the cartridges would be much more useful in trade for the supplies they needed.

As the pod eased out of the hangar, Simon kept his hands tight on the controls—resisting the urge to reach down and brush the knife sheath still clipped to his belt.

Having a room of his own was an unexpected luxury he wouldn’t trade for anything, but nights aboard Mari were so quiet. In prison, he’d had to try and sleep while his cellmates cried (or snored) through the night and guards patrolled outside. Before, on Eden Station, he and his brothers had slept in shifts; the station never really went silent.

And now, even on those nights when Simon didn’t have nightmares—and he had nightmares a lot—he found it hard to sleep.

But it turned out Mari sang to herself when she was happy—and, for some reason, having Simon aboard made her happy. Sometimes, on his sleepless nights, he’d wander down to the den and curl up at the base of Pilot’s console. He didn’t really want to talk, and Pilot didn’t make him; she simply carried on as she always did, unbothered by Simon’s presence, content to let him sit and doze as Mari sang.

And Mari had even given up parts of herself, just for the sake of improving Simon’s prosthetic arm. Pilot insisted it was no sacrifice at all—Mari was so big, and Simon so comparatively small, that the loss amounted to a rounding error—but Simon couldn’t remember the last time someone had made even the smallest sacrifice for his sake.

It was possible nobody had, since his mother brought him to Eden Station.

But Mari had to stay in orbit; leviathans weren’t meant to land on planets, and if she tried, she’d likely be crushed under her own immense weight. And Simon didn’t know what would happen to that comforting song in his head if she got too far away.

And as the transport pod descended from orbit, the constant whisper of Mari’s voice grew quieter—but even as he guided the pod into spacedock and touched down, it never fully faded.

Simon pried his hands off the controls and relaxed against the back of the seat.

Grace, however, as already up and moving toward the door; it slid open, and the landing stairs descended.

Simon got a faceful of atmosphere from outside the pod and coughed; it was breathable, but heavy with pollutants. He grabbed the bag at his feet and followed Grace down the stairs, out of the pod; there was a greyish-yellow haze in the air. The spaceport wasn’t much more than a wide paved area, crowded with all kinds of landing craft—some of them huge and imposing, but the majority of them decidedly not.

Grace hadn’t stopped smiling since they landed.

“What’re you grinning at?” Simon couldn’t help but ask.

Grace turned that delighted expression on him. “It’s my first alien planet.”

Simon immediately wished they’d picked somewhere else to stop. As was the case on most commerce planets, the settlement here was built specifically to facilitate trade. The planet itself was a barely-habitable wasteland, and the urban sprawl surrounding the market and spaceport was ramshackle, crowded, and filthy. Nobody was from here. It was a placeless place.

Grace, however, took it all in like it was the most incredible thing he’d ever seen. It would be adorable, if not for the fact that everyone on this planet would see a mark like him coming from metras away.

Simon slung the bag of chakan oil over his shoulder. “Just … let me do all the talking, all right?”

“Ten?” Simon nearly shouted. “Just for the one crate?”

He and Grace had a list of supplies they needed; the first and foremost item was rations for Rocky. The Peacekeepers had maintained a supply of food Rocky could eat while they held him captive, but they’d always made sure only a limited amount was kept aboard Mari—no doubt hoping the threat of scarcity would keep him from rebelling against them.

It hadn’t worked.

Eridians needed food that was protein-rich, but also contained elements like thallium and mercury—heavy metals that were toxic to most other species. It wasn’t the kind of stuff most food suppliers kept on hand; so far, they’d only found one trader who carried anything suitable.

And he was a fucking extortionist.

“Supply shortages,” the trader said, unmoved. Simon didn’t recognise his species; the trader’s face was somewhat sebaceanoid, but his body was huge and rotund, multiple arms emerging from his body like those of an arachnid. “Poor harvests this year.”

“What, everywhere?” Simon asked in disbelief.

“Many farming colonies.” The trader shrugged. “All same problems. Long winters. Delays in planting. Early frosts.”

Poor harvests from one or two colonies at a time was to be expected, but it made no sense for so many different planets to be affected in the same way at once. Simon glanced to the side, where Grace was observing the whole conversation in silence; he had a haunted look.

Ten percent, he’d told Simon. It makes a big difference.

“Short supply, higher price,” the trader concluded. “Basic economics.”

“It’s the same crates you’ve had in your warehouse for cycles,” Simon shot back; it turned out rations full of toxic heavy elements had quite the shelf life. “What does a grain shortage have to do with that?”

The trader shrugged again. “Price is price. Pay or leave.”

Simon’s hands clenched into fists at his sides; he exhaled roughly, ready to turn and walk out, find anywhere else to buy what they needed—but Grace was stepping up to the counter, elbows propped on its surface, leaning forward.

“Listen,” he said, his voice companionable but low—as if he and the trader were in on the same secret. “I’m guessing you don’t move a lot of this stuff.”

The trader visibly considered whether to deny it, but eventually said, “Limited market.”

“Yeah, and meanwhile you have a lot of value tied up in all that inventory,” Grace said sympathetically.

“True,” the trader agreed, nodding amicably. “Very true.”

“Our next stop is almost five months away—half a cycle,” Grace explained. “We don’t have enough food, but we do have all these cartridges we can’t use. And I’m guessing chakan oil sells a lot faster than all those rations.”

The trader gave him a wary look. “You are proposing something?”

“How about a bulk discount?” Grace said. “We’ll take those rations off your hands if you give us a deal on the trade-in value for the cartridges. We get what we need and you get to clear up some shelf space. What do you think?”

The trader contemplated this for a moment. “You take all?”

“All of it,” Grace agreed.

The trader nodded again. “Deal.”

Simon watched in silent astonishment as Grace and the trader hammered out the details of the sale and arranged for the rations to be delivered up to Mari. It all mathed out to roughly six cartridges a crate—just a little more than half of the original asking price.

Deal concluded, Grace strolled cheerfully from the trader’s booth. Simon walked silently at his side for a little while, until Grace caught him staring.

“I had to furnish a Bay Area apartment on a teacher’s salary,” Grace explained, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish expression. “Spent a lot of time at the flea markets.” He pulled the printout of their list from the pocket of his cardigan. “Okay, what’s next?”

It was pretty late in the day by the time Grace managed to find a quiet corner and comm up to Mari.

“Success, question?” Rocky asked over the comm.

“Success, statement,” Grace agreed. “We still haven’t found any of those xenonite reagents you put on the list, but those were a long shot anyway. We got everything else.”

“Amaze amaze amaze,” Rocky trilled, echoing Grace’s sense of accomplishment. “Coming back now, question?”

“Pretty soon,” Grace assured him. One of the traders had thrown in a handful of borinium chips as a free-gift-with-purchase thing; apparently, they were a little more fungible than the chakan oil. “I’m gonna take another look around, see if there’s anything else we want to pick up.”

“Come back soon.”

“Will do, buddy. See you when we get back.”

Grace switched off his comm and sidled back out into the market crowd. Simon had been quiet ever since they’d left that first trader’s booth, following along at his side as they knocked items off the shopping list. Despite the silence, he was pretty good company.

As they wove through the crowds, Grace caught a low, rhythmic, bassy sound emanating from a building up ahead—one decorated with neon lights. Apparently some things were universal, and one of those things was places to get drunk.

“Hey.” Grace nudged Simon and flashed one of the borinium chips. “Can I open a bar tab with these?”

“Probably,” Simon replied.

“Great!” Grace offered what he hoped was a friendly smile. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

Simon’s eyes went wide, and he looked conflicted, but all he said was a raspy, “Sure.”

Grace led the way through the establishment’s front doors; the interior of the building was packed, the lights low, and the music a deafening, thumping bassline that rumbled through Grace’s whole body. It reminded him of his college days, although there hadn’t been as many aliens around back then.

The centre of the room was occupied by a circular structure that was probably the main bar. As Grace forged a path toward it, though, a hand closed around his elbow.

“I’ll, uh …” Simon was leaning in close so Grace could hear him, head ducked low; Grace couldn’t see his face. “I’ll be right back.”

“Sure,” Grace replied.

Simon nodded and hurried away through the crowd. Maybe he’d needed the bathroom or something.

Grace, meanwhile, managed to claim a spot at the bar. “Hey,” he said to the bartender. “What’s good here?”

The bartender might’ve passed for human, if it weren’t for the grey skin and white hair. “Nothing,” she replied flatly.

“Okay, what’s cheap and probably won’t kill me?”

The bartender eyed him up. “Sebacean?”

“Human, but close enough.”

The bartender nodded. “I’ll get you some raslak.”

“Raslak” turned out to be a greenish beverage that foamed up like soda when the bartender poured it from a tap behind the bar. It certainly smelled like it had alcohol in it, and tasted not entirely unlike beer. Grace sipped lightly at his glass as he waited for Simon to get back.

“What does it say on your shirt?”

The alien that had sidled up next to Grace at the bar was pretty tall; she stood eye-to-eye with Grace, and he wasn’t exactly short. She was mostly human-shaped, but her skin was a deep midnight blue, and her eyes—big and doe-like, black from edge to edge—were surrounded by thin, luminous orange stripes. Said eyes were currently studying Grace’s t-shirt.

Grace glanced down; the thing about owning so many dumb joke t-shirts was that you kind of stopped paying attention to what was on them when you got dressed in the morning. “It’s a physics joke,” he explained. “See, a ball at the top of a slope has a ton of potential energy, but that gets converted into kinetic energy on the way down—so, at the bottom, all the potential energy is gone.”

“‘I had potential,’” the woman said, grinning as the joke sank in. Upon closer examination, the stripes on her face weren’t stripes at all—they were glowing dots, clustered together almost like freckles.

“I like your spots,” Grace offered—then, sensing this maybe wasn’t the most appropriate thing to say to the fourth or fifth alien species he’d ever met, added, “Sorry, was that weird?”

“Perhaps,” the woman said. “I don’t mind, though. I’m Lianna.”

“Hi. I’m Grace.” Now that he had implicit permission, he propped his elbow on the bar and looked a little closer. “So is the light produced by your own body? Or is each spot its own bacterial colony?”

The woman’s smile widened. “It’s a mutualistic fungus, actually.”

The way the spots were clustered around Lianna’s eyes reminded Grace of some deep-sea fish species he’d studied back in undergrad. “I’m guessing it’s really dark on your planet.”

“There’s a lot of volcanoes,” Lianna confirmed. “Ash in the atmosphere. Not much light gets through.”

Grace glanced around the room; it was pretty dark, but not abysmally so. “Isn’t it kind of bright here, for you?”

Lianna gave him a sly look. The black of her eyes flicked aside, just for a moment, to reveal her real eyes underneath. She had a nictating membrane—exactly the kind of thing a species might evolve on a planet where the air was full of ash, and which would conveniently double as built-in sunglasses.

A delighted laugh burst from Grace’s mouth.

Simon had sealed himself inside one of the lavatory stalls, both arms braced against the door as he struggled to get his racing thoughts under control.

He’d … noticed Grace. He’d been sharing a ship with the man for nearly fifty days; it was hard not to notice him. In that initial period after he’d woken up on Mari, Simon had mostly just been happy he was alive—and pathetically grateful to Grace for rescuing him. Once the mortal terror had faded, though, Simon’s awe had faded with it. And then the details started to filter in.

For one thing, Grace seemed to take up every bit of available space—colonising any room he entered with notes and printouts and equipment and, on the occasions he and Simon ate in the central chamber at the same time, dishes and food wrappers. Simon had once glimpsed the inside of Grace’s quarters; he had more clothes than Simon had ever owned in his life, and most of them were on the floor.

And he talked a lot—to himself, or at whoever happened to be in the room with him. “At” was the operative word; most of the time he just seemed to be thinking aloud, asking questions he didn’t expect to be answered. He would, however, reflexively answer any question put to him in turn—and if he didn’t actually know the answer, he’d go and look it up.

All his life, Simon had been punished for asking questions. And now any question he could think up was answered as easily as breathing—right before Grace went back to mumbling ideas aloud and scribbling notes on the big white board in the lab.

And so, as the days passed, Simon had become uncomfortably aware of one important fact: Dr. Ryland Grace was annoying. Annoying and beautiful, and Simon kind of wanted to kiss him.

Relationships on Eden were brief. Recreational. Mutual stress relief. Anything more than that was strongly discouraged; Father wouldn’t tolerate split loyalties. An Edenite could only be devoted to the cause. And after Filament Station—after he’d been sent to prison—he’d kept himself to himself. Put his back to the wall and done his best to avoid notice.

But he’d watched the way some of the other prisoners traded favours, offering their bodies in exchange for less work, or extra food, or little contraband luxuries—like alcohol. He couldn’t stop watching.

Did they like it? Or was it just a means to an end? Would it feel good, to let someone … have him, like that?

Was that what Grace wanted from him?

Grace was an alien, for all that he looked like a sebacean. Maybe he didn’t expect the same things a sebacean would. Simon’s experience with aliens was limited; the Peacekeepers had kept their sebacean prisoners separate from their captive aliens, determined even in those circumstances to keep the bloodlines pure. It was a belief shared on Eden; Father’s sermons had, occasionally, veered into the dangers of contamination and the heresy of cross-breeding.

Surely that wouldn’t be a concern with Grace—unless Grace could get pregnant. Did he want Simon to get him pregnant? Was that why he kept talking about aliens laying eggs inside him?

Simon let a low whine escape from between his gritted teeth and rested his forehead against the door. There was a faint hum in the back of his head—Mari, sensing his distress and trying to soothe him, distant as she was.

With a steadying breath, Simon pushed away from the door and rolled his shoulders back. He was Simon the Butcher. He’d survived Filament Station, Peacekeeper captivity, and an insane leviathan that had tried to eat him.

He could handle having a drink with a man he liked.

Bracing himself, he opened the door and stepped out of the stall. After a few moments of searching, he spotted Grace by the bar. There was someone sitting next to him—an alien, with dark blue skin. She had Grace’s full attention; he nodded along as she spoke, fascinated by whatever she was saying.

Then Grace said something Simon couldn’t hear, his lips curling into a smile, and the alien threw her head back and laughed, bright and unrestrained. Her hand touched Grace’s arm, her touch lingering. Grace didn’t pull away, or brush it off.

A sick, tight feeling roiled in Simon’s chest. He wanted to rip that alien’s hand off. He wanted to drag Grace away from her. He—

He shoved his way through the crowd to the exit.

“So the females are about ten times bigger than the males,” Grace was explaining, “and when a male finds a female, he latches on and fuses into her body—basically, from there, he’s just a handy pair of gonads.”

“I wish that was how the males on my planet did it.” Lianna giggled and wrapped her lips around the straw of her drink, taking a quick sip. “Would save a lot of trouble.”

“Oh? How does your species mate?”

“I could show you.” Lianna’s hand brushed Grace’s chest, one finger trailing down the front of his shirt. “My accommodations aren’t far from here.”

“… Ah.” Grace cleared his throat, feeling his face heat, and leaned back from the touch. That had taken a turn he wasn’t planning for. “Sorry, I, uh … I can’t. I’m kind of here with somebody.” He scanned the bar; there was still no sign of Simon. “I should go check on him, actually—”

Lianna’s nose wrinkled for half a second, and then she sneezed in his face.

“Whoa!” Grace flinched away. “Gesundheit, or—wait, is that … do you even …” he stumbled over the words; his tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and he couldn’t quite remember what he’d been trying to say.

Grace swiped a hand over his face; his fingers, when he pulled them away and looked, were covered in some kind of fine, glittering dust. He wiped them off on the bar; it was harder than it should’ve been. He couldn’t quite get his extremities to cooperate.

He didn’t feel good.

Lianna sighed and reached for her glass, draining the rest of her drink. “I was hoping I could get you to come along willingly,” she said, flat and annoyed. “The spores impair motor function, and you look kind of heavy.”

Grace fumbled at the comm chip clipped to his cardigan. He needed to talk to Rocky. Or Pilot. Or Simon.

“No, one of that.” Lianna plucked the comm from between his fingers and dropped it into his glass, where it drowned in the last few mouthfuls of raslak.

Grace managed a wordless noise of protest, but Lianna had already grabbed him by the hand, leading him out of the bar.

Simon only made it about a hundred motras from the bar before he started feeling like an idiot.

He had no claim on Grace. All Grace had done was offer to buy him a drink—an offer that probably didn’t mean the same thing to him that it did to Simon. And Simon had reacted like a frelling idiot.

His footsteps slowed. Grace was probably still back at the bar—along with his new friend. And if things were going as well as they’d looked, Simon would only ruin his night by intruding.

He’d just … wait for Grace, back at the transport pod.

Simon shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket and began the long walk back to the spaceport. There was still an uneasy feeling in the back of his head—a feeling that only grew the longer he walked.

It wasn’t his. It was Mari. Mari was upset.

Simon immediately brought his comm to his mouth. “Pilot? Is everything okay?”

“Simon.” It wasn’t Pilot responding, but Rocky. “Where Grace, question?”

“He’s at the bar.” Simon suddenly felt stupid saying it; Rocky had told him to watch over Grace, and Simon had left him behind. “Why?”

“Mari has lost contact with Dr. Grace’s comm,” Pilot explained.

Frell. Simon pivoted on his heel and strode right back the way he’d come. “I’ll find him.”

The bar was much as Simon had left it—he’d only left maybe a quarter of an arn ago. But Grace was gone, and so was the alien he’d been sitting with.

Simon elbowed his way through the crowd until he reached the bar. “Hey,” he said, flagging down the nebari woman behind the bar. “The man who was sitting here. Where is he?”

“He left,” the nebari said with a shrug. “Went off with some woman.”

Something caught the light from the surface of the bar. There were a pair of finger-shaped smears across the edge of the bartop—some kind of dust, glittering in the low light. Carefully, Simon swiped his fingertips through the dust and touched them to the very tip of his tongue. It went numb.

Grace had been drugged.

Simon shouldered his way back outside, frantically scanning the streets around him. Across the way, where the main thoroughfare met a small side street, there was another flash of that glittering dust—a handprint, smeared roughly along the wall.

A few motras down the side street was another trace of dust, and a little more beyond that. Whatever the stuff was, Grace was shedding it as he walked—leaving a trail for Simon to follow.

Lianna’s accommodations turned out to be a small, two-room apartment: a large main room with a little curtained-off alcove, which presumably served as a sleeping area. There was some kind of climate control unit mounted on the wall below the apartment’s single window, which Grace was currently cuffed to.

Across the room, Lianna was talking into her comm. “No, Ryland Grace,” she said. “Ryland … no, I don’t have the serial number. It’s your posting. You look it up.”

Grace’s head was a little clearer than it had been a few minutes ago; the spores had to be wearing off. He managed to wrangle his mouth into saying, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. Please let me go.”

Lianna sighed and pulled the comm away from her mouth. “Listen, it’s not personal. The Peacekeepers have a bounty out on you—and the little rock thing, and your leviathan.” She turned back to the comm. “Yes, I’m still here.”

“You can’t—” Grace tugged at the cuffs; they rattled loudly against the pipe, but nothing came loose. “Please. My planet’s in danger. My friend’s planet is in danger. We’re trying to save them, but if you turn me in—”

Lianna rolled her eyes and leaned away from the comm again. “It’s really none of my business. You can sort this out with the PKs.” Then, into the comm, she said, “Fine. Fine. I will go and check the posting, but you’re staying on the line with me. Do not put me on hold again.”

Then she crossed the room to where Grace was restrained and crouched in front of him.

“Don’t,” Grace pleaded. “I’ll be good. You don’t have to—”

She sneezed in his face again.

Grace groaned, blinking slowly as the spores’ effects settled over him again. Distantly, he recalled taking a few fungus-based substances in college. This wasn’t nearly as much fun.

“I’ll be right back,” Lianna assured him, and left.

Grace slumped against the wall with a low groan. Different parts of his brain were moving at different speeds. He had the distant, screaming awareness that he should be working on the cuffs, trying to escape, but his body just wanted to be on the floor.

There was a noise from the hallway outside—footsteps, creeping toward the door. Was Lianna back already?

Then, from the other side of the door, came Simon’s voice: “Grace?”

The cuffs clattered against the pipe again as Grace struggled into something resembling a sitting position. “Here,” he croaked, tongue still heavy in his mouth. “I’m … I … help.”

“Hang on,” Simon replied. There were some more noises from the door—scraping and scratching noises from inside the wall, like something was being tampered with. Then the door slid open, and Simon was there.

Grace made an incoherent noise of relief as Simon quickly crossed the room to crouch in front of him.

“You okay?” Simon asked; he reached out to brush Grace’s face, fingers dragging over his cheek. They came back glittering.

“Spores,” Grace managed to stammer out. “I can’t—I feel—”

“I know.” Simon sat back on his heels and turned his attention to Grace’s restraints—trying to figure out how to unlock the cuffs.

More footsteps came down the hallway—brisk and businesslike. Simon heard them too; he jumped to his feet, backing away into the sleeping alcove and hiding behind the curtain.

The door opened again, and Lianna stepped back into the apartment. “All right,” she said. “The PKs are sending a prisoner transport, so we need to get you to the spaceport.” She stopped at Grace’s feet and reached down for him. “Up you get.”

Grace flinched away; immediately, stupidly, his eyes darted to the curtained-off alcove where Simon was hiding.

Lianna followed his gaze, glancing over her shoulder, then turned back to Grace with a suspicious expression. Slowly, she stood and took a step toward the alcove—then another, stalking cautiously across the apartment.

She reached for the curtain; it slid aside before she could touch it, and Simon swung his right hand, clenched into a fist, at her face.

It collided with her jaw; she let out a high cry of pain, hands coming up to shield her face. Grace couldn’t help but cringe at the sight—Simon had just hit a girl.

Lianna staggered back a step or two—then dropped into a crouch, one leg whipping out in a sweeping kick that knocked Simon’s legs out from under him, sending him in a heap to the floor.

Right. Okay. The girl hit back. That was … better. Somehow.

Lianna aimed a second, sharp kick at Simon’s side; he let out a pained grunt as it collided with his ribs and scrambled away across the floor, rolling to his feet. He went low, trying to hook her around the waist with both arms, but she dodged out of the way and used Simon’s momentum to shove him into the wall, face-first. She moved to pin him there, hand at the nape of his neck, but Simon threw his elbow back—the elbow of his left arm. The prosthetic.

It slammed into Lianna’s chest, and even across the room Grace heard bone crack. Lianna let out a wheeze and reeled back, releasing her grip on Simon; he whirled around, the side of his left hand whipping out to chop into her throat.

She clutched at her neck; her eyes were wide, mouth open, but the only sound she made was a quiet, sucking, breathless noise. The shape of her throat, just visible between her fingers, was deformed—concave where it had once been flat.

Simon’s prosthetic had crushed her airway.

Lianna’s legs buckled; she dropped to her hands and knees on the floor, still clawing with one hand at her crushed throat. Her body heaved with every attempted breath, convulsing as she slowly suffocated to death.

Simon hadn’t moved; he stood over her body, fists loose at his sides, face blank and desolate.

Grace rattled the cuffs against the pipe. “Simon!”

Simon flinched and stumbled back from where Lianna was crumpled on the floor, crouching in front of Grace again. His prosthetic hand moved to the pipe he was cuffed to, ripping it free of the wall, and Simon reached out with his other hand to haul Grace to his feet.

Lianna had collapsed to the floor and rolled onto her back, still struggling to breathe. Grace took a stumbling step toward her, but Simon held him firm.

“She’s—” The words were too tangled up in Grace’s head to come out of his mouth properly. “We can’t—”

“Grace.” There was a tremor in Simon’s voice. “We have to go.”

Lianna was barely moving, now—legs twitching occasionally, hands loose where they still held her neck. She stared at Grace with wide eyes, tears smeared down her face.

She looked so scared.

But Simon was dragging him away, toward the door, and Grace caught his last glimpse of Lianna as she finally went limp, eyes glazing over.

The moment the transport pod set down in Mari’s hangar, Simon started moving their purchased supplies into the cargo bay. It was the quickest way he could think of to make himself useful.

It also helped him avoid Grace. He could admit that to himself.

At this point, all he could do was wait for whatever happened next. Rocky had ordered Simon to keep Grace safe, and then Simon had left Grace to be abducted. And then he’d killed someone.

Would he be punished for the abduction, or the murder? Or both? Would they cut his rations? Would they confine him to quarters?

He could at least be sure that Mari wouldn’t let anyone force him off the ship. He could feel her at the back of his mind, murmuring reassurances.

The door to the cargo bay swivelled open, and Simon flinched. Grace stood in the doorway, arms wrapped around himself, but he didn’t look angry. He looked tired; his eyes were red around the edges.

Had he been crying?

“Are you … okay?” Simon asked, hesitantly. An alarming thought occurred: “Is it the spores? Are they still—?”

“No, it’s—I flushed my eyes in the lab.” Grace rubbed one of his eyes with his palm. “Rocky insisted. And the med scanner says the drug is mostly out of my system, anyway.”

“Oh. Uh …” Simon cleared his throat. “Good. That’s good.”

Grace wasn’t leaving. He looked like he was thinking about something, eyes fixed somewhere past Simon’s shoulder.

“My, uh … my memory’s kind of messed up.” Grace gestured to his own temple. “Sometimes I don’t know things until I see or do something that reminds me. Like the—I didn’t remember anything about the flea markets back home until today, and then all of a sudden I could remember everything.” His eyes lost focus. “I … I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen anyone die like that. Not right in front of me.”

He’d hedged around the words, but Simon could hear the certainty in his voice.

Did that alien woman have a family? Friends? Someone who’d find her body and feel like their whole world had ended?

How long would she have lived, if she hadn’t stumbled into Simon’s path?

“Sorry,” Simon said, inadequately.

“You, um …” Grace’s eyes focused again, settling on Simon. “I get the feeling it’s … different, for you.”

Sixty-two lives on Filament Station, and countless others before that. Simon couldn’t even remember all of them—but he couldn’t forget what it looked like when someone’s last breath shuddered out of their lungs, their eyes going dark.

“Yeah,” Simon admitted. It was, perhaps, the biggest understatement of his life.

Grace’s answering laugh had a hysterical edge. “You know, it’s weird—I don’t think I ever knew how easy my life was, until it wasn’t. The country I lived in was kind of falling apart, but there were people in other parts of the world who had it way worse. I didn’t have a job where I had to hurt people—I didn’t even really have to lift anything. Even when the world was ending, all I ever had to do was … sit in a lab. Write reports. Sign stuff.” He sniffled and rubbed his nose with the side of his hand. “And now I’m here. And I don’t—I don’t really know what to do.”

His voice was small, and lost.

“You live.” It was the only guidance Simon could offer. “You do whatever keeps you alive, even if it’s only for the next ten microts.”

Grace nodded, avoiding Simon’s eyes. “I think … I think I might’ve had to make that choice, once. Just once. And I have no idea when, or why, but … I can’t shake the feeling I made the wrong one.”

Simon didn’t know what to say to that. In the silence that stretched between them, Grace sniffed and took a slow breath.

“Anyway,” he said. “Uh … thanks.”

Simon nodded, not sure what he was being thanked for.

Grace turned to leave, but hesitated at the door, shifting on his heel to offer Simon a wan smile. “And, uh … I guess I still owe you a drink.”

Subscribe to receive an email when this story updates:

#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form { margin-bottom: 0; }#mailpoet_form_2 p.mailpoet_form_paragraph.last { margin-bottom: 0px; }#mailpoet_form_2 h1.mailpoet-heading { margin: 0 0 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_column_with_background { padding: 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:not(:first-child) { margin-left: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph { line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_segment_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_radio_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_list_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_label { display: block; font-weight: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_month, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_day, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_year, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date { display: block; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea { width: 200px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_submit { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_divider { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading { width: 30px; text-align: center; line-height: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading > span { width: 5px; height: 5px; background-color: #5b5b5b; }#mailpoet_form_2{border: 0px solid #f7f7f7;border-radius: 0px;background: #fbfaf3;color: #20030b;text-align: left;}#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form {padding: 10px;}#mailpoet_form_2{width: 100%;}#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message {margin: 0; padding: 0 20px;} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.textarea.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-errors-list {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-required {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-custom-error-message {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph.last {margin-bottom: 0} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 {background: #fbfaf3;}} @media (min-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .last .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:last-child .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} Please leave this field emptyinput[name="data[form_field_ODg4MDU1MjcwMDZiX2VtYWls]"]::placeholder{color:#c2bfab;opacity: 1;}

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription!

Simon woke slowly.

He was lying on something soft. Hunger gnawed at his empty stomach, and his mouth was dry, but other than those mild discomforts he wasn’t in pain. His eyelids were heavy and gummed shut; he managed to pry them open.

There was barely any light to see by, but Simon could see bronze, segmented struts arching overhead, like the ones aboard the leviathan—

He lurched upright. Something was tangled around him; he shoved it aside and fell, hitting a familiar metal floor.

“No, no, no …”

There was something wrong with his left arm. He couldn’t seem to move it; couldn’t get it under him to push up off the floor.

It was all a lie. Something he’d hallucinated, in the depths of heat delirium. There was never any Grace. He hadn’t escaped.

He was still on the leviathan. He was going to die.

There was movement in the dark; a door swivelled open, and a silhouette appeared in the light coming through the other side. “Simon?” called a voice—Grace’s voice.

“No,” Simon rasped. “No, you’re not real. You’re not.” A sob tore his way up his throat. “I really wanted you to be real.”

Light flooded the room—sudden, bright, blinding. Simon squeezed his eyes shut, feeling tears leak from the corners. His chest felt too small to contain his pounding heart. He couldn’t breathe.

“It’s okay,” came Grace’s voice, closer now, fast and worried. “Simon, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

Simon shook his head. “I’m still on the leviathan.”

“What? No, it’s—it’s a different leviathan. Her name’s Mari.”

“Stop it,” Simon begged. “Stop it, I can’t …”

He heard Grace take a breath and let it out. When he spoke again, his voice was calm and gentle—like it had been before, when he was with Simon in the command. “Simon, can you open your eyes for me?”

Despite Simon’s best efforts, his eyes fluttered open.

The last time Simon had seen Grace, his face had been hidden behind the visor of his suit and Simon could barely see past the helmet lamp shining in his eyes. Now the suit was gone; Grace was wearing only a short-sleeved shirt—with writing on it, for some reason—and pants made of some rough, hardy blue material. He had ruffled hair and kind eyes and a pair of eyeglasses hanging precariously from one ear.

He looked so soft.

“Good,” Grace said, smiling a little. “That’s good, Simon. Now, can you look at your left arm?”

Simon’s eyes fell to his side. His arm ended halfway to where his elbow should’ve been; clean, white bandages were wrapped around the stump.

He remembered Grace cutting it off. At first, it hadn’t hurt at all; he’d only registered the impact of each blow, like being punched in the arm. The pain only set in once they were stumbling into the hangar, onto the transport pod.

The pod they’d left in. Simon had been losing blood fast, everything hazy around the edges, but he’d seen open space through the viewport.

“It was real,” he said, barely more than an exhale.

There was a complicated grief in Grace’s eyes. “Yeah,” he said softly. “It was real.”

Simon reached for Grace with his remaining arm. His chest was solid, warm through the thin material of his shirt, rising and falling slightly as he breathed.

He was real, too.

Simon’s fingers clenched around a fistful of Grace’s shirt as a sob of sheer, agonising relief wracked his body.

Once he’d talked Simon down from his panic attack, Grace figured the next priority on the list was to get some food into him.

He led the way through Mari’s corridors to the central chamber. Simon was a little unsteady—he was still weak, and the loss of his arm had affected his balance—but otherwise he seemed okay. He was still wearing the medical gown the nannybot had put him in after cutting off his clothes; changing him while he was unconscious felt … weird, so Grace decided not to. He’d thoroughly sterilised what was left of Simon’s old clothes before leaving them in Mari’s sluice room to soak in her amnexus fluids.

Even if that managed to get the stains out, they wouldn’t exactly be wearable. There were probably some leftover Peacekeeper clothes in the cargo bay, but digging around in there meant leaving Simon alone for a while. And Simon didn’t seem up to that.

Grace guided him to sit at the central chamber’s long dining table, then began to dig through the storage cupboards. He pulled out a package of food cubes; near as he could tell, they were the basic ration around here. Wherever “here” was.

“We have plenty of actual food,” he explained, setting the food cubes in front of Simon, “but the medication we gave you probably messed up your gut flora, so we’ll stick with food cubes until your digestive system recovers.”

Simon didn’t complain—in fact, he didn’t say a word as he ripped the package open. He ate fast, hunched protectively over the food. When Grace turned back to close the cupboards, he caught a glimpse of Simon sneaking a few cubes into the pockets of his gown.

Grace still couldn’t remember his parents’ names, or the face of his best friend when he was a kid, but in that moment all his mandated reporter training surfaced at once. Whatever Simon’s situation had been like before he wound up on that leviathan, it was one where he couldn’t be sure where his next meal was coming from.

Within a few minutes, the last of the food cubes were either eaten or stashed away. Simon’s eyes wandered the room as he sat back; he reached up toward the right side of his chest, fingers closing around nothing. He flinched, then looked down at himself—noticing for the first time what he was wearing.

Anxiety flickered across his face, and he looked up at Grace with a resigned expression. “Are you taking me back to prison?”

Grace blinked. “You were in prison?”

Simon gave him a perplexed look, as if surprised Grace didn’t know that. “This is a Peacekeeper ship, isn’t it?”

“Uh, no,” Grace said. “Well, not anymore.” Then, because it felt like something he should point out, he added, “I’m not even sebacean. I’m a human. We’re … kind of on the run from the Peacekeepers, actually.”

Simon’s brow furrowed. “‘We’?”

Simon followed uncertainly as Grace led him into the lower tiers of the ship, until they reached the maintenance bay. A large section of the room had been walled off using some kind of transparent material, joined together in irregular hexagonal shapes. Sitting inside that contained space was a boulder with legs.

“This is Rocky,” Grace said, by way of introduction.

Simon studied the alien for a moment, then turned to Grace with frank disbelief. “‘Rocky’? Really?”

“Grace give name,” Rocky explained. “Real name is—”

What followed was a long series of musical tones, as Rocky brought its—his?—forelegs together to display the markings etched across two of them.

“‘Rocky’ easier for dumb space blobs,” Rocky concluded. “Is character from Earth movie. I like.”

It seemed as though Rocky’s language was too complex for the translator microbes to parse—hence why he’d simplified his speech down to the simple, almost childlike sentences Simon was hearing. He’d met a few aliens, but he’d never seen or heard anything like this before.

He must’ve been staring too obviously, because Grace eventually volunteered, “Rocky’s an eridian. They kind of just figured out interstellar travel. His ship stumbled into Peacekeeper jurisdiction, and they took him prisoner.”

“Peacekeepers do same to Grace,” Rocky added. “Find ship drifting, Grace asleep. Take prisoner. Make Grace Rocky do science.”

“Until we managed to get Mari’s control collar off,” Grace explained. “We’ve been on our own ever since.”

This part of the maintenance bay looked to be serving as a makeshift lab; it was a mess, printouts and tools scattered everywhere, but had much the same configuration as the lab on the other leviathan. Simon even recognised some of the same equipment. Perhaps this ship had been part of the same project—

“Grace staring at Simon arm.”

Simon’s attention snapped back to Grace, just in time to see Grace looking deliberately away from the stump of his arm.

“Grace ask Rocky to inform when Grace staring at Simon arm,” Rocky said helpfully.

“Yep. Sure did, buddy. Thanks.” Grace’s gaze wandered back to Simon’s face; he looked, strangely, guilty. “I, uh … I’m sorry. For …” he gestured to Simon’s left side.

“You needed to do it,” Simon replied, baffled by the apology. More quietly, and without really thinking about it, he added, “I didn’t want to die there.”

Grace’s expression softened, even as his posture remained stiff and uncomfortable.

Simon cleared his throat; one question had been nagging at him since Grace revealed he wasn’t a Peacekeeper. “Why did you help me?”

Grace’s face fell; he looked almost sad. “Because you asked,” he said, simply.

He made it sound so easy. But if it was that easy, why hadn’t anyone else ever done it? Why had Simon been left to suffer alone, again and again?

Simon wavered a little; he was suddenly so tired. Grace darted forward to steady him, his hands warm where they held Simon’s shoulders.

“Whoa, hey,” Grace was saying, past the fuzzy edges of Simon’s awareness. “Maybe you should sit down or something.”

“I’m fine,” Simon mumbled back. “Tired.”

“Yeah, this was maybe a bit much for your first day up,” Grace said, chastened. “Do you want to go back to your quarters? Lie down for a bit?”

Simon nodded and let Grace guide him back through the corridors to the room he’d woken up in.

As he collapsed into bed, he looked up at Grace and asked, just to be sure, “This is real?”

“Yeah,” Grace promised. “It’s all real.”

Simon sighed in relief and drifted off to sleep.

Arns later, as Simon clawed his way back to consciousness, he found himself once again alone. Grace was gone.

“Hello?” he called out, into the emptiness of the room.

After a moment, a voice said, “Hello, Simon.”

Simon sat up with a jolt and scanned the room. There was nobody else here, and terror grabbed him by the throat for a moment before he spotted the comm unit sitting on a small table next to the bed. He gingerly picked it up. “Who’s this?”

“I am Mari’s pilot,” said the voice over the comm.

“You got a name?”

“You may call me Pilot,” the voice said pleasantly. “Rocky and Dr. Grace are busy in the lab. They have asked to be informed of any changes in your condition, but you are otherwise free to go where you please.”

Simon found that a little hard to believe—but when he climbed out of bed and tried the door, it swivelled open.

His feet were cold. Simon glanced down; he was still in the loose-fitting garment he’d been wearing when he woke up last time, and his feet were bare.

Closing the door again, he surveyed the room. There was a waist-high table along one wall, and atop it sat a messy stack of hastily-folded clothes. Next to it, a few familiar scraps of fabric were piled on the tabletop. They were cleaner than they’d ever been, but still stained—and they’d been neatly sheared into pieces. Probably because Grace, or whoever treated his injuries, had to cut them off him.

Simon dug hastily through the pile until his fingers closed around a rigid shape. He shut his eyes and pulled his hand back, almost afraid to open them again and be proven wrong.

When he finally worked up the courage to look, he found the knife sheath resting in his palm.

Simon’s knees buckled; he slid to the floor, hand wrapped protectively around the sheath as he clutched it to his chest. His breath of gratitude broke into a ragged sob.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there on the floor, but eventually he managed to calm down and pull himself to his feet.

Simon turned his attention to the other clothes that had been left for him. They looked like Peacekeeper off-duty fatigues: basic pants and a short-sleeved shirt. Getting them on took some figuring out now that he only had the one arm to work with, but in short order he was dressed.

There was no hood or harness to clip the sheath to, so Simon hooked it onto his belt instead as he ventured out into the ship’s corridors.

He’d been a little out of it the last time Grace brought him to the … galley, or whatever it was. After a few twists and turns through the maze that made up the leviathan’s innards, Simon finally accepted that he had no idea where he was going.

There was a whirring noise from up ahead, and a small, yellow, bug-like drone appeared, coming the other way down the corridor. It stopped at his feet, peering up at him with its eye-stalks, and emitted a buzzing chirp that almost seemed like a question.

“Uh …” Simon cleared his throat. “I’m looking for the food.”

With a cheep of acknowledgement, the drone swept past Simon, back the way he’d come. It stopped a few motras down the corridor and rotated to face him again, its little eye-lights watching him expectantly.

Simon took a few steps toward it; the drone emitted a pleased chittering noise and led him onward. It wasn’t long before they arrived in front of a door; as Simon approached, it swivelled open of its own volition.

Grace had said the leviathan’s name was Mari. Could it sense him right now? Or were leviathans no more aware of their crew than Simon was of the things inside his own body?

“Uh … thanks,” he offered, hedging his bets. After a moment, he followed it up with a soft pat to the frame of the door.

The drone chirped and zipped away down the corridor.

Simon tried the cupboards and was surprised to find they opened easily. There were a few boxes of food cubes alongside a multitude of things he didn’t recognise: shiny, vacuum-sealed packages and covered cups made from some fibrous material. And there was a lot of it—maybe more food than he’d ever seen in one place before.

Mari’s supplies were completely unsecured, and yet it—she—had let him in here without question. She’d trusted him not to take everything for himself, or poison it, and that was … stupid.

Simon had heard once that leviathans didn’t have weapons—that they would, in fact, refuse to be fitted with any. Maybe a creature like that had no choice but to trust.

He took a package of food cubes and sat at the table again. The cubes were bland and a little dry, but they satisfied the gnawing hunger in the pit of his stomach. As he disposed of the empty package, there was a noise from somewhere above him—just beyond the range of his hearing. Like someone whispering.

Simon flinched and backed up a few steps, eyes on the ceiling, then spun and checked over his shoulder. There was nobody else here, or in the corridor outside.

He fumbled at his comm. “Pilot? Was that you?”

After a moment, Pilot’s voice replied, “To what are you referring, Simon?”

“… Nothing.” Simon’s fingers drifted to the empty knife sheath at his belt. “It’s—it’s nothing.”

It was rare that Grace and Rocky ended up actually working together on something. Most of the time they were preoccupied with their separate tasks; their fields of expertise didn’t really overlap, and in most cases it was better to work in parallel than risk slowing each other down with explanations or instructions.

So far they hadn’t figured out a design for a computer terminal that would survive in Rocky’s atmosphere, so that left Grace to sift through the data from the other leviathan while Rocky worked on his own project.

“How human elbow joint move?” Rocky asked, breaking the silence of the lab for the first time in about an hour.

Without looking up from the console, Grace held out his arm; he bent and extended his elbow a few times to demonstrate its range of motion.

Rocky made a curious noise. “No rotation?”

“No, that’s mostly in the wrist.”

“How work with arm bones?”

Grace rotated his wrist. “There’s two of them in the lower arm. They twist around each other.”

Rocky hummed contemplatively. “Next time, sever arm below elbow. Less complicated.”

“I’ll try to remember that, pal.”

Grace kept on reading; there was a lot more here than he and Rocky had managed to scrape together on their own. The Peacekeepers had put most of their efforts into testing methods of killing Astrophage, but—consistent with Grace’s findings back on Earth—the little black dots were impervious to just about every energy weapon they’d tried. The only thing that seemed to do the job was direct penetration of the cell membrane, and you couldn’t kill off trillions of cells by individually stabbing each one—although several options along that line had been considered, including nanomachines and genetically-modified organisms. None of them had progressed beyond prototypes.

The research data also included extensive star charts, tracking the progress of Astrophage infection through much of the Peacekeepers’ jurisdiction and some of the Uncharted Territories. Unfortunately, none of those maps offered any hint as to where Earth was from here.

How the heck did he end up so far off-course in just four years?

Heavy bootsteps across the metal floor of the maintenance bay heralded Simon’s arrival. He was looking a little better than he had yesterday; he was also wearing the clothes Grace had left for him.

“Hey, Simon,” Grace called out.

Simon opened his mouth to respond, but he went still as his eyes wandered over Grace’s shoulder.

Rocky’s latest project was laid out across his workbench. It was still in the early stages, but the skeletal frame of the arm and hand were a big hint as to what the final product would look like.

“Uh, right.” Grace gave Simon an apologetic grimace. “I was going to ask if you wanted a prosthetic, but Rocky decided he’d just go ahead and start working on it.”

Simon stared at the half-constructed artificial arm for a long moment, then blinked and looked firmly at the floor, as if he’d just talked himself out of something. “I … I don’t have anything to give you for it.”

There was an awful familiarity to the resignation in his voice. From what Grace could remember, Grover Cleveland Middle had been in a decent school district—but there were still kids there in bad situations. Kids who struggled to earn what they should’ve been allowed to just have.

Grace leaned in, offering Simon a conspiratorial smile, and said, “Don’t worry—you’d be doing both of us a favour. Rocky gets squirrelly when he doesn’t have anything to work on. And I’m the one who has to share a room with the guy.”

Simon relaxed, the corner of his mouth twitching a little, even if he couldn’t muster a full smile. His eyes lifted from the floor, this time settling on Grace’s console with a curious expression. “Is that from the other leviathan?”

“Yeah,” Grace said. “Looks like the crew there was studying Astrophage, too.”

“‘Astrophage’?” Simon’s pronunciation suggested the translator microbes hadn’t supplied the literal meaning of the name.

“It means ‘star-eater.’” Grace rolled his stool over to one of the sealed cabinets where they kept their precious few Astrophage samples and pulled out a vial. “They’re tiny organisms that live on stars, eating the energy they produce.”

Simon eyed the vial with a sceptical air. “That’s what the Peacekeepers are so obsessed with?”

“Well, Astrophage breeds fast,” Grace explained. “Once a star is infected with enough of these little guys, they can dim the light and heat it gives off by up to ten percent. Which I know doesn’t seem like a lot, but to the people on any of that star’s planets, it makes a big difference.”

“Rocky star infected,” Rocky said. “Grace star infected also.”

“And I guess it’s also affecting a bunch of planets the Peacekeepers control,” Grace added.

Simon considered this. “So … the infection, aboard the other leviathan …”

Grace shook his head. “That was something else.” He set the vial back in its cabinet. “The Peacekeepers have a lot of scientists working on this, and some of them aren’t, uh … willing. Looks like one decided to go out with a bang. Cooked up some kind of parasitic microbe and set it loose on the whole ship.”

Simon’s hand darted to his belt, where he was wearing the knife sheath Grace had found tangled in his old clothes. “Is there any chance it could spread here?”

“We thought of that,” Grace said. “Turns out the microbe can’t survive in vacuum—you might’ve noticed there weren’t any of those growths in the other leviathan’s hangar. Even the short trip back here was enough to decontaminate the outside of the pod.”

Simon didn’t seem convinced. “What about the inside of the pod?”

“We vented its atmosphere once we offloaded you,” Grace said. “And we flushed the outside of my suit before I took it off.”

Simon’s fingers were rubbing nervously across the knife sheath, again and again—like he didn’t quite realize he was doing it. “What about me?”

“You went right into a quarantine chamber made of xenonite. That stuff can hold back Rocky’s natural environment, which is twenty-nine atmospheres of ammonia, so there’s no way the microbe was getting through it anytime soon. And we treated you with an antiprotozoal that cleared the infection out of your system.”

Simon took a shivery breath. “You’re sure?”

“Simon.” Grace waited until Simon met his eyes. “We did not pull you out of that box until your scans came back clean. I promise.”

Simon looked away again; his eyes were damp. “The Peacekeepers said I was ‘irreversibly contaminated.’”

“Well, they lied,” Grace said, failing to keep the anger out of his voice. He should’ve guessed the Peacekeepers had been the ones to bring him to that leviathan, but how could they leave him there? “Or maybe they were just wrong.”

Simon still wasn’t looking at him.

“I can run some more tests,” Grace suggested, more gently. “Just to be sure.”

Visibly steeling himself, Simon nodded. “Okay.”

Grace sat him down on one of the lab stools and went to retrieve a syringe and some vials. Then he gloved up, tied a strap above Simon’s elbow, and tried not to remember the last time he’d put a tourniquet on the guy.

It took some poking to find a big enough vein in Simon’s arm; he was still a little dehydrated. Eventually, though, he managed to get the needle in; Simon winced, but held still and watched as the vials filled.

He looked confused—as if he’d expected to see something in the blood that wasn’t there.

“You’re sure it’s safe to touch my blood?” Simon asked, as Grace set the vials aside and pulled the needle out.

“I mean, there’s a chance it isn’t, but that’s why I have these.” Grace wiggled his gloved fingers. “Lots more where they came from. Masks and goggles, too. The whole kit and caboodle.”

Simon blinked. “The whole what?”

“Protective equipment,” Grace explained; the translator microbes didn’t really do idioms. He grabbed a cotton ball from the first aid kit and taped it into place over the puncture in Simon’s arm. “I’ve done this before. No big deal.”

Simon breathed a little easier as he left the maintenance bay. Grace had been so sure. Maybe the sound he’d heard was just one of those odd noises the ship made. Or maybe he’d imagined it.

He barely made it ten steps before another whisper brushed the edge of his hearing.

Simon flinched and spun on his heel, but of course he was alone in the corridor. His heart lurched into his throat as, with hurried steps, he rushed back toward his quarters.

He turned a corner and didn’t see the drone coming the other way until it was too late.

The drone shrilled a warning as it collided with the foot bearing most of Simon’s weight. His leg went out from under him, and Simon tumbled to the floor; he tried to stop his fall with his hands, but one of those was gone now.

He landed on his stump. Pain shot through what was left of Simon’s arm; he bit back a yell and shifted his weight off his bad side, forehead pressed to the floor.

The once-pristine white bandages were now stained red. He was bleeding.

“No,” Simon gasped, in sheer panic.

The drone circled around and whirred to a stop in front of Simon’s face, emitting a series of concerned chirps.

Simon’s remaining arm trembled with effort as he pushed himself to his knees, then up to his feet, dodging past the drone as he bolted the remaining distance to his quarters. He cupped the end of the stump with his other hand, desperate not to let any of his blood touch the ship.

The voices were everywhere now, a constant murmur around him. Simon ducked his head and did his best to shut them out. Even if he could cover both ears, it would be a futile gesture.

They were inside his head.

Grace ran Simon’s blood through the analyser overnight and went over the test results first thing in the morning. He even put a few drops on a slide and checked them under the microscope.

The blood was normal. No sign of any foreign bodies.

With that out of the way, Grace turned his attention back to the star charts from the other leviathan. One of them had logged an anomaly.

Astrophage had a range of about eight light-years. The Peacekeepers had mapped a star well within eight light-years of its infected neighbours, and yet it showed no signs of dimming. Grace ran back through the historical data; several of the stars within range showed signs of Astrophage infection going back decades, and yet this particular star remained unaffected.

Just like Tau Ceti.

Grace shot to his feet, knocking over the stool he’d been sitting on. “They found it!”

Rocky made a noise of excitement and scrambled up to the wall separating his workshop from the rest of the lab. “Found what?”

Even in the vastness of infinite space, it seemed so unlikely that a potential solution to the Astrophage problem might present itself on two different planets, countless light-years apart. And yet, as the Petrova Taskforce on Earth had been preparing to send an expedition to Tau Ceti, the eridians had already sent a ship to investigate a nearly-identical star at their own end of the universe.

Eridians didn’t use computers; their capacity for multitasking and perfect memories made computers redundant. When Rocky’s ship set out from Erid, all the expedition’s knowledge regarding their destination had existed within the memories of the navigation team.

When the navigators died, along with the rest of Rocky’s crew, that information was lost. Rocky had maintained the ship’s original course in the hope that would get him where he needed to be, but when the Peacekeepers captured him and confiscated his ship, that plan fell apart.

Grace fed the map he’d been looking at over to the texture display inside Rocky’s workshop. The moment the image formed in relief on the display, Rocky let out an eager trill.

“Is outlier!” Rocky confirmed. “Is star located by Astrophage thrum on Erid!”

A laugh slipped from Grace’s lips; he tangled both hands in his hair, elation flooding through him. They could still save Erid. They could save Earth, if only Grace could figure out how to get back home.

There was a flicker of light from the emitter at the edge of the maintenance bay, which resolved into Pilot’s face. “Dr. Grace?”

“Pilot!” Grace grinned at her. “Great timing—”

“I apologise for interrupting,” Pilot said, rolling right over him, “but you asked me to inform you of any change in Simon’s condition.”

“Is he all right?” Grace’s good mood immediately evaporated. Simon could be suffering some aftereffects from the medication they’d given him—or maybe there’d been a complication with his arm.

“I am uncertain,” Pilot replied. “He returned to his quarters shortly after speaking with you in the lab, and has not left since then.”

Grace checked the time on the console; he was still adjusting to the length of a standard day aboard Mari, which was only roughly approximate to a day on Earth, but some quick math indicated that had been about ten hours ago. “He might be sleeping.”

“I had considered that, but he’s not responding to comms.” Hesitantly, Pilot added, “He … fell, rather badly. Mari is concerned.”

There were any number of things that could’ve gone wrong when Simon fell, especially if he hit his head. “I’ll go check on him,” Grace said, and hurried out into the corridors, toward Simon’s quarters.

He knocked lightly on the door when he arrived, the metallic ring of it echoing through the hallway. “Simon?”

There was no answer, but even through the door, Grace was pretty sure he heard a sharp noise of distress. He tried the button to open the door, but it was sealed from the inside. “Pilot, can you open this?”

“I’m afraid not,” Pilot replied over the comm. “Something has overridden my control over the lock.”

Grace stepped back into the corridor; there was a DRD a few feet away, zipping along on its way to its next task. “Hey,” Grace said, waving it down, “can you get this open?”

The DRD cheeped in acknowledgement and sped over to the door. A probe emerged from its carapace, which it jammed into the seam between its door and the frame; there was a spark, and the door swivelled open.

Grace stepped through, hopping awkwardly to avoid tripping over the DRD as it zipped past him into the room. It took a moment to spot Simon; the lights were off, and the bed was empty, but there was a huddled shape near the back of the room, curled up like he had been when Grace found him on the other leviathan.

As Grace stepped forward, Simon flinched. “Stay away from me,” he rasped.

Grace stalled in his tracks, hands raised. “I just wanted to make sure you’re all right,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

“My blood,” Simon grated out. “What did you find in my blood?”

“Nothing,” Grace assured him.

That didn’t seem to reassure Simon at all; he was shaking his head, eyes on the floor. “No.”

“Everything came back clean,” Grace insisted. “You’re fine.”

“Stop lying!” Simon lurched to his feet, eyes finally meeting Grace’s; they were wide and bloodshot and shining with tears. “I can still hear the voices. They’re—it’s still inside me.”

For a brief moment, Grace froze in mindless terror—but every test they’d run said the infection was gone. And Simon’s bandages were stained brown with dried blood.

“It’s okay.” Grace reached out for Simon’s remaining arm, ready to guide him from the room. “Come back to the lab. We need to change your bandages, and—and we’ll figure out what else is going on.”

Simon flinched away. “Don’t touch me!”

Grace pulled back a little. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I’ll hurt you.” It wasn’t a threat; Simon was curling in on himself, trembling.

Then he dodged past Grace, bolting out into the corridors.

As Grace turned to follow him, Pilot piped up over the comm: “Dr. Grace?”

“Not now, Pilot!”

“This is important,” Pilot insisted. “Mari believes she may know what’s happening to Simon.”

Simon’s balance wavered as he sprinted through the corridors, but he kept his arm tucked close to his chest. He didn’t dare touch anything—not with his bare skin. Every second he was here only increased the chance the infection would spread—to Grace, to the ship itself. There was only one way to stop it.

The contamination couldn’t survive in vacuum.

Voices closed in around him as he approached the maintenance bay; they were insistent now, clamouring for his attention. “Shut up,” he snarled at them, pushing the door open with his good shoulder.

From within his little sealed-off environment, Rocky sat upright, legs extending to lift himself as high as possible. “Simon?” he asked. “Grace worry. Where Grace?”

Simon ignored him and hurried to the door between the maintenance bay and the transport hangar, risking a tap to the control panel. The door lumbered open, and Simon darted through the gap as soon as it was wide enough, rushing to the panel on the other side to close it again.

The hangar was huge and nearly silent, the whispers the only thing he could hear. They were alarmed—trying to stop him.

Simon’s heart pounded, his nerves screaming in anticipation of what he was about to do, but his mind was strangely clear. He knew what had to happen next.

“Pilot,” he said into his comm, “open the hangar door.”

“Absolutely not,” Pilot replied sternly. “Simon, the voices you’re hearing—”

“Just do it!” Simon screamed back. “You have to vent the hangar, please.”

Behind him, the inner door unsealed and began to slide open.

Simon turned back to the panel and ripped it open, fumbling through the override sequence to shut it again. The door slammed back into place.

There had to be another override by the outer door. Simon set out across the vast emptiness of the hangar, eyes fixed ahead of him.

“Simon?” This time it was Grace on the comm. “It’s okay. You’re not infected.”

“I can hear the voices,” Simon rasped back, shaking his head even though Grace couldn’t see it. “It’s the same as last time. Whispers in my head. Soon they’ll start screaming and I can’t—I can’t do it again. I can’t. I don’t want you to get hurt. You or Mari. You don’t deserve it.”

He was close to the hangar doors now. There was another panel on the wall. It was almost over.

“Simon, please,” Grace begged. “I need you to trust me.”

There was a strange nostalgia in talking to Grace like this—like he had when Simon first heard his voice, faceless, in the dark. Grace had promised to get Simon off the leviathan, and he’d done it. He’d dragged Simon’s limp, bleeding, dismembered body through a hangar just as huge as this one.

If there was anyone in the universe worth trusting once Simon’s mother was gone, it was Grace.

Simon slowed to a halt, panting heavily. “Okay,” he said hesitantly. “I … I trust you.”

“Then please,” Grace asked, “just listen.”

“I …” Simon took a deep breath, steadying himself. “I’m listening.”

“Not to me. To the voice.”

Everything in Simon flinched away. “No.”

“I know you’re scared,” Grace said. “But if you trust me, stop shutting it out and listen.”

Simon shook all over, his heart trying to crawl up his throat, but he closed his eyes and let the whispers wash over him.

The words were indistinct, in a language Simon couldn’t quite understand, but the voice was gentle—nothing like the frantic, tortured cacophony he’d heard aboard the leviathan. It dragged up old memories—those nights he’d wake suddenly after a nightmare, only for his mother to hold him and sing in her clear, soft voice, coaxing him back to sleep.

Something trickled down Simon’s cheek; he brought his hand to his face and wiped away tears. “What is that?” he gasped into the comm.

“It’s Mari,” Grace replied. “It’s just Mari.”

All the desperate terror that had kept Simon upright went out of him at once. He slowly crumpled to his knees on the floor.

Mari’s song enveloped him, embracing him, carrying a promise that he wasn’t alone. He would never be alone again.

Pilot was much bigger than Simon had thought she’d be.

Even with her body sunk halfway into the floor of the den, she was tall enough to look him in the eye—and she was easily twice or three times as broad as he was, the reach of her four arms immense as they tapped in complex sequences over the console surrounding her.

She seemed to have no problem maintaining a conversation with Simon and Grace as she did so. “All leviathans communicate with each other on a unique frequency,” she explained. “One most other species cannot perceive.”

“But the microbe on the other leviathan was forming some kind of colony organism,” Grace added. “It was changing both of you at the same time—making you more like each other. Those changes were permanent, even once the bug was out of your system.”

“What kind of changes?” Simon asked, fingers brushing the sheath at his belt.

“Not many—you weren’t infected for that long,” Grace assured him. “But basically, we think your brain got tuned to the leviathans’ frequency. When they talk, you can hear it.”

“I must apologise,” Pilot said mournfully, “on my behalf, and on Mari’s. We didn’t realise at first that you were receiving her communications to myself and the DRDs. If we’d noticed earlier, we might have prevented the distress you suffered.”

It was the first time in a long while that anyone had cared about causing him distress. “It’s okay,” Simon mumbled, throat tight around the words.

Pilot watched him for a moment, but when Simon didn’t say anything else, she turned to Grace. “I’ve plotted a course to the system you found in the Peacekeepers’ charts,” she said. “However, the journey could take up to half a cycle and much of the route takes us through the Uncharted Territories. There is a commerce planet along the way—it may be prudent to acquire supplies there before we continue any further.”

“Makes sense. Rocky’s been saying he’s low on food.” Grace turned to Simon. “We can drop you off there, if you want.”

“No!” Simon blurted out, unthinking.

Grace and Pilot stared at him.

“I, uh …” Simon swallowed. “I want to stay. Please.”

“No problem,” Grace said, with a cautious nod. He glanced back to Pilot. “I better get back to the lab and get Rocky caught up on the plan.”

With that, he made his way out of the den.

Pilot didn’t say anything else to Simon, but she didn’t seem eager to get rid of him, either. She turned her attention back to the console, performing what seemed to be multiple different tasks at once.

Simon cleared his throat, and Pilot looked back up at him.

“Grace said you’re bonded to Mari,” he said. “You know everything she’s feeling.”

“That’s correct.”

Simon forced the words out past the emotion strangling him: “She loves me.”

“Yes,” Pilot replied, unsurprised.

“Why?” Simon asked, baffled. “She doesn’t even know me.”

“Leviathans were not created to be solitary creatures,” Pilot explained. “They desire the companionship of a crew.”

“So any warm body will do, is that it?”

“No.” Pilot looked down at her console, avoiding Simon’s gaze. “While she was under Peacekeeper control, Mari was quite aware they didn’t care about her at all—except as a resource to be exploited. She was … very lonely.”

Something in Simon’s chest ached.

“You wanted to live so badly you sacrificed a limb to do so,” Pilot went on. “And yet, when you believed you were infected with a weapon that could cause her harm, you were prepared to die to protect her.”

Simon’s eyes stung; he squeezed them shut and ducked his chin, forcing the tears away. “She loves me for that?”

There was a touch on Simon’s chin, and his eyes flew open; Pilot had reached out with one of her long, segmented arms to hold his chin, tipping it back up. Her pincer-like hand was warmer than he’d expected, steady and comforting.

Pilot’s expression was soft and understanding. “How could she not?”

Subscribe to receive an email when this story updates:

#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form { margin-bottom: 0; }#mailpoet_form_2 p.mailpoet_form_paragraph.last { margin-bottom: 0px; }#mailpoet_form_2 h1.mailpoet-heading { margin: 0 0 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_column_with_background { padding: 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:not(:first-child) { margin-left: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph { line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_segment_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_radio_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_list_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_label { display: block; font-weight: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_month, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_day, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_year, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date { display: block; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea { width: 200px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_submit { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_divider { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading { width: 30px; text-align: center; line-height: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading > span { width: 5px; height: 5px; background-color: #5b5b5b; }#mailpoet_form_2{border: 0px solid #f7f7f7;border-radius: 0px;background: #fbfaf3;color: #20030b;text-align: left;}#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form {padding: 10px;}#mailpoet_form_2{width: 100%;}#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message {margin: 0; padding: 0 20px;} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.textarea.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-errors-list {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-required {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-custom-error-message {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph.last {margin-bottom: 0} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 {background: #fbfaf3;}} @media (min-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .last .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:last-child .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} Please leave this field emptyinput[name="data[form_field_ODg4MDU1MjcwMDZiX2VtYWls]"]::placeholder{color:#c2bfab;opacity: 1;}

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription!

Rocky had slapped a quarantine chamber together by the time the transport pod returned to Mari’s hangar. With their limited supply of xenonite, it wasn’t all that big—just barely enough to fit Simon’s body, lying across a stretcher, below the spindly arms of the medical robot from Grace’s old ship. Grace had managed to tourniquet Simon’s arm aboard the pod; the robot had clamped the severed blood vessels and revised the amputation site, stitching muscle and skin into place to properly cover the stump.

“Amputation” was how Grace was choosing to think about it, rather than dwell on the memory of frantically hacking someone’s arm off with a hatchet.

Scans and tests had revealed some kind of microorganism infesting Simon’s body. With the equipment the Peacekeepers had left behind, Grace had synthesised an antiprotozoal that seemed to be working. It would also kill off the translator microbes in his system; they’d have to re-inject him once the medication ran its course. Fortunately, the DRDs seemed to have a ready supply.

It would be better if Simon could understand everyone else on the ship when he woke up. If he woke up.

The Peacekeepers’ medical supplies had included a few units of sebacean blood; they’d given Simon a transfusion, and his blood volume was back up to safe levels, but he was still unconscious.

Grace had pulled up everything he could find in Mari’s databanks about sebacean heat delirium. Apparently, if it went on long enough, it advanced to a terminal stage that amounted to total brain death—the Peacekeepers called it “the Living Death.” But Simon’s brain looked fine on the scans—or, at least, fine by human standards.

Maybe, between the heat exhaustion and the blood loss and the microbial infection and the trauma of getting his arm chopped off with a hatchet, he just had a lot to sleep off.

Grace had done everything he could. All he had left to do was worry, and wonder how the heck Simon wound up on that leviathan in the first place.

They’d herded Simon into the prison transport at gunpoint and sealed him inside, alone.

He hadn’t been given much in the way of equipment: just a hatchet and a hand lamp. Even then, they weren’t taking any chances; the rear compartment of the transport was sectioned off, with no access to the cockpit. There weren’t any viewports, and only a single, dim light to see by.

They could’ve at least given him back his knife. The empty sheath hung from the mantle of Simon’s hood; he held it loosely in one hand, thumb rubbing mindlessly over hard leather and metal rivets, over and over again.

There was a crackle from the comm attached to his sleeve, and a woman said, “How are you doing back there, Convict?” Simon recognised the voice; it belonged to the captain of the command carrier that had brought him here. “Ready to do some good for a change?”

“Yeah,” Simon replied bitterly, not bothering to keep the impatience out of his tone. “Let’s get this done.”

The Peacekeepers had come to Simon in his cell and told him they had a mission for him—a chance to commute his sentence. One job, and he’d be free.

It hadn’t taken much thought before Simon agreed; as a convicted terrorist, there was no other way he’d ever get out of that cell. He couldn’t go home to Eden—wouldn’t want to, even if he were still welcome there—but if he could hitch a ride into the Uncharted Territories, he had a chance of living out his days in something like peace.

A jolt went through the floor of the transport as it landed. A minute or so passed in silence, and then there was a hiss from the rear compartment’s hatch as it rolled open. Outside was nothing but darkness.

“Out you get, Convict.”

With halting movements, Simon stepped out of the transport. His boots rang hollowly on the floor—it was metal. He was aboard a station, or a ship.

He switched on the hand lamp and held it overhead. The beam wasn’t strong or particularly wide; the circle of light it threw was absolutely tiny by the time it landed on the wall ahead.

Simon was in some kind of hangar; the space was enormous, bulkheads curving around and overhead like the ribcage of some enormous creature. And it was warm—warmer than either his cell or the transport had been. He pushed his hood back and unwrapped his hands.

He couldn’t see into the cockpit of the transport, so instead raised the comm to his mouth. “Is this a leviathan?”

“One of ours,” the captain confirmed. “We lost contact a few days ago. Scout patrol found it drifting.”

“What happened?”

“That’s what we want you to find out,” said the captain, faintly mocking. “Start with the lab. It should be in the maintenance bay, just off the transport hangar.”

Simon set off for the inner doors, at the far end of the hangar. They were thick and heavy and remained stubbornly closed as he approached.

Shining the light along the bulkhead, he found a control panel. The interface was dead, so he used the blade of the hatchet to pry off the cover; inside was a strange mix of wiring and what almost looked like living tissue, stringy and translucent. One cluster of tissue dominated the whole mess; after a moment’s contemplation, Simon detached one of the smaller wires and pressed the live end to the central node.

It convulsed, and there was a thunk from somewhere inside the bulkhead. The doors cracked open enough for Simon to squeeze through.

“Close the inner doors,” the captain ordered.

“What? Why?”

“Can’t depressurise the hangar with them open,” she replied, as if talking to an idiot.

“You’re leaving?” Simon spun back toward the hangar, but couldn’t see the transport from here. “How am I supposed to get back?”

“We’ll come and get you once your mission is complete.” The captain sounded annoyed. “Now do as you’re told and close the inner doors.”

With some reluctance, Simon found a corresponding panel on the inner side of the wall and tried the same override. The doors slammed shut.

There was a hiss from the other side as the hangar depressurised, fading off into silence. He felt the ship rumble under his feet as the outer doors opened, but the hangar was now a vacuum; he couldn’t hear the transport depart, although he was sure after a few moments that it was gone.

Simon moved further into the maintenance bay. Workbenches were arranged in neat rows throughout the space, various pieces of equipment scattered across their surface. Of the crew who worked here, there was no sign; it looked as though they’d all been mid-experiment when they were interrupted. Simon found a console among the equipment, but it was unresponsive; he tapped at the controls, to no avail.

Something wet dripped onto his hand.

Simon froze. Slowly, he raised the lamp until the light shone onto his own outstretched arm. There was a smear of red across his knuckles.

It looked like blood.

He aimed the light upward. The actual ceiling of the maintenance bay was too high to see properly, but he could make out the edges of curved struts arcing overhead. Clinging to the underside of one was a string of viscous red fluid, dripping onto the floor.

“Convict?” the captain broke in, impatient. “Have you reached the lab yet?”

“The leviathan’s bleeding,” Simon replied, unthinking. “If they even bleed. I don’t—some of it dripped on my hand.”

“You got it on you?” Her voice was sharp and intent. “It touched your skin?”

“Yeah.” Simon felt, even as he said it, that this was the wrong answer. “None of the equipment here is working. I think the power’s out.”

“The leviathan’s pilot can activate the backup systems,” the captain said. “See if you can find its den. It’ll be near the centre of the ship.”

The door leading from the maintenance bay into the rest of the ship was closed, but the mechanism that kept it locked appeared to be nonfunctional. With a firm shove, it swivelled open enough for Simon to edge past. The corridors on the other side were wide, but featureless; one led deeper into the ship, so that was the one Simon followed.

The insides of the leviathan were a winding maze—like the branches of a tree, or the blood vessels inside a body. As Simon ventured deeper, the beam of his lamp found a door, hanging open. Behind it was a small room—crew quarters. There was a bed, and not much else.

He passed other, similar rooms as he went on; there had clearly been a large crew aboard the leviathan, one that was now gone. Simon could breathe, so life support hadn’t failed. But even if something had managed to kill the whole crew, wouldn’t there be bodies?

Where was everyone?

Sweat beaded on Simon’s forehead, trickling down his skin beneath his clothes, pooling at the small of his back. It only got hotter the further in he went. There was more blood—or whatever it was—leaching from the walls, spreading in thick pools across the floors. In some places it had clotted, or—or something, forming slick, fleshy clumps.

There was a faint noise, just beyond the range of Simon’s hearing—like a conversation in the next room, too quiet to pick out individual words.

“Hey,” he growled, “can you cut the chatter on the comm?”

“What?”

“Whoever’s talking in the background. It’s distracting.”

“No one’s talking. Just me, now.”

Frell. That could only mean one thing. “It’s really hot in here.”

“Ah,” the captain said, understanding immediately.

Simon rubbed his sleeve across his forehead, wiping away the sweat dripping into his eyes. There was a slight tremor in his fingers. “I won’t be any use to you if my brain burns up.”

“You have at least a few hours before that happens,” the captain assured him. “All the more reason to move your ass.”

After a few more twists and turns, Simon reached another door—this one larger than the others. He shouldered it open to find a dark, cavernous chamber. The beam from his lamp passed over an array of walkways, extending from the edges of the room to meet in the middle.

Simon ventured out onto one of the walkways. There weren’t any railings, and when he shone his light onto the floor, the edge dropped off into open air and darkness.

He stepped more carefully, after that.

Up ahead, where the walkways converged, Simon caught a few glimpses of something rising up from the floor. As he got closer, his lamp illuminated a large console, ringing around the room’s central platform.

Then he saw what was behind the console, and he stopped in his tracks.

Within the circle of the pilot’s station was an immense pillar of … something, stretching up into the ceiling. It looked like the same substance as the growths on the walls—slick, featureless, pulsing meat. Of the leviathan’s pilot, there was no sign—until Simon spotted a long, insectoid arm emerging from the fleshy mass, still reaching out toward the nearest control panel.

There was a sound from behind him—a low, rasping whisper.

Simon didn’t move. His heart pounded in his chest as he slowly reached for the hatchet on his belt. In one motion, as his fingers wrapped around the handle, he spun and raised the hatchet to ward of whatever was behind him.

Except there was nothing there.

Simon shuddered and wiped his face again before bringing the comm to his mouth. “Hey, uh … I’m in the den. I think the pilot’s dead.” He eyed the column of twisted flesh; he certainly hoped they were dead.

“Okay,” the captain replied. “You’ll have to switch to backup power manually, then.”

Simon hopped over the console, careful to avoid the outstretched arm, and studied the controls for a moment before hitting a few in quick succession. Rows of lights along the edges of the walkways flickered into being, and there was a hum from deeper inside the ship.

“Convict, what’s going on? We just detected an energy surge aboard the leviathan.”

“I’d hope you did,” Simon shot back. “I turned the power back on.”

“… I haven’t given you the sequence for the pilot’s console yet.”

“I didn’t need it.” A weight settled in Simon’s gut as the words came out of his mouth. “I just … knew.”

The comm was quiet for a long time, and Simon couldn’t shake the feeling he’d said something wrong.

“See if you can reach the command,” the captain finally said. “From there, you should be able to send us the research data from the lab.”

Simon took a steadying breath. “And then we’re done, right?”

“… Yeah. Then you’re done.”

Simon climbed back over the pilot’s console and made his way out of the den, grateful there was now enough light for him to see the edges of the walkways. The corridors outside were still dark; evidently, whatever the leviathan used as a backup power source could only handle so much.

He guessed the command would be on one of the higher tiers, and took the next corridor that led upward. The fleshy growths on the walls were larger up here, and closer together. It hadn’t gotten any cooler; his hands were shaking now, making it difficult to hold the light steady.

A voice in his ear whispered, “Simon?”

Simon flinched, heart pounding as he ducked around the nearest corner. He couldn’t stop the panicked rasp of his breathing, covering his mouth with his free hand to muffle the sound.

When nothing lunged after him, he carefully edged back the way he’d come and peeked around the corner.

The corridor was empty. He was alone.

The heat delirium was getting worse; he had to keep moving.

As expected, Simon found the command centre on one of the leviathan’s upper tiers. The door was already open, and he took a few careful steps into the room, shining his light in a wide arc. There were more of those strange growths in here, clustered in greater density than anywhere else on the ship.

He could see the Peacekeepers’ command carrier, massive and intimidating, through the front viewport. It had matched velocity with the leviathan but was keeping its distance maybe fifty metras away.

The operations console was working, but the interface was sluggish, running slowly on reduced power. From here, though, he could access the ship’s databanks—including the reports from the lab in the maintenance bay. They were a mess of charts and numbers Simon couldn’t parse at first glance, but that wasn’t his problem; he just had to send it back to the carrier and let them handle it.

“I have the data from the lab,” Simon reported into his comm. “Sending it over now.”

The tremor in his hands was debilitating, now, but he managed to pull up the console’s transfer utility and send a connection request to the command carrier. It was accepted almost immediately.

“We’re receiving,” the captain confirmed. “Stand by.”

He’d be out of here soon. Simon let out a breath of relief, bringing his other hand up to rest against the console—

And went very still.

The back of his left hand, where the blood had touched him, was red and inflamed. Livid veins crawled under his skin, stretching up toward his wrist. There was something stuck to his knuckles, a lump of something dark and wet; Simon tried to brush it loose, but it stuck fast. He dug his nail in to peel it off, and pain lanced up his arm; he quickly pulled away.

It wasn’t on his hand. It was his hand. Something was growing out of him.

There was a warbling noise from the console.

“Hey,” Simon rasped into the comm. “Hey, the transfer’s finished. I can leave now, right?”

“I said stand by,” the captain barked at him. Then, more muffled—as if she’d turned away from the comm—she said, “Let me see.”

There was a muttered conversation that Simon couldn’t fully hear, but he made out the word “bioweapon.” Another voice, not the captain’s, said, “One of the conscripts must’ve—”

The chatter from the comm descended into incoherent clamour. It was all around him, dozens of voices, whispering, crying, screaming—

“Shut up!” he roared.

Everything went quiet. Stunned silence echoed down the comm line.

“Listen to me,” Simon pleaded. “I want out of here. Do you understand? It’s too hot and there’s something growing on the walls—something alive—”

“Right,” the captain interrupted, with horrible certainty. “That must be what happened to the crew.”

“What?” Simon’s eyes were drawn, inexorably, to the growth on his hand. “What do you mean?”

“It’s in the logs,” the captain explained. “One of the scientists conscripted onto the project was working on something in secret. Some kind of biological agent.”

“And …” Simon swallowed, his mouth dry. “It got loose?”

“Or was set loose.” The captain let out a weary sigh. “It assimilates living tissue. Those growths on the walls—they’re the biomass of everyone who was aboard at the time. And now it looks like the leviathan is being assimilated, too.”

The voices. That was what he’d been hearing—the voices of all those people, consumed and suffering—

“Get me out,” Simon begged, voice rattling. “We had a deal. I’ve done enough. You have to get me out.”

“I can’t do that,” the captain replied. “You’ve already come into contact with the organism. You’re irreversibly contaminated.”

“I’m still alive,” Simon insisted. “I’m alive, I’m not—I’m not some lump of meat stuck to the walls. Not yet. There has to be some way to stop it—”

“If I brought you back, you could infect the rest of my crew.” There was something like regret in the captain’s voice. “I can’t risk their lives like that. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t leave me here, please—”

The comm went dead. There was movement through the viewport; the command carrier was pulling away.

“No, no, no,” Simon rasped into the comm. “Please come back. Please. Don’t leave me here. I want to live. I just want to live.”

There was a hot, dull ache in his arm. The growth on his hand had spread to his wrist, tendrils reaching up his forearm.

A voice in his ear whispered, “They knew.”

They knew, when they came to his cell. They knew there was something dangerous on this ship. They knew that anyone they sent here couldn’t come back. They’d promised Simon his freedom, and lied through their teeth.

They’d sent him here to die.

“It’s what you deserve.”

He didn’t want to die.

Simon huddled on the floor, cringing away from the muttering growths on the walls, holding the comm to his mouth as he cursed, pleaded, cried for anyone to help him for what felt like eternity, until his throat felt like it was full of razor blades.

“Nobody’s coming. You belong to us, now.”

And then, up out of the dark, a voice—a new voice—said, “Uh, hello?”

Subscribe to receive an email when this story updates:

#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form { margin-bottom: 0; }#mailpoet_form_2 p.mailpoet_form_paragraph.last { margin-bottom: 0px; }#mailpoet_form_2 h1.mailpoet-heading { margin: 0 0 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_column_with_background { padding: 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:not(:first-child) { margin-left: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph { line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_segment_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_radio_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_list_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_label { display: block; font-weight: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_month, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_day, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_year, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date { display: block; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea { width: 200px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_submit { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_divider { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading { width: 30px; text-align: center; line-height: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading > span { width: 5px; height: 5px; background-color: #5b5b5b; }#mailpoet_form_2{border: 0px solid #f7f7f7;border-radius: 0px;background: #fbfaf3;color: #20030b;text-align: left;}#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form {padding: 10px;}#mailpoet_form_2{width: 100%;}#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message {margin: 0; padding: 0 20px;} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.textarea.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-errors-list {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-required {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-custom-error-message {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph.last {margin-bottom: 0} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 {background: #fbfaf3;}} @media (min-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .last .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:last-child .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} Please leave this field emptyinput[name="data[form_field_ODg4MDU1MjcwMDZiX2VtYWls]"]::placeholder{color:#c2bfab;opacity: 1;}

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription!

Grace remembered Earth more clearly in his sleep than he did while he was awake.

He walked along the beaches in San Francisco, or taught in his classroom. He worked in the lab aboard the Petrova Task Force’s appropriated aircraft carrier. He sat at the bar in a tiny break room and watched the world’s brightest minds sing terrible karaoke.

He was in a conference room. It was quiet. Yao sat at the other side of the table, with Ilyukhina. There was supposed to be a third, but he was … missing, for some reason. And Stratt was there.

They were all looking at him. He didn’t want them to be looking at him.

Grace opened his eyes.

For a few disorienting moments, the room around him was completely alien. The bulkheads curved overhead in a way that could only be described as organic. There was a low, constant hum in the air. Everything was shades of bronze and brass.

“Grace awake.”

He rolled onto his side, peering at the half of the room that had been walled off with transparent xenonite. Of his roommate’s five spidery legs, three were tucked beneath him while two fiddled with some kind of device between his clawed hands.

“Morning, Rocky,” Grace mumbled.

“Grace twitch in sleep.”

“Yeah.” Grace rolled onto his back again. “I was dreaming.”

Rocky’s dismissive hum didn’t quite translate. Grace had tried to explain dreams a few times now, but Rocky had expressed a certain skepticism toward the concept.

Eridians didn’t dream. They just switched off. The idea was a little terrifying, but Rocky probably thought it was terrifying to hallucinate for long periods while completely paralyzed.

“Dr. Grace?” said a voice from the floor. Grace’s comm was still attached to the shirt he’d stripped off last night.

Grace leaned over the edge of the bed and pawed around until he managed to unclip the comm from his dirty laundry and bring it within range of his mouth. “Yeah, Pilot?”

“We have nearly arrived at our destination. You and Rocky are needed on command.”

By now, Grace didn’t find it awkward to get dressed in front of Rocky; the guy could hear through his clothes anyway, so there wasn’t much modesty he had left to preserve. Rocky himself didn’t wear anything except, occasionally, his toolbelt; either Eridians didn’t do clothes, or Rocky was kind of a freak. No way to know which.

Pilot’s tone hadn’t implied an emergency, so Grace took a few extra minutes to freshen up. Of all the things that had been recovered from his old ship, his toothbrush somehow hadn’t been among them; his only remaining option was a dentic. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to sticking a little white leech in his mouth to clean his teeth, although it was hard to argue with the results.

Rocky’s transport ball tumbled noisily at Grace’s side as they made their way up to the command centre. It was a big ship, and Rocky had a limited amount of the chemicals he used to make xenonite; they’d walled off his workshop in the maintenance bay and one half of the quarters he shared with Grace, but if Rocky wanted to go anywhere else, he had to use the ball.

A pair of DRDs zipped along the floor, coming the other way, and Grace quickly hopped aside to avoid tripping. The little drones seemed to love getting underfoot, although Grace couldn’t help noting that none of them ever got in Rocky’s way.

Although Rocky weighed nearly three hundred pounds. If one of the DRDs ever did wander into his path, it risked getting rolled over and crushed.

A huge, irregularly ovoid door swiveled open as Grace and Rocky approached it. Beyond lay the command; through the front viewport, Grace could see a yellow main sequence star not unlike Earth’s sun.

The clamshell-shaped emitter off to one side of the room lit up, projecting an image of Pilot’s face. “Scans confirm this star is also infected with Astrophage,” she informed them. “Historical data indicates its output has dimmed by nearly ten percent. Fortunately, none of the planets in this system are inhabited.”

It was still weird to hear that young, female, crisply British voice come out of a crab-squid alien that lived in the deepest reaches of the ship. Then again, that wasn’t Pilot’s real voice—it was just what the translator microbes colonizing Grace’s brain stem made her sound like. Why his brain had made that particular association was anyone’s guess.

“Anyone else around?” Grace asked.

“Yes,” Pilot replied. “One other vessel detected, in orbit around the star.”

The strategy table in the middle of the room activated, and a monochrome, three-dimensional hologram appeared above its surface. Modeled there in miniature was an oblong shape, tapered more sharply toward one end—like a slightly flattened teardrop, or a child’s drawing of a whale.

It looked strangely similar to the vessel they were on right now. “Is that another leviathan?”

Grace only got about halfway through the sentence before the ship lurched under his feet. He grabbed onto the nearest console for balance; Rocky slid across the floor, shrieking untranslatable profanities as his ball collided with the rear bulkhead.

They were accelerating toward the other ship, so fast that the systems managing their inertia weren’t quite up to the task.

“Apologies,” Pilot said, a little flustered. “It has been some time since Mari last encountered another of her kind. She is … excited.”

As cool as Grace found the whole “living ship” concept, it was kind of spooky to be inside something so much bigger than he was that had a mind of its own.

“The other leviathan appears to be severely damaged,” Pilot reported. “And it’s wearing a control collar.”

“Is Peacekeeper ship.” Rocky tensed inside his ball, legs braced around him. “Peacekeepers here, question?”

“I can detect no other vessels nearby,” Pilot assured him. “This leviathan seems to be abandoned—perhaps due to its injuries.” After a moment’s examination, she added, “The control collar is also damaged.”

“Can’t Mari just ask the other leviathan what’s going on?” Grace asked.

“She is trying,” Pilot replied, “but having little success. The other leviathan’s transmissions are proving difficult to parse. There is … interference. Too many voices at once.” She made a noise of interest. “I am, however, picking up another transmission on a separate band.”

Grace tightened his grip on the console—which turned out to be the operations console—and pulled himself upright. “Can you put it through?”

There was a brief, squeaking noise of acknowledgment from the console.

“—back.” The voice on the comm was low, rasping, exhausted. “Please come back. Don’t leave me here. I just want to live, please …”

Grace cleared his throat. “Uh, hello?”

The channel went quiet.

“Are you okay?” Grace asked. “Do you need help?”

After a few seconds, the voice on the other end of the line said, “Are you real?”

Grace wasn’t sure what to say to that, besides, “Yes?”

The voice didn’t seem convinced. “Who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Ryland Grace.” When that was met with more silence, Grace asked, “What’s your name?”

“… Simon.”

“Simon,” Grace repeated. Odd that the name sounded like one from Earth, but maybe that was the translator microbes at work. Or maybe, in all the vastness of the universe, there were only so many ways to put two syllables together. “We’re on our way to meet your ship. I guess we can help with repairs, or—?”

“Get me out,” Simon interrupted, desperate and ragged. “Please, please, just … get me out of here.”

“Uh … yeah, I think we can do that.” Grace quickly muted the channel and turned to Pilot’s projector. “Can we do that?”

“Leviathans are incapable of docking ship-to-ship,” Pilot replied. “You would need to take a transport pod.”

“Grace piloting bad,” Rocky pointed out.

Grace didn’t have the grounds to argue. He’d been in one of Mari’s transport pods exactly once, to check out some abrasions left behind after they got her control collar off. He’d barely managed to get the pod oriented in the right direction; any piloting more complex than that was beyond him.

“The access codes we used to free Mari from the Peacekeepers should also work on the other leviathan’s control collar,” Pilot offered. “I can remotely open its transport hangar and activate the docking web. All you would need to do is maneuver on a direct course until you’re in range.”

Fly in a straight line. Grace could do that. Probably.

He unmuted the channel. “Hey, Simon? Sit tight. We’re coming to get you.”

A long moment passed in complete silence, and Grace had begun to worry that the message hadn’t gone through when Simon finally rasped, “Don’t let it touch your skin.”

Compared to Mari’s immense size, the transport pod wasn’t very big; there was just enough room for two seats up in the cockpit, plus a small cargo area in the back.

Grace sat alone at the controls. Rocky had stayed aboard Mari; while he didn’t exactly have to breathe, he did need to vent excess heat through his carapace—and in an enclosed space like his ball, that heat built up over time. It just wasn’t practical or safe for him to venture too far from the ship.

As Grace approached the other leviathan, the pod lurched slightly as an invisible force took hold of it. That was the docking web; Grace lifted his hands from the controls, letting the web steer the pod toward the massive doors of the transport hangar. The doors slid open, and the pod was set gently on the floor.

Once the doors were closed again and the hangar repressurized, Grace opened the hatch and stepped outside.

He hadn’t been sure what Simon meant by “it,” and Simon himself wasn’t too clear on the matter, so Grace had hedged his bets and put on his EVA suit. The soft, ambient glow that illuminated Mari’s interior was absent here; the hangar was pitch black, and Grace only had the lamp on his helmet to see by. He fiddled with the comm in his suit, tuning it to the frequency Simon had been transmitting on.

“—wasn’t part of the plan.” Simon’s voice was low and quiet, muttering to himself. “They wouldn’t listen. I tried to stop it—I didn’t want—”

“Simon?”

Simon’s mumbling cut off with a sharp inhale. “Is … is this … now?”

“Uh … yeah,” Grace assured him. “Yeah, it’s now.” When no further questions were forthcoming, he added, “I’m aboard your ship. Where should I meet you?”

“I … I’m in the command.”

“Okay.” According to Pilot, no two leviathans were exactly alike on the inside—but the command centre would almost certainly be at the front of the ship, on one of the upper tiers. “I’m on the way. Be there soon.”

As Grace moved to switch off the comm, though, Simon’s voice returned: “Can … can you just keep talking to me?”

“Yeah.” The desperation in Simon’s voice tugged at something in Grace’s chest. “Yeah, of course. What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

“Okay. Uh …” Unfortunately, the first thing that came to mind was, “Did you know Phantom of the Opera on Broadway had basically the same orchestra for, like, thirty years?”

“… What?”

Oh, good. Simon was so baffled he’d forgotten to be terrified.

“Yeah, I mean … if you’re a classical musician in the back half of the twentieth century and you land a stable gig, you’re not gonna quit, right?” Grace passed through the hangar’s inner door, into the maintenance bay. There was some kind of lab in here—one pretty similar to the lab the Peacekeepers had set up on Mari. “So it was all the same people, every night, for the whole run. Over ten thousand shows.”

He was panting a little; the EVA suit was intended for use in zero-g. Leviathans had artificial gravity thanks to something Pilot called “gravity bladders,” and upon being told this, Grace had immediately decided not to pursue a full explanation of what that meant.

Point was, the suit was heavy.

“Apparently they all hated each other, too.” Grace exited out of the maintenance bay into the maze of corridors inside the leviathan. “Like, there’s no way that wouldn’t make you a little crazy. All the same songs, night after night, and there’s a hundred other people in the same boat. It’s like one of those existentialist plays. ‘Hell is other people,’ you know?”

“No,” Simon said, his voice distant. “I don’t.”

Grace checked the wrist monitor on his suit. Atmospheric pressure was holding steady, but exterior temperature read as nearly forty degrees celsius. That was hot. “Palm Springs in August” hot. As he watched, it ticked up another degree.

When he looked back up ahead, his helmet lamp caught a glimpse of something dark and thick and wet. He turned the light on it; there was some kind of viscous secretion oozing from the bulkhead, dripping down to pool on the floor. It was a deep, rich red.

“Simon?” Grace said. “I’ll be right back, okay? I need to check in with somebody.”

“… Okay,” Simon replied. There was a panicked edge to his voice.

Grace switched to Mari’s comm channel. “Pilot, do leviathans bleed?”

“Not as such,” Pilot replied, clearly put off by the question. “As bio-mechanoids, they use certain fluids to circulate energy and serve other functions—but those are not ‘blood’ in the way you would understand it.”

“I’m seeing a red fluid on the walls in here,” Grace explained. “And it’s really hot.”

“It’s possible the other leviathan is suffering from an infection,” Pilot offered. “That would explain the fever, and the … unusual secretions.”

“Right.” Grace switched over to Simon’s channel again. “Okay, I’m back.”

Silence.

“… Simon?”

A shuddering breath came down the channel, settling into ragged, pained breathing. “It hurts.”

Right. Time to pick up the pace.

The further into the ship Grace went, the more of that blood-like stuff he saw. Some of it had congealed into large, fleshy patches—gathering in the corners first, then spreading out in a carpet across the adjoining flat surfaces. Like moss, but made of meat.

It throbbed, slick and steady and regular, like there was a pulse going through it.

Grace found the command where he’d expected it to be. The layout was the same as on Mari: viewport up front, piloting and operations consoles, and even a little projector like the one Pilot used to talk to them.

At the center of the room, huddled as far from any of the walls as possible, was a person. He was curled up in the fetal position, arms wrapped around his knees, but from here Grace could guess at a familiar body configuration: bilaterally symmetrical, two arms, two legs, one head.

“Simon?” Grace guessed.

The huddled figure flinched and looked up, eyes widening at the sight of Grace. He seemed more or less human, his long hair hanging limply around his face, sticking to skin damp with sweat. He froze for a moment, then scrambled back along the floor, one hand snatching up a hatchet holstered at his belt.

“Whoa, whoa!” Grace took a step back and raised his hands. “It’s just me. It’s Grace.”

Simon’s only answer was a stare of stark disbelief.

Grace moved forward again and crouched as best he could in the EVA suit, bringing his eyeline down to Simon’s Simon stayed where he was, still staring, chest rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths.

Tuning his comm back to Mari’s channel, Grace said, “Hey, Pilot? I found Simon. He looks like, uh … whatever you said the Peacekeepers are.”

“Sebacean,” Pilot supplied.

“Peacekeeper.” Rocky’s voice was sharp with distrust. “Simon is Peacekeeper, question?”

The Peacekeepers that Grace had met all looked a particular way: military posture buttoned up in dark, squared-off uniforms, with a particular contemptuous glare. Simon didn’t much resemble them; for one thing, the clothes he was wearing weren’t much better than rags, layered up to compensate for all the holes and missing patches. The effectiveness of this technique was reduced by the fact that he’d shed a few layers in the heat.

“Relax, buddy,” Grace said. “Pretty sure this guy’s not a Peacekeeper.”

“Not a Peacekeeper,” Simon agreed, shaking his head. His eyes were glassy. “Mom promised. Never a Peacekeeper.”

“He seems, uh …” Grace struggled to find a polite phrasing, “… out of it.”

“He is likely experiencing heat delirium,” Pilot suggested.

“Is that what it sounds like?”

“Yes. Sebaceans lack the ability to regulate their body temperatures in extreme conditions. As they overheat, their higher brain functions become impaired.”

Simon reached out to touch the visor of Grace’s helmet. Trembling, sweaty fingers slipped clumsily across the plastic. There was something on his arm—some kind of growth, clustered on the back of his left hand, creeping steadily up his forearm.

It looked an awful lot like the stuff on the walls. Grace scanned the room; the lamp on his helmet revealed more of the meat moss, creeping around the edges of the command.

“Dr. Grace,” Pilot said abruptly; Grace jumped. “Mari wishes to understand what’s making the other leviathan sick. The information she needs should be available from the operations console.”

“Okay. Got it.” Grace caught Simon’s eye, although it took a few attempts between the angle of his helmet and Simon’s unfocused state. “Hey, Simon? I’ll be right back, okay?”

Simon’s eyes went wide and panicked again, but he swallowed thickly and nodded.

Grace hauled himself to his feet—the suit seemed heavier by the minute—and approached the operations console. There was already something pulled up on the display; it looked like research data. Star charts, infection patterns. Historical readings, tracking luminosity over time. “I think somebody on this ship was studying Astrophage.”

“Was Peacekeeper ship,” Rocky pointed out. “Send data. Maybe useful.”

The EVA suit’s fat fingers fumbled over the controls, but fortunately the transfer utility was already pulled up. “It’s on its way.”

“Receiving,” Pilot confirmed.

The data transferred within a few seconds; whatever they used for wireless networking at this end of the universe, it left 5G in the dust. Once it was done, Grace tried to switch over to the leviathan’s internal monitors—but something inside the console sparked, and the whole thing went dead.

Whatever. They could figure this out later, when Simon’s brain wasn’t boiling into soup. “No go on the operations console,” Grace reported. “We’ll come back and fix it, but I need to get Simon out of here.”

“Understood, Dr. Grace.”

Simon’s eyes had tracked Grace the whole time he’d been fiddling with the console, and continued to do so as Grace returned and crouched in front of him again.

“Hey,” Grace said, in the voice he’d once used with his students when they were hurt or scared. “Do you think you can stand up?”

Simon nodded and managed to get his feet under him. He wobbled a little as he straightened, and Grace reached out to steady him; Simon latched onto the forearm of the EVA suit for a moment, then took a breath and let go.

He kept close, almost breathing down Grace’s neck, as they left the command and headed back the way Grace had come.

“Rocky,” Grace called in, “can you set up a quarantine area in the maintenance bay? I’d rather not take any chances with whatever’s floating around in here.”

“Understand,” Rocky replied. “Will begin immediately.”

“We’re leaving?” Simon asked, his voice small and hopeful.

“Yeah,” Grace assured him. “We’re leaving now.”

There was a loud, low groan that seemed to come from everywhere, and the floor shuddered under their feet. It almost felt like an earthquake.

Simon doubled over and screamed, clutching at his head, hands clamped over his ears. Grace reached out and grabbed him as his legs buckled.

“They won’t let me go,” Simon sobbed out. “They want me to stay, they won’t let me go!”

“Dr. Grace, I’m detecting an energy surge aboard the leviathan. I believe it may be preparing to starburst.”

Starburst was the only real defense leviathans had—the ability to jump long distances through space, on a randomized trajectory. The damaged leviathan wanted out of here—and if it starburst while Grace and Simon were still aboard, it would be nearly impossible for Mari to follow.

“I thought you said leviathans couldn’t starburst with a control collar on?”

“The control collar is damaged,” Pilot reminded him. “But if the leviathan attempts to starburst in its current condition, it may tear itself apart instead.”

“Bad bad bad,” Rocky added. “Get back now.”

“Working on it, pal.”

Grace hurried as fast as he could down the hall, struggling to keep Simon on his feet. He’d stopped screaming, at least—but his eyes were distant, tears streaming down his face as he breathed heavily through his mouth.

As they approached the door to the maintenance bay, the leviathan shuddered again. Grace stumbled and lost his grip; Simon fell, his left arm reflexively snapping out to steady himself.

His hand landed squarely on a patch of the meat moss. Instantly, a mass of tendrils snaked out and wrapped around it, tightening into a strangling grip.

Simon screamed again, instinctively pulling away—but his hand stayed where it was, stuck fast to the wall. He tugged again, and again, the movements growing wilder and more frantic, his breath coming in ragged, panicked sobs.

Grace gripped Simon’s wrist with both hands and tugged, but the tendrils had wormed their way through the growths on Simon’s hand and arm; it was like the two clusters had merged together, healing into one unbroken mass. Like Simon’s arm was part of the wall, now.

“Don’t leave me here.” Simon’s eyes were wet and terrified, staring into Grace’s. “Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” Grace promised, instinctively. “I can’t—your arm—”

Simon’s gaze darted between his hand and Grace’s visor, and the fear in them settled into an awful kind of resolve. He shoved his hatchet at Grace. “Cut it off.”

“What?” Grace yelped. “No, I can’t—“

“Do it!”

There was a distant screaming in the back of Grace’s head as he took the hatchet and raised it.

The first strike bit deeply into the meat of Simon’s upper arm, just above the elbow. Blood sprayed from the wound, spattering across the visor of Grace’s helmet. The blade was sharp, slicing neatly through flesh until it embedded itself in bone, and Grace had to grab Simon’s shoulder with his other hand to lever it free.

Simon didn’t scream. His mouth was open, but all that came out of him was a quiet, hollow, broken sound.

Grace brought the hatchet down again. This time it cleaved through the bone; Grace could feel the crack of it even through the glove of his suit. The only thing holding his arm in place was one last thin, straining strip of muscle and skin; it gave with a taut snap under the final strike of the hatchet, and Simon reeled away from the wall.

Blood beaded on the hatchet blade. The gloves of the suit were slick with it; Simon’s clothes all down his left side were wet and stained red. More blood pumped from the severed stump of his arm in rapid, thick pulses.

Grace’s jaw shivered, saliva welling in his mouth; he clenched his teeth and swallowed the urge to retch. He could not throw up in the EVA suit.

He grabbed Simon’s remaining arm and slung it over his shoulders, dragging him in slow, stumbling steps through the maintenance bay. The inner doors of the transport hangar opened ahead of them.

No matter where Grace shone the lamp on his helmet, he couldn’t spot any of the meat moss in here. The transport pod sat where he’d left it; he hauled Simon aboard, settling him into the auxiliary seat at the controls before dropping into his own.

“Pilot, we’re good to go,” Grace called in, breathless. The EVA suit was a lead weight on every part of his body, Simon was not a small man, and he was pretty sure he was having a panic attack. “Open the outer doors.”

Through the pod’s viewport, he saw the hangar doors crack open. They opened slowly, stuttering as they went—as if something were working to prevent their escape, struggling against the override from the control collar.

The leviathan convulsed around them, the bulkheads of the transport hangar buckling. They were out of time.

Grace gunned the pod’s engines. Its runners skidded roughly across the floor of the hangar; its hull scraped the edges of the doors as it forced its way through the gap.

And then they were free, accelerating through open space.

Behind them, the damaged leviathan lit up. Grace switched on the pod’s rear monitor, watching with mindless fascination as lines of blue light crawled across the leviathan’s hull, spreading and growing, further and brighter—

And then the ship crumpled in on itself like a beer can in a trash compactor, shredding apart until there was nothing left but debris.

Beside him, Simon slumped in his seat. His face had gone slack and bloodless, and his eyes fell shut.

Subscribe to receive an email when this story updates:

#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form { margin-bottom: 0; }#mailpoet_form_2 p.mailpoet_form_paragraph.last { margin-bottom: 0px; }#mailpoet_form_2 h1.mailpoet-heading { margin: 0 0 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_column_with_background { padding: 10px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:not(:first-child) { margin-left: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph { line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_segment_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_radio_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_list_label, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_label { display: block; font-weight: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_select, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_month, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_day, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date_year, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_date { display: block; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_textarea { width: 200px; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_checkbox { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_submit { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_divider { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message { }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading { width: 30px; text-align: center; line-height: normal; }#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_loading > span { width: 5px; height: 5px; background-color: #5b5b5b; }#mailpoet_form_2{border: 0px solid #f7f7f7;border-radius: 0px;background: #fbfaf3;color: #20030b;text-align: left;}#mailpoet_form_2 form.mailpoet_form {padding: 10px;}#mailpoet_form_2{width: 100%;}#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_message {margin: 0; padding: 0 20px;} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.parsley-success {color: #00d084} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_validate_error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 input.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 select.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 textarea.textarea.parsley-error {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-errors-list {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-required {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .parsley-custom-error-message {color: #cf2e2e} #mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_paragraph.last {margin-bottom: 0} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 {background: #fbfaf3;}} @media (min-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .last .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_2 .mailpoet_form_column:last-child .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} Please leave this field emptyinput[name="data[form_field_ODg4MDU1MjcwMDZiX2VtYWls]"]::placeholder{color:#c2bfab;opacity: 1;}

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription!

Insanely busy this week — two day job gigs, one of which is a night shift. To facilitate me not having to do this again, please check out the following:

Not June, Still Gay! Pride Market

I’ve got a table at Safe Haven‘s November market next month! I’ll be there selling minibooks of the Casefile of Jay Moriarty series, plus both collected editions.

Market hours are from 10 AM to 4 PM on November 7th and 8th. Come on down, get a free bookmark, and maybe buy some gay crime books.

Serializing Now: “The Safecrackers’ Take”

“The Safecrackers’ Take” is now serializing on the Casefile of Jay Moriarty website! The first chapter is available now, and subsequent chapters will be posted weekly on Mondays.

Read it HereThis Week’s LinksLincoln Park billionaire accused of fueling rat infestation

“For more than three years,” Seid has “hired individuals to place nuts, seeds and other foods around” his home, then expanded to Lincoln Park where they place food “around and in trees and throughout the park,” a 43rd Ward document states.

…

When asked by neighbors and park staff why they spread the nuts, Seid’s workers have responded with “hostile” language but no explanation, neighbor Caroline Novak tells Axios.

Police Spent 16 Years Hunting a Serial Killer. Then They Discovered the Humiliating Scientific Truth.

… when authorities tracked their target down, they found not a terrifying serial killer, but an everyday, average worker at a cotton swab factory.

 Justice for Joelle | Trans Legal Clinic

People may imagine that, in an emergency, no young person would be left to die in favour of an ideological policy. I am here as a witness to say otherwise. This is exactly what happened to my child.

Joelle was left to suffer, plead for her life and die a horrific death at 27.

Will return next month, if still alive.

-K