“I used to know her. Before I ever got on the Hadfield.”
I feel, as much as see, the six-way glance my companions exchange.
“That’s impossible,” Scarlett says. “That would make her over two centuries old. Your cryo survival was a freak accident, Auri. Are you saying she somehow did that, too, on some other ship that never made headlines?”
“Or she really must moisturize,” Fin offers, but nobody laughs.
“I know,” I say weakly. “But this is Patrice Radke. She was a settler on Octavia III, the head of Exploration and Cartography.”
I drag my gaze away from the picture, and they’re all looking at me. Some are expectant. Some skeptical. But all of them are hanging on my every word.
“She would’ve been my boss,” I whisper. “I was going to do a practical apprenticeship in Exploration and Cartography under her. She and my dad … they . .”
“Thanks for the birthday wishes, Dad.”
“Thanks for the congratulations about winning All-States again. Thanks for remembering to message Callie about her recital, which she nailed, by the way. But best of all, thanks for this. Mom couldn’t get clearance for Octavia, so what … you just replaced her? You’re not even divorced yet!”
And then I hung up on him. The last words I ever spoke to him were a list of reasons he sucked.
And now he’s dead. …
I look up into Patrice’s lifeless face, my stomach sinking.
But if she—
“Officially, there was no colony on Octavia III,” Zila says. “Records indicate that you were bound for Lei Gong.”
“Well, the records are wrong,” I reply.
Zila tilts her head, studying me in that way of hers. “And this Patrice was one of the original settlers for your expedition, some two hundred and twenty years ago.”
It doesn’t sound like she’s questioning me. Just thinking things through. The others are less certain, though nobody’s offering the flat-out disbelief I’ve seen before. I think we’re past that now.
“This sounds like I’m crazy,” I say. “But I know I’m right.”
Except that Patrice Radke has been dead for over two centuries.
Then again, I’m two hundred and thirty-seven years old myself.
On a ship full of aliens. With whom I just robbed a space station.
Nothing is impossible.
But something is very, very wrong.
26
Kal
“The other GIA agent was like this, too?” Tyler asks.
I nod affirmative. Remembering the way their bodies felt as I hit them. The sounds they made as they fell. Their flesh was … wrong under my hands. Fibrous. Wet. Bones bending like green saplings rather than breaking like dry wood.
“I have come to blows with many Terrans in my time at Aurora Academy,” I say. “These operatives were not human.”
“But they’re GIA,” Cat objects. “The highest arm of the Terran Defense Force’s Intelligence Division.”
“Then your Terran Defense Force may have problems,” I reply.
I can feel Aurora sitting nearby. Her presence is like the light of the sun on my skin. I feel bathed in it, though I try to ignore it, focus on my Alpha’s face and our predicament. But the pull of her is like gravity. A bottomless pool in which I would happily throw myself to drown.
“How does a two-hundred-and-sixty-year-old Octavia settler get into the GIA?” Aurora asks. I can hear the distress in her voice. She knew this woman. Perhaps even cared for her.
“Um, slightly more pressing question,” Fin says, nodding at Auri. “As far as I know, Stowaway here is the only person to have survived a cryo period of more than a few decades. How is a two-hundred-and-sixty-year-old human even alive?”
“I do not believe they were.”
We turn to Zila, who is looking at her uniglass.
“I did not have long to conduct tests,” she continues. “But both these GIA agents showed signs of epidermal degradation consistent with early necrosis.”
“You’re saying they were dead before Kal got to them?” Tyler asks.
“I am saying they showed signs of it, yes.”
“But they were walking and talking?”
“I cannot explain it. Perhaps these growths”—she waves at the silvery leaves sprouting from the agent’s eye—“have something to do with it. Like Betraskan saski polyps or Terran nematomorphs.”
Zila looks around an ocean of blank stares.
“Nematomorphs are parasites native to Earth,” she explains. “They mature inside other organisms, then exert a chemical control over their host’s brain. Urging the creature to drown itself in bodies of water where other nematomorphs breed.”
“And you put on those uniforms anyway?” Cat asks, dumbfounded.
“I thoroughly irradiated the GIA garments first,” Zila replies, unruffled.
“She really likes that disruptor,” Finian mutters.
“I wish we could have brought one of the bodies aboard to study,” Zila sighs.