I’m saved from answering by Zila, who unbuckles herself and stands. “I will provide medical treatment,” she says, in the same calm voice she always uses, as if she didn’t just help blast four Chellerian bodyguards three times her size after blowing out the gravity of an entire space station. “Scarlett, could you access the supplies? We are due to eat. And we should change our clothes.”
Everyone animates at the idea of food. So there’s a pause by mutual agreement as the Jones twins grab and distribute shake-n-heat ration packs. Mine says NotPork’n’Apple Casserole and Pie! on the foil. I’m not sure whether to worry first about the NotPork or the and Pie!, and I shake it until the foil warms to the touch, tear it along the dotted line.
A now-familiar beep sounds from inside my dress. “You realize there is nothing close to either pork or apple inside there, right?”
Squinting inside suspiciously, I suspect Magellan is right, but I shrug and chow down anyway.
“Ty, we need to talk,” Scarlett says.
“Uh oh,” Tyler replies, mouth half full. “No conversation in human history that began with those words ever ended well.”
Zila is standing by Fin, dabbing something on the cuts on his face. “We should discuss what we saw at Dariel’s flat. The information may impact our next decision.”
“Why?” Cat asks, looking between them. “What did you see?”
Kal speaks beside me, his voice low. “There was something wrong with the GIA agents. We saw it when we removed their uniforms for Scarlett and Zila to wear.”
Tyler glances across at him. “Wrong? Care to elaborate on that?”
Scarlett sets down the foil pack that holds her Just Like Fish Dumplings. “I don’t think we want to tell. This, we have to show.”
She’s still wearing gray GIA armor from the neck down, and she pops a release on the chest plate, peeling away the top half of it to reveal the sweaty upper half of her dress. She has her uniglass tucked in there, and she aims it at the cabin’s holographic central display, then transfers a picture there with a flick of her finger.
The image slides up to replace the trajectory readouts, and the whole squad goes perfectly still and silent.
Cat’s the one to break it, in a voice I’ve never heard from her before.
“Holy shit.”
It’s a picture of a woman—a human woman. She’s probably in her thirties, though it’s hard to tell at first. She’s dead, her cheeks hollowed. Her mouth is a little open, and her skin has turned a lifeless, sullen gray, rather than just the bleached colorscape of the Fold. Strangest of all, where this woman’s right eye should be there’s … a plant?
It reminds me of the succulents my mother used to grow in our apartment. Thick, juicy, diamond-shaped leaves bursting from her eye socket in a tight bouquet, none much bigger than my thumbnail. They’re a lifeless tinge that matches her skin, with a dark blush along their edges and a tracery of veins running through them.
Some kind of moss spreads out across the right-hand side of her face. It’s made up of soft fuzz and wispy tendrils and covers half her forehead, trailing down her face and neck to disappear beneath her black undershirt. The same black veins in those leaves also run beneath her skin, like spiderwebs.
It’s like she’s made of stone, and the plants and moss are growing out of her. No wonder Kal said something was wrong. Deep in the pit of my stomach, I know I’ve never seen anything more wrong. It should just be gross, out of place, but instead it’s sending my every nerve jangling, my spine prickling with panic.
“I am not well versed with human maladies,” Kal says quietly. “But I assume this is not some common condition.”
“No,” Ty says, sounding as close to shaky as I’ve ever heard him. “You’re telling me this woman was one of the GIA agents? She was walking and talking?”
I glance up at the woman’s face again. I don’t … There’s something incredibly wrong about this, but there’s something familiar as well. I hold up my hand, block out the eye that’s blooming with that unnatural plant, stare at the rest of her.
Then my gut twists, and my voice is hoarse when I speak, just a whisper.
“Tyler, I … I know her.”
Ty looks at me, his scarred eyebrow raised. “You met her on Sempiternity?”