shoot him and take me immediately. If I did not, perhaps they might choose to search a little longer, prolonging his life for use against me later. Giving the corp more time to send a team to investigate our silence.
I held my position.
“She’s not here,” my father said doggedly. “But if she were, I would tell her that I love her.” He looked up into the vents. Perhaps hoping that I was watching. “And that this isn’t her fault.”
The man shot him.
Then they ransacked the Janeway and left.
When I emerged from my hiding place, the ship’s emergency ionization field was crackling over the jagged hole they’d left in its side, holding the vacuum back.
I remember thinking I had a field just like that keeping my feelings at bay. I didn’t know how long it would hold, either. But I poured all my strength into maintaining it. I thought I would be better off without them.
For twelve years, I was correct.
· · · · ·
I was correct. By the sixteen-minute mark, all five Syldrathi are unconscious, collapsed over their glass countertop. I carefully remove the vent, keeping myself low as I climb up into the room. Though my heart insists on thumping, Aurora Legion training has assured me that if I stay close to the ground and work quickly, I will avoid a dangerous dose of the gas.
“HI THERE!”
I startle as Aurora’s uniglass speaks from its place on the counter, my heart now beating wildly against my ribs.
“YOU SURE TOOK YOUR TIME GETTING HERE!” it chirps, unaware of my distress. “I WAS AFRAID THEY WERE GOING TO DISSECT ME!”
“You are a machine,” I say. “You cannot be afraid.”
“SAY, THAT WAS A NEAT TRICK WITH THE GAS! YOU’RE PRETTY SMART FOR A—”
“Be quiet,” I tell it.
“YOU KNOW, YOU’RE LUCKY I LIKE YOU PEOPLE SO MUCH,” it chirps. “CONSTANTLY BEING TOLD TO BE QUIET COULD LEAD A LESSER MACHINE TO MAYBE START PLOTTING YOUR GRISLY MURDERS AN—”
“Silent mode!” I hiss.
Magellan finally complies, falling mute. I quickly gather the passkeys and the other uniglasses, then avail myself of the weaponry on offer—Warbreed technicians are more heavily armed than United Terran Authority scientists would be. And wasting no more time, I pack my haul into one of their bags before crawling back down into the vents.
· · · · ·
When I crawled down from the vents, I discovered I was too small to move the bodies, but I arranged them as best I could. Even Miriam. She had been scared, I knew that. That was why she had done it.
That was why it was so important not to feel.
Everyone here had acted on feelings, and they were dead because of it.
And because of me.
Someone would eventually be sent to investigate why the beacon had failed. Obviously my hope of a corp craft’s arrival after six hours and two missed transmissions had been optimistic—the Janeway was a minor asset. But in time, they would come. I just needed to support myself until then, and hope the force fields didn’t give out.
It was another seventy-six hours before I woke in my parents’ bed to voices above me.
“Great Maker, how is she still alive?”
I rolled onto my back to look up at them. Five adults in corp uniforms.
I wasn’t afraid.
I wasn’t relieved.
I was nothing.
· · · · ·
I am not … feeling nothing as I proceed to the next stage of my mission. Putting serious thought into the matter for the first time, I realize the members of Squad 312 have compromised my emotional integrity. Slowly, some of what I was as a child is returning. I have not yet decided whether this is a welcome development.
Three levels down, I find the infirmary, where Kal lies restrained on a bio-cot, attended by two Unbroken medics. I raise my purloined disruptor to the shaft’s grille and take careful aim. Waiting. Patient. Finally, I hear what I am waiting for—a shipwide announcement spilling over the public address system, warning all hands to prepare for Fold entry. Loud enough to conceal a disruptor blast.
BAMF!
My shot strikes the first medic in the back of her head. The second draws his sidearm with astonishing speed, but my shot strikes him in his throat, laying him out on the deck beside his comrade.
That was too close.
I climb up from the vents as the announcement ends.
“Who is there?” Kal demands, trying to turn his head.
I do not waste words, setting to work on his restraints.
“Zila … ,” he whispers.
“I understand you were shot. Are your