Ty scrabbled for the knife and splayed his fingers across the console once more, just as he heard the heavy door behind him begin to open. He took a firm grip on the knife and prepared to strike down at his finger.

Something stopped him, and he cried out. It felt like the air around him had solidified, freezing him in place.

The monster crawled back inside his skull, just as he heard someone call his name.

Chapter Thirty-three

The comms terminal in Dakota’s quarters began to beep insistently. She accessed the data-space and found a high-priority alert waiting for her from Corso. A moment’s mental navigation pinpointed him on Deck C, close by the labs.

Lucas. What’s up?

<Dakota. Where are you?>

There was an edge of panic to his voice.

I’m in my quarters, she replied.

<I need you to meet me at Deck C, near Transport 55, straight away. There’s something you need to see.>

Why don’t you just tell me what it is?

<Just get down here, Dakota. Right now.>

He cut the connection. Dakota checked the time and realized, with a silent groan, that she had been asleep for less than two hours.

On getting there, she found Lamoureaux waiting by the entrance to a storage room, halfway between the transport station and the labs.

He nodded towards the open door, his expression grim. ‘Take a look.’

She stepped inside, but her nose had already told her everything she needed to know. The bulkheads were stained red with blood, and the air smelled of copper and rust.

She saw Corso and Martinez kneeling on either side of Ray Willis, who had been pushed into the space between two tall metal equipment bins. It was clear from the deep gashes in his throat and chest that he was very dead.

Corso glanced up at her as she entered. ‘Did you see anyone else on the way here?’

‘No, I came straight away.’

Corso and Martinez exchanged a look. ‘Four of us here—’

‘And Dan on the bridge,’ Martinez finished for him. ‘We should get back there as soon as we can.’

Just five of us left, Dakota thought numbly. Ray, Nancy, Leo – all dead.

‘What about – what about Driscoll?’ she asked. She had almost said, what about Whitecloud?

‘Now there’s a question I’d like to answer,’ said Martinez, straightening up. He grabbed hold of one side of a storage module to keep himself standing the right way up. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Not only that, it looks like he took the Mos Hadroch with him,’ Corso added. ‘And . . . Dakota, Eduard knows about Whitecloud. Or he does now, at any rate.’

‘Please tell me you only found that out recently,’ said Martinez. His tone was calm, but something in the way he looked at her made it abundantly clear he was suppressing a great deal of anger.