Valerie exhaled, forcing herself to release the tension. “You are scientists. When an experiment has failed, when a sample is contaminated, or when you can’t figure out how to undo all the things that have gone wrong, what do you do? Do you keep conducting the same experiment, over and over, with the tainted batch? Or do you start again, fresh, with different conditions?”

Naomi couldn’t breathe.

“Earth isn’t an experiment,” Hart said. Lebedeva ran her hands through the buzz of her hair.

“Earth is already a lost cause. Thirty years was overly optimistic. Humans will find ways around the bans, the limits, the sanctions. Cheat, take, let others worry about the mess they leave behind. That’s how we got into this mess. I thought we could break the cycle, with one ship of young people. Cochran didn’t give us the chance.” Valerie licked her lips. “It might not have worked anyway—there’s the risk that the children would already have society’s influences embedded in them. Travelling so far, so young, would have psychological effects, but people like you, Hart, would be able to mitigate that.” A sardonic nod of her head at the doctor. Hart’s nostrils flared.

Naomi’s skin tingled. “How convenient, then, that something so awful has broken out back home. With Earth so distracted, it’ll be easier to jump through the ring. Hard for countries to divert resources to an exosolar planet with chaos on the ground.”

Hixon’s head snapped towards Naomi. “You can’t mean—”

Valerie held up a hand. “Now, now, let Naomi finish her accusation.”

Naomi sucked in a breath. She’d first assumed the illness was due to climate change factors. The strains of antigens change each year, and quadrivalent strains of flu shots had been losing their efficacy. Trying to increase vaccination success to former levels was Evan’s entire job. But this made her question that.

God, Valerie might have even gotten the idea from her son. He’d talked about infectious diseases at the dinner table one Thanksgiving until Naomi had thrown a bread roll at him and begged him to stop describing pustules while they were eating. The outbreak had started not far from Evan’s work—which meant it also wasn’t far from Hawthorne’s headquarters. Naomi cursed herself for a fool.

“Valerie can’t be behind this. We left months ago. Anything that contagious would have already taken effect,” Hixon said. Hart lifted her chin, mouth working as if to bite back sharp words towards her wife.

Valerie hesitated just a beat too long.

“No,” Naomi whispered. “Valerie.”