Naomi went to the comms panel, her body half-turned to Lebedeva. The Russian held her hands splayed wide and empty as she kept shaking her head and wincing from the burning. Sure enough, Hart and Hixon were both in their quarters. Valerie was in the bridge.

A crackle through the comms. Perhaps Valerie had still watched while it was off, and they’d never had any privacy at all. “Come on down, Naomi,” Valerie said. “Let’s talk. Leave Lebedeva in the lab; I have changed the code on the door.” The words were languid with her slow drawl.

Naomi’s heart rate hammered.

Lebedeva’s shoulders fell. She shuffled back to the sink, ready to rinse her eyes again.

“It is all right,” she said. “I will stay. You will get through to her.”

Naomi nodded, hoping she exuded a confidence she didn’t feel. She left the door wedged open and kept her grip on her vial. There was a chance the camera angles had hidden it and that Valerie wasn’t checking schematics that closely. Worth a try.

“Break open their lock,” she called out to Lebedeva behind her. Lebedeva grunted her assent.

Naomi stuck the vial in a beltloop of her coveralls, slid the pepper spray into her pocket, and made her way to the nearest spoke. She took a deep breath and climbed into the dark.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

129 Days After Launch

2 Days to Mars

120 Days to Cavendish

As Naomi climbed along the spoke towards the main body of the ship, she wished she could speak to Hart and Hixon. Questions pummelled her. Was the two hours a hard deadline? What if it was two and a half hours before Naomi could get her hands on the controls? And if they changed trajectory without the cure… If about a third of the world was under twenty-one, plus five per cent of the adults proved immune, it would still mean returning to a world that was over half dead.

There was also the chance that Lebedeva’s change of heart was only temporary and fear could drive her back to Valerie. Or that her engineering skills weren’t enough to break open Hart and Hixon’s door in time.

What if their plan all hinged on a cure that wasn’t on the ship? That this was the one thing Valerie didn’t make a backup for because she knew she’d be light years away?

What scared Naomi most was not knowing which version of Valerie was waiting for her in the bridge. The one she thought she knew, or the woman Naomi suspected she’d never known.

The door opened.