Jay swore again.

“Two down,” Charles said weakly. “One to go.”

Charles had intended to lighten the atmosphere, but Robin glared at her. The older woman approached the corpse and gave it a superficial examination.

“What do you think happened?” Jay asked. He hadn’t entered the bathroom but stood well back, pressing his thumbs into the bridge of his nose.

“This one went insane and shot his companions before finishing himself off,” Robin said, backing out of the room. “It happens.”

Charles rubbed her tongue over the inside of her mouth. It tasted acidic. “You’ve seen this before?”

“Once. Come on. We only need to confirm the third team member’s death, then we can get out of here and let Central send a purging crew.”

Jay laughed weakly. “Purge? If it were me, I’d just write the whole station off.”

“They can’t. This station links the communication systems between Cyrus and Mandola. They’ll need a new crew to maintain it.”

“I doubt anyone will want to work here after this.”

“They won’t know,” Robin sighed. “Central will move a new team in here and tell them the old crew was relocated. It happens all the time. There could have been a mass murder in your own station, and you wouldn’t have a clue.”

“Oh, hell.”

“Charles, stop gawking, or I’ll lock you in with the body.”

She waved to her leader, not taking her eyes off the wall. “No, hey, come back here. He left a message.”

“What?”

Robin reentered the room, and Charles pointed. On the wall, written crudely in dark-brown blood, was the phrase, “They take our skin.”

Charles rubbed at her arms. The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees.

“Don’t try to read a deeper meaning into it,” Robin said, apparently guessing what was going through Charles’s mind. “He was crazy, so he wrote a love letter to his delusions before finishing himself. Come on. The quicker we go, the quicker we can get out of here.”

Charles let Robin lead her out of the bathroom, past the corpse on the bedroom floor, and back into the hallway. Jay was waiting for them, his face a pasty pale grey. “Where next?”

“Living quarters,” Robin said. They retraced their steps down the hallway, past the damaged control room, and then through the door at the opposite end of the hall. When Charles pressed the switch, none of the lights came on.

“Flare,” Robin instructed, and Charles fumbled one out of her suit’s satchels, pulled the tab, and held it above her head as it hissed and spat. The dingy red light threw writhing shadows around the overturned furniture, broken TV, and shattered glass bowls.

Jay nudged Robin and Charles then pointed to the wall behind them, where a dark liquid had sprayed across the grey-green paint. Robin nodded. “Spread out. There’ll be a body here somewhere.”

Charles went left, circling the overturned lounge chair, flare raised high in her left hand, gun in her right. Something had shredded the cushions, and their pale stuffing had spilt out like a puff of cotton candy. She’d just opened her mouth to point it out to Robin when a quiet snap from farther in the station startled her.