“And ISS handles biohazard deliveries? That can’t be a coincidence. This must be what Tuva found, and why he had to kill her. It’s the Foxfire, Edison, it has to be. He must have been handling it for ISS and brought it aboard for some reason.”

Josh Girdy, the son of a bitch, was right. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to get Piero’s tainted biohazard deliveries onto science vessels. But why?

“Shit,” he muttered. “We need . . . we need to know more. This is heavy.”

You know all you need to, baby. Why does it matter? You’re with us now. You’re with your cluster, your siblings, your mother . . .

“Stop using her voice!” He hadn’t meant to shout, but it gnawed at him each and every time, hearing the horrid monster in his head use Diana’s voice like that. Rosalyn’s eyes could have swallowed him up for their size.

“She sounds just like my real mother,” he whispered, pinching his forehead. “It’s . . . not easy.”

“Think about that song,” Rosalyn said, humming a few off-key bars. “Or Misato. Or me.”

He did. He did think about Rosalyn, breathing hard, seeing in those huge eyes the kind of sympathy he hadn’t expected to find. Sliding the badge copy into her suit pocket, she swayed again, and, carefully, he put out a hand to steady her.

“Tired,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, that’s—” A series of red lights flashed above her visor, three tiny dots that lit up in sequence. “Bad. That’s bad.”

“Yes, it is,” Rosalyn almost shrieked, putting both gloved hands over the bottom of her helmet, as if reaching for her mouth to gasp. “It’s my filters. My clean oxygen. All these spores . . . They must be wreaking havoc on the filtration system. Oh God. Oh God. What do I do?”

Edison took hold of her more firmly, guiding her by the shoulders, turning her toward the ladder. His mind raced. One lone human on their ship and her only guarantee against the Foxfire was about to fail. He should’ve seen it coming. Damn it, he was the captain, after all; of course this level of air corruption would jam up a suit after this much exposure.

Captain, captain, captain, be the fucking captain.

“We . . . Shit. We find you new filters and hope like hell they’re not already contaminated. We can get you back to the lab,” he said, kicking open the hatch. “You’ll be safe there, right? You can breathe there until I find new filters.”

Rosalyn closed her eyes and reached for the ladder, her face turning pale behind the visor. “If you find new filters,” she whispered, trembling. “If.”

23

He expected suit storage, just next to where Edison made his home on the ship, to be empty, but he was not alone.