It deeply unsettled him, this remarkable silence and the as-yet-unknown implications. He knew he couldn’t move from that spot as long as Rosalyn slept. Piero was up to something, and even if the questions and curiosity were eating Edison up, he couldn’t leave her. A captain didn’t abandon his crew, and Rosalyn had become part of the Brigantine whether she appreciated it or not. He had failed Piero miserably, and probably Rayan, too, but it didn’t have to be that way for Misato or Rosalyn. There had to be hope, or there was no point in keeping this vigil or resisting the voices in his head.

There was a third fact making itself known: Rosalyn drooled quite a lot while she slept.

The music twined softly through his head, the only noise beyond the hum of the ship. Free-form jazz worked the best against the Foxfire, he found; the unpredictable notes defied patterns, skipping and stopping at random, too wild for the monster to anticipate. Anything repetitive put him in the most danger. In the early days, those first ugly, awful days, they had all compared notes, trying to find ways to quiet the sudden voices in their heads. In the end, they each found a different solution. Rayan had his memories of Lahore. Misato had her coffee. Edison had his music. But Piero . . . Piero never told them what helped him. Maybe the horrible truth was that nothing helped and that was why he seemed to sink the fastest, with nothing there to hold on to.

Or maybe, just maybe, he was a traitor, and the guilt had gotten to him as quickly as the infestation.

Rosalyn’s head slid off her arms and onto the chair. No way that was comfortable. If he could, if it was possible or even appropriate, he would’ve liked to slide a pillow under her cheek and drape a blanket over her. After what she had seen, after what she now faced, she deserved to get some good, solid rest.

The salvager tried to kill you, kill your family. She will try to do it again.

Enemy at the gates. Edison dropped his glasses in his lap and scrubbed at his eyes. He had to stay awake and alert, lest the Foxfire catch him in a moment of weakness. It would be far too dangerous to lose control now when Piero and Rayan had vanished and Rosalyn was all but catatonic. Vulnerable.

Yes, baby. Vulnerable. Break the shield. Destroy the barrier. Let her join the family.

“I’m not doing a single fucking thing you tell me to do,” Edison muttered aloud. “I don’t care who you sound like.”

And how do you know that? How do you know this wasn’t intended? We want you to remain close to her. We want the temptation to become too much.

“Bullshit.”